RPS School Board Work Session - March 2, 2026

001Good evening everyone. We would like to call the school board work session meeting for Monday, March 2nd, 2026 and to order. Madame clerk, Mr. Pible >> here, >> Miss Ricard here, Mr. Farooq >> here, >> Mr. Hedgepath >> here. >> Miss Holton, >> Miss Rizzy >> here, >> Miss Burke, Mr. Jafari >> here, >> Miss Fernandez >> here. We have a quorum. >> Thank you. And 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 need 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 want

002to remind everyone to please speak at a normal pace and keep your face no more than a couple of inches away from the microphones so that our interpreters can hear you clearly. I will now make the same announcement in Spanish. Thank you. Gracias. >> Thank you. And now we'll have the pledge of allegiance and moment of silence led by Mr. United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. And now we have the adoption of the agenda. Mr. Pible. >> Madame Chair, I move that we adopt the agenda for the school board meeting Monday, March 2nd as posted. >> Second. >> It's been moved by Mr. Pival and seconded by Mr. Jafari. Madame Clerk. Mr. Perl. >> Yes. >> Mr. Card.

003>> Yes. >> Mr. Farooq. >> Yes. >> Mr. Hedgepath. >> Yes. Miss Holton, >> yes. >> Miss Rizzy, >> yes. >> Miss Berg, Mr. Jafari, Miss Fernandez, >> yes. >> Motion passes. >> Thank you. And now to Dreams for RPS update. We have received Dreams for RPS goal three high school SOS. Mr. Cameron. >> Thank you, Madam Chair. To uh begin, I would ask all the high school principles if they wouldn't mind making their way up. Those that are here, if they are here, >> I see Uh, Principal Murray, Principal Olds, Principal, Principal Hudson, um, not all of their colleagues were able to make it this evening, but I just wanted to before Dr. Wiggins uh, presents all the information, wanted to just publicly thank you and your colleagues for the outstanding work over the

004course of the fall and last year and the years before, not only graduation rates, but also seeing some incredible uh, gains in student learning on the SOS. So, wanted to give you your flowers uh this evening and recognize you and your teams, your teachers and counselors and social workers and everybody else who's worked so so hard each and every day, bus drivers and custodians and everybody uh and of course your students who I know you love deeply and uh pour your heart and your whole soul. So, uh on behalf of RPS, thank you. Thank you, Superintendent Cameress, and good evening to schoolboard chair, vice chair, and school board members. Um, first of all, I'm excited and thrilled to come up to present the winter so results. I feel like I am standing in thestead of

005Chief Jefferson who started this work in the year and now I am here to continue the work um with the help of the wonderful principles that you just saw and those that are not here but also our wonderful team. Um it takes a lot of work to raise scores and it um we have what we call the graduation forsome and so that is Dr. Jennifer Blackwell, that is Courtney Ward, and that is John Grove, and the captain of the ship, um, Dr. Bell, who make sure that every strategy, every goal we meet, it's very intentional work. And so, I'm not going to steal their thunder, but I just want you um to know that there's a lot of work that has gone into the results that you see. and hopefully we will get to come

006back and show you the graduation projections for the next few years because they're even more exciting. So, thank you very much. And now John's going to come up. >> Good evening, school board members. Um, my name is John Grove and I'm here to present this year's winter high school so data. To begin, I want to share the five years, the past five comparable years of so proficiency for high schools. Um, and I want to do this to frame how much RPS is accelerating student outcomes for our high school students. Um in this chart you can see RPS from school year 23 24 to 2425 we've increased proficiency from 63 to 71 62 to 65 and lastly 45 to 54. Now this is phenomenal. Um and to add on top of that we have also we're

007also exceeding preandemic levels from school year 1819. And the reason why I want to show you this is and to shift our focus into this year's data is from our current winter assessment window. We can see that proficiency here has substantially increased in all four subject areas for the second year in the row. 12% increase in math, 7% increase in reading, 18% in science, and lastly 18% in history. Keep in mind that end of the year proficiency rates include our winter results. I like to think of our winter rates as usually the floor end of end of the year proficiency. Um and notice that last year from winter to the enter end of the year uh proficiency we increased math from 59 to 65. And you can see that the 59 here into the last

008chart of 65. And then from reading we go from 60 to 71. And again this kind of frames how much our high school proficiency is accelerating with the 12 7 18 and 10% increase. Now before diving into the rest of our results I do want to just make sure I explain the differences in end sizes because they are uh pretty drastic. You can see some increases here and then at the school level you'll see some variation as well. The first one and probably the easiest one to understand is around history. You can see 800 to 300 that's a 500 roughly 500 uh student difference and it is because we are fully implementing on history PBAs in replace of SOS. So I'm not going to spend too much time diving and analyzing that data. I'm going

009to spend a little bit more time in math reading and science. Now the other two reasons is number one around when students are scheduled. So, um it depends on when schools schedule students into test taking courses. And so, for at the school level, if you see a decrease, it's likely because um they have the students scheduled into the next semester and they will test just at the end of the year. And then the last reason um to what I see as the increase here is we have very strong systems of remediation and retesting. So we are testing our students um who have failed previously right away and so we have you can see that increase from 588 to 703 585 to SE 773 and that's likely due to our stronger systems of remediation and retesting

010for our students and Dr. Bell is going to go over that later in the presentation. All right. So, the next piece here is going over our overall results and by reporting group and test comparison. This is going to be super easy to go over because there's a lot of green, a lot of increases everywhere. First, for reading, you can see here our Latino multilingual students and SWDs uh showed some double-digit gains there, which is nominal with our multilingual students leading in gains. In math, you can see that our again our Latino multilingual students and SWDs have increased. But I do want to draw um more attention to the algebra 2. I've mentioned this earlier in board presentations because of our middle school students taking algebra 1 in middle school. We're going to see that increase

011in N size. And what we want to see is also an increase in proficiency. And you see that there, which is again phenomenal. That's what we want to see. And then for science here, just great gains across the board. Our only only um not area to make gains is our white subgroup here, but they also have the highest proficiency. And then again, history, I don't want to play too much into it because the end size. And then for our school results, uh schools that did again phenomenal here. There is a clear winner here and I'll mention that um in a couple slides, but first here is for reading. Um great gains across the board. I want to highlight John Marshall with an 11% increase. This is where it gets really good. Um Richmond High School

012for the Arts, 44% increase from 16% to 60% is phenomenal. Um and you can also see some of our other schools with their gains as well. And then again for science, Richmond High School for the Arts 19 to 68. Um and you can also see here that is also a very big chunk of our students, a big end size here. And this is what's primarily been driving up our overall results as well. And then lastly for history PBA, you can see data here. All right, hand it over to Dr. Bell. Oh, excuse me. Before I hand it over to Dr. Bell, I do want to update the board on our accountability results. So, first we want to include this data just to frame how well our high schools have performed on the new school performance

013um model. Uh but the other thing that we really wanted to communicate is this. Our appeal to the accreditation status was approved by VideoE. Um and that was a big deal because on the next slide here you can see that all of our high schools are fully accredited. Um and we're looking to uh to uh this year to have all of our high schools be on track or distinguished and we're aiming. All right. Thank you. Good evening. My name is Willie Bell, principal director of high schools and athletics. Good evening to the board chair, superintendent cameras, other board members. To continue our our plight to make sure that we are on track as well as distinguished in all of our high schools. We have a what we call a platform or phenomenon called hashtag 300

014where we are improving our instruction through the number of classroom walks that we are conducting uh every day and we have a focus on these areas. Our major focus is student ownership and we have a ratio where 70 we talk we c we talk about 7030 where 70% of the engagement is for our students and the other 30% is for our teachers then we also we check for understanding that's a focus of our walks uh looking at exit tickets and then looking at our annotation strategies through these walks we are able to identify what teachers need additional support, we can team up with our partners for curriculum instruction, wellness, uh those teams when it comes to coaching in various areas. And you see a a snippet of this of the track of one of our

015dashboards where we're able to capture all these things and have the ratings where we can go back and help assist our principles, assist the principles and our teachers in professional learning communities and com comprehensive data reviews. This year our focus for 26 27 a shift uh to prepare for the increase in the cut scores. We uh partner with the collabor with the curriculum instruction team to look at increasing the rigor on the checkpoints and benchmarks for our schools and also adding a performance band so our kids can get prepared for this increase in the cut scores. This one also lift has already lifted in number three where we're working together in collaboration with those teams. That was an increase in our collaboration for this year especially in our technical assistance meetings and our championship habits.

016Another thing that I wanted to lift was number five where all of our schools have a remediation and intervention schedule that is in place that was initiated at the beginning of the school year that John alluded to and we attribute that to a lot of our success and our gains. um that section there number seven you have a lot of things that are in place there but when I conduct my walkthroughs and I'm getting giving support to the principles and assistant principles and the school in general I called in instructional leadership and organizational leadership walks where you see some of the things that we are always looking at and then the last thing we had we created a professional learning series last year to continue to support our content teachers to include AP teacher um

017in this process and how to work through the 4x4. Uh we adjusted the the curriculum pacing so we are finished in December. We can get our kids tested and they don't have to worry about that over the Christmas break and then we'll be ready to move into the second semester when we get back. The last two um slides talk about the technical assistance and the championship habits. technical assistance um and championship habits. We started three years ago and you can see in short the primary structure for those meetings uh with linking all the data instructional practices uh division is partnering with the schools and all those meetings and to improve the outcomes of our students. In those meetings we continuously focusing on graduation. The major piece is we focus on that ninth grade cohort that's

018coming in and we can see and you'll see in a later presentation uh maybe not tonight but where that is working. Uh we focus on attendance during that time. We also always have a focus on our subgroups. So that graduation strategy I think you've heard me talk about it before. We call it the RPS6 because we have six essential outcomes that we're focusing on. And the last championship habits you see uh in short right there where we kind of gave our little flowchart of leadership, behavior, classroom practice, student results, these links, but to add organizational management and we wanted to tease out the different focuses on each session. Technical assistance on the left, schoolbased championship habits on the right. It involves our schoolbased teams as well as our division support teams. So we are combining

019these two in April or we call it TAC TAC. Well TAC is short for tachometer and you know every car has that. So we going to check the motors make sure the engines are running properly, the oil is changed and everything is is smooth sailing. So we we are combining those two together where all of us are coming together and we're having these conversations. We really think that uh these two sessions the technical assistance and the championship habits have worked with improving our graduation rates uh over the these three years. Our attendance our chronic absenteeism is going down. Uh it's just across the board our high school data is looking good. Thank you. >> Thank you so much, Mr. Grove and Dr. Bell. Um, as you see, our graduation rates are well, as we know,

020our graduation rates are rising along with um our scores for our students and we're very excited about the work. But it's cohesive work. It is the principal director, it's data, it's the wellness office, it's an engagement office. when we come together for these meetings, it is the entire group there really working to make a difference for students and it's working. We're very happy about it. Any questions? >> Mr. Farooq. >> Thank you, Madam Chair. Dr. Wiggins, two questions. First, what are the common issues that teachers need support with as as these observations are increasing? And two, what is the feedback from either the staff or and obviously I don't know that you're going to ask kids, but I'm always curious, what is the experience of children if there's more adults more often in their classroom?

021Thank you. >> I'm going to have Dr. Bell to answer because he takes the walks. >> Remind me of your first question again, Mr. >> Sure. What what are the common issues that you're seeing in the observations that most commonly the teachers and the staff need support with? >> Great question. What we see mostly is the gradual release where teachers need assistance on student ownership giving it to our kids because if the kids are able to speak it, regurgitate it, reciprocate it, you know that we're going to have high results for student So we continuously talk about the marzano strategy where it talks about reciprocal teaching. So if our kids can do that, we know we're going to be okay. So what we have what we continuously strategy asks our teachers to do is to

022create those small groups when we transition or give them that gradual release. We are listening to the student agency how they are talking. Are we having some seminars? how they are giving the information back and they're just having a discussion. So when you give it to the kids, you know they have it and that's that's that student ownership piece and that's a m that was one of our major focuses um in curriculum instruction too. We focus on that area a lot. Now second question about students the students have seen us so much when we walk in the room it's just like a normal day. They don't it doesn't bother them because they're used to seeing the adults coming in but they also we also have conversations with them because one of the first questions that

023I know I ask as well as the principles what are you doing with so we're having conversations with those students so they see us all the time the division team so they know that we're there for Miss Ricard, >> just as a followup to that, are the walkthroughs traditionally 5 to 10 minutes or are they longer? How long are the leaders in the classroom for? >> So there are three type of walks. Uh culture and climate can be five to 10 and we have some focus items for those that we're looking at. Then we have what we call informal walks. They're a little longer could be from 15 to 20 25 minutes depending on we have five areas we call five engage explore explain all those elaborate so we're looking at those things depends on

024when we come in the room because 15 to 20 minutes we want to catch a transition because it could be at the beginning middle and end and that's one of the one of the shifts this year is that we've asked principles try to assist those teachers look at the instruction at the beginning, the middle and the essential and then that last one is the form and the form is 30. >> Thank you. And just one more follow-up question on so for I believe I heard this right but I just wanted to confirm Mr. Grove for our current winter so proficiency rates for 2526 they will only go up from here or is there a chance they could dip lower? I >> I don't want to say for certain. Um but when we're looking at our

0254x4 data in winter, it has only gone up overall. Now for schools, it can vary. I will say that. But overall it tends to go up. >> These results are incredible. So, thank you to everyone who has put in this hard work. Thank you, Miss Rizzy. >> Thank you, Madam Chair. Uh my my question um goes along, I think, with where Mr. Farooq was going. I didn't hear a whole lot about um the student response to this. I mean, it's one thing to get them to identify correct answers on a test, but are they displaying um excitement about being in the classroom? Are they exhibiting critical thinking? Are they being creative? Um, do you see lights coming on? I mean, I think that that um is just as important as these increased test scores, which

026are good. I'm not, you know, in any way denigrating that, but I I do want to know if kids seem more engaged. >> Mr. Cameron, >> I was just going to see if any of our principles would like to answer that question. You are by no means required to do so, but if you would like to do so, I think that's a great question. Um, at the end of the day, we talk about sense of belonging and what we do every single day is make sure that we have a welcoming learning environment. That's where it starts with the humanism and meeting kids where they are. Kids want to know that we care before they care about what we know. So, that's where we started the conversation. From there, we have students who are now recognizing

027what positive culture and climate looks like. One is about the adults and the other is about the kids. Now because of the sense of belonging from adults and also the children. Now our students are starting to thrive as a result of the structure that is in place. Now we are impacting kids in a positive way. They're not worrying about where the next meal is coming from or whether or not they're going to be get texted in regards to somebody wanting to do something to them. They are loving their school environment. And honestly, this is what we're about. The superintendent has asked us to lead with love and that's exactly what we're doing. Those results are a direct correlation to leading with love, meeting kids where they are, and students loving to come to school in

028their school environment. >> Thank you. Um, I don't know if it's possible, but at some point I'd love to see some like direct evidence like, you know, student surveys or maybe students can come in and talk to us about their experiences. >> Absolutely, we can do that. Thank you, Principal. And we'd also love if you'd come on some walks with us in schools so you could kind of see some um some of the evidence um for yourself because great things are happening in our schools. And don't get me wrong, we still have much work to do, but we are on the way and making positive progress toward that. And we're seeing it from preschool all the way through 12th grade. We're seeing that kids are excited about coming to school. There's a lot of pieces.

029Um um Director Bale, Cassandra Bale, who's in charge of curriculum and instruction, her and her team are out all the time doing the work to make sure that our teachers have the understanding of what needs to happen and then stretching them. Because the great thing about this accountability system, it just doesn't look at proficiency. It also looks at students who go beyond proficiency because the whole model is built on the growth. You're from one level to another. That's what gives us the scores. So, it's not just about the scores, but I love the scores because it really shows us what students are doing and how they're achieving. So, I always say every point is a child. And so, we have to make sure we're doing those things. But, we would love for any of you

030all to come to a championship habit meeting with us, technical assistance, or come into classrooms with us. When is the last time you've been in high school class? And so, um, lots of great things are happening and and then we can have the students to talk to you. But if we can do another presentation, we'd absolutely love to bring students in. Maybe we could do like a um a collection from a few different high schools so you could get a perspective. Um and so we'd love to do that. >> Sure. >> Yeah. Thank you, Dr. Wiggins. And thank you, Mr. Ols. I've neglected to thank you for that response. Thank you. >> Thank you, Mr. Jafari. And then Miss Hall. >> Thanks, Madam Chair. Just a couple of points and my inquir is focused around

03151 19 go there talking about the accredititation standard >> and uh just wondering if you could help me first first of all let me first say that number of areas that are highlighted in green coming later by it certainly goes to show that our scholars and their educators are really putting their very best foot forward and it's showing showing in the rising scores now circling back to this. I was just wondering if you could give me a little context on understanding the uh exactly what was it that was that did not make the cut the first time around. >> Yes. So there's accountability in this new system and there's accreditation. Accreditation used to mean something different than what it does now. So accountability is really built around test results. Accreditation now is built around a

032series of questions in which we have to answer for the school division. And one of the questions that um was why we didn't have all of our high schools fully accredited is because of the diploma status. And we it we just give regular diplomas. We and we had not given um certain kind of diplomas that really are not for full accreditation for for full um diploma for students and that was why we ended up having to send a waiver and then they sent it back that we were approved. So now we have put in our um in our program of studies and we've also put in um in our paperwork that we do have an alternate diploma for students and that is the one question of why we weren't fully accredited. >> Okay. And just

033to follow up, Madam Chair, so so we do offer certificates of completion at this point. >> Yes. Yes. And and and I guess I'm wondering if it was not a requirement or mandatory, how how can we be penalized for not actually issuing >> Mr. Cameras? >> Thank you, Madam Chair. Uh it is uh technically the law that we are supposed to offer. Uh but we are not alone in not offering them. 85 other school divisions don't offer them. uh because we want kids to get a diploma. A certificate of completion does not uh help you either with work or with further education. And so um technically we were out of compliance, but now we are in compliance. Um we do not intend to give out certificates of completion because again we want people to graduate

034with diploma. Madam Chair, just one one additional followup and uh I certainly get that superintendent. Um couple of different points on that. There are 132 different school divisions. So there are some uh part of some odd that do actually offer certificates of completion and and I would like to point out that at this juncture while I understand that the diploma RPS's drive to make sure that every graduate gets a diploma I just don't want us to underestimate the value of those who have individual education plans and what it means to them to get some kind of certification that shows what they've achieved. And so, uh, I would like for us to make sure that we look at that aspect of it in addition to what it is. I understand what RPS is after, but you're

035talking about some of our most challenged youngsters. And I just think that we should just go out in any kind of way we can to make sure that while not a diploma, they do get something and are able to experience the same graduation type of ceremony, if you will. Thanks, Madam Chair. Thank you, Miss Holton. >> Thank you, Dr. Dr. Wiggins and uh Mr. Grove and uh Dr. Bell for the impressive results and for your teams. Really uh very very exciting results. I'm just looking for a to help me understand a little bit better. Who is it that takes winter SOS? And this is following up a little bit on Miss Ricard's question. If you can help me understand who takes it in winter versus summer versus spring and how does that impact the likelihood

036of success or likelihood of this being the floor rather than see >> Absolutely. I'm going to have Dr. Bell to come back up but basically it is about scheduling. It is who we what classes we've scheduled for first semester and which ones we scheduled for second semester. That's why sometimes the number can fluctuate where you might see 300 students tested and then the next year it might be 250. And so some of that is the reason why it's it's simply a scheduling um um issue in which we do that. >> So to add to that, Miss Holden, our goal in cluster four, which are the high schools, is that by the end of a student's junior year, they have taken all Wales all verified credits have been attained because we want that senior year just

037to be coursework because we have experienced some key a lot of students in these three years who wanted to move on in their academic uh journey after the first semester of their senior year. Right now we have a couple kids who have pursued We have one kid in particular that's at Syracuse right now a part of his academics uh because he was able to finish the first semester. So that's our goal. We've we as we've looked at this over the years and our data. So that scheduling piece we try to get them within that first three years so we can have that out the way because we don't want that senior year. But we want you to enjoy your senior year and move on to other endeavors. >> Mr. Cameras, >> Dr. Bell, could you

038just speak to is there anything systematically different between who is scheduled in the fall versus who is scheduled in the spring or is it simply a matter of scheduling parameters? I think that's one of the questions that folks are trying to understand. Yes, it's it's based on the course schedules. The kids complete those um course completions. We register them every year around this time where they fill out what they want to be a part of. And then when we go through the master schedule planning process, then we align them to what's available based on the number of um seats in the fall and in the spring. So that's how we basically look at the master schedule. Does that answer the question? >> So, I'm just trying to understand uh why you expect this to be

039a floor rather than and and it does look historically like the in the winter numbers have been generally lower than the final outcomes in the spring. And um is that just coincidence or is there something about remediation or otherwise that helps explain that? >> Yes. Also, we have some courses that are hybrids. So, for instance, I'm going give you an example like environmental science and biology. So, the first semester is in environmental science, second semester they're in biology. So, they wouldn't test the first semester, test the second semester. So, but the kids in the spring of last year, we had some kids in environmental, so they took the biology test this fall. So it's also based on that schedule intensified algebra and algebra it's year long but the first semester is one class second semester

040is the combination of that so does that answer >> yeah go ahead try >> um I like to think of it also as this students who are not successful in the winter assessment window have another opportunity kind free a penalty of another failure to retest, remediate and retest. And if they fail again, that does not count against them. And not only is it, you know, it doesn't hurt our proficiency, it's actually beneficial for those students to directly once they fail, they're in remediation currently, probably right now, and then they will retest at the end of the year. And that's also what helps the winter assessment be the floor. We essentially have a second opportunity for those students coming spring. Thank you. I think I I think I understand Mr. Hitchb. >> Thank you, Madam Chair.

