001Good evening everyone. We would like to call the June 1st, 2026 uh work session schoolboard meeting into order. Madame clerk, >> Mr. Perl >> here. >> Miss Ricard >> here. Mr. Farooq >> here. >> Mr. Hedgepath >> here. Miss Rizzy >> here. >> Miss Holton >> here. >> Miss Burke >> here. >> Miss Jafari, >> Miss Fernandez >> here. >> Madam Chair, we have a quorum. >> Thank you. And now we'll have the pledge of allegiance and moment of silence led by Miss Burke. 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. Now we'll have our translation services announcement. Good evening. >> Good evening everyone. On behalf of the language justice team, we welcome you. If you
002need interpretation from English to Spanish, please come see me. I will be at the table in the back with the interpreters. We have interpretation headsets for anyone who needs one. Interpretation in Spanish is also available for those watching this meeting through Zoom. I will now make the same announcement in Spanish. Linguist. Thank you. Gracias. >> Thank you. And now we'll move forward to 1.04. 04 emergency evacuation announcement. >> In the event of an emergency requiring the evacuation of the building during this meeting, the emergency alarm system will be activated. If this happens, all persons should immediately exit this room and go to the lobby where security staff will guide you to the east and west stairwells. Please do not use the elevators. All persons will exit on the first floor. After exiting the building, security
003will direct everyone across 9inth Street and down to the assembly area located at the downtown bus transfer station. Able-bodied persons should assist visually and hearing impaired visitors with exiting the building. I will now make the same announcement in Spanish. foreign Street. Thank you. We'll move right to 1.04 adoption of the agenda. Mr. >> 1.05 it is. Thank you. >> Thank you madam chair. I move to adopt the agenda for RPS school board meeting work session Monday June 1st 2026 as published. >> It's been moved by Mr. Pible and seconded by Miss B. >> Mr. Pible. >> Yes. Miss Ricard, >> yes. >> Mr. Farooq, >> yes. >> Mr. Hedgepath, >> yes. >> Miss Rizzy. >> Miss Holton, >> yes. >> Miss Burke, Mr. Jafari, Miss Fernandez, >> yes. >> Motion passes. >> Thank you. And
004now for Dreams for RPS update 2.01. Receive an update for Dreams for RPS at Richmond High School of the Arts. Good evening, Madam Chair, Superintendent Cameress, members of the school board. My name is Luke Costeder. I'm the deputy chief of staff, and I'll be presenting tonight an update on passion for learning. And then Patrick Herrell, our chief operating officer, will be joining me to share an update on construction at Richmond High School for the Arts. Tonight we're going to um do a little bit of an update on program design, where it stands with Passion for Learning and specifically at Richmond High School for the Arts, and talk about what we're building towards. Passion for Learning is Dreams for RPS priority one, action two. And the goal for passion for learning isn't just to uh stand
005up electives theme programming at schools. It's about fundamentally rethinking how we design the teaching and learning experience for students in high school. And the northstar of that work is to prepare students. And it's to prepare them with the goal of 100% of RPS students graduating ready for a choice-filled life. Whether that means enrolling in higher education, enlisting in a living wage uh career, enlisting in public service, going right into the workforce. Uh and as a result of that um that work students graduating prepared are key metrics in our strategic plan around graduation, attendance, satisfaction and so on will accelerate and continue their trajectory upward. Um and so next slide to do that each of our comprehensive high schools will be oriented around a theme. Um each of those themes uh won't just be electives bolted
006onto a traditional schedule. Uh but they're organizing logic around the student experience aligned to industries and career pathways that are regionally and broadly uh relevant and timely for today. So each of those themes here you can see each of our comprehensive high schools is identified and the um pathways of study underneath them and a uh crosscutting career and technical education and passion for learning hub will be at Mori Street. Uh this is the uh former Altria facility on Mari Street that we are going to rework into our um technical campus that will both be a place for advanced training within the CTE space and also a place for passion for learning experiences for students from across RPS uh to come and um have those experiences. Now, some may be asking, why would we put those
007spaces at Mory Street and not have them in each of the comprehensive schools? And there's a variety of answers to that. One is that we want to make sure that students from across the city are able to connect with one another in that shared space. Another is we want to focus on uh the construction funding we have now for Mari Street and make sure that we can maximize that and go as fast as possible to open up opportunities for as many students as possible. and some are just uh practical um and and more straightforward and that we don't have some space in some of our schools to add on additional lab spaces. So, we're excited about the opportunity we have to work within that 300,000 ft canvas to build Mari Street. Next slide. In the
008language of the strategic plan, we have design principles already embedded. Just want to take a quick beat here to name that these are things that we're thinking about as guiding principles when we're doing this work. We want to make sure that the uh student experiences whether it's course design or extracurriculars we embark on designing or even the physical spaces that we are redesigning or building are uh geared towards being experiential learner centered create collaborative spaces make sure that they're relevant and connected for real life career and community learning and of course are rigorous and allow students to demonstrate mastery. So we're going to uh shift gears. That was some highle passion for learning. We're going to focus here on Richmond High School for the arts uh which is express is the theme. Students will be
009able to choose um from a variety of different arts pathways. It's opening this coming fall and um want to make sure that it's clear that this coming year is going to be a design and planning year for Passion for Learning such that the first cohort of 9th grade students will be starting the RPS Passion for Learning Kickoff in the fall of 2027. Students will be able to choose an arts discipline, hone their craft, whether they're moving into a professional arts career right after high school, whether they're planning to go to college and major in the arts or uh dabble in the arts or if they're just simply uh looking to become a lifelong lover of the arts. All of those things are great and all of those things are things that we're going to foster
010at RHSA. So the theme is express and within that theme students will be able to choose from five different fields. Dance, visual art, theater, music and multimedia arts and then within each of those fields there'll be focus areas. For example, students could focus in dance performance or in dance sports medicine. So you can see here there's a blend of the focus on the arts performance but also for students who want to pursue that career uh in performance or being a practicing artist and then also in related industries and provide them with that opportunity as well. want to note that we are not trying to launch all of this at once. And I want to make sure that's clear um because we believe that um having an intentional roll out where we're designing only highquality experiences
011that get in front of students is best. And we know it's going to take time to design new curriculum, bring new staff on board, provide development for our existing staff. Um and so all of those things will be um attended to uh and we'll be mindful of as we gradually roll this out. As students move through the experience, we can think of this funnel as kind of a time progression. Students will come to RHSA um ready to, you know, explore the arts and develop awareness of all of the different themes and have flexible choices. And as they move through their time in high school, will have opportunity to develop passions uh in the arts, specialize, if they so choose to do deeper skill building, take more advanced courses, and then by the time they move
012through high school, uh towards the end of their time there, um be participating again, if they so choose, in more specialized opportunities, apprenticeships, internships, uh performances, etc. to prepare them for whatever they're doing next. the agency here or the the intention here is that this is all about student agency and choices that they move through um not any sort of sorting um process. We've talked a lot conceptually so we want to ground this just in a quick student avatar which uh is a 10th grader. You can see here that this student would be taking their core content as well as their arts work. So what this shows is that RHSA is going to be a world-class visual and performing arts school. It's also going to be a place where students get great core content instruction.
013You can see during her lunch period in this example, she would have time to work on her portfolio. Maybe after school, there's extracurriculars where she's continuing that work or doing some sort of additional activity. And you can see that within her school day, uh those arts classes, the foundational experiences, a part of her passion for learning trajectory are embedded. Um they're not separate. they're integrated into her day-to-day as a part of her of her um experience. So with that, I want to take a big step back and say what might this look like. So if we think about visual arts, we have those four fields or four focuses, excuse me. And you can see that as students progress through that ex exploration towards specialization, they would take foundational courses uh that would be across uh
014students no matter what they ultimately specialize in. As students move later into uh their high school career, they would start to specialize within their focus and choose from a bank of electives. And you can see here that asterisk shows that some of these electives are things that exist in the Virginia SKED that we've heard from other places we've visited and learned from, but we don't yet have in our program of studies or in our SKED. So, um we're starting the curricular work to bring those things online. We have example slides for uh each of our visuals that um our curriculum and instruction department and in particular the fine arts um coordinator and specialist have done a tremendous amount of work working with um both folks in the arts community leveraging their own expertise and then
015drawing from all of the inspiration and learning we've done across the state to start building out these sequences. We're still designing and testing. There's some things that may change as we learn best practices, as industries change, but this is to give a sense of what these uh course pathways may look like. All right. So, there's two things we want to talk about uh with regards to how students get to RHSA. The first is enrollment. How does that work? Students that live in the Richmond High School for the Arts neighborhood will be able to enroll in RHSA. Now, of course, the students uh that are in zone may also choose to apply to a selective admission school to apply for open enrollment. that will still be an operating um process that they'll have access to. But
016we want to make sure that point is clear. The next piece of enrollment will be students who want to um attend RHSA and go into a 4-year course of study through an application process or what many in the arts world refer to as an adjudication process where students will audition or share a portfolio or in the case of multimedia arts and we'll come back to this in a minute just demonstrate an interest in their specific area of passion. We're going to make sure that there's a proportional number of seats available to Richmond High School for the Arts students for each of these fields and for students within the neighborhood specifically so that there's an assurance that students who live in the zone and want to apply for that adjudication process um have slots. And we've
017been um leveraging the success we've had in the selective admissions application work um as a model for how we can implement that kind of work. And then with slots remaining, we would have open enrollment for students who maybe are interested in the arts, want to attend RHSA for that or any other reason, um but aren't necessarily uh so sure about that four-year course of study, um but would apply as an outofzone student. Again, we're working on the first year here and rolling that out. So, we're modeling what would the first year cohort look like and how might we need to adjust staffing with plans to grow that enrollment as we move across time. And then want to share a little bit about how the application process um is shaping right now. We're still designing but
018um we know that that's opening uh this fall. So students who would be going through the adjudication process would demonstrate their interest in a specific field. And this would be a process by which we match students to where they're interested and for some students who have been practicing artists already in their time whether in middle school or even earlier um and make sure that they're you know um focused or placed to a right entry point. We think that most students are going to come in at the foundational level, but there might be a student who's say uh you know a great trombone player or an exemplary singer that might not be um or might be ready to go into the next level of band or choir. So, we're figuring out like how can we make
019sure those students are starting at the place that uh is appropriate that challenges them um where they are with their artistic skill. As I mentioned a minute ago, multimedia arts we want to open to any student that has a serious interest. Really make that an on-ramp for the next generation of kiddos in in Richmond City who want to make films and be recording artists, uh, create podcasts, storytell through literary arts. And part of this is because we believe and I say we really the my partners in the curriculum team believe that the um backwards map for middle school and earlier um is less strong in this area. It's a new field for us and so we don't want to create some sort of barrier to entry where students didn't have opportunities in school for exposure
020and development of that craft. And so really it's just about making sure students have a demonstrated passion um for that uh field of study. The question has come up um often of how does this differ for students? So, what's the difference between a student who would be going and not participating in that field of study versus a student who is? Um, and it's simple as all RHSA students will have access to electives and experiences happening in the school. We believe that no matter what, a student who goes to RHSA will have myriad opportunities to develop a passion for the arts. We also believe that there will be students who really want to focus on their field and we will then be able to provide them with a pathway for specialized coursework for additional requirements as
021a part of that field of study, internships, capstones, portfolio development, etc. Um, but it won't be a school within a school. It's not a situation where those students won't be also in math class with their uh their classmates who are not in that four-year field of study. And conversely, it won't be the case where a student who's an inzone student and wants to take ballet 1 wouldn't also be potentially in that ballet one electives with the students who may want to pursue ballet as their career. So, we're excited about that opportunity for um collaboration across across the school. Just really quickly want to share what's going into this work. Um we're not starting with a blank whiteboard. We've been doing a lot of work. We've done a number of visits both local uh and beyond
022to see um established performing arts high schools in action and we're excited about adding to this list uh in the next year as we continue design RPS and specifically RHSA leadership and um staff the uh school staff of which is expanding in participation has participated or is participating in a cohort of uh school divisions in Virginia that are thinking about redesign. Uh we're in a network if you will of other schools that are grappling with similar design challenges uh and have been receiving coaching uh throughout that have monthly design meetings which is leading to an inschool design process that we've started working on and are really ramping up next year across the school as we start thinking about innovation and prototyping what's possible under P4L. We've had a number of focus groups and sprints with
023students. We're focusing a lot on middle school. We have an advisory group of uh local performing and visual arts institutions and higher education institutions to provide what first has been um foundational kind of architecture input on the fields and the way we might think about this. And we're excited about pivoting to deeper dives around curriculum and shaping student experiences. And then with all the passion for learning work, we're thinking about what does the current labor market say? The Virginia Office of Education Economics have been great partners in sharing data with us and helping us unpack what are high demand occupations in the central region looking like and where might they go so that we can be nimble as as that evolves over time and be ready for any flexibility. Before I hand it over to
024Patrick, we'll just um close with sharing where we are and where we're going with our HSA. As I shared, we're in this design sprints, high level architecture planning that's phasing into um really more in-depth planning next school year at the new campus. Students will move into the new campus um next school year where applications will begin in the fall and we'll have our first first cohort of 9th graders under Passion for Learning and all um the full building will be under Passion for Learning in fall 2027. We'll have another cohort the next year and then within four years we'll have gone through four um cohorts such that we'll have full programming up to graduating seniors completing their capstones and all of those wonderful things. So I'll turn it over to Patrick at this time. >>
025Good evening madam chair, board members and superintendent. I will be quick because I know we have a lot on the agenda. We have lots going on at Richmond High School for the arts. Some of the pictures I find particularly exciting to see the continued progress. This one, for some reason, gets me particularly fired up to see what the uh gymnasium is looking like and how cool it looks to have the logos on the uh bleachers. But the most important thing, and I know this is not an update for you all, but hopefully this is a helpful update for the public, is that we are moving full steam ahead with an accelerated timeline for Richmond High School of the Arts. We know there is a lot of work to be done between now and that time,
