001Mr. >> here >> at this time we need a motion to go into >> I move that the school board go into code meeting as authorized by section 2.1-371 A1 of code of Virginia for the purpose for the purpose of discussion and consideration of prospective candidates of for second. by Mr. D. All in motion. At this time motion, Mr. Peters [clears throat] Freedom of information to certify that to the best of each member's knowledge. One on the public business of different requirements and two public matters as were identified in the motion by which the session discussed consider state of that departure ass >> yes >> Mr. Jun >> yes >> Mr. Yes. >> Thank you, Mr. Davis. A motion to adjourn by Mr. All in favor. Motion carries. Thank you. The time now is 2
002p.m. Order at this time, please. >> Mr. Senior >> Mr. here >> agent >> here. >> Thank you, Mr. >> The first order of business before the board this evening is to elect a school board chair. The floor is now open for nominations for position on board chair. >> Mr. Christopher place the nomination for position of board chair. Are there any other nominations? None. I ask for a motion to the nominee. Yes. >> Yes. >> Mr. Abro. >> Yes. >> Mr. [clears throat] >> Yes. Yes. >> Thank you. I'd like to thank you once again for nominating me as chair. Just want to let you know that I have decided that this year this year coming up will be my last year as chair and it's I would like to say that I would love
003this year working to work closely with Miss Tucker to groom her as our next chair of next year. I think we have had a excellent relationship. We talked every day and she's one that I can train and so I would love to do that this year. Okay. Thank you very much. Okay, next we will move at this time we will move to the election of the vice chair for nominations. I move that after that wonderful suggestion that you had to make a chair next year. I think I should nominate her to be vice chair since she could understand that. >> Okay, Miss Tucker has been nominated. Is there a second? >> Mr. Peters. Thank you. Is there another nomination? Okay. Another nomination. The nomination is closed. ask you state to call the role please >>
004Mr. Steven >> yes >> Mr. M >> yes >> Mr. Kenneth Bridget >> yes >> Mr. Terce Proctor >> yes >> Mr. Jun >> yes >> Mr. A >> yes >> congratulations Mong [laughter] >> you want to say something >> thank you all so much [laughter] looking forward to it. I'm excited. Didn't expect it, but I'm excited. Um, as we move forward, I'm excited about the great things that is happening here. That's it. That's all. >> Thank you. Thank you. >> Okay. At this time, at this time, we move forward to approve the design of the division superintendent to attend meetings of the board in the absence of the inability of the superintendent to attend and to appoint the clerk of the board. The deputy clerk, the clerk of the board, deputy clerk, do you
005have any name that you recommend as the design for the clerk of the board? >> [snorts] >> She's Thank you for your patience, board members. So, at this time, at this time, I'd like to bring forward for the board's consideration the Miss Tiara Davis as the clerk of the board. >> And at this time, we also like you to bring forward the recommendation for the design as well. >> Okay, perfect. So, at this time, I'd like to bring forward for the board's consideration, Mr. Paul Brown as a superintendent's designate to escape 10 schoolboard meetings in my absence along with the recommendation to appoint Miss Tiierra Miss Tira Davis as the school board clerk. >> Thank you. You heard the recommendations. Is there a motion to accept? >> Mr. Second, Mr. Davis. All in favor? I
006oppose. Motion carries. >> Thank you. Next we move to our committees. Okay. Our first committee is this is for the 25 26 school year. Our first committee is a region governor school. Mr. Davis, are you still willing to serve? >> I am still. >> Miss Proctor, are you still willing to be the >> Yes. Okay. RA. Mr. London. Are you still ready to serve? >> Yes. >> Okay. And I will be your ultimate disciplinary committee Mr. Mr. Pierce and Mr. Three of us will alter Mr. Policy Mr. Dis. Okay. Intergovernment community relations. Definitely have a meeting with um the mayor, vice mayor, city manager, superintendent, the chair, the vice chair, and the chair. It would be um myself and [laughter] school. I'm the representative. I'm willing to stay and Mr. Le willing to Yes. >>
007Okay. The citizen advisory committee career and technical education the board representative Mr. London and Miss Joyce Proctor and ultimately is myself. Are you all willing to >> serve gifted advisory committee of gifted advisor and Mr. Thank you sir. Okay. The parent advisory representative M is and alternate is Mr. Dance. You willing to remain >> school health advisory committee. Mr. and ultimately is Mrs. Tucker. >> Yes. Special education Seattle committee the representative is M is Mr. Lundy and the alternate is Ms. Proctor. Are you all too? >> Yes. >> Okay. Then we have our superintendent advisory council. Our attendance advisory council board representative is Mrs. T. superior council. >> Yes, >> that's the attendance that she has. >> No, I'm pass. >> Okay. >> Yeah. >> Okay. as I >> will advise >> for the finance
008advisory council for the superintendent is and Joyce Okay. And your operations advisory council is Mr. D and Mr. Miles. >> Yes. Okay. Appreciate it. Okay. Is there a motion to accept the appointment? So move by Mr. Pierce. Is there a second? Mr. Miles. All in favor? >> Oppos? Motion carries. Next we'll move to the journ. Is there a motion to adjourn? by a second. All in favor? >> Oppos? Motion carries. Thank you. 5:30. Good afternoon everyone. The time is 5:30 p.m. We would like to call our regular schedule to order. Miss Davis call >> here Mr. >> here. >> Mr. Tucker >> here. >> Mr. Parker [clears throat] >> here. >> Mr. Bernard Jr. >> here. >> Mr. A >> here. Thank you. At this time, board members will move to 1 A, approval of
009the agenda. No changes, I accept a motion by Mr. Pearson. Is there a second? Second, Mrs. Tucker. All in favor? I motion carries. Thank you. One B. Mance, Miss Davis. >> The following are to be during a moment of silence. The family of Mr. Philip A. Ino former Walker School Educator in his passing on Thursday Taylor former Walker School Educators and her passing on Tuesday December 9th 2025 the family Junmer school educator has passed on Monday December 15th 2025 the family of Mr. James Carter Jr. former school educator and his passing on Tuesday December 2025 the family of Elo former city public schools educator assistant principal principal assistant superintendent school board member as well as a board member of the regional boards of region high school on Saturday December 20 Mr. Walter Sykes and family,
010the passing of his wife, Miss Daisy Jones on Friday, December 26, 2025. Mr. Jones and family in the passing of his sister, Miss Steph on Thursday, January 1st, 2026. Miss Brandon family, the passing of her cousin on Thursday, January 1st, 2026. Janelle Price Parker on Sunday, January 4th, 2026. Mr. and Mrs. Stevens on Sunday, January 4th, 2026. Sat on Sunday, January 11th, 2026. Mr. Paul family, Mr. Hall, Mr. Michael support his grandfather Mr. George on Monday January 126. At this time we have a moment of silence. >> Thank you. Next we move to 1 C pledge of allegiance to the flag of the republic for it stands one nation indivisible and justice for all. correspondence. There's no correspondence to recognition. Thank you for your vision and school board members. Again, happy new year to everyone.
011I'm excited this evening. I'm excited this evening to recognize one of our school leaders and our schools. As you know, as a part of our focus this year from the school board and the school division, of course, everyone knows just as a reminder that one of our keyboard school work goals for 2526 is to reduce chronic absenteeism by 3%. And so one of the things that we've done is we put in place lots of lots of research based best practices and strategies to help us attack chronic absenteeism. And so as a part of that, anytime you implement best practices, anytime you work with school leaders and anytime you put programs in place, you also you also cannot forget about celebration. And so what we've done is we've instituted our very own traveling trophy for chronic
012absenteeism. It is given to the school based upon the data that we collect on student attendance and chronic absenteeism and is given to the school leader and the school that has the highest reduction in students chronically absent for each month. And so, as we know, for the first two months that we started in November and December, that none other than our flagship high school, Petersburg High School, has won the award two straight months in a row. However, we are excited to unveil for everyone that for the last for the month um for the last month prior to school um letting out for the holidays that we have a new champion for the month who has reduced the number of students who are chronically absent um for that month for doing the best job of any
013school for that particular month. And so I am excited to unveil today and congratulate to none other than Walnut Hill Elementary School principal [applause] and the Walnut Hill Elementary School staff on receiving the traveling trophy award for reducing the number of students who were chronically absent prior to the student holiday. So congratulations to Miss Urban. [applause] Congratulations to our first elementary school to win the award. We will have Miss Irv come to the podium with her wonderful assistant principal to talk about receiving the award and some of the things that we've been doing to ensure that we can reduce the percentage of kids that are finally absent from school. Miss Berkar, good evening and thank you. Thank you so very much. Uh this is definitely a big honor for us because we actually we really
014push uh attendance and as far as our students being at school and we want to celebrate our students when our students come to school each and every day. What we do is and one of the big things we did just did recently to we want to congratulate our parents for sending the students to school. So what we did when we gave out the certificates to the students, we allowed the students to go to our shop and go shop and pick out gifts for their parents. And we send a letter to the parents thanking them for sending the students to school each and every day. Each and every morning, we ask the students to look around the classroom to actually see who's not there. And if you're one of your friends or someone is not at
015school that day, make sure when you get home, you call them and ask, you know, why weren't you at school? And encourage them to come to school the next day. We encourage our teachers to call the um students if a student does not come to school. We encourage the teacher to actually call this the parent that day to call them and let them know, you know, just find out if if the child is okay and why they're not at school. So, anytime we can reach out to a parent or to the children to encourage them to come to school and even when we see students in the hallway, just thanking them for being at school. So, we just try to be creative to encourage our students, adding incentives for them to come to school each
016and every day and celebrate them for just being there. >> Thank you very much. Congratulations to [applause] you all kind of hold on to it for the next so we can keep the competition going. So, well done. Thank you. [applause] >> Yes. Excuse me. I'd like to make a com I'd like to make a comment on behalf of your school board representative. [laughter] I don't like to say way to go. Keep it [applause] in your career. That Miss Spiel should have been here tonight to pass that on TV. So, I'm going to sleep with her. [laughter] >> She's at the game. >> Oh, she's at the game. Okay. [laughter] >> It looks good. Yeah. Oh, you want me to get them first? >> One, two, three. >> Thank you. over everybody. Yeah. >> Look this
017way and and smile. And one, two, three. >> Thank you. [applause] Good work. [laughter] >> [clears throat] >> Okay, once again congratulations. Next we move on to number two B for recognition. Okay. Thank you so much. Thank you, board chair and school board members. We're excited this evening to have Miss Rachel who is here tonight for representing the American Heart Association. Is that correct? >> Yes. >> Representing the American Heart Association is going to bring forth recognitions. And so she and her team will come to the podium. If we can introduce the team challenge. Hi everyone, I'm Rachel Cast, business development with Gil Building Company. We're a construction management firm here in uh central Virginia. I also introduce Maggie Reed, our vice president. >> Hi everybody. I'm Maggie, vice president for Gilbain's Central Virginia office,
018and we're very excited to be here today. >> And Whitney Jones with the American Heart Association. >> Thank you guys so much for having me here today. I'm excited. I was just a couple of your schools right before break, so I'm excited to be back. So, at Cubane, uh what we really find to be uh super important is that we're not just building buildings. Uh we're building communities. And in order to build communities, what we want to do is make sure that we're investing in that future. Uh and so our partnership with American Heart Association, what we've been doing is we've been giving CPR kids to schools. That really allows us to transfer those life-saving skills. And if everybody's been in an emergency, the ability to rely on that training to understand and know what
019it is that you are doing if you are faced with an emergency, um that starts with learning what that skill is and practicing that skill. And so we've had the ability, which is really awesome, um to bring these CPR kits to various schools. And today we're bringing a CPR kit to be uh Whitney's going to talk a little bit about why, right, that matters so much and why we care so much about it. But at Yain, it's strengthening communities. is building communities and having the opportunity to really share and be part of the communities that we live and build in. >> Thank you, Maggie. Um, and we're so grateful for Bill Bane's continuing partnership. They have been longtime supporters of heart and we're actually uh donated and schools kit last year. So, we're excited to
020donate another kit to uh Johnson School this year. Um, but I want to start with a story before you really pivot paint this picture of why this is so important. So, imagine at home. You just ate dinner and you know you're all in the living room with your mother, your grandmother and all that after dinner, right? Normal. And then all of a sudden your grandmother makes a weird noise and then she just kind of goes unconscious. She looks like she fell asleep. Some of your family members think that um you know she's just messing around with you. You know, she's just you know playing whatever except for you just learned CPR at school. You just learned what a cardiac arrest is, the difference between that and a heart attack and all those different things. And
