001Okay, thank you. [Music] Okay. Okay. Thank you so much. Thank you so >> I know what he said. They're kind of crooked ain't they? >> No. Um these are reading glasses. Um >> these are new, right? What did you say? >> You ready? >> Yes, sir. >> Okay. Okay. Good afternoon, everyone. I'd like to call our close session meeting to order. The time now is 4:09 p.m. Mr. Rios, if you will call, please. How you doing? >> Mr. Steven Pierce. >> Mr. Hal Miles. >> Here. >> Mr. Kenneth Pritchette >> here. >> Mr. Corey Tucker >> here. >> Miss Joyce Proctor >> here. >> Mr. Bernard Lundy >> here. >> Mr. Adrien Dance >> here. >> Miss Proctor, if you read us into close. >> I move that the school board go into closed meeting
002as authorized by section 2.2-3711 2-3711 A1 of the code of Virginia for the purpose of discussion or consideration of prospective candidates for employment. >> Is there a second? Second. So move >> Mr. Dance. All in favor? >> I oppose. Motion carry. We'll now enter into close. We're just waiting. Miss Wto, did you enjoy your vacation? [Laughter] Glad to have you. and we would need a motion to come out of close. >> Moved by Mr. Dance. Is there a second? >> Second, >> Mr. Miles. As required by section 2.2-3712D of the Virginia Freedom of Information Act, a roll call vote will be taken to certify that to the best of each member's knowledge, one only public business matters lawfully exempted from open meeting requirements under the act. And two, only such public business matters as were
003identified in the motion by which the closed session was convened were heard, discussed, or considered in the closed session by the board. Prior to the vote, any member of the board who believes that there was a departure from the requirements of one and two as read shall so state the same, indicating the substance of the departure that in in his or her judgment has taken place. Does any board member wish to respond? Hearing no response, I will now take the Freedom of Information Act roll call. Mr. Steven Pierce, >> yes. >> Mr. Hal Miles, >> yes. >> Mr. Kenneth Pritchette. >> Yes. >> Mr. Corey Tucker. >> Yes. >> Mr. Wy Proctor. >> Yes. >> Mr. Bernard Lundy. >> Yes. >> Mr. Adrien Dance. Yes. >> Thank you. Is there any action, >> Mr. Chair?
004>> No, ma'am. No action from close. >> Thank you. >> Is there a motion to adjourn from close? >> So move second. >> Mr. Was that Mr. Pierce? >> Yes. >> Okay. Second. >> Second. Mr. Miles. All in favor? >> I motion carries. >> Good evening once again everyone. The time now is 5:08 p.m. and we would like to call our regular board meeting to order. Miss Bios, if you'll call the role once again. >> Mr. Steven Pierce >> here. >> Mr. Hal Miles >> here. >> Mr. Kenneth Pritchette >> here. >> Mr. Corey Tucker >> here. >> Miss Joyce Proctor >> here. >> Mr. Bernard Lundy >> here. >> Mr. Adrien Dance >> here. >> Thank you, Miss Burios. >> Members, next we'll move to 1A, approval of the agenda. If there are no
005changes, is there a motion to approve the agenda? >> Moved by Mr. Tucker, second by Mr. Pierce. All in favor? >> I oppose. Motion carries. Next, we move to B one 1B. Moment of silence, Miss Perez, any names? >> No moment of silence, sir. >> Okay. Thank you. At this time, we have a moment of silence. Thank you. Next we had our pledge of allegiance 1 C. Mrs. Tucker. [Music] I >> aliance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. >> One deed correspondence. Miss Burios. >> Thank you. Okay, we'll move to our recognitions. I do is Miss Martin back in the country. >> Miss Martin's not here. Okay. And Mr. Dr. Manson is out
006also. Okay. So, board members, we move to three. Approval of the consent agenda. Mrs. Brown. >> Thank you, board chair preaching and school board members. It is the superintendent's recommendation that the school board approve the final personnel agenda dated August the 6, 2025 as provided donations. Thank you. For our next 43C, we also it is the superintendent's recommendation that the school board accept the donations as received as presented. And if you look on the screen, this is these are our 7162025 to 731 2025 are donations for the school to the school division presented by our finance office. And so these are our donations. So again, thank you to all of our donors for supporting our programs here in Petersburg City Public Schools. >> Thank you, Miss Brown. If there are no questions, is there a
007motion to accept the reg? Um, >> yes, a question. Are you accepting all three at one time? >> We do not have any minutes as this at this time. The minutes were not uploaded, so it's just A and C. >> I said do it separate. >> Oh, okay. Miss Burios, we will move with 3A first. The personnel agenda, please do roll call. Mr. Steven Pierce. >> Yes. >> Mr. Hal Miles. >> Nay. >> Mr. Kenneth Pritchette. >> Yes. >> Mr. Corey Tucker. >> Yes. >> Miss Joyce Proctor. >> Yes. >> Mr. Bernard Lundy. >> Yes. >> Mr. Adrien Dance. >> Yes. The motion carries with six affirmative votes. >> Thank you, Mr. Bur. Next, we move to 3C. >> Do we need a roll call, Miss Smile? >> 3C. Okay. Is there a motion to
008accept the superintendent's recommendation for 3C? >> So moved, Mr. Chair. >> Second. >> Moved by Mr. Dan, second by Mr. Pierce. All in favor? I >> opposed. Motion carries. Next, we move to number four. 4A, superintendent and staff reports. 4 A, Mrs. Thank you board pitch and school board members. Our first presentation of this afternoon is will be given by our Boy Scouts of America, Mr. Myron Kidd. So we're really excited. So Mr. Kid, if you would come to the podium at this time. >> Is he here? >> Have you Have you all seen him? He was supposed to have been here. So we we will we will move on. Yeah. He he knew he was supposed to be here tonight. >> I guess so. We'll just come back. All right. >> Communities and school.
009>> All right. So, thank you for attention and schoolboard members. We'll move to our next one. We will have our communities and schools program update given by um Dr. Wanda Stewart who is the is the executive director Dash. Jamal Ellison. Okay. Gotch. Okay. All right. So, welcome to Mr. Jamal Ellison, our pro our program our director of program operations. Thank you. Communities and schools. Good evening. >> We can't hear you. >> Thank you. How about now? >> Good. Good. Good. Uh good evening everyone. I definitely want to say uh good evening to our board chair, Mr. Pritchette, vice chair uh Pierce, all of you all up there, all board members. uh we'll be up here just sharing uh some highlights and some data and uh some of the achievements that we had with uh communities
010and schools of the Tri Cities for uh this past year and some of the goals that we're looking forward to going into this upcoming school year. So, next slide, please. So, I don't know if any of you caught where I said uh communities and schools of the Tri Cities, but we now have a new name. We are now Communities and Schools of the Tri Cities. Uh formerly Communities and Schools of Petersburg. Uh we had the opportunity to partner with Hopewell City Public Schools as well. So we now have a presence in um Carter G. Woodson Middle School and Hopewell High School. But here, this is we're still here and doing the same thing. So uh we still have site coordinators in all nine PCPS uh schools. We served 463 uh PCPS students that were case
011managed by CIS. uh we serve the total of 3,671 students in the division. Uh we off also actively participate on the PCPS uh attendance task force, the uh set teams which is the student empowerment teams at each school. Uh the school attendance teams at each schools and also the uh school admin teams at each school. Uh we were connecting families and students with various community resources such as healthcare, food banks, and mentoring programs to address any barriers to learning that they may be facing. Uh our focus was on improving what we call the ABCs, which stands for attendance, behavior, coursework, and parental engagement. Next slide, please. As you can see up there, we have common goals. So if you compare the CIS mission with the uh vision of Petersburg City Public Schools, the mission of
012CIS is surround to surround students with a community of support, empowering them to stay in school and to achieve in life. The vision of PCPS is the the miss I'm sorry. The mission of Petersburg City Public Schools is to develop 21st century citizens who are able to effectively collaborate, communicate, and innovate according to the school system. And I think I may have that's not the vision. We'll come back to the updated vision on that. I think that may be an error on my part. But um the CIS-5 basics uh where we believe every child deserves a one-to-one relationship with a caring adult, a safe place to learn and grow, a healthy start for a healthy future, a chance to give back to peers and community, and a marketable skill upon graduation. And there's very much
013uh correlation with the four E right that we have here at PCPS which we believe every student here will graduate would should graduate you know with an opportunity to be enrolled enlisted employed or an entrepreneur. Next slide please. Our CIS site coordinators they're the heartbeat of CIS. They are the uh boots on the ground. Those are the staff that we have housed in every school and their job is to communicate the vision and mission of CIS. Uh they support and participate in multip multidisciplinary team approach with staff in the buildings. Uh we facilitate assessments of students and family needs. Uh the coordinator collaborates with school leaders and staff to address needs. Coordinators also coordinate services and service providers at the school sites. They also manage data and documentation at the school sites and also report
014activities and results to the school principles, CIS leadership and all stakeholders. Next slide please. So this is our unique model. Uh it starts at the end of the previous school year. So what we do uh in May of the of last school year, we passed out uh surveys to parents, staff, and also students. You know, we were trying to figure out some of the goals and goals in their minds of what the CIS program could uh how we could support, but also some of the things that they would like to see in the building for the upcoming year. So we utilize this and other information and data that we collected during the year to be the driver for our plan going into this uh upcoming school year. So it starts with the need assessment part.
015Then we're going into the planning phase. That's where we're sitting down assessing this data and we're getting these uh partnerships in order to meet the needs of the schools. Then we go to the integrated supports. That's where we're actually uh integrating the partnerships and putting the uh putting the work in motion. And uh while we're doing that, we're in a period of constant evaluation where we're looking to see success in real time. Are there some tweaks that need to be made? And um how things are going. So we're constantly doing that to make sure that we're optimizing the supports that we're giving. Uh monitoring and adjusting. So at the end of the year, we take a sip back and uh we're looking at all that we did and seeing what needs to continue, what needs
016to be cut out, you know, what we can improve upon and what we can, you know, add a new going into the next year. And and six is what we call proven success. And we'll get into the data of uh our program in just a bit. Next slide, please. So we like to say at CIS with the right help at the right time and the way we help is that we do it through tiers of supports. So we use a tier one, two and three uh approach. Tier one is uh widely available supports and services that are available to the entire school population. So that looks like uh law day that we did here at Petersburg City Public Schools, which was a partnership with the uh Commonwealth Attorney and her office where we brought in
017some lawyers and uh law enforcement uh personnel to uh speak with seniors here at P uh PHS. Or it could be a career fair like what we did at Cool Spring and Lakemont Elementary where we partnered with school staff there to bring various um you know workforce uh entities to into the school to share about what they do with our students. Tier two is a more segmented approach where it's for uh you know segmented groups and we're bringing in groups like Hebron which was a mentoring group at uh Blandford and Vernon John's where they work with uh 15 girls I believe at each site and or something like Pretty Purpose which was uh very similar which was a girls mentoring group that uh operated at all K through 12 sites here in PCPS. But tier
018three is uh really where we're getting down to the nitty-gritty. Those are the individual supports that we provide for our students, right? We've supplied um 4,155 hours of tier three supports. So that could be seal supports for our students, personal check-ins for our students, but it could also look like uh referrals to uh partnership agencies that may operate outside of the school as well, like maybe District 19 or Camp Comfort Zone. Next slide, please. Basic needs support. We also provided uh a lot of basic needs for our families this year. Uh we partner with Chazm to provide 600 Thanksgiving meals, which were dispersed throughout all of our uh PCPS schools here this past school year. We also partnered with Dignity Groves to provide monthly menstrual hygiene necessities to all uh female students at Petersburg High
019School and Vernon John's. We also partnered with organizations like St. Joseph's Villa uh with their Flaggler Housing uh resource center, Commonwealth Catholic Charities, People's Advantage Credit Union, and Lending Help and Hands to support stable housing solutions for our PCPS families. And we also partner with agencies like Feedmore and Good Sheeperd Baptist Church and St. Stevens Episcopal Church to coordinate monthly food distributions that support the residents of Petersburg and neighboring areas. Next slide, please. So, our impact. So, this is the data that uh our program uh provided to PCPS for this uh upcoming year. So I'll compare the data from last year but also want to speak on the goals that we're looking to accomplish with this upcoming school year. So last school year 99% of all case managed high school seniors successfully graduated. This year
020obviously that needs to be 100%. Last year 98% of all case managed K through 11 students were promoted. This year we're looking to make 100% as well. 82% last year of case managed students demonstrated improvement in academic performance as measured by their grades in English and math. This year we would like to see that be at least 85%. Uh the previous year 70 77% of case managed students showed improvement in attendance based on average daily attendant rates attendance rates and reductions in tardies. This year we would like to see that be at least 83%. And last year, 83% of case managed students exhibited improvement in behavior as measured by fewer suspensions, reduced behavior infractions, and gains in social emotional learning. This year, we would like to see that number increase to at least 86%. Next
021slide, please. These are some of the highlights that uh we wanted to share here from the 202425 school year. Uh many of you remember the uh medical classroom that we were uh able to uh partner with you guys on and uh open up at uh Vernon John. So many of you were there for the wonderful ribbon cutting opportunity. And I definitely want to thank you guys, all of you uh board members and also the superintendent and her cabinet for really being the push to get that across the finish line. And I'd also like to give a wonderful shout out also to Mr. Godette and his maintenance team for their work and partnering with us to get that done. But we're really looking forward to exposing our middle schoolers at Vernon John's to various opportunities in
022the medical field. Next slide, please. And we also have up here our girls with pearls program, which has been a program that just finished its second year in partnership with uh first lady um Ynan and her staff. and uh they come out to Blandford uh once a month to mentor the young ladies there. So you can see some of the pictures there and it always culminates with a uh trip a visit to the uh state capital and the uh governor's mansion. So we're you know just thankful for all of these partnerships. Uh we're looking to do that and even more for this upcoming year and just looking forward to just continued great partnership with you all. Uh and uh an exciting road up ahead. Next slide, please. Thank you. And do we have any questions?