026but we're also really excited that what we would have needed to have spent to get Richmond High School for the Arts old building back up in the condition to accept students next year would be quite a bit of money after the uh flood that we had. And so it made more sense for us to take those funds that we would have had to use to remediate the property and instead use those for any uh additional overtime hours. Our partners, our construction partners, SB Ballard, have been incredibly collaborative with us in making this a feasible option. And so I want to thank them enormously for this, including waving what would typically be very significant change fees for a date change like this. And so we're really happy to have them as partners. And so we'll be
027working over the next couple of months to get us ready. The timeline, as you can see, is tight. So we already had planned contractually for what's called substantial completion for the building. Uh we are uh working with them to move up the full handover of the building to at the latest August 17th, which would be one week before school begins. That would mean that we would need to plan and we're already starting to work with the city on the mayor's availability, a dedication ceremony that would memorialize this new building during that week of August 17th. And then we would be open for school to begin on that Monday, August 24th with students. I'll pause there for any questions, but that's all I wanted to share. Miss, >> very exciting. Senator, thank you and the contractors
028for your fast pivots last month or so. Um, question is first day of school and first day in new building. Just to be clear, the plan is for teachers, administrators to be in a day or two for students. >> No, ma'am. The plan would be for all of us to be able to be in the building on August 17th, which would be a week before students. And that's also the first day that stu that teachers return for in person. >> Thank you. Miss Rizzy. Thank you, Madam Chair. I have I'm going to try to add three really quick questions here. Um, you know, I think the themes are good. Um, I you know, I think that with the proposals here, especially experiential learning, learning centered collaborative teaching. I mean, this is very ambitious and I'm
029I'm hoping that we will start to talk about how these things be cross-disciplinary and that that structure that new course design will also be implemented in English classes in math. you know that this um experiential like more participatory model um will represent an evolution in how we deliver courses across the board. Um so that's going to take quite a bit of work and a lot of buy in and will take time but I would really love to see that that that happens across the board and not just with these. Um the other thing is um I know that with a lot of um even like fully functioning pretty well achieving high achieving um CTE programs there is difficulty sometimes in recruiting and retaining skilled faculty. I hear that over and over again. Um, and so
030I'd like to know what our plan is for that because I'm sure that there aren't, you know, hundreds of people walking around with stage design backgrounds, for example. Um, and we need to be competitive and how we compensate them. And so I just want to hear more about that. And then, um, in terms of preparation in middle school, are are we equitable in what we offer our students in middle school? I know that some schools have some programs, other schools don't. Are we working to make sure that all students have access to um the same opportunities or close to the same uh number of opportunities and breadth and depth of opportunities um at all of our schools? >> Thank you for those questions. So, if I may just I think um fantastic questions and um
031admittedly there's a lot that we'll still need to to design for and talk about particularly with questions two and three um for this idea of how do we make sure these design principles are embedded not just in new electives but across all courses. Um I'm excited that the RHSA design team that has stood up and is growing um within that space is thinking about how do we bring in multilingual learners, exceptional education core content uh to prototype and do design sprints in all of their classes, not just um in the arts. Um I think we're crawling before we can walk, before we can run with this work. So certainly going to be a long time to change that thinking and uh do a lot of learning as an organization. But um anecdotally I'll share to
032to cap this answer um we did a day uh in late April where um we were doing a variety of different design sprint things and I had a session with RHSA teachers who were available to come in and out during their planning. and the richest conversations uh we had that day were about history lessons and how might we make history lessons more relevant and connected to careers. So there's an eagerness that we're seeing already and I'm excited to get back into the school and start doing that work. um on the recruitment and um retention of skilled faculty. Um like to get back to the board on that question and talk to organize thinking a little more about what is our strategy for that with regards to CTE just as Mari Street is in the building
033design phase, but we're not yet quite there for um the staffing element of it. Um though we are excited we're getting some early outreach on the RHSA side from folks who have heard about it. um and are eager [snorts] in what opportunities there are. So, I think that word of mouth is already starting and it's only going to grow when we have a staffing campaign next year for those positions. And then on the middle school front, um I really appreciate this question. Every time we talk to a school or division that's done this work, um people say, "Well, you have to start really in middle school." And if you're being honest, you have to start in kindergarten. And um we need to do a curricular audit of what does the sixth, seventh, and eighth grade
034progression look like? uh in terms of preparing students for readiness for what their high school choices are aligned to career. I think that starts with our curriculum explor exploration course uh or career investigations. Uh and it also um is a matter of and doing an an audit of you know where are we missing the mark in terms of equitable access to courses that prepare students for that. So um that's certainly on our radar but there's more to be done on that front. >> Mr. Thank you, Madam Chair. I just wanted to share on the skilled teacher with very unique skill sets, right? Whether it's in Phoenix when we visited with the chamber just recently visited one of their centers. They had developed partnerships with local businesses where in essence the business would continue to keep
035the individual on payroll so they keep getting paid their same normal salary but they were loaned out to the school to be instructors. Some of them did it on a part-time basis. Some loved it and decided to continue doing it. And so that is one of the more creative mechanisms that I have come across so far to address that. something we'd love to explore with with many of the partners. Obviously, lots of different ways to tackle this, but that's one that that seems to promise. >> Mr. Her, >> thank you, Madam Chair. Um, [clears throat] thank you, Mr. Hotstead uh for the uh the presentation and I appreciate uh Superintendent Cameron mentioning the creative ways for how we'll will uh recruit our specialized uh faculty because of course if we're adding FTEES or teaching positions
036of course that just as we're as we're continuing to talk about the budget that just reminds me of dollar signs right so and and then this is really great work and I'm very excited for for it appreciate also the uh admission that we're crawling and then walking and then running. I know that the a day in the life of an RPS student is just a sample of a 10th grade schedule that you put on slide eight, but I'm I'm curious, especially for our scholars who are seeking an advanced diploma, how does this fit with uh science and social studies requirements? Um, and then also as we're also talking about the 4x4 schedule, if that were to change in the future, what would be some challenges maybe for and maybe that's a question for another day.
037Uh, but certainly something to consider if we don't do the the 4x4, then we may lose a class period um as well. So the first question um pardon me was about science >> science thank you in advanced diplomas. So, um, there's a set of slides, um, that, uh, look at that very question, and we modeled out, okay, what would it look like for a student on an advanced diploma track who, um, also needs some remediation, a student on a standard diploma who doesn't need any credit recovery, uh, and made sure that we could fit this within our existing schedule constructs while also meeting all of those scheduling requirements. So, glad you raised that. We have done um, the thinking around that. Um, and then with regards to shifting schedules, we are doing some thinking about
038as we learn about other scheduling models, what would be best for Richmond High School for the Arts and know that there's obviously lots of contingencies that that may um that may bring about. So, I think that would be a great conversation for a future date for us to unpack a little more about what that might look like and what it might mean in terms of operational challenges. >> Mr. Farooq Thank you, Madam Chair. Like any good politician, I will wax poetic under the guise of asking a question. So, first I'll say that I've spoken to many RPS parents and students who share with me how stressful and difficult the process of applying to our some of our high schools can be. That that pressure of choosing a career and choosing an interest can be really
039really really intense and produce a lot of anxiety. Um, so my question to you is, can you talk a little bit about how this these changes that we're making, they're not meant to push kids into a career, but really just to open up the ability to explore. So even if you don't go to like maybe you don't pick a high school, maybe you just go to whatever high school you're zoned for and maybe you're not particularly interested in art, but that's still an opportunity for explore. Can you talk a little bit about the kind of courses and things like that? >> Yeah, of course. So I think that um there are things regardless of whether it's art or computer science or um public policy etc that we want students to experience in terms of durable
040skill, 21st century skill, whatever the term is building um that will prepare them for a career path uh an educational path, service path that will shift. um no one follows a linear career path and I think with um the current day we're in that will maybe be even more true and so um when we think about relevant and connected uh collaborative rigorous um students have agency and choice and make decisions like those are all things design principles um that we want embedded and also I think not to add more work that we're thinking about but to add more work that we're thinking about we've been looking at our portrait of undergraduate in the Virginia's 5C's um and looking at other divisions and schools that we've seen uh doing this work that have established it and
041every time we go into one of their buildings we see those principles of like what are those characteristics that students um are building no matter what course they're in and how are those progressing and so it's something that we're mindful of and thinking of as well that if I'm in an art class I'm leading a project I'm learning how to you know resolve conflict with my peers in that I'm learning how to speak publicly when I'm um defending my piece and talking about what it means. Um and so we haven't gone as far as what does that look like across all passion for learning, but if that's getting at kind of the question that you're asking, I think that's that's really at the core. Um we know that um passions will change and grow and
042evolve, but that um equipping students with readiness for what's coming after high school is something that can be universally thought of and then applied within those thematic contexts. Miss >> you madam chair I have two compound questions and comment. Uh but start with the comment uh having two of my children who came through RPS with a love for the arts um and who found that uh they do other things to make rent uh but still pursue their arts passion absolutely collaboration skills creativity communications absolutely come through and so I'm very excited about what RHSA will have to offer all students that questions. Three, uh, just briefly, transportation, help us understand the outer zone piece. Number two, engagement. I see you've got a lot of folks engaged. I haven't heard about engaging families and parents both
043about RHSA and about the broader plan for citywide redesign. And I don't, you know, we all hear about it a lot. I'm not sure that families more broadly are hearing about it. families in the RHSA zone I'm not sure are hearing about it yet. So maybe now is the right time to get started on that piece of the engagement. Um and then third is just following up on others uh comments about um uh hiring specialty. I I love seeing that students are interested in animation, fashion, video production. Those may be three of the arts jobs arts fields that are most likely to actually have jobs but most likely to be hardest to find. U staff for and I wonder if we should be looking at budget modifications, maybe not expansions, but something to allow for
044some adjunct faculty uh um possibilities that would give you some um um opportunities to bring pe bring specialists in for a single course. And I love uh Mr. Cam's ideas of getting them to come in for free, but uh if we need to pay for an animation specialist for instance, do we are we is that in the in the mix? >> So on the transportation front with uh students enrolling at our HSA um in our current zone model next year uh as normal, we are not changing transportation for this fall. Um and so with that planning year, we are um starting to plan around what does an expansion of the hub system that we use look like um to stand up transportation for out ofzone students uh to make sure that it's accessible. With regards
045to your engagement point, I think my response would be yes to all of that. Um and I'm excited with um we've been in conversation with the leadership team there about how do we hit the ground running um if not the beginning of school year earlier um to have more conversations with families about this work. Um with regards to hiring specialization and creative work um I don't know if Superintendent Cam has anything else to that. I agree with the sentiment that we should look creatively about how we can um find additional ways to staff particularly in specialized highly specialized areas. >> Thank you, Madam Chair. Uh look, I I would say the board should expect a request from the administration in next year's budget to spend more on RHSA, whether that's on staff or experiences, whatever
046the case may be, to fully build out uh the experience. And I think really great, exciting um experiences worthy of our kids are expensive and we shouldn't run away from that. I I understand certainly that resources are limited. That's why look, we're phasing things in going to try to boil the ocean as it were, but take uh take this step by step. But I do think there are some cost. Um, so yes, would expect some of that. At the same time, as it pertains to RHSA, we have a really robust arts community in Richmond. And I do think there are many, not I think, I know there are many, many organizations and folks that really do want to contribute to making this a success. And so I do do think through partnership there are going
047to be ways to defay some of these costs even if it's through inind donations of experiences and internships, summer opportunities and performances so on. >> Thank you Mr. PL. >> Thank you Madam Chair and thank you Mr. Heder for this. Uh let me just say I love this concept, everything about it and I do believe there's a lot of devil in a lot of detail. Um but I'm going to ask a question. Slide 15 asks the question, how does the experience differ for students who apply compared to those who don't? And is it is it our intention across all of these schools once they're built out? Uh and there there are so many different courseworks. So, I'm going to I'm going to leverage your your analogy. I I'm I'm zoned for RHSA and I take
048a trombone class and I absolutely love it, but objectively speaking, just not good at trombone. Having a lot of fun with it. The advanced jazz improv trombone class. Is that something that I can sign up for or do I have to be admitted to that? Thank you for that question. Thank you for that question. So [clears throat] to continue with that example, I would say that there are likely higher level there will be higher level electives that have prerequisites. And so I think if a student doesn't complete a prerequisite, um that would be something they would need to complete to gain entry. And I think, you know, if there's a student that um wants to pursue that and is not skilled enough to be in it, I think that would be a conversation with instructional
049staff to their counselor um to continue see if this is still the right fit um or find there other arts opportunities within the school that they would be interested. I don't want to stand here and say that um that student shouldn't be able to take that jazz class and be available for that. But I also don't want to say that we would set students up to be in a space that they wouldn't feel like they could contribute and um feel comfortable being ready for. So I think that's a it's a great nuance question that we need to think about with counselors and um families and whatnot. And of course there would be hopefully um just to add to that um to when the student gets to that point they would have had a lot of
050support to get there um and coaching through um their afterchool opportunities through the visiting person from the higher education institution that offered them additional lessons. So hopefully we build up a support structure for students who are really passionate to get to that level um so that we don't have to have those conversations. Thank you. Go ahead, M. >> Yeah, I just wanted to kind of throw in that we may want to think about considering, you know, creative funding methods. I know that the higher education community and the arts community are probably just as cashstrapped, stretched thin as we are. >> Um, especially in the arts. So, um, yeah, I think we will talk about that later. >> Thank you. Would you prefer for me to ask all of my questions at one time or individually?
