RPS School Board Special Meeting - August 23, 2022

001i virtually uh given her circumstances are the out of town madam chair second thank you it was moved by mr young and seconded by ms page to allow school board member ms burke to participate virtually madam clerk roll call vote please miss store hi miss rizzi yes dr harris mohammed yes mr burke miss page yes miss jones yes motion passes thank you mr stanley miss burke can you hear us okay yes i can madam clearly we we heard all that yes ma'am loud and clear thank you very much mr stanley i appreciate you we apologize for that now i need a motion to adopt the agenda as presented it was moved by mr young present uh seconded by ms jones to adopt the agenda as presented madam clerk roll call vote please can we step

002back just for one second and do a roll call first oh yes i'm sorry yes ma'am roll call please miss door miss white present miss gibson she's walking in here dr harris mohammed present miss burke [Music] here miss jones here we have a quorum thank you now i'm going back to mr young do you still approve of adopting the agenda as presented yes ma'am so moved ms jones do you still second that thank you madam clerk roll call vote please miss door miss white yes miss gibson yes mr young aye mr rizzi yes dr harris muhammad yes miss burke miss paige yes miss jones yes ms berg [Music] motion passes thank you miss burke you're doing okay can you hear us we can see you talking but we can't hear you okay use your thumbs

003up thank you appreciate that ladies and gentlemen thank you for being here this evening we have come to the point of public information let me going to stop for a minute the superintendent and now would like to share um a few a few words of um principal parker mr cameras thank you madam chair i did want to just take a moment to honor the memory of principal riddick parker from george with high school who passed away late last week riddick was a cherished member of our family who gave his full heart and his full soul to the students of the tr with community he was a super bowl champion who could have done anything with his life but he chose to serve children and he chose to do so here in richmond first at armstrong

004and then at george with and his passing has left a gaping hole in our entire family but especially in the george with family and so i'd ask you to join me and the chair in extending our condolences to his wife and his children to all who knew and loved him and to take a moment of silence in his memory thank you mr cameras has said and shared everything that i would have so um we're going to move on with our meeting thank you mr cameras we are at a point for public comment one of the things that i want to share with you who are present is that during an emergency meeting it is not required for us as a board to hold public comment i allowed it to be on the agenda for this

005evening we will have a 30-minute public comment session each member who speaks tonight except if you are representing an organization will have one minute to speak i will call you in the order in which you signed up and only one person at a time will be at the podium the business of this evening is to talk and discuss academics and the public needs to hear from us as a governance team so we appreciate the um the flexibility um adhering to one one minute to 30 minutes total and i will stop at 30 minutes um and then one at a time at the podium okay madam um clerk can you review the public comment information policy please conduct of speakers speaker shows state their full name prior to addressing the school board speakers will address the

006school 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 listen to comments but will not respond during the public information period persons appearing before the board will not be allowed to number one campaign for public office to promote private business ventures three use profanity or vulgar language a community member's comments during the public information session relate to school-based issues the chair may refer that 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 form of the remaining time that has been allotted to the

007speaker committee members may express their views in writing in lieu of any or presentation comments received in writing in lieu of an oral presentation will not be read during the meeting but shall be posted to the school board platform board docs thank you i'm going to call those names one by one and please charge it to my mind and not my heart if i mispronounce your name miss emily kavanagh that's pretty good my name is maggie cobb and i'm in the ninth grade this is the third time i'm coming to ask you to hire a chief wellness officer if it was not through to you before how much the students need one it should be clear now you are all surprised that sol scores went down after two years of crisis and 18 months of

008no in-person school i did want to stay home to keep my family safe there were consequences of staying home but you still refused to hire someone who had put me in my my classmates physical and mental well-being as their only job we saw a school shooting in a political uprising on tv and still no chief wellness officer and you guys are surprised that our test test scores went down my name is emily cavanaugh i'm a parent in the third district and i'm coming to tell you that you must continue to follow all of the rules of the mou that we have with the state department of education if we violate the mou we are going to end up with a republican governor who is scared of crt like it's a boogeyman more involved in our

009schools he is going to come and poke his nose into our curriculum he has come he is going to come and poke his nose into our leadership both elected leadership and hired leadership 30 seconds that is not something that anybody in this city wants we have seen failure after failure by the people who make decisions those are the people who vote here on this stage who make decisions for our students so therefore i'm calling on our elected school board tonight to please resign because you have shown yourselves to be failures to our children you have failed them the numbers show that you have failed them thank you ms cavanaugh [Applause] and and let me share with you as i've always shared i don't mind you participating but it cannot be in that fashion and i'm

010i'm going to continue with that this evening so you can do this but you will not be engaged in that manner thank you kaisha king good evening my name is kaisha king math interventionist at the richmond virtual academy i wanted to bring up to the board policy 8-1 1.8 is the equity policy and student achievement in this policy it actually says that excuse me that the board focuses on maximizing his or her student potential to become a global competitive graduate with that being said rome is burning and has been burning due to instructional inequity okay sorry so what i'm trying to say is the kids should be a part of decision making and we put curricula in front of them every day i think we need to hear their voice the teachers come up here

011all the time talking about the curricula is bad there's um culturally uh insensitive books that kids are reading and we're paying all this money and investing in the curricula and it's time to invest in the kids and listen to their voice thank you miss king miss roslyn gibson good evening school board members and participants tonight with mom one minute i will try to express my overall dissatisfaction with the five majority members vote your decisions were irish have been irresponsible lack caring for our children and our community we need thoughtful responsible decisions made for our school district mr cameras or superintendent cameras is not the blame there are a list of decisions that were made thank you once again i'm in agreement with miss emily kavanagh you need to resign thank you this time we're not

012clapping and that is the last time i'm going to say that thank you mr stephen strauss does walking up count towards my minute no it's not okay uh so yada yada connecting sols to the curriculum uh the school board should terminate the el education english curriculum contract after this year and the following week mr cameron should issue a policy directive on the english curriculum stipulating it for it to be a resource not a mandate lastly rps should develop a survey with guidance from the rea to develop a teacher-led curriculum from teachers who are currently mandated to use el education these actions would be in compliance with the district's mou which requires that the state's office of school improvement be informed before any major instructional materials are changed or purchased eo education curriculum is hurting our

013students because it's affecting retention the quote from a richmond times dispatch article from sunday teachers who reported having high levels of autonomy in the workplace and administrative support reported higher levels of morale and job satisfaction we had eight english teachers in the seventh grade last year at my school of those eight i'm one of two who returned and a major reason several of them left was because of the curriculum thank you thank you mr strauss i'm a break for a minute we do not have youtube feed feed no youtube feed thank you we're gonna continue and someone can let as the cameras know how it's going thank you thank you for the message mr paul harris good evening i am paul harris this has been mentioned uh to i'm not sure where that's coming from