041Uh thank you. There's a lot of really great data and and results here. I'm curious about page uh where we're looking at the culture and climate walkth through dashboard. It shows the 2.83 out of three. Um that's That's a really great score. That's I guess about a 90 94% or so. Um I wonder if there might be some added context for what that number means and what if there's a trend that we've noticed at all as far as uh that number. >> Yeah. So these numbers they're indexes that we just use internal internally. Um and what we do is we when we're looking at this data is we just compare by average. So how our division has done to identify any weaker or stronger areas and we use this data to dive into our classes

042to assess okay is there a classroom management issue in this area and what you can also see up top is it's filtered by subject by by uh kind of every area you can slice and dice your data. Um, I will say this, this was for last year, culture and climate. So, it's a little bit of a snippet. So, there's not a lot of context coming into this year, but we do have dashboards um that are tied to what Dr. Bell was speaking to around culture and climate for this year and then also um dashboards around now the the new 5e walkthrough form as well. And we also have it for all grade levels. Um, >> thank you. One more question, Madam Chair. U, the other question was about page 16. Um I I know we

043uh people might see the uh the John Marshall results of point uh of minus 59% and I know that you had talked about the PBAs being a part big part of that but maybe you could add a little bit more context to that just to alleviate any concerns that see that and might be alarmed. I'd like to maybe come back to this question because I want to see who those students are to just kind of see the history of um their testing history to why uh they took the so and not the PBA. So I don't want to answer that uh tonight. Um but what you can also see is that drastic in end size 92 to 10. Um when you have that small end size, it's just the variance increases a lot. Um and

044so that's an explanation. But um again coming back to your point here, I want to take a deeper look into why those students at the so and then I can better answer that question. >> Thank you >> Mr. PL. >> Thank you Madam Chair. Um last slide Mr. Stanley and I believe this is a question for Dr. Bell, but anyone can jump in. Um, the fourth item on there says, "Review the fidelity of the instructional frameworks at scale and then monitor the day-to-day instruction practice and leadership behaviors." So, even anecdotally, what I hear from teachers a lot, it usually falls into one camp. The curriculum is fantastic, I love it, or the curriculum is too constraining and I am doing a much better job by interpreting it a little bit. um in your classroom walks,

045how are we doing with the fidelity of the instructional frameworks? And when you are giving the feedback during the walk, is it feedback geared towards adherence to the frameworks or is the feedback and sort of reward structure for just making it work in that particular environment? So when we walk in we have a thing that's called dash and a part of that dash you have the so objective and with the so objective you have teachers who have their lesson plans ready available for us to take a look at. So the instructional framework is basically aligned to the pacing guide. So the pacing that curriculum instruction has presented for all teachers to follow. That's where we look and see the fidelity of that. Are we on track based on the pacing? Because if we're off track,

046how can we help you get back on track? It could be where that that class needs maybe those students need some additional time or that teacher needs to be able to come back and see those kids again. So it's based on that pacing. That's the framework. That's the fidelity. And we try to stay the the the curriculum curriculum instruction has our pacing very tight. It's very structured. And we can't one day missed is equivalent to like two days missing instruction. So we want to try to make sure that we continue that fidelity and that's what we look at. So when we go in and we see your lesson plan, we see where you are, where you've listed where your objective and what your learning target is for today, then we go immediately to our pacing.

047And every principal has a one pager where they can look at that and see is it is the instruction for the day with fidelity. Where are we with the pacing? And if we're off, then we can have a conversation based on the feedback. That's me. >> Excellent. Thank you. Thank you. First, just let me say that um Chief Jefferson would be so pleased. I know he's smiling down, super proud of these results. And man, um I won't get emotional, but um just want to certainly honor him and his absence for all the amazing work that he's done up until this point. Um these results are phenomenal and super excited to see them and um congratulations to the principles um and all that have uh contributed to these efforts. My question though is um particularly around

048um the math scores. Now I don't have the pleasure of having any high schools in the ninth district. Um, I have a middle school and several ele elementary schools. And when we looked at their results, math was a huge struggle for them. So my question is, are we following their journey from middle to high school? Because while these numbers are great, it's just to me there's a gap between what we're seeing at a middle school level and what's represented in these numbers here. Can you kind of speak to that? Can somebody speak to that at all? So, I'm going all the way back to ele elementary now. We've been making phenomenal gains in elementary every year overall. There may be some schools that slip um back and um lose a percentage, but for the past

049three years, we have made gains in elementary every single year. As we get to um middle school and then high school, what we see is sometimes those scores can kind of fluctuate, which is why we try to make sure from all the way to preschool to 12th grade that we have a through line of strategies of of vision of what we want everything to look like. For example, when they talked about student ownership, that is not just for high school. That is for everybody from kindergarten um from preschool all the way up. We have to have those solid strategies that will make make sure a similar vision and a similar strategy that kids will be moving um along even with our novice teachers, even with our long-term subs, even with our provisional teachers. We are

050continuing to make gains and we one of those pieces is um Cassandra is not up here at the time, but she's here is her team is always in schools. We have two specialists who cover our um 27 28 elementary schools including RVA. And so those two specialists are split and are in schools every day making sure that they're providing support to coaches and teachers and helping them to be more successful. So it is it is a all hands effect. You will see from school to school sometimes the gains are not as great. Overall, we're making gains, but what we've got to make sure, and this is the conversation I have with principles, is it has to be continuous improvement. You can't go up five points and back three because you're never going to get there.

051And so, that is what we are pushing toward is that you will see the continuous improvement in every grade level across from preK to 12, no matter what um they're taking, whether it's math, reading, science, history. So in that instance, would it be fair to say that at least the trajectory of movement from middle school should align to the high school that the students are going to? Yes. And one of the things we look at is cohort data. So, for example, um third grade three years ago when I looked at their results and then I looked at where they scored in fifth grade, they went up 10 percentage points overall for all of our third grades in math and that was AC across three years. That is what you want to see because that's the

052same group of kids who are making growth and that is really important. And so that's we only we don't just look at year by year. We really look at how we're growing students from one year to another to another. And we want to see that through middle school and through high school. And so those things we look at every single day. And that's why we look class by class, student by student. That's what all these meetings and dashboards and all these things are about. It's about really driving down to individual student performance because it can't be this class does okay. this class does great, this class does kind of in between. We need to see a high level of instruction in every single classroom. That's why we do the walks. That's why we do all

053of the pieces that we do to improve instruction. Thank you. Thank you for the presentation. Great job. All right, moving right along. discuss proposed fiscal year 2027 estimate of needs. Mr. Cameras. >> Thank you, Madam Chair. Mr. Stanley, if you could go to slide 19, please. Thank you. Tonight I present to you one more iteration of the FY27 budget. We now have information about what the state is likely to do in terms of funding which has informed our budget picture. And so let me just walk you through at a high level where we are. Uh this version includes all existing collective bargaining agreements, a 2% raise for all units that are currently in negotiations. That includes teachers, a 75% employer, 25% employee split on the increase the increase in cost of health insurance. Full funding

054of our mental health and wraparound support contracts. full funding of summer school and the elimination of the furlow that was still remaining. I do want to note all of the other reductions that were proposed are still cut. That does include the Richmond Virtual Academy, the 46 central office FTEEs, and the other reductions that are listed in the proposal. This is based on an estimated $20 million increase in funding from the House's budget. That's 20 million over uh what we had last year. I do want to note the Senate budget is also positive plus 16, but a little bit less of course than the House budget. I also want to note there's a second year to these budgets and in the second year the Senate budgets a little bit better than the House budget. Um, suffice

055it to say, as Mr. Stanley will speak about in a minute, we are advocating for the best parts of the House budget and the best parts of the Senate budget. So hopefully we'll wind up in a better place. I do want to note that the House budget does have $7 million for us in one-time funding. Uh we do need to use those one-time funds for the items listed on this slide if we're going to be able to afford them. So, I do want to be very clear, make sure that it is very public, that will create a shortfall in FY28. those one-time funds will go away. However, again, based on our advocacy, we're hopeful that uh we get the best parts of both budgets and the amount of recurring funds also increases uh substantially going

056forward. Based on the house budget, then to cover everything listed on this slide, we have adjusted our ask of the city to 9 million total. that isn't not total increase over last year's funding from the city. Again, if we don't get 9 million from the city, we would have to revisit some of the items listed above. So, that is the the summary for where we stand. do want to take this opportunity to express uh my profound gratitude to the Richmond delegation in the general assembly. Senator Bagby, Senator Jones, Delegate Carr, Delegate Cousins, Delegate Schmidt, as well as many others uh that we have had the opportunity to meet with and discuss our needs and our priorities. Uh certainly the state has uh stepped up and will continue to advocate to ensure uh again that we

057get the best of the house and the best of the senate to put us in the best uh possible situation. Mr. Stanley will speak about shortly. Now we await the conference committee which will work out the differences between the two. Once we know who is on the conference committee, we will of course uh deploy that information and deploy folks to advocate strongly on behalf of RPS. Um I do want to note uh one other item if we could uh jump all the way to the CIP budget. Here we go. Slide 52. I do want to note we have made the adjustment uh to include the Wester Hills parking lot and student dropoff area. You can see it listed there as the last structural item, which brings the total CIP asked to 10.3 million. Um, again,

058as a reminder, we have been in the city's budget at 2.5 million a year, and we will continue to advocate for the full 10.3, but I do want to make sure that everyone here uh understands that there is a decent likelihood that the 2.5 recurs and then we will have to rep prioritize accordingly. With that, I'm happy to take any and all questions. Mr. Farooq. >> Thank you, Madam Chair. First question to Mr. Cameras or staff. I I'm always in favor of us presenting an accurate picture of an ask that will allow us to achieve our strategic plan goals because there's so many things we could ask for. I mean, personally, I would love to also ask for several more million dollars to completely revamp our school nutrition and our school meals. My kids complain

059about that all the time. Every kid I talk to actually complains about that. Um, John Marshall High School sorely needs some significant renovations. But that being said, I'm grateful that we've talked this through and and come to this place. So my question is, if our partners in city council or our leaders in the state legislature see some of our proposed cuts such as the sharing of the healthcare cost increase or Richmond Virtual Academy and advocate for us to receive more money, could the first question is could they give us more money than we're asking for? one and two, if they do, what's the process for when that money comes to us? Thank you. >> Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, Mr. Farooq. Yes, they could give us more money. There's nothing preventing them from doing

060so. If that turns out to be the case, then we would be in the very lovely position of having to decide come May after the city adopts its budget what to do with that extra money and what we would restore. Mr. Hitchb. >> Thank you, Madam Chair. Um, Mr. Cameas, the um my while I'm I'm not opposed to and most definitely don't want to ever furlow anyone, um, did the board reach a consensus on uh the elimination of the furlows being added to the budget? >> No, I'm proposing that this evening. It's a total uh savings. The furlow saves $68,000 and uh it impacts a group of people who of course work incredibly hard and so I'm proposing it to them. >> Thank you for that, Madam Chair. Follow up. Um I I want to

061kind of advocate for o other folks that also work really really hard and um I believe it's important for us to also consider our own policies that guide our decision- making. So, uh, policy 8-1.8, the equity policy on student achievement, uh, which commits us to eliminating disparities and ensuring equitable access to learning environments for all students. The policy specifically acknowledges that students with different needs require different supports in order to reach their full potential. And for many students, that's Richmond Virtual Academy. Uh the program has provided access to education for students who struggle in traditional environments due to health challenges, disabilities, anxiety, safety concerns, and other barriers. Removing that option um you know uh you know raises important questions about whether we are expanding or reducing equitable access. In addition, uh policy, another policy 5-3.16,

062accountability for instructional programs, requires that programs be evaluated based on student outcomes and that decisions to continue, modify, or eliminate programs be grounded in those results. And so I hope that before we make the decision on this, has there been a formal evaluation of Richmond Virtual Academy? Uh what student outcome data uh informed this recommendation? uh what equity analysis been completed regarding the students currently served? Um these are just some questions that uh a number of folks are are very concerned about considering. RVA is again not on the list uh for our budget. >> Mr. Cameron, >> the student outcome data for RVA is mixed. There are some pluses uh and there are some minuses. Um I wish we were able to retain everything in this budget. Unfortunately, I do think as it is, it's

063going to be a stretch for us to get everything that is on this list and um don't want to take away any opportunity from any child whatsoever. Um but I do think uh we we unfortunately have to make tough calls. I think this is one of those calls. Um, and I would um would not want to uh put people in a position where again uh that they would be surprised at the end of the year about uh not having a position. There are a number of folks at RVA who've already begun to interview and um we have continued to encourage that and and they all the teachers are guaranteed spots uh in Richmond public schools and so uh we'll continue to support them through that process and would would fear that um if we return

064to this come May or early June we'd be in a position where frankly we would not be able to guarantee those individuals positions and so we would I think quite realistically be looking at potential job losses on that I out of time. >> Thank you Mr. Cameress. Um then I wonder if maybe we could uh you know with that in mind of understanding that you know we do need to be thoughtful about the transition and I do appreciate that. I think that's a very um you know the the the foresight that that you're you're using in that decision decision is important. Um but I wonder also back to uh Mr. Roo's point of asking for exactly what we need and if we ask for it then perhaps we could get it and then we could

065keep that that program uh or at least partially keep that program uh because we want to keep our students and our faculty whole u and and that's one way we can do it. >> Thank you Mr. Jafari. >> Thank you Madam Chair. just to piggyback on what my colleagues, Mr. Baroo and Mr. Hedgepath have said and and not to belabor it, but when we start again talking about what's equitable as opposed to what's equal, we look at what our VA does and and what they extend. Uh, a couple of my constituents or constituents throughout the division obviously have contacted me and I picked a couple of items to bring in and one of them has said that all three of their children have disabilities attend Richmond virtual academy. They have a son who has autism

066and he's flourished with the academy as well as daughters who have not attended in person. When their son was in person, he was continuously sick and there was also some safety issues. in person is not an option for our family. So again, I think that we have to get beyond the data. We have to get beyond the figures and really look at the services delivery and the outcomes and who we actually reaching here. I get it and and clearly all of us know in the back of the house. We've talked about the budget and we've talked about how strained and how difficult it is to make these kinds of cuts, but I just want us to make sure that we're really visiting this and if there's any way to continue it. Let's not just judge

067this based on the numbers of people who presently might be attending it. Let's look at what the outcomes are and what we're actually doing for these families and those who actually benefit from our VA. Uh, one additional point, Madam Chair, if if I can. Um, I also had a scenario put to me where in one one family was attending and if their child is actually forced to or required to go back to a general population within Richmond public schools, Richmond public schools would then also take on the expenditure of providing an assistant. Had the opportunity to talk to the superintendent about it. And so what are the numbers of situations where we would begin to incur other fees that perhaps are not showing up on the face of what we're seeing when we talk about

068just cutting the entire program. >> Thank you, >> Mr. Cameras. >> Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, Mr. Safari. Um I I can't say specifically because I don't know which families are going to ultimately choose to come in person versus continue virtually and so on. I do think it is the rare case that there would be a student with an IEP that would require a onetoone aid. Um but um we can certainly uh look through the IEPs of the the students who are currently enrolled to try to determine if that would be necessary um and try to quantify that for you. And let me also just say um I have no argument with the fact that RVA provides a valuable service to a lot of families um and that it is a a a cherished

069opportunity for a lot of families. I just want us to grapple with the reality as it is. is we are building a budget on $7 million of one-time funds and we probably are going to fall short of what we need to even do the things on the list as it is. And so if we were to retain RVA, I think it is likely that it would be funded on one-time funds or all of the raises will be funded on one-time funds. And so I think at a certain point there's only so much um that we can achieve given the resources that we have. And I'm certainly in favor of trying to advocate and get every last penny. But I also think it is incumbent upon us to um to make some of some of these

070hard calls given given the the picture in front of us. Miss Rizzy, Miss Ricard. >> Um, thank you, Madam Chair. Um, I am really happy to see that summer school has been added. Um, I do want to reiterate the fact that, um, I'd like to see more, um, monitoring, um, you know, data given to us about the impact of summer school, uh, more of a push to have students who actually need remediation to attend. Um, and so I look forward to if we're able to reinstate a report, >> Miss Ricard. >> Thank you, Madam Chair. Um I was um superintendent I hear your point about the 7 million one-time funds and while of course it is greatly appreciated it is a one-time fund much like the Fox buyer credit was a onetime fund last year

071and I I was wondering if prior maybe it's right after this budget finally passes but could we get a list of all the things that we pay for with one-time funds and grants and maybe it's even grants that might expire in the next three years. Um, just so that we are cognizant of what things we hold really dear for our children and our teachers that are potentially going to go away because they're one time. Um, I think that might also be helpful data when we meet with our delegates and senators from the general assembly to advocate for the student funding formula that these one-time funds really aren't helping us adequately create a school district that supports our students and our teachers. Um, so that's just one question and and request. And um just another question

072I had, you know, last last week, city council approved a $14.7 million loan. It was an emergency um using the emergency fund, which I know we cannot request from because we do not create revenue to restore it and it has to be restored within 3 years. But it did me down a rabbit hole of looking at the special codes. And I didn't know if something the administration could look into was the special purpose reserves, which are um must be used for one-time non-recurring purposes and may not be for an installment or phase of a multi-installment or multi-phase project. >> One minute. >> It's funded by the surplus from the pri or fiscal year. And I wonder if this is something we could create a habit of if there's ever a surplus asking maybe for something

073from our CIP to um as a use because oftentimes that is a one-time fix and maybe it's J road, maybe it's something else. Um but how could we maybe at least be advocating for part of that pie? Thank you. >> Thank you, Madam Chair. Yes, Mr. Ricard. Uh we can certainly do both of those things. Uh develop a list of all the grants and other one-time sources. Um and yes, get into a cadence of formerly bringing to the board requests for any surplus dollars. And I think CIP is is exactly right. Miss Holton first a question and then a comment if I may. A question if I understand correctly Mr. camera is that even with the most optimistic assumption about what the state gives us, even assuming we spend onetime money all in one year,

074and even assuming we make all the cuts that you have preserved in this budget, including uh losing the Richmond Virtual Academy and the 40 plus uh central office positions, we're still short and we will still be asking the city for more than we had anticipated asking the city for. Is that correct? >> Thank you, Madam Chair. Yes, Miss Hton, that is correct. >> So, we're still stretched even with all of those assumptions. And I'll just say that uh in my mind, we're really coming down to raises versus reductions in force. And I just feel so strongly that highquality teacher in every classroom, highquality staff throughout our system are so essential to the successes we have seen and the successes that we hope to see that I think the accomplishments you all have made over recent

075years with the city's support in raising our teacher salaries up to the best in the region, not by a huge margin, but by a margin. And that's a real that's a real accomplishment and I would just hate to see us lose that. And and frankly I think the research shows that a division like this serving the students who are farthest from opportunity as we do that we really need to be paying our teachers well more um than other school divisions to attract that highquality teacher to every classroom. and all that just just leads up to say as between if it's raises versus riffs I wish we didn't have to make those tough decisions but I come down on the side of raises >> Mr. Persal. >> Thank you, Madam Chair. Um, I I appreciate Superintendent

076calling out the $7 million in one-time funds. And to kind of pick up where Mr. or card left off. I I am hearing a lot of the one-time funds and I think everybody has a different idea of what a one-time fund is and I heard from city council today the concern over onetime funds and there seems to be sort of a conflating um in some circles with say like COVID era funding where there was stimulus and you know the concern there is hiring people based on that which I totally understand but the other thing we have to keep in mind is that the state has a bianial budget and when they put things in there they're you can do the math on the $7 million out of 20 and it's about 35%. Uh that's a

077third of the budget is just over a two-year period. Um and when we look at that money being and when it comes from the state the state is saying we want you to spend it here which we have to do when they tell us to spend it here. So, is that the definition of onetime funding? Because last year we we when we talk about these $20 million tranches of money and $9 million, this is over and above other budget money that we get. Last year, we had money over and above the budget we got that year. Was that one-time funding? So, none of this is codified. Would would people in the public expect us to say no to the state giving us money for teacher raises when I know that everybody at this dis has

078been at the been to the general assembly advocating specifically for that purpose. Um so to me it seems like a win and I want to make sure that when the public hears one-time funding they're not hearing different definitions of one-time funding. Uh, this is not stimulus money that's coming in check from the federal government. We're never going to see this again. This is year-over-year budget process where we're asking for additional money and we're winning that additional money and we need to put that money to good use. >> You do, Mr. Jafari. >> Thanks, Madam Chair. Why she's Okay. And and I hear my colleagues and and obviously I would love to be able to keep everybody. That's unrealistic. But I just think that at some point we just really just have to be realistic in

079another sense. And that is that we recognize and that we we we convey the image to the public that we do understand >> that we we are not a private corporation. We're a public school division and as such we have to tow whatever we need to tow inhouse. If we're going to make such huge demands that uh or or ask for people to give us money then we're going to have to just cut what we need to cut inhouse. Uh we not going to be able to cut everything and I get that but we certainly must come down on the side of going with a skeletal the appearance of a skeletal uh design here so that we make sure >> time. Thank you. >> Thank you. Um so really um thrilled to hear of the

080work that's being done particularly in the House um and the Senate. Um we have certainly as a board been working diligently to have conversations with our partners and it's uh proven to be very successful. So really excited to hear about the $20 million increase in state funding. Um I heard a lot being shared tonight and the only thing that I have feedback on is um as uh Mr. Hedgepath shared there was not a consensus to eliminate the furlow uh for directors executive directors and chiefs. So I want to do a pulse check with the group to see if if how we feel about that. Um, I mean, namely, you know, looking at the list on page 34, there's there's a lot of things we could do with $70,000. Um, but obviously we don't want to

081take away from the efforts and the support that our directors, executive directors, and chiefs provide. Um, so just want to get an understanding of of where everybody sits with that. And then also, I heard from um I want to say it was Mr. Hedgepath. uh was your request to add back the item for RVA? Um and just wanted to get a pulse check on that as well uh before we were to move forward. And then I have one question for you, Mr. Farooq. Madam chair, to answer your first question, I am open to restoring the furloss on the back end if we get more money than we expect given that we have despite the optimistic budget we're putting forward. We still have painful cuts that we're making that affect. So I can't support it in

082this budget proposal. The other thing I'll say is that a school system, not just in Richmond, but all over the state and all over the country, this is a a human inensive enterprise. You can't, despite what the corporations want, you can't have a robot teach a class. It takes a person. It takes a human being. It takes relationships. And whenever we see good people who stay at a school, we see dramatic improvements. So any budget pressures inevitably will touch people's jobs and that's just the way it is. And so given that we're still making tough cuts, I can't um support that proposal. Thank you, Madam Chair. >> Thank you. You can just chime up everyone. You want to go down the line. She's thinking Miss Mr. Hedgebra. >> Thank you, Madam Chair. Um I agree

083with Mr. Farooq that uh these furlows are something that uh we can most definitely act upon u when we under understand fully what our what our budget is for the year ahead. It's different than a a rift where uh you know we'll uh we will hopefully retain that uh that uh that person uh but then be able to change the furlows once we have a better idea. So um but I would support uh on the other part adding RVA because that is eliminating something um that um that deserves to be put back in the budget. So thank you. >> Oh yes, for the sake of this conversation if you all would be amanable to suspend the threeminut rule because there are several people that wouldn't be able to speak if we were to do that.

