RPS School Board Work Session - February 2, 2026

001Good evening everyone. We would like to call the work session uh schoolboard meeting for Monday, February 2nd, 2026 and to order. Madame clerk, Mr. Pival >> here, >> Miss Ricard here, >> Mr. Farooq >> here. >> Mr. Hedgepath >> here. >> Miss Rizzy >> here. M. Berg >> here. >> Mr. Jafari >> here. >> Mr. Fernandez here. We have a quorum. Thank you. And now we will have our pledge of allegiance and a moment of silence by Mr. Fu. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. And now we'll have our translation services announcement. Good evening everyone. On behalf of the language justice team, we welcome you. If you need interpretation from

002English to Spanish, please come see me. I will be at the table in the back with interpreters. We have interpretation headsets for anyone who needs one. Interpretation in Spanish is also available for those watching this meeting through Zoom. I would like to remind everyone to please speak at a normal pace and keep your face no more than a couple of inches from the microphones so that our interpreters can hear you clearly. I will now make the same announcement in Spanish. Thank you. And before we adopt the agenda, Mr. Pival will share some amendments. >> Thank you, Madam Chair. I move to amend the agenda of the February 2nd Richmond School Board meeting as follows. Add item 6.07, receive for review multi-year school support plans. Add item 6.08, receive an update on immigration and customs enforcement

003protocols. Add item 7.02, receive an update on school year 2025 2026 calendar changes. and adopt the agenda as amended. >> So moved. It's been moved by Mr. Perl and seconded by Miss Ricard. Any concerns, feedback, questions before we vote? Miss Richardson. Mr. Perl, >> yes. >> Miss Ricard, >> yes. >> Mr. Farooq, >> yes. >> Mr. Hedgepath, >> yes. >> Miss Rizzy, >> yes. >> Miss Burke, >> yes. >> Mr. Jafari, >> yes. >> Miss Fernandez, >> yes. Motion passes. >> Thank you. And at this time, we have a motion for close session by Mr. Ricard. >> Madam Chair, I move that the school board of the city of Richmond convening convene in close session one to discuss and consider the appointment of a public officer as authorized by VA code 2.2-3711A1 and to discuss

004the disposition or surplus of certain schoolboard properties for discussion. an open meeting would adversely affect the bargaining position or negotiating strategy of the school board and to discuss with legal counsel regarding the same issues as authorized by VA code 2.2-3711A3 and A8. >> Second. >> It's been moved by Miss Ricard and seconded by Miss Berg. Madame Clerk. >> Mr. PLAL. >> Yes. >> Miss Ricard. >> Yes. >> Mr. Farooq. >> Yes. >> Mr. Hedgep. >> Yes. >> Miss Rizzy. >> Yes. Miss Berg, >> yes. >> Mr. Jabari, >> yes. >> Mr. Fernandez, >> yes. Motion passes. Thank you. Will nine convening to close Good evening everyone. Uh, I believe that Miss Rizzy has the motion to open us back up. >> I move that the Richmond School Board direct its clerk to call for a

005roll call vote of the board's members. that to the best of each member's knowledge, one only public business matters lawfully exempted from open meeting requirements by Virginia law were discussed in the closed meeting to which this certification resolution applies. And two, only such public business matters as were identified in the motion convening the closed meeting were heard, discussed, or considered by the Richmond School Board. >> Second. >> It's been moved by Miss Rizzy and seconded by Mr. Hedgepath. Madam clerk, Mr. Peral, >> yes. >> Miss Ricard, >> yes. >> Mr. Farooq, >> yes. >> Mr. Hedgepath, >> yes. >> Miss Rizzy, >> Miss Berg, >> yes. >> Mr. Chafari, >> yes. >> Miss Fernandez, >> yes. >> Motion passes. >> Thank you. And before we proceed, we would like to bring clarity to the um

006the motion that was done earlier. Miss Ricard. >> Thank you, Madam Chair. Um I did not second the adoption of the agenda. I moved it. So, um, Mr. PL, I think we would need to redo. The intention was to second the motion to adopt the agenda, but I instead said so moved. It's been recorded. Thank you. And with that, um, we are moving to 3.01. 01 Miss Burke. I move that the school board appoint Mrs. Anne Holton as the six district school board representative. >> Second. I got you. It's been moved by Miss Burke and seconded by uh Mr. Hedgeb to appoint uh Miss Anne Burke and Holton as the sixth district candidate. We do have a matter of debate, Mr. Jafari. >> Thank you, Madam Chair. I wanted to just uh be clear about

007this. Uh this matter involves a statute and my lay reading of the statute really doesn't allow any leeway really. The responsibility rests solely with the remaining school board members. And so I just wanted to go on the record my comments and not legal advice. That's observations from plain reading of the vacancy reading statute and what it appears to require. The statute places the vacancy filling responsibility solely on the remaining members of the school board. Once a nonboard member participated, the process no longer reflected the independent judgment the law requires. That outside influence also disadvantaged the other applicants who were entitled to a process conducted exclusively by board members because the board's initial preference was shaped through participation. The statute does not authorize the process is structurally compromised. Moving forward, recurve that defect into any final

008decision. The only way to restore a clean compliant process is to resend the current one and restart without outside involvement, which necessarily means removing without further consideration the candidate who may have possibly benefited from the non-members's input. That conflict cannot be overlooked. Accordingly, I move that the board end, terminate, and resend the entire current vacancy filling process and that we restrict both the non-member and the candidate identified through the non-members influence from any further participation or consideration in this vacancy product process. Excuse me. >> Thank you, Miss Jafari. I just a a point of clarity. A motion is already on the floor, so another motion cannot be made while the motion is still before the motion is voted. Thank you, Mr. Jafar. >> Would I be able to return back to motion? >> Absolutely. Have

009every right to do that. Is there any other feedback or thoughts as it pertains to this vote? I do have one ask that you all include in the motion that this is an interim appointment and not permanent. >> So, do we need to restate the motion? I want to make sure we get this right. >> Yes, restate the motion. I'm sorry, Mr. Mr. >> Yeah, I I think the per the individual who made the motion ought to restate the motion for clarity. >> Okay. Thank you, Madam Chair. I move that we >> Hello. Can you hear me? >> Yes, madam chair. I move that we appoint the board appoints an Holton as the interim sixth district board school board representative. >> Second. >> It's been moved by Miss Burke, seconded by Mr. Hedgepath. And um

010in response to what has been shared as I've shared with my colleagues, if there is any um question in terms of the steps that were taken in this process, as the leader of the board, I take full ownership of that. And what we will do as we move forward is find ways to streamline the process to ensure that there is no confusion whatsoever into every step that is made moving forward. Thank you. And with that, Miss Richardson, >> Mr. Percible. >> Yes. >> Miss Ricard. >> Yes. >> Mr. Farooq. >> Yes. >> Mr. Hedgepath. >> Yes. >> Miss Rizzy. >> Yes. >> Miss Berg. >> Yes. >> Mr. Jafari. >> Spin. >> Miss Fernandez. >> Yes. Motion passes. Thank you. We would like to congratulate Miss Anne Holton for her interimm appointment for the six

011sixth district. We welcome you um to this deis and look forward to the collaboration partnership. We would also like to thank the other candidates as well. This was not an easy decision. everyone um that came brought forth so many um so much great worth and um it's evident in their application that they had every opportunity to um to be a part of this as well. But in the end, Miss Anne Holton is the person that was chosen and so we certainly thank the other candidates and look forward to working with her. At this time, we will move right along um to 4.01. 01 receive an update on Rams for RPS goal 8 attendance. Good evening, school board members, school board chair Fernandez, and Superintendent Camas. My name is Daryl Williams, associate director for family and

012community engagement. I'm here with my colleague, our director, Charles Paige III, and we are here to present on attendance today. And I just want to say it's a pleasure to be here in person with you all today. I was on earlier with on our advocacy day uh virtual session with Matthew. I know many of you were on, if not all of you were on. So, I just wanted to shout out Matthew real quick too for the wonderful job he did before we get into this. and uh he did a wonderful job with that pivot to uh to the virtual space. So, shout out to my guy uh Matthew. Um so, here not going to spend, you know, much time here. We just wanted to provide some definitions that we commonly share when we're doing these

013updates around what truency is, chronic absenteeism, and of course, our average daily attendance. We won't hang on that too long. What I will talk about is our work. Um I'm extremely proud and happy to talk about the work that our team is doing. Um to date when we pulled this information, our department has made over 7,000 outreach attempts. Uh we have a 69 success rate with the with our contacts, which is really good. We're making the contacts. We're we're trying our best to connect to our families around chronic absenteeism and eliminating barriers as best we can. In addition, uh our family liaison and coordinators have either hosted or helped to support over 150 uh family and attendance focused engagement events or initiatives across the division. Um lots of work going on with our teams. I

014will let Charles talk about next slide. >> One of the big things that we invested in over the summer was professional development, especially with our team of family liaison who received over 80 hours of professional development. This summer um every Thursday we would come together for about two hours or a half a day and go through different types of workshops alongside them. We've had Scholastic come by and do workshops with our liaison. We've also done our own internal um ones just bringing everyone up to speed um on some of like the best practices that we were looking to implement in this upcoming school year. We also did some external professional development with school leaders, office associates as well as new teachers. So, getting into the numbers this year, as of day 81, we are seeing

015an increase in our chronic absenteeism rate of about 2.9 percentage points from where we were this time last year. Um, one thing that we do see though is that we do have an increase in our average daily attendance, which means that we are having more students in the building on a daily basis, but that is different from the chronic absenteeism rate that we're seeing where we do see We also see uh that every subgroup has been impacted this year with an increase in chronic absenteeism. The most notable one on this slide would be our English learners who are seeing a 5.29 percentage increase in their chronic absenteeism rate due to just like things like the climate um ICE immigration. Um we have seen a large spike in their chronic absent. So, we also wanted to

016include this trend line which can kind of create a better snapshot of kind of what we've been experiencing this year and how it tracks across our our three-year trend. Um, what we see around week 15 and week week 13 and 15 is typically Thanksgiving break. So, around that time, we're typically seeing decreases in our average daily attendance due to the holidays. We see it in Thanksgiving. We see it around Christmas time. What we also see in this year, it was week 15 where the Thanksgiving break happened, but following the Thanksgiving break, we ended up having two days out due to snow and weather. Um, when we see those trends happen, it's typically a slow kind of uh students kind of filter back into school a little bit slower, the same way we see during our

017uh holiday breaks. So we ended up having that right after Thanksgiving which greatly impacted our chronic absenteeism numbers. Um where you see prior we were kind of trending along the same line. Then Thanksgiving hit which was followed by uh the weather. So we're going to go through these slides relatively quickly. Um but one thing to note is that we did transition to a regional model in this school year. We had done it in previous years but this year we have five regions. So we have uh north, east, west, southeast and southwest. So we broke the south into two. Previously it was four. Uh but we felt to make the southside more equitable that we would break it into two. Um, one because of membership and just uh by the pure size and some of the

018findings that we were able to identify uh through a study that we ended up doing which sampled 400 uh students to try to identify some of the causes for absences. The three uh top reasons were personal health, housing, financial instability, and transportation. And that section took up about 50% of what we were seeing uh causing the absences. All right, we do have some successes that we want to talk about this year. So over 13 hundred of our students that missed 10% or more of the school year last year are now missing less uh than 10% this year. So that's a win for us. Uh another thing I'm not going to read every single bullet, but one of the other things that we found in interesting was a decrease in suspension related absences for both in

019or out of school. So they were at 7.6% of absences through day 81 last year. Now you can see uh compared to six% this year. So that's a good thing. Uh a few challenges just to to address. Grades 9 through 12 had the biggest drop in attendance. Yes. Uh but September was really rough. It was just a a hard month for us um attendance wise. Uh so we really want to talk about strategy to get ahead of September uh next year. Um also um transitions. Uh last year we were using nudges uh from text nudges and we were sending out mailings from everyday pro. Um we had to cut that out. Um so that uh also created a bit of an impact. We switched over to parent square from we lost some of our messaging

020but now uh we are kicking that back uh into place. So we're excited to now uh say that parents will start getting those messages when their students are absent um that day. So there uh so that's a big that's a big win um or that's a huge challenge rather that we we've had to face those nudges and those letters. Uh we were seeing a difference with that. We were getting responses. Uh folks were calling in um trying to see what was going on. So we're happy that we could uh turn on this function again. Um and then as uh Charles mentioned just the spikes in illness right we had the hand foot and mouth uh going around and other uh contagious diseases that are uh running rampid through the city. Um so that had a

021big impact on our attendance this year. >> Um so some of the solutions that we had was one parent square um and just like the notification system that we're implementing. So just making sure that that is more streamlined as we transition from Roman over to parent square that's also getting updated contact information. Um the way that contact information is transferred from Aspen into parent square kind of wonky. So we were ironing out a lot of kinks throughout that transition but super happy for the direction that we're going in as well. Um we have also started doing chat and shoes at every high school. Um I believe to date every high school has had a chat and chew or will have one by the end of February. Um and then as always the continued launch of