014two brief comments firstly uh thank you all for your service madam chairs school board superintendent cameras leadership team secondly i want to just acknowledge the extraordinary work and effort of every teacher every staff member every administrator every counselor school psychologist and others what they do on a daily basis but certainly over the past few years it's no secret whether new to richmond or a long-time resident the historical trauma through systemic racism that has created unnecessary and significant barriers to education covet 19 pandemic in no doubt has exacerbated that trauma which we know from research is inextricably linked to student outcomes and yet when superintendents across the country are leaving in droves teachers are leaving in droves we have here committed those who will rise to the occasion to meet those incomprehensible uh challenges to help

015disrupt and dismantle the structures that maintain them and so as a parent of three children with myriad medical issues and special needs i appreciate every effort thank you so much thank you thank you so much katina harris good evening my name is katina harris i'm the president of the richmond education association the board of the richmond education association is supportive my minute start over okay um we are not in support of elimination of mr campuses role in that district we got raw data we didn't even get the growth stats that show us the other passes we do recommend a district survey about curricula and revisit teacher autonomy which impacts students social emotional academic growth let's discontinue stating that our scholars are under anyone anywhere let's continue with the growth mindset and begin to collaborate as

016one district which benefits our children thank you for our time thank you excuse me thank you mr larry olinois mr oh good evening thank you good evening i had more to say but since i only have one minute i'll reduce what i have to say and this relates to the academic achievement what i'm thinking about is that we're dealing with our students as if everybody is going to go to vcu everybody is going to go to vsu we need to create an environment where children especially these students learn the skills that they would take into the workplace second the least utilized place on our campus is the richmond technical center we need to turn it to richmond public high school it should be a technical high school not a place where students go every two

017hours and go back to their home school so we need to re-engineer our school division in a way that benefits the students and lastly i don't think the superintendent is our problem okay if we're thinking about firing the superintendent then all of you should resign because all of you are responsible for our miss teresa kennedy my name is theresa kennedy i'm a third district resident and a parent of two rps students and i'm here tonight because our kids are not okay our kids have lived through a global pandemic which none of us can relate to in terms of growing up because none of us had to deal with that growing up the way the board members some of you who have spoken about our children referring to words like failure in reference to their results

018that is trauma that is painful i would like for you to appreciate and recognize the language you're using i would also like to point out that if you fire the superintendent guys the new superintendent will have to be approved by by the political appointees of the most right-wing governor we have had in 12 years in in in decades eight of nine of you ran as democrats and were elected by democrats if you resign and are and a dem a republican virginia department of education takes over i call for your resignation that is unacceptable thank you we did not elect that that's time thank you miss crawford good evening my name is dr crawford the owner and operator of elite education consultant i hope the board and the chair and the superintendent give me more than

019a minute because i want to say something that's going to be meaningful and beneficial to the school district um i'm sorry dr crawford you're representing an organization elite educational consulting you will have your three minutes thank you okay thank you so very much i come to you after seeing the testing data that was put out on the media i'm concerned because as a former teacher of rps i was one of the original developers of the sol test questions and what is happening here is that we the curriculum has not changed it's the instructional programming and implementation of the curriculum we need to look at how we are governing our schools and our school entities from site-based management as well as from the central office traditionally there should be at least one administrator in each school

020site that has a background in curriculum and instruction that individuals need to have some knowledge on how to desegregate testing data to determine how the development of intervention and remediation should take place based on the school's site because if you look at the historical data of the school site you will see a pattern of skills that may be at a deficit so we need to look at that we also need to look at how we are teaching and implementing the instructional process the sol test is designed for application of skills not about how much knowledge a student knows so we need to look at how to develop the critical thinking skills and the comprehension skills of our students and how to properly train our teachers to educate them in that fashion no one the test

021is not designed to understand that a carnivore is a meat eater it's designed to understand how climate change impacts the food chain and students need to know how to do that they need to understand what scientific investigation does in terms of how to best implement a viable and more meaningful testing process where they understand the more testing trials that you have the more valid the data is we are getting it wrong we have taken 10 steps backwards in how we're educating students we need to look at our veteran educators that came along in the 80s and the 90s they understand the art behind and instruction so we need to look at that we need to also get qualified leadership that understand that we operate off of spiraling curriculum and what it looks like from central

022office so those are the things that i recommend those of you that know my name and who i am you have my email my phone number i don't mind sitting down having a conversation on how to best serve our students i support mayor stoney in his year-round calendar because during that session in the intervention session you can give remediation and intervention for students thank you so much mr marty joel mr jewel it states here that you are here on behalf of richmond crusade for voters you will have your three minutes thank you thank you um good evening everybody um we're here because of massive failures and there's plenty of blame to go around so we're not here uh to to throw blame but there is cause uh and it starts at the state department of

023education who de-emphasized phonics years ago the most foundational way you teach your child how to read by sounding out a letter to make a word and then word recognition to make sentences they de-emphasize it and and lay it over it with whole language what ham sandwiches whole language and so let's start there the man i might afraid he needs to stay in his own lane because in fact we have no evidence that year-round school will do any better if we're doing as this previous spokesman says if we're doing the skills development wrong phonics is is is backed by a science there's encoding in children's brains and once they get that code they'll take it to their grade if you don't get it they struggled throughout the whole 12 grades and so if you can't read

024you can't take the test after you've gone through skills training at the tech center you can't pass the darn test because you don't understand the questions the same thing with the sol you will see a pattern of failure of african-american or low with wealth children generally who have difficulty getting through their schooling because they have not gotten a benefit of phonics and the tricks that go on in the brain to make that work and so if you can't read you can't succeed and even in math math by third grade you you got words you got word problems it's not just numbers and so uh um there have been and we've been delving into the problem at the crusade for the last three months and we drilled down and found that 30 seconds low level lower

025level administrators have been trying to tell the superintendent have been and and you all have been trying to tell the superintendent you ask for data and you won't get it there are disconnects throughout the system which suggests massive mismanagement and it's fixable and we all need to join together and get on with the business thanks thank you mr gerald tara fitzpatrick hi all thank you for letting me speak today i just want to kind of skim through but i'm really disappointed to see a rush to point fingers by members of this school board instead of acknowledgment of the struggle and the effort made by students and teachers everyone in the district has experienced unprecedented trauma over the past two and a half years and seeing board members place blame with no self-reflection is unproductive at

026best but incredibly demoralizing our students teachers caregivers staff community partners and administrators at every level pour their hearts into trying to succeed and they noticed these comments the comments that were made in the media my own child is young enough to be shielded from them for now and i'm very grateful for that i'm really tired it's getting so hard to keep having to prepare for these prepared remarks for these uh public support for our district's administration i would like to do my own work professionally and personally to prepare for the school year i have school supplies to buy but i'm not doing that tonight instead i'm scrambling for child care to make sure that my voice is heard i would bet that this sentiment is held by a lot of caregivers faculty staff and administrators

027in attendance tonight thank you thank you miss fitzpatrick miss rebecca field is miss rebecca field here oh thank you thank you your time will start when you come to the podium so you don't have to rest you don't have to rush i'm a teacher i'm always rushing um i am a third district resident rps parent and i'm a teacher here at the pride and joy of north side um i am not surprised by our sol scores the decisions made by central administration last year made our job as teachers extremely difficult in high school we are faced with frozen lunches that our students refused to eat kids were asked to learn for 90 minute class periods with no food in their stomachs and their phones distracting them 30 seconds my ap classes were given half the

