001if anyone needs interpretation from english to spanish please head to the back where we have two interpreters who will be able to hand out headsets and just as a reminder to everyone please speak clearly and slowly into the microphones so that the interpreters can interpret properly thank you thank you translation a little bit will approve them amendment that i would like to make the to the agenda i would like to move the discussion or receive for action the river city middle school rezoning proposal to um 3.01 above public information and then public information would be 3.02 miss jones thank you madam chair i think i misinterpreted i was not um aware that we would move it up before public comment i think it should come after public comment that's fine okay so if you want
002to if you open if you're open to last year i like to say friendly amendment if we move it to after public comment i'll i'll be seconded on absolutely we can move it to 3.02 okay second so understanding that five point um more actual items we will be one less item under that and the board action items just want to make sure we're clear so instead of having five items we'll have four and ms jones seconded any discussion we also need to add legal thank you and we also need to add legal school board colleagues to our closed session ms jones do you still can you still second that with the with the two amendments yes okay second thank you it has been moved by the chair seconded by ms jones any discussion seeing none
003i'm sorry i didn't i'm sorry miss page i just want to say that i support the amendment from my colleague ms jones to have the public information before the rezoning for river city middle school for a vote because we need to have the discussion first public information we have many members from our community that are here and i think we need to respect that and enforce transparency public information and then to vote for river city middle school thank you okay thank you miss page i did share with you that i was going to make that suggestion but thank you for your comments now we can vote madam clerk right and i just want to make it clear yes ma'am thank you madam clerk mr yes miss white yes miss gibson yes mr young hi miss
004rizzi yes dr harris muhammad yes miss burke yes miss paige ms jones yes yes thank you now we're going to adopt the agenda with the two amendments can i have a motion so moved it was moved by mr young can i have a second second second second about my by miss page any discussion madam clerk roll call vote please mr yes miss white yes miss gibson yes mr young hi miss rizzi yes dr harris bahamut yes miss burke yes ms paige yes miss jones yes motion passes thank you next we're moving on to one of my favorite items on the agenda recognition we have recognition of student representative mr cameras thank you madam chair and good evening everyone i am delighted to introduce you to king aikens from george with high school king is currently
005a student at richmond alternative school where he is enrolled in the isep program that's the individual student alternative education plan program he is active in both his school and church communities at razz he was asked to serve as an executive and received recognition and awards for good citizenship and participation he also served as a praise dancer with his church volunteered with their camera crew and engaged the congregation before and after service when he is not in school or studying to take his general education development test king enjoys making music playing video games and sports including running basketball and football he loves poetry and freestyle rapping and often participates in open mic opportunities to sharpen his skills king looks forward to pursuing a career in the music industry and is also interested in obtaining his commercial
006driver's license king when you do please call me we will hire you please join me in welcoming king akins [Applause] thank you good evening everyone thank you school board members and secondary superintendent karma's cameras for this opportunity to join you this evening my name is king aikens and i am in the individual student alternative education plan known as isaf ged at richmond alternative school today i would like to talk about the struggle that students deal with regard and expulsion the process of waiting for a panel hearing and not having schoolwork to do while at home from my experience the process of expulsion is overwhelming like many students in my position i would expel for an incident that i was only trying to stop but i felt that my voice wasn't hurt in the midst of
007dealing with the repercussions of my incident i had to wait for a panel caring for over two and a half weeks i would like to encourage to you to explore how the division camp one decrease the amount of time students and families wait for panel carriers and two ensure the students receive credits and or school work while they are out i step allows students like myself to regain access back into the learning environment the staff encourage all of us to work hard to get our ged and push forward to the future they do not exclude anyone and they do not criticize any other students that come inside their class i accept prepare students for tests and help provide us with post-secondary opportunities like getting a job or going to college special thanks to mr graham
008for his advice about how to carry myself during interviews thanks to him i am recently employed at subway i am grateful for opportunities to earn my gdd and to have a chance to walk across the stage for graduation on june 8th in conclusion i feel that students that are either unwilling or unable to finish school should have the option to participate in isf it's a better opportunity than quitting entirely they can get a ged faster and they don't have to lose two to three weeks of waiting for a hearing meeting isf has really helped me to rebuild trust in the school system and to work on my own terms thank you [Applause] [Music] awesome i got a little emotional phenomenal thank you and also we were talking about possibly what would you like to see
009happen at ras that happens at the traditional schools i would like to see a prom [Applause] why treat them different thank you okay let me keep moving next we have proclamation for school nurses week which will be read by ms jones whereas national school nurse day was first celebrated in 1972 as an opportunity to celebrate school nurses and acknowledge their role in advancing the health safety and well-being of their students and whereas students health is instricably linked to their ability to learn and school nurses support the health and educational success of children and youth by providing access to care during the peak of cognitive development and whereas school nurses are fundamental to advancing the well-being of every student through their assessment intervention and follow-up work with school communities families and other healthcare providers to improve
010health outcomes for our students and whereas the return to in-person learning after the covet 19 pandemic would not be possible if not for the rps school nurses who led contract contact tracing for positive covet cases and administer the test to stay program to ensure health and safety throughout the division and whereas rps school nurses are a core link between health and learning and continue to serve with love and make a positive impact in their students lives every day now therefore be it proclaimed that the school board of the city of richmond and richmond public schools recognized may 11 2022 as national school nurse today and call upon all schools and community members to join in this celebration thank you do we have any school nurses here come on down let's give it up one more
011time for our school nurses and all that they do thank you next we have a proclamation for teacher appreciation week which will be read by ms renzi whereas national teacher appreciation week first celebrated in 1963 is observed annually to honor the nation's outstanding teachers in the critical role they serve in the lives of every child and whereas a strong effective system of free public education for all children and youth is essential to the democratic system of government and whereas rps teachers are at the heart of education playing a crucial role in shaping students into the people they will become supporting them through their adolescence and teaching them lessons that they will carry through their lives and whereas rps teachers teach with love each day engaging students with exciting and rigorous lessons while developing the whole
012child by teaching good citizenship and empathy through social emotional learning activities and whereas rps teachers are committed to leading within and beyond the classroom by building authentic and meaningful relationships with students and families in their own communities and whereas we hold our teachers in the highest regard understanding the value of their skills and abilities and recognizing the impact they make on students lives now therefore be it proclaimed that the school board of the city of richmond and richmond public schools recognize may 2nd through 6 2022 as national teacher appreciation week and call upon all schools and community members to join in the celebration awesome without the nurses the doctors the attorneys the contractors the teachers are the reason why they are in the fields that they are in they do a phenomenal job every day
013having served as a teacher for many many years i applaud their work and really before the pandemic they were on the on the battlefield they were in what i heard principal dabney say this morning in the um the red zone the hot zone they're always in that that hot zone first before even the building administrator so thank you for everything that you do we applaud your work your efforts um the things that you do for children that are that are not observed the things that you purchase for children that are not recorded the number of emails calls visitations that you do for the children to the families on behalf of the children thank you for the many nights that you have to stay up verifying and correcting your gradebook and aspen thank you for the
014many days that you have to go to the dollar general store to make that 25 stretch for 50 kids thank you thank you for standing up for children advocating for children thank you your work is just countless and there's really no words that can be described to describe a classroom teacher because without them none of us would be here one and two our schools would not operate and function without them so thank you so very much for the work that you do do we have any teachers in the house just just want to just want to give you a shout out and if you do if you're here come on down let's take a picture it's your week which should be all year but come on if you don't mind come on school down i
015think the whole board should be in this picture teach appreciation okay [Music] we could be back there all right rps teachers rock on three one two three [Music] [Applause] oh thank you all so very much for being okay uh students students see the teachers are the hardest ones that's what my husband used to say miss gibson have a few words thank you all so very much for doing that with us that was wonderful thank you miss gibson has a few would like to share a few words ms gibson thank you i mean in honor of teacher appreciation week i i just want to remind us all that when we it's really more than a picture um it's more than uh you know saying something for one week if we really we're in a time right
016now where teacher retention it's a true issue and our t and our students um really benefit from having people that are experienced professionals in the classroom and so um you know when if we really appreciating teacher it's about listening to teachers and that means listening for a host of issues it's about curriculum it's about working conditions it's about rezoning it's about you know the hours that they have it's about the materials that they have it's about the out it's about being able to transfer easily it's about you know it's it's so many things and so as we um you know can thinking this week thinking you know as things are happening um i really want us to highlight the um the value of teacher attention the value of the people that are in our schools
017and working with our students on a day-to-day basis there are a lot of things that are happening right and when i think about those things that are happening right in richmond public schools it's what's happening in classrooms thanks to the work that um that folks are doing and i i just wanted to express that um you know we have to we have to we have to show our values we have to it's not just about what we're saying it's about what we're doing and so um you know again i mean we have collective bargaining there there there's there's work that we're doing um but i know that we can do better and so we want to hear from you um and thank you for coming this evening thank you miss gibson next we will have