022PTSAs um being supported with pack and sack those are two of their main initi or that is one of their main initiatives for this year. Um so they've been a great help in assisting with our reimagining of PTSAs and then continued solutions uh school leader communication. So we've just been trying to increase the level of communication that we have with our school leaders uh trying to provide them with as many poss as many resources as possible with everything related to attendance. We are also doing in-depth assessment meetings with our regional teams. Um what goes into that is every liaison, every region had essentially their KPIs for the year in relation to chronic absenteeism. So they had their goals that they were trying to meet. Um so we are going to do a mid-year assessment to

023see where we can make improvements there as well. And then we also have the title one parent family engagement funds. Uh so at every school we are hosting at least two parent family engagement funds that are coming directly out of our office. um that our office is hosting at our schools in collaboration with the attendance teams, admin teams as well that is >> Mr. Farooq. >> Thank you, Madam Chair. The first question is on one of your slides when you talk about the 7,000 contacts, is that year-over-year or what's the time frame for that number? That's information pulled from our outreach tracker from this year. >> It's from the first 81 days of school. >> Oh, >> I think that's what you were asking. >> The other question I have are are these numbers only

024for DFC staff or does it also include like school counselors and stuff that might also be doing? It only includes the department of family and community engagement, but we do have record of all of you know counselors and everyone else, but we teased out that data to only include our department. >> My last question is it looks like on slide 15 that the top issue seems to be health equity, public health kind of is that what we're hearing that because sometimes kids take sick days for mental health reasons or because they're avoiding a bully like Have we drilled down? What's the plan to drill down and really figure that? >> Um sorry, I was really close. I really worked really closely with this sample. Um so if you see the breakdown um about personal mental

025health challenge would be a well-being day needed for anxiety or depression that that's around 4.8%. Um so we tease that out from the personal health challenges in terms of like actual achieve sickness. Um and so that that it it is teased out. And then we also have school climate or culture complaints, bullying, negative relationship with school staff. This is all what has been reported to us and recorded through our family. Um and so I did tease it out. It is separate from the health challenges like the physical health challenge. >> Last question. When you say tease out, this was a sample size. And so is this a survey or are you just asking them in a conversation? Like how do we know? Because sometimes my kids call in and I don't let anyone know it's

026because they were depressed. >> So it is a representative sample so it's not going to capture everything. Um but when our family liaison call home and inquire, you know, hey, your kiddo hasn't been to school. We don't see a note. We just want to make sure everything's okay. Is there anything we can do to support you? We start with support and then we follow up with is there a reason why they're not at school today and then this is the reason. So we do have 4.1% with that sample size where no reason was offered. The parent did not choose to share. Um but this is you know we didn't analyze go through the qualitative coding of 4,000 but we did try to take a representative sample. >> Thank you Mr. Jafari. >> Thank you. Uh

027first of all, let me commend you as as a person who's been the boots on the ground and and and did the attendance and the truency thing. Uh want to kind of work around the vision that you have sometimes when do the boots on the ground? Do they still do the pot where you actually have to run run them down and and actually go into the neighborhoods and do the real outreach? Uh can you share a little insight on how you actually handle the in the field part of it? Uh yeah, our team, we do home visits. We're actually ab absolutely pushing into the neighborhoods um when we can for sure. I mean, we're doing home visits every day. Um they're visiting folks, they are dropping off supplies, they are checking on families, they are

028connecting them with resources. I mean, yeah, it's a everyday thing that on the ground like you said in the neighborhood. Absolutely. >> Jeff, if I could just give one follow up. um when you going in, do you find that RPS is able to like when you say resources because I know you find families in various states of need uh lack if you will, marginalized, underserved, etc. So, so how do you handle those kinds of things? And how much of that uh is RPS able to come and give some hands on and helping you out? I >> mean, leaison are are like the first line of defense, so to speak. Maybe the second I kind of count the teacher as a person on honesty, but maybe the second line of defense where, you know, our job

029is to really build relationships so we know who to connect you to. Our team may not be able to fix the problem necessarily like ourselves, but we should be able to be equipped to know, hey, once I build the relationship with you, now I can point you in the right direction. Now I can get you connected to our social worker. Now I can get you connected to behavioral support. or we can go to an outside agency if it's something that RPS cannot handle. Uh but our folks have been doing an amazing job in doing that and we believe in the relationship first. Um otherwise people aren't aren't going to want to talk to us at all and then we're not going to be able to find out what these barriers are. And this all came

030from conversations. You know, we wouldn't even get this information at all if our f folks weren't talking. Um and families were trusting that, hey, this is what's happening with with my family. this is this is what we need and hopefully we can you know get them connected with the things that they need to help them out. You want to just want to add a little bit more. We also have community partnerships in our office as well. So we're also able to leverage those resources um when it comes to providing resources to families. So we also collaborate with other offices. Um but we are kind of that bridge um for our families who express um kind of the barrier and our job is to remove those barriers as best as possible. >> But to also answer

031your question, no, we don't um chase the scholars down through the neighborhoods. Um we try to have um conversations with them and their families. And so that's really more of our u um system of leading with love. Um and especially that's with our chat and shoes in high school. That's that refocusing. We've we found through our data that sometimes having conversations with parents on the high school level is a little bit more difficult. They're looking for support from us and um they often want our help. And so we've kind of transitioned to talking to the scholars themselves to talk to them about why attendance is important rather than kind of like tattletailing to their parents sort of situation. So we're trying to bring them in and and help all of us understand why it's important

032for them to be at school every day. >> Thank you. And just commend you guys for the hard work because the outcomes is showing in the improvements vice versa. So it doesn't come with our hard work and again I just applaud your efforts, >> Miss Ricard. >> Thank you and thank you for this presentation. Um I know I've seen a family liaison at one of our district 2 schools and I know she works so hard with the families and she knows what's going on with all of them. I know they're doing the work, but I know these numbers are also hard to see and So, I'm just what's what more do we need? What can we be advocating for? I was also a strong believer that it's we want our high schoolers coming to school,

033but sometimes when they get to high school, they start stop coming. I found as an assistant principal, it was really hard to motivate them back because the pattern had been set for chronic absenteeism in the lower grades. Um, so is it really putting more resources down in our elementary and middle to like keep those good habits? I guess what what more can we do? I do know for our high schoolers, one of the things that we talked about that are solutions that we're working towards as a team has been moving towards getting those notifications. I know I said we're moving away from tattling on children, but um getting those notifications back up. um you know budget um consolidation has been difficult and so last year we were sending out nudges to parents letters home um

034that was well over a thou $100,000 a year um and so that has been really difficult and so um we did we started this year without it um and so we have been working alongside our communications team um to really make sure that we are able to bring it back. We aren't at a place where we can find those physical letters to send home, but we have found a solution at no cost to the division um to start sending those notifications out. So, we've already started that with our trial run working with the operations team um at RHSA and Carver um and we're hoping to launch divisionwide in February. So, we're really hoping that that is a solution that no advocate, no um advocacy needed. Um that will really turn things around for us. >>

035Another thing that I'll add is I think the improvement of our data, we've been really able to dive into the data, dive into the reasons or what might be holding families back from coming into the school building. And the more that we dive into the data and we're able to identify those needs, uh, similar to the hand, foot and mouth situation that ended up happening, that communication started with our liaison. And then we started to do deeper dives into, okay, which buildings are being impacted the most? What additional resources do we need? Do we need to have everyone bring hand sanitizer? just like the little things. Uh just being more conscious about those areas um would be another area that we're really diving into, but really looking into the data uh so that we can

036target specific >> Yeah. And I'll just round it out with, you know, we're continuing to meet with our school leaders, trying to reset on some of the practices in the buildings, best practices, and just trying to make sure everyone's aligned and we're doing the best we can in our buildings to to take proper attendance and make sure our kids are in the buildings. I I also think that just as a division, we're doing I think we're doing the right things like we're heading in the right direction like with the high school redesign for instance, right? Like I think that start when those things happen. I think kids will be excited, right? And I think they'll want to be in school more, right? Like you're going to a place where you're focused on health. You're going

037somewhere where you're focused on this industry that and so I think I think we're doing the things right as a division. Um I wish there was just a magic, you know, wand or something, you know, to to to improve it, but we recognize it. We we know that this is hard work, but we see everyone is working extremely hard. I mean, all across the board. So, we'll just keep plugging away and just, you know, ask for your continued support uh as we do this work. But yeah, I'll end it. I'll end it. >> Thank you, Miss Rizzy. I'll allow everybody opportunity to then um yeah, I really appreciate this report. Um I love that um Dr. Green Bell and Mr. Williams both um focused in on building intrinsic motivation instead of relying on punitive measures.

038Um, I am wondering, you know, to I think it was maybe Miss Par's point, um, could we look at doing those chat and choose at the middle school level? Um, to like start them, you know, kind of thinking about this prior to high school when it becomes a problem. Um, >> yes. >> Yeah, it felt like a I told you so moment in there. I just I want to call that out, but Yes. And yes. >> Okay. Um I think parents I know I didn't you know I don't Are they still receiving robocalls? They're gone too. >> Yes. Um all of that together was actually it was about $120,000 to send roocalls, text messages, and letters home. Um and so due to um things that constraints from last year um those went away and so

039we've been working really hard this year to get at least the nudges um and the rooc calls out and so we have found a really path great path forward with Carver and RHSA and I'm very excited for the launch the rest. Um we weren't able to find those physical letters. Sometimes you get a physical letter in the mail and you jump a little bit more. um we weren't able to find that, you know, um a way to do that at no cost to the division, but I am very proud to say that we are able to to to have the rest of that launch the rest of the year without with no cost. >> Yeah. Where I was going with that is, you know, um I think a lot of parents, including myself, when I

040first started out, thought that sending a letter would excuse the absence and it wouldn't necessarily count against my kids. And that's just completely not true. And I would get annoyed whenever I got those rooc calls because I'm like, I sent a note, you know. So, I think parents need to really be aware that those notes don't excuse these absences. Um, they explain them and they I mean, it's good to send them and we we need you to send them, but they don't excuse absences. Um, and I think that might be it. Okay. Thank you, >> Miss Burke. >> Thank you, Madam Chair. I just wanted to say thank you. I see you all in the neighborhoods. Our parents know you. That personal touch means so much. Teachers, yes, we as teachers are the first point

041of contact, but they know you as well as they know their teachers. So, seriously, thank you. I've seen in the seventh district. Here comes Mr. Williams. Here come Mr. Williams. All right. Just call Mr. Williams. So, thank you for that. That personal touch means a lot and I like that better than the US mail because that's snail mail. You may not you may get it in you send it in January, you may get it in June. So I'm not exaggerating, but my point with that is a personal phone call or oneonone. That's the that's the finishing touch. So thank you all for that. Well done. >> Thank you, Mr. Perl. Thank you, Madam Chair. Um, I don't know how to ask this question. Kind of going back to Mr. Farooq's point. I'm trying to make

042sure we're not missing any blind spots in this data. Some of this is just anecdotal uh, from parents that I've talked to, and I'm I'm honing in on the Disney World line, and I don't know a parent that goes to Disney World and calls in and says, "We're going to Disney World." Um, and I think Miss Rizz's point uh was kind of there too. When I look at the chart and I see drops around the holidays as as you pointed out and according to your definition, chronic absenteeism is 10%. And I'm assuming that's prrated. So if we're halfway through the year, that's going to be like nine days. So, if I go on vacation for seven days, um, are we missing I know we're telling I feel like there's a narrative in here and I

043don't want to miss the narrative for a lot of our students, but I feel like anecdotally the attitude towards everyday attendance in school has changed a bit across the board. And there are some parents out there that do not face transportation struggles um who can go to Disney World and are going to Disney World and their kiddos are getting mixed up in this as well. I just make sure we're not missing those blind spots. Is any thoughts on that? >> So chronic absenteeism doesn't care what the reason is. Um the state says you've missed seat time and if you have missed at least 10% of the seat time for whatever reason it may be um you are chronically absent. And so um we've been working a lot around our messaging in particular about excused absences.