084Are we okay with that? All right. Thank you. That doesn't mean use another three minutes. >> Thank you. Okay. Thank you, Mr. P. >> Uh, yes, I I agree with what's been uh said already. I'm more than happy. I love all of our chiefs and directors and would love to see the furlows eliminated, but I do think we have a priority issue at stake. So, happy to add that in to the end of the priority list. >> Thank you. Virtual Academy. I didn't hear you either. For virtual academy. >> Yes, Mr. P. >> Uh RV is a little bit more difficult because we're talking apples and oranges now. We're talking about a $3 million bump in the budget. So, that's an additional ask. So, are we asking to bump this, for my own clarity, are

085we asking to bump this by an additional $3 million for RBA or are we hoping to get additional money? >> Mr. Hitch, >> hoping to get extra money asking for what we need. So, in just below fully funding summer school, adding restoring RVA. >> Thank you. Uh, again, more than happy to add RVA back in if we were to get that money. Uh, but asking for an additional $3 million may be a difficult ask in this environment. >> Miss Rizzy, >> thank you. I um, you know, our chiefs work so hard. Um, they're supporting families and I understand that some of the furlows are difficult. But I I actually when I think about it, I support the superintendent's recommendation. Uh as far as our VA is concerned, uh you know, I agree if we happen

086to get $3 million, we have the ability to restore everything that's been prioritized um prior, you know, before it um then I would like to see it. Thank you, Miss Alton. I I would join Miss Rizzy on the uh superintendent's recommendation with respect to the furlows and would point out that he is not asking to uh reverse his furlow, just leadership teams. So, I would support that restoration um on RVA. I just think it's unrealistic to think when we're already pushing up against the limits. We're already over the limits. what I think we're realistically going to get from the city and the state and I think it would be frankly un unhelpful to the staff and students of RVA to give them false hopes. So I would oppose adding it back in at this point.

087>> Thank you. >> I may just add I do I do want to recognize that the advocacy we've heard from the RBA staff community on behalf of their students and their needs is been impressive and I know it's because they care about their students. >> You ready? >> I believe so. >> Okay. >> Thanks, Madam Chair. Um, just briefly and quickly, this is tough all the way around the reductions in workforce, the the cuts. I would actually like to see more more cuts internally. But that not being the case, I think that we do have to u keep the furlows to just just to make this equitable across make make the suffering equitable. Nobody wants anybody to suffer and we all get that. But I just do think that we have a requirement and we

088have a need to make sure that we send the optics that we all understand and in that ve I will say quickly that we just need to keep the furloss. Uh also as well uh I'm in favor and and I know it's a strain and I know it's in in some ways unrealistic since we are already operating at a deficit but I would advocate keeping RVA. I think RBA reaches beyond uh the the seeable and it delivers to those who are in need and I just think that we should go all out to maintain programs with the outcomes that it has even with the lower numbers that it has. Thanks, Madam Chair. >> Mr. Card. >> Thank you, Madam Chair. Um like my colleagues have stated um I am um amendable to keeping um to

089not cutting the furlows but I would put that towards the bottom of the list should um depending on how the money is coming through but they have been working I feel even ex extremely hard over these last few weeks particularly as they've been answering all our questions and providing us all this data. so that we can create a budget and that's on top of their normal day-to-day responsibilities. Um, as for the Richmond Virtual Academy, I um agree with Miss Holton. I think it does um I'm worried that it does create false hope in a very tight budget year. I also, as someone who has had students qualify through homebound or IEPs, I know there is still a way for our students who are in most need of virtual learning to get it through those ways.

090And I also just want to call that out. >> Thank you. So that's a no and a no. Well, you said you agree with the colleagues that we could add back in later. I want to make sure I understand. Okay. So, a no. No. For now, no. And then a no. No. Okay. Thank you, Madam Chair. You know, as far as um the furlows are concerned, you know, I would like to remind people that we are actually fighting to retain the collective bargaining um raises. Well, their increases and the step increases. And so our teachers are that's on the top of our list. Our teachers are going to get that. And so not everyone, you know, I mean, they they will get their raises. They will get their collective bargaining. And so it makes me

091question why our chiefs who you know work I mean as Micard said they have had to answer so many questions and provide us so much data and have worked overtime hours I'm sure to do that. Um I I have a problem with cutting their livelihoods when we know now that teachers are more than likely and I mean I think highly likely get the collective bargaining and the stepping Then there was me. Um I believe that I mean this is a hard decision all around. Um there are really no winners. Everybody deserves um to pay for the work um the sacrifice that they make um um especially our leaders right. But if I think back to the rationale behind putting this line item in the beginning, it was to reflect that we were leading from the

092top. There are a lot of people that have lost their jobs, right? There are 46 central office FTEEs that have been eliminated. And I think we need to have a level of consistency as we approach our decisioning. Um, now it's a totally different story if if we they come back and we're still holding out hope for the Senate um to give us additional funding. And so I think that's a different conversation. But based upon what we have now, I I think it's it's extremely important that we do lead by example. as it was first said um and continue with the elimination of the furlows. However, um if additional fundings does come forward, I think that we should um reconsider that as we would with some other items. Richmond Virtual Academy, I've seen the value and

093what it represents. working on the disciplinary committee, we've oftent times found that to be a source of peace and comfort for students who quite frankly didn't quite establish themselves in a comprehensive learning environment. And so because of that and if we are going based upon a needsbased budget, I would be open to adding it back on um understanding that it probably if we are not able to facilitate the funding as it's been shared. Unfortunately, it probably be the first one to be considered um down the road, but I am absolutely open to adding it back on to as a line item. So, with that, this is more of a consensus. So, that kind of leaves me scratching my head because we're 44 for Richmond Virtual Academy. I don't have any advisement per se on how

094to address a consensus in this matter. I would defer to our legal counsel. We do, but I would have to look at it to see if it speaks to a consensus over an actual vote. Mr. Hitch. >> Thank you, Madam Chair. Um, may I suggest that uh because it is uh a tie that we uh we preliminarily add it to the budget for the vote tomorrow? Miss Holton, >> we are in time, but I'll be brief. I just I I recognize the notion of putting it back in, but I I'll and I hope I'm not repeating, but I just think the risk of having teachers not go find other positions within RPS, students not go find other placements, is too serious to leave this to a June one decision. We we ought to decide one

095way or the other. Now, >> thank you for that feedback. Um, and it I I just realized that I never asked the question that I was going to ask you, Mr. Cameras. Um, there was someone who had asked about a specific family that would be integrated back into school and perhaps they would need additional uh services and you said that you would look into that, but I thought that we were already looking at the families that would be impacted from the elimination of the Richmond Virtual Academy. Correct? or am I did I misunderstand that? I think we are at a space now where we should understand what those needs will be correct or please share if misunderstood something. >> Yes, conversations have been happening with those families. I just don't know off the top of

096my head um how many cases would necessitate a onetoone aid, but we can certainly gather that information for Thank you. And with that being said, I do believe that um again the level of transparency that is needed to ensure that people understand what this decision would mean. This does not mean stop what you're doing and not look for another job. Right? This is important that you continue in the efforts. Um this is a preliminary conversation that's based on um budget that is out of our hands. And so this is our effort to really do what we were elected to do and that is ask for what we need and um but it is also our fiduciary responsibility to have a sense of transparency and how we go about that approach. But I am compelled based

097upon the advocacy that has been shared and the people that I've spoken with. Um to add it back so we're waiting on My apologies. As I was conferring with our legal counsel, I was not listening intently to what you all were saying in that moment. So, if you could just help me understand where you all landed. It's 44. So I'm going to let pack explain to you all what steps you need to take in the fact that you are working at a consensus right now board members. So there is a um procedure so for when there's a tie vote if you all can't reach consensus I would suggest that you bring a motion or resolution before the board. the board votes on it. If there's a tie, there's a vote. There is a tiebreaking procedure

098and if it if it's a then we follow that and then then that's how we reach the decision. So with that being said, we would need a motion to but that's tomorrow, right? So we do have So let's do this. I was going to say let's just wait on it because we don't actually vote until tomorrow, right? Uh that is true, but um I need to uh have the team prepare the final budget for your approval. So I can't wait till tomorrow night for that. So I need to know tonight what to add or subtract. I heard clearly the consensus to restore the furlow. I will do that. Uh we just need some clarity on RVA so that we can prepare for your vote accordingly tomorrow. Miss Richardson. So, in conferring with our legal counsel

099and reviewing our policy that um is associated with tiebreaking, you all only have eight members here tonight. So, even if you vote and it's still 44, the motion fails for tonight, you can bring it back the next day and it will you will more than likely only have eight members tomorrow night as well. So you still run the risk of it failing again. >> So if we're going to be consistent and align ourselves with Robert rules is I'm assuming is where we're we're getting this from then the consensus would fail. Um however tomorrow if there is a different decision you would have that time to make that motion when we vote. You can vote tonight if you want to. >> I I would caution us not to do that because that will isolate the community

100from being able to share their feedback. And a lot of what we do is based upon the input of um the community, the RPS community. And so I would caution us against voting tonight. But I am okay if everybody is okay with um the consideration of what was shared based upon the feedback because it's tied with a consensus um that the vote will the consensus would fail for this evening. Any concerns with that then we are in agreement miss Mr. Hitchp. Thank you, Madam Chair. Just then to clarify that the question can be brought up tomorrow in a motion uh to add to the final budget before we vote. Okay. Thank you. >> Thank you. So, with that being said, we will be removing the uh furloss and we will keep the Richmond virtual uh

101academy line item in the budget as is tonight. That's right. I'm sorry. Yes, we will keep the recommendation of the superintendent for RVA. Good. Yes. Now the we will not be going we will not be accepting the superintendent's recommendations for the furlows but we will be receiving his recommendation for RVA. Thank you all for your patience. Moving right along to 4.02. Receive an update on Richmond High School for the Arts. Oh, wait. One one of the best ones, sorry. 40 401 receive legislative update. I just know you have some amazing news to share with us and so we certainly don't want to miss out on that. Good evening. >> Good evening, Madam Chair. Superintendent Cammeras, members of the school board, Matthew Stanley, the director of advocacy and outreach. Uh, as Superintendent Cameras has already shared

102with you, we have been closely analyzing the budgets that were proposed by the House Appropriations Committee and the Senate Finance and Appropriations Committee. Um, overall, we do see that the House budget does a little better for us in fiscal year 2027. And I'm going to start walking you through uh some of the specific line items in their budgets and and how they add up. Uh so first of all I will note that the general assembly has already passed HB 29 that is the caboose budget that deals with the current fiscal year that we are in FY26. Uh governor Yncan had proposed a 2% onetime bonus for all SOQ funded positions in that budget. Uh the general assembly uh took that and they did something that is about the same cost. That is a $1,500 bonus.

103Um, I do have it labeled for you there in FY27. Uh, because the general assembly, although they put it in FY26, they're allowing us to carry that forward. Uh, the House and the Senate did slightly differ on salary raises for SOQ funded positions, they uh, House bumped it up to 2%. Uh, the Senate bumped up to 3%. Um, the flexible per pupil funding, which you all have talked a bit about tonight, um, I would like to thank Delegate Ray Cousins. Uh the reason that is in the House budget at all is a direct result of Delegate Cousins introducing a $500 million budget amendment uh for that purpose. So had it not been for Delegate Cousins advocacy, it's very likely that we would not be seeing that money in the House budget. Um you will note

104that uh out of that 400 million, RPS receives about 7.6 million. I would also note uh not an issue for us uh but sometimes the budget staff to put in little pieces of language to budget amendments that does can make a difference with things. Um, for example, the House's flexible funding does not require a local match, but it is contingent on us providing the full 2% salary raise. Um, so just wanted to point that out. Uh, the House did not do a specific atrisisk add-on increase this year. Um, but you will see I have a little uh a little earmark there because within the 100 with sorry within the $400 million of the flexible per pupil funding 100 million of that funding was uh distributed based on that at risk add-on formula. So we really

105do appreciate the uh house budget staff for continuing to look at how to distribute that flexible funding equitably across the state. Um and then uh the house did do a little bit more on the school construction assistance program. um that is primarily funded both with casino revenues and lottery revenues. Uh so we are grateful for the slight increase there. Um in the Senate uh the Senate budget overall for FY27 does not give us quite as much money in that first year but in the second year it does. And the biggest difference in the Senate and the House budgets overall, I'm not talking about education is that the Senate has proposed eliminating the sales tax exemption for data centers about eight years before that tax exemption was supposed to expire. Uh this data center uh sales

106tax exemption uh started off in uh the 2000s and at first year it cost about a million a half dollars. Well, we have a lot more data centers now and that exemption now costs the state a billion and a half dollars. So, really really big increase in and the amount of uh revenue that the state is uh is releasing for for data center development. Um Senator Lucas in the Senate is holding very steadfast on that uh expiration of that exemption. Um the House is not so favorable on that. So um it is quite a big difference in the two budgets. There's about, as I said, about a billion and a half difference in the amount of revenue that the Senate has over the House. And that is why you do see the Senate budget in

107FY28 being significantly better for RPS because uh that that uh sales tax expiration doesn't happen until the middle of the year. So, we start to see the rewards from that in FY28. Um I will note that uh the Senate uh did some flexible funding, but it doesn't happen until FY28. Um, I would also note that the Senate did a wonderful uh increase in the atrisisk add-on program, increasing the maximum percentage available um to 39.9% in the first year and 52% in the second year. This gets this starts to get us at that 40% threshold of what research shows that uh students that are economically disadvantaged uh need about 40 to 200% more funding to have similar educational outcomes as their peers in more affluent localities. Um, so we do really appreciate that investment in the

108at risk add-on program. I would also love to note that RPS advocates sent over 1,700 emails to members of the Senate Finance and Appropriations Committee advocating for the Hour Scout on. So that combined with the flexible per pupil funding in the House, we can really see the impact that RPS is having on the state budget process. Um, both chambers did put a little bit of additional funding into a special education add-on. That was an add-on first created last year. Um so some kind of initial bumping up of that. Um and then you will see the sales tax update for that data center exemption expiration that hits us um in on the Senate side. Uh any questions about this slide before I move on? Any questions on the differences in the two budgets? So I know

109that uh this year's budgets are not everything that we hoped for. Uh at the top one of the top things on our legislative agenda has been K12 funding reform. Um and while this year is not the year uh that we see that happening in the budget, we have seen both the house and the senate put significant more funding towards the joint subcommittee for elementary and secondary education funding. This is the place where the new K12 funding formula is going to be written and the funds that they are appropriating are to pay for very very smart people to write that formula. Uh so we are really excited about the work ahead. Uh this year we've also been continuing to have conversations with members of uh Governor Spanberger's administration and they are very well aware of of

110the need for us to do this K12 funding reform. So we are very hopeful that that joint subcommittee will kick off its work uh in the interim this year and that in next year's general assembly we will start to see budget language directing Governor Spanberger and her first bianual budget that she introduces in uh will include that new funding formula for the new bienium. Uh a couple other small amendments that did make it into the House and the Senate budgets. On the House side and on the Senate side, uh they are uh endorsing creating an employee child care assistance program. Uh this would provide a state match to employers that are providing some funding for child care assistance for their employees. Um this is this is one shot out of the gate in terms of

111the different ways that uh the state wants to continue to expand uh child care support and assistance. There were a few other uh budget items regarding the childcare subsidy program that are continuing to be discussed. Um but this is a new program uh that is funded in at least the first year of both budgets. Um on the house side, there was also some language that we've been working with delegate cousins on in regards to regional alternative education programs. Um this funding uh in Richmond actually goes to support students from Richmond, Henriiko, and Hanover uh attending St. Joseph's Villa. These are students who may have been suspended or expelled and and we receive a little bit of additional ADM uh per student I'm sorry per pupil funding uh that will help support those students. We've seen

112our slots decrease recently while we've seen other locality slots increase even though our need has been increasing. Um so we've been continuing to work with budget staff um and department of education to address that. Um, and then additionally in the Senate, uh, the Senate did also provide $2.5 million per year for community schools development and implementation planning grants. RPS has been the recipient of these in the past. Uh, they've helped fund some of the work at Clark Springs, our safe center, uh, run by our wellness office. Uh, so we're excited to continue to see that uh, that uh, progress. Uh there is an AI pilot program in the Senate that would provide $2 million for a year in grants to school divisions who are doing innovative uh practices within integrating AI into education. Um the

113Senate also included $750,000 per year in additional funding for the Richmond Teacher Residency Program at BCU. And then uh one of our burning questions all session was what was the Senate doing with the 1% sales tax for school construction? and they put it in their budget instead of passing a bill to do so. So, right now we have a House bill that creates that 1% sales tax option for localities for school construction. And we also have the Senate budget language. So, we're pretty confident that one version or the other is going to get to Governor Spanberger's desk um that would allow Richmond City Council to authorize a local referenda to happen on this November's ballot. Uh potentially with a new 1% sales tax going in place July 1st of next year. Um so those were

114some of the other really important differences in the budgets. Um on our other big uh key priorities on school construction, um we have seen HB44 from Delegate Ascu and Senate Bill 498 from Senator Ayired that would extend the school construction commission. Uh it would actually completely eliminate the sunset on those. So it would be a permanent body of the general assembly and it would also be responsible for delivering a 10-year capital roadmap to the general assembly uh to address the state's uh school construction needs. Uh the figure that was most used by advocates this year is that we are now over $26 billion in statewide means for school construction and modernization. Um I just mentioned the 1% uh voter referendum sales tax and then on per people infrastructure grants. We covered that with Delegate Cousins

115uh $400 million uh successful amendment in the House budget. Um on the K12 uh funding formula reform uh HB92 is still alive. That was Delegate Rul's bill that was going to better invest in add-ons for not just at risk add-on or economically disadvantaged students, but also continue to codify the add-ons for special education students as well as English learner students. Um, unfortunately due to the cost, uh, that was scaled back significantly. Um, and right now it is still alive and codifies the atrisisk add-on and as well as a special ed add-on, but we will see what the Senate Finance and Appropriations Committee does with that. Um, as the state is about to rewrite the funding formula, they may not may not be wishing to add additional things into the SOQs at this time. Um, on

116the local composite index, I would just note that there were several bills that dealt with the local composite index this year. Uh, several that we testified on, um, usually in opposition because they would have hurt our LCI. Uh, that and all of those bills were all referred to that joint subcommittee on elementary and secondary education funding. So as that committee's work proceeds uh we uh need to be at the table to ensure that discussion of that formula is one of the critical topics that they address in doing the funding formula. Uh it is not really enough just to maybe smooth the volatility of the current local composite index. Uh we know that it is inequitable to Richmond. Um and we are really going to be looking for better answers for what type of ability to

