001and whereas section 2.2-3711 of the code of virginia requires a certification by the new king county school board that such closed meeting was conducted in conformity with virginia law now therefore be it resolved that the new kent county school board hereby certifies that to the best of each member's knowledge one only public business matters lawfully exempted from open meeting requirement by virginia law were discussed in closed meeting to which this certification resolution applies and two only such visit 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 do i hear a motion to approve the certification of the closed session i move we approve the certification of the closed session you have a second second all those in favor oh
002my any opposed motion carries okay [Music] first item on our agenda are the superintendent's responses to citizen comments received at the november 8th board meeting right thank you mr skill this is our second work session which has become our practice of comments that we receive at the regular board meeting we answer to the best of our abilities at the work session i do want to apologize on the front end of this one we rely heavily on the recording of these sessions this session was recorded however there was no audio which has been addressed and fixed yes okay good um so we are going through our notes in those different pieces so if your question isn't specifically addressed um we'll work through that but we believe we have it captured um some participants gave us their
003questions um in the future um if we were to have that happen we will reach out one by one and go through those pieces so um so first question are you aware of a specific metric that will allow the children to unmask or at what point do parents get to choose if they want their children wearing masks or not um so as we outlined in our last meeting under the the health commissioner's order we don't have a specific metric at this point we have not been given one we haven't been provided one um the good news is case counts have been declining and our quarantine numbers which we publish every week on our website have shown that decline so that is great news for us that the quarantines have been less disruptive i do think
004that with the election results that have occurred i do think there'll be a change um i would expect that change to be sometime in january if not sooner but that is really speculation on my part and just what i'm hearing and learning at the state level so that was question one question two you the superintendent have stated publicly that no crt is being taught in the schools does this mean you are not embracing the navigating ed equity from the virginia department of education it is essentially crt it takes the premise that any discrepancy in life is chalked up to racist so that document is a 56-page document it is produced through a steering committee at the virginia department of education it is not a document that we are required to utilize um it's not a
005foundation document for new kent county public schools our foundation documents which are all available strategic plan portrait of a graduate instructional framework i did go through the ad equity report and i'll tell you the premise that we work on here what what the document does want to do is eliminate the predictability of student outcomes based on race gender zip code socioeconomic stance or languages spoken so that is work that we do we look at every data point that we have and do any of those factors currently predict success and i think if you've been watching our board members board meetings you've been attending you've heard me say several times that one of the biggest predictors of outcomes right now in our data is so socioeconomic status so free and reduced lunch is where we see
006the biggest disparity how do you work on that so that is a piece that's in that document that is a part of our work um but that document as a whole is is not a part of our daily work so bournemouth i'd be happy to do a more extensive report on that but for the purposes of citizen comments that's what i what i going from that um is the public allowed to view the history of our uh the history or other curriculum uh that's the easy one yes the public is allowed to view that a lot of that's available online through the virginia department of education um we actually have a couple citizens that have come in to review different parts of curriculum or different textbooks or different those pieces so we are a public
007entity we are a partnership with the public no issues there um on our end how are you personally monitoring that no teachers are promoting their specific political views in the classroom um so the best way for me to answer that is we work through our principles assistant principles lead teachers to monitor classrooms we have a lot of people in classrooms in addition we also monitor classrooms and when there is something that comes to our attention that is not part of our curriculum we address that so how do we handle that would like to know about all the federal funds received for covid and how it is spent particularly how is it being helped to address learning loss due to virtual school so you're in luck on that question we have a full presentation about that
008tonight so ms mcpheep asks for a similar presentation so we believe we'll address that um tonight my favorite question can the teachers get a raise this should be a high priority in my opinion absolutely full agreement full support and as we move forward in the budget process you'll definitely see that as a priority as well i agree so more of a general update around the middle school book we are working on our process manual so our our policy has outlined the different levels of oversight what we're working on is a process manual for selection um and a process manual for um how books are tagged and parents set connected to them so mr miller provided ross miller provided a presentation for you a couple weeks ago the young adult books those that are rated 13
009plus are currently being tagged and a parent consent proportion is being enacted because what we've heard from various speakers is that this book is appropriate this book is not appropriate that way it's the parent consent piece and that way it can vary by household but once again the household is part of that process so we'll be reviewing our books under the new guidelines once that process has been completed the intent is to have that completed prior to winter break which sounds like a long time but it's really three school weeks before we go to winter break um a question was asked about the specific poet x and was it available the book is not available for check out at the middle school so as we work through this process i had a couple of questions
010about systemic racism and i really had difficulty addressing that and i need to go back to the individual or individuals that asked that question for further clarification is the systemic racism as it stands right now and for that i would go back to the equity education equity based on predictability of student outcomes so if we have a data point that is connected to a a specific student piece that may fall on that umbrella but i hate to go any further on that so i need to have a more in-depth conversation about that piece so those are the questions that we had and then the categories connected to those the board members i'd be happy to add to that i think dr nichols i appreciate the the question about the teachers and the raised piece and
011i think one of the things that um as we have uh even talked earlier in a personnel situation of even though it may not come across as the bottom line of their paycheck one of the things i think that as many staff people have communicated as we heard from human resources even this evening about one of the things that we have been able to do to help with that area is with the um with the enactment of paying for their benefits over the holiday which is a huge cash benefit to the majority of all staff people as well as closing public schools for the first two days which is a huge benefit in a lot of different ways for staff as well so i think those things also add to the creativity of increasing um