028amount of time that their peers across the country received and the 4x4 schedule created large disconnects in the student 20 seconds students um my students were traumatized and learning was completely disconnected like my speech right now and um i just wanted to say that the decisions that were being made especially the one week extension of our semester ruined our relationship with our kids thank you thank you thank you mr gary kallus mr calluses appears here that you're representing an organization as well just fam action um you will have your three minutes i appreciate you thank you so much absolutely um great evening madam chair madam vice chair members of the school board i appreciate this opportunity to address you this evening my friends if you was wondering where the increased crime was coming from in

029our city the school self itself is part of the problem not all of it but certainly part of it don't believe the land that all the problems we're having was caused by the pandemic in fact it's been going on quite some time the best education of black and poor people have been going on for years the numbers don't lie if you take a look at the rps citywide aggregate sol scores for reading at 47 percent efficiency and math scores for 34 proficiency cross reference those scores with the rps graduation dropout rates at 79 aggregate and 80 specifically for black students the data clearly indicates indicates that rps is without question graduating a large number of black students that can't read write or proficiently um perform rudimentary math equations this result rps graduates can't earn a

030modest living wage to support themselves because they cannot read well enough to pass credentialing or licensed exams for reading i mean for great pain jobs or careers the data shows that there are schools where student achievement is in the proverbial garbage can and no one's being held accountable no one with nobody one behind accountable now we have a culture of chaos our kids are being set up as early as kindergarten to fail we're requesting that phonics-based programs be used such as read 180 and simpson from k through 12 just not in elementary to engage our students as well as to have all students trained in science faith and science of language by 2024 to better instruct our kids phonetically david shows that middle and high school students struggle with decoding skills this is a big

031basic skill that many of our students don't have to read proficiently the phonological awareness literacy screener the aka the pounds data predicts that over 75 of our children will not have the ability to read by time they get to the third grade without serious intervention this means the low numbers that we are seeing right now in reading math science and writing will not change without will not change for years without intervention in our opinion our schools need creative intervention plans that will allow richmond public schools academic support staff to work with act to work with administrators teachers to create intervention plans specifically to to each school's population almost like having each schools having an iep to increase efficiency and effectiveness parents and community programs will be invaluable to support these efforts and there is reported

032ninety two thousand dollars in title one funds for current engagement rps now i wanna know who who distributes those funds and who controls those funds again those are questions that we have thank you so much for your time thank you mr callus madam clerk or madam attorney can you tell me how many more minutes we have 10 minutes 18 seconds okay allison and pardon me if i mispronounce your name but i'm really trying to read we have to do better with these lines they need to be a little bigger allison thank you can you pronounce your last name please l cooby thank you good evening esteemed school board members superintendent cameras my fellow principal colleagues rps teachers staff parents family and community i'm the proud principal of westover hills elementary school and an rps parent

033with two sons at john b carey first i want to express my unwavering support of superintendent cameras over the past two decades i've worked in five school districts and without a doubt superintendent cameras is the most courageous visionary responsive hardworking effective and passionate superintendent i have ever worked under most importantly he believes in all of our students capacity to learn great things to even consider removing a superintendent less than a week before school opens would throw our school district into chaos and i just cannot imagine any rationale that would support this i implore this board to honor the current contract that is in place i also want to express my profound disappointment that the ct3 contract was cut as part of the 6 million that was cut from the budget earlier this year without a

034doubt the real-time leadership coaching i received last year was the best professional development i've ever received as a principal i'm also concerned about the rumors swirling that the board may get rid of the curriculum thank you for what you do thank you randy o'neil good evening and thank you for this time uh having worked in 24 the elementary schools and improved the health and wellness of upwards of 3 000 children here in 2007 and having done that for the last 25 years across the state of virginia i'm very concerned that children's health is not the issue that uh the foundation of their learning uh is coming from uh that starts in pre-k uh i don't think we have enough activities that are uh endorsed by the cdc or the president's fitness council can mentor 600

035we need to find mentors who can one mentor right tool mentor 600 kids on the site i know how to do that and some others do it's rare but it can be done please consider their health and wellness please thank you thank you mr o'neill miss excuse dr pastor valerie cooley good evening everyone um this is not about pointing the finger this is a community issue we all play a role in this one of the things i i sent out to dr um harris and dr cameras it's easy to point the blame it's powerful to come up with the solutions and one of the things i've noticed because i am one that's in the community it's the comprehension issue especially in the african-american 30 seconds communities so what i suggested that we begin to look

036at the curriculums two curriculums one curriculum that will be for those who are academically inclined and another curriculum from those who are really geared towards trade that way we will cease the pipeline to the penitentiary we will have more children involved and more kids in school and we'll have more family development and structure in the african-american communities thank you for allowing me to share thank you madam clerk update on the time seven minutes 13 seconds thank you miss amanda reisner reasoners reisner thank you good evening um i'm going to kind of wing it a little bit because i had a three-minute speech but i'm here to talk about the curriculum um as most of you know how i feel about the curricula both el and eureka i've been talking about for about three years now

037and how they do not work i have to say last year my students were really successful as were a lot of the ones at my school because we were given permission to not follow the curricula to fidelity um we were able to take the sols the curricula and our expertise in this with the science of reading and effective math strategies and tweak it to ensure that our students got what they needed unfortunately some teachers across the district were too afraid or not allowed to do that is that fair no so many of us have been saying this critically need to go when we've been ignored or silenced look where that's gotten us to so far i can't believe we are here tuesday before the kids come to discuss this but it's really important and we

038need i don't know what the solution is but i really think if you all have listened to some of the teachers who've been saying this for years now we wouldn't have to be here tonight thank you just a quick update madam clerk on the time six minutes 15 seconds miss o'tesa miles did i pronounce that correctly yes you did thank you excellent thank you so much my name is otisa miles and i have three sons who are rich public school students they are fourth generation richmond public school students john marshall is my alma mater um i'm coming here to ask for continuity of leadership i know that we've had lots of crises but every perceived crisis i don't think should lead to threats of dismantling our leadership or firing our superintendent when i read the

039students were failing i was upset because it seemed to lack compassion especially after two and a half years of so much trauma this is stress on families it's on stress on teachers on educators and everyone involved at my job they tell us to take frequent breaks be gentle with each other get a therapist speak up if your workload is too much because they acknowledge we're going through a lot and i would like to say the same things to parents to students to the teachers and the administrators we're all very fragile and we're right now experiencing a lot of mental health stress and they're not enough mental health they're not enough therapists there's not enough mental health beds and i'm seeing kids i had kids in elementary middle and high school last year and their peers

040are really struggling thank you very much thank you miss miles five minutes nine seconds i think dr marla crawford she's already spoken oh i'm sorry thank you thank you thank you [Music] motto is trust as i said i invoke the american motto in god we trust before i speak uh i'm here uh first of all good evening uh army members of school board superintendent candice my name is omar kenyatta i reside in north district i'm here pretty much to speak to my concern and as well as other citizens about the politicization of the public school process uh most recent uh the mayor's uh that's the office of the mayor's comments in regards to directing school policy i was a part of the process in the early 90s when the state of virginia chartered for elected