117pay index the state can use to support public education funding. Um and then finally on this slide, the payment in l of taxes. Uh we had did have some early conversations with legislators about the pilot this year. Um due to some of the other political circumstances, uh we did not introduce a specific budget amendment to change that, but we are optimistic about further conversations next year. And we're of course very supportive of the advocacy that the city has been doing to address some of the city's bigger issues like the combined sewer overflow system um that we know that the general assembly is hopefully going to appropriate some money to deal with. And then finally on strengthening student mental health supports uh HP 195 from Delhi McQuinn and Senate Bill 33 Senator Fabola do provide a

118little bit more flexibility in the atrisisk outon formula. We welcome that. It allows for atrisisk out funds to go towards student health uh including uh covering the salaries for registered nurses and APRNs. Um on teleaalth and Medicaid alignment uh Senate Bill 73 from Senator Sina Vasan uh was amended. It was originally going to require the Department of Education to employ uh Medicaid billing navigators. Uh it was amended to not require that, but to rather require DEMASS to provide more training to school division staff on seeking reimbursement for Medicaid covered services uh rendered at school sites. So, uh we heard feedback, we were really advocating for some of this to happen at the Department of Education. We heard feedback that DMS was not really giving us enough support. So, we're hopeful that this is initial step

119and we will absolutely be going back to legislators next year who feel like we're not getting enough support. Um, and then we discussed a bit about the community schools development and implementation grants in regards to just continue to expand community based partnerships. Um, I want to give a big shout out to uh superintendent cameras for featuring our student advocacy and RPS direct last week. You can click on either of these images and it'll take you to the full articles. Um, we had a wonderful visit with our student advisory council members. uh down to the general assembly. Uh they met with a number of staff right around crossover um as well as had a wonderful opportunity to visit the floor of the house of delegates um and spent some time meeting with our legislators and getting

120to have some some really wonderful informal conversations with other legislators in the chamber. Um I would also like to shout out everyone here on the dis who attended our RPS advocacy day. It was the same day as the VA advocacy day and you can see that they featured a couple wonderful photos of um our wonderful advocates in action that day. um not just some of our schoolboard members, but also some uh REA members uh that were really active that day as well. Um there have been a number of other visits that have been happening all month long. Um I didn't have a chance to get all the other photos uploaded for you, but in our session wrap-up update, we'll make sure to do a a full recap. Um just closing out, uh we only have

121two weeks left of session. Uh next week, we will see the conference budget reported. We're expecting the conferees to be named in just the next day or two. uh we generally know who they are, but sometimes when you get down to numbers five, six, seven, and seniority, they might skip somebody. So, we'll see uh how all that shakes out. I have a final advocacy action alert prepared that we will be advocating for everything that was in the House budget as well as the atrisisk add-on that the Senate proposed. Um so, if you would like to help advocate for those, please go on to that website, rbaschools.net /advocacy. Give that email list a sign up and you will get a notice from me with that advocacy action alert when it is ready. Um the session is

122expected to adjourn on Saturday, March 14th. Even if they have not agreed on the budget, they will still likely adjourn and they would come back in a special session to finish the budget at a later date. Um, as I shared before, the data center sales tax exemption is a really, really big issue, and if they cannot figure out their common ground on that, it could very likely push the budget process out a bit. Um, and then we will come back on April 22nd for the reconvene session. That's when the general assembly will consider any of Governor Spanberger's action on all the legislation that has been sent to her desk. Um, so with that, I will conclude my remarks and happy to take any questions. Thank you everyone. >> Now we can move right along to

1234.02. Receive an update on Richmond High School of the Arts. Good evening. >> Thank you, Madam Chair. Good evening, board members. Uh I know we've got a lot on the agenda, so I will try to be very brief and focus on the most important pieces of the slide. So, we'll start with some quick construction updates. We continue to move along a pace at Richmond High School for the Arts. I've included a decent number of pictures from the construction sites. Um, and so you can see uh that we continue to make lots of great progress. One of the most exciting things for me is we've had to reduce the number of people in the building because we are installing the floors and we want to make sure that that is done really well and that is

124done so that that we will have as much longevity as possible. You can see from some of the pictures tile installation and some of the finishings which tells us that we are getting closer and closer to completion of the project. So we are very excited about that. But the substance and these are uh items for your consideration for vote tomorrow that we want to talk about are one the turf versus grass question and two the outstanding $270,000 delay claim that we have against us. So the first one starting at turf versus grass as a reminder we brought this to you several months ago but this is a highle summary of anticipated costs if we go with the grass versus the turf. As you can see, the installation of the turf is a significant expense, roughly

125$2 million or a little bit more. And that's similar to what we've seen our nearby neighbors who have been installing turf in their new construction sites. Uh, so we've seen that happen. This also has a comparison of annual maintenance costs. As you can see, the turf is less expensive per year, but there is the 12-year lifespan to to the turf as we are learning uh right now over at Hugenot. They are reaching the end of their lifespan. I also wanted to, this is from last month's presentation, do a quick summary of what we know about the safety of turf versus grass. What we know is very well-maintained grass, like truly exceptional professional-grade grass, is the safest option. Just below that, we have the next generation turf as the next safest option. And then poorly maintained

126grass, which is very common in high schools across the country, is the least safe option because of the potholes and the risks that that creates. Um, and I've included some of the references that we've used there. The uh final thing that we wanted to present as new information for you all tonight to help inform your decision tomorrow is what we heard from the community. We had over 700 people uh volunteer their voice, which was very exciting. As you can see, it was a broad array of people representing current students, past students, parents and guardians, staff, athletic staff, community members, and other folks. So, we were really excited by that response. And what you'll notice first off is their highest priority was safety. That was the thing that they said was most important in the decision.

127And that's Thank you, Mr. Cameras. That's at the top, student safety. Over 80% of people listed that as one of the most important things for them. what we saw in terms of preferences. If you start in the top left corner, this represents all respondents and just under 60% of respondents said that they preferred the turf option. What we also noticed is the closer you got to people who use the turf, the higher that percentage raised. So when we looked at students, uh thank you Mr. Tamas. Uh when we look at students, that's 75% of students indicated a preference for turf. And then in the upper right we see athletics staff specifically and uh 80 almost 83% of folks who responded said that they preferred turf. And so again this is for tomorrow night but I

128uh we have proposed uh a resolution if the board wants to go in the direction of recommending the use of turf at this field. The only other piece that I wanted to brief you on and this is what you saw last month. This is the reminder about the delay claim for $270,000 related to site prep and a whole bunch of other things. And so, uh, tomorrow night would be the the vote to approve this extended payment. That's all I have and I'm happy to answer any questions. >> Mr. Farut, Mr. Jafari, Miss Rizzy. >> Thank you, Madam Chair. In the interest of trying to provide the best solution, is it possible for a grass field that we pay extra to properly maintain like to really maintain it the way or is that not possible because

129of the way we do grass fields in RPS? I think realistically we would have to dramatically increase both the staff and the resources that we put into grounds and I suspect that that would not be a request that would be limited to one school. I I would expect that that would be something that all schools would want access to and so I think we currently have two grounds staff for the entire division. Our regular lawns in front of our buildings are obviously serviced and maintained by the city. So we have very limited staff currently. Um, and a lot of that responsibility unfortunately falls currently on the coaching staff and the athletic director team. Um, and so we would have to make a very significant investment to get to the high quality grass that I referenced.

130>> Mr. Jafari, >> thanks Madam Chair. You know, as I reflect back, I can reflect playing on both of those. And at times uh nowadays we have what what we call the concussion protocol. But I can remember even before getting concussions as I would stand up in the middle of the field and this this impacts not just athletes but also the cadet core, the bands, anybody that takes to the field and has been on the field can remember see the heat crinkle rising up from the field. And you can also see this on vehicles especially on hot days. And so having said that and also given that athletes when they're out there expending themselves and they're breathing in so deeply and all all their lungs and everything just taken in whatever is rising up from

131the ground at that time. As I look at the categories that you've offered here this evening, I don't see anything that addresses uh the the adhesives, the chemicals that are used to make the carpet, make the artificial turf, and as well the adhesives that are used to give it its adherence to make sure that it fit in and and it adheres. So if you would and maybe you can tell me why nothing is in any of this that shows the the possible effects of breathing in the fumes that's coming up from the field. I think that's very important for parents who have their children out there expending themselves to know what if any studies have been done that actually shows exactly what they're breathing in whether it's harmful. I don't want to wait 10 12

132years before we find out. Thank you. >> Sure. Um, you are right that is not included in tonight's presentation. I apologize. Two months ago, we did present information related to the environmental impacts, but that would not have spoken to what you're talking about, which is, I think, a totally fair concern. So, I am happy to look into that and share more information tomorrow. >> Thank you, Miss Rizzy. >> Thank you, Madam Chair. It appears that there are no perfect answers here. Um, yeah. I mean, it looks like even though, you know, I think that there's still this general population belief that turf is better and that's why people are both saying safety and then selecting turf. You know, my question was related to Mr. Baroos about, you know, those two figures you gave us. Was

133the grass option the one that was the highly maintained? Obviously, it's not um you know, I I mean, I'm inclined to support whatever it is the community wants. Um although I think people really do need to think about, you know, not only the as as uh Mr. Jafari mentioned, some of the environmental and health concerns. Um but it it it looks like just based on what we can afford, um turf is going to have to be it. I think just based on the fact that we can't do this highly maintained grass. Um, but it's a hard decision. I mean, I just walked past a, you know, VCU is ripping up turf right now and I just walked past a whole like pile of discarded turf that's just sitting there. Um, and it it wasn't a

134pretty thing. Um, yeah. Go get something. Yeah, that that's all. Thank you for your presentation. Um, so based upon what you shared, the safest route would be a well-maintained grass. Is that correct? >> Yes. >> However, in order to do so, to maintain it, well, that would cost uh well, he has it on the background. Page eight installation. So for a 12-year cost total just over 500,000 for a year. Is that right? So would that mean annually would be around 665K or is that just for the initial install? No. >> Are you referencing the >> the grass field? For the grass field, we did not financially model what it would cost to do an excellent maintained grass. Quite frankly, the comparison studies that we have that show that those are incredibly safe are primarily based

135on very well-funded NFL programs and very wellunded NCAA programs that isolate a specific field for a single sport and do not let anyone else use that field other than when that sport is happening. And that is frankly not even close to a scenario that we have. Even if we had the resources, I'm sorry to be a wet blanket, but even if we had the resources, I think it's unlikely we could maintain a truly exceptional grass field. >> So we're comparing apples to oranges then. So what is this figure here then for grass field? What what was the >> this this represents for the grass field the best we could do in terms of a field that gets significant use from multiple sports on an ongoing basis including for use of practice. And so this is

136essentially what we would be able to do for as best as we can maintain grass versus turf. >> And so so that leads to my original question. That's 665,000. Is that per year, per school, or is that Tell me what that figure is. What does that mean? >> Apologies, madam. >> No worries. >> That 665,000 is the estimated 12-year total cost. It's the $125,000 initial installation of a grass field plus 30 to $45,000 of irrigation and other maintenance and no other large additional costs. Yes, ma'am. >> Understood. But in order to maintain it consistently across all of the schools, roughly how much would that be per year >> to uh to maintain >> to maintain grass fields consistently over the course consistently across the division? >> Yes. >> Just a guesstimation. I'm not putting you

137on the spot here. So I think in on average the 30 to 45,000 on maintenance is what would be represented at all of our schools. Yeah. >> Sure. The only thing I want to note is that several of our high school fields need to quite frankly be completely redone if they were going to be at the level that is considered optimal for safety which now we're talking hundreds of thousands and look across the school division probably into the millions. So I just wanted to know that it's not simply we got to water and mow the glass grass but like the complete >> yeah we are I am very aware of how poor some of our fields truly are. I mean it it's it's unfortunate. Um the reason for my ask is just trying to understand

138you know one a 12-year cost of 3.265 is understandable. So, it sounds like your recommendation is turf. What is your recommendation? >> One minute. >> I did not bring a recommendation because I am very eager to understand what the community wants and defer to the board's preferences on this difficult issue. >> Okay, come on. >> I will I will make a recommendation. Um, at the end of the day, um, I'm going to listen to the students and recommend Thank you, Mr. Perl. >> Thank you, Madam Chair. Um, I have a different opinion and I will be going against the superintendent on this. Um, the opportunity cost, which I think Madam Chair was getting to, is I have a hard time being myopic with just Richmond High School for the Arts because if we took this

139money and applied it to all of our schools, not just high schools, middle schools play sports as well, and these fields need upgrading. Um, and these are kind of rhetorical questions, but going to the optimal grass field cost us more money. How close would we get there with two or two and a half million dollars if we were to put that money there? Um, and and I know that this is apples and oranges budgets, but I just have to say it. 3.26 million gives us RVA back, right? So, I I I have difficulty. I I will be voting no on turf. I'm just going to say that. And it's not because I'm not listening to the students and the staff at Richmond High School for the Arts. I'm listening to students, staff, and everybody in

140all of Richmond public schools. And there's so much more that we can do with this money, and we can improve grass fields for every athlete in every school as opposed to just one. >> Thank you, Mr. Farooq and M. Ricard. >> Thank you, Madam Chair. Uh, I say this as a parent who understands how heavily our fields get used. My son plays on his elementary school soccer team which plays on his local middle school's soccer field. So I'm very aware of like showing up some days and it is not maintained at all and some days it is. My question is is it possible can we explore um what it would cost us to maybe contract out maintenance for just one field of grass? Like I understand what you were saying is that if we start

141trying to do that for one field all the fields want it and yes I get that. What would it do we know roughly like is it even possible to contract with the maintenance to someone who would do a good a better job than we would be able to? >> Yes, that is absolutely possible and I'm happy to look into quotes for that. I think what I want to point out though is that given the frequency of use, there is likely very little amount of ongoing maintenance that could keep it at the quality that gets us to the dramatic reduction in injuries. this regard. >> Thank you. Um, one point, Mr. PLA, if you don't mind me clarifying though, the 3.265 million is within our CIP construction trunch. So, it would allow us to do other

142fields, but we're kind of stuck within the confines of construction. Um, and I guess I just want to speak to um the field maintenance. a former high school I was at, their athletic director loved his grass and the amount of time he spent maintaining that field was truly incredible, but he loved doing it. And so that field was and even that field wasn't great because there were still divots and things like that. So I just say that to acknowledge that it is really hard to maintain a field that is that gets so much wear and tear to be truly safe for our athletes. as much as I love grassible. >> So, just as a follow up on the safety and the turf, are we then advocating that at some point we are going to go

143back to every school in RPS and replace the fields with turf? >> Mr. Cameron and then Miss Alton. >> No. Uh, Mr. First of all, I I certainly understand your point and more than respect uh your perspective on this and and frankly um this one feels pretty 5050 to me. Um uh but um on balance given what survey says and what I have personally heard from community members um it feels like the community would in some way feel disrespected if they did not get what they were expected and um and this has been a very challenging project from the beginning and I think we've reached a point of um harmony and positivity and um I don't mean to get overly vive on you but I do think this is a community that has not gotten

144everything that they have desired. tired for a long long time. And given how close it is, um I I I on balance feel that meeting that expectation would help open the school with a most positive taste in everybody's. But again, completely understand the other side. >> Thank you, Miss Alton. So, uh, certainly what I'm hearing from the community, my community, not having a high school, but lots of my, uh, district students going to, uh, uh, HSA would be in favor of turf. And I would weigh in favor of turf, frankly, based on, you can go back to the safety slide, slide nine. Um, I know we have all kinds of immunity, but lawyer in me can't help think about legal liability and high risk concussion for poorly maintained grass which is what I have to

145assume we're going to have given what we've heard this worried male and liability and highest risk of lower extremity injury risk and uh to Mr. Persal's point I would say I would propose that perhaps the consistent rule is every time we build a new high school with a new stadium we go to turf unless Unless the safety rules, safety evidence has changed at that time. And I think we would be with the majority. Well, certainly with our other new high school, relatively new high school juvenile and with other area schools moving in the Turk direction. I have thoughts, but Mr. Hedgeb. >> Thanks, Madam Chair. I am not going to add anything else other than just saying that I concur with what superintendent cameras uh just stated uh before Miss Holton and I'll be supporting

146turf. >> Mr. Jafari and Miss Rizzy. >> Thanks Madam Chair. Just to be clear, many of my constituents either go to Huganite and play or they go to RSA and they play. So for me, it's not a personal thing, even though I know I played on those fields. But what I want us to do, I just want us to go into this with their eyes and ears fully open, knowing what the high risk of injury is, >> uh, knowing that the ACL uh, what those kinds of impacts and as well, which I thought was critical in the presentation >> that wasn't presented here tonight, and that is the the the stew, if you will, that from a 100 degree artificial field, what you're actually breathing. I think it's imperative that parents know and again if

147you decide to go I defer to the board. You know I want I want my constituents to be happy as well. You know they are the ones who want to play on it and just as the superintendent has said this is one of those areas 8th district, ninth district, sixth district who generally are marginalized and underserved. And so I I definitely want them to be happy, but I I don't want to just let them be happy today and then 10 or 12 years ago get the I told you so syndrome. I want them to know all the aspects and I want the parents to know all the aspects. Thanks, Madam Chair. >> Thank you, Miss Rizzie. >> Yes. I just wanted to kind of note that there are some states where schools are kind of

148moving away from TUR because they are studying the potential health and environmental hazards. Um, so I don't think that that's necessarily a statement across the board. Although, you know, I completely understand the community's desire for turf. I just wanted to mention Mr. Jafari as a former band kid. I remember that heat. I won't belabor the point. Um, for me, my position obviously is with the community. However, I will share that and doing research, uh, turf fields are not al always synonymous with safety either. Like in other sports outside of football, um, you know, statistics do prove that, you know, injuries do increase and so that's something to consider. However, my concern is around the schools that currently have potholes in the middle of their fields. like >> 30 seconds. >> We just can't be okay

149with leaving it as is. And so, while I appreciate the energy that's being put towards what we're doing for Richmond High School of the Arts and the community is welld deserving, other schools deserve uh fields without holes in them. And so, um I'm not hearing anything about how we're going to achieve or rectify that. and I'll be interested in hearing what type of priorities are going to be presented to ensure that we have equity across the division. Thank you. >> Oh yes. Uh I think that is a huge question. I think to accomplish true parody across the division, we would have to choose as a division to invest significantly more in our grounds and specifically our athletic fields than we currently do. And I recognize that we are going into a very difficult budget year.

150And right now our facilities and facilities maintenance teams are dramatically already prioritizing as you'll see from a later presentation on some of the highest impact roofing, plumbing, electric. And so I am not incredibly optimistic about our ability to marshall significant resources to dramatically improve our fields. Now that does not mean that there isn't improvement that we can be done. And so I'm I'm eager to talk to the team about what our options are, but I I I think we we will not have the funds to truly get every field to the level that we know our students deserve >> and that is a part of CIP or is that regular? Where does that align? >> That would be part of the annual operating funds. >> Yes. >> Thank you for your time. >> Thank you.

151>> 4.03 is next. receive for first read the special education and CCIS annual plan. Good evening. Good evening. Um, Madame Chair, school board members, superintendent cameras. I am Dr. Rossi Voli and I'm the director of exceptional education and I am here with my colleagues Angela Jones and Mr. Cooper and we are here for the first read of our annual plan for plan for our special education IDA grants. And so just to give you a quick overview of the purpose of the grant, it really is just an agreement between Richmond public schools and the state of Virginia and how we're going to use our grant funds, what we're going to do for the funds that we we receive for our students with disabilities. Next slide, please. This slide provides an overview of the five-year trend data.

