February 22, 2022 School Board Work Session

001college or you're a state school you should have to take those with without question i totally agree always what are you doing all this stuff real i mean why do they even take them well that's what somebody said to me before they said we're live oh thank you can we send miss barber the link the link where is everybody [Music] we're gonna use this screen too yes um great oh yeah yeah are we in are we ready we're waiting we're ready okay okay good all right let's get this rolling show on the road good evening welcome to our new kent county school board work session for tuesday february 22nd good evening everybody do i hear a motion to come out of closed session make a motion we come out of closed session thank you mr

002mead do i hear a second second thank you miss mcbeath and a vote hi mr mead could you please read the certification of closed session whereas the new king county school board has convened a closed meeting on this day pursuant to an affirmative recorded vote in 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 the new canton county school board that such closed meeting was conducted in conformity with virginia law now therefore be it resolved 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 requirements by virginia law were discussed in closed meeting to which this certification this certification resolution applies and only such

003public business matters as were identified in the motion convening this closed meeting were heard discussed or considered by the new king county school board okay thank you mr mead do i hear a motion to approve the certification of the closed session i'd like to make a motion to approve the certification of the closed session okay thank you miss mcbeeth and do i hear a second second thank you mr mead and a vote please all in favor say aye aye okay thank you very much good evening everybody we have um miss barber joining us um remotely online this evening and ms staskill could not be with us this evening so like to move forward to the agenda item number two responses to citizen comments dr nichols please go ahead when you're ready yes thank you miss

004winford put that look back a little bit uh many of the comments last meeting were about books so i'm gonna group those into one series of answers and then i'll go through the other ones as well most of the information that i'm sharing tonight comes from our january 24th meeting presentation that ross miller put together when it comes to our policies and how we select in those pieces um so the division most of the questions were about the division review committee the division review committee may consist of members of the division instructional department that's the department that mr miller leads student services which is led by dr clark teachers media specialists and i'll come back to that parents any ad hoc experts in the field and if appropriate students the person who brings the book

005forward as um for review is invited to attend that review committee meeting as well but doesn't actually serve on the committee so this is the division committee which means it's already gone through the school based committee so committee membership really depends on the level of the challenge for example the current book that's being challenged poet x is at the middle school level therefore the committee will be comprised of representatives connected to the middle school level to include middle school parents um i mentioned the media specialist so this is where it changes as well so it's a middle school level challenge so the middle school media specialist will not be on that committee we'll have a different media specialist be a part of that and we would do that if it was at the high school

006or the elementary so committee membership does vary many of the division representatives will stay consistent uh but others members can shift based on availability availability i'm sorry um a question was made about decisions being made public it would be made public both at a board meeting and through the individual school communication channels for example if it's a middle school middle school would communicate uh the results of that and we would also bring it back here as a division level review we've heard from many people on the issue of book selecting and banning everyone seems to agree that parents should have some level of control for their children and we completely agree with that that's actually why we redid the process to have the parental control component connected to young adult books so we have that

007outlined and really provides that balance um the challenge process we examine the challenge resource in entirety and once again i'm reading directly from the january 24th meeting presentation too and all of those documents are online on board docs um and we can post the links as well to determine the professional acceptance by reading critical reviews of the resource examine the challenge resources in its entirety so one of the questions was asked is do the committee members have to read the book absolutely that's part of the process and part of serving on the community the committee way values and faults and former opinions based on the material as a whole rather than on passages or sections taken out of context discuss the challenges resource in the context of the educational program and the committee would prepare

008a written report uh for the superintendent so that's in a nutshell the big picture on the book piece we did have a question about um rezoning specifically in brickshire and since that's where i reside as well i completely agree there are new houses everywhere including two new ones on my cul-de-sac uh we have two new bus stops right at the end of my street that weren't there two years ago it continues to grow um so in our rezoning with quentin elementary school which comes online in august uh which you'll hear more about tonight we have done a redistricting that will provide room at all three schools um so we do have that growth in mind we work very closely with the county on future development so there is some future development a lot of future

009development in the clinton elementary school zone so when we open quentin elementary initially they will be the uh have the smallest population because that's where the most growth is anticipated in the county so so absolutely that is on our radar and that is why those schools will open at the numbers that they are that's that piece there um there was uh once easier access to board to share to our board to share concerns um we do have the board's contact information including phone number and email readily available on the website so um we did have some questions about social emotional learning i did prepare a couple slides but ross miller is actually going to present on that in greater detail tonight i just wanted to put a couple things up okay this is up here

010ross it's up there okay oh okay can we go to the next slide while we'll work through that thank you um i wanted to take a step backwards because it was um in the context of the comments from last meeting it was about critical race theory and social emotional learning being a vehicle for critical race theories i just wanted to go back to state code state code does require character education first adopted in 1998 last adopted in 2013 we will post this on board docs next to superintendent comments after this meeting tonight i'm not going to read all that to you so be very thankful for that but i am going to grab a couple sections um so purpose of character education program ross can you move that for me thank you sir shall be

011to instill in students civic virtues personal character traits um to improve the learning environment promote student achievement reduce disciplinary problems and develop civic minded students of high character so that is straight from state code furthermore it gets into kind of the character traits connected to it a lot of these we know including the golden rule tolerance responsibility hard work fairness justice consequences i wanted to give this to you on the front end so when you see mr miller's presentation you're going to see threads of that in the work we're doing um mr ellis did give us a disciplined presentation you've seen a spike in discipline numbers this is about having uh responsible citizenship in our schools kids who have kindness empathy compassion consideration once again this is coming straight from state code this is a

012definition of social emotional learning there are a lot of definitions connected to it this one really embodies more of what we do building skills needed to recognize and manage emotions once again hopefully you've seen a parallel to character education in the code develop care and concern for others make responsible decisions establish and maintain positive relationships and handle interpersonal situations effectively so this is just those two things side by side really looking at the high character developing civic minded maintaining positive relationships and making responsible decisions so really that's the focus of new kent county public schools in the context of social emotional learning or student well-being those are the pieces that we're really focused on um but once again you'll see more of that this evening but i wanted to make sure i answered some of

013that in mind ross i think that is my last slide one other comment connected back to the library and i do apologize going back to that there was a suggestion for a library rating system we have tagged all the books that are young adult which is 13 plus that they do have a ya connected to them they're also tagged in the computer system so that if a parent does want parental control around that they would be notified and flagged if a student checked out a young adult book so we do have not a gpg pg13 that piece but we do have a rating system um connected to that so that is um pretty much a summary of citizen comments miss swinford thank you dr nichols board members any comments follow-up questions yeah i was just

014going to say dr nichols on that library it was interesting that you made that comment because last week our last meeting we had 18 speakers and and 14 out of the 18 speakers made comments about the books and so i wanted just to encourage you to understand uh the folks that are present maybe the folks that are listening is that we do have a process and i just want to make sure that we emphasize that and and ultimately is that as the process unfolds if there is a true conflict that that cannot be resolved in-house among the committee and it goes to dr nicholls desk and dr nichol dr nichols has a uh a comfort level that that is not acceptable in his eyes then it does come to the school board for a full