012value right value yes thank you um miss asphalt is that um to to our to our employees as well so thank you for uh for addressing that and how we can continue to be creative in making it a value-driven environment for our teachers and staff and we we really look at it as total compensation so it does you know shows pieces and i believe new ken can do things that other larger school division can't do uh just because we're smaller and i think we're more personable and we can do some of those things so yeah that one piece of the puzzle uh but working on those others thank you thank you okay i did i'm sorry i left that one one piece i did get a question about electronic participation in system comments so that
013was initially put together during the covet piece when not everybody felt comfortable to do that um so with your permission i would like to pull that piece to have them read out loud as i can one it's an interpretation of the reader to um the tone is hard to read really we have good protection good participation here you can come here you can listen and and i think we're all very approachable in between board meetings if you have a question so if we do receive that communication it will be printed it will be put into your folders um and we'll respond through that way so you will not see that moving forward so i apologize for not putting that on the front but it connected to citizen comments and i wanted to kind of weave
014that in there as well i'm just going to clarify what in another way speak back what you're saying so as we receive electronic comments and questions via email or phone calls or whatever we're not going to address them during the meeting but we will address them so we will be following back up with those folks that we receive emails from you know in a timely manner and responding to whatever their questions and concerns are with those folks that are impacted or have any input on the question that's being asked absolutely we just will not set aside a portion of time to read those happily right okay understood i agree with that do you want further discussion about that i have uh no um i agree um i have one other one other comment about the
015comments um with regard to um the question about history and other curriculum strains one thing we used to do in the past is have presentations about what we're doing through the entire um you know school division so i think it might be helpful if we had a presentation on you know history virginia history uh and government uh what we're doing in the schools are you referring to what specific uh subjects are you know areas of that yes so what you know what are we doing what are the what are the children learning in kindergarten you know they're learning about local local history and culture you know what you know and as you go through the years it builds so it becomes you know so you go through us history world history uh and what not
016so i i just think that would be helpful and that would probably answer the question for a lot of people i think that would be helpful as well and just as a reminder in the process for adopting textbooks there is a public input piece we do put the textbooks on display several places so prior to an adoption of a textbook and textbooks not necessarily curriculum so if you look at one of our textbooks we do not go page by page by page it's not always uh in the right sequence for for our pacing but that's another involvement community parent involvement piece too but i can work with mr miller to come up with a presentation potentially at a work session so you can dive into a little deeper we give it a little more time
017so be happy to do that thank you okay any other thoughts about uh comments and other things that we should be considering i know that we had checked with some other divisions and asked about uh seeding their time if that was part of their practice and how long that people spoke do we want to address that or discuss the ability for people to cede their time to other other people do we like doing that so so i i think over um several of the recent meetings um people have come in with a premeditated strategy to string together a couple of three minutes um [Music] thanks wayne it wasn't for you so so basically uh we had a number of people seeding time and i think that um that um has the potential to get out
018of hand for us so i think uh i would suggest that we um people take their three minutes and present their comment in that three minutes and then allow the next person to not speak and not speak for other people correct i would agree with ms barber i think as a board we've been evolving through this process of more increased citizen comment which we appreciate but we do agree that citizens have three minutes to speak and make their point and uh they're welcome to come back every month at the monthly meeting to speak but the process and the um the adoption of seating seating time is just not something that we as a board agree that we should be doing moving forward yes i would agree as well we're we're having discussion we're discussing so
019i think three minutes is is very generous in in terms of having our constituents um you know bring forth their issues and concerns and um i think it's important to hear opinions from all constituents to whom we serve absolutely i agree 100 i think that again miss mcgee i would agree wholeheartedly that i think three minutes is an ample amount of time to present your your concerns or your comments and i think arbitrarily deferring those to someone else is is not in the best interest of giving everyone an opportunity long term to be able to express their opinions and so i would agree that we would uh suspend that practice of deferring continuing to to defer time within the uh within the process of public comment great if you would like to speak if you
020want to sign up we're happy to hear from you we're happy to hear you hear from you and and what you have to say during our meetings during our meetings monthly meetings there and we do also have other avenues for public input we have both email phone calls um we're where we welcome those are opportunities to have deeper discussions that extend beyond a three-minute period absolutely so do i uh somebody want to make a motion i guess i can make a mess i'll make a motion i'll make a motion that we suspend the practice of deferring time during public comments and that the comments would only be limited to the person who has signed up to speak for three minutes only okay and do i do i hear a second a second um all those
021in favor oh i know you guys did a discussion but yeah they want to do it dude there's any further discussion now that there's emotion yes so we have we now have a motion on the floor to amend our practice of allowing um folks citizen comments to see seed their time to somebody else such that when people sign up they would be only allowed to speak for themselves for the person that signed up and that is the motion on the floor is there any other further discussion we have a motion in a second okay um all those in favor aye aye any opposed motion carries all right the uh did we have any other any other citizen or superintendent comments uh no matter if that is that completes i do want to thank all of
022the all of my fellow board members for for joining me at the conference either in person or virtually this this week at the virginia school board association there was a lot of great discussions that were being had around various topics so i really appreciate everybody participating in that as well all right next item on our agenda is vaccination update mandate update dr nichols absolutely thank you madam chair members of the board what i bring to you is a very muddy update but i wanted to let you know where we think we are um in terms of vaccine slash testing mandate update now this is for employees um so mr miller fuel so we know that there is um a new vaccination requirement for employees with more than 100 100 or more employees of course we
023fall in that category we have around 500 employees so osha is issuing a covet 19 vaccination and testing emergency temporary standard um four states who have osha approved plans we are one virginia is one of 23 states with an osha approved plan so that is the vehicle for which this mandate is flowing through um it requires employees with 100 or more employees to have employees fully vaccinated or test weekly okay i know you're probably very familiar with that and seeing those pieces um so these are some of the details uh january 4th is is the deadline that we were working on i'm not sure why my j is cut off there and requires unvaccinated employees to produce a negative test on at least a weekly basis and ensure all unvaccinated employees are amassed by december