041school boards to have the direct authority as it relates to policy making uh the comments were made to suggest that we had gone beyond that to uh this time mr kenyatta um if you look there i represent an organization what your educational consultant what organization no no i'm sorry i'm sorry if you look by my name it's black wall street economic development okay thank you i'll give you three minutes well thank you i appreciate that thank you for for harming me in that such way yes sir as i was saying my concern in speaking this evening is to continue it's a continuing uh politicalization of public schools when there is not no environment the most vulnerable sector of our communities which is our children and many single heads of households are not involved in political

042civic engagement process but yet the process has taken on more of a political idea uh just in a few days ago admit the office of the mayor made comments publicly at least from the media perspective that he that office was actually directing policy making to elected school board officials i only heard one school board fischer spoke to that i was expecting to cheer other members of the school board to let it be known to the constituency of richmond that you are chartered you are uh with the trust of policy making uh we have not yet moved to a point where the actual officer mayor make an appointment a direct school policy uh this is creating some confusion in the community in regards to who is in charge if you've been elected duly elected from a

043district and i'm from the 9th district which i have expectations that whoever represents the nafta district to make it very clear that you have been elected to speak on behalf of the united district and the well-being of students throughout the richmond area i think hopefully uh speaking directly to you better and share that you will clarify this issue because this blurring of autonomy in regards to your electability in the trust and accountability you have to the constituency who put you in place politically speaking that is is somewhat blurred at this moment and unfortunately as i said around here i see very in conclusion as i look around i see very little representation of our parents who are directly need to be in need i'm sorry be in involved in this process i think they're going

044to have some representation thank you joe that was your time thank you thank you so much miss annie campbell we have two minutes remaining madam chair thank you good evening to all of you a 10 second story there was a man who found his axe missing and suddenly his neighbor looked like a thief he soon found his axe and his neighbor looked perfectly innocent it may be human nature to blame but it's not necessary i um [Music] i would like to congratulate you on your commitment to trauma-informed classrooms and environments but i'd like to caution you that that starts at the top 30 seconds if you create cultures of shame and blame it trickles down to the classroom and hurts the people that we care about the most that we're all here for i'd also

045like to say that i was so impressed with the way that rps handled the pandemic that food was placed in the hands of people who would have gone hungry i helped a family relocate and assessed their needs and a bed was delivered by richmond public schools the sol tests are not the only assessment of how we are doing with our children thank you so much we have one minute left for you go ahead take the minute thank you thank you my name is john koppes i used to run an educational foundation for five years there's a saying that doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result is the definition of insanity the problem here in the richmond schools did not start in the last two or three years it's been

046a problem 10 or 20 years going on and the problem may be fundamentally the wrong way of teaching methodologies i have to give to all of you i have a letter for the end fairfax naacp which went to the superintendent of the fairfax county schools concerned very much about the failure of the schools to educate the teach minority students adequately reading and writing and it talks about a solution to how to do this with a with a genuine phonics course i also have here information from the national institute for direct instruction direct instruction is the one teaching methodology that has proven data showing it's effective a second one is precision teaching which again is seldom used around in schools i urge you to take a look at this the problem may be fundamentally in the

047way teaching is being done time there are more effective ways to urge you to consider that thanks tom thank you thank you i want to take this opportunity to thank everyone for participating this evening coming down those who spoke um thank you again so very much we are here to talk about academics and academic performance and before we get there i see that a board member has a question ms gibson thank you madam chair i was wondering if there are any other teachers um that if they wanted to come and speak and we're not able to speak if we could extend public comment by perhaps another five minutes um i just hope to hear from as many teachers as possible i appreciate that ms gibson but i am going to stick to what i stated

048earlier 30 minutes because if i do that and i love teachers please don't get me wrong let me be clear i love them but if i was to do that it needed to be announced earlier and i'm going to stick to the 30 minutes that i believe board members supported and so we're gonna we're gonna stick with that thank you at this time we are here to discuss our academic performance we have a presentation from mr cameras and then board members will just like in any other meeting provide feedback ask questions board colleagues i am asking in this in this your will will of the board that we have three minutes instead of six minutes speaking what say you thank you for that support appreciate that mr cameras thank you madam chair before getting to

049the data and it's in a presentation that was uploaded uh shortly before the meeting i do want to note given that it was an emergency meeting and was notified of the request for a presentation on sunday evening i did not have time to upload it earlier so i appreciate your grace uh madam chair absolutely i want to just begin by expressing my profound gratitude to the rps family the last three years were the most difficult i've experienced in my nearly three decades in education and i know they were the most difficult for many if not all of our teachers principals and certainly students the pandemic tested us in ways we never imagined and stole the lives of far too many but i'm filled with gratitude this evening because i had the opportunity to witness firsthand

050how the rps team taught led and served with love throughout our darkest hour together we delivered millions millions of meals gave every student a computer nearly overnight launched a division-wide virtual learning program in a matter of weeks and implemented the region's strongest covid safety protocols to the very best of our ability we kept our students nourished learning and most of all safe despite the truly heroic efforts of our teachers principals and support staff we can all agree the pandemic had a devastating impact on student learning and mental health tragically the same is true all across the commonwealth and the entire nation as has been widely reported compared to pre-pandemic levels sol scores are down for the entire state of virginia in every single subject and yes the same is true in rpes these results both

051locally and statewide are of course deeply concerning given the pandemic however they are not altogether unexpected virtual learning record student and staff absences due to illness isolation and quarantine during the delta and omicron surges last year unprecedented social and emotional trauma spikes in unemployment and homelessness that continue today and other once in a century disruptions deeply impacted student learning moreover the data is abundantly clear that the pandemic disproportionately impacted low income communities and communities of color does that absolve us of any responsibility for student outcomes of course not but it would be equally misguided to ignore all the ways our community has suffered over the past three years turning to the data itself though rps saw declines in every subject we actually outperformed the state in many cases when one looks at the data by

052subgroup for example in math our declines were less than the states for every single subgroup for black students hispanic and latino students economically disadvantaged students english learners and students with disabilities every single subgroup put another way if the commonwealth had the same demographics as rps we would have outperformed the entire state of virginia we tied or outperformed the state in four of six subgroups in reading five of six subgroups in writing and three of six subgroups in history our weakest subject admittedly was science where we only outperformed the state in one of six subgroups and across all of our subjects our hispanic and latino and english learner subgroups experience the most significant declines and therefore are going to require the greatest support going forward though all the media attention has been focused on pre versus

053post pandemic sol scores it is also important to look at growth data from this past fall to this past spring fortunately we have that data when comparing performance on the fall 2021 virginia growth assessment which is in essence a state created sol baseline test to our spring 22 sols we saw tremendous growth our students reading proficiency increased by 12 percentage points and their math proficiency increased by 27 points i'm going to say that again reading by 12 points and math by 27 points this growth is very encouraging i believe it speaks to the strength of the instructional foundation we've put in place over the last several years that said i would be the first to admit that if we are going to meet the moment for our students we need to be even more creative