023Thank you, Mr. Ellison. Any questions from board members? I just have one. Can you go back? Let me see. It was near the near the beginning and just touch a little bit more. Tell us a little bit more about your 463 students case managed. Yes. So, we case manage 463 students throughout and our goal at each school is to case manage at least 50 students at each school. So, um you know, that's our goal. And what that looks like is that, you know, we're doing monthly check-ins and they have to have and I don't know if you've when I spoke about the tier 2 and the tier three supports. So when we're case managing a student, they have to have at least one of those. The goal is to do as many as possible, but
024we have to have at least a one-on-one, you know, support where they're being touched and getting that wraparound support that way or they have to be part of a group where they're getting, you know, that support that way. But that's what that means. Our goal is to case manage at least 50 students at each school ex aside from Pitman obviously because with that number fluctuates but our goal honestly is to case manage every student there. >> Okay. >> Yeah. Thank you Mr. M. Um I've been um in the past I asked because I know there's a lot of mentors because I'm involved in a mentor group that's um that come into the schools and uh work with the kids uh with which is CBM concerned black men. Uh uh one of the things that I
025think would help us a lot especially the public and the parent that we require require each group to give a a calendar of events that they do so we can make put it on a regular calendar for the parents so everybody can see what's going on because with CBM we do an activity every month with the kids even during the summer and some of the groups have leagues some of them have tutoring We have tutoring, mentoring, and we have uh trips uh events each every every month. But um um to give to help the public um especially the parents see what it is that everything that's going on, not just when they get involved with one group, they can see what the other groups are doing also. So we need that calendar. And I suggest
026that everyone because of community and school, I suggest that every group that work with that come into um Peasburg public schools register with communities and schools so you'll know what's going on also because you're our link to the community. And so we don't need no one in there not going through you. So we need to make sure that so so and that will help us a lot because I know right now this weekend on the 9th we having a car wash for to take the kids to King's Dominion um next weekend um at um AutoZone from from 9 to 2 and that's our second car wash this summer and the kids been coming out trying to get raise the money to go to uh Kings Dominion for this this month. So, the thing is is
027that um if that was on the calendar, you'd be better supported, you know, because because right now it's a lot of flyers and word of mouth. Yeah. So, >> thank you, Mr. Miles. Anyone else? Thank you, Miss Ellis. Ellison, appreciate it. Thank you, >> Miss Brown. We'll go back to 4 A. Mr. Kidd is here. Thank you poor chip pitch and schoolboard members. Um we are excited this evening and this afternoon to welcome Mr. Myron Kidd who will give us a presentation on one of our other great partnerships um at Boy Scouts of America. So thank you Mr. Kid for being here and we'll welcome you to the podium. >> Good evening. >> My name is Myron Kidd. I'm with the um heart of Virginia Council representing uh Scouting America. One of the biggest I
028guess now confusions I guess because we just recently changed our name um for about 100 something year about 110 years. We've been uh what were called the Boy Scouts America but back in February we changed our names from Boy Scouts America to Scouting America based on common sense change now since we're a program that have that serve both boys and girls. So I know it's kind of a confusing thing. And I'm still trying to get used to the new name. I probably take me about a few years to get used to it, just like the public. But um Marit, I'm representing Heart of Virginia Council here to talk to you guys a little bit about our um inschool scouting program that we've been doing here in the uh school system for the last uh few
029years. Um this is my will be my fourth or excuse me, fifth year doing the program. The program basically is a partnership between the heart of Virginia Council and the communities and schools. Um our goal is to basically provide scouting in a in school scouting to elementary school kids. Um our main focus obviously is to expose kids or give them expose them to new experiences, but most importantly is to teach them specific life skills that they can um put into life. In case you're wondering, well, those life skills that we try to teach to the kids throughout the year, citizenship, communication, problem solving, selfm motivation, how to work as a team, personal fitness, and most importantly, character development. Uh if you can see um many of our that you see this picture if you can
030see especially for those looking online the pictures of things that we've done this past year concerning those skills like you know like teaching kids how to fold the American flag that's kind of citizenship pitching a tent that's teamworking learn how to pitch how to I guess make a fire uh one of the coolest things that I've learned that the my fourth and fifth graders really really enjoyed I was very surprised but I'm really happy they enjoyed was learning how to basically do CPR. Something that I kind of just basically a little introduction basically what to do and just the simple steps of CPR. So that's one of the few things that we have done this year. So of course with those life skills we you know we evolve those life skills through our wonderful fun
031activities um that's evolving around STEM outdoor skills as you can see first aid citizenship camping personal fitness and like special events such as rain gutter regata or the pinewood derby. So as I mentioned um we're a program that serve both boys and girls um in our in school program in elementary school with boys and girls who are in kindergarten through fifth grade. Next slide please. So look kind of break down the way we run operate our program. Um the last few years especially last year we've been able to be at each elementary school um each all the four elementary schools and we're able to run a inschool scout program once a month per school and each school um they have get to have the program once a month and we run the program through the
032school schedule. So in case you wonder what what do you mean by that Mr. Kit or Mr. kit uh we are basically an elective for that student. For example, with a student each day they have something called resource which is like basically their art, music, library and art and scouting for that month that that day and the month can be part of their elective schedule um to do. So that's how we facilitate the program. We it's a program that we run all day and we run each grade at a time. We don't have uh contrast I believe we don't have 50 plus kids at a time. We serve each grade at a time. So, we're able to work with each grade level at a time. Um, the program, how do we run this program? Of
033course, the program is run by trained staff um from the heart of Virginia Council. That includes myself along with uh program aids um in scouting. We do something called two deep leadership. So, we got to have two adults per child. So, no matter what we're doing, there must be two adults. I cannot be or any other person cannot be with the youth by by ourselves. So must have two adults um in case you want uh how program how are the program um how program is covered. So, one of the biggest things just like scouting or sports, there's a cost to it, but thankfully with our relationship with the Heart of Virginia Council and the Cameron Foundation, the cost of this program is free of charge. So, that's your scout or your excuse me, your student
034does not have to pay a thing. That covers for, you know, insurance, membership cost, cost of a t-shirt, um, that we give out to the youth. So beyond the program um obviously for scouts that signed up um through you know the membership process they are invited or able to participate in other stuff beyond the inschool program like we have we have special weekend events like for example we have some in October called the creepy hollow um event where they can do more stuff they are not able to do in school like go camping, biking, climbing, fishing and this something that we do. We do this a couple times a year. We have a creepy hollow in October, then we have a spring event in uh May. So, there's more than just this during the program
035in the school where kids are able to partake in more of our scouting um activities. Next slide, please. So, something I added new this year, I'm going to try my best to read it. Um getting to the point I might need glasses. Um something that we do we have done the last few years ever since I've been doing the program we have uh surveyed our students or scouts we do these surveys called the post pre excuse me a pre and post survey where we survey uh scouts twice a year once before the end of the year before once in December and one before the school year is over with to basically gauge the impact of our scouting program basically it's it's doing the fun activities cool and all but when it's all said and done
036we want the program itself up to make an impact. So, what I have here posted here, I'm going try my best to read it, is basically um the improvement. So, it talks about the improvement socially that our scouts have um achieved through from the pre-ervey back in December over to May. So, one of the quick questions like um I'm going read one. I have lots of friends. And what you can see here um you'll notice a 36% increase from you know, strongly agreed that they have lots of friends back in December. That's say 42%. So that increased from 36% up to 78%. So that shows that our program is some making an impact whether you know it kind of open our kids up basically to open up through new kids, make new friends, maybe most
037importantly do better in school. That's question about how well they do in school. Are they having issues with certain things at school? um even to the point we're asking about are they willing are they do they think they will finish high school or even further to are they willing to do they think they'll go to college and even finish college. So we have seen a lot of our metrics here that a lot of increases 15 to 30% increases um and that shows the impact that we have that the program has made on the kids socially. Um that's all I have any questions? I tried to uh try to cut it down. I know there may be some questions. >> Thank you, Mr. Kid. Any questions from board members, Mr. Miles? >> And you said this
038during uh school time. This not a before after school program? >> During school? Yes, sir. During the school time. Yep. During school hours. Yep. >> Yeah. We made it work. Yeah. Yeah. It's Yeah. So that's kind of break the barrier of you know obviously after school you know have you know it's just a it breaks a barrier so we basically come to the kid and provide the program to the to the youth. >> So is this um do you you you um channel it through communities and schools. >> Absolutely. Yeah we communicate with communities and schools Mr. There he is right there. We communicate with them and been having a partnership for the last I guess about four years four and a half years. Yeah. and Miss Wanda, >> we can make that part of
039that calendar of events, right? So we'll know what's so we can see because if some if a board member want to come in and observe, we need that calendar so we can come in and just observe because we can do that see what's going on in our school system. We need to know what's going on. >> And if and if you guys don't mind, we can if you guys would like to we like to invite you to you know when we come to a meeting. >> Love that. >> And I'll get over Mr. Pritchard and how I can communicate with you guys trying to get you guys to check things out. And we and we, you know, we have our executive board members from our council come take a look at what we do too.
040So you guys are more than welcome to come take a look as well. >> Any other questions? >> Thank you, Mr. Kid. Look forward to continue the partnership, sir. >> And we do have theou with them under action. So we'll vote on that when we get to action. Miss Brown, we'll move next to 4 C. >> Thank you, board chair Bridget and school board members. We will now move to our next presentation for this afternoon. And so this next presentation is will be our Petersburg City Public Schools 2526 um emergency management safety and security plan update that will be given by Mr. Paul Rona, our director of security here in Petersburg. Mr. Morocco. [Music] >> Good evening, Chairman Pritchette, Vice Chair, Superintendent Brown, members of school board, members of our Petersburg community. My name is
041Paul Rona. I serve as director of security and the emergency manager for Petersburg City Public Schools. Thank you for the opportunity to present our update of the work of our security and management office, our progress from the 2024 2025 school year, and our strategic direction for school year 2025 and 2026. Next slide, please. Tonight's presentation will include an overview of our developmental scope and vision, a summary of safety related policies, a review of Virginia Department education BDOE's compliance requirements. We'll revisit our department's mission, examine key initiatives from the past year, walk through our new organizational structure, provide an update on security office training, officer training, and outline our strategic planning model. We'll conclude with frequently asked questions, and we welcome your feedback. Next slide, please. Thank you. Safe schools are are not simply buildings with
042locked doors. They're an entire ecosystem that supports teaching, learning, and well-being. The characteristics of a safe school include strong academic focus, family and community involvement, and open dialogue around safety and mental health. Emergency preparedness, intervention systems, and policies that promote good citizenship are all foundational. At PCPS, we recognize that school safety is not achieved in isolation. It's a shared responsibility of families, staff, neighbors, law enforcement, public agencies. Together, we create conditions for safety. And we are fully committed to creating a safe and secure environment for every student, every staff member, and every visitor. Security Emergency Management works in coordination with national, state, and local partners. Together, we are enhancing our procedures to develop a compliant, comprehensive emergency response plan to prepare prepare for a wide range of emergencies and adopt standard response protocols. This plan
043serves as a critical guide not only for staff but also for our public safety collaborators collaborators. It ensures we can respond quickly and effectively should a crisis arise on any of our campuses. Next slide please. Thank you. So policy summary and definitions. We want to just do a a quick review. Uh some policies and guide that work for our office are deeply rooted in state law and our board approved governance. Some of the highlighted policies that we have are emergency management planning, safety drills, building and ground security, threat assessment, restraint and seclusion, and law enforcement collaboration. These policies align with Virginia codes and the VDOE admin code and guidance. They provide a structure for how we prevent threats, protect facilities, respond to incidents, and uphold student rights. Security Emergency Management maintains compliance for these audits,
044drills, and training protocols and law enforcement agreements. Next slide, please. Taking a little deeper look at the policies. So, safe physical environment are policies that guidance that mandate access control, video surveillance, alarms, and strict credentiing, preparedness, and drills. Every school maintains a VDOE compliant all hazards emergency plan reviewed annually. And it also includes a drill schedule for each school so we can on track, keep on track. Prevention, early intervention. Each school has a trained multid-disciplinary threat assessment team that follow the uh comprehensive state threat assessment guidance. Search and seizure. We provide notice that when entering schools, you can see signs on the doors here and the students and visitors are subject to weapons detection systems and reasonable suspicion and proper documentation required for other searches and any requests of canine suites will be used with
045division oversight and desk and other school properties can be searched at any time without consent. student protection. This part of our physical restraint. So our policy dictates on how we um enforce or employee physical restraint. It also decides uh when we need to cease the physical restraint and what is prohibitive such as corporal punishment which is any force causing infliction of uh physical pain on a student by any means of dis by means of discipline as means of discipline. Briefly holding a student in order to calm or comfort the student. Holding a student's hand or arm to escort the student uh safely from one area to another or the use of incidental, minor or reasonable physical contact or other actions designed to maintain order and control is not considered restraint under our policy. So law
046enforcement collaborations prompt reporting structure SRO roles and oversight of all police involvement on school grounds. These policies ensure consistency, accountability, and lawful conduct across all schools in our division. Next slide, please. So, here in accordance with Virginia State Regulations as well as the uh Virginia Department of Criminal Justice Services and the um uh Virginia Center for School and Campus Safety, every school must complete annual reviews of it emergency plans, conduct required drills, and submit compliance reports and audits. So, these are drill compliance, training documentation, school safety audits, division safety audits, incident reporting, audit, uh incident reports, and coordination with law enforcement EMS agencies. So we treat this as a as as as just a floor. Our goal is to exceed these expectations and maintain a proactive prosecutor safety posture at all times. Next slide please.
047So our mission statement. So the mission statement for the uh security and emergency management is to advance a comprehensive, equitable and compliant school framework that prevents threats, protects school communities, mitigates risk, supports effective response and enables full recovery and partnership with local, state and federal safety partners. The statement reflects our commitment to both preparness and partnership and it handles the we say triangle but it's a circle as far as preventing mitigating responding and recovery which are essential for us in the schools. Next slide please. Some of our key projects of school year 21 2024 and 2025. Our office successfully led several infrastructure and technology improvements. We constructed secure vestibules at Lakemon, Cool Springs, and Pleasants Lane. These are in addition to previous vestibule projects such as the high school and some enhancements at Vernon John's.