152It's just showing how much we've received over the past 5 years. So, just wanted you to see that so that you can have an idea of what we have received, but also understanding that this is just a projection based on anticipated funds because we haven't received the actual amount for the upcoming school year. Next slide, please. Okay, so this is really to give you the meat of what we are planning to do with our annual plan. The first part, first and foremost, we spend the majority of our IDA grant fund on salaries and benefits. So most of our um most of the funds you we are used I'm sorry we use to provide funding for um special education teacher positions, instructional assistant positions as well as instructional compliance coordinators, related service providers. Again, the majority

153is spent in that capacity. In addition to paying for our salaries and benefits, we also are required to make sure that we've set aside an amount of money for our students that are parentally placed in private schools to ensure that if they are a student with a disability that they have access to individualized service plans and can receive funding or support for related services such as speech or OT or PT or anything of that nature. We also utilize um 15% of our funding is designated for our early intervening services. And what that means is that Richmond public schools has been identified of overidentifying our black students in the division in special education in the area of emotional disability and intellectual disability. And because of that, we're required to set aside 15% of the funds that

154we're provided for ear early intervention. So prevention services. So it really is to put in some prevention services in place for students that are not already identified as students with disabilities. So we have that information here in the 15% that's set aside we're required to do. Next slide. Um the next three slides really just break down each bucket of money that come from the grant. So the first one is our 611 and those are funds that are designated for all of our students prek through 12. Again as I mentioned the majority is for salaries and benefits. um proportionate set aside as I mentioned is for those students that are apparently placed in private schools and then the CCIS that was mentioned as well. I would like to note that there are approximately 117 positions um

155paid out of the grant which is amazing and also that we have approximately 28 students that are parentally placed that receive services through the grant. The next one is for 619 and that's specifically allocated for just preschool. So, um, we don't get receive as much funds for that because we don't have as many students with disabilities in preschool. Um, so we use that money for providing salaries and benefits for one exceptional education teacher as well as one instructional assistant. And in addition to that, it notes that we have one student that is parentally placed in a private school that receive services using those funds. And the last one just breaks down what we do with that 15% um that we set aside for that over identification area. Again, as mentioned there, salaries and benefits specifically,

156but we also know that there's some training and um services that we need to provide maybe to our school teams as well as our um school psychologists. So, we have set aside some funding for that for stipens and other things. Um we have 10 positions that are currently paid out of that grant and that's for our behavior interventionist and as I mentioned again the training really addresses addresses um seal understanding eligibility processes and ensuring our our school teams have that information. I think that was the last slide. Do we have any questions? It's pretty straightforward. Thank you so much for your time. >> Okay. Thank you. >> Thank you. Enjoy your evening. Receive for review the multi-year school support plans 4.04. Good evening. Good evening, Madam Chair, superintendent Cambridge, and members of the board. As

157a continuation of last month's presentation presentation, I'm here to present the final five multi-year school support plans for Armstrong High School, Francis McClenny, Miles Jones Elementary, Richmond Success Academy, and Thomas Jefferson High School. The multi-year school support plans um are a means for schools to select evidence-based interventions and strategies, create goals, action steps, um and um indicate how they want to monitor those action steps. Um, pending your review and approval of the plans tomorrow, they will then be forwarded to the Virginia Department of Education's Office of School Improvement for their review and ultimately their approval. >> Question, Mr. Farooq. >> Um, is for this for these particular schools, is this the first year? Is this their first multi-year support plan? >> Uh, no. So, the schools have been doing actually school support plans. Um, every

158year that I've been in this position, they have come in different forms and iterations depending on the template given to us by the Virginia Department of Education. Um, so this is not their first year creating a plan. This is the first year of this format of the plan. >> Sorry, follow up. Is it always these particular schools or kind of changes each year? >> So, every school does a school support plan. The ones we have to submit to the Virginia Department of Education are our federally identified schools. Um, and they accompany their school improvement grant application. free question. Thank you so much. Good evening. Steve, an update on the Head Start application. Miss Chain, >> good evening, Madam Chair and Superintendent Cameras and members of the board. Just providing a brief update about our continuation

159grant for Head Start, which is part of our regular process that we have to submit every year. Um we have drafted it. It's with policy council for first read. We intend to submit it for second read in their um first meeting in March. That should be the week of March 16th. And then we will provide it to the board immediately. And we need it for um approval at the second meeting in April because the grant is due the first week of May. And so we want to make sure we adhere to that timeline. >> Is there a reason why it's not prepared for tonight? So we have to do the first read and approval. Sorry. Okay. Can you call that out then so folks don't think that they're waiting on us, please? >> Yes, of

160course. So yes, it was submitted to policy council for first read last week. So, February 26th, we will um bring it to them for second read and approval that week of March 16th when they have their meeting and then as soon as it's ready, we'll provide it to the board. I just wanted to make sure it was first approved by policy council prior to bringing it to the board. >> Understood. So, that means that we will have to do first read and approval within the same month. >> Yes. >> To meet the timeline. >> Yes. So we will post it um that Monday meeting and then for f for first read but then have it for approval the second night. I will share it as soon as it's available though which should be that week

161of March 16th to provide you know any additional um time and clarification that I can provide. Moving right along to 4.06 06 receive standard employment contract language for SY 2026 2027. Good evening. >> Good evening board members, Chairwoman Fernandez, Vice Chair, Superintendent Cameras, uh Elizabeth Le, Chief Talent Officer, still new 110 days in 110 days. Uh so I present to you the first read for the contracts for school year 2627. Uh we are bound by school board policy to present these contracts to our associates every single year. Oh sorry. So right now we are looking at the timeline. Uh today we are presenting the contracts for first read through March 3rd through the 23rd. We will make any adjustments to the contract that contracts that may be requested by the school board. We will present

162again the final language on April 6th for you all's approval and then we will present also the reelection list for schoolboard approval on that date. So I thought putting this in a table for you with active links would be much easier for you to see. And part of what we've had to do this year is based on legal counsel's advice is just adjust some language to align better with Virginia code um so that we are completely in alignment with what the state expects us to have in our contracts. There is no change in the terms and conditions of our contracts. Just some alignment in language. On the left hand side, you will see the contracts that went out for the current school year and their titles and who they are applicable to. In the left

163hand side, you will see the contracts that will be going out in April um and their new names and who they are appropriate to. We are going to have some new employment contract types for the new school year again to ensure full compliance with expectations from the Commonwealth. What we are going to do this year, starting with the notice of assignment and salary with continuing contract personnel. This is really simple. This one is going out to continuing contract eligible renewals, not the folks that are firsttime eligible for continuing contracts. Then we are going to have appointment letters for hourly support personnel. So we are going to be giving our part-time temporary uh contract employees a notice of appointment. And then finally, our volunteer coaching agreements that is all coming in-house into my department so that

164we can manage it appropriately through powers school and ensure we have signatures as we are supposed to have them. Just some key updates which I've kind of reviewed, right? All RPS team members will be required to have employment contracts or notices of assignment. Um we are doing continuing contract renewal letters this year as well as the first year eligible continuing contracts. Uh the contract changes are uh only in name to align with Virginia code. Temporary part-time team members will be issued these contracts or notices for assignment. We are implementing deadlines this year. Uh they will go out on April 13th. They will be required to be returned to us May 1st. We are going to be sending notices of nonsigned agreements. Hey chiefs, directors, principals, these are the folks in on your teams that have

165not yet signed the contracts. Please help us out. And then we're going to be sending those notices again leading up to the deadline. Missed deadlines will result in non-renewal of contracts. We will reach out to people to make sure that there aren't any extenduating circumstances that have prevented people from signing contracts. I'm a big fan of let's make sure nobody ended up in the hospital and can't like you know we want to be fair, right? I I believe in equity and fairness uh when it comes to deadlines. That will then trigger bless you. That will then trigger uh formal written resignations that will be due on May 15th. Nonrenewal notifications will be sent no later than May 15th and then personnel actions resulting from all of this work will come before all of you on

166June 2nd. Miss Ricard, thank you, Madam Chair. I appreciate the deadlines so that we're able to properly staff our schools knowing who's coming and who's not coming back. Um I just wanted to make sure that we have already kind of given um notice of this change um or that it might be coming pending board approval to our union partners so that they can also make sure that their their um people know. >> So thank you for that. Um, I did send uh a really nice letter that I wrote with all of these changes to all of the union representatives. I heard back from to three out of four of the groups. Uh, some had some questions and I I've answered some of them and so uh I'm going to be sending this deck to another

167one that wanted all of the active links. Mr. Faroo, Miss Holton, >> thank you, Madam Chair. Miss Phiz, can you give us an overview of some of these changes you're making, the changes to the contracts, the changes to the process for renewal? What do our peer school systems or other school systems in the state do that's similar or dissimilar? Thank you. So, I don't have complete insight into what our peer groups are doing, but I don't take our legal council's guidance lightly considering his deep knowledge of the school systems. And so, when I first joined the organization, I had the opportunity to sit with our council and kind of do um kind of an indoctrination into our organization and our processes and what we should be doing. And I immediately wanted to identify areas for

168improvement that would align us with what should be standard practice in the public education space. >> Thank you. Good evening and thank you for your uh careful work and presentation. Uh just a a process question. Our board meeting moved in April, you know, from the first weekend of April to the second weekend in April. Um and u I wonder what that does to your timeline. Are you able to get the contracts out on April 13th if we don't vote on them until 13th? >> So that I I own that. That is clearly a mess on my part. Um, but we can shift the timeline by one day if necessary. I believe in being fluid and flexible when it comes to things like that. What we want to do is we want to make sure that

169we give our team members a full 15 days. So shifting that by one or two days is not going to be a a big lift for us. And you can so you can turn them around immediately. In other words, I'm not sure whether we would vote on this on Monday or Tuesday. Tuesday, I'm hearing. So if we vote on it on April 14th, you can get them out on April 15th. >> Yeah. >> Which gives you just over two weeks before people need to respond, which is not a huge window, but I think if with with your answer to Miss Ricard that you're letting everybody know to expect them shouldn't be a problem. It shouldn't be a problem uh to shift the deadline because we won't wait until you all approve this to get everything

170ready to pull the trigger on it. We will be doing a lot of work in the background loading things into P school. Um and by the way, I take no credit for this amazing work. This was all done by my extraordinary director who's sitting behind me who works tirelessly to get all of this work done. I'm just here speaking on the department's behalf. Um, but we work up to the date to make sure that as soon as we get the approval, if anything were to change, we are ready to pivot. So, so is there a need to move the May one deadline at all? Or if other words, if you can get them out in a day, then your people will still have two and a half weeks to respond. But if you're not confident

171you can get them out in a day, then should we consider moving the May one deadline later? >> So, let me just before I don't like speaking on behalf of my directors because they are the boss of me. >> I have full confidence that she said yes. >> Thank you, Mr. Jafari. >> Thanks, Madam Chair. Uh just a a brief observation. I just noticed a persistent reference in the presentation um referencing obtaining signed contracts. And so the question kind of come to comes to my mind are we seeing situations where uh people are or employees are able to operate or perform RPS related duties without signed contracts. What's the frequency if any of that >> 110 days in? Um, so I don't have that data handy to share with you, but we asked for these

172deadlines because it is my understanding that there have been instances where people for I'm sure very legitimate reasons have not signed their contracts in a in enough time to give us an accurate representation of what our needs would be. So, we are implementing these deadlines so that we can have qualified people in the classrooms on time for the new school year, but I can get you that data if you want it. >> Yeah, I I would appreciate it. I I know that we're scrutinizing it, but I was just curious about it. >> Yeah, I can certainly go back if you give me a few business days, we can >> That's fine. Take your time and just circle back. >> Okay, that's Thank you. >> Okay. >> Thank you. Thank you. Appreciate >> it. Moving right

173along to 4.07, receive an update from the facilities and vacant property committee. Before you step up, is there anything that the chair of the committee would like to share? Miss Rizzie. Okay. >> Good evening again and thank you uh committee chairwoman Rizzy. Um, as uh you queued up, Chair Fernandez, the facilities and vacant properties committee asked me to give three primary updates tonight. Uh, one of them we can make very brief because superintendent Cameron spoke to it earlier. The first was an overview of our priority CIP capital improvement requests. Uh, the second was an overview. We have started with the facilities and vacant properties committee to do quarterly updates on the facilities maintenance requests, our completion time and other high level data. We did that at the last facilities and vacant properties committee and I

174was asked to bring that to the full board. And then finally, the facilities and vacant properties committee has put together a recommendation for a more streamlined process when someone is interested in an asset that Richmond public schools owns for how we centralize the evaluation and uh decision-making process. And so those are the three things that I wanted to cover. We'll start with the priority CIP requests. And I wanted to to remind some you all of something that you don't need reminded of, which is that we have enormous unfunded capital project needs. The reason this is important is every time we don't get money for capital projects, for example, if we don't get money to put a new roof on a building, what that means the following year is that we have more leaks and more

175of our operational dollars have to be used to remediate and deal with those issues. If the prior year we had put a new roof on, we likely wouldn't have those leaks and our operational dollars would not be strained. And so when we put these charts that have back in uh 2024 the over $7 million in unmet needs, the following year 36 million, this year it's close to 40 million. That has real implications not just for our capital money, but for our operational dollars. To put that into context, if you do a general survey of uh schools across the United States, a general rule of thumb is that you want to dedicate between$2 and a half to$5.5 per square foot of real estate for upkeep. Right now, we have in our operational budget about a$120. And

176so this is exacerbated every time we don't have enough money to update our facilities with the limited dollars that we do have. And this is frankly a review of what Superintendent Cameron shared with you earlier if we were to receive the $2.5 million that we suspect we may receive. This is what we would propose that we would prioritize that on. And then the second slide has additional requests including Mr. Mr. Hedgepath, what you mentioned about Westover Hills um and the other uh items that you've seen before. So, this is very much a review of what you have already reviewed. Um the uh facilities and vacant properties committee also uh requested that we share our 10-year roof replacement schedule. One of the main things that I want to point out here that we've talked about on

177the facilities and vacant properties committee is it is enormously expensive. I'll point you to Armstrong High School, for example, slated for a near complete roof repair in 2027. That alone would be almost $3.6 million. That is just crushing. And so that this is highlighting the thing that you already know, which is we are very very tight on capital dollars. The second item uh is facilities maintenance requests. We pulled data for the last three months, November, December, and January. And that's the information that we have here. One of the things that you saw when we presented our proposed prioritization matrix of high, medium, and low priority is we made the commitment that within 48 hours any high priority request, we would address that. And so we have initial data on um some of these incidents, but

178I wanted to start with just high level. So what you'll see is in a three-month period, we received over 1,700 maintenance requests. This, incidentally, is during months that included Thanksgiving and a two-week winter holiday. So, this nearly 2,000 requests over a three-month period is low compared to what we typically see in a given quarter. Um, and so you can just imagine with our limited team, the strain that that puts on them to get work done of the uh about 1,700 requests received during that time. During that time, we were able to close out about 74% of those requests and about 24 of those are still outstanding. The majority of those that are still outstanding, as you can see, are in our lower priority items. Uh getting into what the response time is, uh the average

179response time for emergency and high priority items was within a day. uh for our low medium uh those that was closer to a week with an average response time of six days. The second row shows time to completion. So if you can imagine for example a school that reports having a leak in the ceiling. Think about that especially when we had ice on all of our roofs. We are able to go out on site and address whatever we can to try to stop the leak. But if there is an inch of ice on the roof, we're not able to do the underlying repairs until that ice is gone. And so that's how we get to a response time that is within a day where we are addressing the immediate things that we can address. But

180especially for our high priority items that tend to be bigger, expensive projects sometimes that need external contractors. That's why there's a difference between the response time and the completion time. And that's what we've captured here. And then below you'll see the types of requests. And as you can see, we get a disproportionate number of requests, unfortunately, with our most expensive items. Plumbing, carpentry, electrical, and HVAC are the primary requests that we receive. And then this shows all of the school buildings and how many individual requests we received by school building. It probably is not deeply surprising that the highest flyer on that list, Albert Hill Middle School, is a school that is well over a century old. Um, and for those of you who have been in that building, you can understand why that school

181is very high on the list. The third uh item on the agenda that I wanted to talk through was the facilities reuse application process. From feedback that we received from the facilities and vacant properties committee, we saw that there was an opportunity for us to create a unified streamline process. And so what the facilities and vacant properties committee recommended was creating an application process that included items like potential cost to the district if we were to use a field or uh repurpose a school uh but also community impact and a whole host of other factors. And so we've put together a process and you can see linked there is what that comprehensive application would look like. What the facilities and vacant properties committee has asked me to do with my team is to review those

182applications as they come in and present back to the facilities and vacant properties committee the most promising of those applications. I will share all of the applications with the facilities and vacant properties committee. But I will highlight the ones that are most promising and then the facilities and vacant properties committee will go through their evaluation process and determine which of those applications to bring to the full board. The only other item I should note is we very intentionally did not put specific constraints on the applications. So we want to be able to entertain applications for buildings that we are not using but also for buildings that we might be using and we want to be able to consider would we want to think differently about that. So we've intentionally made it a very open-ended process.

183That's all I wanted to share. Happy to answer any questions. I have one question and you may or may not have the answer. Um I'm not really sure. I guess it's related to this presentation, but maybe it's not. Um we I found out over the course of the um the ice storm that we received um that there is a split and how maintenance is taken care of. No grounds is taken care of. On the south side of Richmond, it's the city and on the other side it's RPS. How do you handle when we have like emergency situations such as the ice storm where all of the schools need that level of support? Obviously with the city their priority is going to be getting the roads clear, main roads, back roads, etc. Where do schools fall

184in that? I just know that there are some schools that had a lot of trouble. I mean, they I mean, their staff literally had to go out and like do it themselves, whereas just simply because they're on the south side of Richmond. So, how are we handling those types of issues? >> Great question, Madam Chair. And just to clarify, you are 100% correct. Over a decade ago, we entered into anou with the city where they would take responsibility for doing the snow plow clearing of the primary parking lot and the bus drop off for the southside schools while we as RPS retained the responsibility for clearing those same areas in our north side schools. I I should start by giving the city enormous credit. the way that they were collaborative with us during this unprecedented

185ice storm and what they were able to accomplish in partnership with our facilities team who worked insane hours to try to clear the ice as well as we were we ultimately had to bring in some external partners because the heaviness of the machinery to dig up the ice was just beyond what we had in our current stock of fleet. Um, and so I think the combination of those three items really meant that during that ice storm, we kind of threw what you described of north and south out the window. Uh, because the city was really invested in supporting us to reopen as quickly as possible while also of course focusing on the primary and secondary roads. Uh, I will just to call the city out even more, they even worked collaboratively with us where we

186worked with our transportation team to identify tertiary roads that had not been cleared yet or had only been treated and still were dangerous and we were able to put those on a running list and the city was able to prioritize clearing those which was instrumental in our ability to return when we were able to. So, I know that doesn't fully address your question but in this case it was incredibly clever. No, and I appreciate that and um I've heard the likes of that. So, I'm I'm thrilled to hear that that there's a consistent message across the board. It it also is a little um delicate because our principles, our staff, they know our schools, right? And so, we have some, for example, that it may not look like a walkway. And so if the city

187comes in, they don't necessarily know what those landmarks look like or where they should plow. I'm think I'm assuming they're just wanting to like make sure the road is clear or the the the park parking lot is is clear. But the attention to detail is the feedback that I received was miss obviously because they're they are focused laser focused on opening the city back up which is understandable. How in those instances are we are they still able to reach out to facilities to say, "Hey, we need help." And is that help still going to be provided even though it's doesn't fall under that category of or you know side of town. Yes, absolutely. Again, unfortunately, this particular ice storm I think creates an exception. The typical situation is that we have our custodial teams at

188our buildings that have the ability to treat walkways. They have shovels and they have snow clearing equipment. None of that worked during the ice storm because of the deep cold temperatures, the fact that a plastic shovel isn't going to get under the ice. And so they did work with the facilities team. I think from my recollection, we had four examples of buildings that had ice in front of delivery doors that we had to go back after we opened up and address. And we had three different examples of pathways, for example, from a specific parking lot to a specific entry point that had not been cleared. And so, our facilities team was able to go back and support on those. But I I totally take your point that there were there were areas as we were

189opening back up, marginal areas that we did not cover. And so we've put that in our plan to make sure that for future storms we are more prepared to do that. >> I'm really glad to hear that. Thank you, Miss Mr. Hedge. >> Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, Mr. Herrell. Uh just to continue u uh Mr. Hernandez's u conversation here about the about the snow removal. The city released a map that showed the primary and secondary roads and um and the schedule that they were going to to clear that ice. Uh all of the schools in the fourth district except for Southampton Elementary are not on a primary or secondary road. And so I I have to say that I did not look at all of our other schools. And so my question is

190is that can that be a conversation that we have with the city that at least one road to each of our schools is considered sec primary or secondary? Uh so then that way they are prioritized. Um, I don't know if that's that's unique to Southampton or if that is more common across the district as we're building new schools. So, um, could we work work with the city on that? Happy to do that. I think just to clarify around expectations, I think it's unlikely that our schools would be considered primary because the way the city thinks of primary as truly if fire and uh, police need to get somewhere, are the main arteries of the city passable? And so, but I think for secondary absolutely we can have that conversation. >> Thank you, Miss Rizzie. >>

191Yeah. Um, you know, there was nothing normal about this most recent snowstorm. So, you know, I want to shout out the city and our facilities people. It was hard. Um, and I also want to shout you out, Mr. Harold. You joined our committee. you hit the ground running and you helped us do a lot of work in a fairly short amount of time. >> Thank you, Mr. Jafari. >> Thanks, Madam Chair. Um, just a quick point out on slide four and I'm kind of looking at uh at the top I'm looking at your categories. Uh we we're going from wire equipment panels and also as a safety matter we're looking at updating the parking lot and the drop off areas. Uh if you could could you just give me some insight how how how do

192we arrive at um safety the category safety? What other kinds of repairs and and needs fall under that category? >> Yeah. And actually I'll take us to slide number three because slide number three shows our highest priority items and then the second slide represents the additional items if we are given more than $2.5 million of how we would recommend. Obviously this is all subject to the board's final approval. But safety is certainly high on the list but I would say the other things that are very high on the list are the sorts of repairs that if not done now will accumulate significant future costs. So the obvious example is a roof that continues to leak. If you repair that roof, a leaky roof can have implications well beyond the quality of the roof. And so

193the the list that we have here, you can see HVAC items that the the more we don't address HVAC, the more we have to spend operational dollars. So it is those those things that we feel like for safety, for the proper functioning of schools, for students to be able to learn are high priority items. It's a difficult process though because as you know the the list of needs is ever expanding. >> Yeah. And I certainly get that. May I follow up? Madam Chair, and just to turn it turn it around and take a look at I I've got a a gym floor and the gym floor it was I think the school was built in ' 86. Gym floor was installed then and it's buckling separating and you got air bubbles on it. So again,