021you asking you to take her down from the couch and perform CPR on her. And you do at 17 years old and you saved your grandmother's life. And that actually happened right here in central Virginia. Um, and saved Miss Elizabeth's life, which was amazing. Um, because of the skills that she learned through school. Now, it is a high school requirement for all high schoolers across the state of Virginia, and she'd be CPR certified before they graduate. We want to start younger than that. Um, this past May, um, we actually for years uh through our advocacy teams of making sure that all schools across the state of Virginia have cardiac emergency response plans. And what is that? So that when something happens, whether it's [clears throat] at a football game or at a school or whatever,
022kids and teachers know what to do. We all know what happened to Jon at Hopewell High School just about a year and a half ago. We don't ever want that to be the case. So what do we do? Where's the AED? Do you know you know our AED is right now? You know, look around. As you go into different schools, as you your school especially know exactly where your ads are just in case anything happens. When you're at a football game or a basketball game or whatever, know where those are, right? Because these students have the ability to save their parents life. They can take these home and do all of those different things. So, what the heck is the CPR in schools, right? How is going to help us do that? So, um these
023kit each of these kids can have the opportunity to train 12 to uh at a time um within a 20 to 30 minute time frame. So, just in one class period, which is awesome. And it gives the kids the resources to be able to do that. We actually had one student um he was an elementary school student, so he couldn't physically do the compressions, but he had just learned how to do hands only CPR at school because we know that the normal lay person is more likely to do hands only CPR than CPRs, right? And he walked his mom through how to do CPR when he noticed that the person in front of him actually was having a cardiac arrest and his mom didn't notice but he did. He walked his mom through how to
024do it because mom did it. And so we can really create the next um you know generations of lifesavers and making sure that more people are you know ready to step in um and take action when something happens. Um we know that nine out of every 10 out of hospital cardiac arrests don't make it and we don't want that right. We want to double the chance that someone has surviving cardiac arrest by 2030 and CPR in schools kits will help us do that. They'll help us implement these cardiac emergency response plans that Governor Young signed into law last May and implement, you know, in July. We are working next week to make sure that there's funding and all that fun stuff because there's not currently. Um, but that's for our lobby day next week to
025make sure you guys can do that along with the school for all. But, um, yes. So, this is purchasing John's Middle School. We're so excited. It will I just want to make sure I'm not missing anything. Um, but you know, our goal is just simple and bold to make sure that anybody can be a lifesaver and so that they can go home and save their parents or grandparents because it could be you. We want to make sure at least one person in every household knows how to do CPR and hopefully, you know, mostly too if you're the one that use it. So, um, but so that we can do that. But yeah, thank you guys so much. We're so grateful for building because they do really help us do that and making such an incredible
026impact across central Virginia. But thank you guys for having us here today. >> [applause] >> And it has wheels, so it's very convenient. >> On behalf of We really appreciate this. Uh we did receive one last year here in the high school. Um and we'll pass it along to our department because that's where uh we can really get a hold of our kids and train them to do this and get the information as far as how to do just like you said the young child is able to instruct mother to do it. So that's something great um to have and we definitely program. >> Thank you. Thank you so much. >> [applause] >> Okay, smile at me. One, two, three. There we go. Thank you. Appreciate it. >> Thank you. [applause] >> Thank you once
027again to the American Heart Association. Appreciate it. At this time, we move to number three board members that is the approval of the consent agenda. This board, which is A, B, and C. >> Thank you. to the school board members for approval of the personnel agenda for 3A. It is the superintendent's recommendation that the school board approve the final personnel agenda dated for 115 2026 as provided. For 3B, the approval of the minutes. It is the superintendent's recommendation that the school board approve the minutes of the 1152025 special board meeting, 11:118 2025 special close session meeting, 121 2025 student disciplinary hearing hearings and reviews, and 123 2025 special board meeting as provided. 3C donations received by PCPS. If you all would click on the donations, next slide. And these are the donations for the time
028period of December the 16th through December 31st, 2025. And so, thank you to our donors who have um donated. We see here we have a donor, Jaclyn Roach. Thank you. And we have some other donations um for student support. We want to thank all of our don all of our donors for your support of Petersburg City Public Schools. So for 3C is the superintendent's recommendation the school board approve the donations received as provided. >> Thank you Mr. F. Any questions? Is there a motion to accept the consent agenda for Mr. Peters? Is there a second? >> Second. >> Mr. Dance all in favor. Motion carries. And you know what? I do want to apologize because I forgot to do something. I forgot to say that Mr. Apologize. [snorts] [laughter] Thank you. Okay, next we move
029to number four, our superintendent staff reports and guest reports this morning. Good evening, school board members. Our first presentation of this evening is our Alvar Alvarez and Marcel 2024 financial controls assessment implementation plan update. Um tonight we will have Mr. John Wallingford um who is one of our support um support personnel. Um tonight Dr. Mias Raywood I apologize is not able to be here with us. Dr. Great is out of the country handling some personal family matters and so he will be back next week and so we we wish him safe travels back in back into the country at this time. Um and we look forward to seeing him back and so um Mr. John Wallingford um who of course was a former CFO in Prince William County here in the Commonwealth and so he
030stepped in to support and then um you all remember that last year um when I came in prior to um starting as permanent superintendent but during my acting superintendent role we embarked upon a collaborative financial controls assessment um of Petersburg and our finances and so Mr. John Wallenford. He at that time was serving as the interim CFO. And so he worked very closely with me and board chair Pritchette to work with the Alvarez and Marcel company to work to come and do a financial assessment of our controls and our processes. This was also done in conjunction if you remember with the Virginia Department of Education with at the time states state superintendent or superintendent of public instruction um Dr. Lisa Coons. And so, of course, we're coming back one year later. Last year in January,
031we brought the actual results of the financial controls assessment that was implemented. And so, we are now at year one. If you'll recall, in December of last year, Dr. Matias Greywood was um approved by the board. And so, he was here for a full year at the end of this past year. And so, now Mr. Wallenberg, who was here during this process, is coming back to give the update because Dr. is out of the country. He's fully aware and so just wanted you all to know that um we we're happy to have Mr. um Wallingford back to support us and we miss wish Dr. Greywood um safe travels back into the United States next week. So with that, we will turn it over to Mr. Wallinger to give you all an update on what we've
032done since we got the results of the initial 2024 financial growth controls assessment given by operates and myself. Mr. Thank you, Miss Brown. Uh, Chairman Pritchard, members of the board. First thing I'd like to say is happy new year. Uh, it's good to be back here. I haven't been in front of the board in a couple of months. So, in January last year, Alvarez and Barcel, Mike Potter from Alvarez and Marcel made a presentation to this board. Um he identified Mike and Alvarez and Marcel in their work identified several areas of concern, things that we needed to take a look at and and try and adjust. Okay. And I'm going to go through uh several items uh and share with you what we've accomplished so far. So the agenda I'm going to uh I'm going
033to give you an executive summary. If our first slide is going to be ABC, DD, here's what we've done. Okay. Uh then I'm going to talk about uh uh divisionwide uh governance uh and then I'm going to do departmental updates departments meeting human resources finance that kind of thing uh then towards as we approach the end of the presentation we talk a little bit about audit and compliance then one or two topics on technology. So here we go. Executive summary. Bear with me. I can't say anymore. I got to do this this way. Um about 85% about 85% of the Alvarez and Marcel recommendations have been implemented. Remember this again this is high level. um a stable leadership team has been esta established. Uh and I'll I'll mention the four items that Alvarez and Marcel
034said were the most important immediate needs. Um and this is one of them. But we've got staffing in place now in finance and the leadership team, the division's leadership team has now been in place for in most cases uh over a year. uh comprehensive policy and procedure frameworks have been developed and that's ongoing. That process is always ongoing. It'll it'll it'll continue uh well past you know the work of this oper 23 and 24 audits have been completed. They were clean audits. That's good news. Uh the fiscal 25 audit is underway. We put together some uh information uh for uh the folks from Robinson Farmer Cox, our external auditors, and they're currently working on trying to get uh get us through that audit. Finally uh we have in various areas of the business and finance
035operations uh implemented continuous monitoring and uh compliance systems. So you're going to see as we go through these slides uh the findings uh that you'll see at the top of each one of these slides are are going to be pretty similar and they should be uh familiar to you from a presentation that Mike made about a year ago. So uh from a a governance divisionwide governance standpoint uh the findings that Alvarez and Marcel presented to us were uh policies uh not documented below board level lack of training in inconsistent adherence to those and budget processes that were unclear and high turnover in finance was contributed to some of that. So the [snorts] status uh on on these findings procedure manuals uh have been revised and completed and the team are in the process of putting
036together SOPs or standard operating procedure procedures um that will be published this year fiscal 26 or calendar year 26 monthly compliance reporting uh has been uh put in place and that reporting includes what you see on a monthly basis delivered to you here. But there's also internal reporting uh that the finance teams are using to monitor both expenditures and revenues on a monthly basis. Uh finance steering committee or a finance committee has been uh put in place. There have been a couple of meetings and that is going to help us as we move forward with our control environment work. And finally, uh trainings and uh training programs, they're ongoing. They're always ongoing. You're always training. You're always trying to get better at what you do and improve uh the work that you do. So, now
037to the department updates. So before I start this, I want to remind you of the Alvarez and Marcel presentation. They listed four critical items, four immediate needs that needed to be addressed and those were staffing in particular the CFO but there's been some turnover in finance over the past year year and a half and we are to the point in finance where we're fully staffed. That's fantastic news. Okay. Um the second thing that they mentioned was cash management and cash forecasting. critical thing that has to happen that in the interim between the departure of Miss Holloway and my arrival uh with another another CFO in in that chain for a year. Um so cash uh staffing I'm sorry, I just lost it. U grants management uh the grants management team has been has turned over
038to some extent. uh it's been reorganized so that there's a program manager and there's a finance manager and those folks are diligently working and trying to get uh issues resolved with grants. Um so those are the those are the real issues of concern that our friends from Alz shared with us. What you're going to see in these findings is over and over again you're going to see see the same things outdated outdated manual weak governance and inconsistent processes. Um purchasing in particular about a month ago we had a new new purchasing manager hired um Joe Joe's working at um changing the processes for purchasing all the way through payment. That's we call the purchase to pay cycle. And the goal is to get all of that electronic so that there's no papers right now. We
039shuffle papers around. It could take a week or two weeks to get payments done. And so that is in the works. Uh we're going to uh probably look at coming back to the uh school board with uh different thresholds, dollar thresholds for approval of transactions and uh staff training has been completed with refresher sessions ongoing. We've got to continue to train people on how to do accounts payable. Accounts payable is the other end of the purchasing cycle. You go out and buy something and have to pay. Okay, here are the findings again. Lack of documented procedures, manual processes that we monitor. Okay, there's a theme here. You keep hearing the same thing on these findings, right? So, an accounts payable comprehensive accounts payable procedures have been documented. working on, like I said, putting together those
040SOPs. The purchase to pay cycle that the new purchasing manager is working on will also have some impact on accounts payable because the transactions will go through electronically. We're going to eliminate paper. Everything will be electronic. It'll increase uh reliability on payments. It'll make make it happen faster. actually relieve work in accounts payable purchasing and in other administrative offices. So this is a place we can get really get some productive improvements real time monitoring and exception reported is being implemented and that has and uh monthly reconciliations. There are several reconciliations that were in transition between Holloway Ryder, myself and now Dr. Greywood. Uh there were several reconciliations that weren't being done and those are being done now. Employee expenses. This is one of the items that our friends from Alvarez and Marcel identified and their