048We replaced new security cameras. Some of the old antiquated cameras were replaced and we installed dash cameras for all buses. This is example of how the dash camera worked for the buses. Uh there was an incident of an accident. Uh because we had installed the dash cameras, the police department, the police officer investigating was able to corroborate the information that our driver gave. These upgrades improve every control, student monitoring and incident response. You can see also on there there's that uh trailer I was talk about in the next slide, but on the bus bottom left is where we have a a mobile surveillance trailer that we can take to any school, any place. Uh, and you can see how you can zoom in on it. The picture on the right is the actual dash camera
049and up top of course are Lakemont, Pleasants Lane and Cool Springs vestibules. Next slide please. Some of the other projects that we look to do is we installed a repeater here at the high school. One of the issues that we had was communications, radio communications here at the high school. the administrative office could not talk with the south wing up in the front area was it was had to be relayed. So anytime someone from administration up there up front needed a contact from the south wing usually someone from the middle of the school had it relayed that transmission. We added the repeater. Adding the repeater gives us a complete access and it streams our communication so there is no interruption. someone from the upfront or principal Fields's office or in the administrative office can contact
050the south wing without any kind of relay. Distribution of additional radios. We did add some radios to PHS and Vernon Johns and Blandford. These are the U radios that we have already purchased. So, we added some more implementation of the lock systems. If you notice here on the cafeteria doors, you'll see the handles. These have been all replaced. Same with all the classrooms in the high school. also over at uh Cool Springs, uh Lakemon, Pleasants Lane, and partial Vernon John's. Uh they have been replaced from the old style turning and using the key. We want to make sure that we take any kind of uh uh you know, stress out of trying to lock a door in case there's an emergency. And part of that would be if you if you're under stress and trying
051to fumble for a key to try and lock your door, it just creates a time lapse and something we don't need. So, we actually go ahead and and install these locks. close the door, they're locked. And the key opens the door, but you close the door and they're locked. It takes the thought process out and takes the confidence in that you know that your door is locked in case there's an emergency. The expansion of our surveillance capacity with the trailers as I mentioned earlier and also some of the interior cameras. Uh we did add uh access control to the transportation in Pleasants Lane and we also um added cameras to our buses. So, every bus now is equipped with three interior cameras. Not just a dash camera, but three interior cameras. As prior to uh
052some instance that we had, uh some of the buses didn't have cameras looking at the uh the steps. Some did, some didn't. We made sure we outfitted every single uh bus with at least three interior cameras. We're also piling a new vape program. It's at Pitman. And this program is vape is not just vape detection, but it detects gunshots. It detects aggression. It detects uh key key words and also can detect cell phone use. Each of these efforts contributes to a stronger, smarter and more responsive security ecosystem. Next slide please. So where we were security was kind of managed a little bit with uh both we had like a hybrid type management with the principles um and evaluations were done by principles uh and our funding was through the maintenance department. Thank you, Darl. Uh,
053today what we're trying to do is streamline that and we want to have it support a dedicated budget and the reports directly to the office of security emergency management. That the dedicated budget will help us standardize training and asthma training, uniform operating procedures through a a handbook, improve oversight and accountability, and it's a major step towards a district-wide integrated model of school security. We will have uh the um lead officers will have a weekly meeting with the principles to make sure that our officers are doing what they're supposed to be doing. I will also have monthly meetings with the principles to make sure the officers are doing what they're supposed to be doing and we will correct and discipline any infractions immediately. Next slide, please. Some of the officer training that we've done. I'm going
054to save the the first one on the left. That's the restraint. I'm sorry. So, we're going to go ahead and talk about restraint and seclusion. Uh, we've done that twice last year. Once was the hands-on and once was through the um vector training that every officer had to take. Uh, every officer is CPR, first aid, and AED certified. We went through that training last year. We did deescalation and crisis response protocols. We did civilian response to active shooter events, which is called CRACE. Uh, that was by Department of Criminal Justice for us. and CA and we did casualty care which was stop the bleed program a part of stop the bleed program. Now the school board encourages the use of positive behavioral interventions and supports to reduce and to prevent the need for use of
055physical restraint seclusion. So what we did was we had a traumainformed youth mental health first aid class was an all day class. Every officer was certified and how it was used if you mind would click on the video real quick. It's a short video. Can you go back click? Thank you. Without the training, I will have a guy that maybe just got into a cuss out with the teacher and I approach it at the same level that the teacher is on, which is get out my class, blasé blah. Normally, that would make things worse. So with the training, I'm able to say, "Hey, it's my job to not attach myself emotionally to the situation and just deescalate. I approach the situation like, "What's going on, sir?" And I get the deescalation almost immediately just off
056the training alone. Um, I'm able to check my own temperature before, you know, approaching the situation. Whereas uh typically if you don't have a training, you would just react and then hope that you didn't overdo it or hope that uh you did it the right way. Hope that there's going to be blowback for being too aggressive or you know not being able to assess a situation fully before just diving straight in. So some of these details play back in your head as you get called to a situation. So the training is definitely helpful because you'll get a a light bulb in your head like, "Okay, I'm not going to run in here hot because that's only going to make things worse." There's also Drayon Scott signed here to PHS. So looking forward to next year,
057uh the contracting employees and also the part-time employees are coming in starting Monday. uh instead of having to bring them in and pay them extra uh because usually their contracts start a day of school. Um so now they're actually coming in a week before so we can line up training. So the training we have lined up is again uh restraint and seclusion is requirement annually. Revive training is an opioid overdose response certification course that will be brought bringing in a certification stop the bleed trauma intervention legal and policy updates will be provided. enhanced customer service and deescalation techniques and threat evaluations. And we'll launch a comprehensive officer handbook to guide our policies and procedures. Next slide, please. So, we've adopted a quarterly framework to better track our goals, monitor progress, and respond to emergencies uh
058or emerging needs. Each quarter al focus on specific set and deliverables including compliance drills, audits, officer and staff training, budgeting, external evaluations, audits, assessments and crisis management plans. This model brings structure, accountability and transparency to our annual cycle of operations. Next slide please. So, we also posted some um key questions, some frequently asked questions such as uh what are security protocols, how families feel confident or safety measures we want to answer, what exactly does school resource officer do, what happens if a student makes a threat, credible or not, and how do we train staff and respond to emergencies? Then if you click on the link at the bottom, if you don't mind for a second, if it opens, I guess it doesn't open. Can you scroll down, please? Thank you. So, it's a web page
059that we have that also has resources, bullying and event prevention information, and those and some frequently asked questions as well. I'd bring your attention real quick to the SSO award program. Uh this is strictly a something that that we developed u so that officers or people staff members can award officers by providing them with if they meet the goals and doing what they're supposed to be doing and they can give them for lack of a better term data boy and I give a dimmin deminimous award to them upon that receiving that. Next slide. Thank you for going to that website. So, so at this time, thank you and I'm happy to answer any questions and provide any clarifications for you. Thank you. >> Thank you, Mr. Rona. Any questions from board members? Mr. Miles? >>
060Yes. Um, you talked about a lot of training. Um, last year we didn't have lead officers. Correct. This year we have them. >> We had a lead off. We had one lead officer yet last year is officer Hogan. She is our lead officer. Right now she's the only lead officer. >> Okay. And um um so Okay. So, how many lead officers we going to have this year? >> I'm requesting one additional. >> Okay. Okay. And where where is that one going to be? >> Here at the high school. >> You're at the high school. Yes sir. Okay. So Hogan going to be at the middle school. >> Middle schools. Yes, sir. >> Okay. All right. Now, who's um who's going to train the lead officers? You >> we will continue. We'll do the train. All
061lead officers have to also be uh school security resource or school security officers and they have to go through a mandated training by DCJS. I've already reached out to other jurisdictions who will provide that training for us >> because right now the only training that uh I know that we go to is the one that we go to in the Tidewater area in in in Hampton and that's just like a a a conference. >> Yes or no? I I I've reached out to uh Department of Criminal Justice Services. Uh I have reached out to other jurisdictions and they have provided training for us. We have utilized uh another another organization to send officers to for their certification, school resource, school security officer certification. Uh I've already reached out to other another jurisdiction who's coming in
062to help us out with some legal updates. Uh the restraint training is done by handle with care. So I do reach out to make sure that we uh bring other instructors in that are certified instructors to come in and teach. Uh we also included a Mant training the year prior to last year when I first got here and that was a paid training that we brought somebody in uh to do. Uh so and as well as ACES from DCGS. So those things are brought in by I I reach out to our partners and they come in and go ahead and provide training for us such as the trace training uh the revive training that we're going to have to stop the bleed training. Uh those all trainings are being brought in by other uh agencies
063uh in partnership with us. So uh are you responsible for the documentation and the personnel um uh docu um um records for the people that had been trained and what they've been trained on? >> Yes sir. We have these we maintain records. Yes sir. >> Maintain these records. Yes sir. >> Okay. The other thing is the one of the biggest complaints I get from security is the handsoff approach we take when it comes to what comes through that door. The best way to make sure this school is safe is to make sure it doesn't come through the door. So the things like the cell phones, the book bags, that's that's that's not clear, the um and and the the the the the hats, the things they not supposed to have on, all of that stuff
064is supposed to be stopped at the door. So So if you let them in, what we doing? We let we sending a mix a mixed message saying that, okay, you pass security, you're okay. And then when the teacher or the principal or the assistant principal or someone in the hallway says something to them, they say, hey, they already checked me. I'm good. But they're not good because we let them through the front door at the beginning of the day. Our problems start at the front door at the beginning of the day. So the thing is is that and we create problems for our teachers and our staff because we let them through the front door that way. So if they don't have a clear book bag, that book bag shouldn't go no further than that
065front door. If they have on something they not supposed to have on, they should be seated and wait till the principal get them straight at that front door. If they come in here with something they not supposed to have, they supposed to be stopped at that front door. All of that, all our problems starts at the front door. Another thing, we get complaints from the kids because our security officers are not making rounds. They're not peeping in classrooms. They in the hallways on their cell phones. And you say, "We got a lead officer." And we need to supervise to make sure that the security is supervising themselves to make sure they doing what they supposed to do. Because if we're not making rounds, if we're not making that our presence felt, we and we getting
066complaints from the kids about security. And I'm not talking about this all year long, but it starts at the front door. And the thing is is that everything you presented sounds great and but it's if it's not being implemented it's horrible. So the thing is is that we need it implemented at the front door because if I'm sitting up in my classroom teaching and this child got a cell phone that should have been taken care of at the front door. And see it's happening every day all day long. So all these rules and regulations you're responsible for at that front door. So if you don't let it in the school, we won't have a problem with it. Now the reason why I'm so I'm an expert in this area. I did it for years. And
067I'm telling you, all the training in the world doesn't mean a thing if we're not doing it in the school. And it starts at that front door when they get off that bus. Another thing never been addressed all year long, complaints from the bus drivers with security. What are we going to do with that? When they have a problem on on the bus and they get to that school, they they report that problem, it should be taken care of that that at that moment. They should not be allowed to go in that school. If they report that kid, they should get that kid when they get off the bus. that bus should be held until that um until everyone addressed the problem that was on that bus coming to that school. It shouldn't it shouldn't
068go in the school. So all we doing is just letting it go and we're not addressing it. The key the main thing I'm saying is we have these rules, we had the guidelines, we have people in place. Do your job effectively. Take it seriously. Safety is number one. Everyone in that school want to feel safe. Everyone want in in that school want to feel like they got that support. And everyone in that school want to feel like all these security officers that we have here is doing their job and looking and walking around monitoring the situation even when the kids are in class. I come here and see people on their cell phone. I go to the convenience store see security security security officer buying lottery tickets for tell telling me they're on their lunch
069break. No one should leave here during the day if they secured it. >> Mr. Ms. can you wrap it up so we can get others to ask questions also. >> Okay. So you say you got the documentation when you do the training especially the restraint and some of the other things. Please please email include me in that email cuz I would like to sit and observe. >> Yes sir. >> Mr. miles can't do that >> in training. >> You You cannot have them to send you an email. You're one board member. >> Well, send us an email. All of us >> board has to agree on that. I don't know what >> because I like to sit in on any training. >> Thank you, Mr. Miles. And I appreciate your thoughts. Can I please, Mr.
070Pritchard, I want to address Mr. Miles directly because I know that um Mr. Blank is a part of my team. And so I I want to if you all could just please if you can please direct your questions directly to me, I can make sure that my staff does what they need to do. And so again, a lot of these things in this presentation, we're trying to try some new things. And a lot of this is I think there is some misunderstanding about the role of the security officers, who they directly reported to and what that process is. So, we are in the process of trying to clean up and also trying to reshape this process. I'm going to make sure that my team as superintendent that they're going to do what they need to
071do and I'm going to address those directly. So, anything related to my staff, if you all can just address, you could just address it to me. I'll make sure I work with my chiefs, my assistant superintendent, and we'll work with Mr. Rona and team around what their roles and their jobs are because we're going to hold people accountable. And we're trying this year to put some things in place. And you're absolutely right, things happen at the door, but as we know, kids don't always do what they're supposed to do just because they're supposed to do it. That's the same as adults. And so, I'm going to take all the information and I'm going to work with the team. But anything related to their roles and their jobs, if you would just directly direct it to
072me, I'll work with my team. Mr. Martinez is supervises security, and there are things we know we have to work on, and Mr. Martinez is taking notes. Is that right, Mr. Martinez? And so I just want to make sure that we start the year off that we are going to address these things and all of those pieces. Anything that needs to be sent can be sent directly to me u Mr. Martinez. Um and then any information that I need to share I'll be happy to share. Um but he doesn't um get he doesn't submit it directly to the board members. He'll submit it to me as a superintendent and to his um supervisor. And so I just want to make sure that as we're having this conversation this evening that we are having a conversation
073where we are trying to work on these things and of course having a um your perspective on what we're doing and what things we need to improve on. We absolutely take that but I just want to make sure that while my staff is standing up here that we communicate the right things in the right way so that we can move forward and get these things taken care of in a way that we can. So if you could please do that that would be great. One thing, does all the schools have a best best of you? Because the last time I went to Blandford, they did not have one. >> Um, so you can please address that. Um, >> one of the challenges for Blandford and um, Wana Hill is the just the way it's designed
074because you have the cafeteria right there in Blandford. So we would take we'd have to look at um that kind of design of how the office is because the office is across the way. The idea of the vestibule is when somebody walks in when they buzz somebody in that door. They have to go into the office. It's a little difficult on Bford because of the way it's just set up in doors. There's no way to funnel them directly into the office. So it's something we'd have to consider and look at and it may wind up being a larger undertaking. I wanted to get these other vests done as fast as possible. Thank you. >> Any questions from other board members? Mr. Lundy. >> Um, good job. There there were a number of uh new programs
075that came out that were at the uh convention uh at Hampton. And it was very nice, especially >> some of the uh challenges that they used as far as keeping a breast of where people are uh having those Did you see those lockets that they put around? >> Yes, sir. >> Right. That and and that was good. And within our buildings, we have a lot of holes in our buildings, but you're able to use that system now that can can alert you. You know the name of it. >> Okay. And you and and and you you you it alerts you immediately and you know exactly where everybody is, where the weapon is, everything. It's it's really good. And we had uh uh another thing that was pretty good I thought was not having large walkie-talkies.