018our proclamation for school nutrition staff week i'm sorry miss page stan i'm sorry madam chair do we have any more copies of the agenda for the public um i'm not sure i was going to text the clerk as soon as i got through the recognitions um madam clerk do we have any more copies of the thank you i have a few copies okay thank you we'll give her a few what do you want minutes do thank you next we have the proclamation for school nutrition staff week which will be read by ms dorr whereas school lunch hero day was first celebrated in 2012 to recognize the work of all school nutrition principals who are responsible for providing millions of lunches to students across the country each day and whereas rps school nutrition staff understands that
019proper nutrition and learning go hand in hand and ensure that all students have access to a healthy breakfast and lunch that they can maximize learning during class time and whereas rps school nutrition staff have shown the utmost level of service and dedication to students and communities distributing thousands of at home meal kits during school breaks and whereas the individuals who prepare and serve school meals with love help nurture students by providing them with the nourishment needed to grow learn and live happy fulfilling lives now therefore be it proclaimed that the school board of the city of richmond and richmond public schools recognize may 6 2022 as school lunch hero day and call upon all schools and community members to join in this celebration do we have any school nutrition nutritional staff members in the building
020come on down come on down [Applause] come on down you need us on the floor okay thank you so very much without them our staff our children would not eat and i know we have staff like the children didn't bring their lunch money so they go in there and ask their favorite school nutritional staff person if they can just get it for the day and put it on their books so we appreciate you for all that you do we really do thank you so give him one more round of applause please thank you you all are awesome next we're moving into public information and just to remind those who are streaming with us and my school board colleagues that we do we do have two parts to public information um 3.01 and 3.02 madam clerk
021can you review the policy and then after that um those who have signed up to speak with the to the board for public comment just come on down line up and those who are interested in speaking to us as well who were not able to sign up before the 1pm deadline i believe you can come down and speak as well just sign the clipboard thank you very much and i'm sorry one more thing during during this moment ms gibson is going to take over so i can use the ladies room community members desiring to speak in person must be present community members may express their views and writing in though of any oral presentation comments received in lieu of writing of an oral presentation excuse me will not be read during the meeting but will
022be posted to board docs contact the speakers speakers shall state 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 and any other staff the school board will listen to 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 two promote private business ventures or three use profanity or vulgar language if 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 is important that all community members who wish to participate in the public information period abide
023by the guidelines set forth in this policy refusal to abide by the policy will result in a 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 oral presentation will not be read during the meeting but shall be posted to the school board platform board docs at this time with the following please come to the podium carmen terrell mary gresham marvin green beanie gates the third kaisha king dolores murray darrell turner megan reimer anne forrester nicole davis jeannie balker sherry smith maitez alexander brendan trackey jane winthrop and melissa rickey anyone who has not pre-registered may sign up and speak following the pre-registered speakers please sign the clipboard with the pertinent information
024prior to speaking if you would pass it back thank you before you start speaking let me just make one last um announcement individuals have three minutes to speak those speaking on behalf of an organization have five thank you [Music] school board reimagined good evening chairwoman dr shonda harris muhammad and distinguished members of the richmond city school board my name is benny c gates iii and i live in the ninth district with miss nicole jones as my representative i would first like to say god bless you all however i am sick and tired of being sick and tired since nearly 60 years of segregated schools prior to during and after the supreme court's brown versus the board of education historic ruling to the present time i have come to the realization that we still have a
025major problem in the richmond public school system because there are only two types of students recognized not whites and non-whites like the past but the haves and have-nots of the present growing up in the eighth district on the south side was disheartening depressing difficult and downright dangerous and it's a shame that these disparities and inequity still exist in the form of systemic racism in rps graduating from summerhill elementary school as the top student still did not make things more equitable for me because i was the exception and not the norm i started understanding how being a socio-economically disadvantaged minority student meant i did not matter to those in authority still i rise finishing as the top student from mosby middle school didn't make these inequities anymore right but once again i was the exception and
026not the norm having to go across town to a destitute run down churchill school just did not seem fair i was only a child but i could see how the kids at all the other middle schools were treated better than my fellow mosby middle school stingers still i rise finally i would like to reiterate that growing up on the seemingly wrong side of the historic james river i.e the south side you could see apparent differences being made throughout rps although having graduated as the top student from george with high school for the arts mighty bulldogs my school itself was dilapidated neglected derelict passed over an obvious eyesore and monstrosity even then still i rise as a student i often felt invisible insignificant inconsequential unappreciated unacknowledged and unnoticed by almost everyone who was supposed to help
027educate me my family my neighborhood my community my church my school and my school board all let me down however my faith in god never did remember you were each selected to represent all the students of this city not just the children of the most affluent more educated and easily visible ones with the least amount of melanin in their skin we must do better about our children god bless all richmond public schools students parents teachers and staff thank you thank you [Applause] could i remind all speakers to please state your name prior to speaking thank you [Music] hi my name is daryl turner i am the vice president of the richmond education association and i'm speaking on behalf of the richmond education association um good evening madam chair madame vice chair honorable school board members
028and superintendent cameras i wanted to come before you all this evening to let you all know that the richmond education association stands in solidarity with the staff students and families of river city middle school we recognize rezoning requires many challenges as we've seen over the past six months what we can do is proceed with the best decision for our students and staff a school that is at or over capacity equates to larger class sizes less resources available for students and safety hazards for the entire school community it also means that the staff members may not be able to deliver the services that our students deserve if we hope to achieve equitable outcomes for our students then we must make sure that they will walk into a school building that has adequate levels of staffing as
029well as ample space for them to grow and to learn for many decades the richmond education association has advocated for the needs of the students families faculty and staff of richmond public schools to that end we want the students of river city middle school to have access to a safe facility that is conducive to their social emotional and academic needs they deserve to grow and thrive in a school building that does not exceed its capacity the rea firmly believes that the adoption of a strong rezoning plan will greatly benefit river city middle school students and the community thank you [Applause] good evening madam chair board members mr cameras my name is megan reimer i am a teacher at river city middle school i live in the first district and i'm an rea member i would
030like to share with you what it is like to work at river city but before i begin i would like to give a shout out to our proud principal mrs murphy braxton and all my colleagues that are here with us tonight as everyone knows our school has too many students but what many people don't understand is what that actually means for students and staff art school is unsafe and in my opinion it is a lawsuit waiting to happen the maximum occupancy posted on the expired permit on the front of the building states that there should be no more than 1 650 people in the building this includes students staff and visitors another safety concern is the ratio of care associates to students i believe we have seven teacher vacancies and absences have caused major disruptions
031to the learning environment this has caused student behavior to decline dramatically for example i've had to complete over 20 panel hearing forms this transition times are also a huge safety concern 250 students going down one flight of stairs it is just scary and a perfect opportunity for injury as experienced by two of my colleagues during the tornado drill we had a month ago not a drill the students were so tightly packed that if we had had to evacuate from that position it would have been disastrous and these are only the safety concerns teachers have no designated place for meetings nowhere for team planning all available spaces are used all the time our students are unable to socialize with their friends during lunch because they all have to eat separately they cannot all fit in our
032cafeteria and there are not enough student bathrooms or staff bathrooms which make bathroom breaks a time-consuming challenge here is what we demand re-zone our school using the presented proposal today the administration can iron out the details later maintain our staffing level it would defeat the purpose if we lose positions and finally treat the south side like the rest of the district equity throughout rps rezone our river city thank you [Applause] good evening my name is ann forester i'm a leap teacher at river city a fifth district resident and a member of the rrea i'm here first and foremost to demand the board pass the rezoning proposal that the rezoning committee created this committee formed at the school board's request met for five months received and gave meaningful input and communication to the community and created
033a proposal that simply makes sense the committee meetings were open to the public so i'm not sure why the issues of the proposal raised by dissenting members of the school board were not brought to the committee sooner the proposal to rezone is reasonable thorough and equitable but i think we all know that i've noticed contradictory language in the way we talk about rezoning when it comes to who it will affect and where it takes place school board members have expressed worry about transportation for rezoned students where was the concern for transportation when we opened a school on a major road with not enough traffic lights no sidewalks and a pickup loop that's too small and where middle school students on the high school schedule are routinely stuck at school until 5 pm waiting on a
034bus school board members have talked about parent choice and that this rezoning proposal could do to open enrollment seats at binford and lucille brown but open enrollment only applies to families with the means to provide transportation to their students and the knowledge and time to navigate the process what about parents with no choice where their only option is their zone school which right now is incredibly unsafe i would hope that if the adoption of this proposal means some families may lose their open enrollment seats then those same families will pour their love and energy and investment into their zone school so that the type of school community many have described benford to have can be recreated at every rps school and lastly i want to point out the irony of asking for rezoning options a
035few years ago when rps rezoned district wide prior to river city's construction i remember attending a south side rezoning community input meeting that rps hosted at sacred heart center in this meeting i asked then school board member linda owen if and why options a and b for south side rezoning at the middle and high school level were identical which they appeared to be on the presented maps i didn't get an answer as to why they were the same which they were i learned later that a crumbling george with and a mold-infested middle school that was consolidated into elkhart thompson left southside without options for how to rezone so we took the easier and cheaper route and built a 1 500 student mega school in south side when we once had two separate middle schools our