0245th so in schools that's really not an issue currently because we're all masked in schools but if when that changes um you know that would be something uh that we would have to enforce um companies that don't abide by the rules could be hit with nearly fourteen thousand i think thirteen thousand six hundred dollars uh per violation um before i move on to the next slide just i this causes me great concern and has absolutely nothing to do with vaccination um so i've actually been boosted as of saturday it's really for me is it's it's another challenge for us to [Music] work through for employees uh you've heard us talk greatly that we've held this school division together by people subbing in all areas we've seen other school divisions that have gone ahead of this
025and done a full vaccination mandate we've seen in other professions that there are people that will leave also for us to stand up a weekly testing uh component is no easy feat now we're not required to do that but if you are testing weekly you're going to do that on your time which means you're going to leave us every monday for half a day to go to richmond or go to wherever and test it'd be incumbent on it would be smart for us to stand up our own weekly testing so you come right here to the high school test and go teach or test and go do that but that's a big undertaking four school divisions that are already stretched really thin um so i do have um have some concerns with it if it
026comes through we'll handle like we handle everything else and we'll make it happen and we'll take care of kids and we'll do what we do um again this is not something that we have any control over correct no this is not something that we have control over um so i started out by saying this is muddy at best um if you've been following the news so osha has suspended activities related to the implementation and enforcement um pending further developments in the litigation so that's kind of where we are now we're on hold but at the same time we have to make some moves forward on the testing side of things so we are partnering with vista which is the state agency to be partnered with a contractor this is all grant funding that would occur
027that we could set up weekly testing um if we wanted to move in that direction so we're still moving in that direction to be ready uh but at the same time kind of seeing where this goes and we don't know politically where it will go or or how it will end up but we can't wait on an answer um all work moving forward i kind of jumped ahead of this a little bit there is a county resolution so your partners at the board of supervisors at their last meeting um put together a resolution opposing this mandate um so i have sent that to you guys um we're also hosting vaccination clinics we did a over 900 people receive boosters and vaccines on saturday in partnership with the county we we are having another clinic uh
028for students uh we did have comment at the last one it wasn't a question about uh vaccinated children without permission and against their will we do not do any of that that is all parent approval parent consent completely voluntary and then we're working on setting up on-site testing for students and employees so if you're not well we we can rule out covid um and and so forth so that's our work moving forward with the county putting together a resolution opposing the mandate i just wanted you guys to have that and if you wanted us to work in any particular direction we could we can do that as well so we're kind of standing still and moving forward at the same time so any questions concerns more information so with the osha thing on hold does
029that delay the january 4th mandate as well my work we don't know and my worry that i know they're working to resolve it quickly in the courts my worries it's going to be resolved quickly and if if defined in favor of the mandate we may still be stuck with that january 4th so internally we're working on january 4th um but at the same time we're not trying to panic employees as well so just working through that process uh vaccination status and kind of seeing where we are because the way this has kind of gone through with public schools at least is you don't really have a good handle on full vaccination um and who is and who is so we're working through that process as well to kind of figure out where are we at
030are we at 70 are we at 90 are we i mean that's what we need to have in order to stand up to the testing and know what the volume would be right so we can't require a team member to tell us their vaccination status but we can require them so i guess no matter what we're going to be masking but once they lift the mask mandate you know i would assume that's going to change for people that are late as it has with osha where people in other businesses if you're vaccinated you don't have to wear the mask if we were to move in that direction and we have people that don't want to want to give us that information i would assume they would just have to remain masked that would be the
031that would be the default for testing and for masking based on what we're reading now so we've had our legal team look at it um it was a topic conversation at the most recent superintendents conference we're all trying to kind of navigate that and figure that out together okay any other comments questions you know just something for consideration you know the board of supervisors put forth that resolution um i'm concerned it may be problematic that we've got one part of the county doing one thing and you know potentially we may be doing something else um i think we should consider looking at something like that i would assume that if they move forward and they get and they are able to make something happen we would be able to follow they is that even though
032they're not mandating does that mean that they still have to require weekly testing they no longer have to do that it's my understanding they don't i would support it done my read of their current resolutions they oppose the mandate they're not saying what they would do if it comes through um it's just that i i would it's and this may not be the right parallel but our board the school board put together a letter about local control and right you know the over the perceived overreach with masking and not having things be a local decision for schools it feels like the board of supervisors is doing something similar and saying we we oppose this mandate it really should be a local decision so and while i agree there's a lot of similarities we have with
033the county county we certainly have a lot of differences with the number of our staff teachers and staff it's it's not an apples to apples comparison in my opinion and i think it's just here we are again you know we have we have requirements we have orders we have mandates we have laws we have rules we have policies we have standards we have all of these things and um you know i i just feel that right now the um the announcement's been suspended because of the the pending litigation um we're transitioning to a new administration in january and i just think right now i just don't know if we're ready to do something of that magnitude like what the board of supervisors did um i know i may be alone in that but i i
034just feel like we need to we need we need to look at this a little bit more we've always encouraged the vaccine with the clinics that we've had the clinic we just had this past saturday um and at this point you know if if somebody hasn't been vaccinated it is a concern it's a real concern and they should be testing if they're not vaccinated they're masked and they should be testing if they're if they're not vaccinated at this point but i i'm not i'm not certain right now that we need to pass a resolution for that particular um decision well i would say that we would definitely need more information about what that's gonna what would that mean if the rules changed and then how do you enforce those well i don't think anything if
