001the Richmond City School Board Madam clerk roll call Miss door Miss White president miss Gibson here Mr Young president miss Rizzi here Dr Harris Muhammad Ms Burke president Ms page Miss Jones yeah we have a quorum thank you we will now have our translation services announcement good evening everyone if you need interpretation from English to Spanish please come see me I will be at the table in the back with the interpreters we have interpretation headsets for anyone that needs one interpretation in Spanish is also available for those watching this meeting through Zoom I will now make this same announcement in Spanish de Zoom remind everyone to please speak at a normal pace and keep their face no more than a couple of inches from the microphones so that the interpreters can hear everyone clearly thank
002you thank you we will now should we do that now we will we need to approve Ms page she will be joining us virtually so we need to vote on that Madam chair so move that school board authorized miss page to participate virtually second has been moved by Mr Young seconded by Miss Jones to have Miss page join us virtually Madam Clerk Ms door Miss White yes Miss Gibson yes Mr Young aye Mr Rizzy yes Dr Harris Muhammad Miss Burke yes Miss page Miss Jones yes motion passes we will now have our Pledge of Allegiance and followed by a Moment of Silence thank you you may be seated we are now at item 1.04 adoption of the agenda Madam chairman yes um I'd like to amend the agenda to include the nomination candidates for the
003shab school health Advisory Board um 2023 2025 term so um do you have Miss Jones a preference for where that gets added could we do it on the board business okay so we'll add 5.06 um presentation of nominees yes ma'am yes thank you madam chair I'd like to amend the motion of which Mrs Jones just stated to um move 5.01 from board business renaming the schools to um above right after public comment before it dreams for RPS okay all right can we do these as two separate I think it'd be easier to do them as two separate motions um because I have another addition to should we do them all at one time in one motion or who can it's your preference but if you believe they'll all be captured in the same motion vote
004yeah we can do that okay all right so 5.06 presentation of shab nominees we're going to um it's been proposed that we move 5.01 up and we could include it before dreams for RPS because we have people here who may not want to wait until late to hear about this so um could we call it four point 4.01 and move uh dreams for RPS to 4.02 okay any others any other okay and oh yes um uh proposing to add contract discussion enclosed is that correct Miss Lily yes Ms Lily I saw your email is that language added to the motion to go into close now yes I gave it to the clerk and it's um added to the motion that's going to be read tonight but you need to add it to okay the agenda
005at number I guess it would be still 13 no excuse me 12 I believe contract discussion correct and legal has already been added is that correct that is it okay no no that are you talking about the email that Mr camera sent this morning it's supposed to be the contracts discussion okay so rather than legal okay thank you anything else um I would like to add under board business um of 5.07 the superintendent has said that he would give us a briefing on the uh mayor's basketball proposal evening basketball add that anything else colleagues I put it at 5.07 that'll be fine thank you Madam chair I move that we amend the agenda to include share to include um moving the renaming of schools to include contracts and to include the city of Richmond's proposal
006for utilizing our gyms second so it's been moved by most by Ms Jones Madam Clerk Mr s white yes Miss Gibson yes Mr Young aye Mr Izzy yes Dr Harris Muhammad Miss Burke yes Miss page yes Miss Jones yes motion passes thank you madam Clerk and colleagues all right we are now at we need a motion to adopt this oh yes I'm sorry we need to move to adopt the agenda as amended all right all right so it's been moved by Ms Jones to adopt the agenda as amend it's been seconded by Mrs Burke Madam clerk Mr s white yes Miss Gibson yes Mr Young hi Miss Rizzy yes Dr Harris Muhammad Miss Burke yes Miss page Miss Jones yes motion passes thank you all right we will move now into public information and skipping
007things and putting glasses on okay item two recognition of student representative thank you madam chair and good evening everyone I am honored to introduce you to Jeremiah Robinson from Richmond alternative school Jeremiah is a sophomore at Richmond alternative school where he was awarded the Spartan Academy High School leadership award he is a member of future Business Leaders of America and serves on my student advisory committee on the student government Association and the student advisory committee in his spare time Jeremiah enjoys cooking reading working out and investing upon graduation Jeremiah plans to pursue a degree in business and finance and become an entrepreneur and business owner please join me in welcoming Jeremiah Robinson good evening chairperson raising Vice chairpersonburg board members and superintendent cameras thank you for allowing me for the opportunity to serve as a
008night representative I look forward to learning more about the student board process and expressing some of my personal thoughts and concerns about regarding opportunities for students that attend the Richmond alternative school Spawn Academy before I begin please allow me please allow me to acknowledge the staff and team of Richmond alternative and spine Academy that are presented to support the EU tonight continue to please stand these are the few people that encouraged me and support me daily and I thank them for being here with me tonight as I stand before you I have two agendas items that I would like to discuss to discuss they are like extracurricular activities and elect a student offer before I explore these topics please allow me to share I love personal background by myself at Spartan Academy I came to
009spawning I came to Richmond alternative school VA Thomas Jefferson High School approximately two years ago today I'm proud to say I'm not a young man I was when I was placed at rides to see how I struggle a bit before as an understanding what made a difference for me is I was received at rise you see no one there judged me for my previous actions or put a label on me instead I was encouraged to have goals and expectations of myself are based on my desires and abilities this made a difference in my life that I would value for the rest of my life you see have you seen Ryan Spartan Academy mission is to devote to Empire students to reach their form of attention by College main dedicated to student successes I'm an example
010of this students are greedy each morning by dedicated staff members I got it I got it that dedicated Staffing members from the custodial team to Administration each each person greet us with any judgment or what had me transcribed the day before with a fresh and new approach to each day in paradise to look past our mistakes and look to to look forward with hope you see me Mr cameras around spark Academy has been leading with love since day one for me this is why so many eyes choose to remain at raspberry where beyond our 45-day students such as myself have opportunities at rise that we can never imagine possibly for us and we wish they allowed to attend a comprehensive school we have a grown man rise to be leaders we serve as pure conflict
011mediators group leaders group facilitators opportunity that we will never experience at a comprehensive School you act so why not I will tell you we are a judge for our heart we are judged harshly for our actions and never given the opportunity to restore or rebuild we have our ups and downs but we know we have another day at rise to try A New Path each day when I walk into rest daily I attend my core classes English Math Science and History opportunities for me to participate in an elective classes section art banned foreign languages drivers EDS and Etc are limited and non-existent especially for it and underclassmen I would love to be able to take these classes and they would be integrals stepping stone to my pro-secondary and diverse when coming to rise the expectation
012is for us to stay 45 days due to various circumstances this time is often extended by the time we return to a comprehensive School we are often behind in credits and have and have lost opportunities to screen our academic portfolio having electives offered at grads will allow us to keep on Pace where our cohort and be better prepared for the future I don't have to remind any of you I ain't dirty fat and diversified portfolio helps prepare a young person to complete in today's society our school needs additional resources to hide teachers that are certified to teach variety of electives after this is a graduation requirement and we do want to graduate on time if RPS is about Equity then why our students at alternative school lacking resources that are available to students at comprehensive
013schools another issue I Rise is there are no way for me to participate in any sports myself and others could be missing valuable opportunities to play at a higher level do to not having this available to us a solution for this would be us to be able to join our comprehensive school team we will have to be in good standing with Rise by attending daily and passing all classes just as a student attend the comprehensive school don't mean where and just because we are in a alternative school doesn't mean we have we deserve that the same chances don't deserve the same chances as other students as my principal would say Mr Trotter just because you attend and alternative school does not mean you have to act alternative so therefore why would you why should students
014like me be treated differently when we return to our schools we should be treated as we never left there are numerous studies published with data to support many benefits of participating in sports please give the students ever asked an opportunity to excel thank you for listening to me tonight this opportunity is dear to my heart and I will always cherish this evening I know for a fact if I was not a student at rash this would not have been possible please consider the options I presented to you tonight and let's get the students every opportunity to be successful just like our counterparts at comprehensive school thank you and have a good evening okay thank you Mr Robinson Mrs White first I want to say um thank you madam chair first I want to say to
015Jeremiah Robinson um yes you have made a 360 turnaround and I'm glad that in your speech today that you had some points that I have seen um the red staff original alternative can you please stand up again I thank you all I do attend rest on every other Friday and I think I just was there Friday Thursday and Friday um you all can be seated and he's actually absolutely right RADS need resources they need a lot of resources these are our most vulnerable students in Richmond Public Schools and their lacking resources I've been asking for a whole year for assistant principal and I still don't have one and he's right they need equal chances when they return back to school 45 days is not enough and um Jeremiah when I come there he makes sure
016that I'm on point he does come get me a hug and he makes sure that I'm all right that's the first thing that he asked me when he sees are you all right she's a good young man and I want to see great things happen to him next year hopefully he'll go back to his comprehensive school today is a sad moment for me but as you can see I'm still smiling at rest my deputy director he'll be leaving us Mr Martin stand up Mr Martin he handles our sixth to eighth grade he does a great job our kids at Richmond Public Schools love him he will not be returning next year and of course the principal of Raz Mr Trotter can you please stand and he will not be returning and my heart is really
017fluttered for that but I want to say thank you Mr Trotter for all you do but we're still friends no matter where you go and I care about rad so much my standards would not change I will continue to fight for those resources that you need because I know that you are the most vulnerable students Jeremiah in Richmond Public Schools everyone that you're sitting on this stage as a board member send their students to Reyes everyone and I can't imagine what next year is going to look like with one of our better best better and best principles and assistant principals leaving they always had it I'm talking about on point thank you Miss Brian for what you do she been there years as the administration and I don't know what she may do without Mr
018Trotter there she keeps them in check I really appreciate Raz and hopefully we can probably move someone in that spot and next year I just hope and pray that it functions the same way it is this year you don't hear anything about Razz and it has the top big six of Richmond housing projects in that school and you don't hear anything that's all I have to say thank you thank you Miss White thank you Mr Robinson feel free to stay as long as you like oh okay I understand all right thank you so much all right now we are moving to 2.02 receive Proclamation for lgbtq pride month thank you madam chair lgbtq plus pride month June 2023 whereas lesbian gay bisexual transgender and queer pride month commemorates the events of Stonewall Inn in June
019of 1969 and is a time to celebrate the lgbtq plus community and whereas the lgbtq plus Community has made significant strides towards equality acceptance and inclusivity promoting social justice and human rights for all Americans and whereas RPS Embraces and celebrates the contributions and achievements of lgbtq plus individuals throughout history celebrating their unique identities experiences and perspectives including those made by our lgbtq plus students and staff members and whereas RPS collaborates and partners with lgbtq plus Community organizations dedicated to the well-being of students and encourages the formation of student clubs to provide support and resources for the lgbtq plus community at RPS and whereas we affirm our commitment to combating discrimination Prejudice and violence by fostering an environment that Embraces all student and staff identities now therefore Bria proclaimed that the school board of the city
020of Richmond and Richmond Public Schools recognize June 2023 AS lgbtq Plus pride month and call upon all schools and community members to join in this celebration we are this evening I believe joined by a representative from side by side Marquis knob I believe is here if you don't mind coming on down we can take a picture with you along with Mario Guevara from he she Z and we thank you both so much for being here okay we are now at item three point zero one public information Madame Fleur conduct of speakers speakers shall speak their full legal name prior to addressing the school board speakers will address the school board as a whole rather than individual school board members the division superintendent school board attorney Clerk or any other staff member the school board will
021listen to the comments but will not respond during the public information period persons appearing before the school board will not be allowed to one campaign for public office to promote private business ventures or three use profanity or mobile language if a community member's comments during the public information session relate to school-based issues the chair May refer the individual to Richmond Public Schools administration for one-on-one consultation and follow-up it's important that all community members who wish to participate in the public information period abide by the guidelines set forth in this policy refusal to abide by the policy will result in the forfeiture of the remaining time that has been allotted to the speaker community members May Express their views in writing in lieu of any oral presentation comments received in writing in lieu of an or
022presentation will not be read during the meeting but shall be posted to the school board platform board Docs thank you madam clerk we have nine people registered to speak we have Tracy hardney Scott Madeline mclenny Kimberly battle Phillip battle Dr Anthony fears John Jones Laverne Spurlock Dr Mary Murphy and Adeline Clark you may come up to speak please make sure that you sign your name on the clipart board that is there placed there on the lectern and speak your full name before you begin your remarks also if there's anyone else who would like to speak you may also come up um we will go ahead and get started now please sign the clipboard as well if you have not pre-registered yes good evening this is new to me good evening my name is Tracy Harney
023Scott I hold a lot of titles in this city but the number one title that I hold is Grandma I am concerned about the language and discipline parameters set forth in the RPS score this booklet reads like an intake pamphlet to the criminal justice system super intended cameras and Boyd in your welcome letter you says you use trauma inform and restorative approaches that keep students in school I have found nothing could be further from the truth present with me today is my five-year-old grandson a kindergartener at Westover Hills Elementary he was recommended for suspension for 10 days for an incident that due to his teacher's inability to control her classroom caused the child to be injured he was classified as conducting an assault and battery yet five days prior the same student pushed him down
024at resource and he busted his knee that child wasn't charged with malicious wounding and neither would we want them to be my point is that these are children not inmates why are they being groomed as criminals in the language encoding in his book I strongly suggest that we give is giving a Segway to the school to prison pipeline I take great issue with this in the severity of the consequences that it holds in then to add further insult to injuries my grandson was given a panel hearing where he had to go to a facility walk through a metal detector and be escorted by an armed police officer to location he was then set in a witness chair and interrogated about what happened this infuriated me as he sat there and he cried how is the
025spending of five-year-old even productive when his mind cannot even process the severity of the consequence and this will follow him as a blemish for years to come Kenny Garden is supposed to provide a child with opportunities to learn and practice essential social emotional and problem solving and study skills that will follow them throughout their years kindergarten sets the foundation of a child's Learning Journey and as Educators you know the most common struggle you face when a child first starts school is anxiety anger losing self-confidence and an ability to sit still now once were any of us parents brought together to offer real positive solution instead he was criminalized and even his panel hearing determination letter wreaks A criminality words like a hearing words convene or based on the evidence and testimony I am strongly asking
026you and the national board of education to revisit this because we must do better thank you thank you thank you next speaker I didn't sign up but I don't see anyone else in line so can I go ahead yes hi my name is Ann Forrester I'm a fifth district resident and RPS teacher I had something planned but I also just wanted to um Echo the remarks of the person that spoke before me and just remind this board that the student parent caregiver Bill of Rights which you passed last year is still not accessible in every school um nor is it included with score which I think really kind of balances out that like rights and responsibilities piece um so anyways um I wanted to remind this board of a few items related to collective bargaining
027and hopefully set the record and precedent straight As RPS workers receive their updated contracts for next year I'm both pleased and grateful that this board granted RPS workers the right to collectively bargain in December 2012 making us the first in the Commonwealth to do so I was also proud to sit at the table as a member of the negotiation team when we negotiated these contracts I have no doubt that this contract is a step in the right direction as we write historical wrongs and compensate workers fairly which will lead to better retention retaining the qualified and caring staff we have is one of the most important things we can do to ensure our students are getting the education they deserve with that said I do feel like I have to point out what I hope
028won't become normal practice since negotiations ended there have been several instances in which the RPS Administration and sometimes the school board has made changes or attempted to change issues that are within the scope of the collectively bargained agreement and outside of associations or at least optically it appears that way first teachers at Linwood Holton Elementary were told they'd receive 30 minutes of duty-free lunch which should apply to everyone in RPS yet teachers at many schools have been required to monitor students in their classrooms during lunch for the past several weeks secondly the CTE teachers contracts were shortened to 10 months from 11 which was avoided only when those teachers and their allies spoke out about it third a 200-day school year pilot was approved for two elementary schools which effectively established two separate groups of
029teachers on two different contracts this unnegotiated contract introduces Merit pay and extends the duties of teachers at these schools and lastly just this past week I heard of a concern from csas that the starting payday negotiated is thirty two thousand dollars yet the job posting for the CSA lead role is twenty nine thousand dollars I'm a big believer in assuming good intentions so I'll assume these were errors miscommunications or innocent mistakes of a school system relearning what it's like to negotiate contracts with their workers via their Union but the flip side of assuming good intentions that I often think we forget about is also taking accountability for our actions and words and how they are perceived and received by others no matter the intention and the perception of many of these things I've mentioned isn't
