Regular School Board Meeting and Closed Session beginning at 5 pm

001e e e by m Pro there second second Mr DAV as required by section 2.2 372d of the Virginia Freedom of Information Act of call vote will be taken to certify that to the best of each member's knowledge one only public business matter is lawfully Exempted from open meeting requirements under the act and two only such public business matters as were identified in the motion by which the Clos session was convened were heard discussed or considered in the Clos session by the board prior to the vote any member of the board who believed that there was a departure from the requirements one and two as R shall so State the same indicating the substance of the departure that in his or her judgment has taken place does any board member wish to respond hearing no

002response I will now take roll call for Mr St yes Mr yes Mr Kenneth oet chairman yes Mr car Tucker yes M Joy proor yes Mr Berard Bernard J Lundy Jr yes T sen yes action motion to adjourn from close so move move by Mr Pierce is there second second Mr proor all in favor I oppos motion carries thank you good evening once again everyone the time now is 6:04 p.m. we to call our regular board meeting to order Miss Davis if you call the RO once again Mr St Senor here Mr miles here Mr kener here Mr Tucker here M gey proor here Mr Bernard J ly J here Mr Adrian T here thank you members we move to 1 a approval of the agenda are there no changes there a motion to approve

003the agenda move by Mr Lundy is there second second Miss Tucker all in favor I oppos motion carries next we move to 1B moment of salav the following are to be remembered during the moment of silence pastor and Mrs George W Friday and family and the passing of their son Mr George S Friday on Sunday March 2nd 2025 Mr and Mrs Adrian T Dan Senor and family in the passing of Miss castella L Coleman sister and sister-in-law on Thursday March 6 2025 the family of Miss arnetta T Jones former Petersburg City Public Schools educator and her passing on Thursday March 13 2025 thank you at this time we have a moment of s thank you next we move to 1 C Pledge of Allegiance ask that you will stand and will be l Miss Tucker

004to 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 D corresponds and correspond the board received correspondence and reference to letters your words have comforted us your support has strengthened us and your love has sustained us we extend our deepest thanks to you for your kindness during our greatest sadness we appreciate it more than words can express and be remembered Petersburg City Public Schools we thank you for the heartfelt letter written on behalf of our loved one Alfred Williams Jr we greatly appreciate your kind words be blessed and may God continue to use you to minister to the needs of others in the community the family of the late Alfred Williams Jr thank you we are

005so grateful for the outpouring of love and sympathy during this time of grief for our family we will always remember your kindness thank you regards Francis Winston and family we are deeply grateful for your outpouring of Love kindness and support shown to US during the passing out our beloved family members your thoughtful gestures and coning words that provide strength and Sol as we navigate these losses knowing we are surrounded by such care and compassion has made this journey more bearable and we are profoundly thankful for that your kindness will forever remain in our hearts love always you thank you appreciate it next we move to number two Miss Brown 28 thank you board chair pitchet and school board members I'm so excited for our recognitions this evening and so we're going to start with our

006wonderful students we have several students here in Petersburg City public schools that we're excited to highlight tonight so we're going to start by bringing Mr Bill Lawson our athletic director here in Petersburg City Public Schools to the front so that we could recognize our wonderful students and so we're going to start this evening with our wonderful Petersburg High School wrestling team where's our wrestling team I'mma change the order a little I'mma change the order just a little bit absolutely no problem so thank you please uh I like to say thank you for having me here tonight to rec recognize our athletes they did such a great job uh individually and as teams uh so it's very good to come before you all and recognize them i' like to start out um and sometimes I always

007have a reason for doing things I want to introduce my freshman who made first team All Region for girls basketball Leila [Applause] grav right here face this way yeah then we have April Scott for girls basketball second team All Region I don't believe the next person's here yet uh Aaliyah Turner she made honorable mention for the region uh and if when aaliah gets here if she's able to make it in time you you'll understand her growth when you see her and then for boys basketball uh he's a junior so we expecting a lot out of here um for next year but he made second team All Region arel [Applause] kensaw uh jvon three made honorable mention for boys basketball Nan Robinson boys basketball honorable mention and then uh moving to indoor track Amar Lee who

008was third in the regions in long jump and six in the state class three and now we we'll move on to the next group uh who's very special they haven't had their state competition yet but they have uh done very well in the Super Regionals starting now for speech Taylor Thomas second place in the Super Regional also for speech keani Donahue first first place Super Regional and first place Super Regional Justice Moore right now for wrestling second place in the region 3A and all of these young men did qualify for the state wrestling tournament uh Uriah [Applause] [Music] avans first place in the region sixth place in the state Amir [Applause] manat first place in the region and like a I said a state qualifier also Malachi [Applause] blumock fourth place in the region and

009a state qualifier Carlos Salas Mendoza [Applause] first time wrestler as a freshman fourth place in the region and state qualifier micaa [Applause] Scott and our last one first place in the region 3A State runner up in class three Keith Melton [Applause] is a Leah outside okay okay uh so before I let them deal with the school board members as far as shaking their hands I would like to introduce my coaches uh for speech Terry Smith and assistant coach Miss Vasquez for wrestling keante Owens head coach assistant coach jeremi Jones and the young lady that I mentioned before Aaliyah Turner [Applause] and yes she is a [Applause] sophomore huh who I miss me coach okay I think that's all I see that's all I see I want see coach her coach Harrison here okay and I

010would love for the parents to please stand and be recognized of these athletes and grandparents and grandparents and I just like to thank all the athletes uh thank you all for your determination and grit this year uh just to go forth and play and speak uh you know it's remarkable and we we're so glad that you're recommend that you're representing Petersburg Public Schools stay in line go through and Shake thew yes we can I know come come up also [Music] stay right there stay right there congratul no shake the hand shake the hand no no we're going to take a picture we going to take a group picture group picture y'all can come this way come this way come this way matter of fact hey y'all get in the back y'all get in the back

011everyone let's give our students a hand because this is why we're here this is exactly why we're here in Petersburg congratulations to every single student in Petersburg City Public Schools I am so proud as superintendent and the school board is so proud of you you all better do the thing and remind everybody that we are Petersburg City Public Schools well done well done and remember to keep going cuz we just getting [Applause] started hey coach coaches y'all come up front so they can see y'all sorry I got one more you got one more one more we're good we're good all right I need I need to let one go because he's got to get ready for his baseball game uh they're getting ready to play right now so uh can I can I have uh

012two young ladies uh to come right here for me Miss Taylor and Miss yeah Miss Thomas ke keani and Miss Smith come on over here because I know I'm a fumble the ball but it it was announced today we had a a speech showcase showcase we had a speech showcase today and Miss Smith uh announced at the end of the Showcase that these two young ladies will go to Iowa for the national speech and debate competition to represent Petersburg so I wanted to make sure everybody knew about it Miss Brown found out today you know so we we just wanted everybody to congratulate them um but we do have one thing before we go to the Nationals we got to make sure we go to the states and come back with that Hardware and the

013state tournament for speech is March 29th my birthday yes yes and Mr pritchard's birthday yes so again thank you all for giving us time to recognize the athletes for their Great accomplishments this year and we have a lot of young young athletes so we're expecting some more big things from them next year thank you [Applause] that was so nice to day one yeah hey one uh J I had to work with him man get him out a lot of M I got him out keep doing you doing all right hey thank you everyone we're going to move the art winners the bsba 2025 art winners we're going to move them for our April meeting okay and that is April I believe the 16th April 16th okay next we'll move board members to approval of the

014consent agenda m brown thank you board chair pritet and school board members it is the superintendent recommendation that the school board approve the final Personnel agenda dated March 19th 2025 as provided sorry thank you thank you board chair pritchet and school board members it is the superintendent's recommendation that the school board approve the minutes of the 313 2025 310 2025 the 22 4 2025 and the 123 2025 Schoolboard disciplinary committee student hearings and 218 2025 pcps board budget work session FY 2026 as provided it is also the superintendent's recommendation that the school board accepts the donations received by the pcps as provided and if you will direct your attention to the screen this is the March 1st 20 2 to the March 13th 2025 School School Division donations thank you so again it is the

015superintendent's recommendation that the school board accepts the donations received by pcps Prov as provided thank you m brown any questions from board members no questions is there a motion to accept the consent agenda so move Mr chair move by Mr Dan is there a second second M Proctor all in favor I opposed motion carries next we Mo thank you board thank you board chair Pritchard and school board members we have our very first presentation of the evening we will have our draft FY 26 budget proposal given by Mr John Wall our Chief Financial Officer consultant along with Dr Matias greywood our Chief Financial Officer Mr Wallingford and Dr greywood please come to the podium thank you as Mr wenford U prepares and Mr Dr greywood joins him I'm really excited as superintendent to bring the

016very first um FY 26 budget proposal as superintendent and so we want to thank everyone for all of their feedback all of our community community members our school board members and our staff for all of the feedback that we've received around our FY 26 budget and so this is our draft proposal based upon the feedback from our various sessions Mr wford thank you thank you Miss Brown uh chair pritet can you hear me better very good uh chairman pritchet members of the board m brown tonight uh I'm G to walk you through a presentation that will deliver to you the budget the the superintendent's proposed budget for fiscal 20126 um before we get started with that presentation I want to share with you an answer to a question Mr dance asked two meetings ago I

017believe it was and so if you could advance to the last slide in the presentation please second to the last slide I believe it is the question if you recall slide 12 is it slide 12 there we go Mr dance if you recall you asked a question about uh revenues that I shared and that was the other category and what is that $452,000 and so I'd like to start out by apologizing by not getting the answer to you sooner so here we go these are the items that are included in that 452,000 and what's important about this isn't so much what each of these items is there are a lot of different um items e- rate I believe is the largest of the group what's important to note and thank you for catching this what's

018important to note is that this $452,000 is split across two funds one the general fund fund one and the other piece is uh our grants are small uh in miscellaneous grants that are in fund seven and so what that does Mr Dan and and members of the board is it actually adjusts the revenue forecasts by about $200,000 and as we move through the presentation you'll see those numbers so one answered to your question and two I apologize for the mistake and if we could now go back to the very beginning and I apologize for the uh for the layout issue next slide please okay so the agenda uh for this evening uh will be uh a a conversation about uh the planning process for developing the budget not a strategic a full-blown strategic plan uh

019then technical budget adjustments and I'll talk about those just for a minute or two um budgeted uh the budgeted initiatives and you've seen those slides uh but this is the final form uh then I'll talk about revenues and expenditures and then a couple of addition additional items that you see there at the bottom that $452,000 you see but I thought it would be useful to put at the very beginning of the presentation so next slide please so we we've seen the slide I think uh in different forms two or three different times but um as we move on in the presentation uh what you'll see is the association of these superintendent budget priorities uh these uh six priorities and those initiatives that you've seen and the association between these budget priorities and those initiatives so