036students deserve better than the cheapest option they deserve quality schools and they deserve quality time in schools and so i have to ask would we have ever considered building a school as big as river city in the fan we all know the answer to that and so in closing i'm asking the board to do right by south side students for once let us keep our current staff so that we open fully staffed for once prioritize safety now and adopt this proposal then task the administration with working out the details because southside can't wait any longer thank you good evening my name is jane winthrop i'm a teacher at river city middle school and a second district resident last week i heard the superintendent say that we cannot open river city next year without rezoning because
037it will be dangerous as an esl teacher i noticed that he spoke in future tense i want to clarify that presently river city is dangerous i would like to share some of the ways in which overcrowding makes working and learning at river city more difficult due to the limited number of bathrooms and lack of staff to supervise them teachers take their students to the bathroom as a whole class last friday i took my seventh grade students to their designated bathroom the boys room was out of order so i took them out to the bathrooms on the main hall there were two other classes using those bathrooms so i decided to take them to the upstairs 7th grade bathrooms by the time we were back to our classroom 20 minutes had passed there is not enough
038space for students who need to use the bathroom this is not safe another instance when the pain of overcrowding was sharply felt was a recent friday when many elective teachers were absent there were too many students and there was not enough space to fit them during each grade levels elective block so it was decided that the elective teachers who were present would take the students outside when the sixth grade students came inside for dismissal there was mass confusion about where to take them for the dismissal process again there were not enough teachers or rooms to disperse the students they ended up squeezed into the grade level atrium trying to hear which buses had arrived students were literally begging me to come into my classroom because the atrium was so chaotic at some point they all
039went outside again which placed an undue burden on the staff on bus duty this is not safe i would also like to describe how overcrowding impacts the newcomer academy in particular since this is a program that rps likes to tout there is not enough space for the academy classrooms to be together today i walk the distance from a newcomer math class to a newcomer science class a route which i see many 6th graders walking each day it was 350 steps for my adult legs this is about .18 miles almost a quarter mile and maybe you can make it in four minutes if you're a student but probably not when you're passing through hundreds of students on the sixth and eighth grade halls once they finally make it they are likely to arrive to a classroom
040of more than 30 students this is not safe last week i heard some expressed concerns about losing open enrollment spots i'm not advocating against the availability of open enrollment spots but i find it necessary to point out the inherent inequity of open enrollment as it is many of my students would be interested but when they found out they needed transportation they lost all hope why should some students get to access their desired schools when students at river city don't even get basic comforts i'm asking you tonight to prioritize the students of river city i know that the parents of other schools in the district would not tolerate these conditions for this i don't blame them no teachers no students no parents should have to deal with the overcrowded under-resourced school that we have right now
041thank you [Applause] good evening madam chair superintendent cameras and school board members my name is cherry smith and i am the register at the river city middle school and i'm also a resident of the 8th district i have been addressing the issue of the overcrowding in river city middle school before the students enter that building i am the first to see the enrollment queue and every day i am enrolling two or more students as of today we still have 13 students in lq that are waiting to be enrolled for the 21-22 school year and it's may the 2nd and let's not let's not mention the newcomers program we receive all the newcomers from the district every one of them northside west end south side east end and it's becoming a big issue for our guidance
042department they don't have anywhere else to put these kids the classes are overcrowded we don't have elective classes and we don't know what else to do the hallways are overwhelming doing the class changes and all the staff members are out there trying to float get the flow of the students so we can be safe it's a safety issue i have seen students get hurt and i have seen teachers get hurt let's not mention the traffic before and after school that's a nightmare children are crossing the intersections trying to get to their parents and i even seen one student get hit trying to get to his parent let's do right by these students and give them the love that they deserve by rezoning river city middle school thank you so much good evening to school board
043members and mr camerons my name is tez alexander one of the school counselors at river city middle school i've been educated in rps for eight years i'm also a resident of the seventh district and a parent of a student at henry l marsh i come to you tonight to express my concern for the school counseling department at river city middle school our school is extremely overcrowded as a school counselor many simple tasks such as scheduling testing report cards and course requests can be overwhelming the river city counseling department has requested many deadlines because the number number of students that we have compare that i have 511 seventh graders i have more seventh graders on one grade level than other middle schools have in the entire school many seventh grade classes are overcrowded with some classes
044maxed out at 33 students our newcomer population is steadily increasing and we are also seeing a continuing rise in leap students we want to be able to accommodate all of our students students have limited options for course requests because of the overcrowding as a staff member simple tasks like using the restroom can be stressful there's use a line to use the restroom many days i have to wait to get home to relieve myself the staff parking lot is way too small if you arrive at work after 8 15 you may have to park off campus our students deserve a better learning environment to thrive social emotional learning and academic success it is hard for teachers to build relationships when classes are maxed out at 33 students our staff women's staff members deserve better working conditions
045and our students can feel when staff is stressed rezoning riverside middle school should be done for the 22-23 school year this is imperative for the success of our students and families of the south side thank you for your time good evening everybody my name is brendan tereichi i am a teacher at memphis middle school i'm here in support of rezoning river city for next school year we can't put it back any further we trust the school board our elected officials to figure out the logistics um and if binford can be part of the solution all the better let's get it done thank you guys ladies and gentlemen during our recognition i enjoyed the clapping and the waving of the hands and we're not going to continue to do that thank you go with your hands
046go with your hands please thank you so very much hi my name is paige l wenger and i'm a leap teacher at river city i would like to invite you to spend a day with me at school but before i do i need to give you a few pointers first you need to get to school early so you were assured a legitimate parking place or you will just have to make one up for yourself for first block i don't get my class started when i should as i am waiting for a handful of students who are unable to arrive on time every day because of our buses having to make double runs after this class i moved from the 8th grade hall to 7th this is always a process and i have been going as
047i am going against the tide i have become a master at bobbing and weaving as i have to literally push my way through one time when entering the seventh grade hallway it was a gridlock we were completely still we could not move we were all squished up against each other and it was scary and i was afraid that someone would fall mainly me and get trampled students were screaming and yelling it was not a pleasant experience now for third block we can go to lunch but only half of the grade level will be in the cafeteria because we don't have enough room for all of our students so you may have to go back with them with their classroom for lunch where their teacher has to eat in there with them when you are in
048the classroom we also cannot guarantee that you will have a seat because many of our classrooms are at full capacity for fourth block i have to now move to sixth grade hall the reason i have to move for every class is that the leap teachers do not have any designated classrooms there are also nine of us who share a small classroom as their office area because there is no more space there we have student desk instead of teachers desk and i thought by this time during our five-year relationship you could have at least given me a desk with a drawer now i would hate for you to leave early and miss all the excitement of dismissal we have many parent pickups and this causes traffic jams in our parking lots and backups on hull street
049aft as it has not been an already a long enough day many of our students wait at school until almost five to a bus for a bus to return to take them home so please come and visit us so you can see firsthand what it's really like to work in an overcrowded school if you haven't spent time in our school please reconsider your previous vote of no to rezoning because you truly do not have an accurate understanding of what you are voting against thank you for your time good evening school board members and superintendent cameras my name is maria hernandez and i am a family liaison for the south side hub i come here today on behalf of a community member that sent us an email she was unable to make it here the email
050said hello everyone my name is leah whitehurst gibson a sixth district resident and a director of a nonprofit organization a nonprofit organization that serves the south side of richmond the 6th 8th and 9th district i am also a mother of a future rps student i want to focus my remarks on the decision of rezoning river city specifically on school staff support and safety for the past two years we have put more on teachers and rps staff than anyone could have beared while while teaching and supported and supportive learning environments are at risk for so many from so many directions it feels unconceivable to me that we add that to not rezoning recruiting good teachers and other staff members is already difficult in this job market why should we make it more difficult by asking them
051to work in an overcrowded environment if we want to recruit great people to work with our children we need things that will draw them in not push them away overcrowded schools are stressful for everyone from administration to custodial staff children and their parents why would we force the stress on so many across the community when there are options to alleviate that stress the second thing i want to address is safety the safety aspect of overcrowding it is hard to understand why we built a brand new school that cannot accommodate the students we already had it feels important to say that sending our children to over credit school isn't safe and does not support a safe learning environment it makes me nervous to think about sp about sending my child to school in an overcrowded a
052school and potential not enough staff if there is a crisis situation i think it's also important to point out that if we choose to put this extra stressor on our families and staff every second then we should we should not be surprised if it's hard when our students cannot pass their exams we insist on giving them to determine their future we cannot expect children to learn in an environment where learning is not fully supported not limited to but def definitely including class size finally as a citizen of richmond city i implore you to hear the voices of our community telling you the right thing to do which is reason river city and keep our students and staff safe and supported thank you good evening madam chair rps school board and superintendent my name is melissa