044Um, it's why I asked um uh the board to consider maybe some examples of what is considered an excused absence because it depends on uh the principal because they have a discretion to determine whe whether something is excused or not. I'm just to give some examples about what would be a good example of an excused absence versus a poor example of an excused absence. Have we seen a trip to Disney World be excused? Yes. Um, and so just trying to really streamline that process. Um, but also we're really working on our messaging to just as um, board member Rizzie said, excused absences regardless, it's still chronic time. Um, and also we're thinking a lot about it across language. Um, we have found that a lot of our Spanish language families do not like the word

045um, the direct translation into excused. they feel like we are asking them telling them that they're making excuses. Um, and so that's we we we're trying to have a more culturally competent approach. We've been working with our bilingual family liaison to make sure that we are just asking for the reason why your child is sick or why your child did not come in. And so we're really trying to think about our language and get very consistent across the division, how we engage our families because an absence is an absence regardless of the reason. And that's really how we're taking that approach. >> Thank you. And thank you for just everything that you do. I mean, I could echo the sentiments of all of my board members about just the sheer just support, sacrifice you are

046in the trenches every single day, and I cannot thank you enough for that. Um I do have a couple of questions. Um the first one with um housing um familial and um financial instability uh obviously I mean 13% just absolutely breaks my heart. My question though is around how are we quantifying how much of an impact immigration and customs enforcement is having on chronic absenteeism? like is it just self-reporting or is there a way? How are we able is there a way? It may not be a way. I'm just curious. I know that there's a lot of information that share within the Latina community about um experiences within ICE, obviously not on school grounds, but just in general. But I just wonder if there's a way that we could really start to quantify that data

047in a very intentional way to speak to that. >> Yes. So it's it's actually very difficult um particularly because when our family liaison call yes a lot of people are very comfortable with us but not a lot of people are comfortable saying that it's because of related um fears and so this is just a reflection of those who have said that but oftentimes people do not want to self-identify their documentation status um and so there's a often a lot of times conversation between um scholars maybe they might tell their teacher, but when you get that call from um someone who works at the school division, we found that um actually the folks who um say that it's ICE related fears is actually fewer than what we're hearing. And so it's really about building that um

048building that rapport with our families. I can tease out all, you know, I can go through the data and tell you exactly the number of times that we have done I we've had someone report a fear of ICE as the reason why that they're not coming to school. Um this is just a representative sample, but we have an amazing outreach tracker. Shout out to Christopher Mitchell. um every contact that is made home, we've been really working with our teachers, um our counselors, our social workers, our family leaison that it goes into this tracker. Um and so I can I can go and pull that number if you all are interested to know how many people have um reported that. >> Yeah, I'm I'm absolutely interested in that for for two particular reasons. one I think

049is is equally important to know how many ICE related fears we have and separate that from housing and stability right I think those should be defined in their own terms and because that helps us to create advocacy and partnerships with the city and nonpartnerships and so just being able to speak to those individually will help us to to do that um also I have two other questions and I'll just ask them both at the same well maybe I won't yeah I I Um you mentioned that September was a struggle that it was a tough month. Just want to get context into what you were referring to there. >> One minute. >> And then um last but certainly not least, this is the second time that I've heard which is a good ask redefining and excuse

050absence across the board for consistency sake from principal to principal. Are you looking for us to do that or are are you working on something to present to the board for us to review through policy? I just want to make sure what part you want us to play in that process which we're super supportive of, but just want to understand the ask. >> We can do whichever you'd like. Um but we were hoping to take that before the policy committee um for review. And then September was really our hand foot and mouth outbreak. We had some of our schools go through it twice. Um it typically we do not see hand foot and mouth disease reach the middle schools. Um but this year it did through siblings. Um I know JL Francis was hit twice

051um in a row and it was really difficult. And so um September was just unusual. We we see hand foot and mouth disease across the division but we don't see it like we saw it this year. And it's always good to know that so that as a board we can raise awareness. >> Mr. Farooq and then Miss Ry. >> Thank you, Madam Chair. First, I'll just say um I hear what you're saying about the absenteeism, it's a systemic issue. And so throwing all these things at it without a systemic input, it's hard to see dramatic reductions. Um that being said, I love hearing all the updates. My one question is I would love for you to remind me and I've heard some of these updates in the past but I don't remember them anymore. What

052are some of the opportunities for students who've missed a lot of time to make up time? It do we do Saturday school? Do we do after school? Is it assigned by teachers? >> Yeah, so we have flexible instruction time which is seat time recovery. So uh the real requirements of that is it must be taught by a licensed teacher. Um outside of that it just has to happen outside of school hours. So a lot of our schools end up doing that for their regular out of school time because it's already taught with a licensed teacher. They just have to make sure that they're following some level of curriculum in >> uh Bal and Hugan do do Saturdays. >> Thank you, Miss Rizzie. >> Thank you, Madam Chair. I just want to flag that um you

053know, immigrations and and customs enforcement impacts um largely Spanish speaking communities, but pretty much all international communities um are feeling this anxiety. Thank you so much. >> Thank you. As we move forward to um the budget items, I just want to call out that the documents for the amended portions of the agenda 6.07 and 6.08 are listed underneath 4.01. So, I just wanted to make sure I called that out. All right, moving forward to 5.01. discuss the proposed um FY27 estimate of needs. Mr. Cameras. >> Thank you, Madam Chair, and good evening, everyone. First, I just want to say thank you to all of the board members, as well as all of our employees and community members who have begun to share their feedback, their input, and their suggestions. We truly do appreciate it and

054are looking forward to hearing in person tomorrow during public comment. So, thank you. It is truly appreciated that together we are stronger and come up with the very best solutions. I really just want to draw the board's attention to the additions to the presentation from last week. Go to slide 54. I'm sorry that you went all the way back to the beginning. Thank you so much. Um you'll see uh several sections which try to address some of the key questions that have come up from the board, from the public, from our employees. I'm not going to go through it all, but I just want to highlight a couple of things. Thank you. That is perfect. Um we'll start with the FTE reductions, which understandably have received quite a lot of attention. There was some confusion

055about Was it 42? Was it 46? It's actually both. And I'll just try to explain that very briefly for the public. Um the the 46 is the positions that were being reduced from the central office. The 42 takes into account reductions from the Richmond Virtual Academy as well as a reduction of some other positions in nongenital funds. As I shared when we uh started this process, our budget has general fund which is about 80% of our money and non-general fund which is about 20%. That's title, IDA, Head Start, so on and so forth. The 46 reductions come from our general fund and then the 42 come from again RBA and the non-general fund. So actually our net reduction from the current year to next year is actually a reduction of 88 and that um really

056uh is exhibited by simply the math of the FY26 number which is 4313 minus the FY27 number of 4225.4. For folks who uh are looking for this information in the budget book, it is important that you look at the FT counts for all funds, not just the general. So that's the key there. I also want to note uh many folks do recall and board members asked and noted we also reduced 33 vacancies last year. So this is in addition to that. Uh moving forward on the next slide, we just lay out uh a number of the supports that we are providing uh to individuals who have been impacted and talk also about what is bumping. In essence, if an individual is losing their position and they have more seniority than the next person uh within

057their department for a position that they are qualified, they can quote unquote bump that individual. I do want to note bumping rights only attached to the individual whose position was originally impacted. It does not cascade down one after. And again, those individuals who may be bumped uh have uh will be receiving the same supports that the initial reduction. I want to jump to health insurance. If we go to the next slide, one more. Uh of course, this has garnered a lot of attention understandably. I want to note the proposal is to cost share just the increase in health insurance costs not the total cost. And so we did some modeling to try to illustrate what would that actually look like for employees. So we can go to the next slide 58. We've modeled three teachers

058that cover the broad expanse of RPS teachers. First example here is a first year teacher under the high deductible plan. Stick slide 58. Just staying on the same. Yep. Right there. And if we could um zoom in, that would be helpful. Uh what you see here is for this teacher under the proposal health insurance would go up $1066 pay period for a total of $2554. There were some concern that this increase would wipe out any increases that teachers and other staff in terms of pay increases. While we have proposed freezing raises for the moment, we have preserved the step and the step increase for this sample teacher would be $729. So it does exceed the increase in public cost. I also do want to note um the yellow line there on the bottom. I know

059it's hard to read the numbers without zooming in. That is the cost to the employee of health insurance. As you can see, it has been flat for eight years and then it bumps up in 27 the last the green line is what RPS pays as you see it's the blue line is salary that again over time and so while of course this is regrettable and we not want to have our employees take on this additional cost what you can see is over time the pay increases well exceed the modest increases in health insurance costs and of course even next year the 1.17% step would exceed the additional cost going to the next slide we have here an experienced teacher that is more years of service on the classic plan for an employee and child again

060you see the same pattern this would be $12.39 more per pay period for a total $297. This teacher next year would earn $820 more under the step increase. So again, it exceeds it. And then the next slide is a veteran teacher under the premier family plan. So this is the most expensive plan. Again, you'll see that it would be $209 a pay period additional for an annual total increase of 486. Again, the 1.17% step increase would exceed that. It would be $920. But what is very notable here is you'll see the green line, which again is the share that RPS has taken off, has increased rather dramatically over the last two years. The yellow line is what the employee has paid. Again, has been flat with the exception of the small proposed. I also wanted

061to note on 61, if we go to the next slide, if we zoom back out and just look at the overall cost for health insurance, orange is your RPS contribution. Blue is the employee contribution. With this proposed change, uh for that first teacher, the new teacher high deductible, the overall cost of health insurance, the employee would be going from four to 6%. for that middle teacher to 21% for the veteran premier plan going last on 62 we received a question you know did this all change with the advent of collective bargaining while we all support and appreciate uh the good work of our union partners and support collective bargaining um no this really did not bargaining. As you can see, the yellow line there. I'm going to jump now to RVA, the Richmond Virtual Academy

062very briefly. Um, I just wanted to note that we are holding a hiring fair coming up next week and uh we have created a first hour that is just for uh the RVA staff so that they can have a first opportunity to meet with principles if they are interested in transferring to another school. Again, if you have a teaching license, you are guaranteed findings. Um, I also wanted to know we are doing uh a fair for our families as well to help them with enrollment options whether they want to stay virtual through the virtual Virginia program or they want to return to their zone school or they want to stay open enrollment. Extended the open enrollment window just for our families so that they can advantage of those. Finally, I want to note on 64,

063we received some questions bottom there. Will homebound and homebased instruction continue? Yes, it will. The five uh educators in that program are not are not slated for. Uh next, we were asked uh what the enrollment looks like at RVA. There you have it. This is the fall membership count for the current year and the two prior years. As you can see, the program skews more towards secondary uh than it does elementary with the one exception this year. There's one. Next, summer school was a big topic that's on slide 66. We did want to be clear if we were not able to move forward with this, it does impact this coming summer, summer of 2026. That was a question we received a lot. We also received questions from families who students have IEPs and uh our

064uh by right have extended your services. Those would continue and we're working through what that would look like as we of course obligated under federal law. Um, finally, I just want to note in the budget presentation, it shows that reducing summer school saves us $100,000, but to actually run summer school costs us about three million. The reason it only saves us 100K is because most of summer school funding comes from title dollars and from state grants. We are receiving about $2 million less in title dollars. impacts our ability to uh just jumping to slide 67. There was a question about the code RVA tuition increase. It was initially listed at 24%. That was the initial estimate that we received. However, the code RVA board ultimately decided to go with a smaller increase which um amounted

065to I believe it was roughly 11%. That saved us about $113,000 which we have proposed applying to the social emotional mental health and wraparound support contracts child savers RBHA CIS which is why uh it was an initially 30% cut and now it's down to a 25 again that's a proposal for your then last on slide 69 we have uh received a lot of questions around if we received additional money, how would we propose prioritizing spending those dollars? 69 is just a proposal. Of course, uh we defer to the board on this, but wanted to give some guidance as to how we were thinking. Uh first, collective bargaining and health insurance. We want to make sure that if we did receive money, we were able to fulfill our collective bargaining commitments. They were negotiated in good

066faith and we feel obligated to meet those. Related to that, we don't have any funds currently in the budget for any of the bargaining units that we are currently negotiating with and that includes the teachers. So, we are recommending about 3 million uh to provide some increases there. And then related to that again, well, we believe some cost sharing on the health insurance is going to be necessary for solveny over the long term. perhaps a 7525 split this year to phase. The second big bucket was to fully restore the mental health and wraparound support contracts based on the attendance presentation. I don't think I need to convince anyone how important these are. And then of course summer school related summer school is not just academics but it's recreation, it's health, it's meals, it's so much

067for our kids. And that would be our next again. Thank you so much for all the questions and I'm happy to pause there and try to >> Miss B. Thank you, Madam Chair. And I think this question was answered regarding the virtual school. And I just call the answer right now and it's not in front of me. My question is out of the what 153 students is that correct? Okay, remember that out of the 153 students are any of those students students that were placed temporarily in the program if I'm clear on this now when students are um suspended from school and which I like this idea. That's why I'm asking it. And they have to wait to come before the panel. Some of those students have been placed in virtual school, correct? Which I

068think is great. So my question is number one, with the 153, are those students included in that count? >> Yes. Uh about 10% of those students, so about 15 So I would ask Spart if she wants to add any more on this far from that administrative placement process and um we are in the process of thinking through how we would support those people without the academy if that were to be the final decision. >> Good evening board members. Mrs. Burke, we are required to have a home instruction program and that's inclusive of students who are receiving homebased homebound um and then we also do safety placements. And so we now have five full-time teachers who've been assigned historically to that program as we're looking at seeing what our current needs are. There may be a

069need to be able to retain some teachers. Also, as a part of our model, we have existing teachers who provide virtual services in the evening for some of our students. And so within that home instructional program, there's various models that we follow, but those students will still be supported. Follow up, please. I hope we're on the same page. When students when we go before the team to have not the team, but the disciplinary hearing and we have am I clear on this? Is this happening that students are let's say I'm a student at such a school and I was suspended but due to the listing um I'm still getting work through the virtual academy or is that not a practice? >> So not necessarily the virtual academy it's through our home instruction program and it