015vote and the school board will make the final decision on a particular book or context if it cannot pass through the necessary channels uh to do that so i want to encourage you to know is that we know that the system is set up to take it all the way through it just doesn't stop at the committee level because they cannot come to a conclusion and i think that's very important because if parents question it which they should if they have an issue is that we can push it as far as as it needs to be pushed and so i want to let parents know is that there is a process in that we can make a decision on issues if they are related to a particular book or within our media center and the

016other thing we talked about books that we are trying to work through and i guess correct me if i'm wrong mr miller is that one of the things that we are working through is when parents donate books to individual classrooms for reading material within the classroom specifically the elementary level then we are trying to evaluate those books that are donated by parents and working on a vetting process for those that is fair to the teacher that it does not put the teacher in a precarious situation that she feels like some books are not deemed appropriate within her classroom setting based on age so just to let you know we are we're taking this very seriously and we do want to do what is in in the best interest of of the teacher and of the

017students and having the parents in mind during that whole process so just wanted to make that thank you dr nichols dr nichols you may have mentioned this the the the book that's currently through uh or in the committee process they're a timeline for completion or an estimated date for they're actually having their initial convening tomorrow uh making sure that every member of the committee has the book and then they convene again in two weeks it was what we were looking at on our timeline so it's a now that we have established a process and we've kind of worked through this it's not a process that we've worked through before that you know we have the set initial meeting talk about the purpose and then the review in two weeks okay thank you i think it's

018wonderful that um the parents are able to opt in if they want their children to read a young adult title but a quick question um on these committees you had cited middle school parents being involved who picks those and how is that decision made sure that is uh picked you have a battery issue sorry miss mcphee i hate for that to turn off in the middle um in conjunction with the the principal the ptso pto and then uh mr miller as well so it does come through us if we had a parent middle school parent that really wanted to be a part of the process that's also perfectly acceptable too uh similar to the way that i do my superintendent advisory committee i do get recommendations and then i do have opportunities for people to

019join that are interested yeah it's good that we have a cross-section of individuals on that committee yeah it's very well go ahead we also take a look and make sure that we really do want to make a good decision with this and not just a rubber stamp of sorts you know to really debate and go through you know what fits with our process and goals we're trying to accomplish okay all right thank you moving along to section three new business the first item number a student wellness initiatives student safety caring culture and global awareness which is essential goal number two mr ross miller all right um madam chair members of the board dr nichols tonight wanted to do a little bit of a follow-up based on the last meeting that we had where joe ellis

020presented to us on discipline data so wanted to follow up a little bit tonight on so now what do we do how do we respond to that and so just start with just a quick review of some of the points that came out of his presentation so one um we have seen a rise in discipline referral counts this year and in two different ways we've seen both the number of referrals gone up but also the number of students that that those referrals like apply to so typically in a normal year we'd see about five to eight percent of our students make up the bulk of our uh referrals this year we're seeing more in the 15 to 20 range so it's not just another increase in referrals so um have that there just the number

021of students getting referrals has increased and then also um it's mostly at the middle school high school level uh is where that's occurring so the next question we have to ask us what what causes that why are we seeing the increase this year and um there's a couple reasons and just depending on how you look at it um first of all we've been two years um or close to three since coba detroit started and so the last two and a half years have had quite a bit of interrupted schooling and so when we look at different reasons why students struggle with behavior first academic there's a lot of lost classroom time over the last two years and anytime you have basically a classroom time you have students that are getting used to what does it

022mean to be in a classroom and so we lose that we lose the instructional habits that that they generated so you think through our current sixth grade the last time they had a normal year was like third grade so the the habits that they had formed previously were third grade habits they don't they're not necessarily the same as what we're looking for for a sixth grader and we've lost two years of really development of that so a lack of understanding of instructional expectations one of the things that we've noticed and not just here locally but then talking with other divisions is student um is this the amount of effort that students are putting forth and just their the amount of effort they put into things isn't it is what we used to see and so

023motivationally um getting them back to that point from a social standpoint no a lot of the last two years they've spent fairly isolated um if it's not physically isolated then um basically in some ways they they have not been around as many as other students and so their interactions with students is going to look different and they've um socially so if you look again at ninth grade those students the last time they had a regular year was a sixth grade year there's a lot of social growth that occurs during the middle school years and they they lost a lot of that because they they weren't in school as much time and with that's the loss of relational development can i just when i had a conversation i had with middle school principal today while we

024have been back five days a week full schedule full it still hasn't been exactly the same um if you go to the middle school right now in the cafeteria they're in desks six feet apart it's a very different cafeteria experience so the isolation piece and we talked about you know maybe now it's time to move that back um you know can we start to get those last few pieces the masks are optional we're in the full day we're running athletics activities field trips you know what's next because i would really like us to end this year how we want to start next year um so and they're up for that as well but we're taking a look at those things as well you know we did it so we wouldn't have to quarantine as many

025kids but there's always a downside to isolation there's always a downside to mitigation i mean there is something to to look at through that so as we're removing layers and this health data is getting better which you'll see here in just a little bit uh we're still seeing some of the fallout from some of the prevention and work that we did early on and then also lastly on the far right emotional um this last two years has been traumatic for students and for children for everyone and we have lost loved ones lack of traditional norms and again at the middle school high school age that is extremely important when you look at brain development and puberty and the way hormones react to your brain during that time you have a lot of reorganization of the

026way your brain works and so to have it not be normal leads to basically changes there so and then loss of emotional growth just not being in the same experiences limits the amount of emotional growth they're going to have so some of the ways in which we're responding a we've set aside dedicated time in elementary schools you look at morning meetings this is opportunity as soon shows up to really set their day and talk through what happened the day before and what are the expectations for the day and then at the middle school we have advisory periods and so this is a time for them to do a variety of different things anywhere from um to touching on some of the social emotional things but then also they do enrichment challenges they do different group

027activities during that time it gives them the opportunity to rebuild some of those social social traits and emotional acuity there as well so in the explicit instruction a lot of it is how do we interact with each other it's getting back some of that social aspect that we've lost also how do you deal with emotions how do you if if i get a failing grade how do i react to my teacher in a way that hey can you help me out with this how can i grow from this or in social if there's a social disappointment how do i interact with that and helping students to deal with that explicitly and so just leaving it up to however they're going to react and and included in that social stories on hey this happened how students

028reacted this way was that good was that bad how how should you react we also here at the high school we did we have increased our school counseling staff by a counselor this year and so we're at four counselors and then our behavioral support staff has been pretty active this year in supporting and helping out as well ross i just want to add connected to athletics uh virginia high school league has reported um a disproportionate number of ejections across all sports um the interactions and what do you do and um as kind of and we played sports all last year we're playing this year this year they're in the right order um but the they've noticed across the commonwealth across the nation uh more ejections more unsportsmanlike i think soccer set a record for ejections