053rickey and i am the principal of binford middle school and a resident of the second district it was my honor to have been before you last week to speak in support of rezoning river city middle school as you know i would be the beneficiary of this action should the plan as presented last week be approved i've continued conversations since then with some of you many members of the rps leadership team and lots and lots of binford stakeholders the through line from my perspective is that everyone just wants to make schools work to do so lots of questions clearly needed to be answered it makes sense gather the information ask more questions perhaps but no doubt push for clarity and do what you believe is right to support all rps students i continue to be grateful
054for those of you who are in those decision-making seats it's not easy you're trying to do the right thing from your perspective for what it's worth at this juncture my position remains unchanged i can take more students we do need work within and around our 107 year old building which is landlocked in the middle of the fan and last week we identified along with rps leadership and facilities with specificity what that work could look like when it could happen how we would do it all before august rps leadership and i have worked on some of the data that you'll see this evening that will hopefully answer the questions that were posed in the motion last week should anything at all need to be clarified pertaining to binford please do not hesitate to reach out i
055am here to make this work for rps we are ready just say yes also huge shout out to the binford teachers who are here this evening who took time to do this because this is also hard and good work i'm proud of you showing up especially while we grapple with the tremendous loss of a beloved colleague and friend he's glad we're here i just know it thank you for your support thank you madam principal and happy national principals day which was held yesterday may 1st to all the principals that were here thank you [Music] how you doing my name is jerry gunter i've been here before i'm an instructional assistant in a special ed classes high intensity support at river city i'm a straight shooter so i want to remind you guys that you're dealing
056with educators bureaucracy and loopholes as a distraction don't work we need action open enrollment is a luxury safety is a necessity man next subject wheelchair-bound students who i work with there's so many children i have to make a separate schedule outside of class change to move them safely through the hallways that's a necessity boom i mean i don't know what else to say about it uh really you know the city of richmond is a racial powder king the decisions y'all make affect people in the city y'all can strike a match that could make bigger things happen in the city boom and the last thing i really have to say is a word and the definition of word is manipulating map lines to empower or disempower a certain group my name is jerry gunter and gerrymandering
057is unconstitutional thank you thank you good evening my name is cynthia reyes i am a parent i am a citizen of richmond i'm a resident i vote and i'm angry because many of our children are beating are getting beat up every single day and i'm not saying only physically emotionally under studies i did not come here to complain i have done a lot of work in my community i am not only the parent that will come to you and whine about something i get my hands dirty i just came from the hospital i got out and came over here because the pain i have is way more what i have seen you voting no to rezoning my children will attend that school my children deserve to have a seat to be here to learn i'm
058asking you to rethink of what you're doing to many of our children thank you so much hello i'm deanna firo and i'm a parent that lives in the fourth district and has a student that's actually zoned for george with and river city middle school although my daughter did not attend those schools because we used open enrollment to help with transportation as a single parent um i'm also a virginia educator and i'm a member of vea so i'm here in support with you all as well i came to bring a couple of reminders and pieces of nuggets of information that might be helpful and might spark somebody's imagination to do something important and the first one is that i was a member of the rezoning committee back in 2019 along with another neighbor in the fourth
059district and we did talk about the south side several several times we asked that the school board consider putting it into their facilities plan that they would rebuild another middle school in the fourth district because there's a need we also asked for an elementary school in the eighth district because that's going to be another need and so for those of you that were not on the board back then or were not informed and those of you that were on the board and forgot i brought those sheets for you so you don't have to go digging in board docks and you can look at those numbers again if you remember the data said that within the 10 years after 2019 just about all of your schools are going to be at over capacity so you're still
060going in that direction [Music] for collective bargaining i highly highly encourage educators to make sure that one of the first things you put in there is your class sizes make sure you put that in there the code of virginia right now says that middle two high schools should have no no more than 24 students in one english class if that happens parents should get a notice no later than 10 days with a plan of how it's going to be corrected i know 10 families in my district already that i talk to regularly they have received zero of those those notices as a teacher who taught at one of the open enrollment schools for richmond public schools i ask you to really look at the curriculum and look at the differences of what honors is and
061what honors is not everybody's fighting for the title but i don't think you've actually questioned what's the difference in the curriculum it's not that much different as an honors teacher 30 seconds i wouldn't dare teach less of good quality instruction to any of my students just because they don't have that tag on their transcript the last thing is there was a court case sepulveda versus the puerto rico department of education that went to the u.s supreme court it was found that large class sizes is a violation of disability rights for teachers and students hold on to that thank you so much thank you for your service as well [Music] good evening my name is pippa holloway i live in the fifth district in swansboro on the south side i'm a proud product of public schools
062and have spent most of my career in public higher education i've lived in richmond for only a year but have been an engaged citizen everywhere i've lived i've been to a lot of school board meetings and worked on a lot of school board campaigns and i was motivated to come this evening to speak about two issues first river city as a south side resident i was alarmed last week that you rejected the plan to rezone the school this plan came after months of community engagement you claim to value the voices of parents and community members and here you had a truly impressive process that you should be celebrating and honoring but instead the majority of you recommended the recommendation sidelining and silencing those voices since the vote last week i've been trying to understand this
063vote i've cleared claims that the rezoning proposal lacks a complete budget and transportation plan i've also heard suggestions that these schools are not ready to support new populations of students school and district leaders say these schools are ready to support these new students we've heard that tonight and the transportation plan will be worked out you claim to respect the expertise of professional educators yet by rejecting the rezonings proposal you are rejecting their recommendations the school and district level leaders who support this rezoning and know how to make it work i've been hearing them tonight these amazing teachers that are telling us this needs to happen it can happen this brings me to the second issue the resignation of rps as chief operating officer i was mystified to read news reports that school board members think
064that this critical vacancy will have little impact on construction projects and alarmed by suggestions that the board was unsure if and when this position would be refilled what's the connection between river city zoning and the resignation of the co the answer is a culture of micromanagement that's bringing chaos and failure you've got a district packed with professional educators your superintendent is a professional educator your principals are professional educators as of course are these amazing teachers that we're hearing from tonight let them do their jobs listen to them many of you seem to have an analysis but not a plan you want equity and justice noble goals which i absolutely support but i don't see how your actions are a path to them overcrowded schools ignoring community recommendations demoralized employees chaos and leadership meetings that last
065late into the night all of this aligns you with enemies not supporters of public education you don't cut your way to equity you don't starve a system to make it secede you don't tear down in order to build let's build community support for more resources for our schools the best neighborhoods 30 seconds top quality educators and nationally recognized leaders let's build this school district not destroy it thank you so much good evening my name is caitlin bryce and i'm a teacher at huguenot high school i implore you to vote for the rezoning plan that will improve overcrowding at river city while it is true that often a sitting school board has to contend with the bad decisions of a previous board some of our current board members are responsible for the previous bad decision that
066led to the overcrowding at river city and it is easy to make a bad decision like the majority of the board made last week a decision that smacks of political posturing and personal vendettas against the superintendent when you are not part of the population that will suffer from your unconscionable actions none of the board members who voted against rezoning are school employees students or parents of students who will be negatively impacted by the overcrowding at river city we condemn our children to further inequity when we prioritize the academic success of a few students students who in all likelihood would be successful no matter what school they attended over the physical mental and emotional safety of many perhaps our conversation shouldn't focus around binford losing highly desirable open enrollment seats but rather over why some schools
067in richmond are more desirable for staff to work at and students to attend than others what does that say about the equity of education we are providing or not providing our students in richmond as an english teacher i am no stranger to figurative language and literary devices what better example of real-life irony than a school board that voted to build a smaller george width despite all studies projecting unprecedented south side population growth when at the same time this school board is voting to not rezone a horrifically overcrowded middle school on the south side a middle school that may i remind you is a feeder school for george with i guess that over capacity problem is a rezoning issue for a different school board though november 2024 cannot come soon enough thank you good morning good
068evening my name is andrea emsen i am the leap department chair over at bouchelle and have been so for the last six years good evening rps school board and administration last year i attended a professional development titled redlining richmond covering redlining and housing discrimination and practice policy and law in 1937 real estate assessors were sent throughout richmond to assess land value comments on the map and i am quoting talk about monument avenue and the confederate celebrity statues that line the street there were three colors used on the map green meant highly desirable and greater assessment land value red meant hazardous and hazardous areas and abysmal assessment land values they literally used the word hazardous hazardous on this map just meant that they were negroes living there there are sections to the north and the west
069of the city that are listed as restricted against african americans land values in the yellow areas were deemed respectable but too close to the black areas of the city so they returned yellow and too many black people have have to walk through the area so and i quote losses on property are being taken why did i spend the time giving you this mini history lesson because although it is 85 years later nothing has changed three years ago the rps administration and school board decided to rezone in a way that could be described as unfortunate and modularly mildly suspicious the process and the public comment were not in depth the board voted to rezone one particular community under auspicious or suspicious motives i'll steer here i still hear community members talking about the process and how