030good it feels like an attempt to undermine collective bargaining and so I will leave it to this board to consider that as these new contracts come out thank you thank you next speaker good evening I'm rev and Dr Madeline mclenny um I attended Thomas Jefferson so it's great to be back here before my time begins I need to let you know we've set up a GoFundMe page to help defray the costs of changing the name of you know Park Elementary School to Francis mcclenny Elementary School if you all should decide in that that way I want to talk about Mrs mcclenny my mother as one of many underdogs and how important it is to fight for the underdog as we see in the Book of Esther Hadassah the year was 1857 when James Solomon Russell
031Born Into Slavery in Hendrick Plantation Mecklenburg County um in in on December 5th he was a devout Christian who led Bible studies using the Episcopal book of common Prayer by 1988 1888 he became an Episcopal priest and started schools to educate former enslaved people in his community eventually he turned a two-room school into Saint Paul's college with 35 buildings 50 faculty 800 students Episcopal people white people fought for James Solomon Russell the underdog in 1950 Earl mcclenny senior became president of that college meanwhile in 1933 Rob SD senior started SD Trucking line in Chasity Virginia and he hired four black truck drivers to start his company I mean four four truck drivers three white and one black that one black truck driver was Ned Dyke wood Ned Dyke wood was the father of Francis Wood
032he helped make Estes into the multi-million dollar company it is today and earned enough money to send two of his daughters to Saint Paul's College when Francis Wood mclenny arrived to St Paul's College in 1960 it was known as the leading School in the country for training Educators she always knew she wanted to be a teacher she met the son of the president Earl Jr at a dance he was he was already at the dance with someone else so he took her home and came back to see Francis four years later they were engaged and planning to move to Richmond just as the conscience of the nation was was opening up to fair housing and blacks were excluded from uh mortgages even though uh we had the lowest default rates but they came to the
033city at just the right time purchased a home and get a park where I live now when Dad escorted mom to get a park in the late 1960s to protect her uh the school was led by a principal who also fought for the underdog a humanitarian man a white man of great courage John Clark and and and and and later she would work again with Estes to get computers into every classroom you see mom's Legacy is an American Legacy all of the sex successes of James Solomon Russell Earl mcclenny senior Ned dykewood and Francis Wood are interwoven with white men and white women who defended the underdog renaming ginto Park it's not about being woke or castigating general Ginter it is about celebrating a success we can learn from which future Generations will benefit from
034Rob Estes Jr and I both called our mothers my mother's aunt Naomi we are interwoven our histories are interwoven Francis didn't condone segregation or racism her mom nursed all of the 11 white children down the road down the farm Francis came to Richmond with a legacy and a history of business and education Freedom Fighters Who Loved Humanity almost done and she came to teach all of her babies to read and write and think so that they would matriculate with a foundation that could not be stolen and it was people like the courageous John Clark who came to power just in time just like Esther to fight for the underdog in the hopes of racial unity and not Division division so like General Ginter Francis mcclenny is not just a Francis mclenny's history he's not just
035white history of black history it's American history and it's easy to stand in Judgment of dead people but I don't recommend that we need to know all the stories that make us a unique nation and that's why I don't we don't want ginter's name removed from the building but we especially need to know all of those people that call us to be greater than our worst fears of each other and that story is the story of principal Francis Wood mclenny thank you thank you next speaker if those that have pre-registered would please line up to speak in order of registration that would be helpful thank you I would respectfully Madam chair step aside for those that respectfully signed up I'd have no problem thanks sir good evening honorable board members Mr superintendent principal Powell I
036can't see him but Christopher Paul I hope you're here ladies and gentlemen I'm Dr Anthony a fears and I Rise this evening to present and support the renaming of John B Carey Elementary School to Dr Lois Harrison Jones Elementary School I say to you that there are several reasons the primary reason is all of which she has accomplished in 2009 they're about Dr Lois Harrison Jones was presented the Phenomenal Woman award by the superintendent other by the superintendent's Commission of the National Alliance of black school educators now why was she given this extremely honorable award well let's start here in Richmond for 34 years she served the Richmond Public Schools starting in the classrooms and ultimately becoming the first female black superintendent of the Richmond Public Schools and for the the Commonwealth of Virginia now
037Dr Harrison Jones was also the first black female superintendent of the Boston public schools and the deputy superintendent of the Dallas Public Schools Dr Harrison Jones has served at the senior level administrator in three major cities Richmond Dallas Boston she was the first black woman in Virginia dispatched to the Northern Ireland as a community Ambassador sponsored by the experiment in international living she's the recipient of the living legend award she's a recipient of Newman's other Awards and salutations from professionals Community religions and Civic organizations she received the outstanding woman award along with Doc miss Rosa Parks who I grew up with or written in her neighborhood when I was a little boy she has put proclamations from the House of Representatives in Texas and Massachusetts Dr Harrison Jones is a renowned National and international lecturer
038and presenter she has lectured in institutions of higher education in England Ireland India Russia South Africa Sierra Leone Bermuda Jamaica Ghana and Gambia and Germany she showed her love for reading here locally at the John B Carey elementary school with fourth and fifth grade John B Carey Elementary School students doing the women's history month of March 2021. she shared her life story as a person who was considered a bookworm Now ladies and gentlemen honorable board members I ask you for your unanimous vote to name rename John B Carey Elementary School Dr Lewis Harrison Jones Elementary School and show the world that Richmond knows how to extremely recognize a phenomenal woman thank you very much thank you next speaker we have Miss Kimberly battle Philip battle Jon Jones Laverne Spurlock Dr Mary Murphy and Miss Adeline
039Clark if any of you all are in attendance please approach the podium good evening we are here today because we recognize the value to be gained by renaming John B Carey Elementary School excuse me ma'am will you please state your name sorry I am Laverne B Spurlock a former employee of Richmond Public Schools for 39 years and for 11 months if I had realized I was that close to 40 years I would have stayed another month thank you at any rate we are here today because we do recognize the value to be gained by renaming John B Carey School for Dr Lewis Harrison Jones some of the reasons are number one we would give her to honor number two we would give the opportunity to encourage others particularly our young people who will stand tall
040in that same school number three we would be encouraging others in the community to make the same kinds of impact and I hate that word impact we are using it too much but it is so appropriate at this point to make an impact in the city of Richmond and let others all over the United States know what Richmond Virginia is and what Richmond Public Schools represent it is important at this particular time at this stage as our country moves forward we hope it is important that we do what is good and right to do in our city of Richmond we are present to encourage this renaming so that our young people as well as others in our community are put in touch 30 seconds with what we are all about I hope though that we
041have not overlooked the impact of Dr Harrison Jones's action in our city and school system I hope that the portion of the time that we give to this process time surely be recognized by its value I worked at Maggie Walker High School and I cannot begin to tell you how much the students there were encouraged by their attachment to the person for whom that school was named although that person was not living at the time she never died because we made it possible for the students to have an attachment to someone who made a difference in the city of Richmond we have a lady in our presence who made a difference in our city she has made a difference in our state and in our country and we cannot overlook this we need to pay
042attention to naming John B Carey School in honor of and in the presence of Dr Lawrence Harrison Jones thank you for giving me this opportunity thank you next speaker Miss Rizzy school board members Mr cameras thank you for this opportunity to endorse the proposal to name John B Carey as the Lois Harrison Jones Elementary School excuse me I do state your name next slide I am Mary Murphy okay a retired RPS principal who considers Dr Harrison Jones my mentor and my friend of long-standing her educational knowledge vision and fairness characterized her significant superintendency she was an enthusiastic proponent of a wide variety of learning opportunities for our students Citywide when she appointed the creative and dynamic Barber gray to be Carrie's principal she set Kerry on the path to Greatness enjoyed today her wisdom in
043allowing Barbara free reign sometimes with fear and trembling made all the difference expanding her vision she identified Fisher as a third school to be developed with a specific curriculum theme critical and creative thinking with active Hands-On learning became a viable instructional Focus there were now three open education schools with expected parental involvement serving our population I'm sure you've heard so much about Dr Harrison Jones's contributions to RPS as the first female superintendent now you know something of her broad Vision to motivate staff and students it is most appropriate that this school be renamed in her honor I appreciate your positive consideration thank you next to beaker we have 13 minutes left in a 30 minute public comment period Madam chair thank you madam Claire good evening I am Dr Kimberly battle and I appreciate the
044opportunity to cite some of Dr Lois Harrison Jones credentials and honors because she was so approachable and well known in this community we often overlooked what a phenomenal woman she was and still is Dr Harrison Jones is a veteran educator with an m with an impressive educational background she holds a bachelor's degree in elementary education from Virginia State University a master's degree in Reading from Temple University in Philadelphia Pennsylvania an administrative endorsement from the University of Virginia a doctor of Education degree in educational Administration from Virginia Tech an honorary doctorate from Mount Ida College in Newton Massachusetts and an honor honorary doctorate from the New England School of Law in Boston Mass Massachusetts she's a former textbook developer and reviewer with hair Court brace book publishers and the past president of two International organizations the
045National Alliance of black school Educators and the Continental societies Incorporated she has work experience at all levels Elementary secondary and college slash University she has been a faculty member at Howard University as as at an appointment of an associate professor in The Graduate School of Education and is currently a distinguished professor emeritus at Howard University in Washington D.C she also served as a visiting professor at the University of Illinois the curriculum that is used today in the aasa Howard University superintendent Academy was developed by Dr Harrison Jones she is deserving of a Richmond Public School named after her please I encourage you all to vote for renaming John B Carey Elementary School to Dr Lawrence Harrison Jones Elementary School thank you thank you next speaker please love my name is John Jones I am lifetime
046resident of Richmond Virginia and managing partner of Family Life Services LLC I wanted to speak to you and I'm honored to speak to you concerning the issue of renaming of ginner Park Elementary in honor of Miss Francis mcleaning um it is it's my belief that a community is is not the building but it's the people that reside and thrive in that location and I think renaming dinner Park Elementary in honor of Miss mcclenny is an amazing opportunity to pay homage to uh you know a beautiful soul and an accomplished educator that poured so much love and beauty into this community I um I attended ginner Park Elementary many many moons ago I won't say what year because if there are small kids here that'll scare them um but when they hear years they start with
04719 they think you know was that before Christ or after they don't get it so um they were our moms away from home you know we we went to learn academics but um they instilled in US self-respect respect for the community um they made us feel capable um they made us feel actually that we could handle anything that was thrown our way mcclenny Miss mclenny would say you can accomplish whatever you set your mind to if you don't give up and that's an amazing thing to tell Elementary School students because there were many women and men there like her they will tell us you can accomplish anything that you want if you don't give up so they were on the way to building a level of self-esteem in us that allowed us to be healthy
048whole and well students healthy whole and well adults and healthy whole and well adults continue to teach those same things to their children so that you have a healthy whole and Well Community so rather than to to talk about the accolades of of Miss mcclenny I want to just Express how she was as a person you know I I and many of my friends were we were difficult she called the sugar lump sweetie and I knew we were none of that 30 seconds but she said it enough that we started to believe it and because she believed in us we believed in her and many of us have gone on to you know be doctors lawyers Engineers you know um we in in entrepreneurs all of that was because somebody cared enough about us to
049Believe in Us and I think this is an amazing way to say thank you to her I never got that chance to say thank you to her and sort of me addressing you tonight and I am I'm honored and I'm grateful that you allowed me but I'm saying thank you to her for all that she has done for me and has allowed that to continue on thank you so much for your time thank you next speaker please let the record reflect Dr Harris Muhammad arrived thank you good evening Madam chair Rizzy Madame Vice chair Burke school board members superintendent cameras my name is Dr D pulani Lucas and I am here representing policy Pathways I am president and CEO on behalf of the co-sponsors of the pathways to life abroad International Education and Global careers
050Fair I want to say thank you thank you for your support thank you for your co-sponsorship those sponsors are the city of Richmond Mayors Youth Academy the Commonwealth Virginia chapter of the links Incorporated Virginia Union University the VCU L Douglas Wilder School of government and public affairs and policy pathways we held Our Fair on May the 20th over 200 people came out to support us and we want to say thank you for hosting us at John Marshall High School we had exhibitors representing study abroad programs and International Education degree programs from across Virginia Virginia Tech VCU Virginia Union University and others so you should have we have put on your desk there a bag you should have the program and also some other materials that were given out to students I'm also here to thank
051you for your support of the Summer Academy for policy leadership and public service online this is a Virtual Academy and I want to thank superintendent cameras for his support any RPS student who signs up and enrolls gets full tuition covered this program is for students who want to be leaders in public policy public administration and international affairs unrepresented organization do I get a little bit more time represent an organization yes ma'am okay um our our program is virtual we have college professors and policy experts from around the world zooming in we also offer real world policy focused Capstone projects so we just want to thank RPS for your support and we thank you for helping us to get the word out not only for our Pathways to life abroad fair but also for the Summer
052Academy thank you very much thank you Madam clerk where are we on time we had three minutes remaining thank you good evening Madam chair Madam Vice chair school board members and Mr superintendent I am Adeline Clark and I am a graduate of Richmond Public Schools as well as a retiree I'd like to tell you about a ruler of a kingdom that's not so wasn't so far away from here and his subjects loved him and he loved them in return and occasionally he would select one to honor and this particular time he decided not to make the decision himself he pulled together the brightest and the best and he said I want you guys to decide who I will bestow this Honor on and he chuckled a little because he expected them to be buying among
053themselves for the special honor and when the time came to present him with their decision they all stood before him and he said who have you chosen and they stepped aside and there she stood and he said who in the world is this and the reply was this is our teacher I ask you to give Dr Lois Harrison Jones her flowers while she while she yet lives thank you Mr Willis thank you madam chair remember said Schoolboy I must say that earlier we heard a comment from a grandmother that stood before us today um and uh it was quite disturbing it was quite pleasing to see school board Representatives go back to speak with their grandmother but I can assure you that I'm going to follow up with it as chair of Public Safety for
054the Richmond Branch of the NAACP crime is a crime no matter how you look at it as the executive director of United communities against Crime to suspend a young five-year-old for 10 days and bring them before a panel with police escorting them through any Richmond Public School building I consider that a crime that maybe we need to look at and discuss amongst ourselves what kind of direction are we sending and not only that to see the young man back here just so bubbly and so brightful but not knowing the future of how this can play on our students so I would encourage the board to really really really look at our policy and how we address of course we need to look at how we address when they're disciplined in their situations where our children
055need to be redirected but for something such as youngest and a five-year-old to be paneled at that age is quite disturbing so I'm praying that uh superintendent cameras that staff would really look at and help this grandmother and this young man as well as others to redirect their energy the other is I do want to say I'm right surprised I'm honored to be in the presence of some great icons I recognize the presence you don't have to but I do I wouldn't dare stand before this Podium with my mentor being here today and that's Dr Melvin law so I recognize the presence of former School Board chair doctor law is here uh which God and uh was very instrumental in supporting Community leaders like myself to come before the boy like you all and to
056express our concerns and then the president of Judge mcclinity uh I saw her over there we got a chance to talk and then I hear of the naming of uh get a Park School but to know that Richmond Public Schools have had many uh like Dr Jill Sherman and Dr Richard Hunter Dr Yvonne Brandon Dr Louis Harrison Jones one that I had a chance to work with I can't imagine this boy making any other choice but their choice but why are you making that choice also don't forget that will could not wait can't wait and still are waiting for you to choose a name today the name I submit to you today as a community leader from the south side of Richmond for George with high school is please consider Capital City High School thank
057you so much thank you Madam chair we've reached a 30-minute of public comment I think we have one more speaker and good afternoon ladies and gentlemen I wish to commend this board for the tireless effort you put forth to see that our children are properly educated I wish to thank the superintendent for his efforts and to encourage all of you to just continue to put Children First we can do that by recognizing that teachers are the most important people in any Community ever known teachers should be paid like professionals we expect a dollar's worth of performance from our teachers for nickels worth of pay it's time to correct that when I came to Richmond 55 years ago I was appalled at the salaries the low salaries the teachers made and I went to work immediately
058to try to do something about that didn't quite get to where we should have gotten I encourage you to continue to effort to see that teachers are not forgotten when it comes to the pay that they deserve now I wish I'd gotten up before Mr Willis spoke Mr Wilson I thank you for the kind words um I'm here also to support the renaming of John B Carriage school for Dr Lewis Harrison Jones I would just simply say this you will not find anywhere within the shores of this country any person better suited better qualified better prepared to receive that honor than she and I would be pleased Richmond would be pleased and teachers who've gone on before be pleased at the board's action if you were to do that ladies and gentlemen I will say
059this I did not know about Francis mcclenny's nomination to be renamed the name for gunner Park I also support that Mrs mcclenny was my neighbor lived one block away on the same street for many years I remember her babies the two young ladies who were here who were her daughters we would be honored in Richmond to have you to also consider that and to rename Jenna park for Mrs mcclenny ladies and gentlemen be well you will be in my prayers and my thoughts and I wish you all well thank you thank you okay this concludes our public information period thank you all for coming out to speak we appreciate it okay we are now at 4.01 receive recommendations or renaming of George with high school John B Carey Elementary Benford middle school and genter Park