076And we had small uh transmitters. We didn't have those large transmitters there. They were small. They were about like this, but they were phones, but they were real good. Unnoticeable everything. >> Yes, sir. >> So, those were some good things that were that were done there. >> Yes, sir. Thank you. >> Thank you, Mr. Lundy. Can I ask the question? Is it Centennial? >> That's it. >> That's the company um that reached out to us that we're going to be setting up a meeting with Centennes. Yeah, they reached out. They just sent an email. I think Dr. Gay got the email and so we're going to be meeting with them because they do have the apparatus that you can wear around your neck and it allows, you know, I think teachers to be able to
077press it when there's an emergency. There's some other things we learned about. So, yes. So, they reached out to us and said, "We're setting up um conversations." Dr. Gabe, Mr. um Martinez and we'll have you Mr. Rona but that is on our get we're getting that set up. So they reached out but that is something that we can consider as a part of our uh emergency management plan along with all the other feedback. >> Yes ma'am. Thank you. >> I have a question for Mr. Rona and it's probably it falls under um Mr. Martinez and I see your VDOE requirements and reporting. Do you know when will the crisis manual be available? because usually we have it available before school starts. It's a manual manual that is required every year and the board have to
078approve it. >> Yeah. Yes sir. Uh so actually in the Mr. Martinez's next presentation there's a slide about um where we are with the crisis in the division crisis emergency management response plans. So I can I can address that now if you want sir. I can wait till >> if it's in here I'm fine. >> Okay sir. Thank you. Okay. >> Right. It comes back to the board for approval. Any other questions from board members? >> Thank you, Mr. Rona. >> Thank you. >> We'll move next to 4 D. >> Thank you board chief pitch and school board members. We will have our next presentation of this afternoon or getting to the evening. We will have our HR schoolbased vacancy update. As you'll remember, we came at the last board meeting for an overall vacancy
079report. And so now we will have Dr. Shemica Long Lane, our um assistant superintendent of um human resources who will come to provide a day one um of school vacancy report specifically for our schoolbased employees. So again, this will only be based upon our individual schools and where we are with our current vacancies at this time and any progress that we've made since the last time we saw you at the last board meeting. Dr. Lane, thank you. >> Thank you. Good evening, Board Chair Pritchette, Vice Chair Pierce, Superintendent Brown, board members, colleagues, and community. Tonight, I will provide a vacancy update as we prepare for the opening of schools for the 2025 2026 academic year. Next slide, please. As we review our current vacancies, our progress with university instructors, and then we will provide an
080opportunity for questions uh at the end. Next slide, please. Uh as we look at our information here, this is a similar snapshot to what we showed at our last meeting, but what we did this time is we made sure that we individualized uh the schools across. And so you can see a total. So here you will see a total at our early childhood and elementary school vacancies for our core classrooms totaling 18. Next slide, please. And then in our instructional support roles, you'll see we have a total of 19 vacancies. What we're adding this time is we're going to be doing a breakdown of each school to show the percentages of classroom filled versus classrooms that are vacant. Next slide, please. Dr. Lane, sorry to interrupt you. Could you go back to the very first
081slide? >> Yes, ma'am. >> Um, thank you so much. I know you are helping us out with time, but if you go back to the first slide right here that talks about our school bases, if you could take the board through individual grade levels by school, just so they understand where we are and then when we get to the next slide, I know you have a total of teachers and the board will be able to know so what percentage by school are there vacancies. So, if we could start here and walk the board through, I'd really appreciate it. School by school with the grade level so they'll know where their vacancies as of today before school starts. Okay. Sure. So, at Cool Spring Elementary School, we have two vacancies in kindergarten, one in first grade,
082one in second grade, none in third and fourth grade, and two in fifth grade for a total of six vacancies. At Lake Elementary School, we have two in kindergarten, none in first grade, second grade, excuse me, second grade, third grade, one in fourth grade, and one in fifth grade for a total of four. At Pleasant Lane Elementary School, we don't have any vacancies in our core grade level courses. At Walnut Hill Elementary School, we have one in kindergarten, one in first grade, none in second grade, one in third grade, none in fourth and fifth grade for a total of three. And then at Westview Early Childhood Education Center, we have a total of five in our Virginia Preschool initiative, uh, which is VPI, and our Head Start classrooms for a total of 18. Uh, the
083note at the bottom indicates that university instructors, which I'll talk about at the end, is going to help us to recruit for six of those Vegases at our elementary schools. Next slide, please. As we look at our instructional support areas at Cool Spring Elementary, we had none in special education, English as a second language, um three which includes the library and two encore classes which are art and music, one instructional assistant, uh no nurses, one school counselor for a total of five. Uh at Lakema Elementary School, we have three special education vacancies, none in English as a second language, one uh Encore, two instructional assistants, no nurses or school counselors for a total of five. At Pleasant Lane Elementary School, we don't have any vacancies in special education. We have two English as a second
084language teacher. Uh, no library or encore vacancies, one instructional assistant, two nurses, which includes a sped nurse and a traditional LPN or RN. Uh, no school counselors for a total of five. At Walnut Hill, we have one special education vacancy, one instructional assistant vacancy for a total of two, none in the other areas. And at West View, we have two instructional assistant vacancies totaling two. And that brings us to 19. Um the note at the bottom was the direction that we were going but again we'll talk about university instructors uh at the end of the presentation. Next slide please. >> And again Dr. Dr. Lane these are only support staff. First one was teachers. Thank you. So next we have a breakdown of each school where we looked at how many classrooms we have there
085total uh based on what our data is showing how many vacancies in those areas which were indicated on the previous slides and then we provided a breakdown by percentage for each site. So, as we look at cool spring after hearing the individual vacancies, as of the timing of this report, we had 71.9% of our classrooms filled and 28.1% of our classrooms vacant. Next slide, please. At Lake Elementary School, you see we have 32 classrooms. Again, the data gives a breakdown of how many classrooms we have and those that are vacant. This is a total of 78.1% of our classrooms filled and 21.9% of our classrooms vacant. Next slide, please. At Pleasant Lane Elementary School, we have 94.6% of our classroom filled and 5.4% of our classrooms vacant. Again, aligning with the vacancy shown previously on
086the snapshot. >> And that includes our our um any special classes. So, English as a second language, which is not your typical regular classroom because I know at Pleasant's Lane on the previous slide, they didn't have any regular classroom vacancies. But at Pleasant's Lane, we have two English as a second language vacancy, which goes into that number. Is that correct? >> Yes, ma'am. >> But if you saw this with just classrooms, regular classrooms, they would be at 100% 100% field. Is that correct? >> Yes, ma'am. >> Got it. Just want to clarify. Next slide, please. At Walnut Hill Elementary School, we have 38 classrooms. Again, these vacancies align with the information seen on the snapshot. That brings us to a total of 86.8% of our classrooms filled and 13.2% of our classrooms vacant. Next slide,
087please. Lastly, at West View, again, our vacancies there out of the 24 classrooms align with our snapshot and we have a total of 79.2% 2% of our classrooms filled and 20.8% of the classrooms vacant. Next, we will review our middle school for both campuses. Next slide, please. Dela, before you start that, I just want to have a quick question. So, tonight we had a personnel agenda and so some of these have not been included because they have not been approved. Is that correct? >> That's correct. So, these numbers that we showed you tonight for teachers or other support areas will be will these numbers will change once I update her on the board's approval of the personnel agenda. At Blandford Academy at Verda Johns, we have one math vacancy, none in science, one in history,
088one in English, no encore vacancies for a total of three. But our encore teachers for Bford Academy are those that are assigned to Vernon John's as well. And our math classrooms, we have two vacancies, three in science, zero in history, English, and two encore classes, which are Spanish. And those positions will be filled by our university instructors. Uh this gives us a total of 10 for both campuses, >> but seven of those will be filled by university instructors. Is that correct? >> Yes, ma'am. >> Okay, gotcha. So if there was a field then Vernon Johns will not have 10 vacancies. They will have three left. Is that correct? >> Yes ma'am. Okay. Next slide please. Here we break down our instructional support areas at Blandford Academy. We have one special education vacancy, one English as
089a second language vacancy, none in our library instructional assistant positions, nurses or uh no school counselors. And that gives us a total of two vacancies at uh Vernon John seventh and eighth grade campuses. There are no vacancies in special education, English as a second language, the library, but we do have an instructional assistant vacancy. Uh no nurses, one school counselor, and that brings us to a total of two. That's four vacancies total. And then that one special education vacancy at Blandford will be filled by one of our university instructor positions. Next slide, please. This mirrors what we did for our elementary schools as we looked at the number of classrooms at Blandford Academy totaling 17. And then our percentages include 58.8% of our classrooms being filled and 41.2% of our classrooms being vacant. Next slide,
090please. At Vernon John's, same concept. We have 39 classrooms for a total of 76.9% that are filled and 23.1% of our classrooms that are vacant. Next slide, please. Lastly, we will review our high school and alternative programs. In our core areas and encore classes, we have a total of nine positions, which includes two in math, one in science, zero in history and English, one encore class, which is a CTE course for a total of four. And at Pitman Academy, we have a vacancy in each of our core areas and our one encore class there for a total of five, giving us nine vacancies in our core areas. in Encore. Next slide, please. >> But in Petersburg High School, we have four regular core classes. We only have four vacancies. Is that correct? >> Yes. In
091our instructional support areas at Petersburg High School, we do not have any special education, English as a second language vacancies, no instructional assistants, nurses, or school counselor vacancies, but we do uh need two librarians at Petersburg High School. and that is in uh alignment with our SOQ standards of quality. At Pitman Academy, we do not have any vacancies in these areas. This brings us to a total of two. Next slide, please. As we look at the percentages at Petersburg High School, we have 94.7% of our classrooms filled and 5.3% of our classrooms vacant out of the 75 classrooms there at Petersburg High School. Next slide, please. And at Pitman Academy, we have 28.6% of our classrooms filled and 71.4% of them vacant. Again, this aligns with the snapshot showing we do not have our core
092classroom or our encore classroom field at Pitman Academy. Next slide, please. Divisionwide, we have about 78% of our classrooms filled. We're thankful for our partnerships with VCU, VSU, JMU, and Breitpoint who support our grow our grow your own initiatives. U we also would like to thank our principles and assistant principles who have worked very hard to help to fill these vacancies and the human resources team that is working to help facilitate these processes. Um, with the work combined, this has allowed us to fill our classrooms with fully licensed, provisionally licensed, and resident teachers to help us reach this 78 percentage of our classrooms being filled as we prepare for the new year. Next slide, please. Uh, we are still hiring for the 2025 2026 school year, including the following administrative I'm sorry, school total schoolbased
093vacancies and administrative vacancies. So, as we look at the snapshots and the percentages across the board, we're totaling 37 in our early childhood and elementary school, 14 at our middle school, both campuses, and 11 in our high school, which also includes Pitman Academy. We do have four open school-based administrative vacancies, bringing us to a total of 66. Again, keeping in mind that human resources numbers change as individuals are approved and hired and as individuals leave the division. Next slide, please. This is just a breakdown of the four school-based administrative vacancies that we have currently available. Next slide, please. Next, I'll talk about our partnership with university instructors. As has been indicated through the snapshots, we are looking to hire six elementary teachers for our elementary schools, seven for our middle school/ Vernon Johns Blandford Academy,
094but we have had a change in our special education uh section. So, at this point, we will only be moving forward with the 13. And I'll turn it over to uh Miss Brown if there's anything you want to add to elaborate on that. >> Thank you so much, um Dr. Lane. Um yes, so of course we know we will be welcoming um at our next board meeting. We'll be congratulating again um Dr. Tory Manson who is the new assistant superintendent of student services for Petersburg City Public Schools. Now that he's on board and been here about two and a half weeks maybe at this moment he's had a chance to step back in that role and take a look at um the original agreement with um moving forward with um securing two special education teachers
095through university instructors. The board approved us to move forward but Dr. Manson at this moment has made the recommendation that we um move a different direction because we want to make sure that as we look at using funding from the federal our federal funding related to IDEIDA that we make sure that we don't do not supplant and that we figure out additional ways to be able to support because anyone that we secure for special education has to be able to help provide IDEIDA support with student um IEPs and implementation. And so um Dr. Dr. Manson and team will be moving in a different direction. So, we wanted to notify the board this evening that we will not move forward with those two positions for special education. Um Dr. Manson and team will be working to
096fill those positions through a different avenue. So, wanted to update you. So, we wanted to do that um this evening. And so, Dr. Manson of course will be here at the next meeting. Um but we will have if there are any questions, he can take those questions. We'll take those questions back and we'll be ready to answer them at the next meeting. but they're working to fill those two positions. Um because it's a little bit easier to try to find other classroom teachers than it is special education and we have to make sure that um we're using the um the funding that we're using will align with what we need them to be able to do once hired. Thank you. Uh next slide, please. Um, as we prepare to ask answer any questions that you
097have, we do want to let you know that we're continuing to hire for the 2025 2026 academic year. As well as our partnership with university instructors, we're also continuing our partnership with Proximity Learning. We're continuing to go out and recruit and we will be at the career fair held here on Saturday morning for the community day from 9 to 11:00. So, if there's anyone who's interested in an opportunity to transform with us, please go to our website and apply. And we look forward to seeing you on Saturday as we continue to recruit for the 2025 2026 academic year. Next slide, please. Um, thank you again. At this time, I'll entertain any questions. >> Thank you, Dr. Wayne. Mr. Any questions? M. Do you agree? >> Um, no, please. >> Okay. Any questions to my right?