020there's actually a tie between the money the new money that we're putting in the budget and the abbreviated if you will planning process and I'm not going to belabor this I'm not going to go through each one of these you've heard them before um but as we move on to the initiative slide later in the presid presentation we'll stop and talk about each one of those items next slide please so technical adjustments uh if you recall in in some of our prior presentations uh what I refer to as technical adjustments are those adjustments that are really made um in advance of uh the detailed budget process and those are things like salary increase and the uh the superintendent is proposing a 3% % increase for all staff this year health insurance we're going to see

021an 8% health insurance increase um these are actual uh uh not percentages these next numbers are gross increases uh we're budgeting additional $48,000 in our liability insurances for things like fire and collision uh fuels fuels is a combination you can see $300,000 increase year every year and that's a combination of under budgeted in uh in the current years and actual increases in costs over the past uh two years in the budgets that I've been Associated if you look back over five years you'll see that um uh the cost of utilities have gone up pretty substantially over that period so those are the technical adjustments that will be applying uh to the superintendent's proposed budget next slide please these are the budget initiatives and these are our last presentation and the thing I want to highlight

022is um the actual items and I'll just start with the first three or four for example um the first item is a signing bonus uh and that is $375,000 if you look to the leftmost column this is added this Ties That salary or that um uh that signing bonus it ties it back to one of those six initiatives that you saw on the earlier page in this case it is uh Talent Recruitment and these are just abbreviations for those uh one or two uh sentence um initiatives that you saw in the earlier slide and so we can go through these but what I would say is um there are lots of things that not just Petersburg but all School divisions in Virginia and across the country need those needs differ depending on what locality you

023are uh the student uh population their demographics the age of the facilities the the growth Etc um and so as the superintendent and the staff set out to develop what priorities we thought we needed to meet um we came up with those that least you've seen and then as we developed the budget priorities we always looked back to what are the uh or these initiatives we always look back to what are our budget priorities every School Division will always say we're focused on students first of course and so that's something that you really want to focus on the facilities here in Petersburg Virginia those facilities are um the newest ones are pretty old there's work that needs to be done in those facilities and so you'll see uh that priority here and it's substantially funded

024this year compared to Prior years um if you recall from prior presentations you'll remember that we saw a revenue increase of approximately five million this year and that's 5 million on a baseline budget of about 6065 million actually $70 million this year substantial increase year of year uh you may not recall this but the prior year fiscal 24 to 25 was also a substantial Revenue increase year of again about $5 million and that's what allows us to actually fund these items the total of these items is about four I think it's $4.1 million and that's a function of really two things one state revenue substantially increasing two years in a row and we've also seen an increase of revenues that we're getting from uh the city transfer uh from up from $10 million over several

025years in a row to 12.3 and when I get to the end of the presentation I'll talk a little bit more about um those revenues so again there's nothing there's really nothing new here on the slide there was conversation about one position that I would like to highlight and that is a uh student Information Systems position okay that was that is already built into the budget it was a conversation at the last meeting so I wanted to highlight it even though you don't see it on this list because we don't actually have to increase the Baseline budget to fund it but I wanted to make sure that everybody here was aware that that is a position that's in the process of being filled it has no budgetary impact on us um the the last thing

026I'd like to mention on this slide is um the the bottom section there you see a couple of items and then kind of rotate it off at about 45 degrees uh you see a note that says additional city funding so we get a spreadsheet every year from vdoe when the budgets are finished it's called C tools these are kind of the nerdy inside Finance stuff that I'm talking about right now and what they do is in on that spreadsheet they calculate what the state then the transfer uh that's taking place in fiscal 25 the transfer that was Tak that is taking place in fiscal 25 is the number that the folks over in finance suggested to us we'd get this year so we're going to be communicating with the folks over the city and asking

027them to increase the transfer by about it's about 600,000 um and so we actually got a little additional revenue on that okay that's the first piece here the second piece is we'll also be requesting and we talked about uh needs-based budgeting not just a revenue share we'll also be communicating with the city that these items the uh assistant ad uh and the additional slots um at those schools uh we are asking that the city fund those in addition to the $12.3 million that they initially intended to share with us next slide please so this is a recap of revenues um you've seen this slide uh what you see here and the important number really is to take a look across the bottom uh in the bottom I always go to the bottom right hand corner

028of every spreadsheet I look at and you'll see $12.7 million $12.7 million is that amount that I just mentioned that's the required trans ER that's what vdoe says the state needs to provide to us and that is actually higher than the than the 123 million that was the transfer for the current year and they expected to give to us so this are going to require some communication between us and and uh the city uh you'll notice if you look at the top right hand corner you see a $12 million number that number is actually about $200,000 higher because it includes the uh assistant ad position and it also includes those uh slots at this uh the additional uh gifted slots next slide please this is uh general fund or operating fund revenues these numbers have

029all been adjusted again the important thing to note here is that bottom number on the fourth column over to the right year-over-year change you can see that the City of Petersburg is going to see an increase of about $5.6 million this year in Revenue Miss Brown you arrived at the perfect time uh also of note is the increase in state revenue from a percentage standpoint of just over 10% those are good numbers if we can see that happening again and again um that would be a fantastic outcome for us next slide please Food Service these uh this these two slides are exactly the same as what you saw last time Food Service uh the total budget pardon me put my glasses on uh three .3 million for the Food Service fund this year and of

030note is this uh is the second slide uh the second table on this slide and that is our grants fund now the numbers here are similar uh to uh what you saw in the earlier presentation earlier this month and last month there is one difference here though that I want to note um the school ision has difficulty when we receive a grant that's not budgeted as part of the original budget so if we build a budget of about $15 million and then let's say sometime in February March we receive a million dollar Grant okay it can take depending on the timing of when we receive that notification and this is an actual situation right now depending on the timing of when we receive that funding it can take almost a month to get approval so

031that we can actually spend and there's there's really two ways to deal with that um one is to uh know what the budget is going to be and build it in the you know in the adopted budget process uh another way and what I'm suggesting that we do here with this slide is we actually uh add what I call a revenue uh reserve and what that means is we put budgets in place and this is going to be an Ask of the city but we put a budget in place that has no Revenue support so we have a million dollars in this case I'm sorry again I gota put my glasses on in this case we're going to put a million dollars in place and that's not supported by any Revenue so what happens is

032when we get an award for an $800,000 Grant okay we can immediately put that that award in place that day we get that award we budget Authority both on the revenue and expenditure side we put the budget Authority in place and that same day that person or that that budget holder can begin to spend okay and this is a process that we used um in my prior employer um the numbers were much bigger because obviously we're much bigger up there but we would put that in place that requires trust from the city it requires trust from the school board that we will manage those budget uh that we put in place and so when we when we transfer those funds we go back to the city later and we can replenish that Reserve okay if

033we if we feel we need to if it's close to the end of the year maybe we don't need to and we just move on and it eliminates the process of us having to go back to the city wait up to a month to get it done depending on the grants and again we actually have this situation in place we got spending deadlines that are at the end of the year for a grant award that we receive in in mid-February and it and it just makes it almost impossible to get it done in a timely fashion so this is one of the suggestions in the superintendent's proposed budget and so what it actually does in this case is it overstates the revenue and expenditures that we're us aware of with certainty and it puts a

034contingency in place so that we can move fast next next slide please next slide please I know there're two of them go ahead so here what I've shared with you is the general fund budget uh by a functional category okay this is the um uh this is the categorization that is um uh described in the code of Virginia these are the categories that we have to uh do reporting on and you know there there are a lot of legal issues on these categories um but what you can see here is instruction and this is important to Note instruction is about 46 uh $46 million one of the things that the state of Virginia looks at and they they scrutinize pretty closely is something called the 65% Rule and the 65% rule long history came out

035of Texas um and it was an attempt to make sure that a specific amount or greater than a specific amount of total operating dollars actually got into instruction as opposed to facilities and administration and those kinds of things and that's something that we have to report excuse me that's something that we have to report in What's called the superintendent's annual school report that is a financial and other statistics but for us it's a financial report that goes to vdoe and schedule M schedule M actually calculates what percentage of our total dollars go to instruction in this case if you do the math on this we're at 40 uh no excuse me we're at 66% roughly 66% and so it's it's um it's important to note that in our budget process we've actually exceeded the 65%

036now it's not a requirement that's associated to penalties or anything like that um but it's it's it's something the finance people are concerned about because they measure it okay and so it's good to note ideally you'd have 70% or 80% you know every dollar that you can possibly sync into instruction is what should happen but uh across the state of Virginia uh 65% and above is a good number so this is a good sign next slide please so I've I've walked you through some of the numbers I'm not going to believe this slide again you've seen it um we've actually implemented after having talked to you about a couple of things this evening you can see that um we've implemented we haven't implemented number one yet uh number two and number three we effectively have

037we've got a fully we've got a funded CIP and tip next year you saw on the initiatives list about 2.3 or $2.4 million there so we've actually accomplished that that this year um and we have please and next slide please as we approach the end um currently we're uh We've hit all the Milestones on this except the presentation well actually the the budget hasn't been adopted yet but um this presentation uh or a presentation similar to this will be made to the city council in early April uh the folks in the finance office are still coordinating with the uh City Finance folks to uh firm up that date but we believe that date will be April 1 right now and that's all I have thank you next slide will there any questions from board members

038Mr M yes on that Grant you said the um um that when the grant money come in it's a it's a month process because it goes to the city and then it had to come to us that's what you're saying no what it does Mr miles is the request to increase the budget comes to the school board first so there's the lead time to get it to the school board and depending on when you get the award that could be a week or it could be two weeks and then it has to get in line to get on the city council's docket so that they can adopt it because they have to adopt any budget changes that are made that all has to go through the city so worst case scenario cost you about a

039month or could cost you a little bit more another problem from a timing St we H timing standpoint we have is that their their uh City Council meetings are on Tuesdays and guess when ours are they're on Wednesdays so just that one day can also cost you time depending on on how you hit it so what we would do is we would put a million dollars or some number in place that we in finance and the superintendent understands is not to be used except in the event that we actually have an an additional ward of some kind of some kind of Grant award or other unplanned for revenues and we will be able to use that and if we need to go back to replenish the contingency fund we could do that um in my

040with my primary uh my former employer we would go back sometimes two three four times a year and it really becomes tum what I wanted to ask you was I'm sorry um from the time we receive the award to the time we get the award what's that normal time for from the time that we receed the award um is awarded the award because you know once they say we have it how long does it take for us to actually get to get it it can take up to a month to actually that's what I want to clear that's what I want to be clear that's why you need this process cor that's correct okay and the money that we if we have to use it actually come from the general fund until the money come