051>> Whatever you prefer. >> Respectful. >> Yeah, I can >> capture them. Yeah. >> Um, first off, this is amazing. I think this really opens up opportunities for RPS. Um, this really is considered an industry type standard. Um and I think we will be known for this across United States at some point. My questions are really more in depth around um with this curriculum particularly how do we protect the integrity of the basics in education. We're still moving the needle in math, science, uh etc. We're doing better, right? But we're not we're not where we need to be. And so or want to be I should say help me understand how we still continue to have the layer foundation that is needed to be successful in adding this curriculum to the conversation. >> So thank
052you for that question. Um I would say that um the way we've been thinking about this is to not as we talked about earlier with the how does this fit within the requirements of the graduation with the diploma types that it's not taking away from any of that. Um and so on a really basic level this isn't competing with any of those um core academic experiences. I think we also believe that if students are inspired about what they're getting at school every day um and passionate about the learning that's happening because there's an incredible art class that they have and there's the performance that they're going to go to that that's just going to make student engagement all the higher across the board. Um which we hope will then you know continue to accelerate the
053trajectory we're seeing around our achievement um in the core. So, as far as like how are we thinking about core curriculum, um I would and and what are we doing to continue to strengthen that? Um I would want to speak to my colleagues that are more academically inclined and and circle back to you on that with additional details. >> Thank you. Um since you um just talked about the engagement piece, I'm curious and understanding. And I know you shared just now you'll be beginning to kind of get some insights from the school I guess students in the beginning of the next school year. The application process would tentatively start at the beginning of the next school year. Can you help me understand how we are really embracing the feedback from those that are going to
054be most impacted which are the students within the school. if we're drafting something without that engagement prior to >> Sure. So, um I think that you know we've we've taken the engagement that we've done thus far with students and shaped the model that we have to date. Um I think we will iterate and improve and um if there's demand for one particular field that dramatically outweighs another, we'll need to go back and look at that and and see how does that weigh against our initial plans. Um would certainly acknowledge we would love to have additional data always um but um we have what we have right now and we're eager to get more and then we'll iterate along the way. And what data do you have right now from a student perspective? I just >>
055Yeah, >> obviously this is something that we want to I know there's been a ton of work that's done in this and I know there's some intentionality that's been done with it. I just want to make sure we're not doing too much too fast and not and we're leaving behind those that are going to be directly impacted by information. >> May I ask a clarifying question to your question, Madam Chair? When you say leaving behind, do you mean middle school students or current students at the high school for the arts that will be enrolled there? >> Sure. I'm trying to get an understanding of who you have engaged currently to get a better understanding and how to gauge that. I don't think >> we're clear on >> Yep. >> what has been done this far
056in terms of conversation. >> Great. Thank you. So, um, we had focus groups at all of our middle schools. We just finished in April a round of lunch sprints with middle school students where we invited students to come and share feedback um and have data that I'd be happy to share in terms of the um qualitative and quantitative responses we got to conversations about here's all the different fields of study. Talk about what you're interested in. What questions do you have about them? Where do you see the design principles showing up in your day-to-day experience? Um and we've done some of that with high school students as well. >> Yeah, I'd be very interested to hear more about that. Um, I just wanted to ask one clarify. I know that there was a mention of
057a dedication and we had engaged the city. Just want to make sure we have the date too as a board. >> Yes, ma'am. We do not have a date yet. Uh, we are working with the city and obviously with your calendars to find that date for the dedication ceremony. Yes, ma'am. >> We hadn't seen anything yet. Just wanted to make sure we were a part of that conversation. this record. >> Thank you, Madam Chair. Um, one point I just comment I wanted to make regarding to move in for RHSA. I know when Fox Elementary opened last summer for the school year, teachers felt rushed to get their classrooms ready to welcome their students and families. And for RSSA teachers, I just wanted to say that out loud that careful consideration is given to trying to
058give them the opportunity to get their classrooms ready so that they don't feel rushed or stressed before the start of school. >> Yes, I appreciate the feedback. I have heard that feedback. I think we are absolutely going to be in a rushed scenario here since the earliest we'll be able to get folks in is a week before school starts. We are though trying to learn. I think one of the big biggest learnings from Fox is to have a clearer and more transparent system where people who are in the building can report issues that they need addressed and we can more transparently give them status updates on those processes. I know in particular at Fox that was an opportunity for our improvement. So I think that's big on our list, but I do think it is
059going to be tight. Thank you so much for your time. All right, let's move to 3.01C for first read final fiscal year 2027 operating and CIP budgets. Mr. Thank you, Madam Chair, and good evening, everyone. This evening, I bring forward to you our final proposal, our final draft of our operating and CIP budgets for adoption tomorrow. I want to thank uh the board for how magnanimous you have been throughout this process and for how engaged you have been along with all of our staff and our community members. So much feedback and it has all been incredibly helpful as we have gotten to this final point and uh we are now here. So specifically, as we discussed at our last meeting, we requested of the city a $12 million increase in funding, and we received about
060an $8 million increase, which you can go to slide 18, which left us with a roughly $4 million gap that we needed to fill. As we have discussed, about 3.2 2 million of that will come from the closure of the Richmond Virtual Academy. And then the final 800,000 we are proposing a reduction in the hourly rates for licensed personnel. Those are payments for uh educators that have an increase in class size due to a teacher absence or a loss of planning period. Both of those from $55 an hour to $35 an hour. Again, based on our modeling, that would be about 800,000, which is the remainder of the gap. With those two items, we would still I'm sorry, we would be in balance. Um, I do want to note that even with all the cuts
061that we have had to make, this budget does provide a 2% raise and step increase for all of our units in negotiations along with all of the other raises that were contractually agreed to. uh we were able to fully fund our mental health and wraparound support contracts, fully fund summer school, and while we weren't able to uh fully fund the increase in the cost of health insurance, we were able to limit the employee portion to just 25%. I also want to note that on the capital side, uh, we have added 500,000 per the city for the Wester Hills bus loop and we have added 100,000 again per the city for stadium lights at Thomas Jefferson High School. With that, I'm happy to take any questions. Thank you. Mr. Miss Holton, >> thank you Madam Chair
062and thank you uh Mr. Hammer. Uh it's tough. It's never easy to adopt a budget and we're under the kind of fiscal conraints we're under this year. Appreciate working with but also colleagues and public getting yes something we can say yes to today I just question first question am I correct your slide 18 says a $29 increase in state funding for the house's proposed budget adopted budget obviously that's not a done deal yet until we have something concrete from the state. Everything will be subject to change as need be. But even beyond that, am I right that you are taking we are acting on essentially one-time money that the House put $20 million in in the first year of their proposed budget, but not so much in the second year. And that so we're uh
063operating on an optimistic scenario. And I'll just rattle off a couple of other questions before I The second is am I correct that this budget does not yet make adjustments for the anticipated increase in fuel costs that Mr. Herold told us about at our last meeting. So question is are there is this still a tight budget potentially a tight budget going forward because some of those. >> Mr. Cameras, >> thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you for the questions. Holden, you are correct that the House version of the budget has more one-time money than the Senate version, but I do want to be clear, it's not the entirety. A good chunk of that is recurring dollars. Um, as I noted, the general assembly reconvening on June 18th. Uh actually the House on the 18th, the
064Senate on the 22nd. By law, they need a budget uh by June 30th or the Commonwealth uh will experience a shutdown. So, we'll know for certain. The division of one-time versusring dollars hopefully by June 30th. And then whatever impacts the state budget provides, we'll of course update the board and recommend any uh modifications uh in our July meetings. Uh as for the fuel cost, you are correct. The budget I'm putting forward does not add anything to our fuel line. And so you are also correct. This remains a very tight budget. And I think that's just the reality that we're in. and I look forward to lots of advocacy. >> Miss, thank you, Madam Chair. Just by way of comment, I want to I do want to be weary in both recognizing that grateful to the
065city for the additional funding and particularly in the CIP budget that this $10 million will go a long way towards helping us address some of the repair issues citywide. not all the need, but it it's a a a serious commitment and to the city for that. and then grateful to the state for the the amounts that we're looking at from the state are an increase and yet are still in my opinion a long way to go from where I think the state should be and therefore hope that we all understand that the the long-term prospect of convers ongoing conversation with the state uh to help uh meet additional needs is going to need to be a priority. Thank you, Mr. Farooq. >> Thank you, Madam Chair. I have several questions, so I'll shoot them all
066at Mr. Cameras at once. The first one is our budget process is a little awkward. It takes a long time. We propose a budget and then there's this long period where it goes through the city and the state. So, how has or how have the estimates in the FY27 budget for transportation and fuel changed? Did we recently have to bump that number up? Are we anticipating that we'll just go over it a lot? That's my first question. And the second question is a top priority for all of us was keeping our commitments to our employees through collective bargaining. There was a lot of that that we could do. Obviously, one of the reductions is a reduction in the hourly rate from $55 to 35. Can you explain the process of, you know, how we came
067to the decision of that having to be one of the cuts and what is the impact that will have? Thank you, Madam Chair. >> Thank you, Mr. Cameron. >> Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you, Mr. Ferg, for the questions. On your first question, we have not increased our estimates for fuel simply because uh we would have to cut even more out of the budget and um anticipate that we likely will need to make some modifications during next fiscal year. Um but just didn't feel given how much we've already been cutting that it was prudent at this point to speculatively cut even more. And so we'll see how things develop and of course continue to be in conversations with all of you. As for the changes to the hourly rates, um I mean really this
068comes down to you know something that while um of course we would love to maintain all aspects of our compensation. Um this has proven to be one that is quite costly. Um and when we look across uh the the industry our rate is very very high which of course is a good thing generally speaking but in a time of tight resources we felt it was appropriate uh to bring it more in balance with closer to what the industry standard is. Um at the same time we are uh in the midst of conversations about this very matter um with the union. So this is an appropriate time for the board to take action on it. Again not ideal but given the the current situation and there was nothing else that we had been discussing along the
069way that felt it was appropriate at this time. For example, summer school is about to start. Can't really pull that back now in a way that would be fair to families and to teachers and so on. Um the mental health contracts uh we have uh talked about a reduction then went back to our partners said there's not going to be a reduction. So they've begun to staff up and prepare. And so um when we went down the list of things that we have been talking about are we felt we were pretty constrained um and and this felt like a unfortunate but um but timely one to >> Miss Burke. >> Thank you Madam Chair. Thank you Mr. always was very important to me and I'm so glad that that was addressed. I'm also the mental
070health support services. I mean from every level and school we're all ready for Monday. I saw that today but um I am where we were in the beginning of this process and where we are now is always challenging but I can also see the level of We level up in terms of making sure followed everything in great detail and we did listen. My question is when we get many millions from the state and I'm putting it in the atmosphere when we receive how many millions Mr. >> Thank you madam chair. Yes, Mrs. that the house version of the budget would provide us with an additional 20. >> So question is going back regarding with that are any constraints given we don't know because it will be one time probably then again it may not but
071in the event that it is will that be an opportunity to address the along other items >> Mr. Thank you, Madam Chair. Um, again, I want to emphasize not all of that 20 million is onetime money, just a portion. Um, I I hesitate to give you a a direct answer just because I don't know what the final contours of the state budget will be and what restrictions on various pots of money we will have. That being said, all 132 school divisions in the Commonwealth are facing rising fuel costs and I know this is something that is on the minds of the general assembly and so um I have confidence that we will have the flexibility that we need to be able to to meet them. >> Thank you so much. Welcome. >> Thank you too.
072Can can you clarify? My understanding is that the $20 million that is is in this document is already accounted for though. Correct. >> Yes, it is assumed. >> So anything additional any additional needs we would have to come up with additional money unless the state were to give us over the assumed $20 million. Correct. >> Yes. And I am I apologize if that if that wasn't clear, Mrs. B. Um, yes, we we have built the budget assuming the $20 million increase from the state. There is a possibility that it is slightly more. Of course, there's always the possibility it's slightly less. We shall see. And then we'll have to make adjustments. >> I figured as much, Miss Burke. Thank you so much for bringing that to my attention. I mission Mr. Cameron. >> Thank you,
073Madam Chair. Thank you, Mrs. Sp. Um, I think there is a very strong possibility that at minimum that amount will come to fruition. Um, again, I don't know for certain. I don't think any of us will know until sometime in the last month of June. Um, but I do know that just about everybody across the aisle is very committed to funding education as much as as possible. It really comes down to what the GA and the governor decide about the data centers, how much to tax them or not tax them. And so that that will be the defining defining eleion Is it a little bit here, a little bit there? Is it all under wellness? Is it under engagement? Is it under one area? It's mostly sort of in the pot. Some of it is
074very specific for say raises but a lot of it is um you can use it for various purposes. So it's supporting various I do feel very confident in in that. >> Thank you Mr. Hb. >> Thank you madam chair and thank [clears throat] you Mr. superintendent for the the presentation. Um I'm I'm pretty worried about uh about this this budget in general. Um but I understand it's tough times. I I worry about the uh the timing of this uh of this decision for the reduction of the hourly rate of our licensed personnel. uh since our REA REA negotiations their their contract ends on June 30th for this current negotiation and then you know would then start July 1st for their new contract and I worry that changing this at this point um you know less
075than a month now from from that conclusion of the current contract that that um I don't know if that's the right timing for it. Um, and I wonder also if there are alternative items that we could consider uh cutting rather than uh than hitting the teachers. Again, um I I know I understand we we're getting a RA we're giving a raise to teachers that's deserved. Uh however, as my colleague Miss Burke mentioned that there was health care costs that are increased. So I know that that's a share, but that's that's a that's that's still money that going to come out of teachers pockets. U we have the vision insurance also that now if they want that or need that then they have to pay for that. Um and so [clears throat] then also now lowering
076this uh this an additional way to make money um is is is a challenge is is is bothering me. Um you know the planning periods and lunchtimes are very very treasured times for for teachers. Um and so to get them to do what you know to take to give that up um can't really put a price on that necessarily and so it's just pain to me to see uh the the change um there. So I'm just wondering again I guess that was me a long meandering conversation with myself uh to then ask the question is like what are the other alternatives? um because I was honestly hoping today that maybe we would have a few items that we could discuss and and come to a consensus on rather than have just one option. Thank you.