070may be assignment it may be an assigned teacher at that student's home school so they can comma uh remain having connectivity with that building. So technically they're not receiving services. They're receiving services from a different program. >> No, that's all under our home instruction program, but it's not the school in isolation. >> Got it. Thank you so much. Thank you, Mr. Hedgepad. >> Thank you, Madam Chair. I I I continue to be concerned about the impacts that are um our staff are facing in this upcoming fiscal year. uh if uh you know and I am uh very very appreciative of the administration's uh their work to quantify what what the impact would be for these cuts on on a a paycheck. um you know if if our teachers are missing out on a raise this

071year it's it is essentially a pay pay cut because if we are we we are offering that that 1.17 increase for the step uh it's canceled out by the uh by I understand not just by the health care cost but by inflation um and the general costs uh I've had many teachers contact me who are concerned about making rent uh a number of them are concerned concerned uh in one think considering moving out to the county for cheaper rent. Um they're also, you know, this is also a a cut to their retirement u that will be lost. U if the uh you're using the administration's math, u a beginning teacher would see an increase of about 300 about $473. That's about $39 more a month than they were making previously. However, in Richmond itself, our

072groceries went up 3.1% 25. Just in 2022, they were up 11%. And who knows with the uh instability coming out of Washington, uh what we may experience in the in the coming year. Um and so u I think that we need to do something to lessen this impact. U our employees are our most critical budgetary item. Um and I I think that more attention needs to be to be paid there. I um Mr. Cameress, I very appreciative that uh that we have this worst case scenario u laid out in front of us ahead of time so we know what we're what we're facing. Um and there um are not surprises and people know exactly what's at stake. Um we p when it comes down to it, we need to take care of the adults who

073are taking care of our kids. And um and so I also really appreciate that last slide that talks about where the the three priorities of where we would spend the money if we had that money. Uh I would be more inclined to support a proposal. I'll go quick. Uh a proposal that would would in when we are looking to approve our budget that would include asking for those three items in our budget. However, in addition to that, number two about our m our mental health services, we're already short on that. I would propose an increase in what we're getting currently. uh because I'll say a couple of my schools don't have that support. Thank you. >> Thank you, Mr. Hitchbath, Miss Rizzy. >> Thank you, Madam Chair. Um yeah, I want to thank the administration

074especially for addressing some of these questions that all of us have been receiving. Um I pretty much have received every single question that you have outlined here. So, I appreciate anticipating, you know, not anticipating because we know what those questions are, but you know, at at least trying to gather the most asked questions and offering responses. So, I really do appreciate that. Um, you know, I I definitely agree that, you know, our teachers are our most valuable resource outside of our children. Um, and so we do we do need to be concerned. Um, their concerns. I also am wondering that you know with this small increase in mental health uh services um and maybe if we get more are we able to bolster our inhouse services because I think sometimes when our people are working

075with our kids people employed by our PS they know more about what our kids need. So, I would love to see us bolster inhouse and and continue that conversation. Um, for summer school, I'm wondering if there's a way to partner with the city, maybe with their summer parks and recck programs to see if there's some way we can partner and still offer some support for kids during the summer if we don't get the money for summer school. And, um, These three top priorities are great. I don't see property maintenance and I know that some of our schools are in really bad shape and we're going to very soon have huge bills for maintenance issues and um I would like to add that as a priority. >> Thank you Mr. Farooq. >> Thank you Madam Chair.

076question about our behavioral health partners. I know that when we talk about the things that are affecting our kids, mental health comes up a lot. I know it comes up a lot with every single parent I talk about. I don't know a single parent any any parents who are not struggling with their kids either anxiety or severe depression. And so what I want to my question is what does it look like when we partner with our behavioral health partners? What are the shared expectations? What do the what does the contract monitoring look like? Do we have specific outcomes we're looking for? Like when we say what we're looking for, are we all on the same page? Is that written out somewhere? And I asked the qu this question because I had the chance a couple

077months ago to visit the child savers and other clinicians there. There's at least three schools in my district where they're at John Marshall High School, Henderson, and Mary Scott. And I attend I I visited in person all three schools and spent an hour at each school with each of these clinicians and just talk through like what was it like? And so they're very embedded at these schools. They know the parents and the teachers and the and the kids. So my long rambling question is what does it what does our contract management look like? What do the outcomes do we have specific outcomes we're looking for? And if not, how are we managing what our expectations are versus what their expectations are? Thank you, >> Mr. Cameron. >> Thank you, Madam Chair. Good evening again, Mr.

078Farooq. We do have expectations that are aligned for our mental health partners. Would love to share them with you, but a lot of the services that our mental health providers provide are tier three clinical services, which requires parental consent. Um, I think let me I want to say this in a way that's politically correct. A lot of times we place behaviors under a mental health umbrella. So everything is mental health and so we really need to dissect what the needs are of the individual students. Um because if we continue with that language, you would think that all of our kids in RPS are depressed with anxiety and are ready to hurt themselves and that's far from the truth. Um I will say that we have had challenges because some of the information that are asked

079by our providers or things that's required for them by the state, they have to have as far as their agency goes. Um, but some of our families feel that that information is a bit intrusive and so there is a pause and a hesitancy to share some of their background information because we are also mandated reporters. And so when information is found out if it is something that we deem to be unsafe and we have to report, we'll do that as well. And so those are some of the challenges that we have to deal with on the mental health front. Not that we don't have great relationships with our partners. Again, each and every clinician that connects with students, they have an individual service plan and so the outcomes may be different for each and every

080child and some of that information we are not privy to. >> Thank you, Mr. Perl. >> Thank you, Madam Chair. Um, I think I'm going to pick up the baton from Mr. Hedgepath before he ran out of time. Um looking at the slide on the prioritization if additional funds become available um I'm starting to look at this and the narrative has been on RPS and I' I've said this multiple times the general assembly uh with the city RPS has been asked to do more with less over the years and I mean you know accounting for inflation and everything and I believe that RPS has answered that call. Graduation rates are higher, reading levels are higher and so I get a sense from this year with the budget. We are expected as a board to put

081forth a budget based on our needs. And what we what has been told to us is that the pool of funds is going to be lower this year. So essentially have fewer needs. So that to me translates into okay so you you RPS have done more with less. We'd like to see you do even more with even less. And I don't think that is a viable solution. So if I understand that the city is anticipating meeting the collective bargaining agreements of city personnel, I don't think that we as a board can say that our collective bargaining agreements are not a need. So I to echo Mr. Hedgepath, I would put forth this slide not as an if, but as a need and I would I will be advocating for putting this into our our budget

082ask. Thank you, Madam Chair. >> Miss Ricard. >> Thank you, Madam Chair. Um I think to um continue with what Mr. PL and Mr. path were stating along with many of my other colleagues. Um, I appreciate that we were doing a worst case scenario. I'm a planner. I'm a saver. I think it's important for our people to know where we stand. But then I see articles about the city budget process getting underway and the release of their departmental funds and I just see a lot of very large increases. Um, and that's not to say that they aren't needed as well, but when the housing department is seeking a 34.5% total funding increase, the money and and our schools need money as well. And um, these are all priorities. These are all things that are so

083important, but at the end of the day, the vitality of our city comes from the children that we educate and bring put out into the future. And um that is so important and I know we've been working a lot with and talking to a lot of our general assembly part delegation and I do feel their support and I know they are asking for it and we're going to keep asking and keep showing up and the REA has been an incredible partner in that advocacy and we are so grateful. Um but we need to also ask the same of our city. There's a surplus there are large amounts being asked on their side. Um, and we need to make sure that we are being practical but also supporting our teachers and our students. >> Thank you,

084Mr. Jafari. >> Thank you, Madam Chair. Uh, each year, of course, I'm just completing a year here, but you track what RPS is asking for year in and year out and it's always underfunding. And so while I come down on the side of going after what we need to to assure the outcomes that we're looking from from our teachers and our scholars, also want to impress on the importance of making sure on the inside that we're doing all the things that we absolutely can on the inside to make sure that the positions that we are cutting are having an equitable impact across the division and that we're doing everything that we and in-house to to not just have positions or to use every dollar that we have to create a position or to do a

085salary, but to also make sure that we're trying as best we can to not just have positions as luxuries because sure enough, if you're going to go out and try to convince people that you you need money, then you're also going to have to tighten your belt inhouse. And so, uh, while I do commend the superintendent and the office for the work we're clearly going back and looking at trying to make these cuts more equitable and make them more explanative across the district in the division and from district to district and throughout the division. I just encourage us inhouse to meet people halfway when you're asking for money. make sure we can demonstrate in-house that we don't have any sacred cows that we're able to cut positions and not just hold on to positions as

086luxuries. There may come a time in the future when we can put these positions back on. But if you're going to demonstrate this kind of devastation to people and we really need need then inside of the house we're going to have to demonstrate that through our actions when it comes to the fiscal activity that we in house have control of. >> One minute. >> Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you. I'm sure that there are folks that would like to circle back around, but I'd like to also share some thoughts as well. I believe that both can be equally true. I believe that we can advocate on a city and state level, but also look at our cushions and find ways to trim the fat. And I believe that is what the administration has done in

087their recommendation um for us. But the reality is for me although there are three recommendations there are four that I believe should be prioritized as needs as well. first CBA. They are the lifeline of our students. And for us to move forward, I think it's important that we recognize that our teachers are as equally as important as every other CBA that the city accounts for. Two, summer school. While some feel like there is no need or I wouldn't say need, while some may feel like it is a viable solution to budget cuts, there are a lot of families that rely on summer school for their children, not just for educational purposes. I myself, for half of my life, was a single mother of two children. And it takes a village. And so us making this

088decision so abruptly would unear a lot of concerns for those who don't have anyone else to rely on when child support services are already high. Three, mental health services is a no-brainer. I think it's important and something that we should put back on the table. But I will also beg to differ about insurance premiums. While there are notably um significantly uh higher premiums that are addressed across the country, I myself have known working paycheck to paycheck. 25 to $50 can make the difference in getting gas in your car or putting food in your refrigerator. And so I also believe that there is even if we can't do a a 100% >> one minute >> 75% 25% split I think is something that we should consider. Again I appreciate the approach that the administration has taken

089but I also believe that these are also priorities that we need to stand behind and advocate for. And if they decide to do otherwise, at least we've done our part. And in closing, I'd also just recommend that we look for other alternatives as it relates to in-house. Why are we using contracts? Why are we not why are we furlowing folks instead of using um you know cutting contracts and looking into ways that we can provide overtime? Have we looked at all positions across the board? Those are things that I would recommend that we do as we also look internally and ways that we can be fiscally responsible and take ownership of our part in a very hard budget season. Thank you, Miss Rizzy. >> Thank you, Madam Chair. Uh here here to all of that.

090I um >> one minute. >> Okay. I just want to ask a clarifying question. Um, all teachers receive step increases. That's something I've been asked, >> Mr. Cameras. >> Thank you, Madam Chair. Yes, >> Miss Burke. >> Thank you, Madam Chair. I'd like to thank the administration for the time and hard work. When I walked in and saw the three- ring binder, I was like, are you serious? But I asked for this. I asked for this. Okay. But um you all have put a lot of work into this and answering the questions. Miss um um Jana Chang has done an exceptional job in communicating with us back and forth answering all of those questions. >> One minute. >> And I think the board has done a the board has done a great job in terms

091of going line by line by line. So, I'd like to commend the administration on what we've received, but I don't like the content. I don't like the content and it bothers me. I cannot imagine a school system without summer school. And I'm talking about looking at the our literacy rates, the improvement. Our all of our high schools are fully accredited. We're moving up and now we're going to take the foundation, the wave that has built us >> to get to this place. I can't see doing without mental health supports. Being in Fulton today with the apartment unit that caught on fire, it was devastating. No one was hurt physically, but it was one of the saddest situations to see collectively. It was horrible. But thank goodness to the wellness department because the first thing I

092was told, whomever did it, management, wellness, >> thank you for your support. So I'm not Miss Burke. >> Okay. Thank you. I'm done. Drop the mic. >> Mr. Farooq and then Miss Ricard. >> Thank you, Madam Chair. On behalf of my colleague who ran out of time, I just want to quickly ask that we include 500,000 to 1 million for the parking lot at WTover Hills Elementary School. And I'll ask Mr. Cameron to for CIP, sorry, to CIP for the WTover Hills Elementary School parking lot. And I'll ask Mr. Cameron to elaborate. Mr. Cameras. >> Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, Mr. Um, >> the fourth district is uh undergoing some transportation uh work, particularly on Jenk Road uh to make it much safer for pedestrians and drivers alike. West over Hills Elementary is on

093Jenk and one of the proposed considerations is creating an actual parking lot as part of that work. Those of you who have visited WTover Hills know that teachers and staff park on what I think is generously called a parking lot, but is really um some uh modicum of asphalt and a lot of grass. And um and so we have partnered with the city to do some design work to identify what it would cost and it would be about half a million to one million uh to out that parking lot of a kiss and ride loop for parents so that they don't have to stop on bank which further complicates things for them their kids and of course for traffic and so I know this is a a passion not just of Mr. Rug but also