041in then we replace it that's you that's what you're doing no that's what we would do in this circum right that's correct I just want to make sure I was clear that's all it was a point of clarification I just want to make sure I was clear on that have we have ever had a situation where we we say we were receiving something and didn't receive it um I I'm certain that's happened but I hope not look I don't want to tie you up on possibilities let's leave that alone okay but here's what I'd say we would never we would never make that move and these are typically federal or state grants we would never make that move until we actually receive the award letter okay all right good but that's a really good question

042we good we have some any other questions no question Mr chair so I know we said in the last meeting that this will be an additional um the on SL 6 the $11,000 paid by John 25th I just by June of 2025 I just wanted to be sure of that is that an addition to the $1,200 that is already been approved okay so because I know we were waiting on yeah let me say one thing first that is a function of the fiscal 25 budget just for that Clarity that's not a function of the fiscal 26 budget but Miss Brown I believe you looked like you were about to say something I'm sorry oh yeah thank thank you um thank you U Mr wford thank you board U member uh Tucker uh for that question

043so actually the $1,200 that we will admin we will send to our identified employees will be on the March 28th check that is separate that is a part of the fy2 um budget um based on our budget savings and so that is directly from Petersburg City Public Schools uh as a part of the governor's budget I think um they allotted $1,000 for specified employees um to receive that $1,000 our plan once the governor if you know everything is approved was to pass that along to all of our employees that are identified just in addition to the $1,200 so that is a separate so for our employees that we identified um that we laid out the criteria very specifically for they'll get the $1,200 and if approved in the governor's budget they will get an additional

044$1,000 for those same identified employees so those will be two separate payments we wish we could do both at the same time but we have to wait on the governor's um budget so there will be $1,000 if approved later on before the June deadline thank you I have one more question yes M can you go back to the screen that showed um instruction and on Administration and the breakdown like that just got a question about those categories um you keep going that's there you that's it right there okay um the now I just want to make sure I'm I'm clear on this the administration that's central office correct uh that's that's central office I can get you the the breakout of what those are um uh it's it's central office and I believe it's some

045Administration in the schools but that to be fair I'd have to check to be certain there's a very specific breakdown of and it's in great detail of what each of those is now but for instruction in the school okay now um facilities do that include support staff uh facilities would include well it would include facility support staff it wouldn't include food service support staff for example right okay yeah okay I just want to make sure I got got it straight so if you do have a if you can give me a breakdown of who's in what category I appreciate it of what Staffing you mean yeah yeah who's who's who what jobs fall into certain categories because you know set like instruction we want to I you know I was just one does the assistant

046principles um um counselors all that fall into instruction you know who what categories what jobs fall into instruction which ones fall into facilities so here's what i' Adra yeah here's what I'd offer up this the cot of Virginia and I can share that with you that details it but it's not detailed enough we can actually give you the list of Staff in the school division without giving names but the list of positions yeah just the position just position and what which one of these functional categories they fall into right right cuz when you're doing the budget you need to know yes and because you were talking about that 65% need to go into instruction and I know we're short in a lot of categories especially with in the elementary school with u sped kids you

047know and we short um reading specialist we short a lot of things so that we need to get certified people we have people but we got a lot of substitutes so I was just wondering what fall into what yeah yeah these and then we have student um Support Services that fall you I I like to know what where that fall because we got a lot of jobs that might fall in somewhere else that's all so you can have instructional for example you can have instructional costs that that are actually uh here in the central office it it really depends on what the costs are too so it gets pretty it gets reasonably complex um the one last thing I'll mention about this Mr miles is that what you don't see on here because it's only

048the general fund you don't see food service that's kind of a glaring emission right then there are a couple of other items that you don't see here as well but when I Shar with the board when we shared the code of Virginia sections and the detail of what there is and here in Petersburg you'll see all of those categories I think there are nine or 12 of them because I know a lot of our food services come from Federal grant right that's correct so that wouldn't be on here anyway cuz that's not general fund correct okay all right and I just have one question yes sir I know that we'll be voting on this when we get to the action but are you planning to give us are you all planning to give was a

049detailed budget booklet uh the intention is to produce a budget booklet and I'm going to I'm going to put Dr greywood here on the spot um the intention to produce a produce a budget book that is similar maybe not quite as thorough but similar to what was produced by the finance staff here in 2018 which is a year that we won I think it was the probably the asbo and the gfoa awards was very detailed budget book so yeah we're it's on intention to do that and I hope we can submit it for the award this year as we have in Prior years or in that one prior year excuse me okay because I think what Mr M is asking I think it would be in that booklet yes it it would be in that

050booklet yes sir okay thank you any other questions thank you we appreciate it thank you thank you Mr wford thank you Dr grey for your work on our first budget together thank you so much thank you board chair pet and school board members for our second U presentation of the evening we have our February 2025 monthly update of the budget given by Dr maias grawood our Chief Financial Officer thank you um thank you Miss Brown thank you uh Mr Pritchard uh board members um my name is Maas greywood and I'm presenting the update the budget update for February 2025 next slide please um prior to going into the numbers I just wanted to update uh the board that we've received the draft uh FY 2024 audit report and from the last presentation that the auditor

051did he was he agreed that April 16th he would deliver that report here as a presentation next slide please here's the uh update for the general fund 01 and uh from that detail you can see that FY 25 the budget was 67 million expenses as of 2025 February 38.9 million and the balance is 28.4 million in that fund next slide please and you can see in Grant uh in food service and grants uh the budget expenses um the budget for um FY 25 is 5.1 million for fund two which is school Food Service the expenses as of February is 2.6 million and the balance is 2.49 million the uh current budget is 27 million as of February we've spent 15 million and the balance is 12.2 million you could look at uh you could see

052that in the operations and maintenance uh category there's a 14 14.7 th000 positive balance this is an update from the last update where Mr Lundy had asked a question about that amount being negative and we looked into it and I told you what the problem was it's now been corrected and so going forward you would see that it would be uh a positive number that the Greatwood just want to stop you really quickly so can you go back to that number that says in fund seven I think it says operations and maintenance can you make sure that that number is correct I know you said 14,000 something so can you just confirm what that number is as far as the the um I guess overage or the additional funds that we have left 14,317 okay

053perfect thank you it's not yeah just it's a small number but it's not 14 million it's 14,000 right okay did I say million I'm sorry we don't have that kind of money thank you Dr G thank you for correcting me I appreciate it Miss Brown okay all right so um the total of the um food service and um grants fund um the total budget is um 27 million and the balance now is 12 million on all funds the budgeted amount was 94 million uh what was expensed was 54 million and a balance a total balance of 40 million and I'll take it uh to the next slide for questions if you have any on that update next slide please oh questions before I move on to the next any questions on the first two slides

054I just want to share go to the first slide and I did speak with Dr greywood go back first I'm sorry the yes right there the first chart yes thank you I did speak to Dr greywood because one of the things I noticed that we were missing was the local funding that showed us what city council gave us and where we are how much they owe us that usually was presented in our general fund so he's going to put that in next next month in next month's uh presentation we would include um the Revenue side of the city we would provide a budgeted amount um as of March we would provide all the uh the revenue received and then what's remaining for the rest of the fiscal year thank you for bringing that up and

055for pointing it out problem go to the next slide next slide can you explain to us well all those are fun number seven but people Transportation operation and maintenance de service and trans and fund transfers and Technology with with those small amounts what are we going to do when the money runs out what are we talking about that service and see you have the balance over there what balance see you have um let's look at people Transportation you have a balance of $667 oh that's in fun s yeah grants that's Grant yes so when out that's it yes okay so your um maintenance and operation 14,000 what happens with that if we run out of money in there which I don't think we will towards the if you look at the balances we have um

056opportunities to shift those into general fund okay okay okay so Dr greywood just for clarification so these are grants funds and so after we've EX usted all of the grants funds for these particular funds if there is some additional funds that are needed we have the ability to shift from General funds to take care in federal funding category we have uh budgeted annually 1.4 million and uh year-to dat expenditure in that category is 797 th000 and the balance outstanding uh in that fund is 62,000 next slide please in the nonfederal uh category we have 350,000 budgeted we have about 196,000 expenditure and a balance of 153,000 overall we budgeted between those two funds 1.75 million we've spent 993 th000 and a balance of 756 th000 in both funds is remaining next slide please questions any

057questions on headst thank you sir we appreciate it thank you board me board chairman appreciate I appreciate it thank you Dr greywood thank you board thank you board chair PR and school board members we'll now move to our next presentation of the evening starting with our schol Improvement Grant or our Sig presentation it'll be given by Miss April blunt um via Zoom there and when it came time for principles to be involved we make sure principles attended um as I said Dr Jackson um has spirit haded this from beginning to end not only working with the state department to make sure that will required but to also um include our stakeholders which are our principles to make sure that we have identified the needs for our students and this is supplemental needs then you can

058see as we go through the process we had a time period back in November where we began to fill out and complete the applications that was done in consultation with the principles and their leadership staff so that they could identify the specific needs um and the resources that they were going to use in their school buildings um just moving on to December 30th 2024 um osq because we had submitted our applications provided us with feedback and that needed um and gave us um a lot of feedback our principles along with leadership took all of that feedback into consideration um put it back in the application and then submitted it on going down to February 19th 2025 um VOE um sort of finally gave us that thumbs of approval um for our TSI and TSI schools

059to receive the funding that they appli for and this is where um just picky back and off of what Mr Wallingford shared um was where we received some unanticipated funds that we had to scramble a little bit to see how we could sort of implement things one thing to share is and we'll talk about our comprehensive support schools um first um that is the three schools listed here C Elementary Lakemont and ver John's Middle School on the right you see the funding that was allocated for the schools the schools went through a rigorous process to get these funds one thing to note that the schools that are identified in this category are are are the lowest performing 5% of Title One schools in the state um and so these schools have fa to show improvement

060over time and so what the state is doing is trying to give some additional resources um coupled with um some evidencebased interventions that they would agree to um that helps to improve achievement um and some additional funding that will support those um evidence-based interventions these programs and activities that they have identified here these are things that we went back and forth with the state and had to make sure that there was research behind them um in order to implement them one thing just to note is some of the things that you see here um we have literacy and math camps reading tutors um Spanish um dictionaries for our byal students um lesson planning this isn't only funding that's going into the schools the schools also can couple this with their title one but this gives

061them an additional um Edge because there's some additional resources that they need on top of what title one and or local funds can provide so this is our CSI schools sort of in a nutshell one of the things that um also to note is our CSI schools were identified in all areas um as the lowest performing schools and so that's why um the funding limit was a maximum of 200,000 but you had to show um significant needs and this we pretty much got the max in all areas so CSI schools by themselves received about 558,000 9971 our TSI schools um we have two this year and the purpose of this funding also it's supplemental um of course you use your local funding first for our students need Title One funding is next and then our