035if the rules change then then the resolution is really nothing you know right it's just a posturing in my opinion um and uh you know at this point i i don't know if it's going to mean anything and so we had a december 5th deadline as well just to bring that into the mix and haney's here and allison's here they were on a webinar with osha as well uh full collection of information and and i'm not sure if that's been paused as well with this whole process but by our next meeting on december 6 i can bring you an update on where i mean you're we're all following it nationally anyway but i can bring a public update on where we are and what we're uh working through it is kind of sort of a
036wait and see i just don't want to be caught um move forward with the mandate and we're not ready to roll by january 4. [Music] okay any other further discussion on vaccination mandate [Music] all right moving into old business next on our agenda is clinton elementary school update uh mr pollock and mr moser hello hello to you hey guys when i brought y'all to start with is our minutes i gave everybody a copy of them from our last meeting and what i'm going to do is just generally go through this and see if anybody has any questions at the same time just updating highlight parts of it as of right now where the sprinkler system install is is basically being installed the water heaters are on site they've been installed hvac units their rooftop units
037are in place in the areas where we have completed roof uh work on the switch gear is continuing uh it's about 80 percent setting of steel and that's in setting the steel in section a we should be finished by the end of the month section b we've got block fill sprinkler pipe uh the walls and esophagus is in the kitchens and in the restroom areas are starting to go up plumbing roughing is ongoing sprinkler rerouting for the gym is taking place we have the curtain walls going up in this storefront framing have you seen from the road yes that's a misspell so section a what section is the part without the steel right now that you would be over in f and uh so that's not a no section a is right over here at
038the beginning where you see all the where the cafeteria and all that's in there okay so on the right side of the picture yeah so everything you see to the far side of the picture there where actually you can't see it very well at all this is from the back side you've got the cafeteria right there where the thing is at now where the windows are going in the cafeteria then you've got your section a coming down in front of the bus loop and moving across the face there so is that the section without the steel that is we're waiting on steel or that's on site and that's yeah we're finishing up the part of steel there okay i mean when they're talking steel now they're talking more steel decking than they are of of
039of the beams of the beam okay the coal steel and all that's basically done we're waiting on the inside for metal for doing all the walls that are metal stud walls stuff to that effect that's what we're waiting normal supplies right now that's actually the biggest issue we got going on with supplies right now is the steel stud frame yes the gauge framing yeah the light gauge framing we also are waiting for the brick uh it's a specialty breakthrough up there so it's still on order supposed to arrive here in december we have started our air barrier where you see all the yellow and all that being sprayed on that's all your air barrier being put up that's why we took the flag down because we're still going around with the arab area we've done
040our first inspections on that as of last week apparently that really takes us through the process on that the rest of the stuff we have here's some metals uh like for lighting here uh interior lighting we're having little issues getting that straight uh but everything's still on time schedule wise as of right now we're 35 days behind still guys we haven't lost a single day since the first episode of it so we're steadily chugging along on that does anybody looking through here have anything that they see they want to discuss do you continue to see as the progress and we get closer to the interior finishes that that the supply chain issue will apparently just for the most part we're okay okay i mean what we're trying to do now and that's really what i
041brought this to you here for today i don't really like doing this lineup by live what i really brought it to you today for is that we're trying to get ahead of that we are working on our allowances where we're going to keep actually we already have uh ordered this stuff for the cameras the all the electronic stuff on my side that i will be handling the door logs the access controls all that is already in the process we received the back from heartland our or what do you want to call it the uh allowance money that we had for these purchases we received that back on the credit this month so from that point on and i'll let kyle step in here too i'm handling one side of it kyle's handle on the other
042side of it he and then that are working on the technology side of it and i'm handling the cameras to access the intercom systems that side of it i was going to mention a little bit later but also instructional resources technology we're trying to get months ahead we have space available within the county so we can bring that in when we open doors next year um september we're ready to roll it's interesting no rhyme or reason so these technology allowances that we put together were before this project went full two years so two yeah over two years ago so we were cringing on what those prices would come back at and we're actually right at if not a little bit under on some of those things so it's just things have escalated dramatically and some
043haven't moved at all and the supply chain just kind of bumps around a little bit but what the team has really done a great job of is just uh speeding up the timelines in which we would submit things so i don't know what we have left to submit but it's not much um i mean i know they're working on their end of it we should be done and about when would you say college to the point where we can actually put it out we're working on the av quote for technology right now we're going to look at playground options in that design so i'm hoping by january we have everything purchased and ready to go then as the planning principle that's great because i can really start focusing on my staff and instruction at that
044point getting ahead is essential right now the other points on this too we put back in the bus loop so that is back in and we gave the prices for we actually were under what you got back on the original thing so we look at the canopy that's back in so the only other only issue i got right now actually on site is the generator and then access to getting one and we know that we've already gone through the process and reserved one if it need be that it does not show up here on time we need it to get our occupancy permit so what we'll do is rent one if we have to working with heartland now on that issue so we already have it reserved in place if we need to do it
045that way so you mentioned the the school's school zone signs that um what is that about mr pollock that is where we had to take and pull out we had to pull out to get approval from vdot to start with uh the initial vdoc made us pull out these singles uh for approval at that time but we that has been put back in now and has been approved by vdot so that's just your 35 mile an hour zones they at the initial thing for the turning lanes and all they may we had to separate the two also you'll see if you get back to you get to our change orders and we're about we're down to you'll see the large credit on the one of the reasons i wanted to bring it to you is
046because you have the large credit coming back from your allowances in there if you see it in there that's already the way this is going to work is we're going to use that is it was given back as heartland put it back into the project okay so it's shown as a large credit on the job itself and it will be used in hannah you can step in anytime if i say anything wrong we're going to use it like a contingency fund to pay for what we are from the allowances oh you want to take us through absolutely i'd love to take you through to uh where we're at right now these pictures were taken last week and of course you know two days later it looks completely different so um kind of hard doing a