060Elementary School thank you madam chair I first just want to thank everybody who came out this evening to speak on behalf of their school name of choice and to everyone that came out to our eight hearings over the last couple of months for each of the schools everybody who completed the surveys and emailed us to submit names and support of their chosen new name for each of the four schools in the presentation you see listed all the names that we received for each of the campuses as well as the three finalist names for each School tonight for first read consideration not for a vote I bring forth recommendations for the board to consider first for Binford Middle School the recommendation is Dogwood Middle School in recognition of the Dogwood the state flower entry of the
061Commonwealth second for George with high school the recommendation is Richmond High School of the Arts in recognition of the new thematic Focus that it will have when it reopens in the next couple of years next dinner Park Elementary School the recommendation is for Northside Elementary School in recognition of the neighborhood in which it resides and finally for John B Carey Elementary School the recommendation is Dr Lois Harrison Jones Elementary School in recognition of Dr Harrison Jones with that I'm happy to pause and take any questions and receive any feedback thank you Dr Harris Muhammad thank you I too wanna say thank you to everyone who came out um Mr cameras thank you for your presentation and your recommendation unfortunately I cannot support the recommendation for getting a Park Elementary School and I'm going to share
062with you all why I read the email that you sent to us concerning um a reference from a newspaper article about one of the candidates to have a school name re after her and I just want to take us back to 1992 and just the 1990s in general when you are black and female and I want to preference by saying representation matters and so we're going to use or make a recommendation not to rename a school because an article stated that um and I didn't and I must begin by stating I didn't read the article in its entirety but I read enough to say that I felt like I was being preference in the article I'm entering on July the first my 32nd year in public education and it has not been easy serving an
063Administration black and female and it's 2023. and I'm sure for Miss mclenny in 1990s it was not easy for her to serve as a strong black female showing equity and equality and educational social justice for all students and so I don't want this board and any of us to take an article such as that that noted about clustering of students who do not look like me as a reason not to rename a school after a woman who paved a way for many of us who are black and female and educational leadership I am disappointed that we were not shared the information prior to and I have the prayer that we would not allow an article to ruin a woman's Legacy of producing doctors athletes writers poets educators servant leaders she was a servant leader at
064heart and I credit her and many black female educational leaders as the reason why I have been able to walk in educational leadership in public education I am extremely disappointed because the article was just not found today it's been there since 1992. and if you have ever been black and female and educational leadership then you know her story I am highly disappointed that we're going to allow because if you knew where public education was in Richmond Public Schools and in the Commonwealth of Virginia in then you would understand so in no way am I saying that what was stated in the article is permitted but we got to understand from whence that was developed and in we had instructional classrooms who had all males in it on some of our elementary schools now those are
065two separate entities and two separate pieces but my point of using that example is this someone stated earlier that we want to honor someone with their roses while they're alive and I truly believe that and I just hope one minute I sincerely hope that this board whatever the decision may be will take into consideration the work that that woman did as a black female during that time in Richmond city public schools and the work that she put on a pavement for not just black children but for everybody and we got to do better and we have an opportunity to do that so I want to make sure that I'm clear I will not support that recommendation because doing so for me as a black female an educational leadership will have demonstrated and modeled that her
066work did not matter to me time thank you uh it looks like Miss okay Mrs Burke thank you madam chair um I'm delighted this evening to be here to be a part of the decision that's being made regarding changing the names of our schools as as we all know that as we send our children to schools and to places of Education they do they they deserve to have the opportunity of persons that represent us here and now not from the 1800s and 1900s and I worked under both of the ladies of which that are are being recognized this evening Dr Lawrence Harrison Jones when she was assistant superintendent who always walked and always presented The Talk of an educator extraordinaire she was ahead of her time she was the first African-American superintendent to be in
067place I've always stated that if we did what she asked us to do many years ago Richmond Public Schools would have been in a better State academically but she was so ahead of her time she probably doesn't remember this I was straight out of college and Dr Murphy that spoke this evening also was my first principal that hired me and I had many opportunities and that's where I sit where I sit now because she probably doesn't remember the Kel win model where we were taught to be selected from schools to be educational leaders for the future and there were so many programs in place I believe in grow your own everybody knows that but she always had in place opportunities to train those not just a one-time fly-by-night but over the years to be leaders
068and speak up for every child and her Legacy just continue and I I wholeheartedly support this and then she got started at Woodville Elementary in the East End of the city of Richmond Seventh District hint hint so her Legacy Legacy continues to live on Mrs Francis McClendon I was there in 1992. with the um so-called clustering situation she was the first African-American to be named and as stated everybody was sugar everybody was darling she truly at any time would have any child in her lap consoling a child loving a child and always put Children First is that situation happened unfortunately this is something that took place for years in the north side at Gunter Park School parents chose their teachers so some classes May ended up being I'm not saying it was right or wrong
069but I was there so it was also during the time it just stated that all eyes were on every step but so far as being a situation of technically segregating children that was from my observation and having worked there at that time that was not the climate that was intended that was not the climate that was intended I do support Dr Lawrence Harrison Jones as the new I was going to say new principal forgive me as the renaming of John B Carey school and Mrs Francis Wood mclenny a St Paul college graduate having known all the history and I am a fourth generation graduate of Saint Paul's college so as they say speak my name I speak Mrs Francis Wood mclenny's name I speak Dr Lawrence Harrison Jones name and until we step out to
070tell our history I don't know of anyone that's perfect she didn't enslave anyone okay all right I'm just telling it like it is every child red yellow black or white from both of these ladies and they are women of color and we are women of strength so I know the board will decide collectively but let the record show Cheryl E Lewis Burke 38 years RPS the only one on this board that probably knew both those ladies well and no doubt Delores Harrison Jones as well and I do support that recommend I do support those two persons names I I when Ginter Parks mascot was changed from the dragons or something I can't remember to the Gators we didn't know the whole history of what Mr ganter was doing but now let's tell the history and
071let's get it straight in spite of what's going on in our country in the state of History our history is being destroyed let's tell a story right one minute thank you you said one minute yes man then I'll close with this at the end of the day let's remove some of the men names okay oh I'm going there in terms of kept us as women down as well as keeping people of color down let's put in place someone that our children can look up to just as we did with Obama Elementary School and offside let's have someone that our children can say I want to be like her I want to be strong as that person let's be be mindful of across the board we need a Hispanic name we need an Italian name we
072need Jewish names let's be fair let's be right because okay I'm not gonna say anything about naming schools after other things and then whatever but I do support those two names as an African-American woman and a woman of okay and as an educator thank you time Ms Gibson thank you madam chair um you know I I didn't expect I would be renaming so many schools in my tenure on the board um but but here we are and we're here for for good reason um this is Richmond and um it's a place that I love because it's a place about history and um you know we have history that it's long overdue that we take a look at um and because of that I will proudly support renaming Cary elementary school after Dr Lewis Harrison Jones
073as recommended by the administration um it's uh been truly an honor to learn about the things that um those who came before us did and accomplished and um and I believe that each of our schools should be named after those people because we've only got about so many schools but we've got but so many people too um and uh without this process we we we we don't we're not doing the work of um appreciating what's come before us and um you know why why we're here right now um and so I uh and plan to make a motion tonight in support of the school in my district which is Ginter Park Elementary School and renaming it after uh Francis mcclenny um and I have been uh incredibly honored to uh to learn about her um
074and her Legacy which uh continues to impact the students of Ginter Park in this community um I you know in regards to the rationale behind not making that recommendation um it it does give me pause because look she was a leader in the school in a in a in a highly controversial time um her husband had to uh bring her to the school there was fear for safety I mean it took a lot of Courage um to to do what she did during that time and so to punish or to dishonor or not appreciate the work she did because of the racism of of white families it just um that just doesn't make any sense um and so beyond that um we cannot throw stones right because it's not like we are looking back on
075this time in a place of perfection because we are not there we heard from a woman today whose son a five-year-old was treated like I mean you know it is impacted by the school-to-prison pipeline like this is what we have to do if we believe that clustering no longer exists we're fooling ourselves we're fooling ourselves right um Mr camera spoke of the space program and the inequalities and that's our gifted program right I mean clustering still happens through honors programs and honors classes this is not gone so um so before we we turn our back to a woman who did uh such incredible work we need to look inwards and and do the work to um continue that Legacy and and address those concerns today and so um I motion that uh we rename dinner
076Park Elementary School to become Francis mcclenny Elementary School second foreign so there's a motion on the floor to rename uh genter Park um Francis mcclenny Elementary School um is there discussion yes Miss White thank you madam chair um it's not a discussion just wolf um Miss mclenny um I wanted to go back and discuss but she made the motion prior to can I go ahead and discuss for those who don't know um as far as the renaming I was not for the renaming um although I do know that Dr Lewis Jones her credentials her accoloids and her leadership I am not the person who named schools after individuals although both of these ladies they were leaders they were black leaders and I don't I don't believe in pulling out baggage as well as clustering scandals
077all of those different things because if they stand for something which both of them did this Board needs to walk the walk and stop talking if these are the names that we were giving on here and then five hours ago I get an email that states oh we shouldn't do this and we shouldn't do that that's unacceptable that's more so than unacceptable to me I would like to all see both of those ladies names honoring Street naming ceremonies I'm starting to see them everywhere these two ladies need to have street names but what I would like to say is I'm not sure if we're doing it all together or we're doing it separate but before we met I know this is supposed to be a first read but I think that we need to make
078sure that we this issue about uh the email that we receive that we have this why should we not and why should we because I don't want anything um to come up up with this later and I don't know why we received it but we do receive this somehow this email so it's not right I stand for what's right I believe is what's what's right I know my history I could tell you I know my history Civil War history um I know that uh we're changing the schools because I'm not racist so it whether it's black or white on the the um School signs I'm all about when I ran to make a difference in our schools to make sure that we have good education we have the resources and names on schools that need
079renovation that are dilapidated and we're and we're still not safe in our schools but we're going to change a whole Marquee for this and we're not even retaining our good leadership in Richmond and we say let's make a difference in our school I have two kids in Richmond Public Schools and I had to walk around and tell them who this is who's this Civil War person if I bored they tell me about a Civil War and the Confederate soldiers and all of this I know every confederate soldier it is I was a United States Army soldier for 26 years so why are we changing these names yes we got two great women here two great women and we need to do more than just what we say we're doing and I'm looking for the unaware
080Street naming ceremony I'm looking for the principles there to stay although one of them probably won't but I'm looking for that no need to stop thank you Mrs Burt thank you madam chair um I know this is first read but if my suggestion is if we're going to vote on this at this time um are we going to vote on just the two I'm not gonna do one and not the other as I stated earlier if we're going to do uh Mrs mcclenny we're going to do Dr Lawrence Harris Lawrence Harrison Jones if we can do Dr Lawrence Harrison Jones we're gonna do Mrs mcleaning so my question is I know this is first read but we can accept emotion when given so if that is the motion I'd like to amend the motion that
081Mrs Gibson just stated and we have not discussed Dogwood school or um Richmond High School of the Arts so are we going to split this that's that's my question in terms of moving forward I would recommend a separate motion for each school so we can have clarification on the specific name for each school and the vote for from each board member okay I can live with that miss Page has her hand raised she'd like to say something yes Mrs page thank you madam chair so my question is for each renaming on the schools this is going to be the first read regardless of the motion that Miss Gibson made I I just want us to follow the process and be consistent with all of the renamings Mrs page it's my understanding that if we vote
082on this tonight this is officially what uh we will decide so I cannot support that because I want to follow the process and be consistent with all with the renaming process and we said this is the first read I wanted to be the first read for each of the schools that we have enlisted for renaming thank you thank you I think Ms Jones was next and then Dr Harris Muhammad thank you madam chair I also support just following the process um I do support all that has been shared um if this is a first read then we can just ensure that the superintendent brings back the recommendation for the one school that we want to change the name to and then vote as opposed to a voting tonight but that's just I want to vote
083so thanks thank you Dr Harris Muhammad yes ma'am your microphone is off Dr Harrison push it back in the bottom the bottom the neck of the device right here can you see me push this whole thing down you pull right here I got you eat testing can you hear me now okay thank you um oh sorry I lost my train of thought okay so I also have additional questions about the recommendation for George with high school like you know how did that come about and what does the survey did the survey recommend that um you know I would like for us to continue to have an in-depth conversation about the recommendations as a whole um and did the survey the surveys that were given to the Community First well first of all let me ask
084this question um do you recall Mr cameras how many surveys we received from the George Woods Community on the renaming like I see the list of names that they recommended so I mean was it like Richmond School of the Arts received 52 more I mean I I we don't have any data points to say now this list is a lot um has a lot of names here and so how many voted for yeah for each one you know for Richmond High School of the Arts so the surveys went out uh in the sort of first round and then the renaming committee is the group that came up with the final three recommendations so that they made that decision based on all the information that that they had gathered um I I don't know all the
085decisions they made because I'm not part of the renaming committees but happy to have them come if the board would like that to talk through their process show old and I know it's a lot of data points right or a lot of schools that were listed here but it would have been nice for people who took the time to even complete the survey to say I don't know bright future High School received two votes or Capital City Secondary School of the Arts received four votes or South Central High received 22 votes and then at the bottom indicating how many voted that's not difficult and so if we are going to give all of these bullets of names with no data points beside it then how do we continue to build trust with the community when
086we just hand them all of these bullets and they don't even know who voted how many voted for what thing and I am not trying to be confrontational about it I'm just trying to make sense of it all and this was even though there was a committee but to complete that decency and Order track would have listed how many voted for each that's not difficult if the committee actually did their job that's what I'm saying Dr Harris Muhammad I would like to speak um as the person who presided and is extremely exhausted over all eight of those hearings alone virtually now yes I think uh Ms Gibson attended the two at counterparts that correct Ms Gibson yes yes um anyone else okay so yes you attended beginner Park you attended one at dinner Park but
087um you know as someone who you know was aware of um the committees who met and their activities in terms of how they poll students and how they pull the community and how hard they work to get recommendations uh certainly that could have been reflected on this presentation but I am literally exhausted from the amount of work that it has taken to get these nominations and the process was carefully explained to people every single time we had a hearing so I don't know that there's a reason the community should not be um or us for that matter should not be aware of the process so um I I have to take exception to that just as someone who has worked incredibly hard to help gather these recommendations I I also want to recognize our Clerk
088and our school board attorney who also participated in presiding over those hearings and Mr cameras certainly follow up very quickly Madam chair if I make thank you in no way in saying that you all absolutely did not work hard my point that I wanted to bring home and thank you for that because this is hard work is that it would have helped just to show how many voted for each and that's all I'm saying not that the work is in vain but because you have to calculate it just would have showed how many voted for each that's all but thank you for that and thank you for the work that you're on yeah thank you I you know I certainly I agree a summary of the process could have helped I don't think that's on
089the slideshow or is it it is on there it's on there um you know uh so yeah I mean paying attention to or or looking over what the the process was perhaps specifics could be provided but I will tell you that all schools worked really hard to attempt to get feedback from multiple and try out multiple ways of getting that feedback yes Ms Gibson thank you madam chair um so um these sort of these sort of conversations I will you know they they frustrate me because we talk a lot about wanting to keep our time efficient we don't want our meetings to go over 10 o'clock um it sounds like there's a majority of folks who support naming at least after these two women moving forward with that decision so I do not understand why
090we wanted to spend more time talking about it because we've got a lot of stuff to do we've got buildings that don't have leadership we had a school that had a shooting not very long ago we have um an incredible issue with teacher turnover we are exploring new curriculum methods I mean we've got a lot of work to do and I would very much like to move on um and so that's my uh my rationale as it pertains to the community survey I do want to know only because this happens quite a bit I requested uh the survey results in an email that I sent on April 5th I asked that the renaming Community survey results along with the demographic data be shared with the board so that request was made aid but at this