029and red cards last year across the state really just getting back to away from a screen and how do you interact with a person appropriately so here's a little bit more on what those explicit times look like at in the morning meetings some of the things that we're seeing we are using some of the stanford harmony curriculum but then also like over here at newton elementary school they did seven habits of healthy kids and some of the things that these look at are sort of how to be proactive how to prioritize what your needs are and how to accomplish those how to support one another academically and socially and then what are some healthy habits meaning like what should you be eating on a regular basis that type of healthy habits advisory time it includes

030an academic support time it includes enrichment lessons one day a week it does include lessons from our sel curriculum one day a week some of the concepts these are straight out of some of the things that we're doing with the sel day is stress management emotional regulation conflict resolution recognizing others perspectives and preparing for high school mr miller can you quantify this i think you've you've spoken before but specifically how much time are we talking about on a day or on a daily basis or a weekly basis sure um advisory time at well both of them are about 20 minutes a day and so it's not a massive amount of academic time but it really gives them an opportunity to hit on whatever topic is for the day or whatever activity they have for the

031day and then get the students prepared for the day questions i hope that intent there is really just to give you an idea of what are some of the things we're seeing what are some of the things that we believe are causing that and then um what are how are we trying to respond and dr mills it might be nice excuse me miss barbara it might be nice to do something with athletics as well like you mentioned you know with the and it's not just you know the players but the the parents and the fans also but it might be nice to introduce that into into uh preparations there as well i think it's a great idea i mean there's a sportsmanship award that school divisions can get if you have no objections and it's

032a great award to get um it's becoming increasingly hard to get um just because of where we are at you know i was at wrestling state tournament that's uh interesting one of the most violent tournaments you'll be at but one of the best uses of sportsmanship i mean you throw somebody on around for six minutes and then you get up and you hug it out and shake hands and um but you know i think some preventative things on the coaching side of it and also the athlete side would be beneficial i did want to say that new cat middle school we do spotlight at school at each of our meetings it's one of the things that we started last meeting new camp middle school will be our spotlight next month um and we'll be sharing

033some of the work that they're doing around the middle school as well and sure we'll touch on advisory as well miss barbara did you have a question or a comment yes i did i wanted to um uh ask uh mr miller um how are are we able to gauge or measure the success of the efforts with the students so some of our hope is by the end of the year we'll start to see some of the behaviors that we're experiencing decrease especially as they as they have to do with the way in which students uh react to one another and interact with each other i think that's the big one and that's really um something that we're trying to hit hard in especially at the middle school level in those advisory periods and so there

034would hopefully over the over the rest of the year we'll start to see a decrease there and as we classify the disciplinary basically incidents then those incidents we'll see a shift in percentage from interactions with each other um to so something else that and hopefully overall numbers decrease as well and also just to add to that ms barber the consistency piece is what we've been lacking as far as students and staff and you'll see it in the health update where we were january where we are now with our shift in quarantine and protocols there's a greater consistency in second semester looking forward for high school kids third and fourth marking period for middle school kids and then our elementary students and that all leads into a presentation you'll see in the next month or so

035and that's our expanded summer of more program so one of the things to reduce that learning loss and have the consistency is to expand our summer offerings for families and for kids and really do some targeted work there uh around the same sort of work preparing kids for that next step and expanded sixth grade transition and we're in talks about an expanded ninth grade transition to really get at some of those areas mr ellis i believe in his comments last meeting really talked about ninth graders specifically to high school being a a sore spot having difficulty with that transition if we know that what are we going to do about and so you'll see that in our work moving forward at the end of the marking period at the end of fourth market period in

036middle school but also in summer and then fall of that ninth grade year so really getting in those gaps so that you can start to see a decrease in that data great great yeah under normal circumstances the transition from elementary to middle or middle to high school is uh is a little is a little challenging yeah so our freshmen right now their last make sure i got my numbers right on this one ross our their last full year non covet broken up was sixth grade um so you think about not the inconsistency in seventh grade and then eighth grade and now you show up as a freshman and it's still not exactly a school was when you knew it in sixth grade it's getting closer that's tough and i think i think we may have

037underestimated how tough it was as a profession um but we're definitely rising to the challenge to take that on any other questions okay thank you mr miller thank you you are welcome next item be fiscal year 2223 budget discussion under essential goal number three management and stewardship of resources dr nichols yes we are in the budget process so pretty much every meeting from now until we adopt the budget you will be seeing uh and be able to ask questions about the budget process so tonight we're going to show you where we are right now in terms of requests in terms of revenue as we know it so this is just an overview at our next meeting you will see a more fleshed out version of this we still have some work to do with the

038the county in this process and and work to do across our teams as well so so budget process we've held meetings with division directors and principals we've reviewed current needs and position requests we took a broader lens in these meetings because we have so many new principles so with new nukian elementary school new kent middle school mr wheeler was there last year but as principal now george watkins our planning principal who you'll hear from later today so we really took a broader lens and took more time with those new leaders about what do we want it to look like and bring the third elementary school online line gives us an opportunity to connect those dots across those three schools including that discussion of parent advisory and teacher advisory uh which will continue to be a

039topic at the next meeting also looking at making one thing we've learned throughout this pandemic is the need to be able to pivot as needed so you'll see flexibility and strategic grant utilization to move new camp forward i feel like almost every meeting i'm bringing forward a new grant because we've been very competitive in doing that so really strategically utilizing those grants so that we can maximize the operating budget and you'll see that flow through as we go through uh revenue outlook so right now this is based on governor northam's budget uh it is going through the house and the senate right now and then we'll have governor younkin's budget as well so this is our starting point and i'll talk to you a little bit about some of the shifts that we've already seen

040in the senate and the house so right now we're looking at additional state revenues of approximately 1.1 million dollars and saying that there's over 2 billion dollars of money that is not allocated yet and some of that come could come towards education it may not one of the things working against us is great as a county but it does impact education our local composite index increased and what that means is the county has gotten better economically so when when a county or locality gets better economically we get less money from the state so that's the downside of that when your lci local composite index goes up you receive less state revenue so the county or the city has to bear more of the responsibility with that formula so that means we're going to lose approximately

041200 000 and reduce state revenue as a result quentin elementary so the plan revenue on that and this has been in conjunction with the county for several years now um is about 1.4 million dollars it's a combination of personnel and operating which i'll break down for you in just a few moments additional operating requests we have ongoing communication with county staff to balance these requests so this is far from completed we really pride ourselves with the partnership with the county to make sure we have a responsible and balanced budget and then continued utilization of our grant funded to meet mostly one-time needs we're very hesitant to push something into a grant that will ultimately have to be funded in the operating budget down the line but we do look for opportunities for one-time funds or