077>> Thank you, Mr. Cambers. >> Thank you, Madam Chair. We we really just didn't feel it would be appropriate to begin exploring things that weren't already on the list of things, you know, that have been subject to discussion. A B To be honest, I'm really not sure where else um at this late stage we would be able to identify any savings. Again, with the knowledge that there's likely increased costs coming our way. It is certainly um by no means ideal. Um wish we were not in this position, but um given the amount of money um given that it is something that is currently on the table uh in negotiations, it actually felt like this was while unfortunate a ripe moment to address it going forward. >> Thank you. Having none, I just have two clarifying
078questions and forgive me the first one we discussed and I just um missed it. Um did we ever get a clear understanding on vision? Feel like vaguely we had the conversation. I just want to make sure I close the loop on that. Mr. cameras. >> Madam Chair, may you clarify the question >> in terms of impact across the division. >> Yes. And all of that has been shared with our employees through uh midyear open enrollment process. >> Perfect. And then could you just I know that this has been something that's been on the minds of several of um understandably of those that are within RPS. Um just give us a brief update on the 15 minute $1,500 state bonus um that uh has been discussed uh just recently so that we can just have a
079clear understanding for the community. Thank you, Madam Chair. Yes. So, for context for anyone watching, uh the state has set aside some funding for a one-time $1500 bonus for SOQ positions, standards of quality positions. Generally speaking, uh that's positions like teachers, counselors, social workers. Because of the LCI and because we have many SOQ positions beyond what is required by the state, it would cost us about $6 million to take the 1.5 million in funding from the state. Clearly, we do not have an additional $6 million. And so as sad as this is, we are not able to draw down this 1.5 million from the state for these bonuses again because it would cost us an additional 6 million. I do want to note one of our neighbors is giving the bonus and one of our
080neighbors is not uh for precisely the reason uh that we are unable to. >> Thank you. I agree with my colleagues in sharing the sentiments of this has been a very um difficult budget season. Um however, I do believe that we really try to balance the needs of the administration and also um consider the feedback that was shared from the community. And because of that, we were able to add several things back in that will positively impact RPS, namely mental health and wraparound services, summer school, uh, and most importantly in my mind are certainly the honoring the CBA raises for our associates. Would like to thank the administration for all of their efforts and time spent in bringing us to this point. and um just thank you for continuing the conversation. Right. Now we'll move
081to board business. 4.01 is to receive the first read easement request. Good evening again, Madam Chair and board members. We have two requests from city-based partners for easements on our property. And so I wanted to quickly go through those. Uh the first one impacts uh Armstrong High School. GRTC is requesting that they be able to put a bus shelter at an existing bus stop that already exists on our property. Uh you can see these are the property lines but I think more helpful is the picture on the left which shows uh the front of the high school and the existing stop. And so all they are proposing is to add what you see to the right which would be a shelter and a trash can. Uh under the terms of the agreement they would have
082full responsibility for all of the long-term maintenance and operations as well as any liability for anything that might happen in the same way that their bus stop currently exists. It would just have this additional shelter. The second request comes from our friends and partners at Dominion related to Reed. As you can see from the picture above, uh it would be at the back of the property. Currently, there is an overhead power line that they are working on a project where they would bury that line. And so, uh this would be the first read of a request to give them permission to make these alterations on our property. I should also note at the front of Reed over the summer, we are moving forward with the expansion of the bus loop. So that is actually potentially
083starting to commence today although I think the contractors asked if they could start next week. That's all I had. Thank you >> Miss B. >> Thank you chair. I am so glad that finally there will be one day I saw a young lady she had her baby in the program there standing outside with any so it's overdue I'm going to ask something of you that be added as well you need a cross >> and I was when I looked into it I was told that because that's Michael County as you know that school is But you know this half and half. Yes. County and the city. >> Please. It's very busy. >> I will look into that. Absolutely. >> I mean very busy. So students have to walk across the street. Those that have to
084leave early during the day or whatever else happen. So thank you. I'm in full support of the Armstrong piece. The other go along. But um yes ma'am. I really don't know what's but I do want to >> Yes, ma'am. >> Thank you, Mr. Pival. >> Uh, thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you for this, Mr. Um, given that this is first read, I don't see on the agenda for tomorrow. So, is this a July vote? And my question is, does that give enough time for the construction to be completed over the summer? >> We are not requesting that this be waved for second read. Although I am sure our partners at Dominion and GRTC would be happy if we did that. Uh but no, we had been operating under the assumption that second read would
085come in July. That would give them the approval and they could move forward with the projects. >> Okay. And you have the time needed to >> Yes. Thank you. Now we have 4.02. Receive an update on student organizations and fees. Good evening. >> Good evening. I'm sorry. I was waiting for my army. Good evening, board chair Fernandez, Vice Chair Perl, schoolboard members, and superintendent cameras. Um, tonight we are excited to present the presentation on student fees. I would first like to say thank you to Mrs. Fernandez who help to give us guidance and helped to really look at the needs and wants for the presentation to make sure that it provided all that was needed. So I want to personally say thank you for that. Um I also helped um to bring clarity for the
086next steps that you will see on the last slide. Tonight I have Cassandra Bale with me. I have um who will answer questions on district partnerships. I have Dr. Bale who will answer questions um having to do with anything related to high schools and sports. And then we will have um Courtney Ward and Dr. Turner who will talk about CTE um clubs for middle and high school. In RPS, we believe students have rich and engaging student experiences that extend beyond the classroom. It helps with student engagement, student connectiveness, leadership development, and college and career readiness. We want to start by highlighting a few partnerships. We have many, but I want to um highlight a few partnerships specifically around our elementary schools. One of them is Minds in Motion um which is a program through the
087Richmond Ballet who provides um for our fourth graders um every year we have um eight schools one of them being Fiser who is a part of that and Fiser participates through a grant that they have. Um also SparkCC which is a theater program which is a nonprofit for our third graders and we have four schools who also are involved in spark. Also we have dancing classrooms. Um dancing classrooms um involves five schools um for the school division. Six schools excuse me. And this spring Carver and Blackwell started um with dancing classrooms. And last, mind games. We have um many of our um schools, elementary, middle, and high, who are involved in mind games. Um and that's another district partnership. So, I wanted to just highlight them, but there are many, many um partnerships that we
088have. Now, we will transition to middle and high school. We had a previous presentation that centered on athletics and music. Um although um director Cassandra Bale will be available to answer questions in those areas for the presentation tonight we will center on CTE related clubs with from director Ward and Dr. Turner. >> Good evening everyone. I'm Courtney Ward the director of secondary success pathways and I'm Dr. Rhonda Turner, associate director of CTTE. All right, so we're going to skip ahead to the middle school section. I'm going to let Dr. Turner talk through what a CTSO is and how they uh live at our middle school programming. So CTSOs are career technical student organizations. uh they are associated with the different content areas within CTE. Um we are required by VDOE to have active chapters um
089at any school that has a course related to that chapter. So you'll see every single middle school featured in the slide deck has a um FCCLA which is the CTSO for family and consumer sciences and they also have a FBLA which is um the organization for business education. And then we have one middle school which is River City that has a tech ed teacher and so they have a TSA organization associated with that program. Okay. On the high school level, um we have DECA which is associated with marketing. Um again, FCCLA, FBLA. Um one high school which is Hugenat has TSA along with Richmond Technical Center. Richmond Technical Center has additional clubs and organizations because they have content areas that are not found at your comprehensive high schools such as our health science which is
090HOSA and then our agriculture which is FFA. Um and then our trade and industry which is Skills USA. And so the students um join the organizations uh through membership drives that the schools have. They work on a program of studies of what they're going to do throughout the school year as a chapter. It involves community service, fundraising, um just opportunities to participate in local, state, and national level um competitions or competitive events and other leadership opportunities. So, one of the things I wanted to mention before I go to the last slide is that a lot of our clubs and activities are um from sponsors, especially in the elementary level. They're from donations. They're from grant funds. And so, um that is how we have a lot of the um the offerings that you'll see on
091the elementary and the secondary level as well. So putting this presentation together, we really looked at what are some next steps in order to make sure that we are looking over the offerings at schools on a consistent basis so we can determine where maybe there are some areas of opportunity in helping schools to provide more offerings. Um, so one of the things that we're going to do that we're committed to and I've talked to the principal directors about it is just that you see each school has a slide um in October there will be um I can't determine if there is a presentation but we'll provide um as part of the board memo an update so that you will get to see what your school has and then that can provide a conversation when you're
092visiting your schools and you can go through with them if if um you would like to talk through the clubs they have, where their needs may be and those types of things because that's one of the gaps we also saw is that um we needed to be more it needed to be more clear and transparent as what is being offered at schools and also at some schools um the PTAs and PTO's are able to provide more support um and so some schools have more support there um also So you need sponsors for your groups. And so um when we have schools that don't have um maybe a consist consistent teachers on a regular basis, then you don't see the clubs and the sponsors because you have to create that community. So those are one of
093the things we're committed to providing you in October so that you can make sure that you can have those conversations. But also some of the things that we took a look at is um looking at is there a need for division policy outlining the distinction between fundraising and soliciting? Um because sometimes you may be hearing in your communities that um there's fundraising soliciting for these causes. Is it really for this cause? How do we know? How do we put those things in place to make sure that we know everyone who's representing RPS is doing so in a consistent manner and in the way that we feel comfortable about um also establish monitoring and accountability steps in partnership with the division auditor. So the principal directors are meeting with the auditor tomorrow. It was already a
094scheduled meeting. But this is one of the topics we will add because school activity funds is also one of the areas that we need to make sure that the money is being filtered there and that it's being used appropriately. So now that we have an auditor, we can revisit that as well. Um also looking at the roles of clubs and sponsors and a handbook review. in high school, they have a handbook already. And so, we're taking the handbook and making sure that we are extending it for middle and elementary. If you are a sponsor, you will go through training, sign off that you've read the handbook and gone through training so that whatever we put in place, our sponsors um we're ensuring that they are doing the things that we've said in our policies and
095our guidelines. Um also uh for our sponsors and partnerships um principal will maintain and create the list that I just talked about and they will have an annual review of list community sponsors and partners um in collaboration with the office of engagement and we've been trying to do this over the last few years but I talked to Chief um Greenbell and she is going to continue in trying to get that SP further defining exactly what is a partner and a sponsor Because if you give one time for Christmas to help my kids, is that really a sponsor or is that someone assisting a level? So, we need to clearly define that and then we need to know who's sponsoring at each school because that can further show us where the gaps are as well. So,
096those are just some next steps that um are needed to ensure that um there's more clarity and um increase equity across schools. Before we get into questions, I just want to thank you so much. Um, colleagues, you may recall this came up from a presentation for one of our student representatives where she had she was a part of the FCCLA and she had mentioned um about the need to have to raise funds to get her red jacket. And from there, there were other folks within um the RPS community that had shared that they needed items raised to raise funds for like volleyball uniforms and and so it started me to thinking about like how do we actually do that? What what is the process? Is it consistent across the board? Um it's been intentional in
097pushing this back from month to month to month to to really give them the opportunity to really dig deep. And so I really appreciate the in-depth conversation. I think even after having the conversation, you all walked away with some additional takeaway. So really thank you all for the hard work. Um in that I will say that I don't see where the I think the the red jacket is required, but you all are looking into >> yes >> different ways, but it's not reflected in the documents. I wanted to get clarity on that piece. It's not um for a next step. That's very specific, but it's one of the things that we talked about and I'm going to have them we talked about it last week, but I want them to explain so that um we
098can ensure that um the public knows the conversation on how we can take care of that in the future. >> Sure. Good evening again. So, the red jacket for FCCLA is only required for national competition. Um, and in our com communication with the board of directors for FCCLA, and I'm really glad they called me back, they said that there's state support for um, providing those blazers for students. And often um, what school divisions will do if they need them, they'll reach out to their colleagues in different localities to see if they can borrow a jacket. They also encouraged us to build our own closet of red blazers. So when students fund raise for Blazers, they're not fundraising for a Blazer to take home. They're fundraising to keep a Blazer in place for any student who
099would need one year to year. Uh which could be a great goal for a leadership organization like FCCLA to come together to ensure that they have what they need that year, but also students have what they need in future years to compete at the national level. Um but that is really nuance. that is the only um personal item that a student would need for a CTSO competition at the national level. As an aside, personal items are not permitted to be paid for with Perkins funding, which is our grant for CTE. Thank you for that clarification. >> Certainly. >> Yes. Um, I think this also gives us an opportunity once we get a better understanding of what our schools are doing from district to district, what their needs are as we go out and have connections
100with community partners. having line of sight into what their goals are from year to year could help us to advocate on behalf of our districts um or red jackets or uniforms or you know equipment or what have you. So I think this is a really good start to have a document that's living breathing in one place where we can all refer back to as a division. So thank you so much for that and just I don't know if this is your is this your last day with us? Um, so that tomorrow will be my last school board meeting. Yes. >> I just want to say Dr. Wiggins, it's been an absolute pleasure working with you and we are so grateful and indebted to you for your service here at RPS. You will be greatly missed.
101[laughter] >> Mr. Hitchm. >> Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, Dr. Wiggins. I'll I'll just echo everything that Miss Fernandez just said. We're really going to miss you. So, and good luck in your in your ventures going forward. >> Thank you. uh for the CT for the uh technical center. I was looking at some of those those fees and um and I I see that at a number of the other schools that grants are taking care of the fees and uh or that they're zero fees and I worry for particularly for cosmetology and for barbering those uh entries seem very high and I wonder if that discourages our kiddos from doing those two careers or going in those two directions. Um, so I wonder if there are uh grants that are available that do andor
102if you already know has this been a barrier to some students? >> No, actually it has not because the school has always had a plan in place to support students who are in need and so they have funding within the school's um student activity funds where they do things throughout the school year to uh raise money and then they have support for students who need those kits. the kits for barbering and cosmetologies, the students actually take those with them when they graduate and so they have a full kit um with you know to be able to continue that work. >> Miss Holton, >> thank you Dr. Wiggins for your service and also for this presentation. I understand has been a lot of hard work in the making and one of the exciting things is how
103many exciting things are going on at at uh many of our schools. Uh I will say that one of the a quick read of this would suggest that we do have some real inequities particularly at the elementary school level and I hope that some of that is in reporting inconsistency rather than in actual inconsistency. And so as you work to refine, as you and your colleagues work to refine this going into the fall, perhaps we can encourage you to give some greater guidance and direction to the principles on what information you're asking for. So for instance, I'm just conferring with my colleague here, Miss Burke. Community of caring is an activity uh that exists at a number of our elementary schools. Um she's telling me it's not a formal club at the elementary schools but
104it's an activity that students can participate in. Does that qualify? Should that be listed? U so I I also especially with the elementary schools I was not able to tell with many of the activities whether they are during the school day activities or after school activities. And if they are afterchool activities, I think many of our elementary schools have paid programming for afterare that isn't showing up here at all. And maybe that's because it doesn't come the school's budget or or what. But it all of this to say is what looks like a lot of inequity gives me great pause. There are some schools that have very few offerings and some that offer the world. And so I hope we can address how much of that is inconsistent reporting and how much of that is
105really some underlying in inequity and then how can we go about helping the schools that not everybody has to have the same things. I mean, this is absolutely we want um our schools to be able to have local initiative, but everybody to have some enrichment, healthy enrichment opportunities for our students. And so, this hopefully can be the beginning of a conversation of how we address that. And on that, I I do know one of the I note that one of the things in our dreams for RPS is trying to strengthen our PTAs all across the city. And I would bet that there would be some correlation between that effort and and this uh in the longer run. Oh, and then just one final point. Maybe one thing we want to think about addressing as on
106a school a school board schoolwide level, a divisionwide level is if we are going to have activities that are after school that involve significant costs, do we want to have a consistent policy around scholarships availability or sliding scale fees? Those are many great points that you brought up and so thank you for them because one of the things we grappled with is about the activities. What is an activity? Because at first we thought only what's before or after school that kids needed to stay. But there's also some things during school like minds and motion and and dancing classrooms that happen that are great activities as well. So um that's why the presentation kind of went back and forth. And so I think as we progress on we need to better define what an activity is
107that we want to report within the school because I think that will help school leaders to know oh yeah we do this but um we did not think of it in that way. >> Thank you Miss Ricard and then Miss Burke. >> Thank you Madam Chair. Um, kind of going along with what Miss Holton said, I think it might also be good to delineate what an activity might have a cost, but scholarships are available. I know um I have paid for some after school activities for my children because I am able to, but that scholarships were offered for those same activities for parents who could not. Um, but I do think for the sake of the conversation, it would be good to be more explicit about what the costs are, but that scholarships are available.