062school Improvement funding is sort of like the sprinkle on the top the in order to for schools to be in this category um they had to have show two or more consecutive years um under performing in a subgroup and the subgroups that these two schools did show um was um our black and economic economically disadvantaged um subgroups and so the funding that was available for this category was was only 50,000 as the max again we work with the states um to identify based on the data and our leaders um what the $50,000 could best support for these particular schools um these schools selected reading tutors and math tutors in some cases um Math and Science using ISL to support supplement um some of the work and some of the teaching and learning that's going on

063um some consumable science kits for our students and um swivels and swivels is just to allow teachers to be able to deliver instruction sometimes recort that and you know have that available for students and so the total TSI funding that was available for these two schools is $97,200 and the last part of this is um the school Improvement oversight um one thing to note through this whole process it is a collaborative effort and when I say collaborative we have the support of the state um we have the support of our different departments curriculum and instruction um um accountability finance and Leadership um all working together with our schools to make sure that they're successful and not only in doing that um you can see on the side that this grant period which is a challenge

064um started October 1st 2024 so some schools were awarded way back then and has to be fully spent by September 2nd 2025 one nice thing is um we finally got the actual letter of approval in March even though it was approved in February the actual letter to say yes thumbs up we received in March so it's been a tight turnaround um again Dr n Carter Jackson is is the grant manager she's been able to work with the schools and this is the budget that you see in front of you um and the allocation and how schools are going to use their funds in the categories um that they have been approved she's been successful working with our department and the schools to make sure everything in the 3,000 categories and 6,000 categories that you see

065there which are Professional Services in software or resources for students are totally un purchased and so some of these things we're just waiting for them to come in the only funding that is still out there to be spent is what's here highlighted in yellow in the 1,000 and 2,000 categories and that's usually for planning meetings or data meetings whatever um was approved in each one of the grants so one thing to note is to make sure that we have adequately spent um and beginning to implement the state will be doing a monitoring they'll be doing two different types one with the division level Staff first in April just to talk about where we're at um the supports that we have in place for our schools the monitoring that will happen um and the second meeting

066would be with the principles that they're scheduling it where they go around and actually see these things along with other good instruction that's going on in the buildings implemented um and give us feedback we and um the federal programs office and finance are making sure that we're monitoring making sure everything is documented so we'll be doing some fiscal internal audits um to support them and we'll go out and make sure that the items that we have purchased actually came and we see see them in progress and so the total funding um allocation um for with this grant is $656,000 um dollars approximately that has to be completed and spent by on September the 2nd any questions any questions from board M yeah go back to that last screen it was it was really it's I

067guess it's hard for the public to see but right there when you say um um meeting and planning and what's that figure is that for meeting so for late mon um they have about $112,000 approximately 12,000 Vernon John's has approximately 27,000 and Pleasants Lane has about um 15,000 and and and so this is a weekly meeting meeting so this these these meetings can happen from now until September so um principles for example may have data meetings where they're Hing in on certain subgroups and they may be after school they could be on weekends um and when they do have these meetings they're able to pay their staff after hours to attend the meetings and get the work done because they may be doing data Dives um they may be doing some because hey I might

068see that my students are struggling or doing well in an area and we need to rearrange things to make sure that you know students are successful and that um teachers um have adequately been able to plan so the money is actually for the two PID teachers to stay after hours um whether that be on Saturdays or after school okay I just want to make sure that's what that I had the complete understanding of it so we're actually paying them to come to the meeting to improve that's right and so so these meetings are probably going to be on top of other meetings that they already have because we know that teachers have planning meetings during the day but sometimes you know particularly at quarters end or something like that you may have to do a

069little bit extra and that's what this money is for for those extra meetings or if they you know go out and have you know some type of meeting to bring external um make sure that everyone even the public understand what we're doing here with this grant money because when you're spending money like that a lot of people say well what are we really paying paying for in these meeting we actually paying for personnel and people that come in to do the training something like that plus the teachers that being there and that's a that's a lot of effort on the side on behalf of the central office to get a grant to pay them to come to meeting where they need to be studying to I mean planning to improve in these areas of reading

070and math and different things like that so that it's a great effort going forth to help our teachers to help our kids so but when you look at the budget I know a lot of people might see that might not understand what it's fault that's why I asked the question yes any other questions and this is also board members this is also under action also to approve for Dr Jackson and to move forward no other questions thank you m thank you next we move to pspc teacher Recruitment and Retention efforts Dr long L thank you Dr um long Lang our new um assistant superintendent of Human Resources thank you so much for bringing the report this evening to talk about our recruitment um efforts here in Petersburg thank you good evening board chair Vice chair

071superintendent board members and attendees it has been an exciting 7 and A2 weeks since I first joined Petersburg City Public Schools so what I'll be providing to is 7 and 1/2 weeks of high Lev information which plans to bring you more drill down data in the future so thank you for the opportunity to present this information on Recruitment and attention as we gear up for 2025 2026 next slide please in our quest for continuous Improvement we're reviewing recruit Recruitment and Retention through the lens of these five tenants data analysis sharing our story optimizing resources growing our own and the employee experience I will also provide an update on recruitment visits um that we have taken and that we have upcoming next slide please this graphic represents the intersectionality of each of the five tenants that

072I just described next slide please tenet one data analysis we are analyzing our data we separate it into two parts positions and Personnel the first area we are examining is position control which is the process of ensuring that every position we have is identified correctly with the position code is tied to a funding source and is vacant filled or abolished next we are looking to determine if there is a person attached to the position which is what drives our vacancy report which should align to our job postings having a clear picture of this data is going to help us to ensure that we are recruiting for the right positions for Petersburg City Public Schools this process in partnership with business and finance has allowed us the opport un to review our systems and get additional

073training on how to run reports to make this data easy and more accessible we have partnered with school-based administrators as well to validate our staffing sheets and review employee intent responses to help create a clean report for position allotments simultaneously we are looking closely at our teacher certification data to determine what supporters needed for our teachers that are not yet certified while this quantitative data will help us with recruitment it is equally important to us to capture the thoughts of our current employees so for that we will be conducting a post survey which will gain insight into employees perceptions of their working conditions as well as collect data on how they feel about the benefits program next slide please tenant two sharing our story we are making our rounds to attend Career Fairs both near

074and far to share the possibilities in Petersburg from these job fairs we are able to excuse me increase visibility about the division and collect information for individuals who may not have considered a career in education we will be creating email campaign so that we can Target recruit these individuals to ensure that Petersburg City Public Schools is on their radar every employee is a recruiter and by sharing our how much we enjoy working here we can encourage others to come and be a part of what we're doing here we have extended our Network to include principles in recruitment fairs to ensure that they have the opport to meet candidates firsthand and share opportunities they have at their respective schools we're also expanding our online presence by utilizing LinkedIn updating information on our website and updating our

075paraphernalia that we passed out that represents the Petersburg City Schools brand lastly and most excitingly we are in the process of transitioning from Keystone to Frontline formerly known as APPL track which is an applicant tracking system that is more common in education which will allow candidates to be able to apply with one application but be able to reach multiple districts so we're looking to integrate that process within the next 60 days next slide please tenant three optimizing resources we are prioritizing our funding to focus on programs to increase efficiency communication and eliminate common barriers teachers face when completing required courses for certification Frontline which is the system we will be moving to Will allow us to create emails within the system to provide immediate responses to candidates and allow them to track where they are

076in the pipeline moving from paper to electronic forms via DocuSign increases accountability and ensures we're following prescribed processes in alignment with board policy proximity learning has also been utilized to provide instruction during the gaps when we are actively recruiting candidates one of the most common barriers to teacher certification is cost so we are revisiting funding sources to continue to and to revamp tuition reimbursement and assistant initiatives to continue to provide bonuses for our teachers as well as reimbursement the second most common barrier that teachers encounter when trying to acquire licensure is testing so we are continuing our partnership with study.com which is a nationally recognized source self-paced to help our teachers prepare to pass their practice exams next slide please tenant 4 grow your own grow our own we have Partnerships with colleges and universities

077near and far and we have the opportunity to improve and enhance our Workforce by investing in our very own people here in Petersburg City Public Schools we have also most recently been awarded a grant to begin a middle school core program in the amount of $10,000 outside of our colleges and universities we also have a partnership with the program I teach which provides two tracks for teach to become licensed they can obtain their provisional license and once they have acquired that they can also move through the program to acquire their full us Collegiate professional license thank you Dr Lan I just want to just just take a minute and take a look at our University Partnerships I know that this is not an exhaustive list but I definitely want to highlight the fact that we

078as we work with our I see I see our I see you say VCU Heroes program I think it's Virginia state yes is our her Heroes program so it should say VSU Heroes um is a part of our Partnerships and of course we in Petersburg have a close partnership with Virginia State University for Our Heroes program and that's one of the ways that we are absolutely growing our own so I just wanted to make a correction to our slide where it says VCU Heroes but it's actually VSU and we're excited about that and we're going to continue that great partnership and I know that you've been here for a short time so we just want to make sure that we get that updated yes ma'am thank you um in alignment with with Miss Brown share

079our partnership with James uh Madison University also partners with a bright Point Community College and a 2 plus two program or it allows individuals who have not yet acquired the associates degree to go to the program there and we have uh three candidates who have expressed interest in that program thus far um for our VCU RTR program we have three potential candidates um that we are looking at with that program U they have assured us that throughout the issues they may be having with funding that we will be able to move forward with our cohort this year and both Regent University and and Canyon University offer discounted rates to our employees to take course work towards completing their lure programs next slide please lastly tenant five is about enhancing the employee experience the most effective

080recruitment tool is retention our goal is to create a positive experience from the time applicants apply until they retire we are reestablishing best practices within human resources to create a seamless onboarding process conduct regular orientations reprise recognition and rewards programs and improve professional growth opportunities based on some of the feedback we have already received turnover is costly and affects the performance of our schools so we are re-energizing our staff by ensuring that we are listening to their needs and providing supports and responsiveness in a timely manner sh outlines respectful treatment of employees at all levels is the number one concept to make a lasting impression on employees so we're ensuring that we are being responsive to emails visits calls and text so the employees know that we care about their concerns and we are working

081as fast as we can to find resolves to the concerns that they bring to us we are excited to complete our data cleansing project that we've been working on for the past few weeks produce our staffing sheets to our schools and departments and transition to our new recruiting hiring and onboarding platform in Frontline we feel confident that these new processes that we're implementing and by reinvigorating processes that were in HR before will help us to recruit quality talent to Petersburg City Public Schools as well as retain the quality talent that we have next slide please you notice at the bottom right of the screen is a hashtag which says transform with us when we look online at different uh School divisions we notice that they have usually a three-word catchphrase a call to action that