042one-time needs to be able to utilize grant funding for that's a little bit about the revenue outlook quinton elementary which you'll hear more about tonight this is a further breakdown of the additional costs um so new positions related to that and i say new positions because it's a new school you can see the complement of positions that mirrors what we have at our other two elementary schools operating expenses includes utilities uh general school maintenance and building services uh technology and equipment leases so copiers um so forth fax machines we still have those um you know all of those leases that are connected to adding the new school this is what we'd like to do around salary and benefit adjustments and some of this is getting shifted in the house and senate but so in the

043initial budget that we received in december and you probably saw the news headlines 10 salary increase for teachers just simply not true um it is five percent in year one five percent in year two that's actually not true it is a portion of that is funded by state the remaining falls on the locality to balance so when you're here five percent or c five percent or ten percent you just gotta ask the question is that an unfunded mandate uh where where are the funds to go with that so a five percent salary adjustment for new kent is one a little over 1.3 million that's the state revenue that we're scheduled to receive for that five percent salary 646 000 so just under half that goes back to that local composite index um one of the

044things that's a continuing conversation board members is about our stipend scales whether it's a coaching stipend or a theater stipend or whatever the stipends may be is to make sure those are continue to be competitive so we do have some work to realign those stipend scales and we'll bring those scales forward to you that's a smaller increase but it is connected to salary and benefits one of the biggest issues that we have right now are the continued health care increases so we have an estimate for health care renewal it's about fifteen eight percent increase to the tune of five hundred eighty three eighty 80 000 we are putting this back out to bid to try to get a more competitive bid uh related to that but we're seeing health care increases across school divisions um

045across companies but we'll have additional discussion on this but this is where we are right now and there's a vrs virginia retirement system non-professional group rate adjustment uh the group rate has gone up and that'll be to the tune of 11 414 so you see there's some big ticket items salary um keep in mind that over 83 percent of our budget is related to personnel cost um so any one percent salary increase is is pretty substantial five percent is just to remain competitive and stay even with our with other localities so recruitment and retention this is uh things also things that we would like to do to remain competitive in addition to that five percent we'd like to do an additional step increase for just our teaching staff when the pandemic first hit my first

046year here we were we had to hold off on a step increase because of the uncertainty with finances related to the pandemic so we weren't able to do that we'd like to add that back the question i get most often at teacher advisory or just in conversation with teachers about salary and benefits is when are we going to get that step back so if we could do the five percent and have the step increase our steps we'd like to get to about 1.5 percent but they're not all there it'd be somewhere in the neighborhood of six ish percent but it would depend on where you are on the steps uh minimum wage adjustments uh minimum wage is is scheduled to continue to uh go up that is also being debated between house and senate could

047shift so a lot of this could change not sure if it was the house or the senate but they're now proposing a four percent raise and a one percent bonus the others is keeping the five percent and doing a thousand dollar bonus uh now also keep in mind when they say that that's just for standards of quality funded positions soq funded positions not even all of our teachers are funded uh through soqs uh so it's a it's a limited set of folks that are involved in that um and we have to backfill that piece as well um but there are also some legislation and some hope we spend a lot of time working through legislation of expanding who is covered under soqs and that could have an impact as well so these numbers could shift

048in our favor or not in our favor as we move forward uh transportation market rate adjustments we have some regional competitors that have substantially raised the starting salary for drivers you know drivers are at a premium our transportation department continues to do a phenomenal job compared to other localities about the times that they pick up and deliver and all of those pieces and the gps app has been a big hit as well for families we'd also like to continue the use of school-based substitutes now this is one where that's this may be a grant funded opportunity rather than an operating budget opportunity a school-based substitute arrives every day and fills whatever opening you have in the school but you know you're going to have them every day it has been along with the hard work

049of our paraprofessionals it has been and our teachers school-based substitutes have kept us open during the height of the pandemic operational services we do expect an increase in custodial services we will definitely have an increase in custodial service because we're adding more square footage in quentin elementary they're also looking at potential wage adjustments we do currently outsource custodial um but we're looking at consideration of contracted days and as we expand summer of more those buildings bathrooms and everything need to continue to be cleaned that's an increase as well transportation i don't have to tell you the fuel costs are on the rise that does impact us as well in the transportation department professional development upgrading software fees related to transportation we've done a substantial amount of work on athletic grounds and maintenance you're actually going

050to get a report tonight on something we'd like to transfer and work through with athletics technology really looking at other cloud-based services we were a victim of a cyber attack my first month here so our cloud-based services really saved us in that cyber attack and looking at what other cloud-based services we may utilize power school for example right now we host it ourselves it may be more beneficial to host it uh for powerschool to host it that has all of our student records transcripts those kind of things [Music] and and they do that every day and we don't um integrating automating systems our new executive director sean terry this is his thing that he does uh very well so we're trying to become more efficient in our operations so we'll be integrating and automating more

051systems quinton elementary is actually going to pilot some programs for us clinton elementary schools can be our first school to move completely to staff laptops our staff have traditionally had a desktop um but we believe that really the mobility and flexibility it's hard to pack up a desktop at the end of the day take it home so then you in turn need two devices you need a laptop and a desktop well really do you need a desktop anymore the laptops that we can get are incredibly powerful you could teach virtually if you needed to but you can also take it home if you need to as well really looking at replacement cycles so all of these things that we buy as a as release as a one-to-one school division have to be replaced and if

052we're not looking three to four to five years ahead of time we don't want to get stuck with a bill or devices that don't work technology as you've seen in some of our board meetings you don't want to wait to replace it when it breaks you want to be a little ahead of that so mr terry is really working on that with his team when it comes to student laptops staff devices network equipment as well so those are some operational costs that we're looking at as well instructional initiatives i'm very excited about the potential of a navy core cadet program we've been working on that for quite some time we will get the final approval from the navy um and i said we will get the final approval because i'm going to speak into existence

053um in april may time frame but we do have that budgeted for a position at the high school uh this is the gateway to a full-fledged rotc program and when we say every we want every kid to leave new kent high school ready to be employed enrolled or enlist we've been missing that in list option and we have a lot of kids and there are a lot of scholarship opportunities for kids connected to uh the military so we want to make sure we have a program so it's an expansion of our career programs and we're hopeful to have it up and running next year i believe they're actually going to do a site visit soon to look at our facilities summer moor program expansion expansion we do have that outlined in some of our grants

054regional programs new ken is very fortunate to be involved in four regional programs to expand opportunities for our kids for college and career whether it's chesapeake bay governor school code rva maggie walker or bridging communities as they give additional increases to their staff and they expand programs our tuition increases as well so we'll have regional program support costs go up related to those schools looking at some career and technical education expansion projects here at the high school whether it's expanding engineering looking at additional marketing or even looking at other areas in career technical education one of the initiatives of the new state superintendent um is about computer science expansion computer science isn't something that we have here at the high school right now but we'd like to have it online in the fall so that's