094of Mr. hedge. So certainly if it is the board's uh uh desire, you can add it to the CIP. Miss Ricard, >> thank you. Um I just wanted to thank my colleagues for their diligence with this and the administration for answering all their questions. Um, I think we need to continue to work towards being as transparent as we can about this budget process. I also think tonight we had such a powerful thing highlighted of what happens when we do cut services and that is with our chronic absences when we cut those roocalls and texts. And it's so funny you say that because we've had the flu and the stomach virus through our house and I actually thought, "Oh, that's weird. I didn't get the calls that my children were absent." um that those cuts should

095not happen. And so I would also like us to go back and look at the budget and are there cuts like that that have happened that are really hurting our families and our children. Um because I would like to see that those robocalls and texts need to happen. Our children need to be in school and our families need to know and things get busy. >> Thank you. Does anybody have any remaining time left that they would like to use? I have two seconds and a lot to say, but I will email it. Okay. All right. Thank you so much for a robust discussion and again, thank you to the administration for the hard work they put into this proposal. All right. We still have a a lot of things ahead of us, so we're going

096to have to move in super responding speed at this point. Um 6.01 01 receive an update on Richmond High School for the Arts. >> Thank you, Madam Chair. I promise I will be as quick as possible. We have our normal update on Richmond High School for the Arts. Um, I wanted to provide some updates on some of the progress. We remain on track for opening. Um you can uh you can see from the presentation some of the work that's been happening in the last month since the last update that we provided including some pictures that show from the aerial view a real school with a courtyard that you can see and you can already imagine students using it. Uh some of the stair work that's been happening. You can see in that courtyard that you

097could see from overhead some of the built-in work that we have for student use. Uh in addition, this is one of our science labs and what the mockout for the entire collection would look like for use for chemicals and other uh science equipment that they have. The one thing though that I wanted to highlight as a circle back from last month was the uh decision that we have in front of us regarding the field. Currently the plan is to put a grass field in. We are receiving some community feedback that there is a desire for a turf field similar to what happened at Hugenot when the city built that school on behalf of RPS. What you see here is a very high level takeaway of some of the uh questions that I heard last month

098from this group. Namely, what are the sources and what are the specific differences in injury rates? What you'll see is the safest option is well-maintained grass. By that I mean European football style beautiful perfect fields. That is rarely what anyone has unless you are a professional organization. The next best option is um a new generation turf. There are lots of studies there are lots of meta studies on this but in general imagine you have a thousand student high school and you would expect let's say 10 students to have some sort of serious injury in a given year. If that would be what you would have in that perfect European style grass on a high quality turf field, that would go from 10 to likely 16. So it's a 1.6% increase on a poorly maintained grass.

099And typically uh grass that's used multiple seasons by multiple uh sports get in that position pretty quickly. That has anywhere the studies range but anywhere from a three to a six time increase. So that would go from 10 in that ideal grass to between 30 and 60 for grass. Um we've also cited some additional information uh in some of the materials around the environmental impact uh which is certainly not insignificant of a turf field rather than grass. Uh and then we wanted to make you aware that we are uh we've put together a survey that will be going out to students, community members, and families to get their input. It will include a highle summary of the safety data of the environmental impact and it will also show what some of our surrounding areas are

100doing. One of the things that we're seeing very consistently is our surrounding areas are consistently putting in turf fields. And so we want to provide all of that information in a concise summary and then get feedback. In particular, in addition to families and communities, we want to make sure that we're specifically hearing from student athletes and the staff who work in athletics at RHSA. So, we'll have that information at the next board meeting. One of the things that I also wanted to make clear, unfortunately, is even though the field is part of phase 2, we need to make concrete decisions around any changes to what we would want to put in place for phase 2 by March. So, I know that does put a lot of pressure on this group to make a decision at

101the next boarding meeting. We will have that additional information and community feedback. I would encourage you to let me know if there's anything else you would want to have by next month to be prepared to make that decision. But because of our timelines for when phase 2 would begin, we really do need do need to make notification of any changes by that timeline. Any questions that you all have on that? >> Will you have the survey results by that time? >> Yes, ma'am. >> Okay. Thank you, >> Mr. Jafari. Then Miss Rzzy. >> Thank you, Mr. couple of questions. Of course, you know, I'm still unpacking with a heck of a better description. Where are we? Were I know this is phase two that we're talking about. Were there monies already allocated for it or

102is that what we're looking for from us basically to to allocate pick a plan and allocate the money to pay for it? >> Great question, Mr. Jafari. We uh we would the money that we would need what we currently have allocated is for a grass field. And so we do have additional unassigned funds from the capital improvement plan. The roughly $200 million trunch of money that we received from the city for large capital projects every 5 years. We do not have all of that money officially accounted for. And so if we were to move in this direction, we would draw from that fund, which would of course mean that for future construction projects like Woodville or um our Mory Street property, we would have less of those funds for those other projects. But this would

103not come from operating funds, which was the discussion of the last uh agenda item. >> Okay. And another point, um, you you referenced that surrounding localities you find are going with turf field. Do we already also have information on what's the level of upkeep and recurring cost maintenance? I think those things are critical as well. Uh, it's my understanding as one of my colleagues found out recently, the field at Hugenot is deteriorating at a much quicker rate than expected. And so I think we need to have all of those aspects when we when we begin to consider this and which way we go with this. And my last my final point on this is um we've already allocated what it takes for a grass field. Again, consistent with what we representing in that we are

104cash struck here. We we we don't have the money. want to be definitely sensitive to what the people in the communities want. The constituents want to be on par making sure that they have a feel that is on par with Hugan out or anybody else. But in the final analysis, we have to also balance that we're being responsible in the moment. And so we can't very well tell people that we are strapped for a lot of money and then just go out. And I just think that and to my colleagues, we just need to be mindful of this. you know, sometimes it's just difficult, you know, right out the gate, uh, go with what we have and leave the door open to come back and revisit it. >> One minute. >> But, um, in terms

105of just waiting into what we are presently dealing with and trying to pull money from every place and trying to secure funds, I just want us to be mindful when we go out and things we represent to other people and the things that we entertain because sometimes in the end, we were put here to make the tough call. and making a tough call does not always mean that you can just satisfy everybody in the moment. Thank you. >> Thank you, Miss Rizzie. >> Thank you, Madam Chair. Um, and thank you for this, Mr. Harrell. Um, a field a turf field would be what around three million. >> Yeah, last month we provided a high level summary that was around $3 million. That was a 12-year estimate that tried to capture the initial uh installation cost,

106the annual upkeep, and the 12-year. There's typically about a 12-year lifespan to a turf field, which is about a half million dollars for a replacement of just the field. Uh, and so that would be the the 12-year cost. >> What's the initial investment? >> It would be roughly $2 million. Well, you know, I think as far as I'm concerned, the community will make this determination. Um, you know, for me, the highest priority is student safety. When I argue for grass, you know, I still love grass. I mean, I just love grass, right? Well, not necessarily grass, but natural things, right? So, um, even though I have that love, I mean, I my priority would be student safety. at the time. What I was looking for evidently was the data related to super well-maintained grass. If

107we can't do that, then I think it is um something we need to consider. >> Thank you. Thank you for the work in this. Oh, do you have a question, Mr. Pipal? >> Thank you, Madam Chair. Uh just to circle back, so you said we are currently funded for grass field. If we wanted to pivot to turf, we would have to pull that out of a construction budget. So, we would have to allocate that for this purpose. >> Yes. >> So, from an opportunity cost standpoint, what other things could we allocate that money towards from a CIP standpoint? Um, given that there's a high school in my district with poorly maintained grass fields currently and no lights to practice by, I think there are some other community members that might want to get in line

108for said opportunity costs. Just putting that out there. Um, thank you for the work on this. Uh, and you did deliver in terms of the questions that we asked with the exception of one. I had requested uh if you could explore perhaps repurposing um for example, I gave the example of BCU. Um, they tend to replace their turf fields uh at a you know, sometimes other sports fields in different areas. Have we explored perhaps repurposing turf that is gently used um just for the sake of our fields if that's even feasible? I don't know, but I was just interested in in getting some information about that because I know that that is done across the country. >> Yes, we did look into that. Um it is not outside of the realm of possibility, but a

109lot of stars have to to align. So the the main star is that it is rare for a turf field to come out of use when it is not at the end of its useful life. So you would have to find a situation where a an NFL team has just decided they want something they want blue turf instead of green and so they're two years in. And even then there are a lot of caveats around how much time you can get out of that if it is repurposed in that way because it's not just the turf there is an infill that makes it very difficult to but if the stars were to align that would be possible and so we're certainly looking into that but I just I want to make sure the expectations are

110clear. >> I appreciate that. So whoever is hosting the Super Bowl this year I'm sure they replace their turf field. Come see RPS because we need your turf. Um, no, but seriously, thank you so much for your time. And I would just again, I I shared this last time. I think we should be innovative, but it should be balanced with fiscal responsibility. And I can scream all day long about the needs in the ninth district. Um, we do have parking lots that are not parking lots. We park on grass and in certain areas we have potholes, all types of things. So, um, all of it is just equally as important. So, thank you. Next up, 6.02. Oh, I'm sorry, Mrs. Jafar. I didn't see your hand raised. Do you have time left? >> 36 seconds.

111>> Yeah. And u oftentimes when we speak about artificial turf, it kind of creates this this this mental impression that it's forever and always. um help us dispel the myth that you know you you have to replace this this this is a high dollar replacement it's a high dollar initial investment and a high dollar replacement so if you could just before you set it up could you kind of like share some light on the recurring factors here >> yes sir and this is exactly what Hugenat High School is facing right now the useful life typically is between 10 and 12 years sometimes you can get a little bit more than that and to replace just the turf itself is typically about a half million dollars or at least currently that's the the price tag. >>

112Thank you. Moving right along to 6.02. Receive an update on Woodville Elementary School. >> Hello again, board members. Um, I'll keep this one particularly short because Woodville has made a lot of progress before I came. Um and so it is still at a place where once we have full funding for it, we'll be able to move forward with it. Uh but the challenge that we are facing currently is the uh we received a very large state grant from their uh SCAP program. That program has been incredibly beneficial to Richmond public schools as well as other schools across the state. There is a timeline on when we need to use those funds. And so now we are facing a difficult time crunch. We were given $12.4 million uh to support with our uh process for Woodville.

113Similarly, we were given $20 million for our Mory Street Altria building through that same program. But both of those programs require you to have the money in hand to move forward with the project and very clear timelines to meet. we now find ourselves in a position that we do not have enough capital dollars to move forward on both programs simultaneously. So we have been working with the state to explore our different options. Some of those options are listed in front of you in the last couple days as we've been talking to the state. We've we've seen some developments. So for option one requesting that we repurpose that for other purposes. We got a very hard no. That is not an option that we can consider. The third option, release the funds back to the Commonwealth.

114They'd love that. We would hate that. So, in my mind, that is not a viable option. The other two options we've looked at are could we rush to encumber as much money as possible and hope things go well, or could we rep prioritize Woodville to happen before Amari Street, but then we imperil the $20 million in funding that we received from the state for the exact same reasons. Since uh we initially put this proposal together, we we've put together and uh Superintendent Cameas has sent a letter to the state regarding option number two uh requesting flexibility with the timeline for when these funds would be required, particularly in light of our hopeful anticipation of the 1% tax fund increase. Of course, that would both need to be passed at the state level and supported by

115a local ballot initiative. And so, but if that were to happen, that would unlock significant funds that would allow us to move forward with both projects and would allow the state to use the funds for what they were hoping they would be used for, namely Woodville and Mory Street simultaneously. And so my proposal would be that we move with option number two. We move forward with requesting that the state give us additional time recognizing that that is far from guaranteed but also recognizing that we have had somewhat positive reception to the initial outreach floating that as an option. >> Miss Burke, >> thank you for this report. I'm I'm looking at Mr. Matthew Stanley in the back of the room. Number one, because of the excellent advocacy meeting we had earlier. What can we do?