041assertion was that we had an outdated policy unclear thresholds and manual paperbased processes. The manual paperbased process uh is clearly true. Uh and Matias and the team are going to be looking through outdated outdated policies and thresholds part of the revamping of the whole purchase to pay cycle. So policies have been updated with clear thresholds. Uh electronic expense tracking system is fully implemented. Uh automated approval workflows are uh are uh being implemented and real time monitoring and audit trails are being established. That should uh increase our internal controls. payroll. So, everybody knows Miss Lewis, our payroll operation is is wellrun, but you see the findings, manual timekeeping, no validation, inconsistent adherence. It's the same thing over and over again. Um, electric time sheet validation processes have been put in place. Uh, HR pay HR is
042ver verifying payroll register every uh every pay period that is a uh new process quarterly employment verification started in October of 2025 and that that's exactly what it sounds like every quarter uh the team uh makes sure that those folks who are on payroll are actually employed sounds like a silly thing but it's really necessary uh full electronic time management system roll out is in progress that is uh something that both payroll and HR working on together. Treasury cash management. Uh we were absent uh a an accountant for roughly a year, maybe maybe a little more than a year. And typically the accountant is the guy who manages cash and make sure that cash flow is sufficient to meet the demands uh of expenditure. So we do have an account in place now. Uh cash
043reconciliations, bank reconciliations are taking place. The division has moved to a new bank and that took place about three months ago and uh two-step authentication is logging into the banking systems there. We've got that in place. Um and finally, we're in the process and I I think I mentioned this to you to this board about a year ago. We're in the process of implementing a separate fund for the purpose of capital projects so that when construction new school starts, we segregate those funds. Federal funds and grants. This is a big area. Um we receive anywhere between 15 and $30 million a year uh through all grants. And there are processes and compliance issues that particularly for title one and title IDEA 619 611. Those are the big sources that we have. And it takes a
044lot of work to make sure that expenses are allowable. So people are buying what they're and that reimbursements are getting done because we can go out and spend money. If we don't make sure the reimbursements come in, we find we have a hole at the end of the year. And that's that's one of the issues that Alres and Marcel really identified as a concern. budgeting and forecasting. Uh budgeting and forecasting wasn't really an area that Alvarez identified. It was an area that I identified for them. Um and I said, you know, it it is part of the planning process. Strategic plans feed into budgets that feed into actual expenditures and work that's taking place on the ground in schools. U it's also part of the internal control environment. People don't think of budgeting as a
045control, but it really is. And it forces people to forecast and plan and think about what's going on. Um, their findings again prompted by me were unclear processes, no long-term forecast, no staffing model, and I'm going to talk about staffing in a second, position control. Um, all of those things or many of those things have been put in place. We're working budgets right now, fiscal 27. Um, and uh, the method we're using to build the budget is better than it was last year and much better than it was the year before. Right? So, we progress each year. Uh, a budget committee has been established for oversight on that process. Monthly budget actual reconciliations are taking place. Uh, multi-year forecasting models are being developed. part of the the modeling uh to build our budgets and position
046control. Uh position control I I got to say one or two things about position control. It is from an operational standpoint is one of the most important things from from a business standpoint in school division. We have 800 employees and we got to understand if they've been approved, if they've been budgeted, and we got to make sure we don't overhire. All of those things can happen if you don't have good control. Was one of the very first things I talked with Mike about, when he started last year. Um, I started about two years ago. Since then, we've had three HR directors in place. Um, the most current one Dr. Lane uh sitting over there has taken on the position control effort. This effort is a massive effort and you have to go through every single
047person. Clean up the data or data was bad. Clean up the data. Make sure that you know every person who's working in the school division when that data is good. My work in building the budget is so much easier because Keystone are our software, our ERP. It allows me to push a button, kick out the new budget. All I have to do is say we're going to do, you know, x% increase. Health insurance is going up this much, and it will actually generate the budget. Okay? And it's not quite as simple as I make it sound, but I'd like to thank you, Dr. Lane, for I mean, a monumental effort. It's fantastic. The work isn't done on position control, but we're really moving forward. Good news there. [applause] So, audits and compliance. This is all
048exciting stuff. You guys still away? Okay, here we go. Fiscal 23 audit. I love this stuff, by the way. [laughter] The fiscal 23 audit. And you're aware of this one. The the 23 audit was clean and it's finished. The 24 audit again, clean audit, good news. And that's finished up. The 25 audit, uh, preparation underway. PBC items. Uh, PBC prepared by client. Okay. The auditors say, "Give me A B CDE E." They give us a list of things. We ship it off to them. They start doing their work. Um, almost all of that work is done. Um, we have quarterly internal control monitoring that we've established and monthly compliance reporting. Um, one point about the audit. Uh, in Virginia, localities, not school divisions, but localities have to have an audit finished and their financial statements
049delivered to the auditor of public accounts by the end of December of each year. It's January mid January and that audit has not completed different schools yet. Okay. During the transition, uh we've had one audit, I think it was a 23 audit that was a year behind. Okay. So, we're not going to be finished on time here, but we're still going to be far ahead of what happened in particularly I think it was 24 actually where we were so far behind in getting that audit done. So that's good news. It's not as good as as I would like it, but nevertheless, good news. Technologies and system implementations or integration um uh HR uh procurement uh finance and HR broadly speaking are uh trying to automate all the tasks that we do. The purchase to payment
050cycle is one. Position control that's actually workflow process so that if you know if a a teacher uh retires, you got to go hire a new teacher. How do you communicate that? Right now, it's all paper and phone calls. Okay, that's the position control process. That's going to be all electronic hopefully hopefully here in the near future. Okay, next phase priorities uh in the next 90 days SOP publication and distribution. Um complete the fiscal 25 audit process. Um I hope we get it done. Finalize electronic time sheet system. Uh next six months full procurement automation. That's a big deal. Enhanced uh forecasting tools. We work that on a constant basis and uh comprehensive staff certification programs. The two business organizations in Virginia uh Vasbo and VGFOA, VASBO Virginia Association of School Business Officers and uh
051VGFOA Virginia Government Finance Officers. They offer certification programs to public finance professionals in Virginia and we have are participating in that program right now. Um, one of my certifications is CPFO, certified public finance officer. It's a really really comprehensive um, it's a very comprehensive program. It's really a a good way to learn long-term 12 months. Uh, digital transformation of all processes. That's an ongoing ongoing conversation. Advanced analytics and reporting capabilities that again is an ongoing thing. We're always trying to upgrade it. Analytics simply stated, you know, from a practical standpoint means comparing year-to-year actuals and actuals in the current year to the budget the current year. You do that over and over again and where things jump out as odd or you don't understand, you go research it. that's ongoing. That's part of the audit
052process as well. And that is my presentation with regard to myself. >> Thank you, Mr. >> Yes. on 60 go for getting all my information in for that audit for 2025. Um I've noticed you had 60 days supposed to be finished in December. Are we going to finish that before 60 days by the end of January? >> So I'm going to be honest, Mr. Miles. I can't address the question because I'm not the part of the audit book process this year. But here's what I say. If we're not within the next 60 days, we have issue. Okay. And you know, we had a little bit of a struggle with Robinson, Farmer Cox last year getting it done. We got it done. And so that's really something that Dr. Clay was going to have to answer,
053but it's a question I hear and I'll share it. >> And I just want to say thank you for all work. We caught up a lot of stuff that the last 12 months and I'm on that finance committee. So, I see what's being done. >> Thank you, Dr. We appreciate it. >> We're going to do the update after the monthly budget update. >> Oh, okay. So after after the monthly budget update that was the next presentation then you'll come back up Mr. W provide that. So we'll ask our I'm one that's working on our presentation that we will go back to those slides um after our monthly budget update. >> Thank you Mr. >> Thank you. Thank you board chair school board members. We'll now have our monthly division head start grants update and of
054course we will have that given for the month of this November and December. Is that correct? For the month of November >> November that's sorry November and so of course Dr. um Dr. Great is out of the country. And so we will have none other than Miss Patrice God who is our senior budget analyst. >> Good evening board chair Pritchette, Vice Chair Pier Well, Vice Chair Tucker, [laughter] >> board members, Superintendent Brown, Petersburg community. My name is Patrice God. I am the senior budget analyst for Petersburg City Public Schools and I will be giving the monthly budget update. We have that switch to the Is it embedded in that first piece of it? be a separate >> It's a separate presentation. Miss, she said it has December on it. Is that November? It's um >>
055December. >> The front should say yes December 2025. >> So typically it would have been for would have been given in December in December given in December but it's but it's the November. So we do it at the end of each month. So the presentation should be there. Do you have a copy of >> Yes. Just send it to web master. It's not in the >> Dr. G to provide some clarification for because I know that we for added areas. Thank you very much. Thank you so much. M That's the Dent. Okay. >> That's a different one. It should say update as of November 30th. >> I did. >> Thank you all for your patience. All right. So, Miss Gobble, our new senior budget analyst, standing in for Dr. Great will provide the monthly budget
056update as of November the 30th, 2025. Miss God, >> thank you. I will be highlighting our current financial position across all funds, including the general fund, food service, grants, and head start. We'll begin with our agenda. So, we'll go over the Petersburg transfer uh budget to actuals, the general fund budget and expense, food service and grants expenses, and then finally, our Head start budget and expenses. So, our Petersburg um city transfer budget to actuals as of November 30th, we received $5.4 million. Um and that has been received in five installments of 1.08 million. Um we still have a remaining balance of 9.7 million to receive from the city. Okay. Now, go over our uh general fund budget. So, uh instruction still remains to be our largest investment area as expected for students a student centered
057budget. Our current budget for instruction is 47.1 million and as of November 30th, we have 17.1 million expended. Um this category again represents the bulk of our spending because it directly impacts teaching and learning. Our administration attendance and health um our budget 8.65 million with 4.39 million spent so far. public transportation. Uh we have 3.56 million as our budget and expended we have 1.56 million uh operations and maintenance and facilities. Um we did combine that for this slide um as recommended in our last meeting. So that budget is 10.39 million was expended as of November 30th 5.64 million. Finally, we have technology uh with a budget of 3.31 million and with 1.82 million expended as of November 30th. Total general fund 73.04 million yeartoate expenses 30.5 which leaves us at a balance of 42.4 million.
058Next, we'll go over our food service and grants budget. Food service has a current budget of 3.3 million for fiscal 26. Year-toate expenses is 1.5 or 1.6 million. Uh this leaves a balance of 1.72 million. Uh for grants, again, instruction continues to be our largest investment. Our budget is at 14 million and expended as of November 30th is 5.51 million. Administration, attendance, and health. Uh, our expenses are at 265,49. Pupil transportation, 9,367. Operations, maintenance, and facilities. We apologize, we did not combine that there, but no expenses as of today or as of November 30th, excuse me. debt service and fund uh transfers expenses 121,232 and in technology no expenses recorded uh as of November 30th for fund 07. So combined funds that is uh food service and grants we have a total budget of 18.95
059million total expenses 5.54 million which leaves us at a remaining balance of 13.41 billion. Our total funds um including general fund, food service and grants. Across all funds, our total budget is 92 million. Year-to-ate expenses 25.3 million with the remaining balance of 66.7 million reflecting planned expenditures and only one commitments. We'll now move to our Head Start budget and expenses. Our total Head Start budget is 1.4 million with 454,348 expended as of November 30th, leaving us with the remaining balance of 945,652. We'll walk through the major categories. Salary and wages year-to- date spent 301,773. Fringe benefits 123,848. Supplies $18,35. General supplies, that's a $218 credit. For copier rental, they've expended $616. Plus, no expenses recorded as of November 30th. Teaching strategies, $5,977. Shredded services, $272. Our other operating costs includes field trips, no expenses as
060of November 30th. Um, other expenses, no expenses as of November 30th. purchase educational services $2,17 membership dues $75 parent activity fund uh $100 expended and finally training and technical assistance $1,583. Uh that gives us at total federal funding for uh our Head Start program. Our total budget is 1 point I'm sorry yes 1.4 4 million yearto date expended as of November 30th 454,348 with the remaining balance of 945,652. We'll now move to Head Start nonfederal funding. This is the portion of our Head Start budget. The overall budget is 350,000 with 120,000 451 expended to date, leaving us with a balance of 229,549. These funds include our local match required to support the Head Start grant. So here we have salaries and fringe benefits. Uh November uh expenses as of November 30th, the total is 7,668.