047presentation ahead of time so for tonight similar to last presentation we're going to focus on the south side of the building the side where when you're driving on 249 you look up you can see the big cafeteria windows and also the two floors so here's kind of the transition again kind of where we're going when it's all said and done so the picture on the left again is from the south side uh you can begin to see this is exciting windows going into the cafeteria um so one of their main goals definitely with the winner approaching is closing these spaces in so they can start bringing in more equipment and more materials also we now have the second floor and and that's kind of gonna be our focus for tonight uh tonight's presentation so the
048second floor will house our fifth grade the first group to uh graduate i guess you could say from quinton elementary school um and you're probably wondering why i'm including stairs two weeks ago i met with some future fifth graders at quentin and they were blown away that there were stairs to where they need to go um they've spent their entire educational career on the first floor and just showing simply stairs shock them so um i had to include their excitement into this presentation at the top of this stairwell one of my favorite parts of the school it overlooks the entire building of main street clinton that's the image on the left and then on the image on the right will be the landing that will include several learning spaces for all students pre-k through five
049and also our steam lab that's a place where students can go and be designers and creators and they can code and do robotics um so to me that's really going to be an innovation hub for all of our students ages 5 through 11. so we're getting there you can't really see the steam room quite yet but from what i heard that's where they're moving next on this project and i would tell you i was on site this afternoon as a matter of fact there are some incredible sight lines and you can stand in one part of the building and be able to see just all the way across upstairs all the way down main street the downstairs piece and down an instructional weight so it was it's quite impressive see some great opportunities for some
050uh physics lessons there perhaps some egg drops moving forward we'll clean it up when we're done the next space going down the hallway this is where the fifth graders will be housed and again when i close my eyes i can imagine teachers out in that hallway and kids coming in in the morning so those are all five fifth grade classrooms and then on the right side is the end of the hallway where there's several learning spaces again for students to go and do small group or collaborate on a project together so this space was really defined and i would say the last three weeks the masonry team on this project is amazing every time i go out there there's a new wall up so this is where you can really begin to feel where this
051learning is going to be taking place the last place i want to take you up on the the fifth grade second floor is i think everyone's favorite the learning terrace so at the end of the fifth grade hallway this is an opportunity for students to go outside and continue their learning and their collaboration so on the right hand side that is the finished product the rendering on the bottom it'll be able to have about 48 students on this rooftop deck also there'll be several planters there some great opportunities for agriculture and science lessons and that will overlook the entire courtyard of the elementary school so really i think to most people who go out there their favorite space in the building some other areas of the building that are worth noting on the left there's
052our cafeteria from the inside and one thing that i now look at because i've been hanging out with tim a lot is i look at duct work i look at pipes i look at electrical and and that's the part that most people don't see is just all the work that's going into the infrastructure that you know we have electrical going in we have boilers going in you know we're starting to feel like a school and it's really an amazing feeling when you go in there so they'll be finishing that uh glass up hopefully soon um there'll also also be some different glass with like blue and orange to kind of give a nice um color on the inside when students are uh eating their lunches so a quick question this windows are they tinted um
053those have a slight tint to them okay going down the middle there will be a blue that might be one of our small colors i'll announce later and then there'll also be an orange going across the other way too okay and then the image on the right is of course i keep calling it main street because that connects the entire school together so that's the view from coming in the back door from the buses going straight down you'll see the gymnasium to the right and the library and all those other spaces it's quite impressive you know when i showed the students these images they were shocked how big the building truly was and many of them even commented that this looks like a middle or high school let alone an elementary school so there'll be
054some five-year-olds in all when they walk in that front door in september it's gonna be a great moment for sure so some of the work outside of construction that i always like to note last week we had a staffing survey go out which i talked about last meeting again it's all about three great elementary schools this is not just a quin project along with our hr team this survey went to all elementary staff and it gives them an opportunity to give us feedback you know would they like to remain at their current elementary school would they be open to transferring to either watkins newton elementary or quentin so that will be going on until december 1st giving people time to reflect and think about what their future perhaps looks like in new ken and once
055all that information comes back december 1st we'll really start going through the data and the enrollments to see what our staffing looks like for next year our goal is by february 1 to let our staff know where they'll be for one we want to let them know early so they can start planning but that also gives us time to get ahead and start recruiting if we need to again it comes up every meeting these staff shortages job fairs typically start mid february we're ready to run out before then and start getting some great people in the new cap for number two and three up there we just hit on it a little bit but timmy's been great about getting ahead of these orders and he's uh we know about the supply chain we also know
056about inflation and that we want to get these orders done now so we can focus on the teaching and learning this spring um so we've done a ton with signage security cameras playgrounds a lot of discussions with interior design so those again are ongoing and then the final project that i think most people are aware of we've been looking for our mascot in school colors it's been an amazing process and that's thanks to our community and how involved they've been so we did it in three stages so november 1st through the 7th that was an open forum to anyone who wanted to submit a mascot idea we received 129 mascot ideas quite impressive unicorns earthquakes you name it it was it was fun to go through that uh so after that week we then pulled
057together some focus groups staff and student uh what was really nice for this planning principle was their ideas aligned so what the adult says they had said came together really nicely um it was also great to get future quinn students together to discuss you know i showed them the school we talked about mascots and the role of the mascot so we're starting to kind of build some energy now to opening this school next year so for the last week people have been voting online we had about 700 people vote for our mascot if people didn't want to vote online we also gave out ballots at george watkins for students some classes engaged in a vote then they crunch the data for me i also included some visuals there because you know some of our kindergartners