091time I'd like to know you know I'm happy to revise the motion to include both women if that's the interest I am uh you know I'll withdraw the motion if that's necessary but that just seems sort of I'm going to be frank it just seems sort of silly if we our agreement we support the name I think we shouldn't I think we should vote move on Miss Burke thank you Matt and Dr Harris Muhammad are out of time for the record thank you thank you all right um we have a motion on the floor that we need to uh resolve and then we will move on unless this is why you're looking at me or do you have a comment thank you madam chair I still have that same comment that I had stated um
092this is the first read and I will like Clarity on the email that was sent to us thank you and one of them thank you Mrs Gibson are we miss Gibson are we proceeding with your motion is that your wish I would like to go through the motion if the motion fails then we can always vote again at the next meeting but I'd like to see it through okay it has been moved by Miss Gibson to rename Gunter Park Elementary School Francis M mclenny Elementary School uh it was seconded was it Dr Harris second one by Miss Jones Madam chair we need very specific clarification on what the name is going to be is it going to reflect all three of the names that have been spoken tonight Francis Wood mclenny or Francis m mcclenny
093because the original motion by Miss Gibson was just Francis mcclenny Elementary School how is it noted on the I'll use the language that was uh stated um so the motion is that we rename Ginter Park Elementary School Francis W mclenny Elementary School thank you Francis W mclenny I'm sorry okay so the motion on the floor is to rename Gunter Park Elementary School Francis W mclenny Elementary it was moved by Ms Gibson seconded by Ms Jones Madame Clark yes is do you have a comment yes I second it based on changing it to bring it back for the second read not for tonight so I do not support voting on one school tonight I want to keep it consistent that we do all okay thank you do we have a second for this motion seconds okay
094second it by Ms Burke Madam Clerk misador Miss White okay wait wait excuse me Madam clerk um yes ma'am Madam clerk Mrs Burke was actually affirming what Miss Jones recommended so it's not a second to Ms Gibson's motion thank you yes Dr Harris Muhammad did you offer a second I did I was offering at the same time in Ms Jones and my second still stands but I don't want it to fail um you know I would like for us to have some consensus and come together on this for the next meeting but I will um be be that as it may let the motion continue and if it fails the sales will bring it back all right but I do believe in going through the I want all the schools to have the same excuse
095me Equitable process that's important to me all right um Madam clerk it's seconded by Dr Harris Muhammad please call Mr Orr Miss White no Miss Gibson yes Mr Young no Miss Rizzy yes Dr Harris mom yes Miss Burke no miss page no Miss Jones no motion for you thank you we will have a second read at our next meeting all right moving on dreams for RPS 4.02 receive update on dreams for RPS gold 2 graduation good evening Madam chair Vice chairs school board members and superintendent cameras this evening my team and I are here to provide an update on go to grad on time graduation tonight's presentation is organized into five buckets John Grove will share our overall data projections as well as by reporting category and by school please remember that these are only
096projections I will discuss our current strategy and our strategy for the 23-24 school year Rhonda Turner will discuss our cccri data strategies and systems and finally since Sydney Gunter will provide you with an update on our efforts to ensure that all of the scholars who are identified as summer graduates uh engage in our summer learning opportunities graduation has been my primary focus since January 20. 23 when I was charged with leading the divisions graduation efforts and strategy over the past few months I've partnered with members of the academic team high school principals and their graduation teams and the video e to remove barriers in refine systems that needed tweaking I'll continue to support and push every school leader and their school teams to ensure that we reach optimal results this school year currently as I
097look at the data we have a few celebrations we have seen a slight increase in our overall graduation projections four out of five of our reporting categories are showing increases based on our current projections three out of nine of our high school projections remain at 100 percent and five out of nine of our high school projections are showing increases I want to acknowledge that we have more work to do I'll continue to partner with my team our high school grad teams and the VOE throughout the summer to ensure that we leave no stone unturned as we work to increase our on-time graduation rate again these are only projections official numbers will be available in October I will now pass the Baton to John Groves to talk through our data good evening school board members my
098name is John Grove manager of data analytics tonight we are reporting our projection for the Virginia on time graduation rate a couple notes about this calculation the way we calculate this metric is schools enter graduation projections Based on data such as attendance course grades and test results our team then Aggregates this data to produce the projections you see in this presentation these projections are based on if students are successful with their coursework and pass the assessments needed for graduation currently we are finishing testing and course grades will be finalized at the end of the week therefore these projections will adjust when we update get updated data overall we are projecting a 76 percent graduation rate the most notable increases in performance are with our English learner and Latino populations both with projected double-digit gains and
099one thing to note which is important when analyzing our graduation cohort this year is we see we saw a sizable increase in the end size from the previous cohort of these two populations are English learner and our Latino population when looking at our schools go ahead next slide when looking at our schools the majority of our schools are expected to see increases in graduation rates one thing to note is Richmond alternative runs our isep GED program which currently has nine students receiving a GED and five still enrolled in the program However unfortunately geds are not reflected in the on-time graduation rate but will be reflected in our graduation completion index for accreditation next slide the next two slides provide insight and a deeper dive into graduation Trends we can see how the graduation calculations are
100made every student in this cohort is categorized based on the projections you see on the left this helps us identify students off track from graduating on on time further the charts on the right provide Insight on Dropout recovery efforts and ensuring students graduate on time yep and next slide and so I want to talk to you about our current uh graduation strategy for this school year I've already kind of spoken to it in previous presentations but I just want to highlight a few of them and then I'll talk to you about our strategy for next school year um so the one that I definitely want to talk about is the whole idea of making sure that we have uh clean data submitted to um the video e uh so our student uh report reporting will
101be clean so we will have very accurate numbers this year and submit everything in a timely manner um the next piece is we also we talked about graduation Alliance and how they can actually support with attendance and also uh mentoring and supporting our families even um starting from the ninth grade year to ensure that they get to graduation also this year we have explored alternative assessments the video e allows for work keys and other alternative assessments such as CLEP that we have looked into um and then the other piece is this whole idea of removing barriers so as I spoke to earlier I partner with principals and their graduation teams to really get feedback from them about what we could do better as relates to our on-time graduation efforts and that information has been helpful
102so I really want to spend time on our strategy for next school year and this was not created in isolation this again was done in partnership with uh the academic team as well as feedback from school leaders and so that we know there's been some talk about the 4x4 and so with that we've really talked about that there are some classes that should be year-long such as AP courses and there's some science courses that should be here long and so we're going to implement that strategy in our high schools and the other strategy is the one thing that we gleaned was our high school teachers have 90 minutes and we want to do some more training on how to use those 90 minutes especially to have 60 Minutes of tier one and also how to
103build their interventions because we know that some of our Scholars are not coming back for interventions because they have jobs and other responsibilities um the other piece of setting graduation targets for our schools early on so that they understand what their lift is towards our overall goal for the division um launch of a graduation Summit in August because if graduation is important we should really have this Larger than Life celebration when we set expectations around graduation and how we move forward with our graduation goals um and then the other piece is we'll continue to partner with uh the office of Engagement to actually do our efforts earlier in terms of recovering students and identifying our Dropout students and also the other piece is work on the profile of a graduate and starting our whole conversation
104about graduation freshman sophomore and junior year versus waiting until the senior year to really determine how we get more Scholars across the stage and so those are the strategies that will implore next school year and again I'll continue to partner with um with principals um and even vdoe to figure out how we get to a place where we have great systems that will lead to further increases not graduation rate and then on the next slide if you go up uh we actually submitted names to graduation of Alliance um I believe it was in late April um early May and they have already started to make contact with families and um we'll continue to partner with us um throughout the summer and next year um with uh supporting our families foreign good evening my name is
105Rhonda Turner I am the manager of Career and Technical education I'm here to present on our college career in Civics Readiness indicator which I'll referred to as cccri the cccri accreditation rating will be a part of the school's accreditation for the 23-24 school year based on the 22-23 senior class this rating consists of students who earn I'm sorry students meet this rating by either participating in AP IB or dual enrollment courses um being a CTE completer which means they take the two CTE completer sequences and pass the industry credential they participate in a work based learning experience to include Service Learning or they participate in JROTC part one two and three and pass the ASVAB and so that's the way that a student is defined as completing the cccri standard as you can see from
106the table where our schools are rated are projected to be rated for this school year and the change from the previous year excellent enrolling out this particular indicator we have identified or outlined the work that has been done this school year starting off with hiring a work-based learning coordinator I'm specialist excuse me on our team she started in August of this year we have had several progress meetings meetings with video e to explain this indicator and support schools and how to reach this indicator my team including leading led by me have had meetings with school leadership teams as well as rcte teams in our high schools to explain the process and support throughout a lot of our Focus for our work has been with the work based learning experiences which engage students in things such
107as internships externships school-based Enterprises and things of that nature um we have also had training for service learning um with in collaboration with bdoe uh moving forward so this year we have created processes in place um John's team has been instrumental in creating a process to track our work-based learning experiences we have a team that we meet weekly our work-based learning team to meet weekly and discuss the progress and support schools we also have a new summer school program that CTE is offering for students to be able to participate in service learning or internships and that would also allow students to meet this requirement over the summer um we also are providing training for school leaders and staff and additional funding has been allocated as I outlined when I did the Perkins budget in our
108Perkins budget to cover testing industry credential testing for CTE thank you good evening School Board I'm Sydney Gunter the director of academic programs and supports um and we will have a cohort of students who will graduate in July of 2023 so those students will attend summer school and this year we've done a few things um differently whereas in the last two years we've had summer school that one location this year we will offer it at two locations Huguenot High School in Richmond Technical Center which will provide more accessibility for students on both sides of the city's north side and south side to attend summer school as well we have partnered with our engagement team and our family Liaisons are making contact with all seniors who are slated to graduate in July to ensure that they
109are registered for summer school and attending summer school seniors will be allowed to take up to two initial credit courses or credit recovery courses for standard credits but they can also participate in our Sol Academy to recover verified credits that they will need towards graduation we will have leap support at both summer school sites for our English Learners to provide the support and Scaffolding they need to be successful in their summer courses or on their summer tests and we're also going to provide additional reading math and science tutors to provide an individualized tutoring and support for our graduates who need more assistance and finally summer school graduation will happen on Thursday July 20th and students will have until the day before to complete their requirements to participate in graduation on Thursday July 20th next slide
110please these are our projected number of Summer graduates keep in mind students are still testing and retesting to recover credit so this may fluctuate um but these are the numbers we anticipate as of the end of May for our students who will be graduating in July we'll take any questions that you may have Dr Harris Muhammad thank you thank you for the presentation I have a couple of questions um I know we talked about or you all shared about removing barriers from our students so I would like for you all to share with the board how are we removing the barrier for students at Richmond alternative school when they do not have a full-time counselor it is my understanding 2022 the administration made the decision to share a school counselor but they do not have
111a full-time school counselor so just walk us through how um that it doesn't appear to be a barrier which it is a barrier and how are we working through that um and then my second question is is there a CTE teacher for time at thrive Raz or any of the other um programs that are through original alternative school or Aspire Academy Thrive any of those programs and if there is not a full-time CTE CTE teacher serving the students because that is a part of our accreditation and so how was that removing a barrier and then finally um if there are any new accreditation areas that um the school board may not be aware of can we be well versed on what is new as a part of accreditation because I have not heard that um
112and I might have missed it in the last presentation from your team but anything that is new that we are that is a part of the accreditation I firmly believe the School Board needs to be versed on what that is and what that means and what happens when we don't need it so thank you so much for that yeah and so you're correct uh Raz has a counselor that is there three days a week um and so with that I think you know we have rectified that situation by having a full-time counselor there um for the upcoming school year but as relates to CTE we did assign Richmond alternative a CTE teacher they just were not able to feel uh the position and so for the upcoming school year they do have a CTE position
113and we ensured that they had that at the beginning of last school year and we'll continue to work with them to ensure that that role the staff follow what Madam chair yes okay so thank you for that and so and I am so appreciative of how we're working for the future to ensure that those um spots are filled with credentialed and licensed individuals particularly in the area of CTE however the barrier Still Remains so when I hear that we remove the barriers and we actually did not remove the barriers I just want us to be very transparent about um what we needed to do what happened and first what happened this is what happened and then this is what we're doing to um not allow it to happen again so I understand and I hear
114that and I do hear that there was a CTE teacher slated to go there but once it was determined for whatever reason because it's not the reason why they didn't go there is irrelevant is the fact that no one was there and then but how did those students meet the CTE credential is really the legist of the summary of what I'm asking so who taught that and if they weren't credentialed in that CTE area then how are we going to make up for that and if we can and we have worked with um our schools that don't necessarily have full-time elective teachers to ensure that they had Edgenuity or they partner with other schools and so to also to be clear when I say we remove barriers we haven't removed all of them uh but
115case in point in terms of work keys allowing some of our 11th graders to actually take work keys um is one of the barriers that I'm speaking of but again specifically we have worked to uh and we'll work with the uh the administration at rest to ensure that they fill their CT CTE vacancy and that they have a full full-time counselor on board next school year I think Ms White and then I'd like to make a comment or ask a question thank you madam chair um I do have a question and thank you all team for the presentation but since we're on reds Richmond alternative school um I do have a comment to make on there not only does the CTE needs to be there we need some actual um specialized instruction there we receive
116students from all over RPS and we cannot provide our students even a little bit of rigorous learning there basic learning I know we are getting a coach but these students still have to take a s away off so that barrier needs to be covered there at the alternative school it's just not those twos missing it's a lot there's missing and I'm wondering why no one has sat down with the principal and asked him what he actually needs because I see it on both levels middle school and high school there's no one there that needs certified teachers these children come from everywhere all nine districts all eight districts I don't have any in my district but they need certified teachers they need rigorism a little rigorous learning Sol when it's time for Sol I'm seeing here
117for Razz a negative sign negative two I know what's going on there because I'm I'm there yes man but people who don't go in there they would just read what you have on this this uh PowerPoint yep you know in all fairness um I have actually met with CeCe I've also met with Mr Trotter and the entire team and we all agree that instruction can get better there and I think I alluded to that earlier and when we speak to the whole piece around licensed teachers we have talked to Ceci about that expectation and it's my understanding that a lot of them have gotten their provisional license or have worked towards that um and so we'll continue to partner with them uh because they do provide the teachers that are in the program to ensure
118that we have rigorous instruction and in fact when we did our instructional audit with video e they had actually done one two weeks before and our comments and our feedback aligned and I'll be working with the deputy superintendent Mr Mill Alexander on ensuring that we have the things that we need for our RADS as it relates to instruction um and again we added the additional instructional coach from the RPS standpoint because we saw that need for instruction and that is a piece that I mean you can even have conversation with Mr Trotter that is the first thought that popped my mind when I saw the level of instruction um that was happening as opposed to an AP they needed an instructional coach because they have an executive director they also have a direct of contouring
119cabinet and and also when you said AP they also still need that with 200 and some 219 students the whole school filled up one person cannot just run that school by themselves as a principal but I want to ask you my question on the that I wanted to make sure that you uh elaborate on can you tell me what is actually the difference between maybe I didn't catch it a slider and a non-slider so a slider is identified as an else student or a student with disability that will not graduate within four years therefore that student will slide into the next cohort um so if I am if I am entering 9th grade for the first time with this cohort and I will not graduate on time and I'm an L student then my data
120will be reflected into next year's data if I keep my still enrolled status so I have to stay still enrolled in my school and what is the nonsense um a non-slider would be a any student that's not an L or an swd who cannot slide into the next cohort okay so my question would be probably for Mr Jefferson um thank you Mr Grove looking at the dropout rate and I'm looking at sliders and non-sliders they're almost compatible equally compatible can you tell me what you are actually doing for that Mr Jefferson can you direct me to the slides of referencing um you have it on slide seven and slide eight and they're both highlighted in orange or yellow it's at the bottom right from transfer out to drop out uh sliders for George wolf got