061Donated goods and services. Uh we have expenses recorded at 28,000 and then pupil transportation remaining back I'm sorry uh expenses as of November 30th 84,783 volunteer services no expenses have been reported as of November 30th. The total nonfederal share uh our overall budget 350,000 yeartoate expenses 120,451 remaining balance 229,549. Our grand total for federal and non-federal for our Head Start program combined budget 1.75 million. Combined year-to- date expenses, $574,799. Combined remaining balance as of November 30th is $1.2 million. This reflects both federal and non-federal resources supporting our Head Start programs. >> Questions? >> Thank you, Mr. Great job. Any questions for members? didn't know. Well, I guess I did. I knew you had it in you cuz you told my daughter, >> but you did an outstanding job. [applause] >> Great job, Miss God. Thank
062you so much. We are learning and growing together in Petersburg. So, it's great to see that, you know, we continue to have our great internal candidates who are great internal staff that are moving to different roles and serving our school division in different ways and they are growing and stretching and we're going to do this work together. So, thank you again, Scott. And so with that, we will now thank you for our our next presentation um which is going to be a continuation of our um board monthly budget update. And so with that, I'll have Mr. Walker come back to talk about an update related to our FY2026 um budget. Mr. Walker, >> Miss Brown, thank you again. Um, so, uh, this is, uh, some challenging, but here we go. Uh, as you're probably aware,
063the governor releases his budget every December, typically on the second or third week. This year, it was on the 18th. uh when he releases his budget for the next fiscal year, in this case fiscal 27, he also releases a budget that's referred to as the caboose budget. And the caboose budget is a rework of the current fiscal year we're in. And typically they make technical adjustments. I think you heard that term today, Miss Brown. Uh and it's not usually a big deal. We'll get a little more, little less. is not of note this year. However, um it it is of note and uh because of enrollment growth in Petersburg, we're actually losing money, enrollment shrinkage, I should say. From the budget information shared to us by VDOE last year when we were building the budget,
064we actually came up about 120 to 130 uh students short and that cost us about one point uh $1.1 million. The second adjustment to this uh to Petersburg City Schools budget is a about $2.3 million budget adjustment associated to the loss of K3 class size reduction funding and I'll get into more detail on on that piece in a moment. Okay. So, what the staff has done is we've gotten together under the leadership of the superintendent and the cabinet and their staffs have gotten together to put together a response to this shortfall. So this first this first slide is uh simply in numbers what I shared with you a minute ago. Okay. Our adopted budget this year, the the budget you adopted and the city council approved was uh for the this is for the general
065fund only was $70,400,000. We carried incumbrances forward from fiscal 25 to 26 to the extent of $2.5 million. And [clears throat] these next two lines, you can see a cut of 1.1 and a cut of 2.3. Uh those adjustments uh as a result of enrollment shrinkage and the K3 class size issue. The last number here uh is only $140,000. Budget people call it budget dust. It's it's small, but it it's a function of the fact that because enrollment went down, there all kinds there's lots and lots of adjustments across uh the revenue streams that we get from uh from the state. And so instead of listing, you know, a lot of $20 items, I rolled all that together and that's the net. So, we added 2.5, then we're subtracting 3.3 um with that $140,000. And
066what you see at the bottom is 69,700,000. So, we are actually uh down about 3, it's 3.3, it's $3,317,000 from the adopted budget plus the incumbent carryover. and then recognizing those cuts, those adjustments I should say. >> So, we had to approach the problem, figure out what we're going to do. We needed to get something done pretty rapidly. Um, unfortunately, the governor doesn't deliver his budget uh uh with much time to work because what happens at the end of December and early January, there are holidays and people staff at BOE's hard to get our people you know, hard to get. And so here you can see this is simply a list of uh our proposal to deal with that issue. Okay, I haven't spoken about K3 yet. I'll I'll do that in a moment. So
067we approach the problem with one or two thoughts in mind. The first is how can we avoid doing anything to instruction? Okay, what's what's our what's our product here? What do we do? Okay, we educate kids. So, we really tried hard to stay away from anything that would impact instruction. If you look at this list, you'll notice that there are no schools on this list. Schools budgets were not touched in this process. And I got to tell you, that's something that I'm really pleased about. Okay, it makes me the extent this whole make you happy. That does. Um each of the cabinet members sat with their teams and went through to try and identify uh cuts that they could make understanding that we had to achieve about a $3 million total cut. And so I
068I'll go through one or two I'm not going to go through every single one of these. You can read them, okay? But I want to mention one or two items in particular. The first one is at the very top and that's about 1.2 or$1.3 million and that is a cut to future CIP work that would have been done. If you recall when we when we adopted this budget roughly a year ago they u or nine months ago at one of the things that we talked about was revenue had increased so much two years in a row we actually found ourselves in a situation where we could put a budget in place for CIT and There were several other initiatives uh some hiring of staff that we added and that was about $4.1 million. Okay. Over
069the two-year period, we have our revenue has increased from the state to about $10 million. Okay. So, the best probably uh two of the best years financially Peter F's had in quite some time followed by the caboose budget this year. So, uh that $1.2 2 million was intended for other capital projects. That's not going to happen. That was the easiest place to get money because it's a big amount and it gets you much closer much faster. Again, I'm not going to read through every single one of these, but I will say um there is one other item that is of real interest here, and that is every year we build a budget based on the revenue we expect. First step is to forecast revenue. And it's pretty easy for us because most of our revenue
070comes from the state of Virginia. They send us a spreadsheet that says here are the numbers. Okay? But it's not quite that simple. And we get 13 million from the city. That's basically what our budget is. But there also unplanned for revenues that come in. So we build a budget beginning of the year. It's $70 million. We might actually recognize 71 or 72 million or in a bad You might recognize 68 or 69. Okay, your budget is your plan. That's what you're shooting at. There are Medicaid one that comes to mind. There revenue sources that we get um that we don't build into the budget on the front end. And so we got about 600 $600,000 in unplanned full revenue. Okay. So the real big adjustments are something out of uh most of the central
071office departments uh $1.2 million in CIP reduction and then uh those unplanned revenues to the extent of about $600,000. So that going into great detail on each one of those that gives you a a recap to the big hit the K3 class size reduction credit. K3 class size reduction grant provides money to the school division to support elementary schools in reducing class sizes and there's a certification process that we go through every year. Petersburg has uh received money from the K3 class size reduction grant. Uh each of the years that I I've looked at going back, you know, seven, eight, nine, 10 years, we've always gotten this money. When we went through and did the certification, look closely at what was going on this year when this certification was done for fiscal 26, we noticed
072that we didn't have enough um licensed teachers to meet the requirements. And so as a result of that, when the introduced budget came out and the caboose budget came out, they reduced that number from 2.3 to 0 million. Okay, they took it up, took it all out. One of the things that we've been working on is trying to mitigate that issue. And so everybody, uh, not everybody, but most of the people in the cabinet, M. Brown, um, we've been having conversations with the folks at POE to see if there's some way to mitigate that, you know, that loss. And I'm I would say I'm cautiously optimistic that we might at least get some of it back. I don't know how much. Uh, and here are one or two logistic issues that are kind of against
073us right now on this. The introduced budget is done. So, the governor put his numbers out. They're out there. EDE [clears throat] doesn't have a say in what happens at this point. One of the things, and M. Brown, you and I haven't had a chance to talk about about this. I did talk with the chief of staff. Um, one of the things we're going to have to do is we're going to have to go to our uh, delegate and our senator. If we want to pursue this funding, we're going to have to go to them to uh, get an amendment to the budget and it will have to come to the state budget and it'll have to come from either the House or Senate side because both sides builds their own amendments to what the
074governor introduces. And so that's something that we're going to have to talk about in the next day or two. And and uh one decide if we're going to pursue it uh and two if we are to execute uh on that issue. So to summarize this we started at 70 we added two and a half and we lost about 3.3 in the caboose and that's where the pink stand right now. Last thing I'll say and then if there any questions feel free but the last thing I'll say about that is um as we're in the process of building the fiscal budget. One might ask, well, does this have any impact on the future? And the answer is, yeah, it does. Okay. If our enrollment continues to decrease, we lose money as a result of that. If
075we can't figure out how to get some or all of the K3 class size money back, that means we have what guys like me call as a baseline reduction in your budget. We're going along at 70 million, 70 million, 70 million. And that that's kind of the worst case scenario on this. Hopefully, we'll be able to get some of that uh K3 money back. And the last thing that we have to do on the kind of analytical sites, we got to figure out why we're losing students, whether that's homeschooling, whether that's decreasing population in uh in the city of Petersburg, what it is. But that that enrollment loss is not unique to us. It's not unique to the region. It a statewide issue that almost everybody in Virginia is dealing with except you know the
076wealthiest localities don't don't have a problem but particularly the smaller and less affluent organizations are experiencing this and that's what I have on the topic I'm happy to take any questions >> thank you Mr. Yes, thank you. I was listening to you and you said we were um having a small amount of our teachers at this point, but we noticed that at one time we were looking at where we were talking about right and when we looked at Bright Point uh we found that we had a lot of that came out at at that um graduation. That was a was a lot a large group of people there and we were trying to figure out how could we get those teachers back? Of course, we say financially, is there a way to do that? But
077we had a a very large number of teachers that were finished school and they were doing it very well. So recruitment and retention I'm going to look for Dr. Lane. Recruitment and retention are one of our biggest issues here right now. We have vacancies and we also have a a lack of certified teachers there. There are positions that we need to get licensed. Okay. And so I'm not I'm not really answering a question that you asked, right? But it's an issue and we're actually going to address those issues to some extent later uh this evening. >> Those those Those numbers of of those individuals were like 30 and 40 and they were they were teachers and you know that's what we were looking at. How how is this happening and yet still it's not being
078able to move and not being able to move on to get those teachers in our schools. >> Well, again I I don't have the answer to those questions. They're very good questions to be to be asked. I will say one more thing. We did meet with a team at PDE today. We had a conference call, a zoom or teams call. Um, and they were very helpful. And so we have some learning to do here on how the K3 grant works. That's that's the focus for me. That's the focus of trying to resolve this issue. Um, And over the next day or two, we're going to have to put a plan in place to do something with regard to that. Um, again, I know I'm not answering your question. >> Um, I remember meeting with Dr.
079and you know, Breoint is a two-year program. So, they go through the program for two years. But what Breoint Dr. Fig then a partnership with VCU and the students from right keep going to that um is it RT program and that's the partnership that um Dr. has gone. So that's how that work. Anyone else? >> Thank you, Dr. Mr. Thank you very much. 4C school board members. Our next presentation of this evening is just a out an update of where we are with our five year strategic plan board feedback for our second review. If you'll remember that in December before we left for the for the holiday break um that we had our representatives from HYA, Dr. Mal Hollerin and Dr. Monica Brown who were working with um HYA Dr. Brown came and presented the
080draft of our five-year strategic plan and we received feedback directly from the board. We wanted to bring it back now for a second time for you all to review. We wanted to show you what the draft looks like now with your incorporated feedback from the last session. And so after this, our next steps you'll see in our presentation um will be what we will bring back in February. And so our two support our two um support consultants, Dr. Brown and Dr. Hollerin were not able to be here with us in person. So we have them on Zoom. So, thank you all for being here um to support and so we will have our presentation and update provided by our chief of staff, Dr. Yasmin Gay, with support from Dr. Holland and Dr. Brown. Thank you.