055another opportunity to expand those career and college opportunities for our kids but those come in in the cost of additional personnel and then after school remediation supports so we have received some grants around after school technically before and after school but we do almost all of ours after school to expand that remediation at the elementary school middle school and of course here at the high school so one one of the many ways that we're going after the learning loss and the consistency for students position requests additional teachers for growth i did mention as far as redistricting the growth in the county that is not slowing down anytime soon we've had over 25 elementary students register since january these are students new to new cat and it just continues to grow it's not just at the

056elementary schools but we know that's going to happen for the next few years at least with some of these developments so we will have some additional teachers just related to growth in the county specifically for elementary we'd like to add a new another mechanic so we're going to have more buses on the road more support with the county and county vehicles transportation supports and bus drivers reallocation of positions to balance need and resources so working at both the middle and high school about their schedule and can we balance some of that within a tighter schedule and then carefully planning of grant funded positions to continue to support immediate needs so we do have a couple grant funded positions uh we're actually looking at a grant funded grant manager because we have so many grants right

057now that we're managing it's a lot of grants in one one sentence but that is a position that would phase itself out once the grants weren't here and pays for itself as far as the the grant management and support um and we also want to continue our support for career switcher program to attract and retain talent so next fall will be the first year that we have career switchers that are taking over classrooms here elementary middle and high school those are either people who currently work in new kent county public schools as a paraprofessional or another role and we also have a couple residents of new county public schools as we open it up to them we'd like to continue to expand that opportunity for people education has saved my life as an unbelievable profession

058that i love very much i'd love to provide that opportunity for other people so the costs associated with that is we paid the tuition in partnership with old dominion university or the college of william mary which was standing up a residency program and then the people provide us with three to five years of service as a result so those are some of the positions connected to that our next steps are many march 7th you will see uh a presentation of the superintendent's recommended budget uh we have we'll propose the budget the proposed budget presentation to the board of supervisors for the county administrator some of this is dictated by code is march 14th we have a joint meeting board of supervisors and school board on march 18th we will have a school board public hearing

059on the superintendent's recommended budget uh we'll have the date associated with that after that joint retreat um and then we'll have school board budget approval and final adoption pending the final adoption by the board of supervisors so board members what traditionally happens is the board of supervisors adopts their budget and then the next day we adopt our budget based on their adoption a lot of these numbers will change and i can almost guarantee the budget you see on march 14th will change substantially as far as cuts additional revenue decrease revenue as it always does but i think in transition in those transition years between governors you definitely see more of that so i'm excited and optimistic about what these budget's going to hold um there are some really interesting proposals going around connected to education

060and i think we'll be able to close the gap and have a really strong budget that recruits and retains talent so that was a lot i'd be more than happy to dive into any of those things in more detail but you'll have a number of opportunities between now and adoption to kind of dive through that we'll also post this as we do each year on our website so you'll be able to citizens families can dive into it as well and can ask questions through a email address which we do monitor or of course at our next board meeting as well or any board meetings moving forward or my email or i don't want to throw out your emails but contact you anytime too as well so be happy to answer any questions thank you dr

061nichols board members uh questions or comments dr nichols i have one back on slide eight under after school remediation support i'm sure fellow board members get questions or hear comments a lot from parents in our community who are looking for support for their students tutors particularly in math can you talk a little bit more about some of those after-school remediation support efforts and and and if you know and if you don't understand but how well they're attended well i can tell you uh one that's been going on here that is not um incredibly well attended and that is in english and math it's just about every day here there's a rotating schedule and our teachers provide support for students it's really a matter of making sure that students do attend so if you if your

062child is having difficulty in those subject areas specifically here there is an opportunity almost daily and we do run a bus every day as well for families uh to alleviate that burden but that attendance has not been great um as we're starting the second semester maybe kids are doing their new year's resolutions and getting off to a better a better start but um so that's that piece the elementary schools math specifically i received a proposal from george watkins and new kent elementary to do an after-school math support remediation i believe the target date is april 12th so it's april 12 through i think the end of may and communication will be going home directly to families about that but if you do have a math need or math support there are additional programs one of

063the grants that mr miller really worked on was specifically for after school programs and we received that just after the new year started so schools have been working on proposals for that um the middle school as well has after-school programs connected courses and we do provide transportation as well so if you need support it should be there for you if you find it's not feel free to contact the principal mr miller or myself and we can make sure we connect the dots for you okay thank you very much miss swinford um i wanted to make a comment yes go ahead um i i just want to underscore the importance of us um doing the best that we can with teacher salaries if we're if we're providing a five percent increase we're basically keeping step with

064with all of our neighbors so everything we can do to bolster our staff teacher and staff salaries is is important yes thank you any other comments okay more to come on this for sure definitely will be the focus the next couple of months and thank you for that i know that's a lot of information in that presentation moving along to um item c cip athletic transfer essential goal number three management and stewardship of resources mr hochman yes ma'am madam chair members of the board dr nichols you heard dr nichols mentioned earlier about an athletic um event we're going to talk about we're looking to transfer some money so from year in money to the athletic supplies in an amount of 12 um this money would be used for a full enfield tarp and tarp storage

065for both the varsity baseball and varsity softball fields uh currently as if you've been out there you know we have a wonderful footprint it's a nice facility unfortunately what does happen though they do not train real well and what we have a rain out or a weather event we typically take a few extra days to be able to play versus other schools in our area um and what it does it sets us back and it really does make scheduling very difficult and what we would like to do would be able to tarp those fields so that we could be back to place sooner rather than later and that gives those kids an opportunity to spread the games out i believe in other years we've had three four sometimes even five games that have been backed

066up um that is very difficult for kids particularly if they're traveling we don't want kids out late at night multiple days in a week if not necessary this would give us the ability to play those games and not have to push those back and long term mr hochman we did some extensive uh laser leveling and and work there this infield tarp would and exactly right we just recently finished laser leveling both the softball and the baseball field adding quite a bit of dirt and when you have a severe weather incident what happens is with mother nature those materials run off and go away this would allow us to keep our playing facility much nicer during the school year obviously in the off season some of that's going to happen but what we have seen is

067it's created at times a dangerous situation on the field because it creates ruts in the field which results in bad hops what we want to do is keep it in a nice playing surface a very safe playing surface and we think with the tarp we can do that throughout the baseball season and as we know we get a lot of rain in march and april so that would really be a great benefit for our athletic programs and for those students that are out there the amount on that was again twelve thousand nine hundred and sixty eight dollars would cover both the varsity baseball and varsity softball field board members that does come before us in action items for a boat this evening okay all right moving along now we are under old business number four

068clinton elementary school construction update for essential goal number three efficiently manage growth of student population mr kyle moser and mr tim pollock the dynamic duo thank you board thank you dr nichols start with how far we are behind on the construction right now we're at 63 days uh heartland has took uh a huge step on trying to correct this uh we're they're going to be supplementing the steel crew that is up there so basically they are bringing a whole nother crew in to work so we can work seven days a week to take and catch back up this is what we need to do to get back in a situation where we can finish the steel so we can get it enclosed as of right now section b and section c c is really close