082tells you what they're about what they stand for their core values and how they want you to come and be a part of their team so in that same vein we have adopted the H transform with us in alignment with the superintendent vision of transformation within the district thus far we've been able to recruit at the following places that you see on your screen there was a local job fair at the library uh in January o minion University Virginia State University Christopher Newport University James Madison University and Longwood University next slide please as we continue on our recruitment Journey we were at um brigh point on yesterday we had faille State University today we also had the perk career fair in Pennsylvania is to continue to recruit and retain individuals within our division we are

083peeking into our retirees so we're looking at Gathering a list to see if we have retired who are interested in coming back to support us in the district through the opportunities available in our critical staff shortages as well as mentoring opportunities that we want to re-embed into our schools for our beginning teachers we're also exploring the opportunity of perhaps looking at International teachers and of course we are always looking internally for tap talent in Petersburg City public schools that we can grow and cultivate to move into positions throughout our division next slide please thank you for your support as we get the right people who want to do the right thing right here in Petersburg to transform with us I know I went through that fast so I apologize this is my first presentation since

084I've been here but so I'm happy to answer any questions that you may have any question I'm start I just had one um amazing um presentation um and thank you for the information internal HS um I know or is it can you kind of go through that process um is it like a typical standard High you where they just go through and fill out the application or is there something different um because I know there's been quite a few people that I've had conversation with that have expressed um you know that transfers within um internity so can you kind of explain the process so um I can tell you what I've learned thus far so um I understand that there are transfers that have to be brought to the division so lateral transfers are typically

085if you teach um high school English uh and you want to move from maybe Pitman that works with secondary to the high school that's a lateral transfer um in special education there are more uh robust opportunities because we have special education at all schools so I believe that our director of special ed is very involved with our principles and making recommendations for those transfers based on whether they have the Adaptive or the general C curriculum certification and the needs of those respective schools so right now what I understand is that there are conversations amongst leadership to fill needs as necessary in alignment with certification moving forward as we move into our new system we want to have a complete transparent process where although individuals have the opportunities to select transfer on the intent form that

086doesn't guarantee that they're going to be moved that's an opportunity for to make that request and then in in my vision there would be a posting and an application process so that we have Equity amongst all of our positions and then principes have uh more say so and who's coming into their respective schools okay Mr PE yeah U thank you ma'am uh Dr Long L you're right you you shot right through that thing how fast HR moves but I do have a question um and uh you moved through it kind of quickly but you you did catch my attention on slide six uh and what you were explaining uh and typically what we get is this and I'm just going to speak for you know from what a board member might get from someone uh

087asking a question of how you know do you respond back or do we respond back when they apply and uh what I've heard I've heard a lot but what I've heard typically is um why is it we don't respond I I knew you said something about it why is it we don't respond uh we haven't heard uh I I applied uh I got a response that you got it but you didn't tell me anything thereafter so it's they were in limbo and um application May sit there sit there sit there then they'll call us back and make the comment you know I never heard anything from anybody so uh what I'm my question is uh from the time somebody submits and I know you're working on this I got that the curiosity would be if

088I apply I'd like to know one if you got it let's just say you got it two uh um when will we respond to that just to Simply say that we'll be back in touch what happened to the application uh something as simple as uh was I accepted or not a recommendation um some some something some kind of a measure to let somebody know that we're paying attention to it and not just forgotten um what portion of that will we see or will will the public know when you if they apply okay great question um that type of feedback is exactly why we're transitioning away from the system we have now um we have several issues um sometimes candidates cannot upload their information so we may not get it um there's some instance if you

089have applied before it would not let you go in and apply again and so that makes it difficult and that's a barrier for candidates so as we move into front line those pipelines that I mentioned will have trigger points within the process so the hiring managers and the candidates will know where they are so we're in the process of setting that up but there will be a response to to let them know that the application has been received and then there's a review process so it will let them know that they're under review and then we'll have emails set up if they are not selected for the position or if they may possibly be considered for another position because of course they can apply for many positions at the same time but what's great about

090it is if they're applying for multiple schools the hire manager will be able to see where they are in the process of the other school as well so we don't have this internal competition uh amongst each other and candidates and principles can become frustrated in the process so what we're doing is setting it up in the system so that it's more automated because we do get a high volume of emails and sometimes a high volume of applicants and so it may not be possible for every one of us to respond but what we are able to do is set those triggers up and so that the managers and the candidates can see where they are in the process okay that's great because there are a lot of grand candidates out there we don't want to

091miss anybody absolutely my last question um and um I we saw what was it slide 10 11 where we were talk about recruitment uh what I mean the uh setting up the um U your recruitment where you're going out how uh AR range and I know money is has a lot to do with how far out we go um and I'll use um I'll use a candidate that had applied from Great Britain and I'm sure they got it offline but for us going out to recruit we have a range uh California uh Seattle Washington um and and I know that uh budgets have can restrict us but um what I would like to see us you know extending our recruitment range uh because uh we have a lot of staff that have come in from

092everywhere all over the country you know we can get teachers from everywhere all over the country and Beyond so um just curious to see if we can extend that range sure um one of the ones that you will see the one that we actually have two employees at today is in Pennsylvania which is the perk um Pittsburgh education Consortium career fair and so we have expanded our reach Beyond just Virginia uh and North Carolina so what we're looking at is trying to find um universities or colleges that have a military connection because we're close to a military base and we have the troops to teachers alternative licensure program so we can tap into that resource U we're expanding our own networks that's why we're also including our principles so that they can tap into their

093networks at the respective institutions that they have attended and so we feel like U tapping into those specific areas tapping into our internal folks and their networks is going to help us expand so we are already thinking in that vein um as far as moving out uh we're expanding our reach into North Carolina already um previously we just explored Elizabeth City State University but you'll see on the screen we're looking at East Carolina University and the University of North Carolina at pimbrook that have specific teacher education Career Fairs and as we move forward in the future yes there are budgetary constraints because we try to keep registration fees at around $300 but certainly uh have money we travel okay all right that's fair that's fair I like see how far we travel thank you yes

094sir Mr um excellent presentation thank you the key to any business is customer satisfaction and I'm glad to see that we're heading in that direction with petburg City Public Schools because that's been one of our obstacles in the past thank you very much thank you okay before I before I ask other questions you said you had some ones up in up in Philadelphia at a conference right now um what what is that conference again that's the perk the Pittsburgh education Consortium career fair okay and that's um and um those are stud tell me what type of people come come to that career fair that's all careers or just educational education all education yes sir Pittsburgh in Ohio or Pennsylvania and Ohio traditionally they had an abundance of teachers and so when I worked in K12

095before we tried to Target those areas where they had more teachers than they had jobs and this was one of the ones that was successful in the past so we thought we would try it out this year and see you know what our yield may be okay um and that's good to know because I've been suggesting that we go to teachers conferences for for the recruit but you see we got all we have all these colleges up here how how many certified teachers do we think you would get coming straight out of college none correct they had lur historically I don't think we've had any High numbers well lur teachers coming straight out of college do do that exist uh yes there are teachers who still graduate from teacher education programs and for an example

096we are setting up a table at Virginia Commonwealth University because we already have an established partnership but when we reached out to them they responded that the majority of their teachers that are graduating with a license already have jobs okay but we still want to you know have visibility and get there because there may be some other candidates who may not have been picked up yet or that may be eligible for the alternative license program so those that have high populations of uh teachers coming out already licensed they get grabbed up very quickly so part of our work in that is when we're going to Career Fairs is asking for list of those graduates so we can have those email campaigns and again keep Petersburg on their radar Okay the reason why I was said

097the reason why we're asking that because they coming out of college fully licensed right yes okay so they was in the educational area now we were looking for U I suggested in um every every year include things like the national science teacher Association conference that's in Philadelphia that's in Philadelphia also if you looking for a science teacher why not go where the science teachers are and and recruit from their other places because um a lot of the people people that we're getting out of college they're not fully licensed so the thing is is that I don't know if we getting any straight out of college fully licensed so that's a that's another thing but if you want to get someone that's fully licensed go somewhere where the teachers are fully licensed at these conf different

098conferences because they got dozens of them all over the country that you go to these teachers conferences and you can set up something to recruit there um uh we have to do something different you know we can't keep doing the same thing you know um um I would like to see you present this back at the at the beginning of the year with all these colleges on here just like you got them and show us how much you got out of who you got from each one whether you got anybody from any of them to to put it up there so we can see our efforts because the thing is that we might have to change our Focus even though we keep these Partnerships but we might had to concentrate on in other areas to

099to to get people here uh do we have any um programs where we network with other locals Across the Nation where we do just like student you know exchange student exchange teachers so they can get a urban experience to a to a a rural experience to a Metro experience and stuff like that to help round teachers and training cuz if they already doing that you'd be surprised somebody might come come here and want to want to stay you know do we have anything like that I'm not sure but on the last slide and what we're looking at is at the possibility of exploring International teachers so there's a program um that I've worked with before in North Carolina called uh it used to be called vif but it's called participate learning now and they do

100a little bit of what you just described where they have licensed International teachers and they come over to uh the United States to teach in various areas they're risking rewards uh with that just like there is with going to Career Fairs but willing to be Innovative to get the best folks here in front of our students yeah and with the growing um Latino population I would like to see some Midwest U focuses on there where we could or somewhere in in uh Florida or somewhere like that where we can bring in people that um multi language you know second language English that second language because we going to need them because sometimes in U different situations in the school system we have a communication problems but we don't have enough people like that so we

101need that English Second Language U also so that could be another Focus to recruit teachers you know area where we can recruit yeah but um we we really done fell short in the past not you cuz you just got here but I told in the past we had really fell short with this effort and um and um so we really need to improve that it might you might need some other help from us the board to change the way change policies and change even even salaries because I think if if if you starting a license to teach out the same thing as a um what's the other one provisional license that's not fair you know you got you got things like that going on that you know if I'm paying you this amount then I'm

102going to pay a licensed person the same amount to start out that's that's not fair you know so we need to have a difference in that and U same thing you know then people with Masters and LIC you know you got it's a it should be more incentive there but um especially when we recruiting the highest paid um teacher in Virginia starting starting salary is that s still Arlington Mr prer do you know or it's Virginia Beach it's probably is Northern Virginia yeah yeah and uh so the thing is is that we got the need here we spent a lot of money on on on trying to get teachers ready you might need to look at your salary and make that more attractive too y thank you for that recommendation uh one of our first

103efforts is the superintendent's proposal for the $7,500 bonuses if approved because that's going to be targeting um certified teachers but Port well taken and we we're excited to venture into bonuses bonuses and incentives are not salary what I'm saying is I just just give you an example if you starting out uh um provisional license teachers at just example I just said 52 okay and then your licensed teachers start out at 65 and then not I'm just giving you an example what what what what would be more attractive and then the one with the master start out at 7even now that's a difference but the thing is you done did all your work to get licens and you starting out the same thing as a provisional that makes no sense none whatsoever it should be at