116And maybe he needs to be a part of that. Not now, but at some point. We need to get that money for Woodville. It's no ifs, ands, and buts about it. I appreciate the superintendent writing the letter. I cannot imagine someone saying no, but I don't know. We really don't. Now, did we just get this grant or is this the one left from last year or earlier before you came on board? >> Yes, we received this before I came on board. >> So, this money has been sitting there. Has it been sitting there and we didn't have enough money to make up the difference to match it? Is that what happened? So, we didn't have it back. Okay. So, we need to do some strong advocating. Very, very, very strong. So, I guess that's another

117conversation later because Woodville, we have to get that school built. I'm sure you've been in Woodville. If not, I would love to have the opportunity to travel through the school. It's clean, but it's despicable. It's clean. It's clean, but it's despicable in terms of our students dealing with what was in the 50s when it was built, still there in place, but they, you know, how we make things look good, but it's not good. It's not good. So, whatever we can do on our end, what's the timeline here by when? >> We have sent the letter already. Uh we are hoping to get a positive response. Um but we would need to have construction at least started by 2027 uh to be able to have unless we were given an extension. So we can get started

118if we get the this grant because we won't have enough money to move forward after that though, right? We to be able to move forward, we would need to be to have full funding for the project. I would not feel comfortable us moving forward with a construction project with no possibility to have or no at least no clear pathway to having full funding for that project. Thank you for your report. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. P. >> Thank Thank you, Madam Chair. Um, is there is first of all, none of this is surprising because this is in statute, so we can't repurpose the funds. It's very much in in written in the law. Is there an option five? Can we reapply for the funds when we do have the funding for Woodville? >> Yes. However,

119we are hopeful that they will consider the option two and allow us to move forward at a later date once we know that legislation will help us in retrieving the funds that we need for the new builds. So, thank you. >> Thank you. And madam chair, I made a critical error in my last presentation. I skipped a slide. Um, I don't know if it's possible for us to go back so I can cover that last piece. Uh, there is a construction challenge that we're having at RHSA. >> Oh, yes, we do need to discuss that. >> Yes, >> I wish it wasn't that critical, but it is. >> My apologies. >> Yes. No, go, please. Understood. >> Uh, so the slide that I missed, I'm sorry. In my mind, it was on this second slide,

120which makes no sense. And unfortunately, tonight I am the bearer of unpleasant news across the board. So, I apologize for that. But uh back in 2024, we had an issue that was created through a series of events as it relates to the Richmond High School for the Arts project. So this is the last slide. Um to make a overly complicated story as short as possible. In an effort to expedite the construction at RHSA, there are several steps in the construction process. The first of which is a site preparation process. The second of which is putting together essentially a package for potential biders for construction on what is true about the site so that they can get accurate estimates of what their timeline and costs would be because we tried to move as quickly through those

121two processes as possible. The initial phase that site preparation phase was not fully completed by the time we put the package together to bid out for contractors. We then selected a contractor who started work and found that what they had been told in the original packet was not fully accurate. And that created a series of cascading delays that in an effort to stay on time, they had to make changes that created real costs for them. This then continued to bubble up and now we we are at a place where we essentially have two options. Our contractors, who have been fantastic partners at RHSA, have come to us with a proposal for a change order totaling $270,000 to account for some of these delays that incurred real costs. You can see how they've broken the costs

122out here. Option one is we can move forward with consideration of that project, which would need your consideration and vote at a future board meeting. Option two is that we can contest this. We could say no. That could have two possible consequences. Consequence number one is that could very significantly delay the timeline. Consequence number two is our contractor could, and I can't speak to how strong their case would be if they chose, they could move forward with a claim against us saying because we did not have this information, we want to be compensated for the full cost of the delays and the costs incurred. They have at this point estimated that that full accounting of cost is northwards of a million dollars. And so my recommendation is that we move forward with this $270,000 change

123order, which would make up for the initial costs incurred by the incorrect or incomplete initial package and the additional costs that our contract partner provided. That is the short version. and I'm happy to take any questions, but uh and again that would not come out of general funds. That would come out of that same capital project fund. Uh and so again to the trade-off piece that would come out of future projects that we could do, but seems to be our best option. >> Any thoughts? Miss Burke, I appreciate you're doing giving us all the details and that's that's not that bad. the way you said you were the bearer of bad news. This could be worse. So, um I'm in favor of having a conversation or moving forward at some point when permissible to entertain

124that, but 247,000 you could have said 2.5 million or whatever else. So I I think for where we are and also knowing the transition with your coming on so I don't know what happened. Uh but I'm that's the recommendation that you have as of this point and you've done your homework. I don't know whether we need to wait until tomorrow or vote on it in March. Wait till March. Okay. All right. But thank you for your >> Mr. PL. >> Uh thank you Madam Chair. Just a quick question, perspective question, because I don't know what the total on RHSA is going to be. Is it north of 200 million? >> No, well below that. >> Well, okay. So, I was trying to figure out, are we looking at So, say a 2% cost. >> No.

125Uh gosh, I'm putting me on the spot for math. >> If it were $270 million would be a 1% cost overrun, >> Mr. cameras. >> Yeah. Is there a math? >> That's good to the math teacher. >> Yeah, it's about a 22%. Okay. Just perspective. Thank you. Appreciate that. >> Just to be shared. I hate to say devil's advocate, but who messed this up? I mean, that's $270,000 is a lot of money. And I just if this is the route we have to take, I'm fully supportive of it. But is there not a way to ask whoever messed it up to fix it? I mean, I just just want to understand. >> Yes. As best as I can understand, the uh process broke down because we wanted to move forward with the construction before complete

126site preparation was done. I I don't know the specific person in question. Thank you. I mean, just if nothing else, there's a coaching opportunity here for that decision to have been made. Yeah. Thank you. >> Okay, moving right along to 6.03. Receive an update on the timeline of the renaming of Armstrong High School. Ah, thank you. Uh, good evening everyone. I will try to be brief. Um, we are at the very beginning of our renaming process for uh, Armstrong's transformation into Armstrong Kennedy High School. Um, and so just as an overview, we've done about six renamings, I think, in the last nine year, nine or so years. The last four I've been here for, a renaming will typically require a new logo design, um, an acquisition and replacement of branded materials within the school. So,

127for instance, if you go through and you see flags that have the room number and the school's crests on them, um, uniform replacement, um, for athletics, band, what have you, um, and a marquee and lettering update. Um, we did a little bit of diving into the finances and in 2024 when we renamed Francis Mcclenny, Lois Harrison Jones, RHSA and Dogwood, we did budget about 25,000 per school, not including uniform replacements at RHSA, which ran about $50,000. Um, please note at this time we do not yet have any data on costs unique to Armstrong. I took a quick look around. I think perhaps the lettering on the marquee may be a cost um that we should have our eye on um given what we saw at Dogwood Dogwood and the comparisons there. Um and none of

128our past renamings have included any updates to athletic facilities such as scoreboards, things like that. This is just strictly the building. Um what we are looking for if we are working backwards from a summer 2027 renaming alongside the start of the 2728 school year is this summer is when we would be doing a detailed cost analysis development really looking into what specifically is going to need to go into those costs. Um, in the fall we'd be looking at a logo iteration selection, um, making sure that's finalized, take an inventory of the branding upgrades, and then in winter move towards procurement of designed materials. Again, with some of these having quite long time frames, and we'd have a party um, in summer 2027 ahead of the first day of school. >> Thank you, Mr. Cameras. >>

129Thank you, Madam Chair. I just wanted to publicly note that the chair was correct about the timeline. I had mistakenly said that it was the summer of 26 but it is in fact the summer of 27. The question was raised well then why do we need the money budget for this coming year is because we will spend those funds in preparation for the summer of 2027. >> Wait, but I was looking for more money to come back. So we still can't Okay. Well, I guess we both were right, >> Miss Burke. >> Thank you. This is great news. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Just for clarification reasons, we're going to get a new marquee because there isn't a marquee there. >> That is a good question. That I think is probably budget dependent. I

130was talking about the name on the top of the school, which is similar to what we had at Dogwood, and that replacement ran us about $7,000. Um, but we have not done any cost estimates. whatsoever at this point and those based on masonry and a lot of things that Patrick would speak a lot more cleanly toward articulately about are really nuanced estimates. >> I think it's the only school in the city of Richmond that doesn't have a marquee noted. >> Yeah. And my second question is regarding the logo. We're not changing the logo. Correct. >> We are not changing any of the mascots or anything like that. thought we would most likely have a simple redesign just to make sure the forming is there. >> Well, let's get started. Thank you for your report. >>

131Thank you for the update. >> Moving right along to 6.04. Received the legislative update. >> Absolutely. Uh good evening madam chair, superintendent cameras, schoolboard members. Matthew Stanley, the director of advocacy and outreach. This is so lovely. Um, thank you so much for all of your support. Um, I felt my ears burning when I was downstairs for a moment. Um, the general assembly is off and running. I am going to try to keep our update tonight brief, but please know there is so much information, so many pieces of legislation that have been introduced. We're currently tracking over 250 bills and budget amendments out of the more than 1500 pieces of legislation. I'm sorry, the more than 2,000 pieces of legislation that were introduced and over a thousand pages of budget amendments. Um, so we're tracking about

13210% of what's going through the general assembly right now. Um, we have been very busy uh tracking all of our bills, assessing all of them for impact on the division. Um, and keeping all of those notes logged in a wonderful new system called Fast Democracy uh that we are sharing with the city of Richmond's governmental affairs director. Um, I've attached a bill list for you tonight that does have different positions that we have gone ahead and tagged to those bills and we are actively sharing those positions on our priority bills and bills that we support or bills that we oppose with legislators. Um, I do want to run through a very quick couple updates tonight on our biggest RPS legislative priorities. So, we will start with school construction and modernization. Um so first of all

133we asked the general assembly to renew the commission on school construction modernization and I am very pleased to let you know uh that HB644 from delegate ask you has proceeded to extend that commission by another five years as well as doing one really important thing which is uh requiring the commission to create a 10-year capital roadmap for the state to continue to support localities with addressing the critical construction and modernization needs across the state. um currently estimated at $26 billion and growing. Um there have been some other bills uh related to uh things that uh the commission on school construction has considered and helped generate in the past. Um some different uh provisions with the school construction assistance program, the grant we were just talking about with Woodville. Um unfortunately, there was a bill that

134died that would have allowed us to use those grants for bond service uh for debt to proceed with construction. So unfortunately that did not proceed. Um but we're continuing to follow several other pieces. Um our second and uh I'm sorry I would be remiss if I did not recognize our legislative chair, Miss Ricard. Um she came and testified uh for us on behalf of the HB644 in the House Rules Committee last week. Thank you, Miss Ricard. Um, on the topic of letting voters fund modern school facilities, this is in reference to the 1% sales tax referendum for localities to uh be able to approve and let voters decide whether to initiate new sales tax. Um, this legislation is moving forward. Um, HB334 has now passed the House of Delegates and uh we were very happy

135to testify on behalf of that. the uh Henriiko citizen actually picked up some of our testimony that day um in sharing a little bit about our push for uh better support for localities with school construction um on uh per pupil infrastructure grants. Uh Delegate Cousins introduced a budget amendment at our request that would provide a $500 million one-time per pupil allocation across the state. Um she provided testimony and presented that budget amendment to the House Appropriations Committee last week. I included a link to her video testimony in the slide deck today if you would like to watch. Um on the next big topic of reforming uh Virginia's K12 funding formula, um this topic is getting significant discussion this year. There is bipartisanwide consensus that it is time for Virginia to update its funding formula to

136a student-based funding formula and adequately fund our schools. Um, now there is still concern that this year they might not have all of the revenue necessary to do the full uh implementation of those recommendations. There's also just discussion about the need to spend a little bit more time fully developing that new student-based formula. However, in the meantime, legislators have proposed some very meaningful steps towards moving towards that formula. Um HB92 and SB90 are the two vehicle bills that are being considered and what they would do is that they would expand and codify our add-ons. Uh so first of all the atrisisk add-on program that serves our economically disadvantaged students um that would be codified and right now it's just a budget language. So it would go into Virginia law as part of the standards of

137quality. Um there is an add-on for for English learner students uh that does not currently exist. So, we would receive an additional per pupil allocation for every English learner student. And of course, also our students with disabilities. There there was a a small add-on that was added last year. Um, and this legislation would also codify that add-on and provide some additional investment. Um, the total costs of these uh these bills that is currently estimated would be $740 over the $740 million over the two years of the bianium. and and based on some initial analysis from the Commonwealth Institute for Fiscal Analysis, we believe that um they would immediately bring an additional $9 million in state matching funds uh for those add-ons. Um so we are following those very closely. Um there is some language around

138maintenance of effort that is being very closely looked at. Um legislators are concerned about uh the use of using new funds to build budget holes. Um, so we're paying very close attention to that language, um, and working with legislators to ensure that we have the flexibility that we need to to to make sure that, uh, we're expanding services in a way that meets our students needs. Um, on the topic of the local composite index, um, we are tracking several pieces of legislation that do some some little tweaks to the LCI formula. Generally, we are opposing those pieces of legislation right now um because they are not pieces of legislation that would necessarily help Richmond public schools. And one of the key criteria for doing LCI reform is that it has to be done during a

139very big infusion of new revenue. Uh that way we avoid the winners losers situation of what can happen when you tinker with that LCI formula. So we do expect the LCI discussion to be part of the bigger funding uh reform discussion over the next year. Um those bills as well as some other bills dealing with uh funding reform have been sent to the general assembly's joint subcommittee on elementary and secondary education funding. That was a joint subcommittee that was created two years ago after the JARK report came out. Um and legislators are going to be using that as a vehicle to dig in and consider what the changes could be over the year before our next session. Um, we are also continuing to have a lot of conversation about just the the the weak points