069to being enclosed underneath section f the roofs are on b roofs are on so they are dried in that way we still do not have some windows in on section c uh we really needed the duct work is it is becoming well is really close to being finished in section c on what we can do it's still sealed up we are you have all the units in place for sections a b c and f uh they will be started for c here soon we have done startup in sections and well just break it down we've done startup in the cafeteria the gym and the kitchen those units are working at this time we are not running the ones that have the heat wheels on them due to the fact of all the dust site-wise we

070are water sewer we are doing very well on that they're about 80 we're almost down from 249 they're about 80 percent done on that we have through the wetlands so we don't have that situation to deal with anymore uh the pump station should start sometime next week to build an event that right there is and the the decking the decking is the biggest thing in sections e and the open area there on the back side of b and section d and a all there is that section a there in the front has that loft that comes off that it's basically an open area when it's done that we still have to do it like i said they started last week on getting that done so that right there is where we're at right now guys

071tim is the plan still mid march to run the two shifts yes i mean right now the biggest thing you want it is until we get this roof on and the decking in it's no use in dumping guys inside right i mean i've got to get it sealed up and where we can put air on and i mean luckily right now with the last couple weeks we've had better weather so it's been allowing us to do more i mean but right that's the critical point critical point is getting these steel guys here and getting the decking on so then we can get the roofing on and dry it in and from that point on we're gonna put the gas down and go from there until september tim the seven days a week is already underway

072yes for the steel mason's the masons are basically almost finished yeah they have less than ten thousand blocks on a job this size they're they're driving they have been awesome they have been pushing the job all the way through the i mean there's a lot of things that are done uh i mean have been really moving well you have the fire suppression system the sprinkler system all that for every area that we can put it in it's in there the second they get a opening they're there same thing on the electrical same thing on the uh hvac i mean you can only move so far when it's pouring down on you you got to be able to stop and that's every day that we get that next step they're jumping on it moving forward any

073questions do you anticipate any significant change orders because of the weather delays because meaning is that is is the contractor because they're having to work additional to catch up uh the as far as what i'm telling you there or for the steel people right uh they're being supplemented from their original the original contractor and uh so that's not an additional change order to add to ads nothing in our budget buzz we are doing we're still on budget yeah we're still really good on budget it's more of a time factor than it is a budget issue okay and i think mr mead to your question if we could close that time factor a little bit with a little more budget that would be something that we would bring forward but right now we're still working within

074that budget to you know be there make it happen i said we would bring it forward [Laughter] tim's giving me the eye like tim tim and his team have done an incredible job on this budget where sam's budget was without the steel hiccup i mean it's really been an incredible project to be on i mean guys and we all knew going into this that steel was going to be a really hard issue and anything electronic i can tell you that now i've already been tracking stuff that i'm going to need for the job like we're doing the uh the door swipes all that stuff like that and i'm getting stuff or we already ordered this stuff back in november and i'm checking now to see if when we actually i want it in my hand

075i want to have it here on site not waiting on it and we're still getting letters saying that we're working on it but it's not so we have to be prepared for that part of it too so we're also as a group up there with heartland we're looking at things that and this is the real reality of it is we will be in there on september 6th but we will probably still be up there doing some things that are going to not be critical to the school's opening like for example what generator would be one could be a lot of different things i don't want to speculate leap but there's a lot of things that we're putting on the table saying that this is critical path this is we can work as we go we're

076at that point in this job until i get a little more comfortable with it and we have a little more leeway i really and so of that i want to push that forward that the critical point is getting everything open okay thank you thank you tim thank you time members of the board i'm gonna take a slightly different angle tonight uh on a more positive tone quentin elementary has as a staff so last time i presented we talked about surveying the elementary staff in new kent county we talked about getting letters out to our staff february one and we we did it so a little bit about the clinton staff out of the staff that is going to clinton 95 of them selected clinton as their first choice uh having done some research with opening

077new schools this is typically a huge obstacle i was a part of a new school a few years ago and only fifty percent of the first choices went fifty percent were force transferred uh so as the planning principle it's a great start you know that gives me some great momentum that that many people really want to be there also there were some programmatic changes that occurred for quinton elementary school one of them very excited about two preschool classes coming up to clinton uh two will remain at new can elementary and then we'll also have two cross cat special education classes in the building too um so you know we can say and write the word inclusive but this is truly going to be an inclusive setting um for the students of new kent county in

078terms of early engagement and this is really difficult for my planning you know all these staff members are currently at newton elementary and george watkins but i'm still trying to connect with them and start building the culture and a climate for this new school so if you've been driving by 249 at 4 15 the last three weeks you'll see a small band of educators scurrying across the road that's me and we've been doing tours daily it's just been a great and exciting time for them to see these spaces and really start planting seeds and envisioning what we can do in this new school so that has been going on and will continue to go on through the rest of march uh and i invite anyone who wants to come and join us from the school

079board please do uh it's it's really a great hour tour the second thing that's going on with engagement that is just looking at resource acquisition so i've talked a lot about getting like electronics early well now we have to look at furnishing and supply in our classrooms so i met with miss vick two weeks ago from new can elementary school she'll be joining the clinton staff she never thought about this but the art room has nothing in it right now so she has to think about what consumables what art and what uh materials does she need for those students on the first day so similar to that electronics acquisition we're going to try to get all the instructional materials in for september 6. we might be missing some things here and there like tim said

080but instructionally we want everything there that we need obviously to teach our students and then of course the last thing with our early engagement is just really beginning to build this school internally again quentin elementary school we will obviously use the instructional framework we'll use our mission statement vision for new kent county but we have a blank slate so this is a great opportunity for us to address and build a new school and a new instructional program that meets the needs of all of our students so some of the initial feedback from the staff and i'm going to kind of go over that a little bit my presentation the first one is just a new standard you know when you walk into this brand new building it's impressive and all the staff members have talked

081about that we have to raise our bar a little bit that you know this new standard this new day for new canon is going to start with quinton elementary school and then the second one which i love the most is the instructional lens there'll be new spaces in this bill and these buildings that don't exist at new ken and george watkins and it gives us more opportunities to better engage and teach our students um so i included a quote up there that comes from walt disney that you can build and create the most beautiful pace but it's place but it's the people that make the difference um there go the next one thank you so there's a picture of some of our staff members during their tours um we are fully osha compliant we have

082our vests on our hard hats um and it's been great you know after a long day of teaching everyone's tired but i feel like this has been a great burst of energy for our staff also gives our staff a lot to look forward to next year opening this new school so what i want to do just briefly here is like i mentioned before the new spaces at quinn elementary school will offer us a different instructional lens there's two things that i'm really starting to discuss with our staff and that is one you're not confined to your four walls that every space on the on the property is for learning and they really truly see that also learning shouldn't be confined to an instructional block so we shouldn't only read during a reading block we should