081>> Thank you so much, Superintendent. Uh good evening, uh Chairman Pritchard, uh Vice Chair Tucker, and the rest of our awesome board, our community members, and our staff. Um, as the superintendent said, we will, uh, take a quick review and walk through, uh, our second review of the strategic plan. Um, uh, we want to say to our board members, thank you so much, um, for the feedback that you provided, uh, to us. They were very thoughtful. Um, we had an opportunity to work with our superintendent and also our HYA consultants to make sure that it was embedded in this second review. Again, uh, Dr. Hollerin um could not be here today due to a family issue and also um a family challenge and uh Dr. Brown had a previous engagement. So I will lead the
082uh presentation and then discussion after um and also with inputs from our superintendent. So um oh thank you. All right as I mentioned this is our second review. Um and also just always want to reiterate the the purpose of a strategic plan. Um just in previous work, our strategic plan um gives us direction. It gives us focus uh to a pathway um for student success. And I always say two things that are really challenging for any system is focus and direction. And so this strategic plan will lead us to success that we need for our uh community. So if you look at the first slide here, um, [clears throat] thank you so much. We we have a a a title that we want to bring to you. Um, our superintendent um wanted to suggest the
083title um of our strategic plan, Petersburg forward 2031. And what this resonates is that we are moving forward. uh we are marching forward to success uh with our fiveyear plan. So our proposed title uh to our work in the next five years will be Petersburg forward 2031. We want everyone shouting from the rooftops uh from our schools from the board to our uh community uh that this is Petersburg 2031. Next slide please. So to our mission, um we had some really good feedback from uh uh uh about our mission. I'll quickly read it here. The mission of the Petersburg City Public Schools is to empower citizens through innovations and collaborations who are and you can see it's bolded here because this was the suggestion. I believe it was our uh board member um Miles who
084suggested virtue. So we put virtuous um and our mission uh demonstrate good character um and make meaningful contributions to society. So I'll briefly pause there. Next slide. Again, as you saw uh previously, our vision and portrait of a graduate is um and this stems from our superintendent bringing this to Petersburg City Public Schools. This is our hope for every student is that Petersburg City Public Schools will transform and expand opportunities for learning. So, every student graduates with a life filled with choices whether they are enrolled uh in a college or four years or two years. heard about Breit Point's work, enlisted in the armed services, employed or become an entrepreneur. And I think since the superintendent has been here, many people can actually spit this off from memory that uh we use this vision a
085lot in a lot of our work. Um so people are already talking about it. So we want to make sure that we maintain it. This is our vision and portrait of a graduate. Next slide. So to our core values, um uh again I just want to say a thank you to our steering committee. Um our steering committee consisted of um staff uh building leaders uh division leaders and also community leaders uh who came together uh to come up with our core beliefs. And it says above above all else one, we believe that we exist to educate our students so they graduate with a life filled with I'm sorry with a life filled with and are globally competitive. That was really important to us that a student in Petersburg can compete anywhere in the world. The
086world is their oyster. Next, we believe that engaging families and developing strong relationships are essential. So, this speaks to our family and community engagement. Our families are the lynch pin. Uh they are the lever of change um for each and every student and their success in school. Next, we believe in expo exposing our students to real world situations. This was another recommendation and empowering them to exceed expectations. So it's providing opportunities, opportunities, opportunities for our students to gain experience within the world, no matter the discipline. Next, we believe in cultivating a safe, warming, and respectful environment for our students, staff, families, and community. That was important to us because every school is a microcosm of the community. Our school should feel like another home uh for our students. So that encompass uh the work of
087our teachers, our leaders, our families to make sure that our schools are committed to becoming a community. Last, we believe in celebrating our history, diversity, culture, and student success. Every student in Petersburg City Public Schools comes with a value and a funds of knowledge. That's really important from family culture, from racial, cultural, ethnic value, uh uh whether it is um uh their beliefs, community, things like that that they bring to the table uh that we must value. Next slide. Priority one um and it was intentional that prior this would be our first priority is making sure that we are uh always thinking about student achievement, [clears throat] wellness and support here. And we have our six objectives that I'll pause and let you reflect on. Focusing in on objective two, which definitely relates to our
088vision. Um provide multiple accelerated pathways um for students beginning in elementary school. That's one of our priorities here, especially in our academics uh um event. >> Okay, I just like to quickly just um kind of go through our objectives really quickly just so everyone at home is hearing. So we can just quickly go again our priority is student achievement, wellness, and support. And so each objective that we see and so Dr. Then you can highlight our Were there any changes to priority one which our focus is student achievement and wellness and support? >> No changes. >> So as the superintendent mentioned we can walk through them. So objective three our students and staff will be able to effectively navigate emerging emerging technologies. So as we're moving into technology such as AI um is really important.
089Um, as the world changes, um, that sounds like a soap opera. Wasn't a soap. As the world changes, turns. >> Oh, yes. As the as the world turns, um, our students need to, uh, make sure that we're turning along with the world, right? Um, objective four, provide academic and social emotional learning support for students to meet and exceed grade level expectations. Objective five, increase parental involvement to promote student wellness and achievement, which is a major priority here. Um, objective six, provide a robust menu of extra extracurricular activities and clubs. Okay, next slide. Priority two, uh, talent acquisition, development, and retention. Um, definitely a a focus. Um you heard from the last presentation, it was a question about uh recruitment and retention. Um objective one, increase the percentage of instructional staff that are fully licensed and
090certified. Objective two, ensure that all instructional and non-instructional staff fully trained on best practices, processes, and practices that cultivate a well a welcoming and safe learning environment for all. Objective three, provide additional training opportunities for staff to enhance and advance uh their educational experience. And if you read any human resources research retention, uh the top um um [clears throat] uh objective or the top lever of change for retention is providing opportunities for our staff to grow. Objective four, work to retain a higher percentage of staff by enacting a competitive benefits package and provide a safe and wholesome work environment. Okay, we can move on to priority three, operational excellence um in infrastructure. Um I will say this is this was the group that I was a part of. Um so objective one uh improve cohesiveness
091and coordination between departments and schools. And so what that means is we want to make sure that we are breaking up silos as we are working together and developing strategy. Not one department can move a division on its own. Everyone needs each other. Whether it's finance, human resources, academics, we are all a part of moving this ship. Objective two, use data to inform planning, evaluate progress, and create opportunities. This is the work that is happening with our data accountability assessment and accountability team where we are developing dashboards for transparency um for validity um for awareness uh so that everyone has an opportunity to see the data in real time to make great decisions for our students. Objective three use of technology to enhance process efficiency. Um, we know the work in operations with technology. We
092are constantly reviewing our technology to make sure that it it is up to date. Objective four, efficient use of space and resource to support student and family needs, right? And so making sure that we are using the space that's available um um looking at the value of space um in our schools and around our division. um where we can support our families and students in learning. Uh one example is uh board member Tucker brought to our task force uh meeting is that uh for recovery time uh there's an opportunity to use uh an organization outside of the division uh so that students can uh uh go there where there's a certified teacher to provide recovery services for that student. So using space in the community is going to be very valuable. Objective five, leverage division
093talent to strengthen organizational positioning and encourage teamwork. Um, making sure that we're using the talent that's inside of the division first before we look outside. We have a lot of talent here in Petersburg City Public Schools. Um, I had a mentor who told me said leadership is about putting the gifts where they're supposed to be appropriately, right? So, it's really understanding where our gifts are. Next slide. Fiscal stewardship and resource management. Again, Mr. Wallenford just uh shared a presentation on uh recommendations for fiscal stewardship and resource management. So, that is definitely a priority that we're working on right now. conduct a comprehensive needs assessment to develop uh a prioritized action that maximizes the strategic and equitable allocation of funds through the division. We've been actualizing that with the&m report and other audits or assessments. Objective
094two, uh, the board will enact a policy that establishes an advisory group to collaborate with the CFO in designing and implementing transparent and streamline processes that ensure effective and efficient allocation of funds. So, getting great um recommendations, we already have our finance committee that gives great recommendations to our financial infrastructure. We want to make sure we continue that within the district or sorry, within the division as well. Objective three, ensure grants are awarded promptly and managed with accuracy, compliance, and appropriateness to maximize their impact. We actually have a meeting tomorrow to talk about uh uh cohesiveness of work in uh managing our grants. So really excited to start that work with the grants team. Next slide. Priority five, uh, family engagement and community partnerships. Um, families and community. Um, data says that the more families
095are engaged, uh, you see more success with students, right? So, objective one, increase the number and diversity of division and school partnership that supports student learning and well-being. Partnerships are so very important to our work. Objective two, provide principles and staff with ongoing professional development on high impact family engagement strategies. Uh Mr. Brown um actually is bringing in our family and community engagement uh team to work with principles on high yield strategies actually at the next principal meeting. Um they will be presenting and working with principles um uh giving them that individualized attention and building their capacity around engagement. Objective three, strengthen collaboration with PAC, our parent advisory council, PTA. We had a meeting earlier with uh to establish uh uh more PTAs. I know that's the vision of our chair. Um is to uh
096uh resurrect our PTAs uh within the division here. Um and this is to enhance parent voice and support. Objective four, expand parent engagement opportunities including uh uh CSSP events. I'm sorry I don't know that acronym. Um and data meetings and DTSS activities. So BTSS we have the support from the state um to support us around um multi-tered uh services for our students to improve family understanding of student progress and school uh supports and and we we are doing that work with our family engagement meetings every month. Objective five, implement targeted outreach and support strategies to ensure all families are connected to school resources and communication channels. Again, uh to our great communications team who's doing a really good job with making sure our families are informed uh with updates from our schools and also our
097community. We want to continue that work. Objective six, increase parent and community volunteer participation to enrich school programs and student experiences. Uh when I was a principal, I would say all the time, school is not just for your student. It can be for you, too. You can come and learn alongside uh with your baby. Um if if you want, we want to be able to provide opportunities for that. Next slide. All righty. Um Um, so we didn't make any changes there with any of our priorities. However, there were some shifts here with our next steps. So, um, we're here January 2026. This is our second review of the revised strategic plan with board feedback embedded. There was uh feedback for our next step in February 2026. In the next few weeks, um, we will have
098a final review. Um, the board will review again for adoption of the strategic plan. Um and also in February uh we will begin the work of developing a management team um uh to support or to build implementation plans and strategies. So HYA will be back with us for two days uh to help facilitate that work. And during that time we will be building very specific strategies to enact our objectives and our priorities which will involve metrics and also the recommendation from the board is to build in milestones. So although the strategic plan will be five years, we want to be able to have uh um uh goals stops within those five years to assess how have we done, you know, how far did we get? uh where do we need to make the shift? These
099are milestones, things that we want to achieve uh throughout that fiveear span. The superintendent will review um uh and approve the implementation plan um um before there is full implementation. Now, looking into March and May, um I taught first grade for many years, so I have a classroom voice if you can hear me. Um we will launch awareness. So our communications team um will be working very closely with us to build communication models and strategies. We will have set the superintendent will have sessions with the community um on the strategic plan. So there will be a lot of outreach um about our strategic plan. And lastly, July one is go time. July one is when we start the implementation is when we start the implementation of of our strategic plan. So really excited um about
100the work moving forward. Um uh and we also want to reiterate and the superintendent has mentioned this before. We will have quarterly updates. So we will be updating the board on our progress quarterly. So um Dr. Brown, Dr. Herin, do you have anything to add? Dr. Bay did a fabulous job presenting the work of the steering committee and the changes that the board um enacted or you know uh the changes that the board requested. So thank you board members for thinking so carefully about the plan and to Dr. uh to Dr. Gay for presenting tonight. >> Thank you Dr. Brown. >> Definitely thank you Dr. Gay Dr. Brown. I look forward to rejoining and connecting with the team in the next few weeks as we proceed in next stage of this process. So, thank you
101again. You presented very well. Thank you. >> Thank you both. And thank you both for just being really entrenched in this work. Our community was very impressed um with uh your presence um and how you facilitated our work moving forward. So, thank you both. We appreciate it. So, I'll hand it over to our superintendent, Miss Brown. >> Yes. Thank you, Dr. and thank you to the HYA team. So, at this time, I'll ask what you appreciate and vice Tucker and the entire board. Is there any additional feedback you'd like to give at this moment because we will come back again as the timeline stated back next month for final review and ultimate approval so that we can begin the work planning for our implementation of our strategic plan. >> Thank you, Mr. Brown. Miss um
102Dr. Gay. >> Yes, sir. There is one and [clears throat] and I know you caught it because you stumbled over it. Go to the core beliefs. >> Okay, >> the very first one needs it needs some work. >> SL it says we believe that we exist to educate our students so they graduate with a life fil with and I'm thinking a life filled with purpose and global competitiveness. Something is missing. See it's a word because you stumbled on it. You caught it. [laughter] >> I like that. >> I like purple. >> That's it. >> You had it. >> That's good. [laughter] >> You got it, chairman. We'll add it. >> I like that a lot. >> We'll make sure we add that. >> Okay. anyone else >> because these core police I want to thank
103the committees our community and our committee came up with these courts and they're excited that they are again the byproduct of what they stated. So thank you for catching that boy share picture and again they I think the team kept it um in alignment with what the community needed and so we need that that additional polish. catching that >> though this may seem small I think it's important and that is what um um number um how Miles added which was the word virtuous my um I'm going through a study of our founding fathers the four first four and um from both the Romans and the Greeks we got C attributes in our uh government and one of them that uh George Washington was really pushing at was about virtuous being virtuous. So I thought that
104was interesting. >> Thank you. >> And that is that's such a good quality. It is that we amazing feedback. Amazing. Thank you. Thank you for propping. Of course, we know that George Washington was a Virginia, right? Virginia, right? Is that correct? [laughter] Thomas Jefferson and some others. Is that right? Right here from the Commonwealth. >> I was just thinking I was thinking as as as you were talking, we we sometimes forget about the fact [cough] that our children's are not actually getting the exposure that they used to get. Whereas we had the monies where we could go on trips, where we could be involved in so many other things. And that type of culture is really missing. And we don't know how this culture came about, but it it's left the family out of things.