108And I also just feel this is a great list of all the different activities that are offered at our elementary and middle and high. And I wonder if a conversation has ever been had with building leaders about what do you want? how can we share strategies for getting these partnerships at other schools? Um, and also what do their communities want? Um, do parents want this activity but not that activity? What about students? So, I just think I appreciate all the time you have spent in doing this and I just think this is a great jumping off for future conversations at a district by district, building by building. Uh, we can make sure all our schools have what their students, parents want. So, thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair. And looking at this list, I think
109we cut ourselves short. Isn't that an activity? Isn't that should that be included? So, I This is the first time we've ever done this. So I'm hoping moving forward we would get a little bit more direction as some of these items on here. There is a fee. So is this student activity fee? This is this is a this was collected through me. I see PTA here and there but for instance um as you mentioned um fines in motion that is through a grant or we pay for >> the school division pays for >> but it has on here fee cost. So it's no fee to the children of course >> but you have I don't understand association I want to know if it's a grant it's a gift a little bit more detail looking forward
110and I think some items people left off I I know some schools have much more than this have a lot and I also see the disparity here I see it's a great disparity and wondering along the lines of mind game if the students that have these opportunities with the um different financial background or different um support. I would really like to see the correlation with so scores. I'm not asking you to do this but as we really get deeper into this plus to have those outside activities that enhances I'm surprised I don't I saw once and it was a fee for $150 per student to be in the choir. So they must not have but five or six students in the choir. I mean this just that bothers me because if you have it over
111here I should have it over here. We talk about equity, but looking at this is it's you may have scholarships there, but over here, I'm just glad the child's at school every day, >> but he or she could learn so much more having those extracurricular activities. So, at some point moving forward, if we can get a little bit more detail, >> that would be greatly appreciated. But thank you for what you That is a great start. >> Absolutely. Thank you. Mr. PL, >> thank you, Madam Chair, and and thank you for this. Um, one thing when I look in here, some of the other options, some of these activities, I'm I have a pet project, so I'm just going to jump right into it. Mr. Robotics, um, we list Thomas Jefferson and we list Hugenauts
112and we list related fees as zero. um reality called and they expect to differ. So the registration fee for first robotics is $6,000. So there's no cost to a student, but you got to go out there and fund raise for $6,000. A robot can cost upwards of $10,000. So that is a barrier. While it it's it shows a zero, it is a bit of a barrier. Pugot has not competed since 2016. I look at commercial robotics website um likely due to to those types of cost barriers. So, one of the things I I'd like to be able to do is is consolidate a first robotics team across RPS and maybe there's some opportunity for that in other areas. Um because I don't think we can lobby first robotics to get the cost down. Uh, but
113it is a huge, huge opportunity from a technology standpoint for students and I'm sure this applies to many of these extracurricular activities. This is just one I I know the dollars right off the top of my head and I know the opportunities exist there. So there may be challenges there with transportation, but TJ, for example, has an active first robotics team. And if we could if we could use them as a platform for any RPS student that wanted to be able to leverage that without having to build six or seven different robots at $10,000 a piece might be one of the avenues that we can do to help embrace some of these some of the burdens that fundraising imposes. Thank you so much for this presentation. Still much work to be done, but there's a
114lot of exceptional work that has been done. So, thank you so much. >> All righty. Next up, we have 4.03. Receive an update on 4x4 schedule. Good evening again. Tonight the team will present on the 4x4 and AP offering. Since the implementation of the 4x4, the division performance in high school has improved in academics and graduation um outcomes as shown in the presentation. We know stakeholders continue to have questions and voice input. So, as you can see on the last slide, we will start surveys and listening tours um starting this um fall, early fall um and continuing into second semester in hopes by March of the upcoming year. Um there can be a full pre um um presentation on exactly what the community is saying about 4x4 and um um that will help to make
115um next steps for you all. Now I'm going to have the team to come up and to present on um 4x4 and AB. >> Good evening >> board chair, board members, superintendent cameras. Good evening. My name is Willie Bale, principal director of high schools. Just want to talk briefly about the how 4x4 started. Um you have all those slides in front of you but it started back um the conversation started during co and we were trying to um have a platform or a schedule that would be beneficial for our kids especially while they were in the virtual environment. And we felt like the 4x4 would benefit them better than the eight classes because it didn't have you don't have all eight classes at one time. You have four per semester. What do I have? So
116that was how all this started. Uh previously before we're in 1920 19 2019 and uh 2018 2019 and 1920 we were in the AB schedule where that's you alternate classes. You had a student has eight classes for the year and that's a year-long class and teachers have six classes to plan for for the entire year. But that switched when we during the pandemic when we went to four the benefits when we researched why we should do this. So we saw that we saw six bullets that you have before you one of them being a daily instructional continuity. Uh and to highlight one of the things with that uh it provides if you look at the second one, the second bullet on the daily instructional continuity that builds that stronger teacher student relationship and the engagement
117piece consistent academic support and to add to that if we go down to the academic focus uh provides teachers to give a deeper learning provide deeper learning and the students to receive more mastery of the content which we will continue to work on for this school year. Accelerated credit recovery piece which was uh one of one of the major pieces which made us look at this was instead of students having to wait a full year with creating that learning loss. And then we if a kid is unsuccessful, we can get them back into that same class or credit recovery the next semester which hence has improved our graduation rates and those are steady increased. Teacher workload is more manageable where now you have three classes to prepare. We call them core during each semester versus
118six for the year. Uh the research talks talked about the daily routine, the rituals and routines helping out behavioral dis disruptions and across the board those have decreased. And the most important piece is the relevance. We talk about rigor, relevance and relationships. But the relevance is that when our kids leave us and move on to greener pastures or bigger pastures into new waters and they're preparing for the postsecary experience, it mirrors two-year four-year college schedules. Even though they may some of those may not some of our students may not attend a two-year or fouryear once they graduate, however, it prepares them. They will be familiar with the semester experience and understand the magnitude of that. You've seen this slide before where uh my colleague John Grove talked about how we are closing the prepandemic gap
119and you notice the data when we started back we didn't have the 1920 that was during that actual transition of the co but when we started back 1819 up to now you see that we're reaching levels where we are able to close the gap with our neighboring divisions getting back to some high proficiency levels and as we finish this year we hope I'm not going to be a Joe name but I hope that we will surpass what we have right now based on the winter data that you all that you all saw we should surpass that and we will continue to close that gap with our neighboring divisions my colleague Cassandra Bear will discuss the advanced placement course offers within 4x4. >> Good evening, school board chair, superintendent cameas, and all assembled here. Um, my
120name is Cassandra Bell, and I have the great pleasure of serving as the director of curriculum instruction. Um, I'm going to speak just a little bit about uh AP courses um on a 4x4 schedule. And so, as my colleague Dr. Bell just spoke about uh as it pertains to uh transitioning from a traditional schedule to um a block schedule, 4x4 block schedule. Um we're still able to provide students with opportunities to engage in um the AP course offerings that you see listed in front of you. Um all of those courses are offered throughout our division. They're not all offered at every school. that is contingent upon availability of qualified teachers. Um and so we do review these course offerings annually um to ensure that we are providing our scholars with all of the opportunities that
121we can provide them with. Awesome. All right. Um we also fully acknowledge that there are some challenges in uh implementing AP courses on a 4x4 schedule. Um, most notably that is um the timing of the AP exam. It's always given in May. And so if our scholars are enrolled in an AP course in the fall, they still must wait until May to take their AP exam. And so to mitigate those challenges, we have um responded in the following ways that you see on the screen there for you. Um I want to talk just a little bit about one um uh strategy that we have employed and that is the hybrid AP schedule. We are calling it locked blocks. Uh we do implement that um in a couple of our schools. uh Franklin and community have
122been implementing it for a while and this academic school year which ended on Friday. Um we uh incorporated a uh pilot at Hugenat and um what we've heard from Hugenat is that um it was very successful. Um, and so with the hybrid um, AP schedule, students are able to um, enroll in uh, an AP course or two AP courses um, across the full year. And so it has to be paired with another course, right? So you have to take one course on A days and one course on Bdays. And so we have to make sure there is a complement of course offerings to ensure that we're able to provide that opportunity for scholars. And so every year we want to um ensure that we are providing our scholars with the best opportunities possible and where
123possible we want to provide them with that opportunity. Um to ensure that we are uh continuing to pour into our teachers and ensure that they are prepared to teach this high level of rigor um uh to their students. We provide ongoing training. We have a couple of partners um namely Nimsy and the National Math and Science Initiative. Uh we work with them quite closely to ensure that we're providing throughear professional learning for our teachers. That is um during our divisionwide professional learning, but also at pivotal times throughout the course of the school year. particularly as we get closer to the AP exams in May, we provide our AP teachers with AP exam review um support so that they can um adequately prepare their scholars for AP exams. Uh we also provide um instructional coaching and
124planning and that is also through NIMSY but also through college board. So teachers are able to engage with um AP villages to connect with colleagues across the country um because oftentimes our AP teachers are singletons in their buildings so they don't have a whole lot of folks to connect with um in their buildings. Um but we also come together as a division group. Uh we offer office hours every month and we offer um some meetings throughout the course of the school year to provide support uh and to ensure that teachers are receiving the training that they need. Um we also ensure that we're targeting our AP exam review sessions that are offered um so that we can reinforce those key concepts that students need to be successful on the AP exams. We also think very
125strategically about the courses that are offered in the fall um opposed to the courses that are offered in or compared to the courses that are offered in the spring. So those um courses that have historically been a little bit more challenging try to ensure that they are offered in the spring so that students that learning is really um fresh um for students. Um, we also want to make sure that we're providing as much training and support to our teachers, but then that they're able to pour that back into their students. And so students have an opportunity for that exam review um right before the uh AP exam as well. And we do that through our academic blitz, which is our extended blocks. Um, we provide that um not just for AP courses, but for all
126core content areas. at the high school level, we do have some extended blocks um that allow teachers to pull those students back during the school day and to work with them more intensely and so we incorporate our AP courses into that um academic blitz. This is just a visual while a little grainy, it does um depict for you that hybrid um model that I spoke to a little earlier. And so you can see there if you squint really closely um that at community we uh they offer AP um lit and AP seminar. That is their um hybrid structure. At Hugenot they offered AP lang um as well as AP US history. And then they offered AP Calculus AB and AP Calculus BC. Uh, and then at Franklin Military, um, AP Lit, AP, um, US history,
127um, and AP environmental science. And so we have been able to be quite successful on a 4x4 schedule offering our AP um, courses. As you can see before you, we have seen um, over the course of the past three years um, a large increase in our students um, earning qualifying scores. And so on the AP exams, the range in scores is between one and five. And a qualifying score is any score of three or higher. And so you can see back in 2023, we had 483 students that um acquired qualifying scores, which is amazing, right? Um but in 2025, we were up to 727. So that's exciting. Yes, our scholars are absolutely amazing. Um, and Dr. Wiggins already uh spoke to this slide just a little bit as we close. Um, but we wanted to
128um as we're closing out the school year and as we're preparing for 2627, we wanted to partner with um the engagement office to ensure that we're able to engage not only our staff but our students and our families through surveys, through back-tochool communication, through information sessions. um just so that we can hear from them uh what their thoughts are. And so September around the um 4x4 schedule. Uh and so in September just kind of starting that work and continuing that engagement in October and November, you see that it skips down to February because uh we want to engage with our students and our families that are taking AP courses or um just about the 4x4 in general in second semester. And so first semester doesn't end until the middle of January, towards the end of
129January. And so we wanted to come back once the second semester um starts and then have an opportunity to have a more comprehensive um update to provide to the board. And with that, we will take any questions that you have. Thank you, >> Mr. Hitchp, Miss Rizzy. >> Sure. Thank you, Dr. Bell. Thank you, Miss Bell. Um I really appreciate the the presentation and um you all giving us a good understanding of the AP uh exams and and how how we've been able to to support those students. I think one of the things that I I worry about is uh not for our highest achieving students, but for the students who need the most support. I I wonder um if say uh student A is enrolled in in math for the fall of their freshman
130year, but then they're not enrolled in math again until the spring of their sophomore year, which could happen, right? So worry that worries me that that there's there's an entire year that goes by with that student not being in a math class. Um and and so you know where where math and world language particularly where repetition we know is so important. Um I I I worry about that. I also worry about absenteeism that you know when you miss a 90minute period you don't just miss one class period right you know uh every every day that our high schoolers miss a class or a day might as well multiply by two. Um so I really worry about that in a in a moment where we are we still have problem with absenteeism. I I know it's
131gotten better, but uh but that still concerns me. And so I think I really appreciate the the stakeholder engagement and the feedback timeline and making sure that we're not like, you know, going and you making decision without being fully like uh fully versed in and and the needs and concerns of the community. I wonder also if some of the data that could be provided would be about um how is how has this helped with so retakes? how how has it helped with those students who need the most support? Um, you know, and and whatever data you all feel is most meaningful for that. I'm not prepared to to offer that at this moment, but but however, that would would give us a better understanding of how those kiddos are impacted by the 4x4 as well.