121like 166 and non-slaughters is 25. so what you're telling me Mr Grove is your sliders 166 will go into the next year what this Dropout is so to answer your question what are we doing to support sliders uh specifically for our L students it is the the lead programs that we have at our high schools but specifically George with Huguenot and even at River City and Bouchard right so we put uh League teachers and we put uh strategies in place to support the L students so that they're successful and the same thing for our students with disabilities uh they actually have iupes and specifically designed instruction to help them be successful with passing sols just says and graduation just like any other scholar but this helps drop out what are you doing for dropouts oh
122students so we also have alternative programs such as we have kanganas we have secondary Success Center we have Thrive so we have multiple alternative programs that we're using to support Scholars um with on-time graduation and then also with I think somebody alluded to GED and other uh credentials so this 166 is this year is it this year and did they go through any of these programs because it's saying Dropout right here with a number of 166. correct those 166 students will not slide because they are dropouts so they'll get coded as dropouts and reported as dropouts however if you look above that when we look at our January so that's next year's mid-year diploma grads January 24 of 16 sliders and students that need additional years 18 students and then five underneath for still enrolled
123those three groups as students will slide into the next cohort and so one one area that we want to provide Insight on as well is if we do recover some of our dropouts who are especially at George with uh Latino and L English learner students and if we recover them they will essentially slide into our next uh cohort if we're able to graduate them on time as well and get them re-engaged in school so it provides some insight on Dropout recovery and how to tie Dropout recovery into improving student outcomes when it comes to graduation rates thank you so uh John don't go anywhere all right so um I have a question um and this is a this is a math related question right so I'm looking at the N values for each of these
124high schools and I think I brought this up before um is it really uh mathematically sound practice to compare um two cohorts with vastly different n values you know for example I'm looking at Raz right 2022 it was 87 2023 it was 55. that's a pretty big difference and I wonder if they're artificially being punished just because the cohort sizes are so different right and I wonder if for example George with which is still like you know 52 is still you know 54 even is is not great but you know the cohort in 2022 is 299. the cohort and 220-23 um was 419. that's a really you know that's a pretty big difference so is it really a fair thing to do to look at these two numbers that are very different and use this
125as a comparison for improvement or um decline in numbers let's say yes and no I I would say a general yes just because we do want to compare we do want to measure if we're making improvements but to your point the change in the end size is really important when um analyzing the performance I alluded earlier when I was speaking to the change and size for our Latino population um we saw these massive gains with our Latino population were wondering essentially um you know how come this isn't translating to higher overall status and so we see these these good Trends within our uh within our reporting categories which I I really believe is a good indication of performance especially when it comes to our Latino population but it's not directly translating to our overall status
126if that makes sense just because our Lati we still have a ways to go with increasing our ogr with our Latino and English learners but we are making gains in those areas but those areas did increase in size I know it gets confusing in Matthew I'm sorry no no it doesn't I just you know I still have that question and so um you know I think in the future we may need some more granular data except you know I mean these are like I mean this is like the highest level you can get with making these comparisons and it doesn't really give us enough information I think to really be able to measure gains or losses yep yeah I do want to say one final thing about that our team we're taking a heavier look
127as to better indicators of performance earlier in years so really looking at our end of our freshman year and seeing like how do we measure that progress instead of looking at the very end at the Pinnacles like you're saying um how do we measure at the end of ninth grade 10th 11th grade A year as well thank you anyone else all right thank you for your presentation all right we are now at what is now 5.01 receive for first read the 2023-24 score all right good evening Madam chair Madam by his chair Mr cameras and school board members I am Dr Robin Dalton here in officer and I'm here to present to you the student code of responsible ethics score revisions for 23-24 document or personal like like to think the score committee members for
128their time and dedication to this year's process the 2022-23 student credit responsible ethics score must be must be revised and approved by the school board prior to the 2023-24 school year a score committee composed of the following individuals guided the revision process for this year there were two school board members School Board attorney hearing officer coordinator of student conduct manager of trauma response Parents Principal three assistant principals coordinator for exceptional education and a family liaison the proposed revisions follow the model guidance from the Virginia Department of Education and also all code changes that are required please refer to the full score document for a comprehensive understanding of the recommended changes page numbers refer to the 2022-23 hard copy of the score and items in red are the proposed changes items in Black reflect current wording
129all right so on this slide you can see the summary of the draft revisions there aren't that many revisions for this year based upon the model guidance from ddoe so basically the cover page and the superintendent's message that is updated annually and then the following changes that are going in the actual document are found on pages 11 and 14. so code S barcode which is student Behavior Response Code for bso4 failure to be in one's assigned place that is being retired by bdoe so that code will be removed from our document code bso15 student that's not going to classes assigned and BSO 16 student is in an unauthorized area of Campus not related to school or class attendance those are new codes that everyone in the state of Virginia need to put into their code
130of conducts on pages 13 and 16 code BSO 13 for threatening or instigating violence injury of harm to another student or others the changes to that code is going to be adding not including written threats beso14 new code threatening intimidation or inciting violence injury or harm to another student or others in writing and if right and if the written thread as to a staff member a report to law enforcement is required unless the student making the threat has a disability this too is another code update from bdoe code number pd16 for a legal possession of other Firearms the verbiage that's been added this year as fire bombs exclusive explosive materials or devices hoax explode hoax I'm sorry explosive devices and these are all per code once again these are all updates for all School divisions
131within the state of Virginia next slot so the next steps in reference to the score revisions for this year is that once the score changes are approved the document will be further edited for clarity when the document is ready for publication it will be translated and then printed in time for the start of the 23-24 school year the electronic version will be uploaded to the RPS website once the document has been finalized and this year following once the document is finalized there will be several trainings that are had with all School Community stakeholders to include administrative training in August new teacher training in August other staff training in August we once again will participate in community walks and also student score presentations will be completed within the schools by September 22nd 2023. that concludes our
132presentation for revisions news Mr Young and then Mrs Burke Mr Young thank you madam chair and I recognize that this first first reviewed we're not going to vote on the document this evening but did want to in full transparency convey my concern relevant to the document and specifically in the spring I introduced a plan that pertains to students safety and Welfare among the recommendations under proposals and the report pertains to threat assessment teams and and in lieu of what we do right now specifically identify or review what we characterize as substantive threats to instead to review all threats and absent Miss Dalton correcting me if I'm wrong in regards to any of the following offenses and please Robin do correct me if I misspeak but in reviewing score uh I understand the following offenses to
133not immediately trigger a threat assessment team and and if that's the case I think it's serious shortcomings specifically colleagues stealing money using Force fighting resulting in injury vandalism cyber bullying libel possession of drug paraphernalia and endangering safety of others on bus and this school board members opinion each of each of those very serious offenses Merit a threat assessment to be conducted and and for that reason I would encourage us to not approve the score document until those those offenses are addressed adequate only way where the threat assessment team performs a exhaustive review thank you Mrs Burke and then miss Gibson thank you madam chair thank you Dr Dalton I am very much concerned with the score booklet itself is not an easy read it's not your fault I know much of it comes down from
134the vdoe but it's someplace sometime I don't know whether we can have a sub booklet I'm not trying to put more on your plate but that is not a friendly document for anybody to read is is and I'm thinking in terms of our staff and faculty members as well as our parents and our student body and I'm also thinking back to previous conversations in terms of what we've had right here on this board in discussing what level for a child at any age to have those labels placed on he or she um so but my question is has there been any thought I know what you're trying to do right now to get this ass as as required and I understand that or either what your opinion is in terms of maybe having a sub
135easy read at a glance um booklet and plain English that that everyone and anyone could understand and move forward has that been thought because this is some and unfortunately because I know it's on the um website a lot of folks that we haven't gotten it but it is listed on the website that's the ease that's at a glance this little one right here yes thank you Miss White yes I was going to um oh no just share with you that we do have a score to glance document yes this is that whole big booklet so no so what's in that document actually are some hot items um things that parents ask about most and so they are put into that document and also gives you a reference to the full document if there are things
136that are not there for understanding but um definitely it talks about when where and how the code is applied that is probably our number one question and then also we make sure that we put in there the guidelines for out of school suspension Appeals because that is another Hot Topic where parents say they're they don't understand that when I give them the opportunity nor the information in reference to how to a fill a suspension so that information is listed in that document as well all right maybe is this something new no ma'am I've always had this we have had that in existence now for probably about six years well let me share this with you and I'm not trying to to be whatever okay I'm trying to say this is politically correct because you know
137I respect you to the moon and back and I know you do well what you do but what I see on here at a glance um how to appeal a suspension what I'm talking about is with the overall score itself in addressing those behaviors and what level what tears that's that's the part that I'm trying to get clarity on it and I see over here level one maybe I just need this give it back to you I'm what I'm asking is at some point maybe we have a conversation later but I would like to see a friendly document that spends more that addresses more so what happens when a child has a meltdown or whatever else in terms of the child receiving support from the behavior specialist support plan being written up for those students
138to receive um what do you call it I may have to come before the team to have a behavior plan in place and I know those things take take place but I from what I just saw from that document which is great if my child has gotten into trouble and he or she comes before the panel what I'm asking is there a document before even getting to the panel and I'm thinking back to the question earlier what Mrs White asked regarding Raz and students needing coaches one reason a lot of the students are in RADS because they are they are struggling academically because of behavior situations that happen as you well know before they even got to high school level a middle school level because they were not addressed that's why we need baby wrap
139or some baby support a support program to get our students aligned and back on point so what I'm asking is moving forward for the 23-24 school year and maybe we'll have more time not maybe I will address that in such a manner to maybe have a committee to put in place not for you to do it all but something a go-to form for parents before getting to the point of having to appeal the disciplinary piece what is on that end on this end rather than that in the cause and effect piece does that make sense yes so something in place that because a child had a meltdown and hit everybody in his or her classroom and knocked him about her something is going on so what does the documentation there in place so that we
140won't have as many students to get to the point of can we have too many students coming before this disciplinary hearing too many too many so whether that falls under you or under Wellness or whatever else I don't know but I will ask Mr superintendent moving forward that we do have either a committee in place a group to address the behaviors per se as a simple checklist or a guy to even for our teachers you know some things you write up to give to the principal there's some things you address on your own depending upon the relationship that's there so that's that's that's my question if them does that make sense to you yes what did you gather from what I just said so basically you're looking for a family guy that shows supports for
141students for um behavior supports so yeah so that's something that we could work with collaboratively with um Angela Jones or her team I would love to be a part of that committee as well and I thank you so very much the young man that was here this evening was so impressive and I know that he is enjoying the support that he's getting but that support should be in place before even Warren duraz so that's that's that's the point I'm trying to make but you're like about one minute okay I'll say that for later thank you thank you okay um is it you Ms Gibson okay yeah Miss Gibson is going next I do want to say though as uh someone recently certified in mental health uh first aid I would love to be on that
142committee too um yes Ms Gibson thank you madam chair um every year I um I I feel a way when we we discuss this and I um I I often do not vote in support of the document because um because the issue with um you know the school to prison pipeline is um it's horrific horrifying to me and um and I think we have to take responsibility for the impact um that we we have um I do have some concrete asks of the board um that we consider one um I believe yes this document is very much too complicated right and and I think on the other hand though the I think a big issue is that there's a lot of stuff in here that we just don't do you know um we don't frequently
143have Community Building circles um I I think it's very rare that we refer to a uh behavioral specialist these things um sound good on paper but I know from having sat and participated in these hearings that they're not happening so um I think uh to be fair it's not happening because the resources aren't there and so um I I would like to see a recommendation in terms of the resources required to actually be able to do the things that we have in this document period um I also think that um I recognize that you know this whole thing of with with appealing a suspension I mean it becomes rather move right because by the time the appeal can be heard the students already been out of school for 10 days and the damage is done
144right so I mean we can appeal the suspension but the suspension is done and and why there's simply not enough staff on Miss Dalton's team right I mean so let's be honest like this is this is very much a resource issue and and and we are harming our city by not addressing these needs with urgency so um so I'd like to to hear a recommendation about the the resources that are truly needed in order to be able to to do this work the Justice it deserves um and then I also think as a board what we can do is put some very clear policy in place I believe there should be policy that dictates the requirements that we must need as a district to justify and allow a suspension of a student who is in
145elementary school likewise for middle school and high school because what's happening is we go from 0 to 60 um and and haven't done the work building up to that um and I believe unless we have policy that requires that this this Injustice will continue to happen thank you Ms Jones thank you madam chair thank you Dr Dalton um I um heard a lot of things tonight and they are um things that I shared for maybe the last three years I want to speak to the school committee um who every year when we do these revisions I learned so much because if you are sitting on the opposite end of the table all you think is that we are participating in this school to prison Pipeline and that is the um that's the appearance that it
146gives but I do want to name that there are this this process with the score and wellness and um Angela Jones office it is multifaceted and they all run interchangeably and there's not enough resources on all the sides and so it's not something as simple as let's just create another committee and let's just then work on this we have to really get to the core or the Crux of the issue and part of it as stated earlier is the video and the mandated codes and unless we are going to you know kind of disrupt that in a way that we've spoken about curriculums and everything else we can't then put on the hearing office the responsibility um for all of these codes that happen this is a um problem that has been happening long before
147I know I've sat in this seat and I would just like um for us to be more supportive in a way or what can we do and be more supportive which myself this page as the chair and co-chair have been advocating for resources working with Chief parks and really thinking about how to reimagine suspension because that is the steps that we need to take as far as um these trainings those were some of the things that came out of the score committee um when we heard that parents really couldn't digest um the booklet and finding ways to again be creative to ensure that they understand because a lot of this boils down to training a lot of this boils down to um being able to train administrators I mean folks that are on the committee
148you know you hear so much stuff that is happening on the positive side but then again it's not enough resources anyway that was a lot but I just want to say that the score committee and bringing forward these revisions um yes they are there and they are what Drive are um suspensions or whether someone gets a hearing or not but it also is also you know administrators buildings principles this is a full Hands-On approach that everyone has to take part in and so I just think that we need to really do a deeper look at you know what is really going on this is not just about the score and every time we talk about the score we go on this kind of path instead of really dealing with the core issue um and that
149is um we are in a position that we don't have enough resources in the hearing office to manage as many students that are having issues so um I know that was a lot but like I said I just heard multiple things I heard policy I heard a new committee I heard all these things but all of those things are just a symptom we have to get to the core of what is really plaguing our system when it comes to disciplinary um and that is the score that is mandated by the Virginia Department of Education thank you thank you I want to go then I think Mrs White and then Mrs Burke okay um so it sounds like what I'm hearing from Ms Jones is that and if she was on that committee then I know
150that there was an eye toward restorative practices as much as possible within the limits of having to follow the guidelines you know given to us by the vdoe um I think my question is um certainly we don't have enough resources in terms of people who can do mental health interventions at the school level is that what we're saying Ms Jones I would defer to um Miss Angela Jones or chief Parks I must say no but I would refer to the experts but the truth of the matter is no we don't Andy would you like to good evening Madam chair Madam Vice chair food War leaders and superintendent cameras um to your point Mrs Rizzi we don't have enough resources however we know that there's a myriad of reasons behind that people are leaving education in
151droves that's been private as well as the public sector and so we really have to do a better job at making sure that we're getting quality candidates to work with our students because we could have all the resources in the world but if that folks are not properly trained and they don't know how to truly support our students we won't see those outcomes thank you so then Dr Dalton um you know I think we all would like to see things move in a more restorative way and you know however it is we can support I'm sure we will um and I also recognize that you are almost a one-person team aren't you so I do have a coordinator of student conduct that joined the team um the end of November so she hit the ground