083only do science during a science block we really need to create a thread throughout our day instructionally so what i included up on the screen right now is is really from a discussion i had with some third grade teachers during our tour so the images on the right are of the the main street of clinton elementary school this includes our library media center includes our steam lab that includes some outside learning spaces so when we were walking this the other day one of the teachers said what a great place for force in motion i don't know what she was referring to i don't know if she wanted to drop something off the second floor maybe she did but what a great opportunity for students to learn about simple machines force and motion then another teacher

084said well why don't you embed the measurement standard too with that of course that makes sense and then another teacher said well hey why can't we write about this simple machine and this force in motion and measurement and then the last teacher in the group said well hey where you're this far why don't you just design your own simple machine so that's the type of thinking that we're really promoting at this new school is let's look at real world and authentic learning experiences and let's apply it to our spaces so i could totally see and this these are all third grade standards i could see third graders learning about this and then building their own simple machine in a very authentic manner uh so i think that'd be one thing that we're definitely looking forward

085to at quinton elementary school a similar discussion came up in another place in the building my clicker's not working i'm sorry just go back one yep so on the right side here is what a lot of the staff members are saying is their favorite classroom it's the very last fourth grade classroom facing old tavern farm it's quite a sight it's quite a view and you can imagine springtime autumn it'll create amazing views for the students and staff well when we're up there and this was echoed a little bit earlier tonight a teacher said oh what a beautiful view hopefully they didn't put houses there so we had a giggle and one of the teachers on the tour said well what a great persuasive writing opportunity where the students could perhaps write a persuasive letter to

086the board of supervisors trying to protect this land and then another staff member on the tour their husband currently builds homes and she said you know what i could get you plans of the housing division and we could look at the data that comes with the housing division and we can look at the data for how many students would come to this school as a result so again this is a way of taking the state standards and providing an authentic learning experience for our students now with the builders in this county and the surrounding areas a lot of us probably not but it gets students active in their learning but also active in their community so i thought this was another great opportunity to share again this wasn't my idea these were just the people

087and the staff members that were educating our students and then the very last stop on the the tour here with the staff members i think is the heart of the school and this is just a different perspective of that library space the steam space and also just some learning areas outside of the steam space so many ideas were generated from this i couldn't even keep track you know we had teachers talking about entire grade levels coming to this area to doing a project doing a design uh there was a first grade teacher who was saying this would be a great way to connect with some fifth grade students and doing some cross-grade level planning and instruction so really what we're talking about here is bringing a community together of learners and you know it's going

088to be a great opportunity for our staff you know the fact that they're already thinking about it right now in february we still have several months to go it makes us really seem that we're going down the the right track here okay so those last three slides were just kind of from an educator's lens during our tours to change up a little bit this is a really exciting project going on right now behind the scenes the image on the left side there's a massive wall in our library right now it's very ugly it's a big great concrete block area it's not the best thing to look at in the budget for this project was a mural that would encompass that wall and be a nice uh obviously designed piece for our students well the architect

089has brought in an artist her name is eleanor dodie uh she's local she's out of richmond and she specializes in murals so if you look at the murals on the right side of the screen that's from vienna virginia what she is going to do is she's going to take the landmarks of new kent county and then the surrounding areas of richmond and williamsburg and create a mural that's a one-of-a-kind artwork for our community and when the project's all said and done that's a part of our community we get to keep it so uh that'll be a massive sound board in our library uh i think it's just be a great piece for our students to look up uh and see the the great places within this county uh that also align to the state standards

090too and then the very last piece here uh just because i know there was a lot going on tonight with our presentation and especially from tim here are some of the current project images uh on the left hand uh upper left our basketball court is being installed the floor is not there yet but we do have baskets um so that's a very exciting part for me uh the next picture over is from our kitchen that is the hood so uh leslie's leslie smith's area is coming together nicely there's our fr our finished logo of our mascot to clinton cubs uh the next picture is the the back side of the media center where there'll be a patio out back where classes can go and learn and get some fresh air we some more happy educators

091from our tour the other day and then that is our most current drone footage of the site i know that was a lot to take in and a lot for me to share any questions just a comment it looks wonderful and i've definitely seen the feedback from your teachers and your staff people are excited really excited um and so it's it's it's really amazing for you all and and for for the community so so thank you for all of this okay all right thank you very much all right next item b health update dr nichols yes ms swinford uh we started this health update we've done it several times and we said we do it as a function of the work session because things continue to shift and change this is the third straight work

092session that we've had a health update and things couldn't be more different now than they were when we first started so um this will be a very brief presentation but in the time that we started we've gone to masked optional we've shifted our quarantine practices i mentioned the the story about the middle school and they're looking at the cafeteria space we've been making all of these adjustments along the way and we're excited to report the results so we'll start with our health data um this is from last week uh cases are now number new cases are at five seven day average is at nine um the population 100 000 last 14 days 799.2 i actually looked at it today i think it's at 371. so this was a great sign when i looked at it

093on the 14th it is even better now it just continues to uh drop and we just want to make sure it stays away so i'll be cautiously optimistic in this report because i believe i have given this type of report before and we end up in a different space you as you know my biggest worry throughout this pandemic is just taking care of our staff because if we take care of our staff we take care of our kids we take care of the community um so we really were hanging on by a thread um several times related to staffing as the biggest issue student cases quarantines also had impacts as you saw in mr miller's presentation but i'm happy to report uh where we are now so august 21 to december 21 we had 82

094cases involving staff in january alone we had 105 so that is what you kept hearing from me in the past two work sessions the first two weeks in february we've had 17. now we're three weeks into february so i'll update with you with the number it's 18. so three weeks in february we've had 18 cases versus 105 in the month of january we're in a much better place we have days where we're not covering planning which allows teachers to plan um we have the school-based substitutes that are in place we still have the regular absences that we will work through in any school year but we're getting back to the point and actually for an hour today we had nobody out related to covet um which was phenomenal it only lasted an hour we got

095one on the but that's okay um we can manage one we can manage five but 105 was really a breaking point for us but we held on we kept kids in school and we're moving forward and we're excited about it some of our next steps we still do the daily tracking of isolation for positive and symptomatic cases we still meet with our health department although i think we're going to begin to phase that out we are moving forward with the availability of onsite testing we actually have adopted the test to stay model we've received test kits just last week we had a meeting today with administrators and nurses to talk about that test to stay model the way that works so we're going to be running two different programs test to stay as if you've

096been if you've been exposed and the way we're looking at exposures really will be connected to athletics and try to minimize quarantine there and any known exposures within the school we've really reduced the contact tracing and reduced the number of kids on quarantine but it is an additional protection that would allow a kid or an adult to test daily and be able to stay and not quarantine we are still waiting on additional tests for symptomatic students and symptomatic staff members i'd like to report at the next meeting that we have that in place as well it's just a matter of getting the test in we're not allowed to use the test to stay tests for symptomatic it's only for exposures and we have to track it with the health department and all those good things