058can't quite read but as you can see up there those are our finalists it was the quentin elementary bucks the quinton elementary eagles the quentin elementary cubs and the clinton elementary parents so i thought it was a good sampling of perhaps mascot ideas and the two color choices below come from the school's palette we originally had nine on the initial survey and those two were the most popular that we put out for a vote so without further ado here's what we've got so in terms of our school caller we will be the navy and that is a notable hue i like to call it light blue um so that will be our school's color and we will see that throughout these spaces um speaking to the architects and designers today they're gonna include that in
059our gymnasium our sound boards um i also like it too because the fifth grade hallway has a blue theme to it um so that's kind of like their their voyage and their ex their journey through clinton elementary school in terms of our mascot it was a very tight race so uh before you let's build anticipation a little more so i was asked this afternoon what it was so i said oh i have the presentation let me go so i went and went through it we've talked several times about where it is and he knows my favorite uh and then my presentation ended here oh that's funny i didn't even know my wife doesn't know my child so this has been a problem that's what matters all day today with the information so if i go
060back a slide oh come on our fourth place was the herons i just thought that was great very creative i love herons but it was the fourth place vote they did not have a lot our third place um the eagles so that was our third place and it came down to the bucks and the cubs it was a very tight race and people would ask me on one morning it would be bucks the next morning would be the cubs but very proud to say that tonight um we will be the quentin elementary cubs so the cubs worthy we will put this out we'll start speaking with some graphic designers and we'll start working on our masters pleasantly surprised our pr for the cubbies you're qualified to be qualified the koalas didn't make it man the
061koalas did get in the initial round we had a couple of problems we had at least two koalas but they didn't make it past yeah two out of 129. not a strong show for the class the bucks didn't make it it sounded like they were close a student did comment in our focus group that you know the cub just you know they're strong um they're persistent but they're still young and they need guidance so i felt that they're not quite a bear then another student said well the buck my dad hunts that so i don't know if we would so we are the foreign elementary cubs that's a great choice look forward to all the great things we're about to do we got so many interesting community discussions about it needs to be native to
062new cat and i said well i haven't seen a lion or a trojan around so you know but yeah it would be nice if it was that there was a bear sighting in 2018. yes so we are sure that's great go cubs all right so any other updates for the school tonight no okay any questions board members all right next item on our agenda is coveted 19 pandemic grant funding update ms morheim and as uh miss morton approaches the bench uh she's joined by shannon walton shannon walton is our business manager so often you get to see our division leadership team but shannon is we couldn't do this work without her so she manages a lot of these grants she knows all the answers we don't know um and we just wanted you to be
063able to interact with shannon we think a lot of her and we're very excited she's been on our team almost as long as i've been here so but it's done a tremendous amount with this work um this was uh requesting the questions and mr beef actually asked in her comments as well that we give an overview of where we are so we have stopped and talked about these funds along the way but now you'll be able to see uh in it in it it in its entirety and i probably just took this more times opening so i will be quiet and now madam chair board members um and shannon just thank you for being here we appreciate shannon's work with these grants and a lot of this information is actually on doe.virginia.gov there is a
064section on that web page called coven 19 update and you can find all the information on the federal pandemic relief programs there as well so this is just a little more detailed information specifically for new kent so rewind it all started in 2020. back in june we had a round of requests come actually from the county and we were able to be a part of submission into funding for that and we did receive 814 126.61 which was fantastic and definitely needed and i won't read them all to you but obviously you can see that there were a lot of projects that were included with all of those different buckets of money and really the focus on this one was around um connection for community this is the time we were virtual and making sure we
065had devices in the hands of uh teachers and students because when we first started every teacher didn't have a device because we relied heavily on desktops so this was critical in our jump start um during the pandemic and you'll hear a common theme throughout this presentation i just want to thank chief opet and his staff for really supporting the schools with the ppe needs and the cleaning supplies they created a portal that they the county could use and we were part of that and we had one individual at each school that could go into that portal and basically put in all the different things that they needed and they actually delivered it directly to each one of our schools this was huge for us we didn't we didn't have facilities to keep it we didn't
066have the manpower to order and store it anywhere um so we just want to really thank them they have continued doing that um so thank you to them and it's also a testament to partnership with the county uh not every school division had had a partnership like this with the county their school divisions that received no information they allowed us to compete with requests each of their three rounds um and we were able to do things we couldn't have done because we didn't receive that type of funding during that time once we got into the october time frame which was when the round three requests were coming through to the county uh we did not get any of the round three requests approved and but we did at that time start to see our own
067funding coming in for the school specifically so we began with our crf funding for federal coronavirus relief funds this is hundred thirty 579 dollars this one was a little tough because we found out about it in october and we had to spend it by december 30th of 2020. they did sound out a memo on december 31st of 2020 one day after we were required to spend all of the funding that there was an extension by one year so we appreciated that however we had already spent it so that didn't really help us much um but look at all the wonderful things that we were able to do this was specifically to prepare our schools in covering preparing for responding to and mitigating the impacts of covid so each these fall under a similar umbrella but
068they each have different rules different timelines of different pieces which is why shannon and haney have been critical to making sure um that we have everything we need so here you'll see a lot of things around uh cleaning um you know interesting things you don't think about we had to rent trunks dumpsters and move furniture because we had the space to six feet we had nowhere to put it so we had to run all that equipment to make sure that we were able to set up our schools and classrooms the way we needed to yeah just to point out a few other things we had you know temperature scanners also just mitigating with office spaces and making sure that staff were protected school radios an id badge machine we had a room that we were
069renovating to pull some of our instructional administrative team out of the school buildings to free up spaces for recovered clinic areas and things of that nature so we were able to do it out of that prep work with these funds and i think another thing that you'll see throughout these funds is we we took some opportunities to make investments that post-pandemic will yield big results for us so uh one of those examples is the freezer for school nutrition at george watkins and that is a desperate thing that was on our checklist needs um and we were able to accomplish that and use this funding for it we were doing a lot of the grab-and-go we had a lot of parents coming through to pick up free meals and with the george watkins being the only