194that just goes to my question about safety and how we're arriving at what is safe and what is unsafe. And you know, I got youngsters in there day in and day out who are at risk running, running at high speeds, playing and also doing physical education type things and all of that. So I'm I'm I guess I'm just curious as to how we get those kinds of issues and needs considered and placed in categories like safety. Yeah, we do have a pretty comprehensive list of all of the needs for uh updates and certainly I assume you're talking about Bushall Middle School when you reference the um so we do have a a pretty enormous list. We're going through the process because that list is so enormous with how we can systematize a ranking of that

195which is ultimately a little bit arbitrary but ultimately something that we want to do so that as we have funds we know what order we'd want to address those items. We've not finalized that and certainly I would bring that to the facilities and vacant properties committee for the initial review of that. Uh but that is something that we're trying to address so that as we try to address all of the needs for example Buchall's gym floor we can make sure that we have all of that in one place and we have a ranked list. >> So then if I hear you right then we are taking a look at that. We're taking a look at assessing the risk factor potential unsafe hazardous nature of the gym floor. the gym floor and hundreds and hundreds of

196other requests. Absolutely. Yes. >> Hey, thank you. Appreciate it, >> Miss Rizzie. I don't I don't know if this matters, but you know, one fun fact about the amount of requests that come facilities, it's not really all the way organized by age of the school. If you notice, Even is number four on the list. Um, you know, I just think that's interesting. Yeah, it's a big school. So, yeah, I just think that that was an interesting find once you created this list. Thank you. Thank you so much. All right. And next up is 4.08 to receive a first rate policy committee recommendations. Mr. Hedgepath. Thank you, Madam Chair. I appreciate it. Uh the policy committee has three uh policies, one new and a couple uh changes that are for first read today, including our very

197exciting new policy on AI. I'm welcome. I welcome any questions or uh or additions from the uh committee members, but this is just the first read. No two hands that are going to go up. Mr. Farooq. Good. Madam chair. Thank you. Many people in the RPS family have put a lot of work into the AI policy and there are many things that I like about it. I strongly urge this board to consider changing one part of the policy which is that we have a referendum or a moratorium on not a referendum a moratorium a one-year moratorum before we formally adopt an actual AI model to use and my reasoning is simple I am not convinced that it will actually improve the quality of instruction for our students and I think the risks far outweigh the

198potential future theoretical benefits. Every risk that I talk about is an existing risk that is causing serious damage to kids. Every benefit that I have been told about AI is theoretical possibly in the future. Maybe it could do this, maybe it could do that. I think there's the least of which is that it is essentially at this point a giant plagiarism machine which I think actually violates the code of the rules that we have in RPS for what we want to teach kids. Now will that be res resolved in the future? Maybe, but it isn't resolved yet. Two, there's really really serious I mean I encourage everyone to actually look this up. The sheer number of child sexual abuse imagery that AI is creating is astonishing. It is an absolute devastating risk. And I am

199now I understand that different corporations are creating protections, but it's getting worse every day. So I think the risks far outweigh the benefits. I still think there's lots of good things in the policy. So I do think we should adopt the policy. But in terms of actually adopting and encouraging us to use Google Gemini or whatever model we want to use, I think is a mistake and that's something I would suggest we consider in the future. Thank you, Madam Chair. >> Thank you, Mr. Furug. Miss Holton. >> Thank you. U I would just commend the the work of the committee that took place and the task force before I got to it. um and also commend the the details of the policy to all of us and ask that maybe and I'm not don't think

200tonight is the right time but at some point and perhaps next month on second read is the right time that we really have a a fairly deep dive on some of the key issues the policy committee is recommending the policy address so that the whole board can consider it because I do think that there are some very significant implications um it's a hard area to legislate in, so to speak, because things are changing so fast. I understand there may be even some legislation that affect what we do by the time we meet again that hasn't yet passed. Um, but uh, if I understood correctly from what we heard at the policy committee, we're essentially where we are now is the wild west. I mean there's basically if I understood correctly no limits on what faculty

201what teachers can be using right now and I it entirely possible I misunderstood that but and there is some limitation that students are blocked from chat GBT but that's the extent of the limits they're blocked from one um large language model and the facult organization choosing the most ethical, the most responsible AI tool and authorizing our staff to use that at least primarily and then thinking about what our students should or shouldn't be using. We we probably need to advance that process as quickly as possible even though we know it's going to be a moving target that's going to require a lot of revisions over the next year and beyond. Thank you, Miss Grizzy. Okay. >> Um, you know, this is a huge undertaking. Um, as someone's already mentioned, AI is morphing every day. Um,

202and you know, institutions, higher education institutions are also struggling with how to manage this. Um, and you know, I highly recommend and I I know that sometimes we don't like doing this, but that we consult with other districts and kind of talk this out with partners to like see what they're doing and, you know, maybe develop some kind of community where, you know, we can all work together to to to think about this because we don't necessarily want to say that all AI is bad. I don't think that's true. Um, but you know, we need to put limits on it and we need to make sure that the way AI is used in our schools support student achievement and yeah, we need to make sure that students are learning through AI and and not using

203it for other ways like writing their entire essays, right? which I've seen and uh it you know and now you can actually go into AI and say use the voice of a high school student right and so it's getting harder and harder to tell um you know I require like you know citations a lot of times I can figure it out based on that how in the world did you find that source you know um but um you know it is it is constantly evolving topic and I think this is a really great start here I mean I I really too. Um, and I think we ought to think of this as an iterative process, right? Where we will update some at a time as things happen and as we figure things out. And I

204really do recommend reaching out to other subject matter experts as we're thinking about this. >> Did you want to share something else? >> Yep. Thank you, Madam Chair. Um and I appreciate the uh contributions of the uh policy committee meeting or uh committee members and my colleagues. I uh as Miss Holton mentioned it uh right now there is an absence of an AI policy and so um it is important that while imperfect um perhaps because you know government regulation always follows innovation uh that we'll be continuing to play catchup um and and it's important to mention too that this is this is designed to be reviewed annually um as you know and perhaps maybe that needs to be more frequent than annually. U but it is our our first attempt at putting guard rails on

205u and expectations for the use for both u our faculty members and our students and and I while there are most definitely concerns and I I agree with uh with privacy concerns in particular um there are most definitely benefits that that we can also um glean from it and if we are not a part of it we will be left behind um because divisions all over the state and nation are uh are are working through this and to Miss Rizzy's point we could collaborate with those divisions as well. I think that's very uh important. So um thank you to Dr. Demia Thomas for uh chairing the uh the committee and um the the rest of the the committee that you all did a lot of great work uh and you should be proud of it

206and um glad to take more feedback between now and um our next read. Thank you, Madam Chair. >> Mr. Peral, would you like to go before me? >> I I didn't even have to ask. Thank you, Madam Chair. Madam Chair and I have had probably far too many conversations about AI. Um, and I think she knows my opinion, but the we're talking about two things. We're talking about AI in general, and we're talking about a policy. So, first off, let me say I I think the work that that Thank you, Mr. Hedgepath. The policy committee has done on this has been fantastic. I would not want to be the one to write this policy. I think it's I think it's very well done and it really walks a line that needs to be walked. So,

207really appreciate this policy. That being said, my my opinions of of AI um working in the field, I will say magicians are are seldom impressed at a magic show. So, I kind of know how AI works and color me about as impressed as Mr. Farooq. But that being said, the genie is out of the bottle and we need to figure out how to harness that. and our students will be growing up in this environment and we need to get them the the tools and the the outlook on it that they need. Uh sort of my analogy with AI is is much like the pocket calculator was decades ago. At some point we moved from slide rules and long division to pocket calculators, but you still had to learn how to do division, right? You you

208can't just replace that. And I think this policy helps to put the the uh the emphasis on the teachers to how to incorporate that into their classroom where they can put restrictions where they can't. When you've demonstrated that you're able to use it responsibly, then you can use it responsibly. Um but the analogy falls down because in this case the pocket calculator can give you a different answer every time. Um but uh so yes, I I'm still guarded about AI, but I do appreciate the policy. So, thank you, Madam Chair. >> Thank you. A lot of great work has been done. Um and what I'd like to also highlight that um may have been said already, but I want to make sure that it's heard is that we received insight from our parents and the

209community. Um and that is so important to us. Um AI is a wave of the future whether people want to accept that or not and good or bad just like the internet it is here and um you know it's certainly our responsibility to put guidelines and in place and policies and procedures to ensure that we are at least ensuring guard rails are there. um not having anything in place currently is very scary and so having something in place will ensure that we at least understand the standard as a division. I had the same question in terms of are we seeing what's happening across the the country. Um that was one of the questions that I posed during our committee uh meeting and they assured me that that is something that they are looking into. They're

210looking in the industry standards, how it's being used. Another question that I raised was around as we think about how to implement AI properly. I hate to say it, but how much will it cost us um to implement it in a very strategic way and I think that's something we need to start thinking about as well. Um but at the very least, you know, our our teachers um do such an amazing job with so little resources as is. And so my hope and desire is that this will allow them to free up time and space and certainly not um take away from the create creativity that comes into play in teaching, but also help with efficiencies on the back end um to help with uh how they do their day-to-day assignments. I too have concerns

211as um Mr. Fuk has shared about the safety of our students and so I think as we continue to do research that'll be extremely important and how we safeguard that level exposure to ensure that they are not exposed to anything that they shouldn't be as scholars. But thank you for the amazing work that's been put into this. It's a great first start. Miss Rizzy, >> thank you Madam Chair. You know what I want to say is that this is not like our district's fault at all like or anybody's fault. They were writing about the problems with AI 30 years ago. They knew that this was going to get out of hand and no one did anything about it until now. We're trying to backtrack and work on ways to protect our students and make sure

212that students aren't substituting this for real learning. But I will tell you that the industry knew about this. I've been teaching about this for like 20 years at VCU. Um, and so it's really s, you know, I mean, it's frustrating that now it's dropped on us and we have to create these policies. >> Thank you. All right, moving right along to 4.09 receive for first rate contracts over 100K. Mr. Came, >> thank you, Madam Chair. We have several contracts for your review given the hour. Please let us know if you have any questions and we will bring them back in April for your approval. Thank you. Thank you so much. Moving right along to 5.01. Receive an update on care and safety plastic backpacks. Right. >> Good evening school board members and superintendent cameras. Um,

213given the hour, I will just give the administration's recommendation to continue to maintain our clear backpack policy. There was some questions that had been submitted proactively. We were able to answer those. Are there any additional questions that we can answer for you this evening, >> Mr. Farooq? Thank you, Madam Chair, and I I appreciate I did submit some questions ahead of time and I appreciate the answers and I'm just going to bring them up again just for the public. I believe I was not on the board when this board passed the clear backpack policy. My understanding as just a parent at the time was this was really an attempt at us and not just us but school systems everywhere dealing with the brutal and ugly tragedy of gun violence in America. And yet one of

214the major things that we end up dealing with is vapes. I just really have a problem with a policy that was designed to prevent one thing and now it mostly does another thing. So my question is and this is something we can go back and think about and I would ask that you and your staff think about if we are concerned about vapes and want to make sure we're catching them and reducing them and preventing them which I support. Is the clear backpacks the best way to do it? I'm not sure. But I do like, and I'll say this, I like that the clear backpacks make the morning screenings easier. I have personally benefited, even though I was a grumpy parent about it when it first happened, it has made my life so much easier

215because every morning I can tell if my kids have their lunch or have their folders. So, I want to acknowledge that there are so many positives that I did not anticipate. And that's my only question. Thank you, manager. >> Thank you for that feedback, Mr. Farooq. I will share that the policy and the actual vaping are two separate issues. I think one of the great things that we have learned as a part of doing entry and morning arrival is that we are able to decrease the amount of prohibited items that are coming in our building. And I thought it was important that we raise that um because it is working and we just wanted to be able to provide evidence of that. >> Thank you. Um, I'd just like to share I was actually on

216the board when um I I think I was the one who raised my hand about clear backpacks in general. Um, and I will say that I I I do believe that it's been very successful. Um and um and just reminding my colleagues that it wasn't just about um safeguarding our students against weapons, but it also gives a a very um it gives more um it gives CSA officers the ability to screen folks that are going into buildings more efficiently in a civil in a a school like River city where it takes I mean it feels like an hour uh almost for for students to get through um the the process of being checked. It does make things um more efficiently uh more efficient. My question however is around consistency. Um we have received feedback that

217certain schools um for whatever reason have not enforced it in cases where the plastic backpacks have broken. Um there was question around do we give loaners, do we not give loaners, like how are we addressing that specific piece? Unfortunately, Chair Fernandez, we don't know about those issues until you bring them to our attention or there's another parent that brings them to our attention. Um, as the board knows, the Ultimate Backpack has supported us over the last two years with providing 100% every student in Richmond City Public Schools with a clear backpack. Um, that is a very expensive endeavor, close to a million dollars. And so I am not certain if Co-Star and some of our other outside partners will be able to maintain that. I will say we have in the past um purchased the

218drawstring bags that could have that are um you know a loner for a day. Um but we did have some additional inventory over at the warehouse. Right now we have,00 extra bags. All of the secondary bags have been given out and uh there is a system in place. So if schools do need some particularly elementary schools, there are some bags available and all school leaders have been made aware of um the replacement. But of course we want to make sure that we are reserving that for only our families who have the greatest need and there is no way that they could absolutely replenish that backpack. The biggest question is, you know, if there is a child that comes into a school, they don't have the clear book bag. Um, that there's consistency in how it's

219being approached from school to school. Obviously, um you don't have eyes everywhere and we all wish we could be a fly on the wall, but if there's just at least consistent messaging about the expectation of what should take place um in instances where they need a loner or backup or they didn't bring it, I think that would just help um everybody to be on the same page. feedback well received from the information you shared not only on the clear backpacks but also we've put out some information about cell phones um which we'll talk about next month. >> Thank you, Miss Rizzie. >> Madam Chair, I and I really hope you know I'm I certainly haven't changed much. I still have some concerns about how this habituates our students to constant surveillance. And I think that

220as a culture we've become so depend well not dependent but you know you gradually you don't know that you lose your rights until they're gone right and I'm hoping that we have conversations with students about why we're doing this and also telling them that they have a right to privacy and that privacy is important and that you know as they grow up they need to make sure that they're self advocating to keep as much privacy as possible because you know there are arguments that once these kids grow up there's going to be very little that people won't be able to see or survey about us right and so I worry about that as a culture like how we're kind of habituating our children to get used to that kind of survey um that doesn't mean

221that it's not effective I see that there there has been impact um I just have those >> thank you for that feedback and I do want to say for the public. If there are any students who have personal care needs or other type of items, I do encourage that they talk to their school leaders um so that they can get the special permissions because we did create forms to be able to support those students who have special circumstances. >> Mr. Jafari, >> thanks again, Madam Chair. just wanted to follow up and I do come down on the side having worked in safety and security and from that background like that that it is important and it serves a purpose and there but there still are pros and cons but I think often times in the

222conversation what we lose out on is the deterrent factor got peer pressure we have those who might impress upon another child to take something in they would not otherwise take in and so again without belaboring it. We leave out often that that that factor of it wherein it is a deterrent to the items, not just necessarily uh violent items, but items that might just well be disruptive to the ongoing and and and cohesive discourse of the classroom. So, it just discourages that. Thank you. >> Thank you. I was going to ask something else, but I'll do it offline because it's going to open another can of worms. So, I'll follow up with you in the email. Thank you. Mr. Farooq said do it. It's so bad. Um, moving right along to 5.02. Receive an update

223on immigration policies and procedures. Good evening. Good evening, uh, school board superintendent cameras. Um, my name is Dr. Jennifer Blackw. I am the director of multilingual learner success. I am presenting tonight giving you all an update on our response um to immigration um here in Richmond public schools. Um the last time that we were here um we were able to provide um some updates um and since then we have um now retrained all of our school social workers. I'm also um accompanied here by my colleague, Director Angela Jones, and so she has been super instrumental in um helping me along um the work here. But we've retrained all of our school social workers and our support staff. We've also retrained all of our um school principles and LEAP teachers. I also want to note uh

224that our students have also participated in student led and organized walkouts um all throughout the city um which has been really inspirational um to watch. Um I have also gone on some listening sessions uh to Hugenot High School and Richmond High School for the Arts and so we learned from our students as well. um you know, a a couple of things. Um one that our resources were definitely not making it um to the community um that needed it the most. Um and so really leaning in on that and understanding that we have to do absolutely a better job with our communication structures, our language justice structures in the district as well and just making sure that we are absolutely filling those gaps. Um they also um gave us some really great uh recommendations and next

225steps um that you know I I will talk about um in a little bit. I do want to also highlight that through our welcome center um we were able to host our first um know your rights training and we'll make sure that we have more of those trainings um to come as well. And we are also going to continue our partnership with our cities um our city uh organizations and uh partners um as well. Okay. Um since then we have also strengthened our rapid response protocol. Um so we have properly um outlined the steps here. Um, as I mentioned, we retrained all of our school leaders and so they do have an action item to meet with their school-based rapid response teams and make sure they have their emergency planning sessions documented um by March

22610th. So, we are waiting for those uh plans to come back. We are also launching a new mandatory staff training. Um so as I mentioned uh myself along with uh director Angela Jones and Victoria Goches who is our embudsman for students and families uh we've collaborated uh to launch this training. It will be available on safe schools and all RPS staff members must complete the training within 60 days. Um we have here just um some of the student uh and family resources for everyone to view. And um Chair Fernandez, these are some of the frequently asked questions from our town hall. Yes, thank you. So um you know, apologize that we didn't get this out sooner, but these are the again most frequently asked questions from the um town hall. So those are um there

227for the public to view as well. Um some of our next steps we are definitely encouraging for our um students, teachers, community members to just all band together, join parent teacher organizations um at every school and to include our multilingual families. Um and so this is really the best way that we can support these initiatives. Um including looking at safe passage initiatives um again um looking at the transportation how we can better make sure that our students are getting to school safely and of course we're going to continue to collaborate with our Richmond City partners. Um, one thing that our students asked, um, really was to have a Spanish language video that goes out to our families. Um, so we started that and, um, we are, um, well on our way, um, for those next

228steps. So, um, we are looking forward to, uh, launching that soon as well. Take any questions. >> Thank you so much for your continued advocacy, Miss Rizzie. Thank you, Madam Chair. I have heard anecdotal reports that quite a few young people are staying home and not coming to school because of out of fear. Um do you have a you know idea of how that's going and whether that's getting better? Yes, I I do know that we have been tracking through our um attendance trackers when students are reporting um you know out of fear uh that they are staying home. However, um you know, I I do want to mention that it is very unclear because students are not necessarily always forthcoming with reasons as to why they are or are not coming to school as

229they fear that they're once they reveal their documentation status what exactly will happen. So even though we are tracking that data um I again fear that it's not going to be very accurate representation and um one other question slashc comments um a man approached me in the gym last week and asked if we were doing evidently he saw an advertisement for um or call for people to help donate supplies or carry supplies to multilingual families. Do you know anything about that? >> I didn't. And so I I Yeah, you don't. No, I'm sorry. All right. Thank you. >> I have heard of some nonprofits in the community that have signed up to do that type of work, but nothing within RPS itself. Yeah. this person. >> I will say that through our love market, we

230have heard that there are families that are fearful of um leaving their homes and so my department is offering delivery to families that are registering for the love market and that are in need of food assistance. >> Thank you, Mr. >> Thank you, Madam Chair. Uh thank you so much, Dr. Buck Blackwell. This is a really important work and I just wanted to publicly thank the MLS department for their partnership. Uh and um you know at at the example of of Miss Fernandez's uh u event um at the last fourth district um PTAC meeting at Lucille Brown earlier in February. Um MLS came and and delivered um an awesome u and very helpful presentation. And so I just wanted to say thank you for that. It was it was very uh wellreceived. Um and you

231have a partner in the fourth district anytime. U so just really appreciate the hard work. Appreciate it. Thank you. >> Miss Alton. >> Yes. I'll echo echo the thank you as well. Great work. One question. I'm not I know you all been doing a lot of training. U have you are the are the school uh security officers part of the training, our school resource officers part of the training. Have we reached out to the Richmond uh police department to coordinate and have a plan? you know, we may not hopefully we're not now or ever at the uh situation that our friends in Minneapolis got to, but god forbid we were to come to that moment. Uh, I would hope that we would have law enforcement there to back up our school employees enforcing our school

232policies and that we're reaching out to both our internal security options and our external partners uh might well be in advance might well be good planning. >> Absolutely. Um, thank you so much for that question. So, we have trained our care and safety um staff um a couple of times last January when um you know we launched all of our um initial trainings and then again during pre-ervice in August this year we definitely recognize the need for continuous training and so in the new mandatory training um we it's for all staff so our care and safety will um be required to view that training Um again um as well um in response to our partnership with the Richmond um Police Department um again early on last year um I was fortunate enough to you know