098Mr. Miles, any questions? Yeah. Um the nurses, are we going to be able to get those two nurses for Pleasant Lane and or did they retire? You know, because I saw both of them vacant. So, are we going to be able to fill those two positions before school start? >> We have one that we are working on and so based on when our next time for approval is, the special education nurse aid is a little bit more difficult to fill because that work is different. But we are working on that nurse vacancy. >> Okay. Um Mr. Martinez probably could answer this better because so many time we start our C school year off without a sports trainer and we and it's hard it's really hard when we don't have a trainer out there a certified
099train do we have a trainer already hired this year >> Mr. Martinez you can answer we just talked about that today >> thank you Mr. Brown >> we did okay so we're on our way to getting one if we don't have one right >> so we have Mr. this you can we can tag team and so we have an agreement with Bon Sakuras. Okay. >> Um with the for trainer we are in the process um coach Lawson am I getting it right? So I think as I understand it that we have the trainer process the trainer agreement with boss Kors and we're working on this school year but right now we have a trainer out there every single day with our kids. Is that correct? >> Okay. Okay. Very, very good. >> You can come
100to the mic so everyone can hear in the community um about that. So, we just talked about that earlier today. >> I hear you. That's what I >> Sorry about that. Uh good evening to everyone. Uh yes, we we still have the same trainer from last year. Um Patrick Mallerie, I think. Yeah. Uh is his name. Um but he's assigned to the high school. He's been here uh part-time throughout the summer uh for some of our conditioning days, but now that we've officially started practice, uh he's been there every day, um since the pass went on. Um and he's through bond secures. Uh we have everything in the works. We're just waiting for their legal team to send basically the same contract >> to us for this school year. >> Okay. Very good. Very good.
101Uh that was an excellent presentation, Miss Lane. Uh one other question. Uh office personnel. Are we gonna be uh because I know some of the complaints I get from the public is when they come and go into the office if we don't have enough personnel in there to take care of that. Are are we fully staffed with office personnel for the schools? >> We had one um vacancy that we were able to fill with a transfer over at Cool Spring to make sure that they were um intact. We have one additional position at Bford that was a part of the new budget that we'll be working on filling next. >> Thank you very much. Yes, sir. >> Thank you. I do have I have two myself. Miss Brown, you told us and Dr. Lane shared
102also that you're going to you will not be using the the two positions. So, we're not going to you're not looking at taking one up to elementary and one up to middle since we're not going to use the two for special education with university partners, university instructors. >> Oh, so university instructors. So, the original Can you hear me? So the original request for the two, you're absolutely correct, were going to be was going to be paid for out of special ed funding. It >> was coming from them. >> So it's coming out of that funding. So we can't I would love to be able to transition money from special education to general funds and add additional um teachers to the I think the 13 that you all approved. So we're not going to be able
103to do that. So that funding will still be there for Dr. Manson and team to work out, but that's that was a separate funding source. Our 13 will come from local money. So if but Dr. Greywood has assured us that as we continue to find money because we already have our priorities and our budget is set that we will if there becomes if money becomes available we will be able to add additional dollars for us to get more teachers but we had to utilize it within the constraints of our budget this year. And so yes so we did I get it right Dr. Greywood? So that's where we are. Uh but I wish that we could take the two two teachers and transfer it over but it is special ed um federal funding with IDEIDA.
104>> Thank you. Thank you. The next question this may be um Dr. Lane I'm not sure if you can answer this. This may be Mr. Brown um Mr. um Mr. um Godad Miss Brown. This one, Cool Spring, you said that there were 32 classrooms to be filled and 32 at Lakemont, but Cool Spring has about 500 some students and Lakemont do not. So, why do we have the same amount of classrooms at both schools? Can someone help me with that? The numbers are totally different. So, why are we why are we hiring the same amount of teachers at Lakemon? So, um, as you know, we've been working on our data cleansing project, um, since my arrival on campus. And so, what we did was take the positions that were already in existence, look at the
105SOQ and been monitoring it with administrators as well as with, uh, the curriculum team to see what the appropriate amount of staffing will be. And so, we're just hiring based on the information that we already had. And as we see numbers fluctuate, we'll be able to make adjustments accordingly. So, you're saying there's a possibility that that some of those teachers that will be hired at Lakemont may be going to other elementary schools. >> Uh, it is possible based on the uh staff and needs and the enrollment at the schools. >> Okay. Thank you. >> Question. >> Yeah, Mr. Lundy. I noticed last year we had uh a huge problem at Cool Spring and that seemed to have been because at Lakemont, I mean at um Pleasant Lane, there were more students getting on those buses
106coming to Cool Spring than anywhere. And the numbers were so large, you didn't know where the kids were going. The kids didn't know where they were going. the parents didn't know where they were going and that's something we might need to rectify because the numbers were really out of hand and some of those kids some of those parents did not know where they were going and it caused a lot of havoc for Miss Kelly. It really did. It was a lot of havoc for So that's something I hope we can look at also. Thank you. >> Yes, sir. Thank you, Dr. Lane. >> Thank you. >> Next, we move to 40 on 4E. >> Thank you, Dr. Lane. I know that we'll continue to update the board as we continue with that data cleansing to
107make sure um but that is the best estimate that we have at this moment. So we'll continue to update the board with any changes with reassignments of people and how many vacancies we have. Thank you. All right. So thank you. We'll move to 4E. Thank you board chair Pritchard and school board members. We will now have our final presentation of this evening and this is a robust presentation because this is about Petersburg City Public Schools presenting to the board our back to school for 2526 which will begin on August 18th for many of our transitional students pre kindergarten kindergarten 1st 6th 7th and 9th grade. Is that correct Mr. Brown? Did I get them all right? Okay. And so this is our readiness update and for everyone else in Petersburg it will be August the
10819th 2025. And so tonight, we're bringing Mr. um Jay Martinez, our assistant superintendent of operations for with his entire team to discuss our division's preparedness and readiness for the opening of school um in about a week and a half. Mr. Martinez, >> good evening, board chair Pritchette, Vice Chair Pierce, board members, Superintendent Brown, and community members. It is a pleasure to present back to school 2526 operational readiness update. Um it's a pleasure um to be able to do this together with my operational team. Uh next slide. And today's agenda, we'll go over quick overview um and I'll bring my um operational uh department heads up and they'll discuss um what's going on within their departments and then we'll end with our summer projects update and a quick Q&A. Next. Outstanding. So, our summer um it
109represents a critical preparation period for our school division. While our buildings are quieter, our operations divisions work with focus intensity to ensure readiness for the new school year. We serve as a foundation for learning, ensuring safe, welcoming, and inspiring environments from the moment students board our buses to when they enter our classrooms. This summer, our teams demonstrated remarkable resilience and collaboration. Our department heads will present brief updates on their team's summer efforts and day one readiness. Each will outline their readiness, status, and system improvements for the upcoming year. We are confident in our preparation and proud to support another successful school opening. Next slide, please. And you know, every operational department um has a superstar quarterback. And I want to introduce uh Mr. Gadet. Please come to the uh stand. As you can tell, he
110probably don't want to be here. Um um but this this young brother right here uh he's an outstanding uh pillar of this division and without him I don't know where we would be. But um actually you know what let's give Mr. Goddet a round of applause please please please. All right here we go. >> Welcome Mr. Daryl Godette to all you. All right. Good evening. Good evening, Chair Pritchard, Vice Chair Pierce, Superintendent Miss Brown, board members, and all in attendance. Um Daryl Gette, coordinator of facilities and operations for Petersburg City Public Schools. This evening, I'll be presenting the facilities portion of um this school readiness report um presentation. Sorry. Uh next slide. Who we Okay, we we here facilities and maintenance and operations. Um preparing our learning environments, our strategic summer progress process. Hold on.
111We had a couple of key bullets. Um principal partnerships being paramount. Our summer um strategy begins with the direct collaboration with each school principal to review needs, strategize solutions, and establish a clear plan for their building. They this includes prioritizing work orders, planning classroom relocations, developing comprehensive deep cleaning schedules. Next bullet is um a deliberate prioritize approach. Immediate focus. We address crunchtime schools. those schools hosting summer school and other pro other programs to support their operational needs without delay. Welcome new teachers. Classroom for new teachers are prioritized for cleaning and pre um preparation ensuring they have a early early access to set up. Uh let me set up where we at. Hold tight. Hold tight. Let me get back where I at. Gotcha. Gotcha. All right. systematic system systemic readiness. Our methodical building by building
112plan ensures every single space is addressed before the return of staff and students. Next slide. I think I better read from up top because computer's killing me. All right. A closer look. Summer readiness task. Key areas of focus. Deep cleaning and sanitiz sanit sanitization. Um, third wall and furniture wipe downs, interior and exterior landscaping, cleaning of air vents and returns, complete floor stripping, waxing for a fresh stock. Um, restocking all soap, paper towels and toiletries, system and safety checks, assessments and repair of all outstanding maintenance items. Replacement of light bulbs and damaged ceiling towels. immediate disposal of any damaged and unsafe furniture, classroom and furniture reset, um strategic furniture replacement and relocation based on principal collaboration and school needs. Um the next slide um upcoming slide is going to be what we try to do
113with the pics was give y'all a highlight of some of the work that has been done around the schools with the painting of the flag pose exterior painting and the work of the custodians and maintenance staff. Um that being said Petersburg High School um near completion their completion rate is like 75 75% of cleaning. Next slide. Vernon John's again Vernon John's had summer school this year. Um so previously we was looking at a low percentage but right about now they tracking like 80% of cleaning because what we do we pull um staff from other schools that was near completion to go and support those um schools such as Vernon Johns and Pleasant Lane. Next slide. Warner Hill they're 95% completed. Um, again, we everybody know we that's our school that's want slated to be built.