070the trust in rps has not been the same since as the esl lead over at bouchard i personally was livid with this decision as it removed the bulk of my kids from our school to make sure that the same was not repeated this time i asked to be a part of the resulting process this year i guarantee you that we were focused thoughtful and blatantly honest with our discussions surrounding equity divisive terminology such as across the river impedes our progress the south side of richmond is still fighting to break the limitations set by the land assessors in 1937. we are not a unified rps we are north side we are south side we are east end and we are west end we are above the river and we are below the river 30 seconds break
071the cycle every student deserves to be in a safe and loving environment the good of the many override the luxury of the privileged few river city is at capacity already it cannot hold anymore voting against rezoning is a dereliction of your duty to every rps student thank you thank you hello my name is emily cavanaugh i'm speaking on behalf of kids first rps and i would like to ask for the full five minutes i have a lot to say a week ago my daughter maggie was here and she said that she would like for your actions to match your words on behalf of her classmates you all all say that you're here for the students for all the students yet last november five of you voted to effectively cancel the vaccine mandate by rolling back
072all of the consequences for not abiding by that that was after uh myself and dr daniel vula stood in front of you and impassionedly asked you to vote for the vaccine mandate dr dani avula who has been such a wonderful friend to our district throughout the two years we've been in this pandemic yet you all say with your words that you're here for our students five of you dug your heels in for months in a fight with city council even after an embarrassing public meeting between the two elected bodies yet you all say with your words that you're here for all of the students you all asked the city for six million dollars less than the superintendent's proposed budget after the city indicated that they would fully fund our budget essentially saying nah we're good
073yet you all say with your words that you're here for our students again i'm going to bring up that on february the 28th in the face of massive public comment you all voted to publicly fund the chief wellness officer position and the coo position and then secretly followed up with a midnight vote with not a single person in the room to not fill that role what did my daughter call it oh she called it dishonest and yet you all say with your words that you're here for our students speaking of your words before the dangerous irresponsible vote last week the five of you made to not rezone river city middle school let's talk about your words bouchard middle school 97 percent students of color that was used zero times lucille brown students of color those
074words were used three times river city middle school the school that we are actually trying to re-zone students of color that was mentioned about 10 times benford middle school students of color that was mentioned times those are the words that we hear from all of you the last thing i have to say is i know at least two or three of you all went to the bathroom how many of you guys get to go to the bathroom during the day no those are the words that we hear from you all they do not match your actions when i explained to my daughter what i was doing here she couldn't be here with me today and she was really disappointed she can't understand why we're zoned to benford we live in that tiny little zone why
075she gets to go to a middle school where she can raise her hand and go sit in the hallway if she's feeling stressed out because class is loud or whatever because there's so much room in her school and i'm telling her about my friends kids who have whole classes out in the hallway because there is no room how do i explain that to her what words am i supposed to use it's going to depend on all of your actions that you take tonight that's my time thank you my name is thad williamson i'm an rps parent and a resident of the fifth district so first i'm speaking tonight to urge the board to approve the head start application so that our community can continue to receive federal funding for this essential program to do otherwise
076would be simply catastrophic second with the end of the school year approaching i want to take the opportunity to thank superintendent jason cameras chief of staff and michelle hidasco chief operating officer alana gonzalez the entire administrative leadership team as well as all the principals teachers and staff for their work this year to reopen our school system with love and that certainly includes the richmond virtual academy i would hope that all those employees are still with rps next year in the wake of the pandemic the administration has had to deal on the fly with literally new challenges while also continuing to deal with continuing and often worsen problems related to the trauma and poverty so many of our students experience this includes a major escalation of student mental health concerns including according to a presentation heart
077recently an increase in the number of children considered to be at risk of self-harm is for these reasons i have been appalled time and again at this sport's unwillingness to provide the administration the moral policy or resource support it needs to meet these interlocking challenges the board voted to strip six million dollars in superintendent's budget proposal for next year without even sending it to city council for consideration it voted to block the cost-neutral hiring of chief wellness officer despite the mental health crisis in our schools it floated the idea of cutting the chief operating officer then created a climate in which the current ceo has elected to leave rather than put up with it anymore and just last week it traumatized numerous staff principles and administrators with the wrong-headed and indefensible to approve the desperately
078needed river city municipal rezoning i've been following the richmond school board for many years i do not recall the board treating dr jewell sherman dr brandon dr ben mr krantz or prior 2021 mr cameras and their teams with anything less than professional respect tough questions at times yes but respect the jobs these professionals do are challenging and require specific skills and relevant experience the role the school board set policies and goals the role of the administration led by mr cameras is to execute on those priorities by law and rps's own governance manual the only employee the board may hold accountable or give direction to is the superintendent we need this board to support the superintendent's effort too many on this board have been treating the superintendent and his team as if he were the sitting
079governor or president of a revival political party and the task was to block or frustrate his agenda at all costs that not how school boards are supposed to work there's only one agenda our kids and supporting the teachers and staff who teach and care for our kids the success of the superintendent and the system is your success our kids success and community success so i would please ask you once again for the board to stop trying to do the administration's job and focus on doing your own job a little bit better thank you thank you okay uh good evening uh my name is nicole davis and i'm here today as a south side parent and a south side teacher i am a leap teacher at river city middle school and i'm a parent of two
080children one at jail francis and one at summer hill while they seem young now my oldest sitting here in the audience today in a few short years will be also attending river city middle school and as much as i love our school seeing the conditions we have now if rezoning is not passed i have serious concerns for his ability to receive a safe and high quality education as it currently stands i want to make it clear that none of my current academic and safety concerns are the result of anything lacking on the part of our educators our administrators or our students i love my coworkers and i especially love my students when we say conditions are unsafe due to overcrowding we are not faulting our students they are amazing but they deserve better and we
081all deserve better i think i work with some of the most brilliant and dedicated educators around but there's only so much we can do given our current conditions our admin and our teachers cannot work miracles and our current predicament only has one solution and that is rezoning now i know many of my colleagues today have already spoken about their safety concerns as a result of overcrowding so i wanted to take a moment to highlight some of the educational impact of overcrowding we know that rps is not alone in facing a critical teaching shortage however at an overcrowded school like river city we don't have room for any error that means that if teachers call out which happens already overcrowded classrooms are now stuffed with students often without desks and learning diminishes for all on a
082near-daily basis we are forced to split classes due to staff shortages and a near-complete lack of subs that means that a class of 25 to 30 students or more has to be split between several classes that already have anywhere from 25 to 30 students or more so you do the math this means we have classes regularly above 30 students and this is not what's reflected on paper but it is our daily reality sped teachers are routinely taken away from their students who are legally entitled to their services in order to serve as substitutes education isn't merely sitting a student in a classroom with a teacher it's about the relationship we form with our students and it's through those relationships that learning takes place when classes are routinely split and teachers are pulled away from their
083classes to act as substitutes the routines and expectations of that teachers classrooms get disrupted and all students are underserved by that i'd also like to highlight that staff shortages are directly linked to and exacerbated by overcrowding teaching as we know is already a stressful profession but when you teach in an overcrowded school that stress is multiplied tenfold and this contributes another serious obstacle to teacher attention i care so very deeply about river city it is my neighborhood school and i'm a proud south side parent and south side educator but it's time that rps approaches all school with equity and for too long now southside has been given a lower priority than schools and other zip codes educational equity requires that this board takes immediate action to pass rezoning now thank you good evening camp madam
084chairman members of the school board my name is dolores murray and i'm a former employee of the richmond public school system and i'm also a member of the retired vea rea and nea i came down here tonight not to criticize you only to remind each one of you as to why you were elected to run the school system in richmond nobody else not in city council mayor listen you are the people that were elected to run the school system george whit everything went crazy no problem with fox now here we are talking about a middle school that's bursting at the scene and you have three high schools and three middle schools that are not up to their capacity folks it is your responsibility to take care of the problems i hear that there is some
085division it should not be you cannot afford to be divided at a time like this people they are banning books all across the country out of library schools at the top of virginia virginia's agenda private schools charter schools home schooling public education is being attacked you have got to be together whatever the differences are personality different of opinions whatever you must come together and make decisions for this system i have the greatest respect for everybody on this board because i know half of you and all of you know me and mr superintendent and i know my time is short but i would like to speak to you about the vpi program it was started in between the early childhood by dr little john and the idea was to educate four year olds as students of
086the richmond public school system and it worked it was sponsored it was funded by richmond and it was so great senator kaine and others saw that it was such a great program that it became funded by the state and became the junior preschool initiative at the school that i worked we had parents sleeping outside of the school all night to get their children into the program because we let them know that your child is this is not day school you are now a student of richmond public school system and mrs burke can vouch for that because she was there too first time now i know my time is out yes ma'am but i would like to talk to the superintendent at another time about re-looking at that program the vp program it does not need
087to be incentives thank you thank you miss murray thank you hello my name is lindsay hirschner i'm a licensed clinical social worker and a richmond public schools parent i would like to speak to you as both a mental health professional who provides outpatient mental health therapy as a contractor at river city middle school and as a parent of two richmond public school students the oldest of which is zoned to start at river city middle school in the fall of 2023 it is clear to me during my work with students at river city middle school that overcrowding at the school causes adverse mental health consequences for students there is a problem when multiple children i work with have to have therapy goals on their treatment plans addressing how to manage the triggering of their mental health