152running um but yeah so she's been acclimated and she will be in place again next year so um yeah we work with what we have Mrs White thank you madam chair um yes I also was on the committee um with Miss Jones and I'm going to say what I said on the committee is that our students need to know we have to be educated on how to follow all the school rules or they continue to do the same thing over and over we also have speaking of lacking of resources we have child studies cases that haven't been looked at or done and when we have a actual uh panel that seems to come up more so than anything now um and also Dr Dalton she said she has another staff but I'm sure she's looking
153for a raise just like everyone else I know I bought it uh before the first time that her department needs a raise and they still haven't received one I think everybody should be treated equally um I'm looking at this student code of conduct and I do have a couple of questions Dr Dalton it seems like we're having a drove of reminds now that we seem to get on CBDs gummies and vaping where is they is that located just you know in here in this code of conduct was that with that language where parents can understand so um the thing is so vaping is part of the sbarco bsc5 which is found on Tobacco possessing using tobacco products electronic cigarettes vaping equipment um imitation tobacco products and and the book it's founded on pages 12 and
15415. in reference to the CBD or the edibles they all fall under the drug category and that so it doesn't specifically say the wording for Edibles or CBD but it falls under drugs and that is espar code bso5 and that's for drugs then under the influence of Controlled Substances illegal drugs or synthetic hallucinogens or unauthorized prescription medications and that can be found in the score document on pages 13 and 16. well can we change that so that we we know who we're talking to our audience I mean um we do know our audience our parents how they're going to interpret that if they don't know what all of this that you just said means so we need to actually engage our audience more um and my other question uh for you I'm looking at the
155code of conduct I'm just just want to ask this question because it was brought up tonight as far as preschool where is that listed based on uh I don't see any levels or responses interventions because the young lady that came here tonight how would how was those um given to uh for preschool for the child because I don't see those anything in here for preschool suspension for 10 days yes to um Pre-K falls under Elementary so it's pre-k through five okay and then um what was your other part of that question I'm sorry I was looking for that um and then the other thing that I would like to see the code of conduct I know we the principals make the decisions and that's you know it's kind of it's not really uniformity because sometimes
156you can a child can get suspended for 10 days a child can get no suspension based on the relationship with the principal and then we have a lot of schools who just won't say that they have behavior issues for whatever reason that is to make them look like there is no behavior issues but then when we get the reminds we get a whole blew up there so I would think that we need education all around the board and we need to start doing that before the next school year thank you Mr Burke thank you madam chair I'm going back just to I don't want to leave with this I don't want to leave you this evening without making sure that we have in place every year we do continue to address what vdoe has put
157in place the Department of Education in terms of this score booklet of which we have but I do whatever it's a committee a task force or whatever we need to have a planet of action in place a task force let's say to maybe grow your own with the mental health piece with the resources that we state that we have and that may be in our budget to a certain extent I've read some places not here maybe it's someplace else in terms of having in place knowing that we don't have ample resources or Personnel to train those persons that are already here with us that's staying with us be a prayer professionals be it whatever positions therein teachers whatever at the end of the day we we cannot leave this table before this year is up
158without having something in place for a friendlier document to address School whoever does it and I'm going to keep pushing that until it's done as well as something friendlier for our parents and students and teachers to a hat in their hands the book is too much miss Page has her hand up Miss Paige yes so my question is you know we have this conversation year after year um so my question to Ms Dalton First I want to thank you for your presentation but can you clearly articulate the needs of your own apartment because and I know we don't have I mean we only have you know eliminate limited um amount of dollars but what are the needs of your department how can we best support the needs of your department because supporting your department will
159better support our students and the families that we serve and you don't have to answer tonight but just think about some things that can really you know add value to your department and you know and that's the discussion for the board and the superintendent because we know your department is small and you all cannot do everything based on the student cases that we hear you know that we see on a monthly basis you know that are you know impacted by the sport so is that something that um you can get to the board information uh yes ma'am I'd be happy to share that information um with uh Miss parks and Mr cameras and they can provide that information okay because I mean we have to be serious about this you know we talk about the
160score it's not user friendly um but we still are not addressing the needs about students and Families so that would be greatly appreciated thank you thank you um yeah I I'm just going to plug you know I attended on Mental Health First Aid training through rbha that I thought was extremely extremely helpful and I wonder why you know it's not required of more of our school Personnel uh it is just really it was it was extremely helpful and you know I'm a person who thinks that I know a lot about Youth and youth mental health and how to be a support for Youth and I I actually learned a lot from that training so I just want to plug that um Miss Jones yeah and I just wanted to add really quickly just to also
161think about again when we are talking all these topics to look at the young man that was sitting here tonight he came as he mentioned from his Comprehensive High School to Res that is a prime example of restorative justice right relationships there are models that we already have in RPS we just need to come together and figure out what models are working and how we can do better instead of continuing to try to recreate the will Dr Dalton has extensive knowledge in the hearing practices and Partnerships and there are people in place that can help us to support our students coming through these you know infractions and help restore relationships and really rebuild our young people tonight was a prime example of that based on whatever happened we don't I don't know what it was
162but it's a prime example of not always looking at discipline in a negative and I'm quite sure a score whatever code was attached to whatever happened so we need to be thinking about that as well so London name thank you thank you all right thank you Dr Dalton Chief Carson right next we are at 5.03 discussed path forward with Maury Street project and that's actually now 5.0 sorry I want to be correct here 5.02 yes thank you madam chair and given the time I will be brief given that we recently received news of a twenty dollar twenty dollar s 20 million dollar Grant from the state to support the new CTE high school that we hope to establish at the Mori Street property also known as the old Altria property um in discussions with the
163chair and vice chair we thought it might be a good time to discuss the path forward and so what I wanted to do tonight is lay out one potential path forward see if there's consensus on the board to proceed in that direction and then we can flush that out further and come back to the board there is enormous interest in the city of Richmond around Workforce Development around this project in particular but I think we have to get from conversation to action and so I think the first step is for us as a school system to articulate what we hope to ultimately achieve with this property what is the programming what is the profile of the student who are the partners that we would like to participate with so towards that end what I would
164be proposing is and this would largely kick off in the fall given that folks tend to disengage over the summer but a series of community conversations and focus groups with families with students with industry leaders to try to begin to flush out what this program could look like with an eye towards preparing students not only for graduation but for employment in high wage high growth industries along with as we have discussed before potentially partnership with J sergeant Reynolds so that students have a pathway towards higher education and so the vision would be to kick that off in Earnest in the fall and then with the goal of being in a position to put forth ultimately an RFP in 2024 to articulate our vision and then receive from the community um proposals they could be a
165sort of traditional proposal to build or renovate the site based on what we've laid out or partnership proposals that involve other entities so that the board can then look at all of these and and determine how we would like to move forward so that's the the high level uh idea I didn't want to begin having those conversations or go any further until the board had an opportunity to weigh in and and either bless this sort of direction or provide feedback to go in an alternative Direction without All Pause and happy to take any questions see Mr young one word yes Mrs White thank you madam chair um I like my one word would be a plan I can't bless anything off unless I see a plan for this type of money thank you yes ma'am
166that would be the next step I I just wanted to get a temperature check first before going down that path and um Mr cameras I don't know that I heard you so you were going to engage current um CTE faculty but I would think that that would be you know a facet of what you do absolutely all right well we will now miss Page yes no problem yes um a plan I'm very supportive of this because this is this will be in the eighth District but an intentional plan that engages the community as well as you know the um the partners involved that have the skill set you know the Workforce Development you know as far as the industry um you know the trends of the industry so I mean we don't have to reinvent
167the wheel we have those Partnerships with um the Workforce Development the Virginia Community College system so I would like to see a plan that's intentional and that's really engaging all parties involved or pertinent parties that needs to be involved thank you all right next we are moving on to uh 5.04 discuss historic tax credit process for William Fox Elementary School thank you madam chair and again I will try to be brief though this gets a little bit complicated I wanted to provide an overview of how the historic tax credit process works because there is one a critical step that the board would ultimately need to take if we wanted to go down this path and I'll speak about that in just a moment we're also joined by our Consulting attorney who's helped us uh navigate
168the historic tax credit process thus far and so if you have any additional detailed questions I know he'd be happy to provide those answers for you there are basically you can think of this as sort of two parallel processes one is with the Department of historic resources where we have to first request certification that the property is actually of historic significance it can either be a Virginia in the Virginia Landmark register or in a historic district we know that the fox building on Hanover is in a historic district so we do not anticipate any concerns there second is we would submit a plan to the Department of historic resources outlining how we would maintain the historic nature of the building so for example how are we going to ensure architecturally it remains a historically accurate
169that the materials and finishes that we would use as part of that plan we would have to provide pictures of how it existed before and again how we would ensure that it would exist like that going forward our architectural firm Quinn Evans has actually already begun some of that work in anticipation that we might go down this path and then third at the end once the project is complete the department of uh historic uh resources has to then certify that actually the work we did is in fact uh historically accurate and um they also uh involves a CPA to evaluate that we've spent the money appropriately towards all of the items that we articulated in the plan so that's one path with the Department of historic resources which is a state agency the that's fairly
170straightforward the more complicated side of things is the actual tax credit financing so that's what I want to spend most of our time talking about so under Virginia law you can get tax credits for 25 of the eligible expenses basically eligible expenses are anything that we would normally use CIP dollars for things like the roof the structure the mechanical systems not landscaping or um site work or if we wanted to add a wing to the building that wouldn't be eligible because it's not historic additionally anything that we use insurance money for is not eligible so in the situation of Fox as you might recall per our agreement we're receiving about an additional uh I believe 12 ish million 14 from what was the number 12 yes 12.4 million from the insurance company anything we use
171that money for would not be eligible for the tax credits however we have 15 million from the City and that would be I also want to note the 5.6 million we're getting in the state construction Grant also is not eligible so the only funds that would be eligible are the 15 million that we're getting from the city and so 25 of that is what would be eligible for the uh tax credits so 25 of 15 million gets us to 3.75 million so that is the kind of upper limit of the tax credits that we could hope to secure from the state as part of this project all right so let's say we get the 3.75 million in credits the way this ends up being good for RPS is basically we then sell the credits in
172essence to an investor and there are Market rates for what credits go for right now there it's a good market for sellers that's us um they're going for something like 88 89 90 cents on the dollar meaning basically the investor would pay let's just call it 90 of the cost of the credits um and then they're able to use the full credits that's how it's a good deal for them the way it's a good deal for us is we get 90 of the credits to RPS and that's money how RPS can use however it so chooses it doesn't even need to be used for Fox specifically and so if we actually are um okay in terms of our expenditures uh given that we have lots of different funding sources for Fox those funds would then
173be available to use for for anything the board so desires um here's the tricky part we RPS can't get the credits ourself it has to go through an intermediary and so typically how this works is an LLC is established for example we call it the fox renovation LLC the LLC is owned 99.99 by the school board and 0.01 by the investor and that's just a technical need of this process and so if the board did want to go down this route we would have to establish the LLC I'm not asking you to do that tonight we would contemplate that at our June 20th meeting but I wanted you to know what that's uh what's involved with that um and then in essence once the project is complete and the investor gets their credits and we
174get our money then uh we basically buy out the investor for a nominal sum usually it's a hundred dollars and then the school board has 100 control of the LLC and then can dissolve it so that's the the general process I I do want to note yes uh we could expect about 3.75 million in tax credits assume we um get about 90 cents on the dollar for that um that would yield us about three million however I do want to note there are some additional costs for going through this process so if you go to slide five we have to do Document Preparation for the Department of historic resources there are submission fees legal fees I mentioned the CPA so there's some fees there those are all pretty small dollar amounts in the scheme of
175things the big dollar amount is if we go down this route we actually have to do stuff to maintain the historic nature of the building for example rather than just buying new windows we would restore the existing Windows which is more expensive and the estimate ballpark of that cost for this project is about seven hundred thousand dollars so if we netted about let's say three million uh when we sold the credits we then probably have to spend somewhere around eight hundred thousand in terms of fees and uh restoring everything the way it would need to be and so I think it would be safe to assume RPS could probably yield somewhere in the order of two million dollars net out of this effort which again could be used as the board sees fit let me
176pause there I know that was a lot I'm happy to take any questions and anything technical I would ask our attorney to come up and thank you all right um I have a question and then I see Dr Harris Muhammad and then Mrs White um would this work as the other LLC did where I will become the owner in Mrs Burke and I will be co-owners of this LLC well the the school board as an entity would would control 99.99 I think as for if the entity has officers I'm gonna yeah ask our attorney to come up and speak together like like the president yeah yeah yeah and so I want to know if this resale we say you know we'll we'll give it back to now or they'll give it back to us for
177you know nominal amount if that is going to be in writing so that there is no question that that will take place um and so yes my question has to do with risk here okay I'm Tracy Shaw I'm an attorney with the woods Rogers Band even the black let's see if the last piece is the first piece the first question I understood was that typically an opera a um a limited liability company has a manager and that's an individual who signs for it who who you have to act through a manager even though the school board is the 99 owner of the interests uh in the in the LLC you have somebody has to sign the document so your school board would appoint a manager maybe the superintendent might be a member of the board
178whatever it might whatever you might choose now the second thing was the risk issue uh or the or the issue of the you and an LLC has an operating agreement which is basically the contract between the school board and the investor which would probably be an institution uh and that contract lays out the the call Price that is at the end of the completion when he gets his credits or it gets its credits uh at the year following the year in which you get the credit so you get to get the buildings completed in 2024 he gets the credits in 2024 2025 School Board calls his interest or a nominal sum and he's out in the school board owns the partnership owns 100 of the partnership um so what was the other question of liability
179yeah liability any risk at all and then um is that nominal amount in the contract yeah it's in the it's in the contract it's a call Price that's set out of the operating income so uh did I is there another question that I missed in there is there any other potential for liability or risk that you haven't covered uh I I don't think so I mean it's pretty clear from the operating agreement that the investor is entitled his credit all right now if if for some reason uh we don't deliver the credit uh because you'll usually you'll ask for a certain percentage of the money up front you'll say that when he's brought in or it's brought into the partnership which would be sometime early in the construction process you can negotiate a percentage 20
18025 whatever you want to ask for in terms of the credit in terms of the dollars up front uh if you don't finish the project and you don't get the credits or for some reason the credits are disallowed at a later date which is hard to see how it would happen but the only way would happen would be if somehow it was an audit it was determined that some of your costs were not creditable because it's capitalizable cost that that are creditable um then you might have to pay the money back you know you'd probably have it require or that'd be a requirement that you indemnify him for what he paid for the credits if he doesn't get the credits or if they're subsequently disallowed so um it's a limited liability company so the liability
181is limited to the company itself although the managing member meaning the school board would would be on the hook frankly if we're paying them back if they indemnifying them if he's paid for the credits and he doesn't get the credits all right thank you um Dr Harris Muhammad Mr cameras I think it would be helpful and I will be interested in I'm doing this just getting some one-on-one time to go through and explain it's not a strength of mine but would love to just go through this again um where we can go step by step and talk about benefits and I hear the rest that you share but have all of that explained so maybe send out a um and in no way I'm rushing this conversation but I know for me I want to
182be able to just really get a clear picture of what um what what this means for the school board um and I look forward to you know maybe a couple of dates or something where we can get together and talk about that thank you yes happy to do so and and full transparency I had to do the same thing with Mr Shaw to make sure I understood it so I'm happy to do that Ms White thank you madam chair um looking at the tax credit overview um and I just like to make a statement since I am the Second District representative for Fox I'm not really interested in um the LLC the buyouts the liabilities and the investors buying credits selling um to roughly get 1.7 when we're going to spend almost eight hundred thousand