132>> Thank you. we'd be happy to come back with that information for you. But just to speak a little bit to um our students that may have um some gaps in their learning um as it pertains to math and for reading specifically, we do offer um intervention courses um to support that tier three instruction for those scholars. Um, and so that would serve as one of their elective courses that they would be able to take to kind of offset and balance um, so there's not that huge gap between when they last took a math class or reading class. Angela, you were speaking of some of those gaps where some of our kids need that extra support. That's why we infused the academic blitz times where we extend. We may have first and third on a
133Tuesday, second and fourth on a Thursday. So, we're able to extend the block to three hours to give those kids more support. Uh a kid may have been absent so they get that maybe twice a month they can get that support from our teachers where we extend it. That's that academic blitz and that like was speaking to that's not just for AP that's for all of us. Thank you, Miss Rizzie. >> Thank you, Madam Chair. And I I do appreciate this uh presentation. I think in there are some several places where I kind of get triggered with the correlation causation issue here where you say that something has increased, but there's no real way to prove that, you know, 4x4 schedules really caused that improvement. And so there were several places where I saw that
134like you know with for example more qualifying scores on the AP. Could it be some other factor that led to that? Right? Um could some of these schools be offering more AP classes than they did two years ago and therefore they're higher there are higher number of qualifying scores. Um, I, you know, I make no bones about the fact that I left K12 when my school went to 4x4 because I'm used to seeing my students all year round and I teach English and I feel like I develop deeper relationships with them. Even if you have a little more extra time in the 4x4, there's something about seeing a student all year round that really does help with developing relationships, learning the student, you know, identifying their skills, helping to, you know, mediate any, you know,
135issues they may have across the year. So, I left and went to VCU where I actually teach a two semester course where I see my students all year, right? The same students, right? And so and and I still, you know, I developed these deeper relationships and I I actually appreciate that I have these students for two or I had I don't teach anymore, but you know, just until recently um that I saw for 17 years the same students for two semesters. Um it makes a difference. Um so I really didn't feel like I could do that with a 4x4 schedule. Um, and so I, you know, I know that there are some benefits and I certainly am not going to say there aren't or, you know, even make that argument, but I do I do
136get quite a few emails from parents and teachers alike um, who have questions about whether this is the best way to do things. And so I really look forward to seeing what the engagement >> um, feels for us. >> Thank you, Miss B. lot of information and a lot of information I'm hearing a lot organiz Why is it both you get more hours going to college? So for help to understand why some we're going to have to figure out a way in which to listen to them it's working well but I'm looking at slide maybe I'm just by what I'm seeing. Can you help me with that? Can you break that down? I know it's very simple, but I may not be prepared in the correct manner because I'm looking at the numbers. >> So,
137if you could just clarify your question. >> Um, I don't know. I see on here at the end of the year >> overall um score 727. That's >> oh that's >> those are qualifying scores and so uh it's not necessarily um a onetoone correlation between um studentto student. There may be one student that um earned a qualifying score on multiple tests um that they were taking that semester. Um, and so this data just shows you how our qualifying scores have increased over this three-year period of time. And this is the three-year period of time that we have been implementing or part of the time that we've been imple implementing the 4x4 schedule >> because I'm still okay. >> I think I'm also thinking in terms of I think one of the slides had some schools
138may have had more advanced wasn't enough. >> Yes. Um teachers must be qualified to teach AP courses. Like they have to be qualified to teach uh dual enrollment courses. And so um if you have staff at your building that is qualified to teach, let's say AP Lit and AP Lang, and you have an AP calculus teacher, um an AP environmental science teacher, AP biology teacher, you're able to offer those courses. And so every school um has the opportunity to offer all of the courses that were listed for you, but every school may not have staffing to support all of the courses. And so we work to offer as many courses as we can offer and all of our schools. You're welcome. >> Thank you, Miss Ricard. Thank you, Madam Chair. Um, to kind of go
139along with what my colleague, Mr. Hedgepath, was saying, I think not only does chronic absenteeism impact our kids, but the past two years we've had major weather events or other issues in one semester, which is kind of which is another downfall to 4x4 that if you're out for a week due to ice or water, it's actually you're missing almost two weeks of a class. Um, the other question I had is, you know, I truly appreciate the survey. I know that was something we asked for. I know I understand the desire to put it out second semester, but my question is, if we're then getting an update in March 2027, if there is an appetite to go back to an AB schedule, could that be implemented for the next school year? Or is the master scheduling
140process too far down the path and we would then have to wait for 28 29 if I'm doing that math right. >> Yes. Um so we are certainly open to we're going to do surveys not just in February. We're going to do the surveys at the beginning of the year and all throughout um well at pivotal points in first semester. So certainly if we wanted to come back to the board and share information um at the end of first semester we could certainly do so. Our master scheduling process starts in November. And so uh we're in the throws of all of that work with schools in partnership um at both the middle school and the high school level um throughout this um the rest of the fall and the spring um to uh support them
141in their master scheduling process. And so if we did not make a decision until March or so, it would be a little late. Miss Holton, >> just briefly, I'm still learning and appreciate uh the presentation about the 4x4 schedule and the implications of it, but I do want to take a minute to celebrate that if my math is right and my phone is helping me on it, that's a 50% increase in AP qualifying scores uh from 23 3 to 25 and that's remarkable. Um so whether it was due to this or other factors that's a really exciting development. I I I would love to get information and not on an urgent basis but at some time on that more on that what you know what what other changes have contributed to that. Um and where
142are we on increasing dual enrollment? And I know I think I'm right that we we're boosting that as well. Um but let's look together at those and some schools may be doing more boosting on dual enrollment and some more on AP. But both of them have a real value. I mean a tangible financial value to students who are going on to higher ed as you of course know and that's that's really something to celebrate. Thank you. >> Thank you so much. Yes, students that do earn a qualifying score on the AP exam are then um exempt from those courses in college. And so it is a cost savings for families as is um uh dual enrollment. So not every single one of the courses but a lot of them um uh if there is that
143match and correlation between the um courses at the college level. >> Thank you Mr. Farooq. Thank you, Madam Chair. I have several questions, so I'll shoot them all at you at once. My question, first question is, do we know if the 4x4 schedule and it's been about four or five years since it's been implemented? Do we know if that's working roughly uniformly the same at every high school, or are some high schools just better at implementing it than others? The other question is so much of how well it works is about how well that particular teacher or that particular school implements it, right? So what has the professional development been like? What has it been like to kind of bring staff along and change the way we do instruction from how some staff may have
144never done it, right, their whole career? And my final question is um do we know how our peers in Virginia, whether it's our surrounding counties or perhaps Norfolk, what their I know Norfol has like a hybrid 4x4, but I don't know if it's exactly like ours. Do we know how their what their lessons or their experiences are with this? Thank you. >> Thank you, Mr. Farooq. Across the high schools, the 4x4 is uniform. all the counselors operating the same thing. We have those course selections from our students with you know we do the tally sheets in right around February. Uh so there is no difference in any of the master schedule. The 4x4 is is basically the same platform. Uh where the difference is like Cassandra was talking about was the AP courses that may
145be the difference in offerings based on the the staffing but we operating the same thing. What we did also uniformally in the schools uh for the past two years is that extended block that I was talking about to better support the students but also with our teachers and at all of our high schools. We all employ the professional learning communities. We have the what we call uh CDRs, comprehensive data reviews where we are going in and we're taking a look at the data u collaborating what we call around student achievement so that better supports our kids so we're able to have those conversations at all of the high schools so it's uniform. The last thing that you spoke about were some of our neighboring divisions and what we found out through the help of my
146colleague Courtney Ward. Uh she and I did the research. Most of the most of the school divisions are have a hybrid like we do. The only true 4x4 where there is no hybrid. What we found was in Sussex and Greenville County. Those were the only true 4x4s. Um, but everything is basically a hybrid. uh where it could be and with that hybrid you know it turns into an AB just like it's A or it's just the four because depending on the classes uh that how is going based on some of the challenges that you mentioned Miss Burke we haven't had the opportunity to ask our colleagues saying north of Virginia Beach Petersburg u but I can say this I do know by RPS on the rise as they are calling us because they see the
147data and they see us closing the gap but we haven't had the actual conversations but we will because I would love to know some of the challenges that Miss Brit miss uh thinking about video we miss the uh Miss Bert uh I would love to know those and hopefully we can lift those when we do the engagement survey because I want to know what those are and get a better feel to answer some of those questions and I do know some of our teachers as you mentioned there is some angst about that uh because I believe some of that angst is that when you come in in August you got to hit it there is a sense of urgency right then there is you can't procrastinate we're going to we have the curriculum is set
148for 90 days from August until December kids test as well we have a period where we in you you know, have all the curriculum should be taught. So, I can understand some of the pressures because you can't, you know, we're talking about student absenteeism. Teachers can't be absent either, you know. So, we there is a sense of urgency. So, I get >> Thank you. We have Miss Rizzy and then Miss >> So, I have less than a minute, so I'll talk fast. You know, one thing that, you know, we do and that I've done, you know, both in high school and at the college level is what we call spiral curriculum, right? Where you teach the same skills, you do them over and over again in different ways and by the end of the year,
149the student is at a much higher level because they've practiced, right? And so that's where I see the benefit of having students for a full year. Um, my specific question is I want to see if you all could provide maybe at some future point some data on how on how diverse learners are doing with the 4x4 schedule. >> We'll add that in there as well. Yes, ma'am. >> Miss Ricardo. >> Thank you, Madam Chair. And I just in light of the point you made, Dr. about teachers having to hit it from day one. You know, that also prevents that time for relationship building and creating collaborative environments, classroom contracts, all the things that Miss Rizzy had talked about, you just kind of lose that opportunity. And when you build those relationships, students come to your
150class more because they want to see you because they like them. I just wanted to also call that out that, you know, what is the goal of our schedule? It's not just the academics, but it's also making Thank you, Miss Burke. >> Thank you, Madam Chair. Correct me if I'm not correct. I'm thinking about Franklin military because I see the middle school moving just like the high school, but apparently Franklin military academy the middle school some of them and not all of them. any other >> it's a high school >> but majority is 4x4 >> majority or middle school is >> yeah we have we have some of the middle schools and Miss Waller would have to speak more to that but I think our eighth graders some of our eighth graders some of those
151classes are 4x4 so most of our courses at the middle school level are on um a full year-long schedule. Um there we do double block for reading and math. So that's every day all year long um at the middle school level. Um but we do have a AB schedule for um science and history. Um so that's just slightly different. Um and so it is a combination. So it's somewhat hybrid. Um and there are a few courses that are offered um at the semester but primarily we are double blocking reading and math and then um AB schedule for science and history. >> Followup question is number one Franklin is the only one that has that middle school. No other middle school. So I'm looking at the success 100% graduation rate. I'm wondering wondering if that for
152those students that remain at Franklin from middle to high is that experience from middle helping them to be able to survive at high. You're in the same building, same teachers, same setting. I know it's smaller, but just trying to think it's it's I can see being a ninth grader that first year. >> One minute >> because you're leaving a middle school, excuse me, elementary school where you're more and you deal with character ed and the relationship is different whereas seem like it's more college and I'm sure some students fare very well but there are others that I want to see all of our students be successful so just just so when you come back next year and giving this data we can find out more about the middle school that is how many students at
153Franklin that continue let's say thank >> we certainly come back uh Miss Burke with some information about uh Franklin Military, but they are on that type of schedule because they share teachers in that way. And so they're uh you have some teachers that are teaching both middle and high school. And so um that's why that school is just slightly different than um our other middle schools. But we're happy to come back with that data. >> Thank you. Thank you for your presentation. Now moving right along to 4.04 receive for first read policy committee recommendations. Mr. Hedgeback. >> Thank you, Madam Chair. Uh the policy committee has a number of policies uh revisions ready for first read for tonight. Uh, as always, we'll have until next month for feedback. Um, you can ask questions now. You
154can surely email questions. I'm happy to to take those. Then, uh, just a couple things to point out about this uh about this list of of policies. Uh, one, we have a new a new murals policy. Uh two, we have um a few proposed changes to the school year uh when it comes to um unscheduled remote learning days. Um and identifying two days on the calendar that would be converted uh would be labeled as first uh first option snow makeup days ultimately. so the community could be more uh prepared for uh for those days. Um we also have a trained service animals policy as well as quite a few policies uh in personnel that were focused on uh inclusive and affirming language and updating pronouns. >> Thank you. >> Any questions? All right, we'll move
155right along to 4.0. 05 received for first read contracts over a 100,000. Mr. Cameas, Madam Chair, we have several contracts for first read. We are happy to take any questions and answer them between now and our meeting in July. Thank you. There are none. We'll move right along to administrative updates. Receive an update on care and safety item 5.01. >> Good evening, Madame Chair, school board members, superintendent. My name is Shannon Ebran, school nutrition services director. Um, and I'm really excited this evening to share the work that my team has been doing in this school year. Um, just to honor student choice, to move forward with Dreams for RPS, and just to add menu variety for our students. Um, one of the highlights I'd like to just talk about on this slide is that we've
156just really been trying to um, connect our school meals to community. Um this year we've um had some local produce that we've been able to feature. Our milk is always local, but um in October with the Crunch Heart around the Commonwealth, we had apples that were just 85 miles away from RPS. Um this spring we also had strawberries that were just a little over 140 miles from RPS. Um our milk dispensers are really popular. We have them at school three schools this year and we had a celebration for farm to school month at Lynwood Holton um where we had um a visit from Vax and we also had a naming ceremony. So just um want to make our students aware um with their connection to food and then to the local community here in Richmond
157um because our milk comes within 24 to 48 hours from the cow straight to the cafeteria. Um and a lot of people don't know that. Um we're just trying to have um student favorites on the menu from our annual Thanksgiving meal is always a hit. We've had wings this school year twice. Um really exciting for like the Super Bowl and then for March Madness. Um but then also um National School Breakfast Week was really um special this year because we were able to serve pancakes to our students. That was a request of theirs and also turkey bacon. And it was really exciting because on the day that we served it, I got to be at Fiser and a student was just really proud to show their um their breakfast tray and was like this was