070school on that side of the county and opened that up that was a huge help to have that storage space out there to prepare for that our next grant that we're sharing it was a set-aside award this was a competitive grant that we went for and we received 177 322.90 there were different buckets in this grant award and we received four of them for special education services and supports vision which is technology related items cleaning supplies and facilities upgrades and here are some of what we did with those fundings and again it was more logistically preparing our schools a lot of the my hot spots and services for staff and students and then of course preparing air scrubbers for our clinics our clinics that we had to have a separate room for the coveted area
071so we prepared those with all the equipment that they would need the next grant that we have elementary and secondary school emergency relief this is sr1 funding 214 0439-27 this was awarded in may of and we had to submit an application by august of 2020. again this is uh to address the impact kevin 19 has had and continues to have on elementary and secondary schools some of the big projects that we covered was our summer more program this summer thank you mr miller on your efforts with that program we also covered various supplies i'm trying to look through this list and kind of summarize it again for classroom spaces health and safety of students and staff this is um the funding that we use for healthcare claims for code that was presented at a couple
072board meetings back support for the ppe warehouse so shannon worked closely with chief opet now that they have the warehouse and moving forward what we did was prepare a large order to stock the warehouse so that when we order the supplies through the portal they're there in the warehouse for them to deliver next esther 2 funding this was awarded in january of 21 applications were due in april we received 821 432.81 these funds had to be expended and requested for reimbursement um the sr1 had to be spent and requested prior to to requesting for us or two so there's a little bit of an overlap with the fiscal years and how we're able to reimburse for funding due to our fiscal year and then on june 30. um so there was a lot of logistics
073with that shannon helped with that a lot we appreciate that basically what we've presented with this funding is two full-time instructional coaches which we have hired and ross might be able to speak to that but i think they're specifically for elementary and that covers that for two years fy22 and fy23 again summer of more for next year a little bit of custodial services additional custodial services and we did originally have some hvac upgrades which we will need to revisit now because we received another grant later for hvac upgrades and i think that's another theme that you guys have seen as we've gone through these grants is what we line up to initially spend them spend on them sometimes we have other grants that come in that are directly related to them so hvac is a
074great example when we received this there were no hvac grants that we were going to receive now that we've received an hvac grant now it's coming back to this and do an amendment with virginia department of education so anytime we change we have to submit that amendment to um the doe and get approval once again on it so that's a process in itself as well but this is a grant we'll have to go back because we now have that money in a different space and we have time we do we do and you'll see um i try to include the the dates that the expenses are required to be incurred on all of these grants so you kind of see the theme a lot of them are up to 2024. um the earlier grants are
07522 23 and then these most recent ones even beyond that so what we're trying to do is really set ourselves up for the next three years with these additional supports summer of more specifically the instructional coaches you'll see continued um and there are even initiatives that i think we have idealized in our minds that we even haven't really been able to put you know into motion yet because we just we're thinking through what else can we do um so i think there's time for all that and we're starting to work through those processes and we've been very mindful that it's great funding so we have some investments in personnel but two instructional coaches specifically um but not heavy on that funding because when that funding goes away it would have to be position would either
076have to go away or be a part of the operating budget so we do believe in the instructional coach position we do think that'll have a place in our organization moving forward this gives us an opportunity for i think we have it for three years now through various funds um proof of concept so that we have time to build it in an operating budget if we chose to everything else is comes down to an investment in the future next up is the sr2 set-aside this is another competitive grant that we went after and it was submitted um may 2021 and awarded the month following that in june these are to address unfinished learning and extended school year and year-round school programs these are have to be spent by 2023. so a little bit quicker these
077have been spent on virtual virginia enrollment fees we're looking at assessment and data management systems and then additional supports for summer more continued supports for some or more after that we have the american rescue plan arp sr3 funding this is a large award 1.8 million dollars awarded in april of 2021. we had to do an application by september of twenty twenty one this particular grant requires twenty percent of the award to address learning loss um if you see if you visit our plan we're actually doing better than that that's important for us this particular grant requires posting on our website so you will find on our website um the return to learn in person instructional plan along with this plan specifically of how we plan to utilize the 1.8 million dollars question about the website
078who's who's posting all of this information to the website um we work with the division leadership team and usually we ask ross when we need things posted and he'll milla will also create pages we put it in different places on the website to make sure that it's available we're also required to have public hearings around it as well which we had one we have the date on there um no it was june 7th and we received public comment on both plans um so this is also to let you know that we'll also be receiving public comment on both of these plans on december 6 as well you can submit it electronically and we have that website on that email address or you can do it in person after me so right now we do not
079have any recommendations um this evening for either of those two plans to be changed we do think that we will see some plans to the return to learn instruction plan probably sometime in january we'll be a little bit further with some of our other grants and what we're funding so we may have a change to the funding side but most likely that won't even come in january that might be at a later date we try to keep this particular application and when you're reading the plan you'll see it's a little bit generic just to hold room for things that we may want to do down the road but you can definitely tell where the buckets of funding are within the plan we've highlighted a couple times at our board meeting about the career switcher program
080which we've lost launched and we have our first group of candidates going through this is an example of one of the projects that goes right at teacher retention ultimately learning laws but it's also an investment those folks will be with us for the next three to five years at least to fulfill the terms of the career switcher program so um the year-round school-based substitutes people see a year-round and they think year-round schools what that means is that they're the school-based substitute that's with us all year during the school year not necessarily be around although we've talked about having them in the summer too to keep them so some of the things you'll see here we we did extend like dr nichols said the full-time coach is into fy24 that's the third year um and he