104least of uh $8 $10,000 difference in those two teachers because we want the licensed teachers so the thing is and then you put that Master to it that's another $5,000 so we have to make we have to look at it like that and stop saying every everyone's the same everyone is not the same so the thing is that and we got to create that now um so I understand the incentive okay we give them some money to sign up but we need a salary to keep them not Inc okay but that's just a that's what she Shar oh she already shared that yeah oh oh oh oh yeah yeah cuz you s you sounded just laer okay well we talked about it before but I didn't I didn't know you know the way you look

105go ahead well anyway uh those teacher conferences are the ones that I think if you go to the ocean if if you're looking for a Shar you wouldn't go to the lake you go to the ocean so if you if you want to a certified teacher and go to teacher conference we might want to pick out a few of them to go to to Teachers Conference especially science Teachers Conference cuz we really hurting in them um Miss Pro I would like to reiterate something Mr miles has said um though he he's done a good job of it himself but I'm another voice um you're new here and I have heard Mr miles bring up this very thing about attending conferences where teachers go as opposed to just going to Career Affairs I have a human

106resources background where we did career Affairs and now I wasn't recruiting for teachers but I know just based on the number of uh people graduating from teacher colleges you're not going to get a lot of teachers so I would challenge us to do what he has suggested before and even now is to go to some teacher conferences because I think you'll get some quality people there perhaps I don't know that okay yes ma'am I just want to share with Mr M and we've shared this with with the board also we are putting together um the mayor asked us to put together a proposal what the starting salary be for new teachers at 60,000 and we and we're also including what it would be to move a teacher that's already that's not making 60 but would

107have to make more than 60 how much it would cost to move them up also so we're putting that together to present that to city council also any anyone else okay when we had the gentleman that was going out with the trying to get teachers were we successful in this at all talk about last year yeah no we we didn't receive an update that was from Mr Brown I don't know if he still has that or not is he still recruiting Mr Brown yes yeah that's that was last [Music] year yes he still works here you haven't seen him let me turn my mic on all right thank you thank you oh no thank you Miss Long thank you Dr Long Lang for your presentation I know you'll be coming back to provide updates so

108thank you very much for your first couple of weeks in Petersburg we have lots of work to do but we have already started and we have had some great starts so thank you mve okay thank you board chair PR and school board members tonight we have our final presentation of this evening which is a attendance Plan update and so I will bring to the podium Dr Yas M gay our chief um of staff and then Mr Paul Brown our chief academic officer to just to give a brief update on our attendance plan and the proc and where we are at this moment in Petersburg related to our attendance data thank you um and we will try to be brief we are the last presentation so we will try our best um good evening uh board

109chair Pritchard Vice chair Pierce and our esteemed board our superintendent Brown our community members that are here and our staff also uh good evening my name is Dr yasman Gay uh Chief of Staff I am here with our wonderful Chief academic officer Paul Brown um and we will be giving you an update on our attendance plan um just earlier today we had an opportunity to celebrate our students um I hope this is another celebration because we met a milestone so um here we go next slide all right for our agenda um the first thing we will do is just to give a summary um just a reminder of why we're doing this a focus on improving attendance and reducing chronic absenteeism um our board set a goal that we had to meet for 2024 our

110comparison attendance data we will talk about as well um our superintendent uh attendant attendance policy recommendation so our superintendant will talk about recommendations to our current attendance policy and we'll also talk about some enhancements that we've made to our attendance plan um and it's broken down into three buckets one is what is our division's responsibility um also responsibility for our principles and schools and also our family and Community responsibility um Dr Lee is here and we'll be sharing uh in with us as well next slide all right as I mentioned our board set a goal in 2024 of a decrease and chronic absenteeism at 3% so um just to talk about what our continuous School support will be at the school level and also at the division level just briefly um our attendance collection and

111our definition of what attendance is we have to be very clear about what we mean about that and our schools and our division understanding um what and how data is collected uh weekly meetings with attendant secretaries at the school level um so you'll see these are are multiple indicators that we are zoning in on in our Improvement plan at the division level we mentioned before that we have convened um an attendance task force and as you know a task force is brought together to solve a problem right and so just want to recognize members of our task force uh janesa je Jefferson our um truy lead uh Jesse Chavis discipline coordinator Alicia Fields principal of Petersburg High School Joy Lowry who is our director of secondary education relle Hines who is our supervisor of research

112Dr Darda Jackson uh Miss April blunt Dr Brandy Lee who is our coordinator of family engagement our CEO Paul Brown Jamal Ellison um our director of programs for communities and schools is also partnering with us Wanda Stewart who's the CEO um yes janesa Jefferson I did mention her thank you Mr Brown Dr Tory Manson who's our director of special education um we are moving to advance our task force because we want to get multiple perspectives um we will be having a student as a part of our attendance task force to give us feedback um also teachers and community members so please look out for that next slide so here is our data um and I always say I'm put my data analyst hat on um we slice the data in a couple of ways one

113is with our subgroups and I want you to pay close attention to our particular subgroup groups as you can see overall there has been an average decrease in chronic absenteeism across the board with our subgroups there's been some increases here um with our subgroups as well um you can see with our multi-race students there's a slight increase there um and also with our Asian students but when you look across the board there has been a slight decrease in chronic absenteeism um between and let me just mention this our comparison from the 2023 2024 school year and this year our 2024 and 2025 school year next slide so as I mentioned we will be very intentional when we share data with the board and also the Community First you saw the subgroup from 2023 2024 end

114of school year to this year to date yes thank you to date which is March also you can see and and this is more of like an analytic kind of number um is that uh when we talk about variance from last year to this year in comparison um we have been there's been a change 8.16% in the right direction almost a 10% change right so that's big for a school district it really is is a 10% change but we can do more again although we exceed it slightly that tells a lot about there has been some practices that we put in place that have been very successful having a chance to talk to uh Vice chair Pierce that means that we need to set the bar higher and we a little bit more teeth and

115accountability so I hand it over to our superintendent over to our superintendent thank you Dr Gay um school board members I just want to draw your attention to some revision recommendations based on the feedback from our task force and so I'm asking um the school board and I'll work um closely with Mr pritet and the team to talk about a couple of different things that we're we're requesting um for our policy and so we're going to start with accountability really quickly we want to in our policy really outline the and determine and put in writing for everyone what is the accumulated amount of tardies that equate to an absence so if you're a tardy 3 days or 5 days does that equate to being absent from school and so we need to clearly outline that

116we're recommending that for our policy we're also asking that we look at how to determine impact on attending graduation ceremony so how many days a student has missed if a student has missed 18 days or 25 days or 30 days are they still able to participate in the graduation ceremony because we want to make sure that we figure out if we can tie their ability to participate to the number of times that they have been absent during their that school year especially as a senior then we also want to look at accountability around acceptance of a certain number of Parental excuse notes we know that it is very easy for us to generate a note when you are out we need to really look at in our policy we're asking if we can include how

117many notes that we really want to have to say this is the number of notes that we're going to accept as it relates to your student being absent and being excused and so these again just suggestions for our policy review then we're also looking for our clear definitions of absences what is excused and what is unexcused we really want our policy to outline that we want legal vacation absences that are included and what are non-school related Sports because we do have students who participate how do we Define that is that an absence or are we allowing our students to go participate in something different that has nothing to do with their school related um um attendance for example we have lots of AA stud students who have to travel I was a a mom so

118I understand going all over the country for sports how do we treat those absences when they have to leave on a Friday and they're not in school we want to be really really thoughtful about that in our um absence in our policy and then we want to be really clear as a division we're recommending treny versus chronic absenteeism if a student misses the established number of days they may fail for the quarter so if you miss 30 days so that no one is unclean clear and then lastly looking at virtual learning so what is determined seat time minutes for attendance do we as we look at we're not going to move forward this next year um because we have so many things on the plate to talk about any type of virtual learning program right

119now we're going to take some time to think that through but as we think about it how do we allow students to make up absences okay do we establish a policy for virtual absences how do we do that so we want to make sure that we just want to dig deeper into policy so I just wanted to bring these really quickly for the board to just start thinking about as we try to refine the policy thank you superintendent um just want to mention something before Dr Lee starts um our attendance task force we looked at policies from our surrounding divisions and we were able to make some comparisons and there were some things that we wanted to add to our own policy or make recommendation to the superintendent um to create more accountability around our

120policy I just wanted to mention that and thank you to our attendance task force for that work session thank you and so right where we are we want to take um the recommendations that are being made by the superintendent and once those recommendations to policies have been approved we want to make our parents aware of the changes to those policies because one of the things that we truly believe is that the work of attendance um and reducing our rat of chronic absenteeism it is is the work of everybody it's the work of our School Division it is the work um of those in our local community and it is the work of those um in our school communities but it's also the work of our families and so we want to make sure that our

121families are aware of the changes to those policies if they are proactive when they are setting appointments and carving away time from school just as the superintendent mentioned but we also want to make sure that our parents know about opportunities to recover absences because things do come up and there are things that we cannot always plan for so we want to make sure that our parents know how their students can recover absences lastly we want parents at the table um in order to have real impact those that you are working with have to be at the table beside you and so we want to make sure that our parents are joining pack that they are joining their school PTA and that certainly once we get to that point that they are um participating in those

122attendance task force meetings as well and I know that Dr Gay has already been thinking about how to move those meetings to later in the day to be able to accommodate our parents as we move forward we really cannot round out this work without thinking about how our Community Partners can fit into this work as well and so our Community Partners need to be aware of the division attendance policy as well what I love about being able to work with over I don't know 20 25 Community Partners at this moment is that they want to be on the same page with us they want to know how they can help and so this is really important um Community Partners could also support uh the superintendent Vision around attendance by only scheduling our students to work

123after school shifts we have so many students that you know say they are missing out because they are at work and sometimes we're out in the community and we see our students and so I think this is an opportunity for our Community Partners um our local employers to walk hand inand with our school division to be able to achieve a common desire di outgo lastly we want to be able to work with chronic with our Community Partners to leverage their resources to mitigate the barriers that lead to Chronic absenteeism when you do a root cause analysis and understand why our students are absent to be able to have the resources to mitigate that barrier is an important support and then lastly and certainly but not least having our Community Partners at the tables alongside our

124team and our parents as well thank you so finally the attendance committee sat down and said what is the system that we're trying to to improve throughout our division and we talked about the system that we would like and first is that this the attendance committee is looking at how do we establish a division data collection analy um system um with that system I have to take off my glasses it talks about the importance of the role of the principal in it but it also talks about the responsibility of the division to create a system for monitoring attendance on a daily matter and so we are in the process of partnering with power school to look at our um current student information system to get it to a point where principles on a daily basis