158the best breakfast that they had ever had. Um so really excited to be able to make our students smile and just to give them something that they may not have had um [clears throat] at home. Um but just really um doing a great job this year with rolling out all of the things from the student food show. Um we really kept to our promise. We were able to do nine out of the 10 items. Um one item is considered a alle cart item. So we are looking at ways to roll that in for this next school year. Um but we've had salad bars at our high schools um this school year as well. And then in addition to all of the student food show items, we've also implemented 15 other items. So, remixing some of
159the things that we already have on our order guide, bringing back some things that our manager said were really popular with the students, but we're just trying to make, you know, um the choice exciting for our students. Um not always making it easy. Sometimes we have favorites and they can't choose what they, you know, want to have for lunch that day, but we just really want to engage with the students and just bring the things on the menu that they're really excited to see. Um, and then just a quick shout out that we've been featured with No Kid Hungry um twice on a webinar. I got to be with um Kesha Washington, Miss Washington um on a webinar and she just really got to talk about her strategies for serving over 700 students breakfast um
160and just how she gets them through the line and just the culture of breakfast at um River City. So, I was really excited to be there with her and support her on that webinar. Um we did have our elementary student food show this year and it was really exciting. Um we had um last year was with our secondary students. This time we engaged with our elementary students and it was pretty much the same type of experience. So we had 14 vendors but each vendor showed about two recipes, some of them three, but overall was close to 40 dishes that our students got the chance to try on that day. um we took a more visual approach with voting and um more manual. So it was like really exciting because we had green chips, blue chips
161that were poker, not poker chips but um bingo chips and they were in a clear box. So you know you got to see the students voting in real time. Um they were engaging with the um the vendors, you know, asking about the different dishes. Um, and I think it was just a really exciting time for the students because um, they a lot of them just had never experienced that type of um, menu sampling day. And then these are just the top 10 that rose to the top um, on that day. So again, we're taking the same approach that we're going to roll out the top 10 um, items um, from this year's food show. Same way as we did for the last year's um, just rolling through. So, just looking ahead, oops, as we um
162go into the next school year, we're just really um making an effort to just tie everything that we're doing into Dreams for RPS. We just had our chef um culinary open house that was I think it was a great success. We had six chefs um you know, restaurant tours, culinary leaders. We had um some um institutions like Reynolds there. But it was a really great night. Everybody, almost every chef that was there was like a parent or a caregiver here in RPS. So, they were really invested. We took them on a tour. Um, let them try some of our dishes. They gave immediate feedback and I've already gotten some emails from them about how they want to collaborate or just ideas that they have for our school nutrition program. So, um, that was just a
163really great night. um really fun night and really important because we got to also showcase our um kitchen managers on that evening as well and some other team members um instead of myself who really came to the forefront and presented on that evening. Um we have been working on flavor stations this year. Um we have uh been piloting them at our high schools just doing a tour and we're really excited to roll those out. So, we're just really working on menu enhancements and just getting our students engaged again and just trying to figure out what they want to see on the menu and um rolling them out as we work with them and um work with our menus for the next year. Um we're still continuing our partnerships with Lulu's Local Food. Um, we've been
164having our markets the past couple of weeks and they're continuing through the summer and we hope to continue them in the fall as, um, the budget allows and as Molly continues to graciously work with us. Um, and then one super exciting thing is that we are collaborating with a um, program called Eat Real. It's a certification kind of like um maybe like a validation for like school nutrition and our meals. Um so they've just taken a deep dive into our program over the last year pulling out data. Um trying to see where we're winning and where we need to make improvements. um and it's going to go over three years and they have different performance standards, but they're really looking at, you know, us getting um away from some of the processed foods and just
165helping us to continue to implement some of the USDA guidelines that are surrounded around lowering sugar and sodium, trying to work with smaller farms, bringing more local into our program. Um, but they really did get um some good data and I just want to share just real quick, but they identified that we do have 10 scratch-cooked items on our menu and 91% of our produce is uh that we currently source is from small farms and midsize farms. So, I was really proud about that. And then over a week, we tend to serve 17 different types of fruit varieties and 29 vegetable varieties. Um, and that was just something that, you know, obviously I don't always have the time to look at. Um, so this is just a really helpful program. We're working with the registered
166dietitians as we do this and other school professionals. So I'm really excited to see um the other data and just the different improvements that they're going to help us implement in the next three years as we work with them. Um, and we're trying to make it to or we will make it to their green certification. I'm really thinking it's going to be in the next year because we're just in a 23 point gap from making it to the 64 points for that um [clears throat] that certification. So, I'm really excited um to continue to work with them. And um that concludes my pro my um presentation. Um and I just want to shout out my team because we're doing all of these initiatives while we're um we've served so far 3 million meals. Um we
167and that's just as of March. So we're still rolling in with our claims. We're still counting um for April and May, but I'm really hoping we're going to make that 4 million mark because typically we we do 3.9 a year. So I'm thinking we're going to go over this year and I'm really excited. And I'll stop there for questions. >> Phenomenal job presentation. All right, Miss Ricard, Mr. Hedgepath, Miss Rizzy. >> Thank you, Miss Zbron. I really appreciate this. Um, and I was able to um, shadow the chef showcase and it was a wonderful event and just wanted to thank you but also all the cafeteria managers that stayed past their time to do that. It was lovely. I I was wondering one thing that I came away with was the vegetable procurement and the
168schedule we're on and I was wondering if you could just share that with our colleagues just so they're aware and that maybe in the future if there's funds to look elsewhere. >> Yeah. So, um at the culinary openhouse I shared that our um fresh produce comes on Thursday and a lot of that has to do with our particip participation in the Department of Defense program. Um, so we get entitlement dollars for all of these meals that we serve for each of the three million meals. And so with that, we get money that we can put in different buckets like um commodity foods which are like brown box or like the DoD. So anyway, it's all like in a state schedule. So we don't have a lot of control over um when our delivery day happens.
169So we are looking at different ways to to uh purchase our produce. So um yeah, our team does a really great job of um you know preserving those items for the week, but that that is a reality that things come in on Thursday and then they sit over the weekend. So, I'm really working with procurement to think about different strategies um whether that's like line items with other um vendors or if we just need to think about moving away from that DoD and state purchasing, but thank you. It's a it's a challenge and it's a good point. Thank you. >> Thank you, Mr. Hedgepath. >> Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, Miss Ibron. Really appreciate your work. >> Thanks. Uh, I've had a few questions from constituents that I I thought would be worthy to
170to share. One was about the portion sizes particularly at the middle school level that I understand that uh maybe we follow USDA recommendations that and and please correct me if this is wrong that elementary, excuse me, and middle um divisions have the same um portion size and schools have a separate different uh portion size. Is that correct? >> Yes. So, um I can give you more information, but I would say probably like the most noticeable differences are the calories like over the week and then um the serving sizes for the fruits and vegetables are much larger on the high school level as well. So, it's really averaged over a week's worth of time. And it's kind of complicated, but there are a lot of good graphics out there that I can share with you. But
171um yeah, I think the biggest difference that you would see just from like charts and graphs are like the calories um is actually much higher on the high school level for breakfast and lunch versus um the K through eight because the K through eight can be blended. So their pattern is a little bit more um it is the same versus the high school. >> Thank you. And I did didn't mean to put you on the spot for the exact specifics, but yeah, I do I do worry that that a kindergartener and an eighth grade may eighth grader may have different uh caloric intake requirements. And so I wonder if there's a way that we could we could perhaps make make a third category for our middle schoolers. Um that where there there's a middle line
172between the high school offering and the the elementary offering. Although in in that same vein, I do concern I'm concerned about waste >> also because that's the other question that a number of of of parents had asked about and I did I I've seen it >> uh at Lucille Brown as an example during lunch they have the community table that like an item you put it on the table and somebody else picks it up. I think that's a really great uh for that. But I wonder if uh if if we're doing all of these uh u advancements to the health and you know of our our food offerings uh are the kids eating it right >> uh right because we want to make sure that that it's not going to waste and so I wonder
173and and again perhaps this is a conversation for another day but I wonder uh what your thoughts are about about waste and if there's been studies on >> um we have we do not have a waist study Um, you know, I've asked my team if we've done that before. Um, I would be interested to see that myself. Um, I think a lot of it also just be is just like about continuing to train our team and just fine-tuning some of the concepts cuz as you saw like trying to explain like the difference between a middle school and a high school um, meal is kind of complicated and sometimes the USDA guideline not sometimes they usually are kind of complicated. Um, so I think just continuing, you know, to do the work, um, that we're doing
174to train our staff to make our meals more appealing, um, you know, just with the different just visual, you know, just excitement and things like that with our meals. Um, but then I do agree about perhaps, you know, expanding, um, share tables at other schools as well. But um I think it's definitely something that we need to put on our radar and work on more in this next school year. >> Thank you so much. >> Thank you, Miss Rizzy. >> Hey, Madam Chair, Miss Ebram, thank you so much for all of your hard work. Um, you know, having been on this board for a while, I will say that like I received not one complaint about food. Um, thank you about that, too. So, thank you. >> Congratulations on that. I'm curious about the DoD
175and food procurement. What would have to do with each other? But we could >> I know that's a qu. Yes, it's been around for a long time, too. >> Okay. Um and you know, I just want to say that I've noticed um especially because I've had some concerns with breakfasts and the reliance on um processed foods. And so I have noticed less of a reliance on processed foods for breakfast. So I just wanted to note that I appreciate that. >> Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Farooq. >> Thank you, Madam Chair. Um, thank you again to you and your staff. There are so many things that our kids can't control. >> Yeah. >> In the school system and in the in life. And so all your engagement activities are just I think excellent and really exciting.
176I've had the opportunity to observe a few of them and the kids are having a blast. >> Oh, thank you. So my question specifically is do you mind repeating when you said that 91% of our fresh produce is locally sourced? Was that right? >> Yeah, it's 91%. So we do use a large broadline distributor, but I really try to menu our items so that they're seasonal. Um, and we're paying attention to the seasons here in Virginia, but then also USCA has a guideline that we have to do by American. So that excludes, you know, the Guatemala, the Mexico items and things like that. So, um, like I said, this is not, this was not something that I knew. Um, but I think, you know, when I plan the menu that way, that gives the distributor
177the opportunity to use something that's local, which I'm sure that helps them to throughout all of these um, you know, turbulent times with fuel and all those different things. So, I'm happy to know that our distributor is paying attention to those things as well. So yeah, that's how that came to be. >> Thank you, Mr. Cambers. >> Thank you, Madam Chair. Just real quick based off that question. >> Um, we don't have locally sourced. >> Well, no. Our pineapple is can So, there are some exceptions. I was trying to check. Yes. >> All right. Thank you. >> Yes. >> [laughter] >> Thanks. Yes. Thank you so much. >> All right. Moving on to 5.0 uh 5.02. Receive an update for um SY 2627 staffing. Good evening, Madame Chair, members of the board, Superintendent Camas. I
178am here today to share with you a staffing update as we head into staffing for our new school year. Uh Monica Haskins was going to be here, but she had a family emergency, so she had to leave, so I apologize for that. All right, great. So, I wanted to put together something that we could all see very easily visually on where we are with our staffing. And because our data is a a wee bit challenging to put together, um you can see that this data is as of May 18th. So starting in the upper left hand corner you see that um our current vacancy rate was 5.59%. And moving across that top blue bar we were at that time recruiting for 115 classroom teacher vacancies out of 158 total uh classroom teacher positions. As we
179move down into the three buckets about our projected vacancies. So, what we do is we try to um think about what are our licensing non-renewals potentially going to look like. And we monitor that throughout the entire school year. and we stay on top of our folks who have provisional licenses and we work with our teacher leader pathways group to make sure that we're constantly putting opportunities in front of them to help them get fully endorsed. So throughout the year we're tracking these folks and so when you look at our license potential lensure nonrenewals the list is about 55 where we're like yep it's a slim chance that these folks are going to get renewed for a couple of reasons. either a they have not completed the requirements for their renewal and we don't expect that
180given the timeline they will and B they're just not eligible for another renewal at this point in time. Okay. We also look at performance non-renewals because every year we have to go through and we have to identify who's being nominated for non-renewal based on performance. Then we also took the uh number of unsigned teacher contracts that we had at that point in time because if you recall we gave everybody until May the 4th. That was not intentional for Star Wars day, but we gave everybody until May the 4th to get their contracts signed, but then we said, "Hey, you have until May 15th to give us a resignation." So, we kind of gave people a nice 11-day grace period there to get contracts signed and back to us. So, at that point, we had uh
18119 that were not signed. And then what we did is we looked at last year's res resignations that we received in June, July, and August. And then I added about 20% to that number. And that's where I estimated. So these are forecasts right there on that left hand side. And so I anticipated that we're probably going to receive like another 25 over the course of the summer based on last year's numbers and me adding about 20% to that number. Then we looked at our pipeline like how many candidates do we have that we are touching right now through our different avenues. So in our applicant tracking system, our ATS, we have approximately qualified applicants in the system that the recruiting team is actively engaging with, calling them, following up with them, finding out, you know,
182are they still interested? And these are all this is a an everchanging number that 225. We also have the ability to issue 80 LEAL's this year. So, we're counting on those as well. Then we took a look at the individuals that are inside of our grow our own programs like the seed conversion, the seed programs and the associate teacher program. And based on historical conversion rates, we are estimating that we will be able to convert approximately 20 of the candidates in the seed programs and roughly 15 in the associate teacher program by August to at a minimum have provisional licenses. And then I wanted to give you how many have we hired to date for an August start date and that was 61 at that point. Okay. So, do you want me to keep going
183and then ask questions or do you want to Okay. Okay. Just wanted to make sure. >> We're at almost nine. So, >> Okay. All right. So, I'm going to blow through this. So what I gave you here is the individual clusters and we categorized it by yellow, green and red so that you can have just a quick visual understanding of who are our highest vacancy areas. You can peruse that at your leisure and ask questions. So I'm just going to kind of go through that really quickly. And then is our strategies on what we're going to do to fill our vacancies. So we've had recruiting events throughout the year. On May 28th, we participated in national um education teacher job fair. June tomorrow, we're having our lensure and hiring fair, which is um is a