081highlighted the career switcher program looking for any other things here uh we did have funding actually for a part-time um kind of like a grant manager type of a position someone that can really put put a lot of focus into specifically with with us or three with all of the um guidelines the things that you have to have the public comment the different review there's committees that you have and all that information is in the plans and we have done that but and this is very time consuming it takes a lot on shannon um the whole team so we just need a couple extra hands on deck so that was kind of what that was for and then again we originally had hvac upgrades written into this grant but like you'll see coming up we
082think that we'll probably shift that out of this grant into the new grant and then use that funding for something else which is the next grant so we just were awarded in october of this year an hvac replacement and improvement grant the applications were due in november of 21 which thank you mr pollock that's a quick time to come up with a hvac plan especially for this amount of money so it's 617 000 and there is a 100 local match requirement so potentially that's 1.2 million in hvac upgrades which are definitely needed um and as you can see the projects that we've looked to fund are finalizing the new kent middle school hvac replacement project that you see in our cip requests every single year controls and install gw and the high school and then
083a makeup air unit here at the high school we did request the matching portion for this grant through our recent cip request to the county they are still working to finalize their recommendation for what's approved in the cip however we do feel comfortable that working together with the county we will definitely have the funding for the match it may be in the cip we may bring it to you in a transfer from our cip prior year appropriations but either way we're committed to utilizing 100 percent of this grant this is important and next sr3 set-aside award this is a competitive grant again mr miller i believe is working on the application for this one it was actually due tomorrow and we just received an extension till december 1st so i know he has worked with
084our principals and instructional team to put together something for requesting this is for summer learning programs before and after school programs and other learning loss initiatives and last grant this is another opportunity it was just released on november 12th these applications are due on december 3rd and we plan to go for this as well it is a priority-based grant and it is capped at 50 000 for divisions of our size we cannot supplant anything that we're currently doing um but we can use this for fy22 and fy23 so if there's something specifically that we wanted to continue or do and next year we could definitely write this grant to meet those needs so we'll be meeting with marvin hence and jonathan hochman to just kind of go through what we may want to request to
085help with retention of our drivers that's the last grant that we're aware of um i will say i've heard of others and we have been on webinars where they have cautioned us with what to put in our grant applications because of the fact that there may be other applications coming out that would be specific to certain things and they've shared some of those with us so it's it's definitely like dr nichols said there's going to be more grants that come and it may be specific to something that we've already written into a prior grant so at that point then we would be going back reviewing what's in that grant making amendments shifting things around because every grant that's available obviously we want to try to go after it and get it so we'll continue to
086do that and with an eye that in fy24 none of this money is available right so making sure that we're investing it smartly so there is no cliff when we get that by 24 but our facilities are better we've closed those gaps in learning loss um and we're in a good place moving forward so we've covered three years of summer of more 20 21 22.3 right yes okay and and if the only thing right now that that's preventing us from going a year out is the the deadlines on the expense requirements um but if there is a grant that comes about or if there's a way to extend it into a different grant where we could get an additional year we would push that you know as long as we can um or potentially build
087in into our operating budget if that's something that you know we want to try to continue down the road and we are fully committed to the summer piece we saw great results in a large pilot this summer and plan to expand it over the next two pieces but once again that buys us time one to figure out what a cost is because first summary we were sort of estimating um to figure out what that would be and kind of build that in um so that there are a couple things that we are doing that we would like to build in a budget moving forward just it gives us that time which may mean something has to come out so it's not always just adding something in you may have to move something out to make
088that happen so really just um this is really just more for me and dr nichols to really reflect and make sure we were following kind of our standards that we had set up these are our guiding factors you know we're trying to manage this pandemic in our schools and all of our facilities the different departmental buildings that we have we need to understand and address learning loss most importantly we need to also make sure that we're giving folks what they need we you know the principals know what they need we need to make sure we can get it to them we're really trying to move new camp forward beyond the pandemic you know we really want our schools to have what they need now but also plan ahead and make sure that we're also doing
089things to move new kent forward and the most important thing that we need to do is remain flexible with every single funding source that we get because it's constantly changing and i think we've done a really good job of that and that's really all we have this evening if you stop by the office you can see it all on a giant marker board in different colors laid out because we look at it every day um and making sure we have the right pieces in the right places well thank you haney for all of your hard work and your staffs and everyone else who goes into doing this i know it's a no it's a real challenging of a juggling act day in and day out of making it happen but i appreciate all you all
090your folks do to make it happen to get the necessary funding for the progress that we need for the future of the school system and the future of our programs and facilities to do that because i know that it's not an easy task so thank you so much for your hard work and it's definitely appreciated by i know by this board and especially by the staff that that you make all this happen so agree thank you and we just wanted to note that there's an email address nkcps feedback at nkcps.k12 and that's also online on the on the sr3 plan page and any input that anyone wants to provide they can certainly call us come see us send it through that email address that is specific to sr3 funding but of course you know really
091with any with any grant funding that we receive we're always happy to hear ideas the division leadership team has been wonderful with coming up with ideas ross's team shannon just sometimes we were in a in a pinch where we did not want to lose funding you know and there's there's got to be something that someone needs always so we're always trying to make sure that if you need something ask no matter what it is because most likely we have a way of getting it for you right now okay that's it thank you very much that's very informative appreciate that let's see now we're going to move on to our action items uh do i hear a motion to approve the superintendent's recommendations regarding personnel matters as presented i move we approve the superintendent's recommendations regarding
092personnel matters as presented and do i have a second a second any discussion all those in favor only any opposed motion carries see i think that's it our next meeting will be our december monthly meeting on december the 6th we will not have a work session on december the 20th unless something comes up because it's not needed at this time