114So, we kind of we still want to, you know, show care for for that school, but not putting too much money into it, you know. Um, next slide. Bford. Um, they're 95% completed. Um, we actually once we make the move of getting some of our SBO staff back into schoolboard office that, um, those areas in that building will be taken care a couple of classrooms. Um maybe a office or two. Next slide. Pitman alternative pretty much is complete. Um had one little small area in the office area um to to clear and again that's 100% um complete. Um Westview school. Next slide. I'm sorry. Westview um 95% completed. Um next slide. Pleasant Lane. again this was one of our location that had you know summer school um what else we had there the steam program
115and I think they had the YMCA as well so again we pull people from other schools to come over and support them and that right about now they looking at about 95% completions next slide again here we tried to make sure we highlighted the painting in this interior painting that has um been going on in the two schools. So, with this being said, you see you got your flag pose. Um, again, your exterior painting and your interior painting. Um, with this school, the painting that's been put in place, um, from here on out, this is going to be our school colors in that class in those classroom. No one is to bring any painting to do any painting outside of what's already there. And it has to be cleared through operations. Um, next slide. >>
116Mr. I just want to just stop pause and go back to that to that slide again and just kind of highlight what we were able to do. If we remember that it was approved for us to paint the interior of two schools, Cool Spring Elementary School and Lakemon. And so I was there today and the schools are looking amazing. One of the things I want to highlight is that at Cool Spring and at Lakemont, what we did in every classroom is we did an accent wall, right? >> So that teachers, no one has to paint a wall. every those two schools, there's an accent wall in every single classroom. So that makes it brighter for our kids and it gives our teachers a bright wall within their classroom. And so the color is gold at
117Cool Spring, which is in alignment with their school colors. And then at Lakemont, there's a um blue, is it blue? Correct. There's a there's a blue accent wall in all of the classrooms at Lakemont. And so that's what you see is that accent wall. And so we're really excited about um some of the painting that is happening. Of course, there's still more work to be done, but you have to start somewhere. And so, of course, the next thing will be focusing on replacing all the windows at Lakemont and Cool Spring, and we're in the process of working on those specs so we can have that project started because that was a part of what was approved, but we have to bring back once we have a clear amount. So, I just want to highlight the
118the the the way the classrooms look because I was there today and um it looks really really good. So, thank you, Mr. Gedd. >> Yes, ma'am. Next slide. Lakemont. As Miss um Superintendent Brown was saying, that's our accent wall for Lakemont. And again, these the colors that we have in these buildings now, those will remain those colors from here on out. And I want to also clear when you just spoke about the windows and doors, let everybody know, we're not doing them Christmas. We're going to do them at the end of the school year. We're going to go get it speced out, bid it out, get it approved. But as soon as this door is closed, that's when we'll start that project that project. >> That's exactly right. We'll just bring it to the board
119to approve so that we're ready to roll with the funding and approval to spend the funds to replace because it was already they already the board was already aware that we were going to have to replace those. So, we'll take it then. Yeah. >> Yeah. much >> and I just want to um just add on with um Mr. Godette when he gave the percentages of completion. Um I just want um the board to understand that when it comes to operation these these two weeks the best analogy I can give is is you know um if you ever been at home during the summer as a latch key kid waiting for mama to come home or grandmama to come home. You know you got to get that place cleaned up before you get home. So, we
120at 2 weeks and we at that at that spot where we know kids are coming in and um operation is is is is going to have everything complete by that time. But, let me go ahead and uh introduce Dr. Lee um and and he's going to let us know that we're going to be ready to roll for day one. Dr. Lee is our uh director of transportation. Take it away. Thank you. Good evening everyone. Thank you, Mr. Martinez, school board chair, vice chair, superintendent Brown, members of the community. Uh we are here to talk a little bit real quickly about transportation. Uh our mission in transportation is to provide uh safe reliable student transportation to all of our students uh each and every day. Over the course of uh trying to get ready for this
121school year, all of our drivers are required to uh CDL drivers are required to have a physical completed and that has been completed. All of our vehicles have been inspected uh for uh road readiness uh from everything from changing the engine oil, checking the tires, replacing tires, interior, so forth and so on. Our routing and logistics, our uh final routes have been actually uh it says in progress. They have been completed. Uh they will be posted uh in the next couple of days. They have already been sent out to the schools. Uh we're uh finalizing our bus and van assignments to our drivers. Uh and the student data verification uh actually is finishing up hopefully tonight. Uh that includes both regular ed students and our special needs students. Uh in short, we are ready for
122the wheels on the bus to go round and round. Thank you, Dr. Lee. Next slide. And let me introduce you our director of information technology, Miss Yates. She's a little under the weather, so she'll be okay. Good evening, board chair Pritchette, Vice Chair Pierce, and Superintendent Brown. My name is Monnique Yates, director of technology, and I'm here to give a quick update on school opening for information technology. Um our IT department ensures the digital tools and infrastructure in session for modern education are reliable, accessible and secure for all users. So our readiness update states that our asset and classroom readiness complete technology inventory and audits are complete. Um we have we are in the process of assigning refreshed and image devices to staff and students. Um our core systems and data readiness for district and
123classroom um integrations. our student information systems rollover has been completed and our critical applications using clever um DDO and um other integration um rostering is in progress and all systems are on track fully operational and we're ready to provide a seamless digital experience for students and staff on the first day of school. Miss Yates, before you leave, could you please just also add to um any servers that we replaced related to um preparing for the first day of school? I know you've been working your team over the summer so you can just update the board as a part of that. What have we put in place to help um enhance and improve our system here for our infrastructure? So for our network infrastructure, we have added a new server at each building. Um we are
124in the process of implementing Office 365 for staff. Um students will stay on Google Suite. Um and we are anticipating a switch over to the entirely new system next week before students come back. We are actually testing. We've been testing for the past three days. >> Thank you. And I remember our servers were 2012. Is that correct? >> Yes, ma'am. 2012 and we are now on 2023. >> Thank you. >> Okay. Good luck. >> And next we have athletics. And again, this is a reminder this is about day one readiness. So all our department heads is is is bringing up what are they doing to to have ready for day one. Here you go. Our director of athletics, Coach Lawson. >> Good evening, board chair, vice chair, uh Mr. Pierce, uh and the rest of
125the board members of Miss Brown. Uh come to you. Uh we're getting ready for day one. Uh but we start athletics is already started. Football, uh we're in full swing now. uh as of Monday uh we actually thanked Miss Brown and board Vernon John's had 46 kids to come to the first day of practice. Uh uh and JV uh football had 42 and varsity was 36. So uh our numbers are increasing with our younger ages. Uh, we want them to continue to increase. Uh, it looks good. You know, as the title says, gearing up for a winning season, and that's what we're gearing up for with the athletic department. Uh, we've already going, our cheerleaders are going practicing. Uh, all of our fall sports will begin practice by Monday. Uh, that's including golf, volleyball, and
126cross country. So, we are we're already making moves. Uh we've done uh most have had most of the things approved and completed as far as the Virginia High School League uh certification, our coach's paperwork, and our coach's handbook. And we have Vernon John's uh handbook that was just completed. Also, um thank you to HR department for helping us to get all of our fall coaches hired. Um, so we have everybody in place for the fall season both at Verner John's and at the high school. Um, our schedules are complete. We're verifying with the officials associations to make sure we have officials uh set up for all of it and the coverages are in the progress by the principles at both schools. Uh, physicals, everyone needed a physical to get on the practice field. So, we're
127we're in good shape there. And we've had uh parent meetings with all the teams except for Verner John's cheerleaders. We will have that next week uh as we will conduct trials for Vern John's cheerleading uh after the parent meeting. The field and repairs are actually Monday sports turf came in and did their yearly uh clean. So, that's up been updated for this year. Uh, and we're doing deep cleaning uh of our weight room and locker rooms uh the end of this week going into the weekend. And we're in the progress of making sure that we have all our equipment and needs for the upcoming season. But like I said, right now we're in good shape. I would like to note uh it says Thursday, August 21st um against Armstrong. That's actually a scrimmage. That's not
128an actual game. >> Uh our first game is the 28th at home against Ken Reicho. And we do have uh three Thursday night home games this year. Uh the reason for it, we do the one before the holiday as usual. Then because of the shortage of officials, we have to select another one. That was the Chloron Heights game that we selected. Then the reason why the IC Nocom game got moved to a Thursday because our head football coach is being inducted into the Hampton University Hall of Fame on that Friday. So we moved the game up to Thursday so he could be here for the game and then go being inducted into the Hall of Fame. That's all I have. >> Thank you, Coach Lawson. All right. Um and again director of security Mr. Rona.
129>> Good evening again. Um so part of this to save their students is our highest priority. Having said that uh school and division crisis emergency plan response plans are in progress right now. It's completed is the high school Vernon Johns and also Blandford Pleasant Lane um Wana Hill and Cool Springs have all been completed. I got the information for Lakemont this afternoon. That'll be done uh tomorrow. And then Pitman and Wesley will be done before uh midweek next week, if not sooner. Also with the uh school crisis and emergency plans on the back of them, you're going to have school uh assessments as well as uh safety plans for each school. Each school is different, which is why each school will have their own plan. Although the actual responses are the same are uniform, the
130actual mitigation within the plans are different uh because the schools are different. Weapons detection systems being tested and operational. The one here has already been tested. Uh so we'll test the uh make sure the one's operational early next week at Vernon Johns and at Blandford. Access control card systems are being printed. I still get a few uh here and there. Some extra new employees that need access control. and we'll handle them as soon as they get them. Um, like I mentioned earlier in my presentation, we're going to have next week a security officer be trained trained and briefed and ready to go. Uh, so our proactive measures ensure all security protocols and systems are robust and ready for the start of school year. Thank you. And next, nutrition services. Um, I want to introduce Miss
131Tisa Martin. She's our interim nutrition director. Um, as you know, um, we have a board approved contract with Tahir and the state, um, required us to have a interim, um, school nutrition program administrator in place. So, as of right now, um, Miss Tis Martin is sitting in NSC um, by way of uh, People Inc. and she has been here and um we are um probably going to bring the uh acting director or the the um active director or excuse me the active school nutrition program administrator um probably within two or three weeks um we're going through applications right now but Mr. Start. >> Good evening, Chairman Pritchard, Vice Chair Pierce, school board members, Superintendent Brown, and all of the other community and PCP members of um just want to say thank you and thank you
132for that amazing welcome, Mr. Martinez. Um I'm not going to take much of your time. Um currently we are uh certified uh with VDOE uh our serve safe. I'm a serve safe trainer and proctor. I'm uh able to administer all the serve safe certifications that need to be done and we will be doing that upon the arrival of our new staff. We've uh hired in and filled some vacancies and so we should be fully staffed and ready to go uh as soon as school is open. As far as the handbooks and the hassips, I've updated all of those to make sure that they are available uh for our staff upon arrival on first day. Um we are displaying the inspection permits. We all we always had them. They've always been uh with us, but we're
133physically putting them in the locations tomorrow. Um just so that's one less thing for any of our staff to have to do. Um menus have been approved thanks to Tahare. Um they have been approved um and accepted. Our point of sales um is we're working on our point of sales. We're crossing it back over from our summer program and putting it back into Mosaic for the school year. Um staffing assignments, like I said, I completed that already. And as far as deep cleaning, sanitization, and uh equipment checks, we've already been through everything throughout the summer. We've been picking up anything, any slack, things that might have fallen by the wayside beforehand, and we've made sure that we've prepared ourselves this year to be a success. Um, we definitely have in mind that we're fueling our
134students for success. And if we don't have that in mind, then the a lot of things may fall at the wayside. So that is one of the main priorities that myself and Tahare are utilizing in contemp. Um so all preparations are on schedule to asssure that our cafeterias are ready to welcome our students and nutritional meals for the first day of school. Um thank you so much and y'all have a great evening. >> Thank you. So before you leave, could you tell everyone a little bit about you? Um and then I see the Taher team right is in the back and I want to make sure it's pronounced Taher. Is that right? >> Taher. Yes. I want to make sure. So, if you could just tell everyone a little bit about you um as you
135are our interim um program administrator for our nutrition program here in Petersburg City Public Schools. Yes. Um first I want to say thank you for this opportunity. It is a beautiful opportunity. I I definitely take it seriously. Um I've been in the industry for over 20 years. I've haven't been in K through 12. I've been blessed to be able to establish myself in this. Um I've been all over the country, all over the world with culinary. Um I've been a restaurant consultant for the last six years. So, I tend to have a thing about coming in and picking up pieces that need to be fixed and making sure that they become successful after I touch them. Um, I look forward to this school year. I've heard some of the things that have happened um in
136the past uh with the acceptance of, you know, students and parents not really enjoying their time here. And I definitely take that in consideration because I understand that my clients are my first priority and our clients are the children. And so, I've definitely put that in the forefront of my mind. Um, I would uh uh greatly appreciate accepting the uh position permanently to be the dire uh well food service administrator for our district. Excuse me. I know you like titles. Um I would love to accept that opportunity um in the near future and I definitely look forward to working with you for the rest of the school year. Um I'm willing to accept any questions if you have them. Thank you very much. Thank you so much. I appreciate it. Uh I know you have
137a little bit more in your background, but we'll have time to tell the board. um later, but thank you. I know you have um higher education experience, so thank you. Um >> absolutely. And it is my pleasure. Um this has been a collaboration um that and a partnership that's going to be amazing. I would like to introduce Mr. Rodell Indeloo and he will introduce um Taher. Good evening everyone. Good evening. Um, it's always great to have this opportunity to be before you, board chair, Miss Brown, the rest of the board. Uh, my name is Rodell Endaloo. I'm district manager for Taher Food Service Management Company. I've also been um the the lead contact throughout the whole entire consultant um time that from um November on. And I'm going to tell you that Petersburg became very
138personal to me and I fell in love with the culture. I fell in love with the with the vision that this district is headed. I fell in love with everything um in and all all around. and I look forward to coming here and um hence the reason that when we were uh had an opportunity to bid on the program, we did everything we can to aggressively try to win your business. In addition, when we won the program, we wanted to be um I'll be honest with you, I was extremely selective on the staff that I brought to the school district. I went through dozens and dozens of applications for chefs and I prioritized their education, passion, and experience. In addition, I wanted to ensure that each chef would fit the culture here at Petersburg as
139well as follow the visions and goals of the board and superintendent. Um I wanted it to be meaningful um to to each and every student that the the people that will be around them will have um this the same kind of goals and experience that they would have in their interaction. But beyond qualifications, I was al also looking for individuals who would truly fit the culture. Chefs would align with the vision and goals of our school board and our superintendent who could connect our with our students and staff on a deeper level. Today, I'm proud to present one of our chefs that we selected for for Petersburg, Chef Simona Locashio. She is a graduate of liquor dawn blue and a proud mother of of three including a set of twins. Her passion for school nutrition
140is deeply rooted in her upbringing in the Bronx, New York, and is strengthened by her nurturing heart as a mother. She brings not just skill but heart to everything she does. Chef Simon is also currently pursuing further education in nutrition, a testament to her dedication to growth and excellence. In her in her um I'm you're you're going to love this dish. She in her mystery basket survey, we just get you know what we do here just to make sure you know is we it's like what you have in a cupboard and make me something. And she made this. It's her take on hamburger helper. It was like ground beef noodles with sauce and it looked simple, but it tasted so good. I said, "The kids at Petersburg are going to love this." So, I cannot