1844-hour event in the middle of the day. Um I've heard that's a pretty successful event every year. And then on June 29th, we are attending the National Teachers of Color Virtual Job Fair. And obviously throughout the summer, we're going to continue to attend any any job fairs that are are relevant to our market. In addition to that, we're engaging in strategic outreach. So, we are targeting our northern markets and really positioning central Virginia as the place to come and be a teacher. Now, specifically, the team is targeting similar school districts like Richmond public schools. Right. I grew up in Jersey, so I know for a fact that Newark, New Jersey, Camden, New Jersey, and Trenton are places that are very similar uh demographically, economically, English as a second language. I mean, I'm an ESL graduate
185myself from my kindergarten days, Spanish was my first language, right? Um in those areas. So, we also are thinking about like Baltimore, Philadelphia, there are several um areas of eastern Massachusetts. There's a couple of areas in Connecticut. And if you think about it, these places have like exorbitant costs of living that we can really say, "Hey, you tired of the snow nine months out of the year?" Like, you know, I know the snow here is getting worse. I know. Um but that's kind of our approach. Uh we are also engaging in strategic competitor district outreach and I'm not going to speak too much about that because this is public and I don't want them to find out what we're doing. Um [laughter] we're also working on a bring a buddy employee referrals uh to try
186to incentivize our existing teachers to kind of bring buddies along and and refer folks to Richmond public schools. And so how we're activating these pipelines is through the leels, the seed conversions, the powers school applications, incomplete application recovery, that is a hidden gem where we reach out to people who didn't fully complete their application and proactively call them and be like, "Hey, we noticed you didn't complete your application. Come to us." Um, and recruiter contract recovery where the recruiters are reaching out to people who are not signing their contracts and trying to recover them proactively. And we have um different processes and incentives like a virtual multi-school interview mo uh model that the team is engaging in where we bring people in to do uh panel interviews with different schools sitting on the same panel
187uh to just so that they don't have to go through 15 different interviews. Several schools can interview a candidate at the same time. And then um signing bonus and and incentive exploration. We are exploring uh funding to um encourage people to come here from out outer states in the northern markets and we help them financially with that relocation because relocation is expensive. So really our featured initiative right now is to work with our principles so that as soon as we send them candidates within 48 to 72 hours they're they're reaching out to the candidates for an interview. Um we're also working with uh principles and recruiters for timely dispositions of candidates and that is going into the applicant tracking system and appropriately statusing candidates so that we have a realtime view into what the status
188is of our candidates and requiring justifications for stalled requisitions. If we don't see movement on our candidates, we want to understand why. And if people are passing on our candidates, we always want to understand why as well. So we also wanted to provide you with an update on onboarding. We are going to revamp our onboarding process because today in our current environment, we have new hires starting every single business day of the month and that is not a standard practice. And what ends up happening is every single new hire becomes a custom event for all of those different areas that you see on this particular slide. And that really creates a drain on our resources and it compounds the costs of every hire because of every single function. So what I have uh recommended is
189that we move to two start dates per month at the beginning of every pay period. It creates one cadence for all of our new hires, streamlines that new hire experience, right? Um, we are going to take day one and make it into a full day orientation so that we have cohorts of hires, right? We're going to build it around the pay period. We will have exceptions, but they will be very narrow and approved exceptions, right? because we really want to create these cohorts and improve the experience for our folks. What that does is it almost indoctrinates our people into Richmond public schools. It creates a an opportunity for us to give them a welcome and bring them into the RPS culture, walk them through policy, get a good overview of our benefits, help them get
190their payroll stuff set up, their I-9 verifications, and it really creates that sense of community when you are hired with a cohort, right? and allows you to stay connected to all of those people and our school division. So, I I don't think I have to sell people very hard on this because there are so many advantages to Richmond public schools, but really I would say that this allows us to build for scale. Um, and for me, I think really the biggest advantage is the impact that it has on the new hire experience, right? Um, and then I also included for you a sample, a draft. This is still a work in progress. I just want to be very clear because I think we're missing a couple of critical things in here, but the next few
191pages was like, here's like what that day could potentially look like for people. We're still flushing this one out, though. That's it. Thank you so much for the presentation. Before we get into questions, I just had one quick one. For some reason, red is not included in the vacancies. I was just wondering if that was >> Red Elementary. I apologize for that. That must have been an oversight on our So, we pull this from a live database that we use. So, maybe what happened was the cut and paste missed it, but I can get you all those numbers 100%. >> Thank you so much. >> Absolutely, >> Mr. Farooq. >> Thank you, Miss Phelise. Um, as a government employee myself, I do really appreciate the ideas about streamlining our onboarding. That's so important. It can
192be so disorienting for a new employee to be in a big uh workplace and not have other people to ask about if they miss something or details they need. So, thank you for that. My question is about um retention and I'm curious about some of our staff with Bridgemond Virtual Academy. I know we have about 20ish staff there. Do you know yet how many of them are definitely going to stay with RPS and how many more we still have to work with? >> So I am 98% locked in. That's what I said to Superintendent Cameras this morning when we reviewed my activities of the last two weeks and helping to place as many of our RVA members as possible. We uploaded a report to you all uh that shows by person what their status is.
193I did not come prepared to say this percentage, but everything is in there. Everything's in there. >> Question. Thank you, Madam Chair. I am very glad to hear that you are now making a more of a concerted effort to track applicants, right, and to code them once the applicants come in. And um you know, some odd 30ome years ago, I applied to RPS and never heard back. So, Henriiko benefited. [laughter] this is um you know um anyway I'm glad to hear that that's happening and you're more intentional about doing that. >> Um I my question is what are your strategies for the schools who are showing in red right now? Are there any unique strategies that you're employing to work to staff those schools? So really our strategies are broadbased across the board because we
194really believe that the right fit in the right school is really important. I feel strongly that the strategy of reaching out to the school districts that are very similar to us in other states that may not have as good a climate as good a vibe as Richmond does is really going to be to target those harder to fill uh schools with the and by hard to fill it's the higher vacancy schools. Uh I think that we organizationally have engaged in collaborative strategic planning around those schools and we've made people process and systemic changes at these schools in terms of how we uh lead there as well as how we are recruiting for them. So, I firmly believe that this outreach to other states is really going to benefit a lot of those schools because those
195teachers have experience in this type of a an environment and I think they're going to enjoy coming to us. And the nice thing about going after the schools like in Jersey, in Pennsylvania, and in New York is their school ends at the end of June, not at the end of May. So, we have a really nice window of being able to go after them now. Yeah. Does that help, ma'am? Okay. Thank you. >> Thank you, Miss Holton. >> Thank you, Miss Biz. Um I'll rapid fire several questions. Um uh the first is how does the gap now between vacancies and recruitment compare to prior years if you know are we better off or worse off or where are we relative to other years? >> That is a really good question and I did not come
196prepared to discuss yearoveryear metrics but I can get that information. I don't want to put you to extra work, but the uh do you have a feel for it or maybe not since I know you weren't here? >> Yes, I wasn't here. I'm wondering if Superintendent cameras can help me with that, >> Mr. Cameras. >> Thank you, Madam Chair. I would say we are roughly where we were last year. >> Thank you, Madam Chair. May continue. Uh second question is see some schools with some very significant gaps uh I see Carver, Blackwell, Southampton having red letter student classroom vacancies. What uh is the uh central office? What can you do? What are you doing to deep dive help those students? So we are engaging in a multi-pronged strategy to understand a what's driving some of
197those exits. Uh for example, my director of employee and labor relations uh noticed a pretty large exodus from one of those schools. She's going to jump in there and do roundt discussions with existing staff and we are proactively reaching out to people to schedule live exit interviews with them because sending an email for an exit interview, I don't know if y'all are aware of this, but on average you'll get less than a 15% response rate to that. So, while 15% is statistically relevant, we we obviously want more data on exits than that. Right now, it is a very manually intensive process with somebody making phone calls, but that's just one of the strategies outside of the of the strategy for recruiting that I've discussed that we are engaging in to try to fill those vacancies.
198>> Well, I appreciate that you're using the data to then guide some deep dive efforts. Um, and then the third, and you may well have spoken about this previously, but uh, uh, what maybe maybe the answer is we've done it earlier in the year rather than now, but what are we doing to reach out to our Virginia H.B.CU's ed schools because they're a great source of recruitment, I would hope, for RPS. >> Yes, the recruiting team has been all all year round. They they reach out to H.B.CU. They've reached out to local uh, colleges and college and university partners. local community colleges. So, we engage with them as I believe as early or as late as December, as early as January uh for those. And this year, our strategy is going to shift a little
199bit um and focus more on much earlier intervention going into October. Madam Chair, if I have time still and in that vein, again, this may be just me as a newbie not knowing, but do we do student teaching in partnerships with those schools? Because that's a that's a pathway, right? Yes. Is that a recruit? Yes. Uh with uh teacher leader pathways, they help us with student teaching and our academic partners help us with student teaching. But we pull out of all of those pools when we go out and we try to recruit for our uh pathways programs. >> Thank you. >> You're welcome. Great questions. >> Thank you so much. We appreciate your time. >> Thank you. Last but not least, 5.03 03 receive an update on 2026 summer school programming and summer professional development.
200Good evening. >> Good evening, board chair Fernandez, uh members of the school board, and superintendent Camas. I'm Sydney Gunter, director of academic programs and supports here to provide a brief update on uh where we are with our uh summer school program. Um we again are going to host prek through 12 summer school. My colleague Rebecca was here to present with me um but it got a little late and her parking expired so she had to leave but she did provide me with her updates which I'll share in a second. Um we are going to again have reading math science remediation um with built-in experiences such as mad science of central Virginia um coming to do fun shows for our kids as enrichment um like we did last summer. Um we will take field trips to
201colleges for our middle school students. Um, so we were able to to build in some experiences this summer. Thank you to the board um and to Superintendent Cameras for funding summer schools so that we're still able to provide those experiences this summer. Um, again, we're going to partner with the mayor's youth academy and our recreation and parks friends um for those connections this summer. Um, and to note, I just want to share our summer school enrollment. Those numbers were of 527, but today we have 1,662 students registered in preK through 8 summer school. Uh for high school, we will continue with the credit recovery 3-week program and then the so uh recovery 3-week pro program after that. Um we have today 174 students enrolled in credit recovery. That's that first part for the course recovery.
202Um, and we'll have better numbers for the so recovery after that portion is over. Some of those students will need to also recover SOS after they take the course. We have 18 identified possible summer graduates as of today. Um, but we anticipate more students will be identified as counselors continue to register students for summer school. And we have approximately 318 instructional staff, so teachers, instructional assistants hired for summer school. Um, which is about 100 fewer than last year. Um, as we shared, we were more intentional in targeting kids who uh needed summer school the most this year. So, we have fewer students, so fewer teachers. Um, and I do just want to highlight we also were able to work with our teacher leader pathways department as uh um, Miss Billy shared to bring in some
203of our associate teachers to be our summer school substitutes. So, we want to give them an opportunity to continue in schools this summer. >> Yes, Miss B. >> Thank you for this report. I was in one of schools today. Got a text. Some people said they couldn't hear me, so I'll try to be a little loud one. Can you hear me? Um, my question is regarding the numbers on slide four. I know persons are getting ready because of the school I was in today. They were talking about summer school. I'm just surprised to see the numbers especially for Shimaranza Elementary. And that would be for three schools, correct? Belleview, Marsh, and Shimarazzo. >> Yes. And we only have 158 students. Yes. So that is who has registered so far. Um we are giving families an
204opportunity if they were invited if there is space in a class to come with a parent on the first day to register on site if they can. Um and if there's available space we will place them in a summer school course or put them on a wait list um for summer school in the event that um we have extra space. Sometimes kids don't show up. So they register, they don't come and we have extra spaces in class. Um so we may have more kids after the first week. Um but again those numbers fluctuate. >> So summer school is for how many weeks? Six weeks. >> It's four or five weeks for prek through eight and six weeks for high schools. >> So my question is I know that more than 158 students in those three
205schools must be included in this number. So is it on parent square? How do parents know that they have the opportunity? It is. >> So we sent out summer school invitations via parent square to families. We also sent all of the summer school letters of the invited students to our uh schools. Um each kid who was invited has a personalized letter and then additional kids who they wanted to invite also had the opportunity to be invited. For example, if a school identified a kid that was not initially identified, they could have invited them to summer school as well too. So if you're invited to be in summer school, it must be an honor. That's the matter what you're saying. >> Absolutely. So my question is, do we have an idea of this 158? How many
206students were invited per the three schools? I do I don't have that off the top of my head, but I can certainly share that with you. I do I do have that number. >> I would love to, but maybe I can help with that. Thank you, Mie. >> Thank you, Madam Chair. So, this year we are targeting students who need the support. I know that that has been um a concern in the past is that students who don't really need the support end up being the ones who attend summer school. So it is looking now like we're getting that you know critical group of students who need the support. Yes, the initial identification letters went to students who fit in certain um parameters of students who were identified as high-risisk on vowels or students who
207may uh not may who did not pass their so test last spring. Um, but then schools also had the opportunity to invite additional students who may not have passed the spring as well, too. >> Thank you. We appreciate your presentation. We're excited about summer school. All right, Mr. Hedgepath has closed. >> Thank you, Madam Chair. I move that the school board of the city of Richmond convene in close session. One to discuss and consider the performance and possible discipline of classified employees and to consult with legal counsel regarding the same issues as authorized by VA code 2.2-3711A1 and A8. Number two, to consider with legal counsel regarding issues related to FOYA personnel matters and matters related to the education foundation as authorized by VA code 2.2-3711A8 2-3711 A8 and number three to discuss one or
208more collective bargaining agreements involving the expenditure of public funds where discussion in an open session would adversely affect the bargaining position or negotiating strategy of the public body and to consult with legal counsel regarding the same issues as authorized by VA code 2.2-3711A29 and A8. Second. >> It's been moved by Mr. Hedgep and seconded by Mr. Percal. Madame clerk. >> Mr. Perl. >> Yes. >> Miss Ricard. >> Yes. >> Mr. Farooq. >> Yes. >> Mr. Hedgepath. >> Yes. >> Miss Rizzy. >> Miss Holton. >> Yes. >> Miss Burke. >> Yes. >> Mr. Jafari. Miss Fernandez. >> Yes. >> Motion passes. >> Colleagues, we are now in close. If we could transition back to the room.