054even more strategic and even bolder while we advocate for additional resources towards that and as the board and i have discussed i'm looking forward to presenting my innovation and acceleration plan in response to our data in october in the interim i'm happy to answer any questions that i can and i want to again express my profound gratitude to our teachers our principals our support staff and most of all our students thank you mr cam madam clerk miss burke would like an opportunity to speak when okay thank you miss burke miss door i'm gonna let miss burke because i don't know if she had her hand up first or not miss burke thank you madam chair and good evening everyone thank you so much for this opportunity to speak i hope you can hear me now

055we can yes man we can hear you do me a favor miss burke turn your back turn your volume down just a tad bit okay that seems to be a problem this evening you want to come back to me and mr stanley can get that straight up i can because i'm very loud i've changed okay i'll i'll just get with mrs stanley and then i'll get back on you can go ahead to the next person and i'll get back on i don't want to take anybody's time i'll get back on no come on go ahead go ahead we'll um you're okay go ahead and talk thank you go ahead and talk there all right i was told i was too loud i went from my ipad to my telephone and now i'm on another ipad

056um thank you for allowing me to be on virtually this evening um i'm very delighted that we have persons out this evening to speak and i appreciate the superintendent sharing the data since we just received the raw data and usually just as is stated in the memorandum of understanding with the state department that there should be opportunities that's listed in that document for the superintendent to get with the um persons within the the schools persons with its administration to disaggregate the data child by child gender by gender neighborhood by neighborhood and it's so unfortunate i don't know whether we've had a chance to do that yet because usually we get the first data is first it's brought down so therefore as listed my question is to the superintendent um i'm just trying to get in

057my mind the purpose of the the meeting this evening overall yes we do need to talk about this yes this is a matter of urgency yes this is a matter of a matter of which we've gone through before previously and we were able to come out of that and the suggestions given were great but my question is what does the expect to you ram chair what is the expected outcome this evening and my question to the superintendent is usually the step is to allow the teachers i've had so many parents to call and students to call to say ms burke it's social media we didn't pass but i did pass i passed everything i had a principal a call and said you see my gains in reading i had um a teacher to call from

058one of the high schools we made 16 increase in our math scores in comparison but right now the overall climate is that we all are failing and that bothers me greatly we are opening school and every child that walks across that threshold threshold every teacher every parent every administrator should be in the mindset of lifting up moving on where do we go from here my question is to our chair is what is the overall purpose of tonight's meeting and because technically i'm the line of of one um serving as the superintendent which is his job to do and yes we hold him accountable has he had the opportunity to go through the data set up the plan of action and it's more to it than just saying after school programs there's more to it than

059saying year-round school so has that program been put in place yet i'm not aware of that and the second item is um this this it's just mind-boggling to me that we're opening school just lost the principle so much is going on our children should come in as stars our children should come in as the potential of greatness 30 seconds miss burke all right but my last statement there is i believe in every child in rps i don't understand the full meaning or purpose of this meeting tonight maybe i'll get it when we go into closed session it's a conversation we need to have but let's get all the information together first and follow our mou thank you madam chair thank you miss burke give me um one minute and i will answer your question we

060um are dealing with the time a situation right now but miss give us patience and then you'll hear from mr cameras thank you everyone for bearing with us we do ask that no one take photos at this time thank you for bearing with us thank you everyone for being here tonight we do ask for your patience and please do not take photos we do want to respect everyone's privacy thank you once again please do not take photos we want to respect everyone's privacy thank you or videos or any videos we do not want any recording or photos of any sort for this moment thank you thank you all so very much i just need a minute thank you so very much for your patience and i'm not being rude or anything but there are just

061certain moments that we don't videotape or take pictures and i appreciate your understanding thank you to the staff that we're here supporting our employee thank you very much we're going to continue with that meeting oh had a pen in my head miss burke i want to answer your question are you still with us yes okay thank you we had an emergency thank you for your patience the purpose of this meeting is because i was requested on thursday to hold this emergency meeting according to our policy when three board members have requested an emergency meeting the chair must adhere or not i chose to adhere to that because it is a policy so that's first and foremost secondly the purpose of this meeting um is in addition to is to discuss the sense of urgency with

062our academics why is it a sense of urgency i can't speak to board members that i serve with but for me it is a sense of urgency and so i i am expecting to have a robust conversation about that data about our academics and how we need to move forward i think board members know i know that board members who reached out to me to request this meeting did so as a right as a board member and so every single one of us have the opportunity to share our voice our concerns regardless of what side of the fence you stand on and so that was the purpose miss burke miss lilly may want to speak to the policy um i've asked her to be be prepared to speak to that but um that is in

063my role as chair is to um and this is not the first time that i have as chair have been requested by three board members or any board member to have an emergency meeting so when there is three and it follows the policy the policy must be followed so thank you thank you thank you madam chair for sharing that and i am very much aware of the policy um that wasn't my question and um thank you for your response however my question just to be clear on my end is what's the expected outcome number one and number two have we received as board members and community persons the complete final data so that's that's that's what my question is so i have so far as having a meeting with three people i'm very much aware

064of that so my question and maybe we'll discuss that and i'll hear the answer in terms of the expected outcome for tonight but thank you for explaining that i i apologize miss burke i forgot the other piece that you asked so the outcomes or what the expected outcomes are tonight is dependent upon the board members those are not my outcomes every board member will share um what they wish to share and we will i have received recommendations um for board member from board members i will share what those recommendations are for the superintendent we will share those recommendations i will share those recommendations that i have received from board members who who desire to give me recommendations and share um some of their recommendations with the public this evening some of those recommendations that board

065members have shared with me must be discussed in a closed session so that's the purpose of a closed session and to sum it up that is the purpose of our meeting so the expected outcomes is to share what board members have shared with me um in terms of what they desire to see as recommendations again i will share those publicly okay did i miss anything miss burke from your question matt madam chip madam chair yes ma'am thank you so very much so did i miss that email of getting that information because i i don't remember seeing that email of what they expected i just wanted to be prepared for the meeting we're far away people think i you know we're far away on vacation and i just want to make sure i do what is

066right so i was just so so far as expected um the email was sent to all of us regarding what the outcomes were i did not send an email this is um information that board members called me and shared oh okay but it wasn't given to all of us as a board yes ma'am it wasn't given to all of us all right board members let me be clear every board member can call me every board member can right so i understand that i was just trying to make sure that we had the opportunity to review beforehand and i'm looking through my emails now i didn't didn't want to speak on that if i had received the information i just didn't receive what the input was from from the four persons or whatever and i have

067input as well but um i'm waiting i'm just just trying to get use our time in a manner which we have absolutely doing days in the message of interest of our children and i know we all are trying to do that i just didn't see the email with those suggestions that we would address as you stated in close thank you nowhere right um miss door and then miss page thank you i like ms burke was not aware we were to bring recommendations as part of this meeting it seems like again some board members are having a pre-meeting to discuss that what they want leaving us in the dark that's not teamwork furthermore the request to hold an emergency meeting tonight makes an already fraught governance situation worse it's unwarranted and unwise to call for a