125can pull the percentage of their attendance per class by um class period And by day and so we really want our principles to have that attendance at hand those percentages at hand the other piece is that the principles really felt like that this was a attendance is a priority for them as the instructional leaders of the school they really want to talk about how do we hold make school more engaging for our students so one of the things that um principls have done this current school year they have had attendance parties there um some class of being honored for making perfect attendance and so they're doing lots of things to get um kids engaged the other piece is that they're looking at as we roll out the instructional framework kids come to school when three

126things occur one they have that teachers are excited about kids and show that they love kids two when classrooms are structured and when kids feel safe and so we are really working around how do we make our classrooms more Eng engaging for students how do we support our teachers to create more engaging classrooms and so principles are really owning the instructional leadership component the other one is establish in school-based teams and so we're actually going back looking at our current attendance plan we're revamping those members on the team Dr Gabe mentioned making sure that we have a student involved where they are currently some of our schools have principles have established student committees where they're actually meeting with students um getting feedback for students about what can we improve this afternoon I actually had a

127um the privilege of attending Petersburg High School the speech um competition and at the end I was talking to one of the winners and I asked I said what other things would you like to see at Petersburg what kind of clubs to make Petersburg High School more engaging and the students said that there are there lots of activities have been happening this school year compared to this year and I said what what other things what You' like to have and and he just kept saying more clubs um at the middle school level today we had this morning we had principal meeting and the principls are talking about things that we can do for this year to really get our kids um more engaged around learning as we close the year because our goal is to

128finish strong and Vernon Jones Middle School talked about adding some additional after school activities because when kids are engaged in school when they have something excited about it may be not be math but it may be a club that they're part of after school and so our our our principles are looking at what can we do differently next year to make our schools more engaging for our kids not just from an academic level finally there is a monitoring piece we're um the division will be also looking at establishing a division monitoring team that will also Monitor and support attendance and so we're really looking at revamping our whole attend attendance plan um based off our new policy but really looking at how do we support our principles and our schools and those attendance teams and

129making sure that we monitor attendance because you know we know that if kids are not in front of teachers they're not learning and so we want to make sure that we create an opportunity for our kids to be at school hold them accountable but also create an engaging environment for them and then the last piece is recognizing when our schools and our teachers and our teams and our students actually meet the goal for attendance and so um I know Miss fields at the high school they just had a um a dance um for kids and it was for the the 12th graders they were the highest had the highest attendance for this month and they had a dance one school had a a glow party um but they're doing different things to make sure that

130kids are engaged and I was talking to a teacher that explained um actually it was one of our instructional specialists was visiting a class monitoring a classroom and a student came in and the class stopped and clapped for the student because the teacher said thank you for being here we have perfect attendance and that class had perfect attendance for 20 days so our schools are doing some wonderful things to engage students um the attendance team is really looking at how do we build the infrastructure around to support monitoring attendance um and also looking at how do we revise our policy um based on the recommendations from the board Bas on the on the approval of the board not recommendations next slide that's it so I stop here and we'll have questions thank you Mr Brown

131thank you um Dr Gay and thank you Dr Lee for your attendance piece I just want to make sure that we highlight again that we are in the process of revamping our attendance plan but again as you heard the team talk about we actually are putting into place the attendance the required attendance teams at every single school and so we know that with all the things and challenges that you have in a school division what gets monitor gets done and so the attendance team is one big piece that is required that principes are leading those efforts and making sure that we have the right people on those teams so that you're always looking at What Child is not there today is Yolanda not there is Paul not there why are they not there and that

132you're not waiting two weeks later to figure out that they've already missed 10 days and so those attendance teams are one of the key strategies that we're implementing across the division and so if you haven't heard about the attendance team and in your school the principal should be able to speak to it because that is the strategy one strategy we're trying to use that's different and making sure that we're monitoring and supporting principles with the data so thank you team for your efforts of course we said we are excited about the 3% but that is today we got to make it into the end of the year so that we stay and that we continue to show a decrease in chronic absenteeism so with that thank you team for your work and I'll turn it

133over to watch thank you m brown Dr Gay um Mr Brown and Dr Lee thank you all um any questions from board members Miss tuer um I know um Miss Brown said that we're working to maintain do we have any personalized um School chronic aeny plans like do we have any plans that the actual attendance team has set together because every building is different every Comm every neighborhood is different so do we have a Target plan um per school and if not is that something that we can um get our schools or our um attendance team to work towards currently um we do have attendance plans at every school um that plan is based off of our previous attendance policy what this committee um has gathered around when we looked at that policy that policy

134created a division of how people are supporting attendance and and so for instance the treny officers were at the level three instead of being down at tier one what our team and I and I really appreciate the members of the attendance team we're looking at how do we revamp the support to make sure that everybody's involved at level one um and their support would change as it goes up the level but like right now we're looking at revamping our attendance policy to show that treny officers are part of the level one of the tier one piece of attendance but there is a policy correctly now and every school does have an attendance uh plan can I just add something just really quickly um thank you board member uh Tucker for asking that question um I

135call it individualized detention and so because each school has different context each team may look at different things based on what their data is telling them what the attendance task force is doing is providing that individualized support will be providing an individualized support for schools so if you can see can you go back to uh the last slide where we talked about systems of accountability and support so many of the things that you uh see may not look different from what you've done because uh board um member Tucker you've been a part of this work for a long time with with Dr Lee what I will what we're doing right now is we are tightening up our systems putting more systems in place for accountability and support that's what is different so again every principal

136will be leading their attendance teams that may or may not been happening at the schools and we will be monitoring and supporting that remember monitoring and support as a balance when we look at the attendance team they must have certain members of the team you can see that to get various perspective teachers social workers uh guidance counselors as M Mr Brown said students that will be a part of the core team to give perspective so when we think about what we're doing different or what we're trying to enhance is our accountability and support to improve attendance what the superintendent said what goes unmonitored goes undone so we have to make sure that we're creating a monitoring system as you said division oversight I will say what's also different too is that we did not have

137a division oversight around the we may had attendance teams at schools but we did not have a solid clear division oversight around attendance you can see we will be building an attendance dashboard which creates transparency around where our schools are on a continuous basis that joint responsibility so just thinking about school level we talked about at the school level accountability but also there's an accountability at the division level where we need to make sure we're providing that accountability and support well we're even saying hey Cool Spring I see there are 10 students right that have been absent let's have a conversation about that at your next attendance meeting at the division level we should be able to say that thank you thank you I'm sorry go ahead I'm sorry that was M Tucker's question any

138questions miss any questions right Mr um yes um I see you got the task force to create a policy I know budget and policy fall under is our main responsibility as a school board um or was any school board members invited to be on this task force to create this policy so we're not creating a policy we're creating a um we're we created recommendations for the board to look for this we're creating an attendance plan it will be our instruction it will be our plan for monitoring attendance right and if we adopt it it'll become policy right once you adopt it it will become share once you share the policy based of the recommendations then and the reason why I'm addressing the school board with this just like the budget I told you you need

139to know what you approving if you get it and you got go back there for a a one R and you got to become a expert on what they did and you're approving something that you really haven't had time to really look at and and and get a feel for it and get then give good suggestions because once we approve it it's not theirs no more is ours do you understand that that's why you need to get involved you need to educate yourself on everything that's going on you just can't leave it the chance even though they're experts still your input is final this board input is final once you approve it that's us you can blame them all you want but we the ones that approved it they didn't approve it we did so

140you really need to know what you're approving you need to be involved in these in in what's going on and and even if you got to inconvenience yourself like Mr Mr Pierce does every time we have a student hearing he's here all the time and he's driving a good little ways to get here and and and we're doing this because we we're willing to inconvenience ourselves to get the job done and so we have we need to really be incon be willing to inconvenience ourselves to really know this all the work that they doing that we're familiar with and that we understand why they chose these path that they take not in a one hour period of time but over a period of time to understand this is what we're approving this is why we

141need to approve it so it's very important that we're involved because that policy is ours that budget is ours once you approve it that's it you got to live with it so we we we need to get involved and um one thing I know about absenteeism and educating people that regardless of the policy we got to meet the students where they are and we got to come up with a policy that does that for Education not penalization but education so I encourage y'all to come up with a plan to the ones even the ones that don't come to school we got to find a way to educate them that's what should be in that policy when where do we draw that line where is a chronic aism set for example you can miss 18 10%

142is 18 days a year right cuz it's 180 days okay in that semester when they get to nine what are we going to do what are we going to do when they get to that nine nth day what are we going to do it should be in that policy clear this is what we're going to do and those those type of things don't exist and we need to look at that where do we draw that line when they get to that nth day in that semester so the thing is in accountability so please consider all those things and that definition you going to respond to it I will respond to you Mr M believe it or not you are correct we do need to um before they bring us anything pertain to a policy I

143a share on this brown we need at least one or two board members that would be on that committee to help to give input on that policy the making of that policy before it comes to the the board so so so they would need to appoint where we would need to appoint at least two individuals on that committee and I know the board might not everybody might not have the time to do it but the ones that can do it can we have a session where we look at it just us with the superintendent and review it and after everybody got it and read over don't come to the meeting if you didn't read over I'm telling you because that is so frustrating if you if you going to come work on it you haven't

144read anything you haven't done anything that is so frustrating to come up here and try to talk about something you're not familiar with that is so is so hard I'm not saying don't I'm not going to say don't come to me but I'm saying consider because when you come there and you didn't do your homework you didn't take time to to do it it's it makes it hard on everybody it does it make it hard on everybody and and I want you to get the best experience from it so yeah go ahead I going to shut up go ahead time is up good pre good presentation uh I was just wondering since we uh have decreased our absenteeism uh do we have any plans to celebrate districtwide with that 8% decrease 3 or will it

145be maybe something talking about yeah that is a great question I will take it back to committee I know that schools are doing individual c celebrations at their school um and that is a great possibility at the end of the year if we make our goal to do a a districtwide a division wide celebration as well yeah every opportunity we have to toot our horn we need to toot it thank you hopefully we can maintain because usually the worst money is the last month kids last month hi um Kimberly Mason um Cool Spring nurse um I just want to say um a lot of the recommendation that the superintendent has made um I just want to charge you just look at some of your old policies because some of the stuff has been already in

146the previous policies through um previous superintendence that was already policy for instance um for the tardies it used to be three tardies used to equal one absence M and it used to be um you only use that set two parent notes only that's right for the whole entire time and everything else it had to be a doctor's note mhm that's right you know so that was previous board policy um so I don't know what happened when it had got Revis but I would say just go back to previous policies back back in the day yeah but it used to be that way yeah yes I will say Mr preer that was one of the um principles who have been here before they kind of sh that dur the committee meeting same thank you Miss Tucker