088systems caused by the loud noise and physical crowding in the halls at their school my clients experience high levels of depression anxiety and post traumatic stress disorder when they walk through our crowded halls the symptoms of these conditions are triggered and students bring those symptoms to class causing lack of focus and behavior challenges in their overcrowded classrooms i want to also speak to you as a future river city middle school parent of a child who is autistic and has a trauma history due to time spent in foster care my son has thrived at his richmond public school elementary school due to kind and attentive staff who have the time to address his unique needs as it is now like many of my clients my own child would not be able to successfully navigate river city
089middle school as it is due to his trauma history and neurodiversity that caused him to be sensitive to overstimulation as a south side community member i would also like to name that my front yard is the river river city middle school bus stop for my neighborhood every morning i leave for work and my middle school neighbors are still sitting at the bus stop past the 9 15 start time and i regularly see them come into the building after half of their first block has passed the children in my neighborhood deserve to attend their full school day which apparently is not possible under the current zoning i believe in the work and the judgment of the dedicated staff at richmond public schools that is why i choose both to send my children to richmond public schools
090and to work there as the contractor i ask that you also decide to believe in the staff who are experts on the work that they do every day and support the reasonable rezoning plan that these professionals have unanimously agreed on thank you [Music] good evening madam chair school board members and superintendent my name is patrick wells and i am the math instructional coach at benford middle school i ask you to find a solution that helps alleviate the overpopulation at river city middle school this includes moving some students to benford middle school due to the open enrollment process benford already services students from all parts of the city we support welcoming more students to our school this is the right thing to do for the students and the staff of river city middle school because they
091deserve it in addition i ask that in the process of this you also vote to provide us with the additional resources that will be needed to support our over 100 year building to accommodate the increase in student population thank you very much for your time thank you good evening madam chair school board representatives and superintendent my name is tyler chapman i am a richmond resident of the second district and i'm a math teacher at benford middle school i am here tonight to talk about my school and the topic of middle school rezoning benford's vision statement is to affirm and prepare students to be their authentic selves through the arts i want to pause to point out that this applies to all students all students find success at binford and this absolutely includes students from richmond's
092south side please approve the rps rezoning plan the benford community would value the opportunity to be a part of the solution i implore the school board to take the time tonight to vote once again it is the right thing to do the students staff members and families of river city middle school require your reconsideration their community deserves the adoption of a rezoning plan that enables equity ensures their security and allows their community to flourish i am confident that the aforementioned plan can do all these things and i am confident that the rps leadership will put it into action along with the resources necessary for all involved middle schools thank you for your consideration and for voting yes on the river city rezoning plan thank you good evening school board members and superintendent cameras my name
093is elise boyd and i am the proud icc for richmond virtual academy i want to thank the school board and rps administration for confirming the value of virtual learning for students who thrive in digital environments in the past week i've communicated with several school board members and the superintendent to express my gratitude and reiterate how honored i am to work for rps and to be an rva owl but tonight i'm here to lift my voice for the students and colleagues at river city middle school all students deserve an environment conducive to learning all students deserve the space and grace to learn in their own way i began my rps career at river city and once a red tail i'm always a red tail the faculty administration and staff are among the most brilliant loving and
094dedicated teachers with whom i have worked in 16 years the students and families are committed to learning and have big dreams for their lives they need the space to make those dreams come true and you know i have to ask how can opening the richmond virtual academy to the opportunity of all families alleviate some of this overcrowding and allow space for those dreams to come true our top enrollment when based on family choice was from river city middle school please come together scrap the politics and focus on the safety and realize the potential of our river city red tails thank you good evening i'm marty jewell and um what's left of marty jewell i uh i'm former city councilman and i'm amazed we're back here um well a whole nother controversy it seems well fact
095one is that the school was built too small and then take a rocket scientist to figure that out which means that you've got to thin that crowd out uh i happen to have been involved with rich in politics in schools for a long time and i for for a fact uh the last several rezonings that were done were based on class and race and i'm mighty afraid we're going through this again that the last time i came before you talking about george with high school we don't have a school capacity problem we've got a rezoning problem and that rezoning needs to be able to thin that middle school out to make it at least consonable in ways that uh that makes sense uh mr cameras i've been beating up on you from time to time
096mr marty i'm just saying and i'm being nice but i cannot i just want to make sure everybody understands that this time i'm on his side okay that's what we still did not address the superintendent by his name you work with me we can but thank you i appreciate it can i get my time yes yes you can you can get it back yes uh mr superintendent i i happen to believe firmly that that was the decision made by the mayor to build that school at the size it is now not the superintendent and and and part of the problem was coming to a conclusion uh with with the george with uh a project i still mad digging in it instead of staying in his lane and got you all at each other's throat makes
097no sense meanwhile and i pray that that can be resolved uh the other thing is i i don't know uh what's in the rezoning plan but i do know that when we redistrict for city council for the house of delegates for congress it is against the law to use a body of water as a barrier to drawing those district lines it's against the law and so it ought to be against the law for us to do that with school board and school districts and school zoning and so i urge you to look beyond the past constrictions and and see if we can be more imaginative about how we get this done everything i've heard these people say is absolutely correct it's fixable and i'll leave it to you thank you thank you mr jewell i
098appreciate you good evening oh my god what's your name baby naira phillips thank you um so my name is naira phillips and i've been i'm currently a student at river city middle school i'm in eighth grade and currently next high school is hilganite and but what i would like to say about river city i just feel unsafe is overcrowded you barely can get through the halls because it's too many kids and it's like it's not it's kids bringing in weapons it's not cool at all it's it's not like i just feel like why and before i even came came to river city i was at lucille brown and i just felt like lucille brown was much more better than river city because it wasn't a lot of fights it cost is a lot of fights
099ever mercedes this is not it's just terrible lucille was just it wasn't bad like it was cool it wasn't a lot of altercations or anything like that but that's it's just it's just sad but that's all i got to say thank you thank you dear wait yeah do this thank you that's okay good evening madam chair rps school board and superintendent my name is richard rebmann and before i begin i just wanted to say thank you for considering all our calls for action be them positive negative aggressive or passive we do appreciate you hearing our voices and our calls for help my name is richard redman and i am a citizen parent and band director of benford middle school if i am recognized tonight it is because i've taught for 15 years in seven different
100buildings in the north south east and west ends of our districts at rps all city band events i've directed and guided bands of students from every school we represent i've taught students of school board members spoke with you at length at networking events and prepared music groups for you here and around the city in my first week at binford i spoke out at our morning shout out circle about how binford might be the first school that made me feel like i was part of a family i know other teachers agree and students feel that love every day whether in morning community circle conversations in one of our fantastic fine arts groups or with an after-school athletic team we allow students to be their authentic selves and always work to establish close relationships with the many
101communities we represent we open our arms to them when times are hard be it a disappointing grade on a report card the trauma of a pandemic or the loss of a loved one the rezoning conversation can only end one way with binford receiving more young minds from our overcrowded river city middle school to join our family i want these students the bimford staff wants these students and these students indeed all students deserve benford we have a responsibility not only to students that come to our school but to the staff and students of river city they will be able to find the space time and resources they need to lead with love not bring these students to our school and to not support us with the resources that will help us mold them into the future
102leaders of our city and country is to do a disservice to the jobs we are here to do tonight let's lead with love for our students teachers parents and the entire community thank you good evening jacqueline murphy braxton principal of river city middle school i didn't prepare anything tonight and all i could think of was how personally i took last week's vote but like the four agreements say don't take anything personally but i am taking it for the students of river city middle school and the staff of river city middle school no one deserves all the things you heard tonight staff of river city would y'all stand up this group right here is probably the size of most of the staff in most of the schools here in richmond public schools our staff is five
103times bigger than this with 150 teachers and staff members 1500 students you hear the things about overcrowding you hear the things of just the struggles with restrooms and you know they came here to stand up for themselves and the students of river city and um i don't even think i could stand here today if it wasn't for the staff we have and some of our supporters from central office everyone who's tried to come through and uh support us at river city um all of you who want the board to vote yes why don't you all stand with us please no one wants to see us continue the way we have no one not me and you shouldn't either we should be the modern mother teresa's gandhis and martin luther kings for our students and it
104should be all about children all about their safety and we all have one job and that's academic achievement and you cannot have academic achievement in the conditions that we have thank you good evening madam chair rps school board and superintendent cameras my name is dr stacy gaines and i'm joined here tonight by assistant principal cornelia smith and i am the principal of lucille brown middle school located on the south side i've also served that community for the past five years i was unable to attend last week's board meeting however i was tuned in online and quite frankly i was beyond shocked at the board's decision to reject the proposed rezoning plan as a member of the rezoning committee i can say honestly that although we did not always agree on each other's suggested proposals i