141wait to institute that particular dish. Um, one of the most favorite dishes in Petersburg for the elementary kids were the was the cheeseburger fries. Was it >> the cheeseburger fries? And so I can't wait. And then also uh thank you to uh to Miss Martin who found out that um we are able to get ground beef as a commodity. So it'll draw down from your from your um allocation. So that works really really good for us. And so we're we're really excited for that. So please welcome Chef Simone Lashio. Um, next I'm pleased to introduce Chef Alyssa, a graduate of Johnson and Wales University. She has built a reputation as a brilliant and innovative catering chef. Her creativity, flare, and fresh ideas will be an exciting addition to the team. She'll be bringing her talents
142to the culinary programs at Vernon John's, Blandford, and Lakemont, where we are eager to see her elevate the dining experience for our students. So, she is extremely talented. She is extremely um innovative. Um she is um very passionate about what she does and I cannot wait for her for the kids at at Vernon John and BL. By the way, Blandford, I love the kids at Blandford. Every time they see a chef, they get excited like toys are us. So I cannot wait till she see till she sees how the kids receive her. I'm very very excited for that. Um, in addition, we're ready and prepared. We've got menus already set. We've got support already coming in. Myself, um, Joe, um, Ciskick, which is our transition coordinator, will be here on site all through until September
143being a support. Same as the Chef Danny Sigur. And also as an added bonus, the head of nutrition and um culinary for um for Taher will also be on site for the next 3 weeks will open to support the team here in Petersburg. This is the commitment and devotion that Bruce Taher, the owner of our company, along with the rest of the the executive team from Sean, Trent, Jerry, Jason is so committed to Petersburg. there is weekly updates to make sure everything is going right and and I just want to say thank you so much for this opportunity and we cannot wait to get started. This is Chef Danny. He's also been here with me. So, if you've ever seen the lines out this door, it's because Chef Danny was in here. and Chef Danny
144will be opening this this particular building um next week or in two weeks. So, he'll be here throughout the the opening. He did a Mediterranean dish. Kids was all hugging us and everything. I don't know if that was appropriate, but we took it anyway. We enjoyed the love. So, so if anybody has any questions, I'd be happy to answer. >> So, I just want to say thank you. All right, thank you. Next slide. All righty. And we're going to close this out real quick with an update about our summer projects overview. Uh Mr. Gette, he can come up and help out real quick, but I can just give you a real quick overview since this um presentation is getting kind of lengthy, but as of right now, you can see our PHS bathrooms. Um they're
145almost completely done. Um our security vestibules was already reported on when you were coming in. You can see our uh Pittsburgh High School marquee was installed. Um we've already completed our divisionwide power washing and interior exterior painting. Um our IT um spoke about our technology and infrastructure upgrades and our schoolboard office upgrades is almost complete and um the school board and community is going to be very very proud. um our our team and our operational team. This was an opportunity for us to not only praise our operational staff, but to have the department heads here in in showface because um it's a lot of things that you don't see that's going on in the back end. Um you're not going to see um operations here on Fridays and Saturdays. Um Sunday morning at 2:00 in
146the morning answering an alarm. Um, uh, Wi-Fi is down, freezer's down. Folks don't necessarily see that or or or hear that or feel that, but operations is here. We're working hard. Um, and we're we do it for the kids. We do it for the children. We love Petersburg. And um, next slide. And thank you very much. And we'll open up for questions. >> Mr. M. I have um a couple of points. One of them uh we talked earlier about work orders and we're going to come up with a process where that we make sure that the work orders uh uh get in because right now some of the work work sometime people complain about something not being done but then we go back and look and we can't find a work order. So to we
147don't want to make and you you know I know you said you were going to come up with some type of process to make sure that they're not just passing it on to the wrong person that it's getting to the right person and because um um I I I know from working closely with operations that some of these things that people complaining about we don't get we're not getting. So, we need to make sure when they put in a work order that we have a process that it make sure it goes to the right person or go the right person get gets it. >> So, I know you're familiar with that. So, have we >> Absolutely. So, yes. So, um we looked at the current work order system and you're absolutely correct. Um we'll be
148bringing our new process to the operational advisory committee. Okay. >> And we're going to present that and I believe you'll be very happy with with with our solution. >> Okay. Um second thing um but we we get a lot of complaints from bus drivers about safety okay on the bus and and I know that um when you're responsible for 50ome people 60 people kids on the bus is very important. So um and I know that some some of the problems that they dealing with are repeated problems. We need to develop some type of zero tolerance that riding that bus is a privilege. if you would jeopardize the lives of people on that bus, you don't get a you don't get a second chance to do that. And um so we really need to take a
149look at that all those situations when it happen. We we we don't want to give a give them a second chance to create create a disaster because riding the bus is a privilege. So they're going to have to find another way. A lot of these things that we haven't repeat offenders and they get away with it because we we we're not um uh making sure that we put our foot down. But the the highway is very dangerous and the roadway is very dangerous. So we really those complaints coming from those bus drivers, we need to make sure that they they they addressed in a way that the people that's causing the problems don't get a second chance to cause those problems. >> Absolutely, Miss Miles. We we we'll definitely I'll collaborate with Mr. Brown and
150and Mrs. Brown and we'll and and and we'll bring back something in regards to that. >> All right. >> Anyone else? >> Yes. I didn't pick up on when would the um offices be open at the headquarters, if you will. >> Oh, yeah. She was talking about central office. >> Uh SBO office, Miss Proctor. Okay. So, we're um it's it's going to be phased in. So, we're going to be moving in next week. Um, we're going to bring in IT and HR in because it's it's a technological um thing that we have to start doing. So, we're going to be phasing it in. So, we're going to be getting starting next week, but everybody should be in there um as soon as possible. >> Okay. Okay. >> So, Mr. Martinez, so by August 20th, because
151I know we should be back into the school into the schoolboard office and so we should be able to have our next school board meeting, which is the 20th at the at the schoolboard office. We >> we will. >> Okay. Gotcha. And so we will start moving back in at the beginning of next week because I know you all are trying to finish out and making sure that we prioritize this getting the schools ready. Absolutely. So, okay. So, we'll start because they should be coming to an end with some of the work and then they'll be finishing up those small things. Okay. >> Anyone else? Anyone else? Just glad glad to see that you had on there that you all will be cleaning up the um locker room. Yeah. Absolutely. >> Needs a lot of
152cleaning. A lot. >> Thank you. I appreciate it. Absolutely. Also have another question. The seats, >> the chairs in auditorium, have they been fixed? >> No, they didn't. They have not been fixed. And one of the reasons why is because um those particular seats were >> built a while ago. So, we have two options. we can either fix it and make it stand out or we can um uh switch out the whole row if you will or the whole first two or three rows. So, we want to bring a couple options to the superintendent and let her choose. Um so, we're actually working on that. Um and it's also to keep in mind that um um we we're starting to look at planning on modernizing um Petersburg High School. So we want to start implementing
153certain plans and and auditorium is is definitely high priority on there. >> So >> we we'll be giving options to the superintendent really really soon and share with you that with you. >> So thank you. I know that you share with me again that our options that we had is that if we replace the the couple that are they will stand out meaning that they won't match what's there because of the fact that when the school was built we can't just replace it with that same look. It would look very different. Or we have the option, I know we talked about is that we have to replace everything in that row, but it still may not match the other areas of the auditorium because of the year. Is that correct? >> It definitely won't match.
154>> So, I know you're bringing to me a vendor who can do that, but we have to be okay with the fact that when we fix them, they will look different than the others. >> Correct. >> Okay. Next question. Janitors. Where are we with bringing on full-time janitors? Because I know we've been having we had janitors, I think, through the temp agency. >> Correct. And we do have vacancies. So, where are we with that? Because I if we have them here, why have we not trans why have we not turned them over to full-time employees yet? >> Actually, Mr. Pritchard, that's in in um process right now. What we did once they finish up with the temp agency, we bought them on with us um in a part-time basis. So then that'll move forward to
155um bring them to you guys for to approve them for full-time position, excuse me, full-time positions because we do have positions that match the number of um part- timerrs that we have that um came out of that temp agency. So right now, like I said, they're currently working every day. It's just a matter of going through the process with HR to um move forward on that. >> Okay. >> Thank you. Mhm. >> And then next one, I just have one more. Mr. um Rona, um you presented those committees. Um when will you be advertising to put the committees together because I know under the school safety audit committee um per V um VDOE, we're required to have a committee. >> Yes, sir. And what I did actually was uh this afternoon at 1:00 I met
156with a uh a group that we kind of have as as not so much as a committee but as a safety team that we were looked at to go over the safety audit of the division and that included an invite to uh the police department, fire department. Uh the Virginia Emergency Medical Services was there as well. A few of our teachers were on board with that as well as District 19. and we had about a 30-minute conversation today about the audits. >> Thank you. >> Yes, sir. >> Mr. Ms. >> I don't know. I'll have to do. >> Were you gonna say anything? Oh, you good. >> Okay. >> Um, thank you, Mr. Martinez. Thank you, Mr. Gotet. Thank you, um, Miss Yates, Mr. Rona, Dr. Lee, um, and our newest addition to nutrition. Thank
157you so very much. And I want to thank Taher for their work. And so, I want to just say thank you to Rodell and to the entire Taher team. Thank you for your continued partnership. We're really excited about the next step of this work together. We started in a consultancy um with a consultancy relationship and now we will have our chefs here every day and so we are excited about the talent that Taher has brought to Petersburg. We're glad to see Chef Danny back uh who helped us in the beginning and so I just want to make sure that I thank um the Taher team for working alongside our Petersburg um staff because they are very special and they um are a big part of keeping our process going. Thank you so much for what
158you all are bringing and I'm so excited about what our kids are going to experience even more this year cuz now the sky's is the limit cuz now you all are here with us each and every day. So, thank you so much to Taher and thank you for your work and I can't wait to get to meet the chefs up close and personal and to try some of your dishes cuz we will be over um to try some of your delicious meals. So, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. >> Thank Thank you, Miss Bria. and to the Taher group. Um just want to let you know usually um at the end of the year and the beginning of the year usually our culinary arts students usually prepare dishes for the board. So is it a
159possibility that on the 20th that you all could prepare some sample dishes so we can taste the food as well? No extra charge, right? We appreciate it. So we look forward to tasting some something different this time. Okay. Appreciate it. >> Miss Proctor says she wants to taste the cheeseburger fries. Next, we'll move to our last. Yes, our last um report fore is our policy. >> All right, >> first read. >> Thank you, board chair and school board members. We will now have our policies for first read for August 6, 2025. And if you direct your attention to the screen, I'll go through them fairly quickly here. So, policies for first read tonight. We'll make it a little larger for us if you can. Thank you so very much. And so, tonight for our policies
160for first read on for our updates and so we'll have policy number one. And so, our policy number one for Petersburg City Public Schools is policy GAB slash ibea. And the title of this policy in our school division is acceptable computer system use. It is in alignment with our VSBA policy GAB and SL1IBA. The purpose of this policy review is the policy language has been updated and the legal references and cross references have been updated in alignment with our VSBA policy 525. First read policy number two is policy PCPS GB and the policy title is staff weapons in school. This VSBA policy alignment is gr and this policy language has been updated and cross references updated with the footnote added in alignment with our VSBA 525. Our policy number three PCPS policy GCB that policy
161title is professional staff contracts. that VSBA policy alignment is policy GCB. And the purpose of this policy review is our policy language has been updated to remove duplication with policy GCE. Cross reference is updated to reflect previous title changes of sample policy GCE in alignment with VSBA policy 525. Policy number four this evening is policy GCDA. And our PCPS policy title is the effect of criminal conviction or founded complaint of child abuse or neglect. This BSBA policy alignment is GCDA. And the purpose of this policy review is policy language updated to reflect amendments of Virginia Code 2020.1 22.1-296.1 by House Bill 1924 in alignment with our VSBA 525. Policy number five for first read is policy GCE for Petersburg City Public Schools and the title of this policy is substitute teachers. This policy is in
162alignment with VSBA policy GCE and this policy language has been updated and legal references updated to reflect amendments of Virginia code 22.1-302 by House Bill 2201 and Senate Bill 1230 cross references updated VSBA at 2525. Policy number six of this evening for PCPS is policy GCG. The title of this policy is professional staff probationary term and continuing contract. That is in alignment with policy GCG and the policy language has been updated and cross references updated and a footnote has been added in alignment with VSBA 525. Policy number seven is policy GCL and that policy title is professional development. that is in alignment with VSBA policy GCL. And this policy language has been updated to reflect the amendments of Virginia Code 22.1-298.8 8 by House Bill 1936 and Virginia code 22.1-253.13 col 5 by Senate Bill
1631293 and House Bill 1089 and Senate Bill 220 of 2024 in alignment with VSBA 525. Policy eight of this evening is policy GCPD in alignment and the title of this policy is professional develop professional staff discipline, excuse me, and that's in alignment with VSBA policy GCPD. The purpose of this policy review is that a policy language has been updated and legal references updated to reflect the addition of Virginia Code 2020.1 274.4 4 colon 1 by House Bill 732 and Senate Bill 726 2024. That is in alignment with our VSBA policy at 525. Our ninth policy for PCPS this evening is I IA/GAB and the title of this PCPS policy is acceptable computer you system use. This is I IA/GAB in align with that VSBA policy and the purpose of this policy review is the policy
164language has remained unchanged and legal references and cross references have simply been updated that is in alignment with VSBA at 525 >> that concludes thank you board chair pitch and school board members that concludes our policies for first read for August 6 2025. Thank you, Miss Brown. Board members, we will bring these policies back on August the 20th. Are there any questions? Okay. Next, we'll move to our public comment period. We do not have anyone that signed up. Was there anyone here to speak? Yes, ma'am. Need you to go to the podium, give your name and address, or if you you live in Petersburg, you do. Yeah. Give your name and address. Oh, and I'm I'm sorry. You have a threem minute time limit. >> Okay. Um, good evening, uh, members of the school board
165and the community. My name is Sierra Thomas Tucker. I am, uh, happy and excited to be one of your newly hired educators here at Petersburg. Um, I've been in the area for a while. I'm actually a Colonial Heights resident. However, um you know, Tri Cities, everywhere is everywhere is home. So, um I just wanted to introduce myself. I bring with me a wealth of experience in districts across the country um and all across the United States. Uh through those experiences, I've developed a passion for supporting districts um with teacher onboarding um professional development and um family and student engagement. Um and my goal here today is uh to particularly help with increasing teacher teacher retention and satisfaction. um as a new hire um and also an education consultant of I've intended your new teacher um
166boot camp this week um and I've done that with the lens of all of my experiences and so um I would love the opportunity to share some of the insights and support the district with actionable recommendations um that can help strengthen your teachers early experiences, teachers like myself Um, and if there's any interest, I'd be happy to follow up with more details. You can reach me at unchained [email protected]. Um, thank you so much for your time and uh for the work that you guys do and are doing to continue to help educators and Petersburg grow and be better. Thank you. >> Thank you. Appreciate it. Um, if you will see um Dr. Lane, >> Dr. Lane >> with HR. >> Okay. Next board members, we move to our action items. Miss Brown 6A. >> Okay.
167Thank you board chair. Thank you board chair pitch and school board. Thank you board chief pitch and school board members. Our first action item this evening is our public private education facilities and infrastructure act of 2002 which is also called PPE authorization and approval of a $25,000 conceptual review fee for the Walnut Hill Elementary School Construction Project. And so at this moment, it is the superintendent's recommendation that the school board approve the public private education facilities and infrastructure act of 2002, also known as PPE, to authorize the approval of a $25,000 conceptual review fee for Walnut Hill Elementary School Construction Project as provided as a sense of background information for the school board, as a part of the policy that was approved um by the school board for us to have a formal PPE process.