233sit in um you know the same room as Chief Edwards and so we were able to discuss um you know really what this was going to look like and really the involvement with our school resource officers um as well. So, I'm happy to say that we have a really beautiful partnership um with our school resource officers and the Richmond um police department. Um and um I think that um even they are trying to figure out exactly, you know, how to navigate, you know, all of this um in terms of um how um they interact or don't interact with ICE. Um and so um but we will continue that collaboration. Just by way of followup, I guess I'm envisioning a situation where people purporting to be agents of the federal immigration services come to a school

234asserting a right to enter. School personnel are trying to follow our policies are calling for our lawyers and our superintendent to advise them, but who helps keep the peace in the meanwhile until somebody gets there to examine whether they've got an adequate warrant, etc. And it just seems to me that the police are the people to keep the peace. And so between our resource officers and other resources within the police department, I would hope that that scenario is one you're playing out with Chief Edwards. >> Yes. and and I've had discussions with um some of our school resource officers as well and we've played out this situation and they would be outside of the building with our principles as all of this is happening for precisely that to maintain the pre the the peace. So

235as our our principles are calling our superintendent at least our school resource officers are there and they can also call in um for additional support as needed. >> Mr. Cameras. >> Thank you Madam Chair. I just want to echo what uh Dr. Blackwell said. We have extremely close, productive and positive relationship with RPD. They have been involved in the process and I think I can say without any hyperbole, not a single request I have made of Chief Edwards or his team has ever been denied in the interests of our students and their safety. And so um I have every confidence that they will continue to play that role. Um help us protect our students. Um and so I think it is just it bears repeating how grateful we are for their partnership and um how

236tightly they work with us with Angela Jones, Chief Parks and and the rest of the team. Um, I don't think a single day goes by that we are not in communication with them uh about the goings on in Richmond and and in our schools. >> Thank you, Mr. Jafari. >> Thanks, Madam Chair. Uh, I note the frequently asked questions and uh, additionally noted last week, I think it was, uh, Mr. Baroo shared a scenario and RPS council responded to it and I thought that interaction produced a very useful layout of information that I think would be quite useful and I was just wondering have we circled back to try to synthesize that information so that it can be used uh is something that we're looking at putting into training for our staff because I do

237I do really think that it was very useful the the conversation that was had about the information. Thank you, >> Mr. Faru. Could you uh remind everyone of the question that you it was a very good question that you raised. >> Sure. Thank you, Madam Chair. And this comes from me both as a parent who walks his kids to and from school. I live two blocks from the school and as a you know member of the community, I often attend school events. I visit schools often. And so my question specifically was if I as either in my capacity as a parent or in my capacity as a schoolboard member am walking to and from school. So I'm near the I may not be on school property but I'm near school property and I see somebody

238who won't identify themselves or is wearing a mask purports to be federal immigration but how do I know that? Right? They won't identify themselves won't show a warrant. who's actually gonna stop them from taking me or my child or someone else and their child? And that was my question was like, if can I ask RPD to come with me if I, you know, and if they're not showing a warrant, they're not identifying themselves, are they going to stop somebody from being detained? Are they going to stop someone from being grabbed? And if I see that somebody is being grabbed and they are being assaulted, then what are my legal obligations to report that to CPS or the police or whoever? And we got some really good answers. Um obviously all of us on school who

239work in schools are all mandated reporters. Um but I mean there are also like you know sadly there are confirmed reports where people don't identify themselves won't produce a warrant and will still like grab someone and in many cases violently. Um and so I I think those are like you have those are scenarios we have to explore with our partners in the police department. >> Thank you so much for all the work that you do. Your team is amazing. Thank you so much. >> Good evening again. We have about four more presentations and so I Okay, >> next up we have 5.0. >> Sorry. >> Receive an update on math curriculum. >> Sorry. All right. >> Um, so I've asked the team to be brief and leave time for your questions. So each team is

240going to come up and just take 3 to five minutes max um to explain um their presentation and then we'll take any questions. Good evening school board chair Fernandez, uh Superintendent Camas, and school board members. My name is Cassandra Bell. I am the director of curriculum and instruction and I'm joined by my colleague here, manager of math and science, Mrs. Linda. And so we are here before you this evening very briefly which is kind of hard for me um to talk about our uh math curriculum adoption. So oh is this the awesome Okay. So, in accordance with VDOE's newly adopted 2023 mathematics standards of learning, which was fully implemented last school year, all school divisions in the state of Virginia must adopt aligned curriculum um to the 2023 standards of learning. And so, RPS is

241doing just that and selecting materials directly from the Virginia mathematics textbooks and instructional materials approved list. This slide here just shows um how RPS, just like many other school divisions during the pandemic, saw a dip in mathematics performance, but how we're also on a um large incline. We have seen a 12% gain um since the pandemic, as you can see here. Uh and this slide speaks to um how RPS students are passing algebra 1 so at higher rates um from that of the prepandemic levels uh indicating that students are better prepared to pass the algebra 1 so I will just um state here that this data is not just um at one level this is inclusive of both our middle school and high school um data for algebra 1. So the uh curriculum that we

242have um selected from Virginia Department um of education's um approved list is that Eureka math Virginia edition. This um allows for continuity of our existing curriculum uh as uh our RPS is already have um already has excuse me Eureka Math Virginia edition in our blueprint. This slide just speaks to um the standards of learning um and the correlation between uh the Virginia edition of Eureka math curriculum. As you can see, the standards across grades K through 8 where um the standards uh in the curriculum align adequately where there's limited alignment and then um in some areas where standards are not addressed fully. um where standards are not fully addressed, uh RPS will ensure that resources are utilized to supplement Eureka Math where needed to fully address all of our standards. But I will also just

243state that again Eureka Math Virginia edition is on the approved list from VDOE um indicating that uh the curriculum does adequately cover the standards. Uh we just wanted to lift here that um by schoolboard motion in October of 2022, we established some task force um for English, math, and science. Uh we have been uh implementing those curriculum task forces uh since November of 2022 each academic school year. However, we've seen uh a bit of a decline in um attendance to those curriculum task force meetings last year. But because we saw some great impact from the three years of collaboration, we wanted to continue that work in this academic school year as the feedback that we're receiving from the curriculum task force members has been utilized to inform the curriculum adjustments that we've made year-over-year. Uh

244and we wanted to make sure that we uh still heard from all of our teachers and teacher leaders on a monthly basis through our instructional lead meetings. And so that has continued this year. We intend to use the feedback that we're receiving from the curriculum task force um members that are within our instructional lead meetings uh to inform the decisions that we're making um as we look at our curriculum review at the end of each um school year within the work that we do each summer. So this particular slide um just really just speaks on the structure of Eureka and it really just starts with just making sure that the coherence is there and solid. So we start with a module and then we go through topics and then individual lessons with this. It just

245makes sure that the structure is clean. It it's sequenced well. we always going through growth and students have the ability just to build over time and additionally that there are some very clear teacher clarity and planning. So now we're going to go just go through some of the components at K5 level. These are, you know, fluency, application, all of these are the exact same throughout. But it also allows the students to have some automaticity when they're going through their thinking, applying their knowledge, just building and most importantly being able to speak and have that mathematical discourse that we would like to see throughout. In six through eight, of course, it steps up a little bit because we're going to learn a little bit more. We want to make sure that our students are getting a

246deeper understanding so they are ready and prepared for algebra. So, we're going to add in some problem set, so Socratic um some Socratic lessons, exploratory lessons, and some modeling. Again, just another way to build upon what they received in elementary school, but also prepare them for high school. So, it's just that middle ground. The next following slides with K through, you know, state um is really just talking about the math blocks and how that the Eureka really lends itself well to just being a part of our math block without without disrupting what we already have. So within this um K2, it just speaks around like we have a core dedicated time for tier one instruction that is never going to change. But then we add in here's this concept development. Here's a way in which

247the students can explore and have those conversations. Here's exit tickets so that we can formatively assess doing every lesson. Every lesson ends with this exit ticket. And most importantly, we allow that time for that personalized learning. Therefore, our tier one instruction is strengthening and our intervention is really getting that flexibility that it need. All right. So, we um know that curriculum alone does not move the needle. Um that we need to build our teacher capacity as well. And we do that through professional learning. And so, professional learning does matter um for us here in RPS. And so for professional learning, we provide um training for our teachers at pre-ervice and then throughear training just in time um training through collaborative planning PLC's um and coaching support as well. And then finally um with this adoption

248uh we know that there is a financial investment uh and that is for both our teacher and student additions as well as um access to a digital suite that provides supports to our teachers and our students um and digital access as well. And we welcome any questions that you have >> Mr. Farooq Mr. Hedgeb. >> Thank you, Madam Chair. Uh, Mr. Cameras knows that I have been I am so excited about this because earlier this year when I was helping my son do his math homework, there were not one multiple questions that were logically incoherent, as in there was no right answer. Now, the answer sheet had a right answer, but it was not correct. Even my nine-year-old was like, "Dad, there's no right answer to these questions." So, that led me down the long

249rabbit hole of like, "Where do these materials come from, and what are we doing?" So I am so excited. Be beyond that preface. My question is the magic of the curriculum really is in the work with the teacher helping them really exercise their um expertise and their instincts with the kids they have in the classroom. So my question is what is it like because I feel like you have principles doing observations, you have principal directors, maybe you have assistant principles, people who perhaps when they were teachers they did not have such curriculum. What is that conversation like? How are we training our principles and assistant principles to teach something that maybe they didn't do when they were teachers? >> That's a great question. We have the wonderful opportunity monthly to um work with our principles

250during cluster meetings. Uh we work very closely with our principal directors in all four clusters and they have been so gracious as to um place an existing spot for curriculum instruction every month. And so we have an opportunity to connect with our principles both our returning principles and our new principles to really walk them through our curriculum materials. Um at the beginning of the year we uh show them how to access our materials and we uh go through each of the components for all of our units. Um I will say that we have uh moved we still uh implement Eureka as our uh primary curriculum but we have added in um several pieces to supplement the curriculum um which may have led to some of what you were speaking to um and that is largely

251because um our curriculum is the existing curriculum that we have had. So we do need to update it. We do need to make sure that it is in proper alignment with the new standards that were implemented last year. And so with this new curriculum adoption, although it will still um have the same um structures, it's still Eureka Math Virginia, uh it will be the updated version that aligns with our new standards. >> Thank you, Mr. Hitchbath. >> Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, Miss Bell. Thank you, Miss Headset. Um I um I recognize you all are very busy, right? In addition to the new math standards, you have science, you have social studies, you have English, you have all of these standards that you're implementing. And with that comes the uh required u mandates from

252the the the the state government on what we're supposed to spend. Um and so my first question to you all is um related to this is about uh the budget cuts that we are proposing, right? we're we we see some positions that are being cut in the uh in the academic office. Um how is that going to impact uh the hard work that you all need to to do? >> So, I'll take that one. Um it will be um a reallocation of some of the streams of work. Um it will be a heavy lift. I am not going to um say that it won't. Um but we will have to shift the work and make sure it happens because in the academic office you don't have an opportunity to say we're not going to do

253that anymore. So that is what we're looking at now how we will shift the work for the people who are no longer with us and it will be a heavy lift. Yes. >> Thank you Dr. Wag. U so then uh my my only other question is that a lot of uh feedback I'm getting from teachers is need for more PD um and need for more dedicated PLC time. Um and so I just um I want to make sure that that's and I appreciate very much that that was highlighted. Um and and want to emphasize that whenever we can do that is is is is really a good idea. And this perhaps is a bigger qu bigger comment too that you know when we're looking for uh makeup snow days like inservice days are really important

254and that's why they're scheduled. And so perhaps maybe when we when we talk about our snow days in the future uh that they not be on inservice days or maybe we somehow figure a way to have more inservice days um so that way our our teachers can be the most prepared right with Eureka. Um, so then that way our kiddos can do the best on on uh their test. So, thank you so much for all the work that you're doing now with a a tighter budget. So, thank you, >> Miss Ricard. I believe >> Thank you, Madam Chair. Um, just a quick question. when we're out in the community and community members ask us about the new math well I know it's not new but about the math curriculum and what what is the what

255excites you about this curriculum compared to other curriculums what do you feel is the real selling point of how this is going to really help our students be the best math students they can be answered then >> well I believe that we're all math people, but I love math exceptionally. Uh, and so, um, although I did teach history as well, um, I'm really excited about this curriculum because one, it's not a, um, move away from what we've been implementing. It still follows the same models and structures and strategies that our students have grown to know and our teachers have grown to understand. Um, and so I'm really excited about the ability to just stay the course and to ensure that we're pouring into our teachers so that they can ultimately pour into our uh, students.

256I think for Eureka, one thing that I love and I'm going to take the administrator's kind of lens too is that the math is um our teachers at the pilot year kind of struggled a little bit because it teaches math differently than the way we learned math. Now kids are engaged in the concepts the larger concepts as how does math come alive as opposed to just 3 * 4 is is 12 you know the basic math and just the you know the composition decomposition and all of the ways in which students actually learn math. love to show you. Come in and take a look at how we learned with Eureka our manipulatives. Um because we have manipulatives um from the program from before is why we did not purchase them. That's a blessing that we

257did not have to purchase them and that's why there was not an extra million dollars on the cost. So there are a lot of math manipulatives that our kids use every day because we still go into the concrete represent representative representation and abstract and we make sure that math comes alive for the kids. I would love love love to come and show you if you have any interest in um learning a little bit more about Eureka because I think you have to see it in action to really understand some of the concepts and how the principles then support which is why Cassandra and um Linda and their teams are always at our principles meeting because it's hard to support what you don't understand because as I said it's a little different than the way we

258learned math but kids can engage and that's why we've seen the acceleration with algebra because of Eureka and what it brings. >> Thank you, Madam Chair. The former math teacher and me couldn't let this um I would to yes to to answer your question, Miss M. regard. I would also say what I love about Eureka is I think it teaches kids to think like mathematicians in that um you really do develop if if implemented well and consistently and with the right support um how to think differently about humorous talk about literacy a lot that um a lot of people don't consider themselves math people or did not have positive experiences in math math class because they were forced to just memorize an algorithm. You do this and then you do this and then you do

259this. Why? I have no idea, but the teacher told me to. And what Eureka does is develop a deep sense of um the why. And that starts really, really young. So uh yes, everybody needs to learn their multiplication tables, but we want kids to understand that 3 * 5 is three groups of five or five groups of three and that multiplication is really just repeated addition. And conversely, division is just repeated subtraction. And once you kind of keep that in your mind, it kind of opens up a whole bunch of other things and things begin to make sense in their connection. and not show off it. I love look, you know, I love I I'm I'm I'm a um converted literacy fiend, but deep in my heart, I'm a math. Well, and just real quick

260to support what you were saying, our youngest has just started multiplication in second grade and was asking her brothers to give her multiplication facts. And so they did three times three and she was counting out her three groups. >> Absolutely. >> Miss Rizzy, >> yes, I have a comment and a question. I do remember the whole big curriculum fight. know I was here. Um it was very ugly and um I it seems like we've landed in a good place. Um and so I'm I'm guessing you are using the task force because there was a concern that Eureka wasn't aligned to the standards. So I'm guessing you're using the task force or you started using the task force to help with that, right? to help teachers um align the curriculum and make sure that our students

261also understood what was being asked of them on the SOS. >> Absolutely. So, we um have worked with the task force for three consecutive years. Um and I will uh admit that over it took a little bit of time uh for us to get on the same page, but uh we learned quite a bit from talking with teachers. um they are the practitioners in the classroom every day. Uh and just hearing from them and their personal accounts was um really compelling. And so based on the feedback that we've received over the years from the curriculum task force um we were able to make appropriate adjustments uh and to support them in the work that they were doing. And so that really did inform um some of the adjustments we make uh each summer. But again,

262still holding true to the structure um of uh and the conceptual understanding, procedural fluency, and all of those pieces that are built in to the Eureka math curriculum. >> Um and you know, the statement I wanted to make is that honestly, I mean, um J Mr. Hammer says he's a literacy convert, but um actually there's evidence that you pull on the same cognitive skills when you're doing language and literacy as you do when you're you know performing math or or or um solving math problems. So um yeah, they they go together and they feed each other and actually the better you are at math, I think the better can be at literacy and critical thinking. So they all connect. Absolutely agree. Thank you. >> Uh I have a couple of questions. Thank you so much

263for the presentation. Um I can ask them all at the same time or ask them one by one. Which would you prefer? >> All of them. Okay. My first question um on page 17 it talks about the professional learning um that is going to cost us $70,000. How will that be allocated exactly? My second question is um someone mentioned that the transition will be a heavy lift. I wanted to get a better understanding of why that is. Um third um how does the how does the the new curriculum align with the accountability standards? Um my question is more so like around it was a presentation that was done a while back and in the math category for um where it says advanced the proficiency level is very very low um particularly in in middle schools

264um and some elementary schools as well. So I'm just curious to see how this will help us get on track with that. And then um someone mentioned that the task force has not been as active this year. Is is did I hear that right? Um and I was just wondering why. >> Um so I'll start with the first question which was around professional learning at $70,000. And so that professional learning price um captures all of our PL from the uh initial launch which will be in pre-ervice in August for our um new teachers and for our returning teachers. Um that will also encompass training for our leaders um with a strong start for Eureka. Uh and then it will also encompass training for our math coaches who are um our direct support in the buildings

265and they are kind of the arm of uh the division uh specialist team >> coming in to do the training or are we using someone and just giving them a stipen? I'm just curious. >> So it will be a combination. So we will have some in-person training from Eureka directly and we will also have some virtual training as well. um it's a little bit easier for us to do virtual training um throughout the course of the school year. Certainly um considering uh the limited time that our elementary teachers have in terms of their collaborative planning spaces. Um but with our math coaches, we meet with them twice a month. So we'll have some opportunities for some in-person learning. We know that that's the best professional learning we can provide. Um there will also be training

266for my team of uh math specialists who will then um uh engage in kind of train the trainer type um training throughout the course of the year. So it'll be a combination of that along with um some uh asynchronous training and on demand training that will be accessible to our teachers and our leaders um should they need that support as well. Uh in addition to the digital suite that has some on demand videos to support teachers. So that is kind of the comprehensive plan. It'll be a three-pronged approach to professional learning so that it's not just um uh at the beginning of the year but throughout the year and just in time as um teachers and leaders need that professional learning support. >> So the 78,000 is for the trainer itself or the system or

267>> it's for the trainer and for the training materials. >> Thank you. >> All of that all inclusive. Um the second oh second question around task force um or maybe that was later on. Uh but maybe that was the fourth question. Um okay uh the task force um what I indicated was that not that our um participation has dwindled this year. We changed the structure so that we could have more uh comprehensive um feedback across all of our schools. So we have instructional leads at every building um for each content area. And so um shifting to that model after we finished the three years of consecutive curriculum task force meetings um we thought that that would be our best approach to ensure that we got broader uh feedback across all of our schools. Um but

268we did notice that the first year of implementation in 2022 we had a lot of um participation 15 members in each um curriculum task force. Uh and then some of the attendance started to dwindle as we got further along in the process. So by the end of our task force meetings last spring. Um we had maybe five or six folks that were showing up uh consistently. Um so we decided to make that shift so that we could continue the great work um that we were doing with our curriculum task force members but have broader um uh exposure so that the information that we are providing on a monthly basis is then taken back by those instructional leads and disseminated to their um their uh colleagues in their uh respective buildings. >> You were asking about

269the heavy lift um how why would it be a heavy lift? It is just continuing the training process with new teachers, novice teachers, long-term subs, um all of our teachers. Though we're continuing with Eureka, it is still a process in training them to fully use Eureka the way that it needs to be for um maximum um um maximum clarity and to understand um to make sure the kids are getting everything they need. And then the last question around the accountability standards, how this aligns to ensure that we are looking um at things like the that goes back to SL >> if I may. I think I think you were speaking to uh scoring in the advanced category. >> Yes. Yes. And so what I would argue is it's that very um habits of mind, mathematical

270habits of mind that I was talking about earlier that are going to enable kids to get across the threshold into the advanced category. I think there is a ceiling on what you can achieve by just memorizing algorithms. And so if uh used with integrity and consistency um then I do think that that is the pathway to getting more kids into the advanced. >> Absolutely. This might be a question for another day. So I'm okay if that's the case. But as I think about this approach, right? So, so let me ask this question first. How do we decide who is advanced? Is it just the autonomy of the teacher of the staff? >> It's the test. So >> the test so assessment they score on four different levels and advanced is one of those levels. And

271so it depends on the cut score, how many questions the the student re, you know, answers correctly. So that's how you become advanced. >> I would admonish us to take another look at that because those that we're saying should be advanced and the amount that are failing is a very high percentage. And I can show you the reporting that I'm looking at. So just something to really take a deeper dive into. Thank you all so much. All right, moving right along to 5.04. Receive an update on student fees. Good evening, school board chair Fernandez, members of this Richmond public school board, and superintendent cameras. Um, I'm Christy Joe Adams, the coordinator for arts education. I'm Stephanie Ramsey, coordinator of athletics. Got to be jumping a little bit back and forth and I can run off

272at the mouse, so I'm going to stick really closely to my statement. Um, I'm here today to give you um an overview of the fine arts, performing and visual arts, district funding, programming, and the school supported costs. I have this way. Richmond public schools provides comprehensive district-f funded fine arts programming in the areas of visual and performing arts designed to remove financial barriers for our students and to ensure that all students have access to highquality creative experiences. Students do not pay to participate in music, dance, uh theater, or visual arts programming in Richmond public schools. Uh we assume the cost for essential needs including marching band uniforms, equipment, and competition and performance fees. The district focuses on all city ensembles and specific grade level partnerships to build skills from elementary all the way through high

273school. RPS has many fine arts partnerships working with students at every level in every school. Uh two that are enjoyed by many students uh in our elementary schools that you may be familiar with like minds in motion and dancing classrooms for our fourth and fifth grade students. Um they really enjoy it. Um all city ensembles uh um include we do a lot with all city to um to pull lots of students from across the district. Um we have a band, orchestra, choir, harp, guitar, jazz band and marching band. And we also are piloting our first theater all city program. Um al um excuse me in the area of visual arts that was performing arts. In the area of visual arts, RPS emphasizes authentic experiences by moving students work into professional spaces. We actually um have

274a professional space where we exhibit student art at artworks and um we have a nonprofit organization that comes in to adjudicate their work so that they can get used to how that works um you know in the scheme of things for visual art um where students they they received a local um ribbon for uh certain scoring and that that sort of thing. It's the James River Art League that comes and supports us with that. We showcase students on our regular annual exhibitions and RPS fine arts festival that we're really excited about and a massive divisionwide um that's the event that we have over a thousand pieces of art and we have over 300 students performing um in every content area. So it's a lot of fun and we have m their um musical performances as

275well. Um every elementary school in the city will be represented at that and every middle school and every high school will be represented in that festival. Uh these investments are designed to standardize highquality instruction, provide equitable access, um provide vertical alignment as students um age up and and go through the programming um and foster community partnerships that give students a professional platform for their voices. Uh the fine arts are essential part of our scholars educational journey uh because they cultivate creativity, discipline, collaboration and confidence while empowering students not to just consume the world but to interrupt, excuse me, interpret it, shape it and lead within it. That's about the con arts. Okay. Good evening. Um so what I want to say is that athletics is the last class of the day. Um I think I

276think a lot of people will miss that out. It's it's not just something that's extracurricular. It's very important to the the vital um success and experience of our students. So key programs are we have um 31 sports on the high school level, 14 on the middle school level. When we started middle school um in 2012, we only had three. So it's quite a bit of growth over the years. Um so there's lots of impact right now. Um we still have two students, excuse me, two schools. John Marshall and Thomas Jefferson are playing in the state tournament for basketball. We have students that have come through that are um on our speech teams that are now in the state. Um so we're we're moving forward with a lot of success. Um so there's tons of ways

277to to build up the the alignment from elementary to high school. We're trying to do that and the career pathways with like our broadcasters. Um special events that we have, we have the scholar athlete of the year program which is great. We culminate that um at the new CarMax um park that's going to happen happen so we can um celebrate them and all the things they're doing. Um we increase our community visibility. We celebrate all of our students which um makes them want to do better and looking forward to things. Um we have we just finished our districtwide swim championships. That was great with swim RBA. Um all city cheers this coming weekend. So if you want to get to see all of our cheerleaders in middle and high school, come to Hugenot High School.