105was confident that every individual who gave up their wednesday evenings worked tirelessly to propose a rezoning plan that would not only alleviate the overcrowding issue at river city but also take into consideration the unique dynamics of every school that could potentially be impacted by our proposed plan i may not be able to speak eloquently about the history of richmond i'm not from here i actually live in petersburg however as a principal in this school district i know firsthand the impact of overcrowding and the turmoil it creates for all stakeholders for this reason i stand here in solidarity with each of my colleagues from benford bouchard and most importantly river city i implore you to make the right decision for students tonight and vote yes to the rezoning plan thank you thank you madam chair superintendent
106members of school board my name is charles willis have come actually that i would have five minutes of representation of our organizations two of my represent tonight one is united communities against crime as well as richmond highway neighborhood civic association first i want to start by saying that miss braxton she kind of stole my fire because i wanted to say to all those that are here that supports river city middle school if you would please stand but of course she has already asked that i was a little uh stunned though that i didn't see any board members staying because she said it all that supported or i didn't see there were some others that was in the audience that didn't however i'm not into pointing fingers i believe that though the board has a clear
107idea that we all support and i don't think i've seen any board member or heard of any board member that did not or do not support river city middle school or the rezone and how we get to that is the same things we did when we dealt with the george w situation i want to deviate a little bit for a minute and ask the boys and dungeons to consider something this past of april we lost an icon in the city of richmond and of course i come before the board often to ask for a moment of silence and i recognize folks that have passed on is part of the work that god has commissioned me to do in our organization united communities against crime i recognize this presence of a couple of our board members
108that are here as well as in the audience this past uh at john marshall high school we recognized the young man that is a icon of the city a great entertainer producer composer he loved richmond public schools very supportive grew up in the holland park area and was known by the name of charles baby charles jones senior i'm actually that the board would consider and especially those that are in that area that you would consider to take into consideration renaming the music room of john marshall high school after this young man and called that music room the charles jones jr music room my reason for that is mr jones was again as i stated a strong advocate for rich public schools he taught his son his family and others to have respect and love for
109public education mr jones was a mentor he's an educator he was a mental health counselor his daughter is now a richmond public schools teacher over at woodville his son is known as none other than richmond's anti-bullying ambassador young prince charles i'm pretty sure all of you all have heard of this family this gentleman is a strong advocate for family you would never ever see a dad like this dad before once you meet this family their house is known as the house of happiness so i'm asking that the board would take into consideration or that board representative that's in the uh in that district i believe that's the third district i believe it is where john washer high school is that you would consider to rename the music room of john marsha high school after charles
110jones jr the others has begun to close so many of y'all have came tonight you've heard so many come tonight about the rezoning and the board's action that took place on the last meeting i want to stand and commend the principal of river city middle school and i'm real funny on folks that are not born and raised in richmond but when you take a principal that comes into this city and has given all that she can and do you see the staff that stands behind her and the community that stands behind this principle and these staff members then you can't do nothing but join them because it's better together so i ask that this board is no secret that that's why i asked for the agenda and i think madame clerk and uh madam chair
111and others that uh made the agenda available because i wanted to see what was on the gender and i see that later on that you do have actions that possibly is gonna um be raised about revisiting or taking actions on the rezoning again and if that's the case then i would ask that you also would take into consideration to move forward on rezoning um rivers has been stated has been given especially when you have all of the principles and especially i'm real proud of you the principal from benford because the public was giving us a different perception but you got it straight tonight so thank you for standing publicly and saying that you are willing to accept the kids from blackwell and hillside and bear me wherever they coming from you say you're willing to
112accept them and that's great so i kudos to you also thank you and thank you for your time thank you good evening school board and superintendent cameras my name is thank you there you go there you go thank you stole my thunder my name is victoria pearson i'm an rps teacher and leader and i'm a resident of the fourth district and i'm speaking tonight in support of the river city rezoning committee's recommended plan as an esl teacher a really important part of my job is welcoming new students at our newcomer academy at river city we have welcomed over 80 new students since the first week of school from countries all over the world including belize colombia costa rica the dominican republic el salvador guatemala honduras mexico nicaragua peru venezuela afghanistan senegal and yemen and that's
113just from our newcomer academy that's a small percentage of our overall student population which is just as beautifully diverse and i do want to clarify that only about 20 of our students in the newcomer academy live out of zone but don't worry the leap department is already working on expanding that newcomer academy to other schools the bottom line is that the south side is growing on any new student's first day at school first day of school at river city they see classrooms of over 30 students substitute teachers or combined classes because of a staff shortage they're teachers having to ask for more furniture to accommodate them limited bathrooms for staff and students the list goes on and on you've heard it all tonight and i think that's good that you've heard it all tonight because
114maybe not so many of you have ever even visited river city it is no secret that river city opened overcrowded despite our staff's best efforts and our staff really does an amazing job an overcrowded building is just not a welcoming space for any student in the name of equity sometimes those of us in power with privilege we have to sacrifice for the greater good a few open enrollment seats in exchange for four middle schools to finally be at a safe and reasonable enrollment i implore you to vote yes tonight on the committee's recommendation for rezoning a plan that's supported by all affected principals and a vast majority of staff and families we've listened to public comment i don't think we've heard a negative comment yet against freezoning we simply cannot afford another delay you must
115vote yes tonight and then let's continue to work together to advocate for all of those increased resources the transportation and the smooth transition so that every single school in rps can be a welcoming space for our diverse student body thank you thank you [Music] good evening school board and superintendent my name is shannon heady i'm a resident of the second district i have a child at thomas jefferson high school and i have a fourth grader at william fox and you might wonder why i would be here in support of the rezoning for river city well my fourth grade daughter is going to go to benford she is zoned for benford and i don't presume to speak for a lot of families but i'm going to speak to my friends that we are excited to welcome
116river city students to the fan and to benford and i will do one better principal ricky i'm going to be your first volunteer this summer to get that school ready when the board votes i would love to not have to come here and spend five hours to hold you all accountable for some horrendous decision making that's what i would love i'd rather volunteer and work in all these middle schools that need us and the high schools so please i'm asking you to reconsider this decision and to be more thoughtful and listen to all parents in the future thank you good evening my name is kaisha king math interventions at richmond virtual academy and today my grandfather died and he's been in the hospital since april 1. but richmond virtual academy community has been going through
117this since february 4th and i didn't come here for sympathy or empathy because i'm a black woman and my voice doesn't matter a lot of times if i am sad or hurt or angry i took off today and i'm here not because i i'm just like going with certain people on the board the clerk reads board policy every time we have public information when i come here i'm speaking to nine not four not five i am not political i've been placed in a political seat as a black woman number one and i'm angry and today is the first time i can be because i see what river city is going through the city built river city [Music] now y'all gonna make a bigger george with and then i have enough ftes in the school this
118plan tonight does not say it is gonna help the current issues going on that were there before today or last week teachers are tired i am tired i i am tired this is not political i watched when the presentation came up that many people on this board walked away for administration for some tears we've reached out to all of y'all we needed all of your help from the food shed to buildings to everything we're not doing this any more stop everybody needs to heal because of the pandemic we straight went back to business as usual it is not business as usual for people who had to be shut in and now they finally figure out their value and their worth because they were alone stop 30 seconds it was 5'4 before all these new board
119members came it was the majority now it's 5'4 now and now y'all saying something oh no policy is policy that's the only thing as a black woman that i can stand up for with the law says i've worked at woodville for 10 years i'm a sped teacher i have to follow laws everybody needs to just recalibrate and heal and really think about the kids thank you thank you so much and we're sorry for your loss my name is steven strauss i'm a teacher at river city middle school and a fifth district resident tonight i think we've heard a lot of great commentary from my colleagues and folks in the audience and so given the vote last week i think the discussion could be really short all we need is someone in the majority to motion
120to reconsider and then someone to second vote and then we can move on from this we so i'm just asking we don't need to have a long discussion we've heard great points uh tonight thank you thank you good evening madam school board chair and school board members my name is rosalyn gibson i'm i live in the 8th district and i'm a tax paying citizen i like to say that because i like to remind our elected officials that we have an investment in the city and the decisions that you make for us um the i'm gonna go down an uncomfortable road stoney the road we trod bitter the chastening rod yeah that road uh i've come before you before i talked about segregation let's hang out here for a moment this is this is the uncomfortable
121part you know i talk about brown versus the board of education bobby johns walking out of an overcrowded newly built school in farnfield virginia and her calling upon charles hamilton houston the famous howard law school dean who uh taught thurgood marshall our first black supreme court justice and he also taught one of richmond's very own spotswood robinson george excuse me i'm strong graduate and a vu graduate richmond's very own him along with oliver hill took on the case for uh barbara johns and the students who walked out in protest and it was one of the cases that became part of brown voice versus the board of education which you all know or should know uh did away with separate and unequal because it never was equal so 30 seconds after all of that took place
122there was a movement called mass resistance richmond has never healed from any of it it has never progressed with mass resistance can i please have some more time this is very can i please just have a few more minutes can i please are you speaking on behalf of an organization or no i'm speaking of for me you have the same amount of time as everybody else have as an individual ma'am that's our policy i just want to say 10 seconds when you delay martin luther king said there's a fierce urgency of now [Music] you have delayed dismissed and postponed acting on george with and now with river city overcrowding time please vote yes you owe it you owe it to your ancestors thank you thank you absolutely thank you sorry i'm going to read from