097but we are supposed to get another shipment of tests that if my son mason is not feeling well he can test and if he's negative he gets to continue to stay so while we are in a much better place we're continuing to drive down those quarantine numbers from continuing to have consistency and continuing to kind of move forward um i do still plan to update you at the work sessions even if the update is things are still going great and we're moving into the next month so we've made a lot of progress between work session and work session i believe our current data says we have six positive cases related to students and the one related to um staff and while our quarantine numbers were up in the 400 plus uh the last number was

098somewhere around 25. so it's just it's it's it's a great day new camp we just wanted to to stay there so board members that was very quick and most my health presentations are not quick so thankful to have a quick presentation i'd be happy to answer any questions you may have when tests arrive how many tests do you receive um so we received um 400 plus uh and it's really there's a formula that goes with it it's about 10 of your population we went a little higher just based on our numbers um and the supply chain is kind of caught up again you couldn't get a test now they're readily available again so that is kind of where we are we'll see what the usage is we don't have our next order ready we'll see

099how quickly we start to go through but the health department now that we're officially a test to stay school division we have a direct line to those tests that also gives us a direct line to the other test that we need i do want to mention uh i talked about masking so we are at optional masking that's really worked well i'm very proud of our kids extremely proud of our staff we've been able to manage that some kids wear masks some kids don't it's fine they're great um some staff do some you know it's it's really i'm very proud of our community for uniting around this right now we're still left with the federal order around buses that is supposed to expire march 18th now every time it's going to expire because it is federal

100has been extended but we are ready to make that shift um if given the opportunity the senate bill that was passed that made mass optional law we did not have to make any adjustments for that because we're already ahead of that following the executive order uh the debate now is does that also cover the federal order as well as soon as we have clarification on that we're ready to go and we know of all the things to handle we can handle that one too so so the test to stay program that that will be through the end of the year or is there is there an expiration date on that there's no official expiration date right now we're through the end of the year uh one of the reasons we went ahead and continued forward

101with this program it got us access to tests which will allow us to eventually do the symptomatic piece but you know i've been at the cusp of this several times and going okay last year we closed with like almost 2000 people in the gym you know having a great graduation and then we were in a different place i just want us to be ready and i hope we never have to use it but then we're ready if we need to start next year we're already in that pipeline so and that is grant funded that does not cost any money on an operational side effects okay all right thank you very much next item item c calendar fiscal year 2223 our second and final reading mr hochman madam chair member of the board dr nichols um

102as you will recall we started this process back before winter break and we put together a very good group of folks from each of our full school four schools we had an administrator a teacher a parapro and a parent and also from the high school we included the student and we also had some central office folks that were part of that committee as well and in terms of the caliber development development as you can see at the bottom where it's highlighted we are at february 22nd and what we have done is we through going to all of the schools and meeting with each school's staff we've made some adjustments and so all four schools were very well represented when we went to meet with them um there were some heartfelt conversations and when i we

103get a little later in this presentation i will show you what those adjustments are um if you like what you see uh potentially that could be approved by you this evening um if not we can come back as a committee and uh look at some of those adjustments to bring that back to you at a later time in review some of the considerations we were looking at when we first initiated this process uh seven teacher work days prior to the start of the school year a post-labor day start our 180 instructional days 990 hours and 140 clock hours for our high school classes the 200 teacher contact days three asynchronous learning days on the week-long versus the three-day thanksgiving break the two-week winter break one week of spring break a holiday on the monday after

104easter and the last day of school being friday june 16th so those are some of the things we talked about two changes that we came about particularly after we met with our elementary staff um and you're going to see we'll toggle back and forth between january and february just because of the end date of the school semester essentially on what we had proposed was that there would be a half day only one of those prior to the end of the semester if we go over to february ross on what we have done on the first there will be an early release only for our secondary schools and then on the second all schools will get an early release um the high schools have their union in a unique situation as their school year ends essentially

105halfway through the year and they have to start over but there are some of that and some of that goes on as well at the elementary school so we have included some half days there as well moving forward to june uh same type situation we had one half day in there on what we have done is we have recluded two early release days on the 15th and 16th to allow our staff to close out the year without having to stay through the weekend or come back in the beginning of that next week that was the greatest concern there there is a lot of things that need to be done and those two half days those two early release days would allow them the opportunity to get that done without extending them through the weekend or

106the beginning of that next week there is that calendar where those half days are represented on there it looks pretty if we need to change it again we will um also moving forward next steps like i said if you are satisfied with what we have you'll have the opportunity to approve that calendar and if you decide that you don't our committee is ready to come back together to make those changes and resubmit that to you when you are ready any questions on the february 22nd it says adoption of 2223 and 23 25 that was the initial dr nichols and i appreciate you pointing that out that was if we were going to do a pre-labor day start for next year and we decided early on that we were not going to do a pre-labor day

107start so there was no need to go through with the two-year adoption we would have wanted to do that to give people an opportunity to change their vacation dates or housing that they were going to get to beat that's kind of what we had heard um public comment we put it out for public comment about a week and a half ago and we got back three comments uh one of them was upset we were starting after labor day when one was happy and the other one was just thanking us for our work so that's that didn't get a whole lot back we did feel like it was a very comprehensive process we talked to a lot of people i think the committee as i mentioned previously was very well represented from across all of our

108schools and all levels and if you go through and ask them i think that they will feel as if their voice was heard as you can see we made some changes based upon what we heard from our elementary folks so i think we have a pretty good product right here which will allow us to meet our strategic goals that we have as a school division thank you board members any questions okay thank you mr hochman all right moving along into action items first item for approval is personnel matters board members do i hear a motion to approve the superintendent's recommendations regarding personnel matters as presented i'd like to make a motion to approve the superintendent's recommendations on personnel matters okay thank you miss mcbeeth do i hear a second i'll second thank you mr mead

109board members any discussion all right and then a vote please all in favor say aye aye aye all opposed none the motion carries next action item to consider consider approval of the calendar um okay all right board members do i hear a motion to approve the fiscal year 2223 academic calendar as presented i'll make a motion that we approve the school calendar as presented thank you mr mead do i hear a second second okay thank you miss mcbeath board members any discussion and a vote all in favor say aye all opposed none the motion carries next item action item c approval of cip transfer funds for athletics do i hear a motion to approve the consideration of the transfer of cip funds for athletics i make a motion to approve the cip transfer funds for

110athletics thank you miss mcbeeth do i hear a second thank you mr mead board members any discussion hearing none a vote please all in favor say aye aye all opposed none motion carries all right thank you everybody that is the end of this evening's meeting our next meeting will be our regular monthly meeting on monday march 7th with that our meeting is adjourned at 7 30 pm thank you