105And we need to concentrate on that very much. because we are not being ex children are not being as exposed as we would like for them to be. >> Thank you brother. Um if you all can go to the very first priority which is around our academics which is a great comment. You look at the very first Yeah. right here. Thank you. Priority one our student achievement wellness and support. You see objective six. Do we need add to that objective given your comment where it says provide a robust of extracurricular activities and clubs. So I don't know if that's experiences needs to be added extracurricular that's something what do we want to see there because that's where we want to embed it into our strategic plan which will be exactly what we're focused on making
106sure happen in this building when I was as a child working we always had clubs we always had a huge amount of exposures, a huge amount of travel that will take place, a huge amount of experiences. And we don't get that now. And if you if you think about it in your surroundings, you find our kids walking this building all the time. They walk this building all the time because they are not getting what we want them to have. We want them to have meetings. We want them just as it was said here when the lady was first when she first came here. We were speaking on the fact that we want our kids to have the exposure that other worldwide situations should be given to them. Also, you can't do it in here and
107walk around this building. all about hiding and not being able to do what you need to do, not being able to get the educational uh exposure that you need to do, but actually having some structure. Our structure is being >> we um I'm sorry. So, just to piggy back off of what Mr. Lindy said, I would definitely love to add something there um that gives our kids some hands-on experience, whether it be experience or field trips. Um, but I definitely think we need to add to objective six so that, you know, it gives up a piece of accountability. If we put it in there, then we know we have to adhere to it. So, I think it's much Awesome. >> We will definitely add field trips um >> for experiences and student experiences I think.
108So we can student experiences so we're going to have robust menu or um you know we have extracurricular activities you know extra activities but student experiences would be you know even more finite and club. So what we're saying in the plan is because this is what we're measured against. We're going to provide you know robust menu of student experiences, extracurricular activities and clubs because once it's in our plan that's what we're going to be hoping you know the school division too that we're going to provide that and when we have our plan in place we will align our budget to that. So if we say we want kids to have more experiences, extra activities, and clubs, then we have to seek out additional funding and embed and align our budget to exactly what we said
109we're going to we're going to do and achieve in order to improve our school. >> You got to add that feedback. Yes. >> So um I know we don't want to add field trips, but when it comes to experience, can we put site and offsite experiences because some field trips can be had or some experiences can be right here in the building. So, can we do on-site and offsite experiences since we don't want to put the word? >> That's a great point. Yes, >> this made me think of um it's really great feedback. Um along with that, I would suggest uh internships and apprenticeships. as well because it bridges the gap between graduation and career. So when I think about objective six, I think about in school apprenticeships get you prepared. It's kind of like
110that launch pad. It's like a smooth transition into the career field. I hear a lot from the board around that, right? So we'll make sure we add that to Anyone else? >> Thank you. Thank you. >> Okay. Thank you board members. will now move to our final presentation of this evening which is the summary and culmination of our compensation class and a classification salary study results and recommendations. I'm excited um to bring Miss Ally Crumbler, our Evergreen consultants um who have worked very closely with Dr. Lang, Dr. Long Lane, our assistant superintendent of human resources and our teacher to study all of the data and do a deep dive into our classification compensation salary for all of our employees in Petersburg City Public Schools. So, this has taken place over the last few months, excuse
111me, over the last few months and we've done some robust work. So with that, I'll turn it over to Miss Ali to take over after you're done. >> All right. Good evening. Um, thank you for having me. I'm very excited to share the results of our study. As the superintendent mentioned, my name is Ally Crumpler. I am a senior consultant with Evergreen Solutions. Um, here to present the results of our classification and compensation study and our subsequent recommendations to the division. We'll start with our study goals. So, why complete a classification compensation study? Um, So, I'm sure you're well aware that one of your biggest assets and greatest strengths are your employees. And we want to make sure that you're in a position to both recruit and retain your top tier talent. Um, we work
112towards that goal um first by completing an internal review. So, reviewing the current classification and compensation system that exists within the the division to assess your internal equity. Um, we also complete an external review which involves surveying your peer organizations to assess your external equity or how competitively you're paying positions within your local market. And then subsequently uh based on those two analysis, we produce recommendations for the division um and recommendations for a new system that would be more equitable both internally and externally. >> [snorts] >> If we look at that internal review, we start with an assessment of current conditions or an AOCC. Um, and this really allows everybody to uh obtain an understanding of the current status of the the system that is in place within the division, assess strengths and weaknesses of
113that current system and really helps to provide the baseline for recommendations moving forward. Um so this um assessment of current conditions was based on a snapshot of HR data that was received in September of last year. Um so as we know HR data is not static um and constantly changes. So keep that in mind that this was as of September. Um once we received that data we we saw that the division is currently operating under two main pay plans. Um that is your unified and your teacher plan with 31 pay grades in between. So, there's 31 pay grades. Your positions are slotted into those grades. Um, one thing that we did note is that some paygrades have different pay rates for different positions, but they're still grouped in the same grades. So, for example, you
114may have um a paygrade D um with positions in payra D, but some of them are paid at different rates than others. So, this suggests that you may have made changes to pay ranges over time, but have not adjusted your overall plan. Um, we also noted that you have varied range spreads. So a range spread is the distance from the minimum starting salary to the maximum earning salary. Really the earning potential for your positions. Um so that does vary across your positions from 52 to 81%. Um HR best practice does recommend uh range threads between 50 to 70%. So you are well in in those uh best practices currently. Um we also noted varied midpoint progression. So a midpoint progression is the distance from the midpoint of one pay grade to the midpoint of the
115next pay grade. Um so really this suggests us that there's limited evidence of using your plan for upward progression. So that an employee can't really look at your plan and calculate how can I consistently um increase my pay if I were to promote up within the system. Um currently um overall these two plans do represent um 225 unique classifications um or positions representing roughly 645 employees that were included within that data set. Um I did want to note that that 225 number does include uh individual teacher classifications. So the way the data was presented to us, it was broken down like art teacher, biology teacher, etc. um of that your your largest classification is your special education teachers representing roughly 6% of your employees. Um if we take a step further and look at your
116salary distribution um so you can see that the overall average tenure for included employees was roughly seven years but the median tenure for your employees was roughly 3.42 years. So um if we look at where the majority of your employees are concentrated is within the first five years of their tenure with the division. Um, roughly 69% of your employees are compensated below the midpoint of his or her pay range, which makes sense if we're talking about employees that are within the majority of them are within the first five years of their tenure. It makes sense they'd be paid less than the midpoint. If we're looking at a system that is primarily based on tenure to move forward, um, but we also noted that 164 employees were compensated outside of your published ranges. So either above
117or below. Um and looking at your data, um many of those are teachers that are working towards their certification. Um but this also may suggest to us that your plans may be outdated and we need to update them to make sure that the majority of your employees are operating within your plans. Um, if we break down your pay ranges into four equal parts and we look at a quartile analysis, you can see that your largest concentration of employees is within quartile one or that first 25% of a pay range. Again, that makes sense if your employees most of them are within the first five years of tenure. Um, and your tenure generally does increase with increasing cortiles suggesting there is a a relationship between tenure and pay within the division currently. Um however um in
118looking at those 31 pay grades 15 of your pay grades do have um tenure that decreases from one cile to the next. Um so this suggests that you may be experiencing some compression um between newly hired and longer tenured employees within the division. Um, continuing on with that assessment of current condition, um, looking at where a model would anticipate an employee salary, um, versus where they are are actually being paid within their current salary range. Um, you can see that the majority or the largest concentration of your employees are being paid within 10% of where a model would expect based on their time in their current position. However, you do have a roughly 38% of employees that are making more than 10% of where a model would predict they would be placed based on their
119time in their current position. Um, if we look at where those employees are, you can see that of that percentage, 78% of them are within the first five years of their class tenure. So, the first um five years of their time um in their position. Um, this suggests to us that so you're you're increasing their placement. you're not hiring at your minimums. Either that's due to market competitiveness. You're not hiring at those minimums. Maybe they need to be updated. Um or you're you're giving additional credit for education experience. Um trying to bring that top tier into the division. Um but it may suggest that those minimums need to be updated so that you can hire closer to those minimums and and reduce that number. Um, moving on, um, with our internal review, we also completed
120an employee outreach phase. Um, so I'd had the opportunity to come on site in September, um, and meet with your employees, um, with a cross-section of departments and locations. Um, but we also rece an anonymous online outreach surveys um, which is what you're seeing here. This was the response rate for our um, online outreach survey. So we sent out 628 invitations and we received 188 responses for that. Um based on the employee outreach um the the survey and the focus groups um we asked employees why they came to work for the division as well as well as why they remain working here. Um so one of the top responses was community impact and the type of work that they do. Um so almost every employee shared that they love serving the community um that you
121guys have here in the division. They love working with your students. Um, location was also a top um, driver. Many of them live in the surrounding areas and enjoy the feeling that they're giving back to their local community. Um, not surprisingly, employees enjoy the job security and stability that comes along with working at the division. Um, employees like the hours and schedule. Um, so many of them shared that they come from working in the private sector where they often had to work nights and weekends. So, having a schedule that is more similar to that of their children was definitely a huge benefit. And then employees also share that they generally enjoy their peer relationships. So um they enjoy working with their co-workers as well as their direct supervisors. Um if we look at areas of
122concern um so employees feel that pay has not adjusted over time and employees feel that there is a lot of compression between newly hired and more tenured employees. Um so we we noticed in our data that um that may be supported. Your employees do feel that that is happening. Employees also feel that colas or cost of living adjustments have not kept up with inflation or the local market. Um employees feel that pay plans should be evaluated for internal equity. So looking at roles and responsibilities um among positions and making sure that they are um placed into a pay plan appropriately based on those factors. And then also employees feel that job titles and job descriptions should be updated to more accurately reflect current roles. Um so many employees shared that roles have changed over time
123and the job descriptions and titles have not necessarily changed to account for those changes as well. Um overall we asked employees to give their top employee considerations for what they would like to see the division address through this study. Um those would be adjusting compensation to be competitive in relation to your market peers accurately aligning pay according to those job roles and responsibilities and then adjusting comp compensation to account for the local cost of living. Um the next phase in our internal review was a job assessment tool or a JAT. And this is really our version of a desk audit. Uh I would love to come and sit with all of your employees and see what they're doing all day, but unfortunately there's just not enough of me to go around. Um so this tool
124really helps us capture that. So um through this tool, every employee uh receives what we've been told is their most recent job job description and we ask them to provide us information on what needs to be added, changed or removed so we can get an accurate picture of the roles, responsibilities and risk that that position carries for the organization. We also score each of your positions based on six compensatory factors um that are shown there. Um so those are management processes resources technology errors and risk and then knowledge and experience. Um based on that scoring we're able to help the division um review your internal class plan make sure that physicians are placed appropriately in relation to each other. Um based on that analysis we did find that your your titles do generally reflect the
125role and the type of work but there is some drift among titles that could be addressed for better consistency. Um, two main examples of that would be in relation to your coordinators and your specialists. So, what that means to be a coordinator or a specialist within the division currently can vary greatly depending on the position. So, um, that's one thing that we want to make sure that we clean up for you and make that consistent. What does it actually mean to be a coordinator within the division? What does it mean to be a specialist? Um, we also noted that some positions do appear to be currently misaligned relative to the scope of responsibilities and should be examined for adjusted placement within the new pay plan. Um, so this is the um participation for that job
126assessment tool just for your information. Um, so we did receive a response from roughly 36% of employees um through that job assessment tool. Um and of those submissions, roughly 47% of them were reviewed by supervisors. So overall, we did receive um information on roughly 62% of division positions that were included within the study. Um if we did not receive employee submissions that or supervisor um input, then we use the current job description to review um those positions as well. Um moving on from the internal review and and looking at our external review. So looking at your market survey and reviewing uh the division's uh current compensation plan in comparison to your market peers. Um this allows us to check for competitive compensation by comparing your current positions and how you're paying them in relation to
127your market peers and allows us to identify and address any inconsistencies or disparities in pay across similar positions. And so for this we're looking at the roles and responsibilities of each position, not the title since it may be called something different in another area. And then we also adjust each of um so every peer data that we receive, we adjust that by a cost of living factor to make sure that we're comparing apples to apples. We're we're making sure that the the value of that peer dollar is comparable to the value of Petersburg City Schools dollars. Um this this is a list of your market peers or who we solicited information from. What we actually solicited information from 18 peers. We received a response from the 16 peers that are shown here. Um these peers
128were um included for either um close proximity, they're ones that you may compete with for quality employees or they had a similar size, structure or offering to that of the division. Um we also included two ERRI sources um economic research institute. This is secondary data that allows us to get a better idea of how you compare uh in relation to your private sector. um competitors. So while they have very different revenue streams, it is important to to maintain an eye on what the private sector is doing so you can be as competitive as possible. Um so looking at the data that we compared, so we did receive a response from roughly 90% of the peers that we reached out to um we did include 89 um divisions, classifications or positions within that analysis and we
129received sufficient matches for inclusion on roughly roughly 90% of those. Um, so what I mean by that, um, we when we're looking at our analysis, we're looking at at least five quality matches for statistical relevance. Um, and then we're also looking for a differential of less than 40%. So while we match based on the roles and responsibilities of each position, if the your peer is paying either more or less than 40% of what you were paying, there's something about that position that we're not aware of. They're valuing it in a different way. So we would consider that as an outlier and exclude that from the analysis. Um overall we received um more than 600 matches and we receive it or have an average match count of roughly seven per position. So we're looking at a
130pretty good robust data set for you all. So, if we look at your results here, um, so keep in mind that we're comparing pay ranges, not individual employee salaries, because there's a lot of different factors that go into an individual salary. We're looking at published pay ranges here. Um so if we look on the average so your dollar in comparison to your peers dollar not adjusted for cost of living or a distribution along the bell curve um your roughly your minimums are roughly 3% below that of your market peers. If we look at the midpoint so the midpoint of your pay ranges on average across all of those 89 positions you're roughly 6.6% below at the average and at the maximum your maximum pay ranges are roughly 8.6% % below that of your market peers.