183dollars we have the money we have 12.5 that was given 15 million 5.6 33 million we can build that school now so I'm not sure why we're going through all of this again looking for investors selling LLC the money is there and I like to see the school built thank you I guess the answer to that is it's two million dollars or so uh I'm not sure what the net number is you came up with but I think there's probably a little more in the uh in the qualifying costs than the 15 million which I guess you use because there is a developer fee that can be put on that but um yeah it's a question of whether a net amount at the end of the process if it's a couple million dollars or one
184point made or whatever the number is whether that's that's worth it just to have two million two million dollars that you wouldn't have otherwise well we spending 850 some thousand so I are we really making a deal when we can just go ahead and build a school because we do have the money we had to fight for the get the money now we have the money now it seems like we're bargaining to just get tax credits and going through this long process because I do know this is a long process so the investors so we might as well just go and build a school yes um Mrs White I do want to be clear we would we're building we're rebuilding the school either way um and yes we have the money to build the school
185with or without the credits what the credits going through this process would yield RPS is about two million dollars net so literally in essence a free 2 million dollars that could be used for any for more athletic equipment for any and so while it is a lot of work um it will still be building the school and it would yield us this additional funds that we could use for some of the things we've talked about that that may be true with the cameras but there's still a process investors trying to sell the credits back that's just when I asked this at the beginning before we before the fire about tax credits it was denied you said we weren't going to do it now we have the money and we're ready to invest with investors to
186get tax credits so I'd just rather have the money and build the school I don't see what we're going to spend 850 000 to get 1.2 million back in Return of almost what we just finished paying for uh I have a question and Mr Young um Mr attorney what is your name Shaw s-h-a-w attorney Shaw have we met you before that is your fee a part of this 800 is your fee a part of this 800 I think it's in it's in the number that he was uh that the superintendent mentioned the big the smaller piece of it the accountants the filing fees the attorneys the uh the big the big number was I guess the one I haven't heard before was that the windows would be that much more okay thank you Mr Young
187yeah just real briefly I mean the the proposal or the process or the invite for consideration perhaps is the best way to describe what the superintendent introduced a moment ago is not on like what was done at Maggie Walker and at the max Regional Governor School uh and it's a sort of process that did save the taxpayers considerable money and provided for uh erection renovation of two outstanding outstanding buildings uh that constitute extraordinary schools I fully support but the superintendents proposed for Fox thank you yeah I just might say that I first got into this uh side of things with the EC glass High School in Lynchburg that was done because I was 20 years ago but and then John Handley High School which is a very large project in Winchester they used credits for
188that and um you know they that money that was there and picked it up are there any other questions um Mr superintendent um uh just uh Madam by share that tentatively on our June 20th agenda uh we'll bring this back for official uh approval or non-approval so that we know how how to move forward so in the interim um as Dr Harris Mohammed had asked if anyone would like to discuss this further please just let me know if there are things I can't answer I'm happy to put you in touch with Mr Shaw so that the board can make the best possible decision on June 20th thank you thank you and thank you Mrs Shaw thank you all right next item on our agenda is 5.04 update on Legal Services thank you madam Vice chair
189um so just a couple of quick updates um we did reach out to the Virginia Department of Education regarding the approval of the job description for potential in-house counsel I don't know what was making that noise um uh they did indicate that the job description would need to be approved my question for the board is would you like the administration to draft something for the board to review or would the board like to manage that process entirely itself I'm happy to do whatever the board would so desire any questions comments board or Administration Mr Young I don't have any reservation relevant to the administration putting it together the likeli would expedite the process thank you Mr you know I'm Dr Harris Mohammed and Miss Gibson I agree if we can um also as a part
190of the process Every Step It Away review um have someone maybe communicate maybe not put all of this on your or Madam chairs plate but maybe a board member can be that um set of eyes and ears and just provide the feedback and say hey this is where we are you know do you have any additional feedback I think that will really help move along the process and not wait until the last minute and say we have 20 questions about the job just the job description alone so that's my recommendation but I agree with Mr Young I think it would move much faster based on what we asked from the last meeting this page has our hand up all right Ms Gibson then miss page that thank you madam chair um yeah from my perspective
191I think it it should be pretty straightforward process I would assume that the even the Virginia School Board Association may have a sample job description for this type of position um I think we could also look to see the language in Chesterfield I believe they also have in-house Council so um I would just request that the administration look at uh references as they develop these documents and it would be for two you know a senior and a a a more Junior position um uh so that we can move this forward with expediency thank you thank you miss Page yes I support the administration moving forward with the um creating the job description because they are the ones that know the needs of the district thank you consensus that the administration would move forward with that
192legal services piece yes I just want to restate it to make sure I'm clear we will go ahead and check all the sources that board members articulated uh create a draft circulated to get feedback and then we'll finalize it and get that posted um and um yeah I think that that works thank you all right thank you so much we're now ready to move forward to board action items 6.0 excuse me excuse me shab 5.05 misses um Nicole Jones thank you thank you madam chair um boy colleagues I have it you have before you the nomination of the um student health Advisory Board committee members for the next um term for many of you who know the shab has um been responsible for some of our Wellness policies they have supported um on the nutrition
193committee with um when we were looking and in search of a new nutrition director of nutrition and have been pretty active in um supporting the wellness office and mental supports for our students and so we are asking tonight for your vote um on this committee you have the names before you any questions Miss Jones Dr Harris Muhammad if there aren't any questions or discussion I would like to make a motion and I can wait until after um Miss White thank you madam chair Ms Jones I have a question the 12 names are we voting on the 12 names will they be added on to the second page or were the the ones that are on the second page where they come off so the ones that are on the second page are the Committees now
194I mean are the members that are there now and the 12 names are some of them are continue to stay so the names that are on page two will change will be updated with the new names so you um so with the new names the 12. because you look like you got quite a few on the second page so therefore you you need some more names or no no no we'll need no more names basically we just want to know we good we just watch the vote on um what we have but seriously um so we have two names on here already that are on page two they are continuing to stay on as a part of the committee and then the new names are folks who have been vetted and were recommended to join
195the committee for the 2023 through 2025 okay thank you any other discussion Dr Harris Muhammad thank you ma'am I move that we accept the recommendation from the Richmond school health Advisory board for the names that have been submitted second second is has been moved by Dr Harris Muhammad that we accept the listed names from the shaft committee and seconded by this page yes I know somebody asked me for a paper I'm sorry oh okay please that um as motion are you ready any questions discussion Madam clerk we're ready to vote to the store Miss White yes Miss Gibson abstain Mr Young aye Mr Izzy yes Dr Harris Muhammad yes Miss Burke yes Miss page yes Miss Jones yes motion passes all right we are now at uh 6.01 received for Action Personnel actions thank you
196madam chair this evening we have six nominations 13 changes of contract 34 resignations and five terminations of employment six retirements two name changes and one rescission of resignation yes Miss White um thank you madam chair uh we are having a close correct okay I just had a question all right so we'll go on to close to continue with Personnel actions Madam chair can we return back to item 5.07 with the superintendent's update on the mayor's basketball program I thought I missed it okay all right yes thank you thank you so much I didn't have it written down 5.07 um yes thank you madam chair um the program would involve the use of the Gill Center at Fairfield court on June 9th and 10th that's Friday and Saturday from 6 p.m to 10 30 P.M along
197with June 15th through August 19th on Thursdays Fridays and Saturdays same time 6 p.m to 10 30 P.M George with uh similarly June 9th and 10th Friday and Saturday and then June 15th through August 19th Thursday Friday and Saturday again 6 pm to 10 30 p.m the programming would be Run 100 by Parks and Rec All Staffing all security all maintenance everything involved with the program would be run by the city we are simply providing the space for these activities to occur this is part of the city's um summer anti-gun violence program to make sure that there are more opportunities for youth to engage in productive activities certainly throughout the day but also in the evening when we know sometimes we have some of the activities that that we don't want to have happen um
198that is is in essence uh the the entirety of the information thank you all right Mrs White and then Ms Jones thank you madam chair um I have two questions uh Mr cameras who decided what locations uh this was going to be at Parks and Rec uh requested these two locations and um is there any way that Richmond Public Schools is held for any liabilities at all no ma'am we in fact in the facility use agreement articulate that we have no uh liability for anything that occurs as part of these programs Miss Jones thank you madam chair I just have a question around the fact that we're saying we don't have any liability but since Parks and Rec pretty much serve RPS students is there going to be an opportunity or are we doing anything
199internally to it a minimum make sure that our students even know that these programs exist and how they can be a part of them or are we just leaving that up to Parks and Rec um we have by and large been leaving everything up to Park some Rec just to kind of keep us separated um if the board would want us to advertise this I will do so I was just trying to keep um kind of the the separation as as clean as possible so follow up Madam chair um even if it's a separation for me our Parks and Rec is a partner and so if they are a partner just like all other partners why would we not share with families what's happening um in particular in schools where we are seeing challenges um
200with our students during the day or whenever um we should definitely be trying to support or at least kind of you know share that that opportunity is there so that it doesn't seem like they're not included I'm happy to do so if that was if that is the will of the morning does it have a question offline okay um you know I I I I want to just make the comment that I I was I was um kind of surprised to hear about this from a third party and that we weren't you know I know that we don't own these buildings but you know it is a part of RPS and we weren't notified ahead of time that this was going to happen so you know I felt a I felt a little bit blindsided
201when someone called and asked me about it and I didn't know and wasn't able to speak on it um also you know we've been talking about as a board about ways that we could work to you know help with violence prevention specifically gun violence prevention that's impacting our students and um to have this happen without collaboration or an invite you know an invitation to collaborate with the city on this um also you know is something that struck me um I mean certainly we all feel um protective over our young people and we want to make make sure that things that are meant to address especially what we've been dealing with with gun violence um that that those kinds of things are done well and um to do this and make this decision and I'm speaking
202for myself as you know Stephanie worthy Fifth District representative um to do this without engaging us or notifying Us in any way especially you know me representing a school where there was just recently a shooting in a near death um it just feels a little a little um I mean it feels lacking in you know a recognition that we are a partner in this too so I do want to express that Dr Harris Muhammad has her hand Dr Harris Muhammad thank you um I think one of the areas that can be approved on is just sharing communication and this sounds like a great program and giving our students an opportunity to you know just just be in a safer place in a more um organized setting is always positive and I know that's what we
203all all nine of us want for our kids oh 10 of us want for our kids as a governance team but I would have liked to also have it made aware was that this was moving forward and um been given the opportunity to cheerlead for it um and and with that being said Mr cameras I think that you should take the ownership and uh moving forward and making sure that our families are notified I mean one way it's the use of our RPS direct is an excellent communication tool um and it goes out every day and if that is something that we can use to just put that information in right before school closed then that would be great because I think you take a break from that during the summer the RPS direct or
204maybe not not every day but maybe once or twice a week but I think that um that would be a great way and maybe um share with the building principles you know to put it in their closing out or just be creative with things like that but um not to um you know extend the point but I would have liked to have known that we were partnering and I think it's a great partnership I do um but you know just lean on us and share the communication with us so we can support what is what is getting ready to put forward so thank you I do um appreciate the Parks and Rec in the city um a group of people coming to the mines because we all see what's happening right and not just gun
205violence but also some other internal things that are going on in our young people's lives um so really appreciate um the programming that is that has been extended to our kids so kudos to everyone that was involved um uh I just want to apologize for my lack of communication about this um I I'm sorry about that it um given that we use our facilities for so many different things it unfortunately did not cross my mind um to um to provide notifications so I do sincerely apologize on that and it sounds like there is some energy to spread the word given the intent of the program and barring any objection um I will certainly do so um in the channels that Dr Harris Muhammad recommended um I have one more comment than Mrs White um you
206know I I would like some information before I get on board with this and maybe you can say the board Sans Rizzy um we'll we'll advertise this um I I as if it's going to be billed as gun violence prevention I'd like to see some evidence-based um documentation that a recreation program like this can or has been seen to reduce um the likelihood of gun violence in our with among our youth um primarily because I know that one of our students who you know went away and um you know actually used guns to well aegon to um film a music video and then subsequently lost his life was involved in a gun violence program offered by our partners and so you know I just wanna if we're going to build it that way and if
207we're going to advertise it as it's a part of a gun violence initiative I want to be sure that whatever it is we're doing is evidence-based and that we know that you know it has been seen in other places for example to have had some efficacy in preventing gun violence Miss White thank you madam chair um I have a statement Annie uh well a statement and two questions um I know that we just received this and it was um I guess you might have forgot Mr uh cameras to let us know um but you and the mayor y'all did talk so something should have came out immediately when y'all agreed to having it in our facilities and I would like to see some type of education gun violence education thought just not open gym where
208we just playing basketball that doesn't do anything they come right back out that doesn't do anything we're not talking about gun violence we're talking about playing basketball or having teams and how long would this gun balance program last is it just for the summer uh and Why Can't This Be year round my understanding I'm sorry madam chair my understanding is yes it is for now just slated for the summer um I will inquire with the city about explicit gun violence education and Mr aziz's request around evidence as for year round I'm not sure I would support that given the impact it would have on our buildings while school is in session so um yeah I think for now uh we should limit this to the summer go ahead unless the cameras isn't this at night
209during the evening yes ma'am but you said doing to our buildings well I still need to if we're going to keep our students off the street during the summer why not do it year round we're talking about gun balance all year round not just the summer yes ma'am I would be open to it but as long as the costs of um the custodial costs and the security costs and such were all borne by our partners if they weren't my fear is that we would end up spending quite a bit of money on custodial contracts or custodial overtime security over time and such that I think would not be financially sustainable for us so that's the kind of thing I would want to understand before even bringing to you all a proposal for the rest of
210the year furthermore uh to miss rizzi's point I I think we need to see if it works and if it if it does then I think that's a worthy conversation so is the city pen custodian cause for the summer yes ma'am thank you Miss Jones yeah not to belaborate but I just wanted to add because it was mentioned that if it was the will of the board we were promoted through RPS direct and all of those channels and I want to just ensure that we have had another conversation I guess with the city beforehand because we don't want to put it out and then it's not enough capacity because we also know that parks and recs sometimes are short and it's only however many people they have working so I don't want it to be
211said that the board said do this and then they get an influx and they can't serve everyone as well so I would just like us to be able to maybe have another conversation with the city see what their capacity and their numbers are um in terms of how many students do they even you know um you know are thinking would come or you know if they have a said number that they're trying to um reach versus just putting it out there and then it comes back to us saying well you said put it out there and now you know Parks and Rec are picking up the slack because we want to have um students engaged and again like I said my other question would be where are these students coming from because if they are
212already RPS students um that live in the city then perhaps there could be some cross reference in terms of who we actually are recruiting and be a little more intentional thank you Mrs Burke thank you madam chair being mindful that before covet Parks and Rec had Midnight basketball they had basketball in several schools um so technically this isn't anything new my suggestion is that even with inviting the students in the community I agree with what Ms Jones stated and for instance I'm very happy that we're going to use the guild Center for um basketball in the East End I have also known my community I know that certain groups will be there and certain groups will not be there certain groups can walk certain groups don't have transportation well my concern is which will fall
213on the city per se in terms of what happens after the games but I do know that during covet when school was closed excuse me the private school um what's the Episcopal School Angelina Cooper what is it Anna Julia Cooper forgive me um they did have basketball there every weekend and it ended up being very very right in the midst you know that's located right by Woodville Elementary School and it went very well so I'm glad that we are reopening our schools for this purpose and I hope that more schools will be added however I do want us to be careful in terms of because some students do have cars and you do want to have them there so who exactly is this for I would prefer personally that it all it all rests on