068meeting on such short notice one week before school starts with several board members out of town with a limited agenda and much of an enclosed this does nothing to build trust amongst our board and the community surely we can at least adhere to the basics of good governance on such matters as this we teach our kids to work well and play with others yet failed to meet that standard and so something as simple as setting a meeting time and having a meeting uh discussion sadly i believe tonight's meeting is a microcosm of the ways in which this board is failing rps families there can be little doubt that like every district across the nation rps faces achievement challenges in the wake of the global pandemic that exacerbated long-standing and profound inequities in our system that

069rps test scores dropped can be hardly surprising they drop statewide as was just reported by the superintendent across the commonwealth reading proficiency declined five percentage points math proficiency 16 percentage points from the prior to the pandemic however a deeper dive among student population as mr camerous reported reveal stronger performance in some areas than we saw in other jurisdictions notably in math our declines were less than the state's average across each population subgroup and while there's a headline concern that we saw a zero pass rate for seventh grade mass at math sols the fact is that rps transitioned most seventh graders to eighth grade pre-algebra and very few even took the math 7 sol i hope that we can refrain from cherry-picking data out of context as this will only inflame tensions and mislead the community

070furthermore i'm disappointed that we're even having a meeting focused on standardized test results just just last meeting members of this board correctly pointed out that far too much credence is placed on standardized tests we know the sols ignore developmental and experiential differences among among individuals we know that they have a history of racism and more importantly we know that placing an emphasis on static results versus growth metrics puts our students and teachers at a disadvantage in june during his evaluation superintendent cameras presented us with three goals for the rest of the year one successfully reopen schools two rebuild the leadership team and three develop an innovation and acceleration plan calling a last-minute emergency meeting that will only serve to explicate the painfully obvious does nothing in support of these goals 30 seconds and worse only

071serves to further reduce the structure of this board in the eyes of an already deeply skeptical public and perhaps even more important we are putting our democratic control at risk with new government gubernatorial appointees who views on ways to manage our existing mou could have serious consequences for all of our ps thank you ms page and then mr young and then ms gibson i'm really a little baffled um right now just as some of my colleagues stated they expected outcomes of this meeting was not shared with every board member we are a board of nine we represent nine districts but let me be clear this is a sense of urgency because this impacts our children but we have not given the administration the schools teachers principals the opportunity to take a deep dive with this

072data we just received the information thursday last thursday and we're expecting a plan on how to move forward i mean we not even we don't even know we have not received information on the data regarding the subgroups what was working you know the students who failed well versus the students who needed some extra support we cannot continuously point fingers again the expected outcomes was not shared with the entire board thank you mr young and then ms gibson and then miss ritzy and miss jones excuse me thank you madam chair first a brief statement and then an inquiry of the superintendent first as it relates to a statement it truly breaks my heart hear so many excuses this evening because candidly we're here to discuss this evening does not pertain to reading writing arithmetic it relates

073to something more important relates to persons lives and here's so many excuses relevant to what we have accomplished or not accomplished and it is a collective failure and everyone on the stage needs to own that failure including yours truly and i hope that everyone on the stage would own failure it certainly isn't failure in the part of any of our persons in the buildings our extraordinary principals our teachers all of our staff but instead of those of us who have a policy making responsibility it's why this evening relevant to the inquiry what are we going to do this evening prayerfully prayerfully we are going to devolve decision making devolve decision making to the persons in the buildings who will know our students best who day in day out they report to work they often aren't

074celebrated for what they do but they know our students they know their students what they need what their wants what their passions what their desires what their capabilities include so prayerfully we are going to signal in a really really substantive way this evening that we're going to chart new course richmond public schools a new course that will instead devolve decision making to accommodate our teachers to provide for autonomy for the first time prayerfully in the history of this city or at least in a really darn long time my colleague in a moment is going to speak to that thank you for indulging me colleagues as relates to my inquiry of the superintendent uh sir thank you would you be able if it's my colleague's pleasure to share the data specific to reading and mathematics the

075state subgroup data and then the division reading and math data for the subgroups that's in the presentation mr young i'm not referring to the growth i'm referring to the overall number so for example if you look at state reading data students that constitute english learners 32 percent relevant to state math 36 so hoping we could have a conversation relevant to the the numbers bottom line bottom line numbers in lieu of growth data i shared that all with the board last week when the scores came out i'm happy to pull that up again miss gibson would you like to go ahead while mr um cameron says pulling that up thank you madam chair uh i just want to begin by saying you know the the richmond way has been to go along to get along for

076a very long time and i am proud to stand among uh i believe four colleagues who are ready to roll up their sleeves and get to work and um and change is difficult and change is hard and i know there are plenty of folks who would like to see things remain the same but i am not among them it concerns me to hear that we don't all agree that this is an emergency um this this year has been riddled with them it's not common to be a serving on a board where we've had two buildings burned down we've had a notification that all of our lunches did not meet federal guidelines and high school halls filled with blood now we've heard about the the scores and i don't accept them and there's no way to

077spin it they're not good i'd like to make a motion for a couple of items and i will read that okay so i motion that related to the curriculum that richmond public schools will implement new internally developed curriculums designed by the end of the 22-23 school year to meet the unique needs of rps students and begin this process by establishing a working group by subject that will include that will provide initial recommendations and budgets by october 31st 2022 as such the existing off-the-shelf curriculum will be phased out by the end of this school year effective immediately teachers will not be disciplined for veering from the curriculum as deemed appropriate and secondly related to teacher retention the supe the superintendent will provide the following items to the board and public by october 31st 2022 one the

078vdoe approved climate and culture survey report findings from teachers from the past three years and two provide plenary data from the past three years and a projection of the most recent data for teacher retention thank you madam chair i would second miss gibson's motion thank you there was a motion two motions on the floor i will ask miss gibson to repeat them and before we jump into the discussion of those motions i would like to have ms renzi share miss jones share and then we're gonna come back to the motion is that okay the two emotions thank you miss rinsey thank you madam chair you know i still need to take a moment to recognize two of our dedicated educators and administrators have recently passed on way too soon both of them are younger than

07950 years old i want to honor their work and legacies and to offer that we will never forget them and this is for dr talishia chandler at amelia street school and my man hundred grand mr riddick parker at georgia with high school i'm still very much in a state of grief at these losses i'm hopeful that once this meeting is over our community can at least agree to gather and put our arms around both of those communities i'm quite frankly shocked that i have heard nothing from anyone about either of these deaths besides the communities um i've received no emails i have seen us spend millions upon millions of dollars of federal and state funds to presumably for reason i can't talk today because i'm in grief but to presumably address the effects of covet

080we have created more levels of bureaucracy above our teachers and have not invested enough in them i approved these expenditures because i trusted our administration's recommendations people want us to cite covid but i asked what happened to that 54 plus million dollars we invested in literacy when our so many of our students are testing below standards we really did have very little growth in reading we could have most likely gotten the same results without investing any money i've said it before there's a hole in the bucket and it's time we plug it up we have spent millions upon millions of dollars to what end our children are being splayed across the media cycles labeled as deficient there's evidence that you know with the fox building which by the way i loved um could have been