140in the LCI formula and suggesting uh significant consideration of some of the other indices that could be used uh like the revenue capacity index or the local fiscal stress index. And oh, I keep hitting the wrong button. And then finally, our third big priority, strengthening student mental health supports. Um there are a number of bills uh in the general assembly right now right this year that do deal with student mental health. Um first of all HB195 and SB33 um provide a little more flexibility and at risk add-on funding to make to allow those funds to be used to address students mental and physical health um using uh including the hiring of registered nurses or advanced practice registered nurses, nurse practitioners. Um so we have happily supported that legislation um supporting Delegate McQueen uh with her

141bill. Um, in regards to Medicaid alignment, Senator Shrina Vassan um has a bill that would require the DOE to employ two school-based Medicaid billing navigators. Um, we are very excited about that legislation. Um, our nurse manager, Miss Candice Bourne, as well as our Medicaid coordinator, Miss Ronnie Wilds, came and testified at the Senate's public education subcommittee last week, and that bill passed out of committee and will be heard by the full committee on this Thursday. Um and then we're continuing to follow uh many different budget amendments and different types of pilot programs that support community partnerships. Um one of those specifically is a $2.5 million a year grant program that would provide additional community schools implementation and planning grants. Um and I think there's a little bit more in a presentation from uh Miss Parks

142tonight that will talk a little bit more about how the division is currently approaching community schools models. Um I want to I'm going to go quick. So, I just want to recognize some of the awesome advocacy that's already happened this session. Um, as you all know, we had a wonderful virtual advocacy day today since the division was operating virtually. I thought it was a hit. Um, I think it is something that we will build into our advocacy programming every year because of the accessibility uh that it allowed for people who might not normally be able to come down to the general assembly. Um, we uh had over 63 participants and the average person was logged on for three and a half hours. It was a total five hour Zoom call today. Um, so I'm tired,

143but we had a great time. Um, I have to give a really big shout out to the Richmond Education Association and especially Emma Clark for her wonderful organizing this session. Um, one of the very first advocacy activities out of the gate this year was the REA hosted a light brigade where we held the fund our schools sign over Interstate 95 welcoming legislators back to Richmond. Mrs. Cheryl Burke actually drove under us while we were holding those signs up and saw the dancing letters. Um, and then we also held a screen printing workshop um, in collaboration also with the REA at Studio 23 um, printing t-shirts and the posters that you all are sharing with us tonight. Um, and then we've already done a number of uh, general assembly visits. Our interfaith advisory council joined us

144during the very first week of session. We had wonderful meetings with delegate Carr, Delegate Cousins, Senator Jones, Senator Bagby, as well as delegate Schmidt. um really excited to share with them how RPS is on the rise and thanking them for their recent investments in public education these past years. Um for example, the general assembly has been continuing to invest in the atrisisk add-on program um which has significantly benefited RPS and we believe that the results show that their investments work. So we are starting all those conversations with a big thank you to them and asking them to keep their foot on the pedal. Um, leaving you tonight with just a couple uh quick updates on what to expect next. Um, first of all, on Monday, February 16th is the really big Virginia Education Association lobby

145day. That is the day in which there will be a rally on Capitol Square and we want to see a sea of red. Um, please encourage your constituents, your colleagues, your friends, your family members, bring the whole family out. Um, come and wear red and join us at the rally that day. Um, it is the day to show up and and make our voices heard. Um, and then starting this week, we are going to start sending some advocacy action alerts uh with some form letter uh formlet letter uh campaigns. Uh thanks to the system that the city of Richmond helped procure for us, we were able to send those uh formlet letter campaigns for the first time through a professional system that helps users identify who their legislators are and get their gets their messages

146to the right people. Uh, if you would like to sign in, sign up for those formlet letter advocacy action alerts, um, I do need you to scan that QR code or visit our site at rvaschools.net/advocacy and fill out that quick Google form so that I can send those advocacy action alerts direct to your inbox. Um, and then on February 22nd, the House and the Senate will release their respective budget proposals. That is when we will have a much clearer idea of what we can expect in further state funding this year. Um there might still be some compromise that would happen in a conference committee after those budgets are released, but we will at least know what our kind of new baseline is uh since the governor's budget was released in December. Um and then in

147early March, the general assembly will adopt that conference budget. Um they will wrap up their consideration of all legislation and they are planned to adjourn on March 14th. Um that is of course pending agreement on the budget. that does sometimes run over, but we are hoping with uh unified control of the general assembly and the uh governor's uh mansion that we will have some good agreement, a good swift agreement so that localities have plenty of time to plan their budgets um and adjust as as we will be doing this spring. Um I want to make sure that I acknowledged everyone. I did not. I need to acknowledge uh Mr. Harold for joining us for testimony at the House Rules Committee as well. He'll be joining me tomorrow in the House Education Committee uh regarding some

148of the other school construction assistance program bills. Um and I would also love to acknowledge Luis Martinez and Jen Blackwell. They came and advocated with the Senate Public Education Committee on legislation um that would uh enhance language access for our families as well as protect the rights of our immigrant families. So, I just want to give a big shout out to everybody that is coming down. If you would like to join at any day, any time, please let me know. text me, email me, um, and I will join you down at the general assembly to conduct visits. Um, so I think that wraps it up for tonight. Happy to take any questions. >> Great job. Thank you so much. I attended We'll talk more about it tomorrow, but great job today for the virtual advocacy

149day. Thank you. >> Thank you, Mix. >> Okay, we do not have any first read policy committee recommendations, so we're moving right along to 6.06. 06 received for first read contracts over 100K because of the hour and this is the first read. Would encourage everyone to just take a look if there are no outstanding questions now would just encourage folks to uh shoot an email um with anything additional any thoughts or feedback. Wonderful. Um we'll move right along to 6.07 07 receive uh for I can't see my own handwriting. Receive for review multi-year school support plans. It was an amended item that I had to write in. So, good evening. Thank you for allowing us to add the multilingual plans as a part of um the adjustments. Um in January um there were a lot

150of new um there was a lot of new things that Virginia Department of Education required and one of them was that for our school improvement grants that we needed to bring them to the board. We've been doing them for quite some time but now they need to come to the board. Do you have any questions? Thank you so much. Moving right along to 6.08 to receive an update on ICE protocols. Good evening. >> All right. Well, good evening everyone. My name is Dr. Jennifer Blackwell. I'm the director for multilingual learner success. I'm here to provide an update on our immigration response um and the measures that we've been taking to protect our students um and our families. All righty. So just to ground us uh quickly um this time last year we really started um

151um looking at our collaboration between the academics office, the wellness office and of course the um engagement office to really establish a strong foundation. We created our immigration resource hub and our rapid response team and really started collaborating um across RPS and across um our city offices as well to make sure that there was a comprehensive support plan um in place. Um we were also um one of the first uh divisions in Virginia to update our school board policy. So I wanted to thank you all for that. Um to uh strictly ensure the privacy protections and of course um continue this shared message that our superintendent came always says we love you here. Um and that is still the message that we send to all of our families today. Um moving into for this school

152year we have seen um a shift. We've reported a decrease in our newcomer encro enrollment and we also have to acknowledge the heightened fear and the anxiety um within our immigrant community um as also evidenced by the uh rise in the chronic absenteeism rate that we saw today. Um, but in response, we have bolstered our community resources. And just last Thursday, I was uh so proud um to um stand with our um school board uh chair Fernandez and our superintendent Camas and uh the standing strong together town hall. Thank you so much for that wonderful opportunity. Um and it just really reinforces the protocols um and the protections that we have um put in place um for our students and our families. All righty. So, very quickly, we do have our privacy assurance here. Um,

153Richmond Public Schools does not, shall not, will never collect or inquire about the immigration status of our students or their families during enrollment or at any other time. And we also strictly adhere uh to FURPA. Um, and uh, we will not share any student records with uh, immigration customs enforcement without a valid subpoena or a signed court order. For our emergency preparedness, um, unfortunately, schools are no longer considered sensitive um, locations. However, RPS continues to be a safe place. Um, our protocol is strict. Um, ICE agents are restricted um from enforcement actions on school property and they must present a judicial warrant. An administrative warrant is not sufficient for entry um on RPS grounds. And I'd also like to point out that school property extends to bus stops, playgrounds, sports fields, and schoolled events um

154as well. um for the RPS policy for the school responsibilities. Um everybody goes through our visitor screening um here in um RPS. Um and um we this does not change for um immigration customs um enforcement. Again, there absolutely has to be um a judicial warrant. Um, and if uh there is not a judicial warrant that can be produced, then administrators are instructed to deny access uh and to provide the superintendent's uh contact information and uh document the interaction and immediately notify the superintendent's office that ICE tried to enter the building. uh in the case uh that there is a judicial warrant present. Um we also have a uh set of steps that would need to be taken. But I also want to clarify that no immediate action is taken by the school site alone. And

155in fact, um, the superintendent and legal counsel must be notified immediately and must be on school grounds to determine all next steps. The principal um, in this case, the principal will escort the agents to a private uh, waiting area. We will document everything, names, badge numbers, the supervisor's details. Um and most importantly, we will not provide any student um information and again we do not take any actions until the superintendent and legal counsel are present and they will be the ones to provide the next steps in that situation. Um one thing that you know I wanted to point out here really are um our RPS resources that we have developed over the past year. the resources that we have bolstered over um the past couple of months and also our community partnerships as well. So

156we do uh have the rapid response team which is the division level team created to support our students who are impacted by immigration um uh related uh stressors. Um and so we do have a rapid response email address. Uh furthermore, students in crisis can call the speak up phone number for immediate support um if they are uh left in a situation without a parent or a caregiver. We do have a sharable uh folder that um we launched last Thursday night. Um they are pretty much um downloaded resources from our uh national trusted organizations. Um and again we have shared those with our um families as well. Um I do want to um point out that we um have had for about a year now our RPS immigration resource hub which lives on our RVA schools

157website. Um and uh we also have our um RPS welcome center um as well for uh to support any of our new students um in the division. We have also launched our family network series which is sponsored by our welcome center and we are in the process of also scheduling monthly know your rights nights. Um to continue on with our RPS resources. We also have a new um bilingual resource here. Thank you so much um for the comm's team for partnering with us and getting this out um on such a short notice, but it's absolutely beautiful um a resource to help encourage update emergency contacts and family preparedness plans um in in the case of family separation. Um we always want to point out that language is never a barrier in RPS and encourage for

158families to utilize the family language line. We have our unbudsman for students and families who um can also provide um support for our families and our students that are uh in these situations. Um and then last but not least, we have our RPS love market that is available for any of our families um who are um in need and uh registration is uh required. Additionally, um those family engagement sessions will be um starting soon as well. And again, we will make sure that know your rights nights are part um of those family engagement sessions through the safe center. Um here is just a couple of links um for our national legal resources. Again, all of these are listed online at our RPS immigration resources hub. Um, and this is also the list of our RVA

159trusted um, community partners um, that were present with us last Thursday night. Broad Library, the International Rescue Committee, the Office of Immigrant Refugee Engagement, um, the our um, RHHD resource centers, Sacred Heart Center, and Waymakers Foundation as well. Links to email addresses and um phone numbers are on there um for your convenience. And just a couple of next steps, we um encourage for all of our families to check out the new bilingual resource package, update their emergency contacts, and create the family preparedness plans. Um we are in the process of looking at a virtual training for all RPS staff to view. That should launch within the next week. We will make sure that we provide a refresher course for all administrators um during this month's principles meeting. Um and we again are going to continue

160to um bolster our community partnerships and our um resources here in RPS. Um and again the message as um we stated remains the same. We love you here. We want to see all of our students in school every single day. RPS continues to be the safest place for our students. Take any questions. Thank you so much for your presentation. Are there any additional phenomenal thank you for being here tonight obviously there was a relevance for the topic um as shared. I'll share more tomorrow. So there's no getting into that now. But thank you tonight for the update. I thought Mr. Farooq you had a question. No. Okay. All right. Uh let's move right along to 7.01. Receive an update on care and safety. As she comes up, I also like to note that the materials

161for ICE protocols uh were parked under 7.01 vers 6.08. Thank you. Good evening. >> Good evening, board members. for tonight's care and safety presentation was just to provide you an update on the community school grant as you heard Mr. Stanley share. There's $2.5 million available that's up for grab and we intend to reapply for that and hopefully we'll be able to maintain all the phenomenal work that we're doing at Clark Springs. We've been able to serve over 3,000 families. Yes, that is a that's a huge celebration um within our love markets as well as some of the activities that we've been doing over there. So, we've had cooking classes. Um, certainly we'll have some group fitness activities that'll be coming along and then we've also had nutritional classes. And so, just prepping and things that

162families can do at home to make their meals a lot healthier. And, uh, we just ask for your continued advocacy. And then for the general public that's listening, we also need you. We need volunteers. Your time, your talent, and certainly your cash will help us to continue having our programs uh going. You can also donate to the Richmond Ed Fund. We've linked that into the presentation and then just spread the word and uh raise awareness of all of the positive things that we're doing at RPS. We really want it to be a safe center, a student and family engagement center. And so um some of our upcoming sessions we had to reschedu um but we're having Zumba, Zumba Kids. Um we're even going to have Salsa Jen. I'm sure you will enjoy that. So, we're