214the city per se as terms of um invitation and involvement and also in terms of what they teach or don't teach I would love to see everybody doesn't play basketball some people play chess some people play want to be dancers some folks want to do more than basketball but my suggestion right now is that we let it rest upon since this is the city's program Parks and Rec already has different teams playing anyway so um particularly in the East End from different centers so my suggestion that the city is renting and has mou and this is their program just as the church comes in we don't tell them what to preach just as a girl scouts comment on any other program we don't tell them what to say but um I would prefer from my
215perspective that it all rests upon the city and they do have a means of communicating banking yeah I I mean I I think that this will rest on the city I do think that I'm within my right to express that I was um um not you know I would have rather they collaborate with us on it just follow up Madam chair just Mr cameras are we aware of the age groups I believe it's youth not necessarily you know RPS students it could be young adults as well but I will try 18 to 22 or I I believe so okay but I will check with Parks and Rec and get get that information furthermore okay thank you [Music] at 10 o'clock so um we need to thanks moving here so we are now at 5.05 right
216have we done zero two oh 6.02 I'm sorry all right read for second read receive or second read the N Action title one two three and four grants good evening again board I am Sydney Gunter again um and I'm here um for approval of the four Federal entitlement grants titles one two three and four um I just want to go to the questions at the end um to address the um few things that you all asked last time to read it right to reiterate the responses um the first one question that was asked by Ms White was in regards to title III funding in support of pre-K um and I just wanted to share again that our title III funding supports students in grades kindergarten through 12 however our language support supports families in pre-k
217through 12 so that would be translation services interpreters for families works with families in in pre-k 2 through 12 that's not limited to kindergarten through 12 but Elite programs specifically is for students in grades K through 12. um the other question was about the elite team being under curriculum and instruction um as the board voted previously we will have a leap director soon and so that leap team will go up under the new leap director as well as the Welcome Center all of our language Justice efforts will now be one combined team to support all of our English language support and efforts um and then the only other question that was proposed was around the positions in title three um specifically our bilingual graduation and Dropout support specialist is one of them she is currently
218entrenched in that work and as we see we are seeing double-digit projections for our English Learners um Hispanic students right now and so after graduation we can provide more specific information about the impact of the specific student she's been working with um or our Latino NL students okay any discussion yes Dr Harris Muhammad because this is for um action if there's no discussion I can make a motion at the right time is there any discussion all right I move that we accept the title one title two title three and title four grants second it's been moved by Dr Harris Muhammad uh to accept the title grants as proposed as presented and uh seconded by Ms Jones Madam Clerk Mr Miss White yes Miss Gibson yes Mr Young all right Miss Rizzy yes Dr Harris Muhammad
219yes Miss Burke yes Miss page Miss Jones yes motion passes thank you thank you we are now at item 6.03 received for Action the 2023-24 re-election list all right we will wait well no we will move on and come back to it when Mr cameras returns uh six point oh he's okay 6.03 re-election list thank you madam chair uh before you is the 2023-24 re-election list uh assuming board approval this evening we are excited to get contracts out to our staff tomorrow is that what you were about okay but I do have a comment certain I am really pleased that contracts will be going out prior to the last two days of school I know the past couple of years after the pandemic was a little difficult but I'm really excited and hopefully we can
220improve and add a year next year so remember June June the 6th and then next year um maybe a week earlier or something like that so I I am really pleased with this thank you great work to Talent team and whoever did the work to put this out there this is exciting if I may but I'm sure um Allison Davis uh Miss Lee um Miss uh mickens domena the the whole team has a role to play in that so thank you to the mom all right so it has been moved to uh except the real election list as as proposed or as presented so accept the re-election list as presented it was moved by Ms Jones uh Dr Harris Muhammad did you second I did yes ma'am seconded by Dr Harris Muhammad Madam clerk Mr
221Stewart Miss White yes Miss Gibson yes Mr Young all right Miss Rizzy yes Dr Harris Muhammad Mrs Burke yes Miss page Miss Jones yes motion passes okay thank you we're at 6.04 received for Action tuition meal and rental rates thank you madam chair uh you have before you the updated fy24 rates for tuition meals and rental rates for our facilities any new discussion Dr Harris Muhammad a move that we accept the tuition meal and rental rates for fiscal year 23-24. second okay it's been moved by Dr Harris Muhammad that we accept the tuition meal and rental rates for uh fiscal year 23 24. it's been seconded by Ms Jones Madam clerk Mr Miss White yes Mrs Gibson abstain Mr Young aye Ms Rizzy yes Dr Harris Muhammad Ms Burke miss Page yes Miss Jones yeah
222motion casts okay 6.05 received for Action the 2023-24 salary schedule thank you madam chair but for you is the salary schedule for next school year which incorporates all of the raises that come through our budget season and our collective bargaining agreements one item I did want to add if if the board would consider is a retention bonus I know this is something that the board has wanted to do for some time now that we are getting closer to the end of the fiscal year I do believe that we will have sufficient our funding left to be able to do so and what I am proposing is for all staff who return next fall who have two to nine years of experience a one thousand dollar retention bonus those with 10 to 19 years of experience
223two thousand dollars 20 to 29 3 000 and anyone with 30 or more years of experience four thousand dollars okay [Music] that's Muhammad thank you madam chair um Mr cameras um dealing with the retention bonus uh see that you have it categorized um what about the schools that are hard to feel and they're giving that additional four thousand would they also get the retention bonus also everyone um that is a good question um I yeah they're two different things so I think the answer is yes I just want to make sure they get the four thousand because there's two different things but if they're getting the four thousand and as they're getting the retention because they're still at school so would they be getting whatever six thousand dollars yes ma'am okay thank you Dr Harris
224Muhammad Mr cameras thank you um I think this is a generous um uh bonus um I would just like to know when you alluded to in the email that this funding came about because several schools did not move forward with the year-round um calendar and so before I can support this recommendation I would like to know um what that funding was and then um you know when I I normally voted on the year-round calendar for certain schools however when were we aware that we were going to have this particular money um left over and to use in this in this fashion yes ma'am um there was about 12 million set aside for extended time which would have covered four to five schools since we only had two of course we had a balance of um
225let's call it about 8 million um I wasn't prepared to essentially put that on the table until this point in the year because I wanted to just check to see if we had any cost overruns in other parts of the art but um I think we are going to be in good shape and so the proposal I laid out to you just now would cost on the order of about five million so that would still leave us about 3 million uh that we would have as a cushion as a buffer Dr Harris mom yes ma'am I have a follow-up thank you since we have the extra funding left and it's very exciting is it possible to use any of those funds to um to support the positions that were recommended for a riff I would
226be hesitant to do that because um we're trying to reduce the number of positions on the ARP um not put more back I think because this funding is is still coming out of the art you can't okay got it thank you Mrs White all right Mr Young I just wanna ask for a clarification first I fully support the superintendent's proposal um but clarification regards to Ms White's inquiry uh we aren't uh persons that transfer from one RPS school to an to a hard to feel School aren't eligible for the bonus because they don't constitute a new teacher correct I believe I believe that's accurate yeah so I don't so I think the answer would be no right I mean should be to miss White's quite question it wouldn't be because the one one bucket of
227yes I may have misunderstood yeah I'm sorry Mr cameras that's not what I stated I was talking about if they were at the school I think Mr Young got that mixed up I was talking about if they were at the school with retention uh do they actually still get that bonus plus the money for the heart to feel position that's what I was talking about yes so there's two different situations one is for the staff that is currently there um and yes they would get that retention bonus which is different from staff who are currently in RPS and move over there that would not anyone want to offer a motion so moved okay so it has been moved by Ms Jones to accept the 2023-24 salary schedule with the um with the retention bonus added
228and it has been seconded by Dr Harris Muhammad Madam Clarke Miss door Miss White yes Miss Gibson yes Mr Young aye Mr Rizzy yes Dr Harris Muhammad yes Miss Burke yes Miss page yes yes Miss Jones yes motion pass thank you we're at 6.06 receive for Action a request for authorization for the superintendent to hire school-based staff during the months of June July and August 2023. thank you madam chair this is our standard practice to ensure that we're able to quickly hire school-based staff during the summer months given that we only have one meeting in July and even in between our August meetings and our June meetings it's important that we're able to quickly move on candidates Dr Harris Muhammad there's no discussion I move that we allow the superintendent to hire school-based staff during
229the months of June July and August second it's been moved by Dr Harris Muhammad to allow the superintendent to hire school-based staff during the month of June July and August of 2023 it's seconded by Ms Jones Madam clerk Ms Stewart Miss White yes Miss Gibson yes Mr Young aye Mr Rizzy yes Dr Harris Muhammad yes Pittsburgh yes Miss page yes Miss Jones motion passes all right 6.07 receive for Action the recommendation to authorize the superintendent to make budget transfers to balance all accounts for fiscal year 20 22-23 again as is our standard practice uh this would allow us to make all those transfers up until June 30th the end of the fiscal year to make sure all accounts are balanced so moved it it's been moved by Dr Harris Muhammad to authorize the superintendent to
230make budget transfers to balance all accounts for fiscal year 2022-23 seconded by Mrs Jones Miss Jones Madam clerk Ms Dorr Miss White yes Miss Gibson yes Mr Young aye Mr Rizzy yes Dr Harris Muhammad yes Miss Burke yes Ms page yes Miss Jones motion passes all right 6.08 receive for Action certification of intent to participate in the 2023-24 Virginia Regional migrant education Consortium thank you madam chair this is a Consortium for Central Virginia actually coordinated by Albemarle County to support migrant students migrant students are defined as students who move school systems uh over the course of three years explicitly for the purpose of agricultural work we have a very small number of these students but we do want to continue to be a part of this Consortium and to do so it requires for approval
231thank you in the discussion of Dr Harris mom a move that we accept for Action the certification of intent to participate in the 2023-24 Virginia Regional migrant education Consortium Consortium led by Albemarle County Public Schools second right it's been moved by Dr Harris Muhammad that we um see we approve intent to participate in the 2022-23 I'm sorry 2023 24 Virginia Regional migrant education Consortium moved by Dr Harris Muhammad seconded by Ms Jones Madam clerk Mr Miss White yes Miss Gibson yes Mr Young all right yes Dr Harris Muhammad yes this Burke yes Miss page yes Mrs Jones motion passes okay we're at 6.09 receive for Action contracts over a hundred thousand dollars thank you madam chair we have one it's for Honeywell to uh make some significant upgrades to the uh essentially Energy Management Systems
232in four of our schools and those schools are in one moment I'll pull it up uh Carver Elementary Chimborazo Elementary red Elementary and Thomas Jefferson High School and I would call it Miss Fox if there are any more detailed questions about the project thank you Dr Harris Muhammad raised our hand Dr Harris mom a move that we receive for Action contracts over one hundred thousand dollars second Dr Harris Muhammad has moved that we approved the contract uh over a hundred thousand dollars and seconded by Ms Jones Madam Clerk this door Miss Wade yes Miss Gibson abstain Mr Young aye Ms Rizzy yes Dr Harris Muhammad yes Burke yes Miss page yeah Miss Jones yes motion passes we're now at item 6.10 receiver action budget transfers over ten thousand dollars think about them chair we have
233a transfer of 96 840.30 uh from our workers comp line uh this these are funds that are not being utilized this fiscal year um these funds will go towards supplies to Resource the um reimbursement to our Mechanics for tools lost uh in the bus depot fire Ms White thank you madam chair uh Mr cameras how many mechanics is this I don't know the number off top Matt I'm going to ask Miss Fox to come up it looks like it's 14 though I'd have to double check but I believe the number was 14. thank you any other questions or discussion they have a motion so moved all right they have a second okay it's been moved by Dr Harris Muhammad to approve the budget transfer over ten thousand dollars uh it's seconded by Mrs Burke Madam
234Clark the store Miss White yes Miss Gibson abstain Mr Young all right Miss Rizzy yes Dr Harris Muhammad yes this Burke yes Ms page yes Miss Jones yes motion passes okay we're now at 7.01 receive the 2023-24 Staffing update thank you madam chair given the our um I won't say much here other than that we are making steady progress you can see all the data in the presentation and happy to take any questions thank you Miss White um thank you madam chair just want to say what's the cameras for uh my school Carver has 10 year I clarified today is six now we're really working within the days that this was poor yes ma'am this data is about 72 hours old and um things are moving fast so thank you and and my other question
235would be this I had just asked about the retention bonus does a retention bonus also include the leadership administration too or is it just for teachers does it in the hard to feel schools uh it does not include Administration okay thank you okay we're at item 8.01 received for Action board travel and District activity requests we have several tonight one second please I'm sorry while you're doing that I do want to correct myself from Far earlier in this meeting Mrs page did attend a George with renaming Committee hearing just wanted to set the record straight on that indeed she did tonight we have requests for Ms Gibson District three in amounts as follows for for these specific um categories Richmond Technical Center teacher recognition and materials 500 John Marshall High School girls track donations 687.50
236John Marshall High School girls wrestling 687.50 John Marshall High School girls cross country 687.50 and John Marshall High School girls cheerleading 687.50 yes Dr Harris email to see if I could that's okay missed it it's all right um email to see if I could add um 100 to go to overbeat Shepherd for their fifth grade moving on ceremony and to send Martin Luther King Jr Middle School a hundred dollars for that eighth grade moving on ceremony for Refreshments for the families yes um Miss Burke I don't think you have to get a hundred dollars approved do you man clerk I'm not sure about that but it does sound familiar yeah okay I'm so used to just if it's over 100 then yes but if it's 100 okay thank you for that thank you yeah thank
237you so we don't have to approve that but okay she's gone thank you but don't wait we'll you know find out but thank you Miss Burch as permission for everything I just want to make sure we're asking permission okay all right I move that we receive uh the budget I'm sorry we receive um the board travel and District activity requests second all right so a move that we accept the board travel and District activity request it's been seconded by Mrs Jones uh Madam clutter Miss door Miss White yes Miss Gibson yes Mr Young Epstein Miss Rizzy yes Dr Harris Muhammad yes Miss Berg yes Miss page yes Miss Jones yeah motion passes okay we're going to go ahead and move down to new business okay colleagues and I am going to now move to announcements
238Ms Burke thank you so much Madam chair I was very pleased today at the Kiwanis Richmond Club of the Kiwanis we were a recognized two students that are members of the Key Club um one young lady from Thomas Jefferson received 2500 gifts gift scholarship and the other student from Community High and I do have their names from trying to find them now so I can send them on to the superintendent to include they were very proud and I was very proud of them as well because there were children excuse me only about four students that were four or five and Richmond Public Schools had two so I'm glad that we are actively engaged in the key program and that they completed our requirements and received the 2500 scholarship as graduating seniors so you who for
239Community High and um Thomas Jefferson thank you is why thank you madam chair I just would like to say congratulations to all the elementary schools and middle schools who will be having their move on ceremonies on Wednesday and Thursday this week thank you I'm Dr Harris Muhammad yes thank you thank you to the Thrive family for inviting me to serve as your graduation speaker on Friday you blessed me the students were great with sharing their future plans thank you to the parents and to the Thrive team you rock I look forward to reviewing possibly a few pictures in the RPS direct very soon also if you did not attend the RPS summer Wellness Day event at MLK on Saturday you missed a whole treat thank you to miss Gunner and the entire team for a
240job well done and you may see circling on social media me and a fifth grader we had a friendly competition of jump rope and so who run that con who won that competition can be discussed later but it was fun and also to Travis Woods and his non-profit organization youth impact thank you so much for thinking enough of RPS and the Eastern Community for hosting team Workforce Development camp at Armstrong high school on Saturday thank you so very much Miss Jones just wanted to give a shout out to the 8th grade team over at River City Middle School who made a um beautiful um week of um things for the moving preparing for the moving on ceremony and working tirelessly even in the rain on field trips and all of that I just wanted to
241give them a shout out because they did an amazing job and their dance that they put on um was very super sweet so I just want to give a shout out to the 8th grade team of at River City Middle School for all their hard work that they worked extra long hours for last week to get their young people ready for moving on this past Friday thank you uh three quick things one congratulations to the five graduates uh rcea today Miss Rizzy and I were able to celebrate them so congratulations to them they are our first graduation of the Season uh two I just want to remind everybody for my email earlier today the groundbreaking for George with uh will be on July 15th Saturday it's Summerfest at the same time so please mark your
242calendars for that and finally today was the deadline to submit uh bids for the early site work and we got four bids which is great um so we're really looking forward to that all right and um I it's been a whirlwind um but I do want to recognize a few events I attended and if I missed something please please um forgive me uh I attended a great end of year celebration at Swansboro Elementary um principal Murphy Braxton was the keynote and it was great um uh I attended the closing of the Bulldog account not the closing but the ending end of the year ceremony for the Bulldog Academy at George with high school also a wonderful event shout out to Maymont preschool that moving on outdoor drive-through ceremony was lit I was so awesome we
243had a great time photos I think were in the RPS direct um and then Mr Young and I attended the Richmond adult Technical Center graduation which was really an inspiring very inspiring event so thank you so I think we're ready to go into closed everyone yes go ahead Mrs Burke pursue into sections 2.2-3711a1 and 29 of Dakota Virginia in 1950 as amended I moved that the school board of the city of Richmond convened and closed session to consider the assignment appointment promotion performance demotions salaries disciplining or resignation of specific public officers appointees or employees of the school board or for discussion consideration interview or prospective candidates for employment and the Personnel actions for today and discussion of the award of a public contract for Legal Services involving the expenditure of public funds including interviews of
244bidders or offers and discussion of the terms or scope of such contract where discussion in an open session would adversely affect the bargaining position or negotiation negotiating strategy to the um of the public Bond and move to going to close by Mr Burke seconded by Miss Jones we are now in close no ma'am we need to vote we need to vote to go into close I do that every time I'm sorry sorry Ms door Miss White yes Miss Gibson yes Mr Young aye Mr Rizzy yes Dr Harris Muhammad Mr Burke miss Page yes Miss Jones motion passes we are now enclosed