081saved if work orders and emails to our administration have been private prioritized i don't blame any one staff member on this but i do believe that in most instances the buck stops at the top people are stretched to the max underappreciated demoralized exhausted people are dying growing ill from the stress how can we continue on this path who is profiting we've gotten to a point where those who don't agree with us don't want us asking these questions but when i'm in our schools and i see our teachers faculty and staff struggling to make the best of impossible situations without proper resources what's my time one minute and then at the same time see wasted workbooks unused technology because our teachers have not been supported enough to effectively use it when i think of the missing

082chromebooks i know that something is wrong when i look at our crumbling facilities that haven't been maintained i know that something is wrong we don't need another assessment we need a team of student focused experienced professionals who know the research and will take the time to double down on what's best for students no matter who that angers it is unfortunate that our children are the ones who are now suffering thank you miss jones thank you madam chair um so i want to start off with a little quote um the complexity of systems and patterns patterns arise out of a multiplicity of relatively simple interactions and so what we have here really is relationships and the issue stands um from relationships how we interact with one another and how we use them as truth for others

083and ourselves to change this dynamic that we keep talking about as we try to do things um i think that um we should have a meeting because until we actually speak the narrative will be what it will be so i am appreciative of the meeting um what i will say to the recommendations that were forwarded to you madam chair we've heard all evening from folks speaking at the podium about who was elected and so the people of the city of richmond did not elect group chats private emails pacs or anything else they elected non-board members so when recommendations are going down they should go down to everybody so that we can all be on the same page um what i also want to say is that when members of certain groups in packs are you

084know get were they like given information before us and this why this information or these motions that we're receiving now have already been put in place i don't have a problem with change i am not in denial about change because change is inevitable and we need to change but we also and thank you mr young for saying it if we are not going to hold ourselves accountable then we need to stop because at the end of the day no matter what happens from the top down or for the bottom up everything that has been approved no matter what we thought about it we agreed no matter what we realized or what we asked or whatever we continued to agree because we all felt like we were moving in a positive direction we're not okay let's

085make change but let's make change as a collective because some of these changes that we're making do not affect schools on south side do not affect schools in the east end and so if we are not collectively talking about change i don't care about who's been here who hasn't did it who won't change who wrote this let's talk collectively and maybe we can come together and make some change what we do is we segment who we think will vote for something or be a part or put people a part of things so at the end of the day if this is not about the collective relationship of non-board members this governing body i don't care what we do and how many motions we make we can change everything from the top to the bottom it

086will remain the same because it is all about relationships and if we don't get to the core of that we can keep doing us and it's like they said earlier time it is insanity thank you thank you couple of things that i want to address every board member that has been elected to this board report answer and report to our constituency just like two or three members would give me a call building relationships require all nine of us not just two of us not just three of us i am accessible to everybody on the school board as well as the superintendent as well as to anybody in the division it is not my and let me repeat it is not my responsibility to ask school board members to call other school board members even though

087i say share and talk with all of your colleagues it is up to adults to self-check my job as a part of the chair as many know is to facilitate the conversations i take it a step further in decency and in order again it is not my job to hold anybody's hand so if several school board members call me and share with me as all board members have done some i agree with some i don't agree with but that is not to be shared in the public i am going to adhere the best that i can to the request if i agree with the request or not from school board members again just because someone is not calling another person to share with them what they think that starts with self-checking why is that not

088happening i agree it does begin with relationships i said that all and i've said that a lot in 2021 and i continue to say that but it's not my job it's not my role to make sure that these relationships with adults are happening we have to be able to have courageous conversations even when those courageous conversations do not feel good i support the request of having an emergency meeting if board members wanted to know what the outcomes were or the expectations just like two other board members asked everybody should have asked that didn't happen i answered the questions that were sent to me accordingly no secret text no secret group chat none of that but when they call and share concerns i'm going to listen if i agree or not i will share some other

089concerns later miss white i see that you had your hand up and i'm gonna allow you to go ahead and speak thank you madame chair first of all i'd like to see uh say thank you to the teachers that are here and the principles just so many things have just came into my mind i i'm sitting here listening about collective i'm sitting here listening about trust but the real big thing the issue is here is accountability accountability we've been we've been through a whole lot in the last two years our children have been in a lot in the last two years and it's all i thought up here yes it is i've said it before and i'ma say it again today i asked why were we having an sol the other state said that we

090needed som i think we could have been a little bit more persistent because there was a lot of growth in the schools my principal sentence is she's sitting right in the audience right now she showed me the growth i went to the school and i saw the powerpoint so i know that there was growth the growth should have been used as the sol test another thing should not have happened and i was a little bit upset about that the middle school database does not support that we should have had seven graders students take a eighth grade test we already knew that it was declining it's been declining for years before the pandemic so why did we have them take a grade test some of our kids need basics our kids need proficiency and i sit

091here and i stand for every child i don't care what race you are but to come up here and say that we need to resign i saw 150 people here tonight i had a school that was on a cheating scandal and i didn't see any of you there not one person holding up that school i hope we do better this time we do need a new curriculum we should have never introduced two new curriculums during the epidemic we need a new curriculum bdo standards just like all the restaurants thank you thank you miss um [Music] madam clerk how much time do i have 17 seconds miss white also had 11 seconds left okay so six seconds i just i want to be clear and i'm gonna try to say this in 11 seconds i believe

092as an educator the reason why we had so many seventh graders take the eighth grade test because it was a professionally chosen method to increase our middle school math data because across the state our math 7 test is known to be the most difficult test to assess i just wanted wanted to share that because i'm transparent mr cameron's have something that he wants to share i'm sorry miss commission um cameron speak please and then ms door thank you thank you madam chair um i have grave concerns about the motion that was put forth this evening both on procedural grounds and on substantive grounds as a matter of process uh this is once again a violation of our unanimously agreed to board norms where we have all agreed not to introduce and vote on motions the

093night of especially items that are not even on the agenda that is deeply concerning for something as consequential as the very focus of what we do what it is our students are learning that's number one number two because it was not on the agenda the public and certainly our teachers and principals and others did not have the opportunity to even speak to the merits of the motion to weigh in in any way shape or form other than through innuendo that they ascertained from media reports facebook and other sources as a matter of substance it is a well documented well-researched fact that putting rigorous material in front of children is one of the best levers towards closing gaps in achievement by race economic background and ability status this has been studied time and time again by

094institutions of higher learning and repeatedly they have come to the conclusion that when you put rigorous curriculum in front of children it ensures that no student is left to be at the mercy of any substandard curricular materials i believe that the curricula we have are helping us make the growth that we have seen if i didn't i would be the very first person to promote the removal of those curricula i am committed to teachers having flexibility to adapt as they see fit in their classrooms and teachers to do the same but to jettison these two highly regarded highly respected curriculum and to make that announcement three days before school starts and to put our principals and teachers into in essence a state of panic not knowing how to precede this school year even with the