131If we adjust that um for those cost of living numbers and distribution along at balper, the 50th percentile would put you right in the middle of your market. So half of your peers would be paying less than you, half of your peers would be paying more than you. Um you can see that that cost of living adjustment does help you out some. So at the 50th percentile, you are competitive. you're about 1.5% ahead on average across all of those positions that we survey. If we push it to the midpoint, um you're about 1.4% uh below. So slightly behind um the the 50th percentile at the midpoint. And then if we look at the maximum um you're the maximum of your pay ranges are on average roughly 3% behind that of your market peers. Um if
132we look at the the 60th percentile, so pushing you along that bell curve a little bit, making a little bit more competitive in relation to your market peers. You can see that that pushes you a little further behind. Um, so that's really a budgetary decision. How competitive do you want to be within your market? So you can see that the peer average range spread is roughly 73%. So if you recall the range spread is the distance from the minimum starting salary to the maximum earning salary or really the earning potential for your positions. Um, so that peer spread is roughly 73%. Your average for the included positions was roughly 64%. So remember, some of yours were 81%. So you're a little bit more competitive for some, less competitive for others. All right. Um, in the
133external review, we also took a look at your stipens. Um, so overall in terms of your siphons, um, your siphons do trend below your peer market average with an average variance of approximately 60 to 65% behind the market. So, I know that sounds like a huge number, but keep in mind that your siphons are is sometimes very small. So, if we're looking at a $500 stipen where your peer average is $1,000, that would be 100% behind. Um, so, but if we look at specific stipens, you do appear to be more competitive competitive with your athletic stipens, but less competitive on average in terms of your academic clubs or your teams. And so, thinking about your strategic plan, that may be something that you want to think about. um you know making those a little bit
134more attractive in terms of those um academic clubs and teams in the future. Um another thing to note is that roughly half of your school division peers do provide pay ranges for stipens rather than flat amounts. Um so they're rewarding additional experience for those coaches, those um uh club sponsors over time. Um the division is currently offering only flat rates for siphons. So that may be something that you want to consider implementing in the future as well. All right. So based on our internal and external analysis, we do have a few recommendations for uh the division to consider implementing. Um the first would be to implement three updated pay plans for your teacher unified and administrative skills. And the second recommendation would be to assign all positions into those new skills um based on internal
135and external equity. And then the third would be to implement these new plans using a defined implementation strategy. So we'll walk through each of these recommendations. Um so this is um as part of recommendation one. This is the proposed plan for your unified scale. Um so we have 20 pay grades here with a minimum starting um hourly rate of 1675 an hour. Um we have a consistent range spread of 78.5% and then a consistent grade progression of 5% between each grade. Um, this is a a step plan. So, keeping in with what you currently have, there are 30 steps built in for each pay grade. So, an employee can um move through that plan or that pay grade in 30 increments. Um, the second proposed plan is for your teachers. Um, so I know this
136is shown as hourly rates, but based on your um employees working 1450 hours within the division, um, this would be a proposed $60,000 start for your teachers. Um, one of the biggest changes here is that we're proposing your pay raise to be based on degree level. So instead of paying supplements separately, um, once you're paying an employee a degree supplement, you're always going to be paying them that degree supplement. So once they get a bachelor's degree, that's not going to go away. So, we're proposing that you uh roll that into your pay plan and pay it as one sum. Um so, we did so the division is already paying uh supplements for bachelor's, masters, and doctorate. Um we did add in optional um or additional pay grades for masters plus 18 and then masters plus
13730 or an ed specialist degree as well. Um and and this I'm sorry um that pay plan um the next one um is also um a step plan with 30 steps uh proposed for your teachers. Um the the third pay proposed pay plan is for your administrative staff. So this is starting with um school administrators and up through your chief level. Um what we're proposing here is an open range pay plan. Um so if you recall we we noted that you have compression between your newly hired and more tenured employees. Um, a step plan really gives you the structure and consistency needed to help alleviate some of that compression, but we're not really seeing that compression in relation to your administrative scale uh or your administrative level positions. Um, and then in talking with your
138um division leadership, um they like the idea of having flexibility and bringing employees into the range for your administrative staff. making sure that you can really be competitive and offer um negotiated salaries and not be tied to those steps. So, we're we're looking at an open range pay plan just to provide some additional flexibility for your administrative um employees here. Um but overall, we're recommending 10 pay grades, um a range spread, so earning potential on average of 64% and then a consistent grade progression of 5% between each grade here. Um, for our second recommendation, recommendation two would be to assign all of division positions to those pay grades. So, those recommended pay grades that we just went over, assigning all of your positions based on internal and external equity. Um, the goals of that would
139be to establish clear pay grade structures that are going to reflect market norms, roles, and responsibilities, and also division priorities. So, areas of critical need, making sure that you're accurately accounting for that. Um the second would be to address systemic alignment issues currently within within the division. Um to focus on consistency and transparency when making position placement decisions. So not making those in isolation but looking at your plan overall looking at your positions where they're slotted, what makes sense if we're going to move positions in the future. um and also help to maintain flexibility within plane placements to allow for future [clears throat] adjustments as the your roles and responsibilities, your markets and your division needs evolve. All right. Um third recommendation is to implement these new plans using a defined implementation strategy. Um in
140talking with your division leadership, we did propose four options. Um and we'll we'll talk through each of those and the the strengths and weaknesses of each of them. So the first say bring to new minimum approach which is exactly as it sounds. So it would look at making sure that every employee is at least making the new minimum of his or her pay grade. If they are already making the new minimum, no additional adjustment would be applied unless it would be to move them on to the next flips of step. Um the we don't recommend bring to new minimum unless it's all that your budget can afford because it's going to create additional compression because it's just going to make sure that everyone's at the bottom and no additional adjustment would be applied. Um otherwise
141we looked at a parody based option. So u realigning employees based on time. So one of the biggest complaints we heard is that there's compression between newly hired and more tenured employees. So we want to alleviate that for you. Um the first option would be a tenure based parody which would look at an employes total amount of time with the division and then realign them based on that um for a 30-year career. Um, so if an employee has been um an instructional assistant, then a teacher, then an assistant principal, then a principal, it would give them credit for that total amount of time. Um, this may not be the most appropriate because they've likely promoted and been given credit for that time um when they were promoted. Um, so it may overinflate an employes um
142position in their salary range by giving them credit for that total tenure. The next option is class par. So instead of looking at ten total tenure. It looks at time within their current position. So if they've been an instructional assistant, then a teacher, then an assistant principal, it's only going to look at that time in the position where they currently are sitting um and realign them. So again, on based on a 30-year uh time frame, so if they've been in that position for 15 years, they would be placed at the midpoint or um you know, as close to their current salary as possible. Um the last option is a hybrid parody option. So, exactly as it sounds, it's a hybrid of the two parody options. Um, so employees would be given credit for their full
143credit for their time in their current position, but then additional half credit for their total amount of tenure with the division. Um, so this is a great way if your budget allows um to get to realign employees based on their time in their current position, but also provide additional um credit or compensation to reward those long tenured employees to the division. And unfortunately there are some costs associated with each of these options. Um so you can see again your brand to knee minimum is going to be your cheapest option. Um again we don't recommend that option because it's going to create additional compression for the division. Um tenure parody is going to be your most expensive option. Um but again uh likely will overinflate some employees if they have received promotions within the division over
144time. Um class par is going to be your cheapest parody option. So realigning employees based on their um time in their current position with the division. And then hybrid par is going to fall in between those two. So giving them um to full credit for their time in their current position and then an additional half credit for total tenure within the within the division. Um these estimates do include a minimum 3% increase for each division employee based on the July 1 implementation. Um in talking with your division leadership um the we feel that the best approach um you know and the one that we would propose would be a class parody option. Um so giving employees realigning them based on their current time or time within their current position. um you know in in hearing
145your your budget presentation um this is something that we can Evergreen can work with the division on doing a multi-year implementation if that's what your budget requires um and we can make recommendations on uh the positions of most need would go within that first year and then follow up in subsequent years. Um final recommendations and next steps that we would recommend that the division take. Um so first would be board final review and approval of the classification and compensation plans. So um both the three K plans and then position grade assignments, how positions are slotted within those plans. Um we would recommend that the division review compensation guidelines annually and revise those as needed. And so one of the things that Evergreen will be working with the division on is a compensation philosophy outlining how
146employees will move through that range. Um so if we build out 30 steps for you, how do employees get to the next step? Is that a year as a step? Is it performance-based? You know, how do we want employees to move through those plans? Um we will also be providing the division with a hiring calculator. So as you are looking at bringing new talent into the division, how do we do that in a more objective systemic way to help alleviate some of that compression that you're currently experiencing? Um and again that's something that we're working with that with the division to help develop. Um we also recommend that the division um conducts annual smallcale market surveys. So especially as you have positions that are hard to fill or have increased turnover. So just maintaining a
147check on that market analysis are you remaining competitive for those positions or do we need to adjust the pay grade within the plan to make sure that you can fill those positions. Um, finally, we would recommend that the division um conduct a comp comprehensive classification and compensation study. So, as we're doing here, every three to five years um as your market conditions change or as your budget allows. Um, finally, next steps for Evergreen will be finalizing your class plan um in conjunction with your HR leadership team to ensure internal equity for your position. So, we're finalizing that analysis and hope to provide that soon. Um, and then we will also be completing updates to all of your job descriptions utilizing that JAT information. So, as your employees share those updated roles and responsibilities, we're going
148to make sure that your job descriptions reflect that as well. >> Any questions for me? >> Thank you. I appreciate any questions. I would suggest that we work with workers and stuff like that. So even though I saw that survey [clears throat] come that tells me that people are reluctant and don't feel comfortable with that type of survey and we got to we got to improve the way the employees respond. and things like that. So they will participate less than 30% and that I kicked the whole thing out. So because you had 625 and 88 recently responded and that's not good. So we need to take a look at everything. The information came back was excellent, >> but we need to the way we going to weigh this. We've got to get more feedback and
149especially from the board from the superintendent how we going to address different you identified all the problem areas we had and it was and that was excellent we need to put some personaliz what it is that you're trying to address so very good report and so it's a more communication take place >> yeah And and one of the things that I forgot to mention is with that job assessment tool um at the superintendent's direction, we did reopen that to all employees. So overall it was open for approximately eight weeks um and and employees overall had about five weeks to submit their feedback and then supervisors had roughly three weeks to to review those submissions. >> One thing I really like was the internal and external especially information that you brought in that very light and