278um we'll be doing that. Um and so various little uh things we we've tried to do as city championships to bring us together um as a school system. Um and then our newer sports obviously were swimming and girls flag football and those have been uh great partnerships with uh swim RVA and um the Washington Commanders. Um so most of your investments that go through are going to be transportation, uh school stipens, uh coaches stipens, um officials and game workers are a larger one. So that's some of the things that we we listed in this that you're going to see um for what we have. And then another big one is athletic training services. So we have five uh athletic trainers on the high school level and one on the middle school level. And then the

279additional medical supplies we have to use for um our athletes. Um and then anything's repair maintenance that we have. Same thing for a middle school. Um it's just the coaching um transportation, athletic services, um replacement, repair. Now the schools do um fund raise or pay for their own uniforms, but that doesn't come out of our budget. And then uh the last slide is just some of the athletic partnerships that we've developed over the years. Like I've mentioned, Swim RVA, the Washington Commanders. Um CarMax last year helped us with buying all the swimsuits so we could start swimming. And then this year, if you haven't heard me say it, I know Miss Reard has heard me say it multiple times, but we're starting elementary Baseball as an initiative with Metropolitan Junior Baseball League, and that's $28,000

280from Major League Baseball to start that. Any questions? M Christy Joe, thanks for being here. I just wanted to highlight that you are the person, if any of you are going to that network, that's who you'll get the art from. has it. It's already done, you know. So, that's who you'll find. Um, did you give us the festival date? >> Gladly. It's Saturday, March 14th at Hugenot High School from 10:00 a.m. to 400 p.m. >> I noticed somewhere I ran across it. There's a calendar now with it. >> Um, sure. It's been called our schools. Um, what we did is we partnered with the company that does all of our high school um schedules. So, we added our middle school. So you can find it as a one-stop shop. It's now going to be called

281Arbiter. Um but we'll make sure that you have the link again. Patrice has it. She's had it. Um but we have a separate one for high school. I'll send it to you again. Um so that we can share it with you all. But yes, it's one place. >> Thank you so much for this presentation. um the request was more so around um the fee requirements for students in specific areas. So like for example, there was a young lady who came and there was some type of trip that she had to she was chosen for and she had to raise money for a red coat or jacket of some sort. So, we're having situations where there are some students who um for whatever reason may be uh needing to find additional funding to be a part

282of those programs and and just really wanted to understand what that looked like across the division. And so, which is why we waited for a very long time to bring this up to give you all an opportunity to really do a deep dive. And so, while I appreciate the information, it it doesn't really um speak to the heart of the original request. Do >> you know, was that athletics or something else? >> I don't think it was athletics. I believe it was um I don't I don't I'll have to go back and look, but it's it's just one example of what we're hearing that it some for some um students it's it just may be a barrier. So, we want to understand what those asks look like so that we can find a way to

283support them so that that doesn't become um something that uh is a barrier from them participating or being able to be a part of the program or being able to travel. and have the red coat, etc., etc., etc., we do ask that we do have no student fees. We have a a a no paytoplay policy or uh or participate um for that. So, you may have a coach who wanted something special for something they were doing. Um we do try to provide some opportunities for fundraising if they want additional things beyond the needs that we have. Anything that >> let us know, you know, once you find out who that is, we could address. I was looking for you guys to tell us. Yeah. So, cuz what what happens is so like we have some

284schools that are amazing. They have PTAs and they're able they're on it, right? But not all schools have PTA. So, what do we do in those scenarios where there's a child or children that want to participate and don't adequately have a resource in raising funds? How do we ensure that they still get the same type of experience as those that don't have, for example, a PTA? So, those were that was more so of the information I was wanting to have you look into and you can certainly we can revisit it later, but it doesn't really speak to the heart of what the request was. Miss Ricard, >> thank you, Madam Chair. I think that was um like a career and technical service organization like FCCLA or DECA. And so, I guess that that is a

285potential question. When schools have individual clubs, are there fees that then become associated because of those individual clubs? >> Thank you, Madam Chair. Um why don't we take a second stab at this um given u the additional clarity about the ask um and I think the team uh we can spend some time digging into on a school by school basis uh all of these other clubs but also for example there are things like I know every year robotics at TJ and they go to competitions and and they need a bus and it's not part of our normal transportation. So I I believe that's what the chair is referring to like all these other things competitions and such that are not the kind of tier one of activities but sometimes go beyond that. And so, um,

286I think we can do some work assessing what's going on in every school, what, uh, are some of those costs, and then figure out more broadly, um, how do we level the playing field because there are some kids who who don't have access to those things. >> Thank you. Thank you so much, Sh. This doesn't take away from the work that you all did with creating this. And I just want to give a huge shout out to uh, Dr. Ramsay for just all of what you do. you are um everywhere and all the time and I don't know how you do it. Um but just thank you so much for your passion around athletics. You do an amazing job, Miss Rizzy. Uh yes. Uh now it's getting late and I'm trying to remember what I

287was going to say. Oh um Mr. Cameras, I was just going to ask once you get all of that, could it come in the form of a board memo? >> I mean, I just, you know, I want us to stick more with like data and student achievement. So, unless there's a real need to have a presentation on that, I mean, maybe that will the the memo could answer our questions. I'm just asking just >> I I serve at the pleasure of the board and I know uh this is a an area of a particular interest to the chair and might want a discussion about it. So we will certainly uh discuss that agenda sitting where to place it. >> Yes. And it's important to note that this is something that was an original request early

288last year that we've waited, you know, to to receive the information. But I do think it's important for transparency's sake and for the community because there I I guarantee you there are children who are not participating because the fees are a barrier. And so we should uh we we have an obligation to ensure that they understand if there are resources or other ways for them to be able to participate what they are and empower them so that they can be great in whatever they direction that they choose. And so we thank you for your time and look forward to hearing from you at a later date. Um Miss Holton had her hand raised. Okay, thank you. Okay, moving right along to 5.05. receive an update on subgroup academic performance. >> And if I may, Madam

289Chair, given the hour, um these are of course weighty topics we have coming up, but please team, let's focus on the highlights and see if there's any questions for further discussion. Thank you. >> Absolutely. So, good evening again. So um we have the principal directors here who are just going to give a 60-second kind of highlight um from what they have um in the presentation. And then we have our principles here, one from each co cluster. We have Nick Lores who's from Loris Harrison Jones. We have um Kesha Ryan who is from Francis. We have Annette Dabney who is from cluster three middle schools from MLK um from high Monica had to leave but Monica Murray was here and from preschool we have Lisa Hicks. So, our principles are here just um for you all

290to ask questions specifically about what they do in their school when it comes to subgroups because it's one thing for us to talk to you about all of the things going in schools, but they are the people actually implementing it every day. So, the principal directors are going to quickly highlight um a couple of areas and then you can ask anyone any questions. Thank you. >> Good evening. Um, Superintendent Cam, Madame Chair and board, my name is Shayla Holman and I am the principal director for preschool and I also um supervise the Virginia preschool initiative. And so I just wanted first of all I know this is a subgroup uh presentation so I'm thankful to be on here because preschool is real school. Um but and we provide the foundation. And so what we do

291we understand that our three and four year olds are just getting into school. So we look at this as a holistic approach. And so when you look at the slide you will see we do some of the same things as our elementary, middle school and high school peers. Um we look at data, we have data sources for diagnostic tools and our um our informal data. We have collaborative planning um targeted small group. We do all of those things. We also have an initiative this year so that we are even better aligned to um literacy and K2. And so we are calling that preschool pathways. We are building it. We would love for you to come and see. Our children are building words. They are sounding out. Um and so we also have our sense of

292belonging uh which the district is looking at which is our jam because we are we have to do class and that's a big portion of what um class is about. It is a um national tool to evaluate preschool and so uh teacher interactions is key in fostering student um student engagement. So ultimately we do all of these things and it's really targeted our our principles, our deans, teachers. We have professional development for all. We meet with our principles and deans on a monthly basis. We do walkthroughs and we we figure out what trends so that we know what supports to provide preschool holistically so that we're looking at all children in their supports, but also so that we can dig into every child's name with small group instruction. Good evening, Chair Fernandez, Superintendent Cameras, members

293of the board. I am Lucy Michelle Jones, one of two elementary principal directors. And tonight, I just want to briefly highlight some strategies as it relates to the academic performance of our subgroups. To inform instructional decisions, we remind our school leaders that data should remain at the forefront of every instructional conversation. In making those datainformed decisions, we follow the idea or the concept of going granular. And that's where our administrators and our teachers move beyond conversations about broad grade level data and class percentages. Our schools are intentionally being granular, meaning they are analyzing performance data student by student. By analyzing the data reports and student work samples, our teachers are able to pinpoint exact gaps and misconceptions. And this allows our intervention to be precisely targeted rather than generalized, ensuring that we are treating the

294root cause and not just the symptom. We have leaders like principal aresh. She was here with us tonight representing that work in action. He and other elementary leaders facilitate consistent data meetings where teachers define exact remediation plans for targeted students. In addition to our weekly or our by bi-weekly data meetings, our teachers are also utilizing our daily exit tickets to drive real time adjustments where our teachers address misconceptions immediately rather than waiting for the end of a long pacing cycle. Another instructional response to the granular data analysis is the strategy of teachers identifying students who benefit from being double serviced. Some of our teachers call it being double dipped. Meaning our students receive tier one instruction from their grade level teachers. And then they are paired with a trained instructional assistant, an interventionist, a peer

295teacher, a coach, a tutor, and sometimes even our administrators push in for strategic push-in or pull out support. In elementary school, it is truly all hands- on deck. We recognize that our subgroup data is growing, but we still have significant work ahead of us, and we will continue to hold our administrators to rigorous, actionable standards to close these gaps. Ultimately, our focus is simple. Elementary PDs like to say, we don't do complicated. So, our focus is simple. the right students receive the right support from the right person at the right time. And we will continue to commit ourselves to this level of work because as Dr. Wigan stated earlier, behind every data point is a child that's counting on us to provide the right support that they need to thrive. Good evening uh chairperson Fernandez

296um school board members um my name is Indira Lipkcom. I am the second half of my partner. So, I just want to give a brief um overview of our multilingual learners. In addition to what PD Joan shared with you, we really pay attention to our WEDA scores. Um those results help us to determine next steps for our students and really drilling down to what does it look like in the classrooms in terms of instruction. So with that assessment, we're looking at they're listening, they're speaking, they're writing, they're reading um and coaching teachers around the best strategies in order to work with these students. So, um, I just wanted to share just a a few highlights of as PDs when we're walking with our principles, we are drilling down to what exactly is happening with our

297students where they're positioned in the classrooms. are they given a ample opportunities to really have speaking and interactions with their peers, with their teachers, and across um the the school building. So, I appreciate the opportunity to have this conversation with you this evening. Thank you. Good evening everyone. Middle school doesn't do quick. All right. Um, good evening, Chair Fernandez, um, schoolboard members, and of course, superintendent cameras. I am Miss Waller. I am the principal director for cluster three. Go middle schools. So, yes, in the back. Um, so one of the things we do in middle school, first of all, is our instructional day is broken up into 90-minute blocks where our scholars take have math and English. Some of you have been in there every single day. So they have um this 90-minute block that's

298broken up into 60 minutes and 30 minutes. That 60-minute is the core instructional time where they're getting standard focused in core instruction. And then the 30 minutes every single day is personalized learning time. That means this um the teachers, the coaches, the principles, the whole team is coming together creating small group instruction and personalized plans for these scholars. Some of that includes teacher le groups, some of that includes tutor groups. Um and then some of that is personalized by particular programs like Lexia, I excel, some of the things you probably have already heard of. Additionally, one of the things we do to build capacity with our teachers is we ensure that they have um the actual information to be able to do that. So one of the things that we've done in partnership with curriculum

299and instruction is ensure that our teachers because we have a lot of new and novice teachers in cluster 3. We come together during the school day and we do half-day sessions so that the teachers feel a lot more comfortable with the programs and the actual um implementation of doing small groupoup instruction. Right? We want to make sure that they're comfortable. We want to make sure that they know what to do when they're looking at this data. Trying to be quick. The other thing that we've done is made sure that they understand the new accountability system. That is huge. It is every kid every day. So when we say that, we really do mean it. Um, one of the things that we also do is ensure that our counselors and our teachers are part of the

300process. So we have implemented the fact that there is no significant gains without significant relationship. So teachers and counselors work with students, especially those ones that we know are in um critical need of support and they do academic counseling and goal setting. It's wonderful to see. I invite each and every one of you to go to your middle school and not only yours but neighbors because I want you to see our middle school scholars in action. They are truly wonderful um individuals. Lastly, on the district level, um we do have championship habits and technical assistance. I can give you more about that. I won't bore you to death with what that um looks like, but what I can tell you is principles have to come to the table with their teams and they have to

301report out on their data. They are held responsible for what is on that screen because every child again counts. But what's different about that is it is not a I got you, it's a I got you. So what happens is is exceptional ed, school improvement, meals, engagement, talent and even cultural climate comes to the table and they basically work and say what do you need to be successful. So that is the difference um that middle schools and really Richmond public schools is bringing to ensure that we are closing the achievement gap for every single scholar that walks into our buildings. Have a good day. >> Not gonna have Dr. bail to get up again because he kind of already presented some of the things that he's doing in high school. So, we are open for

302any questions. I have the whole team here, all the principal directors, all the principles. Any questions you have, Miss Rizzy? >> Um, thank you, Madam Chair. So, yes, this is a great presentation. I really hate that you are rushed. This is a big chunk of student achievement that I'm interested in um exploring. Um I I I appreciate all of you staying this late. Nick, you look tired. I'm so sorry. Um but um yeah, I mean as long as as much as you all can keep us informed, this was great. As as much as you all could keep us informed of this, the better. Um, and then just maybe periodic data updates like showing perhaps that the gaps are closing because at some schools the gaps are quite large and um I know you're doing everything

303that you can do. Um, but you know I I certainly would and I think everyone would love to see those gaps become smaller. But thank you all. >> Mr. Farooq, Miss Holton. >> Thank you, Madam Chair. I'm curious the feedback you're getting because we we do have a lot of new teachers. Sadly, teaching has gotten harder and harder. So, we're grateful for the people that are still with us and new people who come in. What is the feedback you're getting from the new teachers sort of I don't know if they're around long enough, but like as they go through this process through one year and then come back for the next year, is it helping retain them or is it sort of overwhelming? What's the feedback? >> Um, I'm going to let one of the

304principles answer. >> My mom beat me. >> Hi, Miss Dab Middle School. So, initially when teachers um come to RPS the first year, it may seem a bit overwhelming, but because of all the things the district puts in place to support them, the second year is less overwhelming. And the biggest thing we tell the teachers is to start with building positive relationships. Um because if you don't have a positive relationship with students, they're not trying to hear anything you're teaching them. So that's um one of the main priorities at MLK building positive relationships through different programs, different support systems. So the second year, majority of teachers, they come back and they feel like a little relief because now they have some tools in that tool box that they can implement. >> Good evening. Uh Nicholas

305Les, principal Harrison Jones Elementary School. Um echo much of what Principal Davney said. It's about relationships. Um kids don't care what you know. They care. They care to know how much you love and and and want to learn about them. They want that relationship and uh and so what we really focus on is building those relationships, but then figuring out uh as principal director Joan said um where they are and how they're progressing through the year. So our teachers track at the beginning of the year students that take for example the vowels assessment and they track how those students perform. Students are identified as high risk. When we reassess at Val's midyear, which we just did, we looked to see how many of those original 42 kids that were assessed, what was their progress? How

306many are now uh continue to be identified as high-risisk? How many new student students came in that weren't assessed by us at the vowels at the beginning of the year, but were at the middle of the year, and then where do they lie? So, we can start that process with them. What we've seen at Lois Harrison Jones and we're very proud of is that when kids are with us and they stay with us a long time, as one would imagine at any school, we see progress and we see continued uh incremental and consistent progress. We're very proud of that. >> Miss Holton, >> thank you. Uh Dr. Wings. I just wanted to thank you and your principal directors and now your principles as well for sticking it out here with us a long evening. As

307uh Miss Rizzie said, this is some of the most important work we're doing in you all's presentations even though hasty. We we did have the opportunity to see your presentations ahead of time and you're you're doing such great work and it's just great to hear about it. And I'll thank Miss Dabney also for hosting me uh for my first visit in my new role to Martin Luther King the other day. It was a great visit. >> Miss Rzzy, you madam chair. I I also want to address something that's a bit of an elephant in the room in terms of um cultural I guess competency and our teachers. um our teach teaching force over the years have become has become less and less diverse and um I noticed that it's very clear. Um I wonder what

308you all are doing to make sure that cultural sensitivity is a part of the training that our teachers receive. I mean to be honest with you there are great cultural differences. Um, you know, and I love my culture and how it's different and I I can respect others, but I think that teachers need to be aware of multiple cultures. And so that's what I sometimes I notice that in schools is that, you know, there's this cultural divide that maybe people aren't intentionally working to close. >> So that is an ongoing process. Um, I'm not going to tell you that we have figured it all out and it's perfection, but we are continuing to look at that from SLA, our summer leadership academy. Um, every year we do something toward addressing cultural competency. One of the

309pieces that I mentioned last presentation but I didn't put in this one is that our academic directors are reading Zaretta Hammond's book um because we want to continue the process on cultural competency um because it's really courageous conversations we have to have um and really unpack who we are and what our perceptions of other people are other cultures and so it's a process that we are continuing to to improve but we're not there as of yet. So, um it is an ongoing process. Um I also wanted to add that we will be having a presentation on 4.5 now um which will be a new initiative to help acculturate many of our new teachers to the history of Richmond and so we're working close collaboration with them just so it can be also um region specific

310as well. >> Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Um, colleagues, I know that several of you have requested the 4x4 and I know that you want to have a robust discussion. The question on the table is, would you like for us to defer it? Any concerns with that? Okay, then we will defer it to Miss Ricard. I I I would love to defer. My only question is are there is there anyone who has specifically shown up for this meeting that hasn't already presented or >> that was just planning to do the 4x4. >> So the the 4x4 presenters were um Dr. Bell and Director Bell. Um, and so we can um postpone it if you rather have questions or if there are other things you'd like us to add to the presentation, questions

311you may have, please give us those as well so that you can have um that information. >> All right. Thank you so much. Since we don't have a close session tonight, um our meeting is adjourned.