168As a part of that process to begin the con begin to receive proposals around the conceptual design of Balnut Hill Elementary School, there is a fee for um um companies or um construction companies to be able to present their conceptual um proposals. And so I am asking for approval for us to be able to charge those companies a $25,000 review fee for them to submit a proposal for the Walnut Hill Elementary School construction project. And so that is that request this evening. And so we need the board to consider approval for us to charge those companies who want to submit a conceptual overview of Walnut Hill Elementary School for construction purposes a $25,000 fee along with their proposal. So again, thank you, Miss Brown. Are there any questions? >> Can we do A and B
169together since they considering the same thing? >> No, it's separate. >> Yes. Uhhuh. >> I move that we to accept. >> Moved by Mr. M. Second by Mr. Pierce. >> Any unreadiness? All in favor? >> I >> opposed. >> Motion carries. >> Next we move to B. >> Thank you for chair Richard and schoolboard members. We have a public public private education facilities and infrastructure act of 2002 PPA. Again, we have an unsolicited proposal from Gilbane Incorporated for walk for the Walnut Hill Elementary School construction project. So, at this time, it is the superintendent's recommendation that the school board um for three different things we're asking for in this recommendation. And so, it is the superintendent's recommendation that the school board one accepts the unsolicited conceptual PPE proposal submitted by Gilbane Incorporated for the Walnut
170Hill Elementary School Construction Project. Again, it is the superintendent's recommendation that the school board acknowledge the receipt of the $25,000 review fee from Gilbane Incorporated. And three, it is the superintendent's recommendation that the school board direct the superintendent or my design to issue the required public notice, receive competing proposals through 4:00 p.m. on September 19th, 2025, and conduct the evaluation process in accordance with policy DJFA-R as provided. So again, as the background, we have received our first unsolicited proposal from Gilbang Incorporated. And so at this time, I am asking the board to acknowledge the receipt of that $25,000 we've received. And we also received the proposal. And I'm also asking the school board to please um um direct um me and our our school team to go ahead and be able to issue on our
171website a public notice that we are now accepting additional proposals for a period up until September 19th, 2025 by 4:00 and also um direct us to begin the evaluation process of those proposals in accordance with our policy. as presented. >> Thank you, Miss Brown. Is there questions from board members? If not, is there a motion to accept the superintendent's recommendation as presented? >> So, move that we accept. >> Moved by Mr. Lundy. Is there a second? >> Who is that? Muck. >> Oh, Mrs. Tucker. I'm sorry. All in favor? I >> oppose. Motion carries. Thank you. >> Next, we start our process. [Applause] We are on our way to building a brand new Walnut Hill Elementary School >> in Westview. >> And Westview. That's exactly right. And Westview. >> Right. So our next evening, thank
172you board chair Pritchin and school board members. It is the superintendent's recommendation that the school board approve theou me memorandum of understanding between the Petersburg City Public Schools and the Boy Scouts or excuse me Scouting of America as provided. >> Thank you, Mr. Brown. You've heard the recommendation. Is a motion to accept? >> So move, Mr. Chair. >> You want to roll call? Roll call. is >> um >> Rio. >> Mr. Steven Pierce. >> Yes. >> Mr. Hal Miles. >> Abstain. Mr. Kenneth Pritchette. >> Yes. >> Mr. Corey Tucker. >> Yes. >> Miss Joyce Proctor. >> Yes. >> Mr. Bernard Lundy. >> Yes. >> Mr. Adrien Dance. >> Yes. >> The motion carries with six affirmative votes. >> Thank you, Miss Burios. >> Thank you, M. Where you? Mr. Kid. All right. We look forward
173to seeing you. Have a great time with those students. Next, we'll move to D60 policy. Second, >> thank you poetic and schoolboard members. It is the superintendent's recommendation that the school board approved the policies for second week that were dated on 7:16, 2025 as provided. >> You've heard the superintendent's recommendation. Is there a motion to accept? So move. >> Moved by Mr. Pierce. Is there a second? >> Mrs. Tucker. All in favor? >> I oppose. Motion carries. Thank you. Next we move to number seven, superintendent report 78. >> Absolutely. Thank you board chair pitch and school board members. I have my superintendent's report this evening to share some great information. So with that I will ask them to pull up the report. Thank you. So this is the superintendent's report data for August 6, 2025.
174Thank you. Next slide please. So, first I just want to highlight our Power Scholars closing ceremony that happened on July 16th, 2025, where we celebrated our Power Scholars closing ceremony at Pleasants Lane Elementary School with a variety of multicultural presentations and dances. Empower Scholars students in grades K through five focused on academic support, hands-on enrichment, and exciting field trips that brought learning to life. So, here are pictures of our wonderful students as they participated in a closing ceremony of multicultural presentations. Next slide, please. Also, I just want to highlight our Petersburg High School summer academy commencement ceremony number one. On July 17th, we had our first summer ceremony where we celebrated our Petersburg High School summer graduates. And congratulations to our ceremony one graduates, Trayvon Bradley, Tyon CL Clanton, Bernard Cotman, Jamarian Hobbs, and Antoine
175Learn. And so we're really proud that students persevered, even passed the May commencement and came back for summer to finish out their requirements. So that was our first summer summer ceremony on July 17th. So congratulations to those students. We're very proud of you and please continue to make us proud and keep working. Next slide, please. Then we also have something very unique here in Petersburg. We had a second summer ceremony for our high school students, which is really nice that on Monday, August the 4th, we again celebrated four more Petersburg High School graduates during our 2025 summer commencement. So, congratulations to Jerry Chapman, Darion Harris Horde, Davian Mahas, and Kazir Jones. And so, again, our students persevered. They did not finish. And I love the fact that here in Petersburg, we have multiple ceremonies to
176make sure that their families and friends can come and celebrate them outside of traditional ceremonies for graduation. So well done students. Next slide, please. I also want to highlight our PCPS new employee orientation that was conducted on 20 conducted on July 17th where our human resources department held two new employee orientation sessions at Vernon John's Middle School. This session was basically for our new employees to learn about leave, payroll, safety, and benefits to begin their journey of transformation with PCPS. Thank you. Next slide. I wanted to share that this year we had a school leader summer academy 2025. And so on July 21st to July 24th, our academics department held our school leaders academy for our Petersburg City Public School administrators. Our school leaders learned important information and updates where we had the VDOE come
177and present to our leaders around the standards of learning testing from the VOE. We engaged with our PCPS department leaders and they also collaborated on the master schedules and reviewed student data to inform how we will make decisions in our schools. and we shared strategies to address academics, attendance, and behavior through datainformed planning. And they participated in cross school planning to align with our leadership practices that we're expecting with our for our 2526. And so we were able to bring all of our leaders together so we can get them on the same page and we can move in the same direction. So thank you to our academics team for your summer academy work with our school principles and our school leaders. Next slide. Let's highlight. We see our wonderful Petersburg City Public Schools students. They
178are entrepreneurs that were featured on channel 6. So our PCPS students, Khalil Lee at Vernon John's Middle and Antonio Reed at Blandford were highlighted by Channel 6 for their new lawn care business. After the Aren't our students amazing? After the segment premiered, Channel 6 did a followup on our young entrepreneurs because their business is now booming. And so remember as a part of the vision we want to make sure that our students graduate with the choice with a choice field life and one of those choices is become an entrepreneur and we already have two students who are already on their way before they even graduate from Petersburg High School. So we are very very pr proud of them and I love that they are showing how amazing our kids are here in Petersburg. So congratulations
179if you are watching and congratulations to the parents of Galo and Antonio. Next slide please. And so I want to provide an update with the board for services that we have procured at this moment. So PCPS has completed the review process of the proposals that have come in and we have selected Hazard Young and AIA and associates to develop our division's five-year strategic plan. So the total cost of this plan is going to be $55,000 which is the work that includes includes all of the community engagement, all of the processes in building this plan. And this plan will begin the work in August of 2025. So, they'll be coming in to meet with the board, meet with our staff, and that will be a full process. And the final draft will be presented to the
180school board in December of 2025 for you all to vote, but you will also get a draft copy in November so that we can um prepare for the December meeting. Interim updates and feedback sessions will be provided prior to the final draft being presented. And so, this is a part of our policy just to make sure that we you we are aware that we spent the $55,000 to procure our strategic plan. and we have we will be starting in a few weeks. Thank you. So, next slide. We also have our communications audit plan and our media services training that will happen for our leadership. PCPS has reviewed the proposals for these three pieces and they have selected the communications department has selected the ISO group to conduct a communications audit, develop a three-year communication plan
181and complete qualitative and quantitative research, planning and implementation of the communication plan, media training for our division and on call crisis communication support as needed for the duration of one school year. The total cost of all of these services will be $65,000 for one school year. Next slide, please. Our next slide is our compensation classification stipen and contract services. PCPS has selected Evergreen Solution LLC to provide a compensation classification stipend and contract study update. The total cost of this will be $62,500 and the study has already started and is scheduled to be completed by October 2025. We're excited that they're going to take a look at every position within the school division compensation, how they're classified. We will look at all stipen position. They will make recommendations for what should be stipened and they will
182take a look at our contracts, our contract years and to make sure that all of the pieces they will do that deep dive for us. And so they have started and we will be complete by October of 2025. And last this evening I want to provide everyone an update that we have a new health care provider beginning October the 1st in Petersburg City Public Schools. We will transition back from Sentra to Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield to provide health care in Petersburg City Public Schools. So all PCPS employees starting October the 1st, um you will have Anthem as the new health care provider. This decision was made to improve coverage options for our employees and network access for all of our employees. At this time, there will be no additional cost to employees. Thank you
183to the school board of Petersburg City Public Schools for voting to absorb the cost of the increase for this year. And based on your feedback, we were able I was able to do a deep dive and make the recommendation that we go back to having Anthem as the healthc care provider for Petersburg City Public Schools. Thank you. That concludes my that concludes my Thank you, school. Thank you, board chair, and school board members. That completes my superintendent report for this evening. question. >> Yes. Question for for Anthem. When will that come to the board because we do have to vote on that? >> Yeah, we can't move forward without the board voting on on that. >> Perfect. Great to know. >> That cost a lot of money. >> So, Dr. Greywell, you'll prepare that for
184the August 20th. Is that correct? >> All right. Thank you. >> Okay. Also, Miss Brown, on the I believe you you talked about three three things that I knew three things you shared with us, not Yes, that's one, two, three. Is it three? Okay. Three. I know um you just you are to share that with us because of the cost. You share it with us. But also um for the board, can you give the board the scope of work on all three? We need to know what they're doing. Even though we're paying them, we still want to know what they're doing and we need to see see the work before they start. >> All right. >> Okay. >> Absolutely. We have the scope of work that we as a part of the informal um RFP
185process that we put out. There's a scope of work that's approved and so then Lori Newton takes that scope of work. There's proposals and we'll bring those scope of works. We sure can. >> Okay. Thank you. >> I sign we move on to 7B committee reports. I do not believe that we start we will start this month. I knew I did walk out. Most of your committees will start this month I think. >> Question again. Where is the link? I know Miss Vonger and I talked. Miss >> Von, hey, >> where's that link for the volunteers again? >> Can you show it to us on >> Can you show us the link for the volunteers again? So, they help. Thank you. >> This is for the board committees that individuals, community members can sign up
186to be on the committee. Awesome. I'm sorry. It was freezing in here. I'm sorry, Miss Buckets. Good evening. It's it's before you right now. It's under the about section on our website. We updated that section so that it now reflects a a Google form to sign up that's come that comes to communications and it was also sent out to all of our families when we communicated back to school information last week. >> Okay. Are we starting to see any responses yet? >> I will check. >> Okay. Thank you. Appreciate it. >> Great pictures, Mr. Miles. I see you on the website. You and um Mr. Coleman, >> we had your cowboy hat on, your boots on the ground. >> Yes, board chair. We updated all the photos from the National Night Out last night. >>
187Okay. Yes, I see them. Thank you. Great pictures. Thank you communications for always keeping our pictures and that was part of the plan is to keep our pictures in real time so that you see them so that they're not staying there for a period of time. We want to continue to change our pictures. I think Mr. Lundy was on there at from the Big Feet meet. Did you see it? >> Yeah, I saw it. Yes. >> And thank you. Thank you and your staff also for going around in the community visiting every almost every event last night for the back um I'm sorry I said back to school for the um national night out. Yes. I think everyone who who who attended events went out had a we had a great time. We we really
188did um got to meet people that we've never met before. I was in a community that is not, you know, not a community that that I would go out and knock on doors, but had an opportunity to meet had an opportunity to meet people over in Ward Six. I might might look for me a house over there. They were so nice to me. Yes. Yes. There they go. Oh, that was >> Yeah, >> that was Met Metropolitan. I was just right. >> Mhm. There you go. [Laughter] >> Mr. Miles, I was at orientation and Mr. Dance, I let you know. Also, Mr. Lundy, do you know the teachers? Do you know there was so many Virginia state teachers in there and they reminded me because I'm, you know, graduate from Norfolk State, man. They told
189me to sit down with that little state stuff. [Laughter] Oh, >> yes. Saturday at 10:00 from 10:00 a.m. until 200 pm we are having our community day back to school day with um People's Advantage Federal Credit Union in Petersburg City Public Schools. We have entertainment. We have line dancing. We have our band performing. We have our cheerleaders performing. We have free food. I think today from the meeting, I believe they told us we received over $6,000 in donation to pay for the food to make sure that everyone is able to eat. It's going to be out front on the front lawn. But if you're able, if you're able-bodied and you're not doing anything and you can be here at 8:00 Saturday morning to assist with individuals, helping them get their materials and things out of
190the vehicle, please come at 8:00. We'll be here at 8:00 to assist individuals who may need help setting up this this Saturday. And my understanding is you can wear your Miss Field said you can wear your black shirts because it covers perspiration. >> That's right. I said it, Miss Fields. I know you're watching. Okay. Next, we're going to see. Well, I've already gone over new business from board members. Is there a motion to adjurnn? >> Moved by Mr. Lundy. Is there a second? Mr. Miles. All in favor? >> I >> oppose. Oh, before we oppose, don't forget Monday we leave the schoolboard office at 8:00 a.m.