163looking forward to just great things coming out of Clark Springs. And hopefully your advocacy will allow us to have a permanent home within the division somewhere, not Clark Springs. We know that that's only a temporary space, but we do need your continued advocacy so we can continue to provide these services for our families. >> Thank you. For those who don't have access to this presentation, how would they go about volunteering or looking into signing up? We have a volunteer list that we send out through our volunteer team with Miss Nanette Bailey. But if they want to email the care and safety email address and we've actually created a email address for the safe center because Mr. Beasley told us the safe center information was overtaken the care and safety. So we have a separate email

164address now just to make sure that we can differentiate between the two. But if they want to reach out, they can even reach out to me r parks1 rvaschools.net and we will get them connected to one of our resources so that they can support. >> It might be helpful to um communicate that and remind as well. There's a lot of people that's been sent for ways to volunteer. So uh Miss Rizzie, >> in line with that, where uh do families go to like see your schedules and know exactly what's happening? So, we've been putting them out through Parent Square. It's the unfortunate thing is we've had horrible weather and so all of the sessions that were supposed to be last week were scheduled for this week and then the sessions for this week we've been

165working today to say when are we going to do it. The good news is we'll have things throughout the throughout the day as well as in the evening. So, there's some academic enrichment sessions um knowing the child fond process helping your student with math and literacy in the home. So they'll be a combination of things, but we put them out through parent square and they're also in the direct. >> Thank you, Mrs. Jafari. >> And your next love market is when? >> February 6. And we already have 459 families signed up. We can support up to 600 families. >> Mr. Baroo. >> Thank you, Madam Chair. I I saw that one of the goals was to address absenteeism. So I'm curious how I mean I think on paper it makes sense that these things would

166but how how are you seeing the impact like how do you know if it's actually improving absent? >> At this moment we don't have any data to prove that it is decreasing absenteeism but we are addressing barriers that we know contribute to chronic absenteeism. And so if families need clothing we have a clothing closet over there. Food of course we've actually helped families to reertify for their benefits. um as well as to reertify for housing through RHA and then also connect them with some of our mental health partners for some adult mental health support. >> Thank you. So we can now donate clothes as well. >> Absolutely. We'll take them. I'll come and pick them up. >> I I just donated a bunch, but I got you for the next time. Thank you. Okay. Um

167there is an amended item for 7.02. receive an update on uh SY 2526 calendar changes. >> Good evening. Um board chair I'm sorry for those that are following along. The calendar amendment information is under 4.01. Sorry, my apologies. >> All right, good evening board and superintendent. Thank you for having me. Um, I just wanted to start this off with a couple of reminders of our policy. Um, policy 7-76 includes our holidays. This does not include um indigenous people's day, but it is it already has been I didn't include it because I just yet because I forgot, but it is accounted for in our holidays. So, I just wanted to name that. Um if we could go to the next slide. Um just so you're aware of the holidays. Then also this is important at the

168very bottom of the policy. It says, "In the case of a school building being used as an election day voter precinct and voting location, impacted schools will be closed that day for students or students will attend school virtually from home. So, we have a potential closure and or virtual learning depending on um divi the division's decision on Tuesday, April 21st, 2026. This is a selected date for a voter referendum on statewide redistricting. I do know that that has been um placed on hold by a district court judge. However, um folks in the legislature have said that they plan to appeal. So, we're just trying to be ahead of the ball. So, I wanted to let you know that April 21st could potentially um be closure and or virtual learning day if that does move forward

169as 23 RPS schools are going to be used by the city as voter pre precincts. Democracy. Yes. So really, um, I know it's late, so uh, we just want to hop straight to the point of despite a lot of the amazing work of our families, our teachers, instructional staff, and building leadership over the past seven days to include tomorrow. Um, we know that in-person instruction is the best form of instruction for most of our scholars. And so, um, we would like to provide students with the opportunity to recover as much learning as possible due to our unprecedented weather event as it related to the the ice storm. Um, so that plus the impending potential closure andor additional virtual learning day on April 21st. Um, we would like to be as prepared as possible to prevent

170continued disruption to inperson instruction. Um, and so we have recommended that the following dates become in-person learning days. February 17th, March 20th, and April 6. You can see above the recommendation what those dates formally were. Um, so the February 17th date um does not require board approval because it is not a holiday. um that is a professional learning day that the superintendent has elected to turn into a full learning day. But the dates for March 20th and April 6 would require um board approval. I want to note this year Easter Monday falls the Monday after spring break. So the students would get the full week of spring break off the weekend and then that Monday. Um, we are proposing turning that Monday into a full learning day. >> Mr. Farooq, Miss Ricard. Thank you, Madam

171Chair. I have gotten at least 20 emails just in the last hour and a half about this. And so I have to ask a parent who really resents having to teleawwork while also my kids are at home virtually learning. How can we ask people to tell work on virtual days our staff but then also say just kidding that wasn't good enough we're also going to require you to be in person more often. It's the the dichotomy of that I think a lot of our folks are struggling with. >> Um I totally understand that that is very difficult. I have a 9-month-old. It is exceptionally difficult to tell work and um you know nap time and then also folks are teaching at the same time and supporting. Um so I'm definitely empathetic to that. really what

172I'm considering is what helps our students um what under what circumstances do our students learn best. Um and so I'm trying to make a recommendation that is student first um and making sure that they have as much opportunity to catch up as much as possible. So I definitely have empathy um and understand those feelings of frustrations um but also want to make sure our scholars have ample time in the classroom. >> Thank you, Miss Ricard. Thank you, Madam Chair. I'm just wondering what the budgetary implications of this are. Are these were holidays for them? Is this included in their 100 or 200 day, 230day contracts? How does that work? Mr. cameras. As best as I recall, these are not um there's no specific set number of holidays that are guaranteed in the contract. Go back

173and double check that. But I believe the contracts state that for various reasons calendar at this time and we'll verify we're not asking you to vote tonight but are asking for a decision tomorrow so that we can alert families on the time. At this time I don't think there is a budget >> Mr. Hedgep and then Miss Rizzy. >> Thank you Madam Chair. Thank you Dr. Greenbell for the for the presentation. Um I couple questions. One I wonder about the uh 17th and our chronic absenteeism because that's very close to now. I wonder if there are if families have made plans for that long weekend if that might uh impact that. Um my other question is about um I know we don't go for the days for accreditation but we go for the hour for

174the the minutes or hours the time. Uh how much built-in time do we have and how many of these days do we need to make up to make sure that we're still meeting the required time? >> Mr. Cameras. >> Yes. So, for the public, um, Virginia does not have a required number of days. There's a required number of hours. Um, because our school day is a little bit longer than many, uh, we have ample cushion. So, I do want to be clear, uh, this is not because we would not meet the state standards, but rather because I will speak as superintendent. I have grave concerns about the impact of this weather event on learning and the impact that's going to have on student outcomes at the end of the year. And I feel, though, of

175course I certainly defer to the board, that we need to do everything we possibly can to restore in-person instructional time that was lost despite the very best efforts of teachers uh doing what they can and our secondary folks attempting as best as they can to do asynchronous and then synchronous. But let us also recall that at the elementary level um there has not been and there will not be any synchronous teaching. So again, this is really born out of a desire to make sure our kids get the instructional time that I truly believe that they need to be successful. >> Thank you, Miss Rizzy. Mr. Hedge before we circle back to um Mr. Brew guy who have had um countless emails and just trying to weigh and judge the balance between obviously, you know, student

176outcomes, but also um there are a lot of teachers who quite frankly worked the entire time um virtually through one-on- ons, connect points, they they actually like worked. And so, um, just trying to trying to balance the two. I would also like to call out that, um, throughout this process, there was a level of inconsistency across the board with some of the schools. I've been told that there are at least two schools that did not go home with a Chromebook. Um and so my question is while this might address the concerns of those student outcomes, this these spec specific schools did not even receive a synchronous learning because the Chromebooks for whatever reason were not sent home. How can we avoid that from happening in the future? and what steps are we taking to resolve

177that actual missed work um for that level of learning. >> Thank you, Madam Chair. Uh yes, there were two middle schools that did not send home Chromebooks as they were directed and that has been addressed directly to those principles and that will not happen. The second part of that question is is that just lost time at this point or how do we how do we address the deficiency that quite frankly the students did not receive their education as they should have during that time period. >> Yes. I can ask Dr. Wiggins if she'd like to come up and speak to how those two schools were Yes, as Superintendent Cameron said, we have um those principles are aware that we will um move in that direction of sending home Chromebooks from this point on, but what

178they did do still was send homework for in parent square just as elementary and preschool did as well. So, those students received work, they just did not receive it um in synchronous lessons as the other middle schools did. Was this an executive decision made on behalf of those particular schools and just didn't go with what was instructed? I just want to make sure I'm pushing back on the right buttons here. >> Yes. So, um it has always been asked of middle and high school to send Chromebooks home, not just for synchronous learning, but just as part of what they do on a regular basis. So, um, for example, the first week, high schools even had office hours. Even though it wasn't synchronous, um, work necessarily, they still met with students and made sure that they

179kept students engaged. So, that should happen on a regular basis, which is why we asked, um, secondary schools to send home their Chromebooks. We will in the future, I will say, have to deal with um, we were onetoone as of COVID, but we don't have a budget line item in to continue to be one to one. And so I think that may be one of the things that the principles really worry about is, you know, sending Chromebooks home and then sometimes just even in school they can get broken or as they get older um they're not as um usable. We all know how computers are. So then we have to think about um how we're going to continue to fund our onetoone in the future um because our Chromebooks are getting older. So that's just

180something for the future. I appreciate that transparency, Mr. Farooq. >> Thank you, Madam Chair. During the ice apocalypse, I reflected on the death of the snow day, which is I have really fond memories of snow days as a child because my parents were also off and that was family time. and I had little to no time with my kids and honestly have never had a snow day with my kids unless it was on a weekend. Yet, even though I had to work, what's doesn't happen to me is I don't get additional days that I have to work because of the snow. But that is the case for our staff. Um, I just think if if we're going to insist on virtual work for our staff and for our kids, but then later say, "But that's

181not good enough," then we need to make some hard choices and maybe just let people have a snow day. If we're going to bring people back, we shouldn't be doing both. It's just not fair. I think it's it's overwhelming. I think it sends the wrong message. Thank you, Madam Chair. >> Thank you. Thank you all. do have one additional item I believe to be pulled out of other information for the evaluation committee report. Miss Burke, >> thank you, Madam Chair. Our evaluation committee met um before the snow and in your folder in your on your agenda, the attachments, there are two attachments there. Number one, the timeline has been updated and number two, a professional development form. Be mindful that Miss Ricard and Mr. Hatchpad did all the technology piece to make sure that we

182can meet our three objectives and one is professional development. So be mindful that it's effective January 2025 because that's when the board approved that we could approve those 2026. Excuse me. Thank you. 2026. Okay, thank you so much. So, the form is self-explanatory. I would like to add the goals back. I should have had that form as well. So, I'm going to send that to Madame Clerk. So, there are three things. The goals before us and eventually you will have copies like this, but not as large at every place metat with our goals on it to keep us focused and the professional development. We've already done two. We did the um at the rest at the the dinner that we had right before that one not the school board association we met on the budget

183with the superintendent and his team that was professional development. So that's to be included, right? That special retreat. And then we also had the conference, the legislative conference that just took place for those that attended Virginia School Board Association. And today, I think we can also include the advocacy that was professional development as well. So we're on the ball for documenting our hours. Now, as you all know, I'm documenting how many um how many our minutes we're spending on student achievement. And tonight, we're supposed to spend at least 30 minutes each meeting. I have zero. Am I incorrect or am I correct? Attendance is not student achievement. we had but if we had connected student achievement with the attendance piece but we didn't say anything about reading math. So moving forward that is one of

184our goals. That's one of our goals. Every meeting 30 minutes we're going to get good at this and at the end of the day our results are going to be so good we won't need these signs next year. Thank you. Well done. Thank you Miss Burke. Thank you to the committee for your hard work and keeping us on track. With that, Mr. Jafari, I believe you have a close session. >> Yes, Madam Chair, I do. I move that the school board of the city of Richmond convene in close session to discuss and consider the appointment of central office position as well as the performance of central office employees and to consult with legal counsel regarding the same issue as authorized by Virginia code section 2.2-3711A1 and A8. >> It's been moved by Mr. Jafari and

185seconded by Miss Burke. Madame clerk Mr. Pible. >> Yes. Mr. Ricard, >> yes. >> Mr. Farooq, >> yes. >> Mr. Hedgepath, >> yes. >> Mr. Rizzy, >> yes. >> Miss Burke, Mr. Jafari, >> Miss Fernandez, >> yes. >> Motion passes. >> Colleagues, we are now enclosed. If we can move expeditiously into the room so we can