095timeline that has been outlined and to then create the financial and time burden of creating from scratch brand new curricula i actually believe would do enormous harm to our students if those who have put forward this motion feel confident that the vast majority of educators teachers principals and so on are supportive of it then i would ask to give them an opportunity to speak to it either tonight have folks be able to come up but more appropriately to table this motion until our next school board meeting so that all of our educators can know what is at stake and weigh in and if the board decides at that point to move away from these curricula so be it and we will move forward but i think it would be a gross disservice to our educators

096to our kids to take this action suddenly without any notice this evening thank you miss white miss um door thank you madam chair um mr cameron i don't think that this was going to just happen tonight for a new curriculum i don't think that's what mitch gibson was talking about but when you're talking to me about studies and rigorous uh curriculum that doesn't include richmond population first we got to know the culture and the climate of the students that we are serving just like year-round school i heard about the year-round school that wouldn't make any difference you can check out chesterfield they have two year-round schools that made no difference what their sol scores were so we have to know the climate and the culture and i would like to know do you have any

097projections for uh accreditation because then i don't think many people will feel the same way after they see whether the schools were accredited ms dorr she has nine seconds i will not vote for any night of motion especially once one of such consequence the character characterization that some of us are afraid of change by voting for this is not accurate i simply want the opportunity to talk to my constituents thank you miss page miss renzi to um possibly make a decision a haste decision about our curriculum it is malfeasant because anyone knows when you implement something new you start to see a baseline or the results probably within two to three years then that's when you step back and say what's working what's not working you know make those adjustments but we have to remember

098if we just do away with the curriculum the previous curriculum was five to seven years outdated and we want our children to be able to compete globally that's that is not fair to them miss renzi i'm sorry miss rizzi's time has expired okay miss page i just want to follow up um i do not support this there's no planning um how this will impact the school division i do not support this thank you there's a motion there were two two motions it was a single motion i'm sorry single motion on the floor mrs gibson can you read your motion again please yes um so the motion on the t i have a comment and then i'll read the motion but i guess i'll start by reading you can have your comment and then your emotion

099okay um so i so mike well i have a question for mr cameras you know my my comment is that um you know this this year we tasked our students and teachers with just it was just too much too much change um we completely revamped the calendar uh brand new curriculums we eliminated regular seventh grade math so every every student had had honors seventh grade math we had the block schedule new intervention methods new chromebook devices across the board it was simply too much and a lot of those changes happened without any input we've heard from teachers over and over and over again expressing concern about the curriculum we've also seen teachers leave the district in uh in numbers that are alarming so so i do i am eager to move forward and the motion

100on the table is not to start from scratch and scrap it tomorrow um we are going to take the year to um to put a plan in place uh so that we have something that's really been developed by the experts and professionals that we have in the district um my question for mr cameras is you know i mean i guess i'm eager to know i mean do you believe that teachers have the experience and the expertise to be able to to guide us in this way um and then that's your time i'll let you get your question out so he can hear yep yes ma'am thank you madam chair first i want to clarify nearly everything that you listed uh was implemented two if not three years ago and the whole premise for your argument

101is that there's too much change and what you've introduced tonight is one of the most tectonic changes our school system could possibly face now that may be very well what you desire to achieve and so be it but to argue that this is a response to too much change quite frankly just doesn't pass basic common sense madam chair i recognize that we don't all agree but as board members i am i i hold to the bar of speaking to each of my colleagues with respect um and to shame me for making emotion uh it's simply not appropriate and i will leave it at that uh the motion i read it i have made which might i would add there was not a single teacher tonight who supported keeping this curriculum who spoke and we have

102heard from teachers over and over again in in addition to teachers who came and spoke that they were fired we just we need you to read the motion thank you thank you thank you so it is one motion in two parts excuse me ma'am i have to ask you to leave we have a you cannot ma'am i'm very much aware but you cannot do that in the middle of our meeting i will call the order or call the question when i deem necessary thank you please do not do that i appreciate it from my heart i really do thank you related to the curriculum richmond public schools will implement new internally developed curriculums by the end of the 22-23 school year to meet the unique needs of richmond public school students this process will begin

103by establishing a working group by subject that will provide initial recommendations and budgets by october 31st 2022 as such the existing off-the-shelf curriculum will be phased out by the end of this school year effective immediately teachers will not be disciplined for veering from curriculum as deemed appropriate related to teacher retention the superintendent will provide the following items to the board and public by october 31st 2022 1 the vdoe approved climate and culture survey report findings from teachers from the past three years and two provide plenary data from the past three years and a projection of the most recent data for teacher retention in the district thank you the motion was repeated by ms gibson ms jones [Music] the motion was repeated by ms gibson it was seconded by mr young miss madam clerk can you

104share with me um the minutes that any board member may have before we go into voting for the motion mr young has 32 seconds and you have 17 seconds no one else has any more time remaining okay thank you yes ma'am it's for clarification i was just asking because i know we were talking about one thing and we finished all our minutes and then the motion came out i thought that's why i was raising my hands i thought we had additional time to speak to that and that's why i was getting some clarity because this is a motion we weren't talking on the previous topic right so madame attorney um each board member should have because this is the motion we we didn't they have not spoken to the motion they were still speaking that's

105up to you how the the clerk and how [Music] because this is a motion and i said we'll get to the motion we're going to have each board members can start at a time of three minutes madam clerk because they had not spoken to the motion so for clarification you're getting three minutes per topic tonight is that what you're no the this is a motion that has come on the floor and if they want to man i call the question okay there you go the question has been called thank you madam clerk the question has been called miss door no miss white no miss gibson yes mr young aye ms rizzi yes dr harris muhammad yes miss burke no [Music] miss page no miss jones no motion fails the motion fails thank you for the

106robust conversation at this point ladies and gentlemen madam clerk do we um the board member who has the close session you have it miss rinsey thank you pursuant to section 2.2 1 of the code of virginia 1950 as amended i move that the school board of the city of richmond convene in closed session to consider the assignment appointment promotion performance demotion salaries disciplining or resignation of specific public officers appointees or employees of the school board or for discussion consideration or interview of prospective candidates for employment including the discussion of specific employees of the board it was moved that we're going to say going into close that was seconded by ms jones madame clerk mr miss white yes what was that yes okay miss gibson yes mr young miss rizzi yes dr harris muhammad yes miss

107burke yes miss page yes miss jones yes motion pass thank you we are going in to close thank you thank you we are reading back into open i move that the richmond school board directs this clerk to call for a roll call vote of the board's members that to the best of each of each members knowledge one only public business matters lawfully exempted from open meeting requirements by virginia law were discussed in the closed meeting to which this certification resolution applies and two only such public business matters as were identified in the motion convened in the closed session minclo's meeting were heard discussed or considered by the richmond school board sorry it was moved by miss jones excuse me to read us in the open it was second about mr young madam clark roll call

108vote please miss door miss white yes ms gibson mr young aye ms rizzi yes dr harris muhammad yes miss burke miss page miss jones yes motion passes thank you ladies and gentlemen there is no other business for the richmond public school board this evening the meeting is adjourned thank you have a good night