150pointed out some very we need to especially >> thank you suggestion is that maybe people did not respond because they basically satisfied and it sounds like you extended the time period still >> absolutely thank you mouse and proctor absolutely we saw that the numbers were not as high as we wanted them to be. And so what I'll say is many of the cabinet members of some of the positions that you're referencing, they also talked to their staff. And so just like the teachers, even if teachers did not complete the survey, you know, there were some voices at the focus groups that spoke for the majority of the teachers and said, "Hey, a teacher role is a teacher role. We want you to take this into account." There were other positions. I know because typically we
151have employees who may not, you know, engage, you know, in technology use or want to speak out, but there were voices that provided lots of feedback. Even if you had one or two that worked in the department, they had been there so long, they were able to give us really good feedback. And so, I just want to first of all thank um Ally and Evergreen and Dr. blame for their work. Um because this was um a labor of love, you know, charged by the school board that we really wanted to look into salaries. And so um what we noticed is is that we looked at the choices to Mr. Miles's point. I asked the question, will this address this addresses everyone every position in the school division whether you're at the whether you're in this
152position or this position to the left because I don't you know hierarchy is not comfortable for me. I think everybody's role is different in a school division, but everybody role matters. And so those minimums and putting everybody, you know, making sure that if we were to as we're recommending the class period, which is right there in the middle, that will address all of those positions that Mr. Miles is referencing, right? That would make sure that everyone gets touched and gets addressed and gets put on those scales so that we have reduction and people feeling like they're not being paid fairly, that we're not compensating them for what they actually do. Um, related to that, those job descriptions when she talked about the followup, those job descriptions come to the board. So, every job description change
153that happens because we're going to be changing everybody and cleaning it up. That's what we asked the consultants to do. They will come to the board so that you can review these are the new job descriptions. These are the new pay grades in alignment with the recommendation so that you know people will feel like our process is more transparent. Here's how you're getting paid. Here's where it is. Here's what's going to happen. Is that correct, Natalie? >> Yes. So, we we like to say here at Evergreen that every position is valuable because otherwise you wouldn't have them. But every position also has a value. We want to make sure that they're placed in that pay plan appropriately based on those responsibilities and risk and and the market and the market that we're in so that
154we can be competitive and that people, you know, because we're never going to be able to pay everybody what we want to pay them, you know, but what we can do is be competitive and pay people um at a value that we show that they're worthy of, you know, what we're what we're going to give them. And so again, I get those emails. I know that the board gets those questions about I don't make enough. I I do this. I'm pay this. That was what this was about is to make sure that even if um everybody didn't do the survey, right? We made sure the leaders out there made sure that when they were interviewed and when they did it, they talked about their roles within their department. Here's what they're doing. Here's what they're
155here's what's different about their role. And we need to take that into consideration. We also got a um I think from PA provided a BEA uh study also. We also looked at that as well. So um just know that the recommendation is to address everyone um throughout the the division. And I think going with that, you know, based on we're not not voting on anything. We're just bringing this down. this is what the recommendation is so that the board can then um talk about it and we can determine when we'll bring it back for more conversation for for >> excellent presentation that was quite a bit to absorb. Yes. >> If we implement the plan that that you're suggesting, um do we have numbers of where we will be uh three years from now or
156five years from now? What it's going to cost each year to maintain these increases in salaries? Do we have a scale or any idea, you know, how much it's going to cost us each year providing a 3% cost of living? Um >> so we can work with your budget folks to extrapolate that data. Um, one thing I will say is those estimates, you know, again, your HR data is not static. Um, so it's ever changing. Um, so to provide you with the best budget numbers, we would need to get some updated employee data to run those calculations for you. >> Thank you. >> Also, I just have one question on is it possible that I believe this. Is it possible that we can see the board of % of employees are making more than 10%
157expected in current salary range. >> Yes. And I just want to clarify, we're not saying that these employees are being paid more than they should be. We're just saying that they're being paid higher into their current pay range than a model would expect, but that's likely due to a combination of factors. Um, you know, maybe they're a 30-year career veteran and you wanted to value that experience. They had they have a doctor degree, something like that. That's what the data doesn't show us, but we're happy to provide that information to you. appreciate it. >> And I'd like to also add, I know that prior to my arrival, what I understand is that um you all the school board approved um an increase for employees, I think that were 10 years and over as teachers. I
158think you all gave an up increase to those those teachers from what I understood in 2023. Is that correct? And then also when I came on board, you all charged me to take a look at the operational side of the house and did the exact same thing. So we did some large increases. It may not ever be enough, but I just want to acknowledge that prior to this, the school board had already um had the for the foresight to say we need to address the ones who've been at the top probably because you heard I've been here for this number of years and I'm only making this amount. I'm assuming that's what happened. And so you all um decided to make adjustments to where they were on the salary scale. Is that correct? And we
159did the same thing. So lots of changes have happened between 2023 and 2024 on the teacher side and on the operations side. So she took a look at wherever we put them based on those two actions to go into this data. Um and so again as she said more than 10% we know that to be competitive weed things where we can negotiate. Yes, the two percentage is that we can go above an expected range because we're trying to get talent in the school division. And you all see that, you know, each time on the personnel agenda that we offer based on what is our highest need. And so hopefully this will help us, you know, still give us because we're you're suggest you're recommending steps for teachers. Is that correct? >> Yes. And then for
160anything outside of teachers, you're recommending a range open scale >> that's for your unified employees as well. >> Unified. So unified employees are everyone that's not classified. Correct. >> Is that correct? >> And then your administrative scale. We're recommending an open range, >> right? >> So those three categories, you're replicating steps for for the classified. The range is for administrators and then What is I and we talked about is what is the one for the unified? >> Um so steps for unified steps for teachers open range for your >> what you talked about I think some of the bus drivers you talk about bus drivers and maintenance and operations you're talking about all those operational um positions are going to be on a unified we're recommending a unified step scale. >> Yes. And then with
161that implementation defining a compensation philosophy for how employees would move through those steps. >> Great. Thank you. >> Appreciate it. >> Thank you so much. Thank you. >> Okay. Next talk about the comment period. We do not have anyone sign up tonight for public comment next. Thank you both school board members. We have our BSBA policy services subscription contract renewal for 2627. So at this time it is the superintendent's recommendation that the school board approve the BSBA policy services subscription contract renewal for 2627 as provided. >> Any questions? Is there a motion to accept the secretary's recommendation? >> So second motion carries 6B. >> Thank you for school board members. This is a purchase approval request. If you all could pull that up for procurement of items to be to complete our approved technology improvement
162plan phases three and four. Thank you. So again, this is as a part of our technology improvement plan, Petersburg City Public Schools is currently 50% through its strategic data center upgrade. Having successfully stabilized the foundational environment in phases one and two, the project is now entering the value realization stage. This report requests formal approval for the final two phases to establish robust identity management, cloud-based device control, and mandatory legal hold compliance. To complete this project, we are requesting a total of 141,000 dollars and sorry >> 141 149. >> Sorry. Thank you. I can see I should be able to see 141,12 49 and thank you and 11 cents. Thank you for phases three and four hybrid active directory intra intra ID and in tune solution to modernize device deployments implement endpoint backup solutions to meet
163compliance and legal hold requirements. ensures all critical data is securely stored and accessible for legal or audit discovery and secures critical district documents managed by staff. This purchase will be completed under the GSA contract vehicle. >> I'd like to move to accept any questions first moved by Mr. M second Mr. Davis. All in favor motion carries. Thank you. Okay, next we'll move down to our information items. 78 superintendent report. >> Thank you. Thank you. Schools. I have a very brief superintendent report. Thank you. So, we want to celebrate. We'll celebrate the National School Board Recognition Month. This is the National. We'll come back and celebrate our schoolboard members next month as a part of the Virginia um school board recognition. But we wanted to say congratulations and happy National School Board Recognition Month. Please join
164us in sending a heartfelt thank you to our incredible PCPS schoolboard members for their unwavering dedication and commitment to excellence in education. And so next month we will have our big celebration of our of our school board doing Virginia School Board appreciation month. >> Also, this is our Virginia school principles week which is January 12th to the 17th, 2026. Please join us in celebrating our incredible principles here at BCPS who lead with dedication and vision. Our principal efforts shape futures and create positive learning environments. So, happy Virginia school principal week to Sonia Shaw, Britain Bird, Alicia Fields, um Donda Morrison, Dr. Dr. Joseph Rodriguez, Miss Rea Green, Miss Melinda Urkart, and Dr. Stacy P. So again, congratulations and happy Virginia School Principal Week. And so we want to just highlight that Bford Academy achieved 95%
165attendance rate. Last Friday, the BJMS Lamper Sixth Grade Academy achieved a 95.4 attendance rate with 292 engaged Wildcats diving into high quality instruction. Our Wildcats, our Wildcats embrace the philosophy, when we miss school, they miss us and we miss out. And I think you saw that if you saw the video, that is the focus at so excited that 95% of the students were in attendance. um on last Friday. Also, I just want to just highlight our fall awards program. This week, we held our athletics department um fall award for our 2025 athletic awards ceremony here at PHS. During the ceremony, we honored our student athletes who participated and competed in JB and varsity football, girls and boys volleyball, JB and varsity cheerleading, and girls and boys cross country. So, yay to our athletes for their
166participation in our fall sports. [applause] Any questions? Thank you for the school board members. No questions. Just want to make a comment and I forgot Miss here. So, hopefully she's listening and she'll go back and look. Miss was put to a challenge and so hopefully Miss Eric would carry her challenge out for her winning the trophy and students um actually coming to school. I believe this challenge was where's the challenge? Do you remember um this one here? to remind her of her challenge. >> I'm sure the students would be excited. >> Good evening, board chair, members of the board, and Superintendent Brown. I believe she has committed to riding through the hallways on a fine broomstick, greeting every student who shows up to school. Uh, she will be a superhero during the month of January.
167>> They're gonna love it. They will love it. [laughter] They gonna love it. And I can't believe [applause] I heard that Miss Marine has volunteered to be what you call it a chicken day. She's going to dress up in a chicken costume and and Mr. and Dr. Ross is going to be her superhero behind her. [laughter] >> [laughter] >> be careful. >> Right. >> Okay. So, board members and committee reports. Um, the reports are there. Um, I did speak to the district coordinator. She will be submitting hers in fe on February 4th. Working on mayors. >> I got one announcement for everyone. um Saturday class and we're honored that break was selected to do the honor god at the college basketball game between BSU and uh and Virginia Union University and it will be a
168full female honor guard for the first time at Fre Classic at Virginia State that Saturday at 7 o'clock at the multi-purpose center. So come and support Junior ROC number that you arrive between 7 and 8 a.m. The parade starts at 9. Um the parade is a longer this time that we would start in Pun and go all the way to the library. So she suggested that if we are walking that we have somebody with a vehicle that that we need to leave our vehicle down at Pun. So we need to bring us down to Pun Island then someone need to bring us back after parade. So we need to coordinate with someone who can give us a ride to our vehicles. But I think many of us I know some of us are walking Mr.
169Miles, Mrs. Tucker, Mrs. Proctor, Mrs. P. >> Yes, sir. >> You Mr. Davis, >> you have not done that one. We going to be in the parade one day. [laughter] >> And I suggest everyone dress. They call for the coldest day in January. And I do [laughter] and I do show I think she said she's trying to put us in front of the band. So we march in front of the band. So we have to sing a little >> if you have songs that we need to practice. Can you send us [laughter] more announcements? Our next board meeting is February 4th. Oh, don't forget January. We also have the conference legislative conference. That's January the 26 legislative capital conference. That's January 6 through the 27th. Some of you are doing virtual and some will be
170doing in person. >> Okay. Is there a motion to >> move? All right. Everyone have