147on one last thing um actually two I know um the task force and as Miss Brown stated we do have a lot of students that do play a is there um a window of opportunity for the the leaders of the Au groups to come in and sit on the task force because every year it's a big commotion around um football and basketball with our students going to Florida it has always been said that it is at the discretion of principles whether or not they will accept their excuses so we have a split it's split in the divisions some principles in schools will accept and some schools won't however I feel if we bring bring those coaches and those leaders to the table and kind of go over that chronic absentee piece with them I think

148it will kind of not eliminate but kind of reduce more because then we can hold them accountable on the court on the so I suggest that's a suggestion that I have um if we could and the other thing is with the data piece with the subgroups is it any way we can get a more detailed breakdown per school so that we can kind of what the targets are and kind of try to Target those I know like with ver John it may be whereas um blanford has a more reduced number than the actual ver John's School itself so if we could kind of get a breakdown um that would be great yes and that's that's also one of the improvements we're trying to make is where we can create an attendance profile per school and

149that it will be available to the public as well as to um at school level and that's one of those things that we trying to improve that's one of the recommendations from the committee M Mr um one thing about sanction events if for sports for sports if it's uh aaou Virginia High School league or anything that sanction that is on the calendar with the school is not supposed to c absente ism so is it sanctioned and do they have it on the calendar for these kids to participate if cuz if they absent they should be able to make up their work so for for any sanction event that they that that that team need to make sure it's on that that that principal have those kids and that list of names that go into this

150sanction event cuz those those kids is when it's sanctioned that mean everything is cover Insurance everything so they should that that that that's an absence that shouldn't be it shouldn't be an absence they should be able to make up their work to go to that event so that that so now they going to you events that haven't been approved and not on the um the the principal calendar knowing that they not going to be there and then you did they get a letter of the week before hey they going to this event it's not on we don't have it on the calendar you you you know even if it's sanctioned you know you should have got it on the calendar and the thing is we just just can't take your word for to just add

151something during the year you got to let us know at the beginning of the Season that you're not going to be here this day and then and it's a sanction event so some people just fly by night and it mess you up so I can see the problem with kids going to things especially young kids what the coaches didn't do the due diligence to get to do the leg work to make sure everything is taken care of because absenteeism is important and board member Tucker I do appreciate that offer because I there needs to be a bigger conversation because we want to create a whole student and that is academics as well as Sports and so we want to make sure that those stud students who are going away that we're not widening the Gap

152academically with them while they're away and so there needs to be a balance so the team would definitely be open to having those conversations appreciate it do we have two board members that's willing to serve When Miss Brown sets up her meeting you have a lot on your PL I had a lot on my plate man too much it's depend okay we start you okay we've got one that's good we one that's good that's good input make the and and if you can't make it let me know I'll be your alterate I got but student here take up a lot of time it takes up a lot of time I a i a taking [Music] St else thank you thank you next we'll move to public comment period public and staff comments are encouraged during

153the public comment period no person may speak on the issue for more than 3 minutes please give your name address award number when we come to the Podi and we have Miss L hi hello hello superintendent Brown Mr prer board member guest same person different story I am here for support and help I've had couple incidents happened on my bus since the last time I was at a board meeting and it's getting to be old and tiron when can we get some support when can we get some protection sooner or later might end up someone going to get really serious hurt and I'm not speaking for everybody I'm speaking for myself but I'm not the only driver that is having issues and it's out of my control now as soon as I retaliate or do

154something I might get ritten up or lose my job because I'm trying to protect myself and that's not fair to us you know we we out there by ourselves I know you guys say no but yes we are no help no support and my three minutes is up okay I just need help we need help thank you guys thank you thank you was there anyone else thank you got all right thank you Bo thank you board chair PR and school board members um it is the superintendent's recommendation that the school board approve the draft um FY 26 budget proposal in the amount of 89,1 18327 as provided to go before cancel to go before city council as approved you've heard the superintendent's recommendation is there a motion to accept so move by Mr Mr all

155in favor I oppos motion carries thank you P your p and school board members it is a superintendent's recommendation that the school board approved you perect thank you thank you thank you School Board pet and school board members it is the superintendent's recommendation that the school board approve the budget amendments as presented and increase the appropriation for the FY 2024 2025 by 4,523 6238 and direct staff to forward the necessary documents to the city council for its approval okay you hear the superintendent's motion to approve the budget supplements to go before city council is there a motion to accept so move move by Mr M is there second second M all in favor oppose motion carries thank you impr thank you School Board preach and school board members it is the superintendent's recommendation that the

156school board approve the school Improvement Grant Sig as provided and included Extended Learning also thank you board let me start over it is the superintendent's recommendation that the school board approve the school Improvement Grant and the extend learning grants as provided thank you you heard the recommendations that motion to accept so move by is second second Mr M all in favor I oppose motion Carri 6 e vendor contract oh I'm sorry sixd field trips thank you board chair PR and school board members it is a superintendent's recommendation that the school board approve the overnight field trip request to enable Petersburg High School students to attend the vhsl state speech competition March 28th and 29th 2025 in Salem Virginia and to engage the agriculture career Explorations April 1st through the 6 2025 in Memphis Tennessee you

157heard the recommendation there motion to accept second second by Mr M all in favor all right I oppos motion carried 6 e thank you board chair prent school board members it is the superintendent's recommendation that the school board approve the school nutrition Consulting Services contract as provided and you can look up at the screen the recommendation is to award for board approval for board approval the award of the contract for the remainder of the year to provide School nutrition consulting services for our school nutrition program between now and the end of school year for taher Inc out of Mana Minnesota and so again is the superintendent's recommendation that the school board approve the school nutrition Consulting Services for tar her Inc and contract award as provided is there I'm sorry you heard the superintendent recomendation

158is there motion to accept so move by all in favor iose motion [Music] car next we move there to our information item our superintendent report 78 thank you School boor thank you Schoolboard scho School Board chair pritet and school board members um tonight is my first superintendent report that I will be summarizing for information for the school board members around our special purchasing items and so special purchasing item number one concrete repairs at Vernon Johns in Westview Petersburg City's Public Schools is providing information to the board about purchasing related Center dumpster pad entrance and sidewalk concrete repairs at our very own Westview early childhood education school and a dumpster pad handicap ramp and sidewalk concrete repairs at Vernon John's middle school not to exceed the amount of $95,000 and the work to be performed by

159Virginia Concrete Construction company and to be completed no later than 6:30 2025 I also want to update the school board members tonight on our science coaching support that we will have at Petersburg High School we will be providing an informational update on collaborative teaching and learning Group Consulting who will be providing Pro providing support at Petersburg High School so what we'll do is we'll focus on instructional support and coaching for our secondary science they will help us by reviewing lesson plans for alignment with teachers and administrators and they will help us to do learning walks with school administrators and the director this is a part of our work in Petersburg City Public Schools to continue to provide job embedded professional learning focused on systematic instruction and evidence-based practices to develop science and engineering practices and

160conceptual work across our schools they will work with our Petersburg City Public Schools High School to evaluate data and resources to establish objectives align instructional support and track student progress so again as a part of my of my superintendent report tonight I just wanted to update you on a couple of changes related to our Capital Improvements project and to update you on support that we will be providing at Petersburg High School thank you does they have a date in the deadline does I have a date that it going to take place we will get that date and deadline for you uh Mr Brown I know the part of the works we provide the date that they will start and the date that they will end and the length of the contract okay cuz I you

161know being a stem person I'd just like to observe a little bit of it when it when you start thank you P CH that concludes my superintendent report for this evening thank you committee reports any reports from any committees do we had to approve that the last one we don't no this is not approval okay all right it's under um based on board policy it's under amount okay yeah so she's only information okay reports yes uh yes sir yes um school health and Advisory Board we had a meeting we did not have a form but we did take um minutes for the next meeting so but we did discuss um vaccines so at um so next month well not next month may we going to give you an update on um the vaccines for the

162uh kindergart you know starting school could they get them at Oney old foury old then the six sixth grade and then the 11th grade because you know they have to had um their um vaccines to go into the seventh grade then they got had the vaccines to go into 12th grade we'll let you know how well that went okay appreciate it sir okay any new business for board members and also down in the F I'll let you know down in the FYI section there is a free bsba webinar that's coming up and it's will it will be Thursday April the 24th is on conducting effective internal investigations and it's free so you may want to sign up for that also the jrc military ball we receive the invitation is it is it colonel colon Jun

163colon yes M sent us invitation that is April yeah April 26th Saturday April 26th 6: p.m. to 10 p.m. at the Great Wolf Lodge in wsur I want cost I believe it's $25 per person yeah that's not b and the last one M Dr Manson sent the big feet meat Olympics celebrating adversity Special Olympics it's going to be held at Virginia state on ail 17 at 10 a.m. at the at loger stadium and I did I will not be able to attend that me that soone you did say the 17th it's the 17th on the Fly okay that's a Thursday that's thday third thday yeah we usually have kids there it's pretty good yeah we have a head start meeting tomorrow at 10: at Westfield which I will be attending thank you we have make

164Walker tomorrow at 9:00 a.m. we vot on the budget there also and you have a superintendent meeting at 8 a.m. also um you not here this was sent to me friends of The Scouting friends of scouting dinner that will be held on April the 8th at 5:30 dinner at 6:45 at the Richmond convention center and this is free they say you have to give a donation but if you let me Nam T so let me know if you play to tonight so I can texting the names V free and and we have students that are in Petersburg that are in the truth because Mr D I know he has they have a truth out of their Church yes that's one of them yes Church yes and I think it's is it Mr Mullins Mr Mullins

165he's one of the Assistant Scout Masters City oh because I don't know we're going to have another meeting before the end but the concerned black men is having that lock in in April I'll bring you that meeting at the next I bring the information it's going to be at the YMCA yes because of spring break our next meeting will not be until April 16th and see that's um before you doing the spring break actually is doing spring break the most activities wow so so we doing our YMCA lock in for the mentees and last Saturday we did our stem program which they made from scratch um um remote control race car so they'll be finishing up that and doing it at the Lock in and the kids that did it were 31 elementary school kids

166and we did it at um um at the elementary school um Mr Rodriguez allow us to do that at um Pleasant Lane last Saturday so they did a really good job I tried to send you some pictures of uh you got them the kids did a really good job with 31 of them 31 Elementary boys they put together those remote control race cars from scratch every screw fantastic anyone else okay oh I'm sorry Monday the 24th War 3 we we're having a War 3 um meeting at Vernon Johns the speakers are um city manager Marsh Miss Brown and the president of Breo Community College what day Monday at 6 p.m at ver John this coming Monday yes 24th 6 p.m. ver John there no other announcement entertain a motion to adjourn so move by Mr

167second Mr Pierce all in favor oppose motion carry this meeting is D Jour have a good evening everyone and if we don't see you enjoy enjoy your um holiday your spring break I thought you said spr break with April Easter time wait a minute you said when [Music] yeah e e e