123my phone because i don't do well with this my name is tara harris i'm a 7th grade english teacher at river city and a resident of the third district as i'm sitting there i wasn't sure that the actual chaos and danger that the students and staff are in daily has really been conveyed i'm a general ed teacher whose room is right outside the bathroom and near our pods entrance so i'm posted up in a hot spot for overcrowding and chaos i've taught in rps for a decade at bouchard with and now at river city i know that relationships are required to run our schools and there are so many kids every river city that it's impossible to build those necessary relationships with the sheer amount of students that we encounter who we don't personally teach
124it's just not we can't do it a middle school this large was a mistake and you need to re-zone us and give us the resources both human and probably a mobile restroom like they have the state fair several of those would be helpful but we need to keep the staff and add more there just aren't enough adults in the building to keep it safe chaos and violence reigns and we are under foot sometimes literally figure it out thank you thank you i want to take this opportunity to ask if anyone else is in the audience that would like to come and speak to the school board if so please do so is there anyone else in the audience that would like to speak to the school board please do so at this time good evening
125everybody my name is russell morton i'm a cell for rps i came late and it was another agenda but i heard this but i have been to river city before and i've been to lucille brown and um there is an overall calling issue i've taken the whole class at one time to the bathroom getting that done is attached um i've encountered fights had to break up fights because of overcrowding doing the changing of classes so it is a tough task and everything that they're saying is true whatever needs to be done needs to be done i was at another middle school rps as a thursday they need resources there too so whatever needs to be done please do it and that's it have a good evening thank you good evening school board my name is
126mariah wyatt and today i'm coming to you as the rps parent i was concerned about river city also crowding that's why i brought up this issue several times several months while on the school board but i'm tired of the political rhetoric individuals trying to get attention for whatever reason it is election or whatever it may be i've been at river city my niece was one of the top fives last year at real city school i know that she complained about how crowded it was the fights and that's why i kept asking why are we having all these reminds safety issues fighting two three times a day uncontrollable i've been asking that since i've been on this board but i'd like for you to know that's not the only school that's just like this this happened
127with the equity rezoning thomas jefferson is just like that also they're supposed to be an ib school and they're way overcrowded at least by 200. there's no difference there so when we need to look as a board we need to look at all these schools that we want to rezone with equity for this uh plan that happened in 2019 but my concern was why am i'm getting why am i getting ridiculed over something that was done two years by board members who are aware of this and then i'm called out for racism discrimination i'm not the person about racism the only thing a race that i'm interested in is the human race and if you're not interested in the human race then you don't need to be speaking to me i take my oath very
128very serious and i can tell you i don't see color i've been in military for 26 years as a united states army commander i don't take that lightly someone telling me that it's dealing with racism we have a lot of schools that we haven't even identified how about our schools that have second governor's schools we're not looking at this is not about racism this was about clean data and clean answers and all we received was excuses and some tears i want clean answers and clean data tonight i have not have a problem with rezoning river city i know about the south side i came from the south side but i am very concerned about the children time that we put in from hillside from manchester miss wyatt that's time there can i just say one
129more thing you can finish up but that's fine and what i would like to say is when we walk through the when we excuse me excuse me ladies and gentlemen we are not going to be disrespectful we're not going to do that we we are not going to be disrespectful miss white that is time miss white okay that is time can you make sure you turn off the mic please yes thank you so very much thank you miss white ladies and gentlemen thank you for your um comments during public comment we appreciate you taking your time to come and speak with us we appreciate the emails and and calls that we have received um but i just want to um a board member has made me aware that that they would like to speak but
130i would and i'm sure others will as well but we have to and we must regardless of whatever side you sit on do things in decency and order regardless of what you think about any elected official sitting on this stage we cannot disrespect each other that is not okay not in this space it's not okay we all have to do better and how we address each other regardless of what you think about the person we have to do better we cannot and i'm not and i need you to hear my heart not going to tolerate that regardless of whatever side i stand on with my school board colleagues i'm not going to allow them to be disrespected because i will want my children to say you did your best and you stood up for what
131was right decent and in order regardless of what you think of the elected officials and superintendent on this stage i'm not gonna let you do that i will not you can beat me up and down you can talk about me in the street but i'm not gonna let you do that to my school board colleagues i'm just not not in this space not particularly in a public space and i'm just asking you to hear my heart enough is enough of disrespecting each other in this space and i appreciate that very much so now we're moving on to the discussion and vote of rezoning of river city middle school excuse me middle school we're going to have a presentation by ms hodesco and after the presentation and ms door we've had a school board member who
132reached out to me to speak first and we're going to go and and i'm going to do my best to to do this thing right here to make sure that people that i don't miss people and i don't want anyone to take it personally that i missed you that's not it i'm like trying to lean forward lean back and all that but miss adusko can you please present the information for the school board and those who are streaming and those who are here thank you so very much yes uh good evening school board superintendent um i'm pleased to have the opportunity to come back to you this evening to respond to miss razi's motion from last week with updated information about the implementation of the rezoning proposal at river city the first slide though um
133i just wanted to reorient you to um the map for your approval there have been no changes to the zones uh but this is just again so that you can have it in mind one thing that i think is especially important when we talk in a little bit about transportation is to note the difference basically between section six and river city is that tiny little dot near almost the top of the red line that's connected to the word section six and section three which is the red section up top the next slide just again is a reminder of the projected utilization rates with a one-year implementation plan for rezoning you'll see the functional capacity usage for each of the four middle schools listed up top with three important caveats on the data just simply around
134how those numbers can be fluid given human behaviors are so as well you'll move to slide four the first piece that ms rizzi had asked for additional information on was in regards to some of the facility upgrades that would be needed at binford middle school to welcome the new students from river city and principal ricky our facilities director bobby hathaway and myself had already planned a visit to binford last tuesday so we continued that to walk the building to be able to provide you the information here which will allow the school to welcome additional students by removing some small things from different classrooms such as built-in counters around the edge internet polls that might obstruct space in the middle middle of classrooms or in some instances like the dance studio or the science room do
135renovation within those classrooms in order to either split them to have new classrooms or to allow more students in different electives there's also some small upgrades around increasing hallway space and flexible seating as well as clarifying outdoor usable spaces with some repainting and redesign in the parking lot and then of course additional furniture as needed this is a relatively small amount of around 120 000 as our best estimate and this would come from our operating budget in the facilities line on slide five i wanted to clarify that while neither brown nor bouchal would require any facilities upgrades to accommodate additional schools we do recognize that when new kids are coming to the school we want to be able to do things to help welcome them and so there is a moderate budget for each one
136of those schools as well as of course the additional furniture that's needed this money would also come out of the operating budget based on the types of things that the principals of those schools selected so they might come from a facilities line or it would come from the aligned line based on the items ms rizzi then asked for additional information regarding transportation and i think there's two very important pieces here the first overarching point that i want to make is that there isn't necessarily a transportation plan that's specific to rezoning we simply as a school division transport children to their zoned schools but i do think there's two very important considerations to keep in mind with that work so the first is routing and we worked closely with our transportation department and randomly selected 10
137students from section 3. so again if you think about the map that red far upper right section and asked them if those students were to go to binford or river city what would be their distance in miles and then what would be their time on the bus and the data that you see here for each one of the students is not only is the route shorter but the time on the bus is significantly reduced and in fact for some students it's half the time this of course makes common sense because you can see from the map that binford is closer to to section 3 than river city and again this is because of the flexibility introduced with crossing the river i will note that um certainly there there can be challenges that we have heard
138and we need to kind of rethink some things within our transportation department of south side north side drivers but even within that construct there is certainly cushion time for driving such that it will be it will be faster and it will be shorter but i think one of the biggest concerns and likely why this issue was raised is because of our other transportation issue that has nothing to do with rezoning but is certainly very real and that is our the region the nation's current challenge around bus driver vacancies and because of that the transportation department is not able to operate as it would wish because of the vacancies that it has and so the talent office is one of their primary uh priorities this summer this spring and summer is filling those bus operator vacancies
139and so i've outlined some of the different recruitment efforts that are underway now and will be throughout the summer whether that's continuing a 3 500 signing bonus for newly hired drivers providing support to pass that test or more intensive campaigns and hiring events we are confident that we can move forward towards that zero vacancy first day of school i do also want to just name one very other important piece that folks here would not have known but certainly the committee dug into and that is that many students in section 3 already are zoned to armstrong most of section 3 already crosses the river to go to high school so while this might be new for a middle school this is not new for rps to cross the river especially for this particular part of the
140city in fact it's a natural continuation and then finally the last thing that had been requested was just to codify some of the comments that i had made last time about other resources including staffing and other non-personnel resources so as i mentioned before there's a domino effect that's going to happen once the board approves boundaries um hopefully these proposed boundaries so that we can determine how to allocate resources once the boundaries are approved our first step is going to be to run the middle school lottery which we would be able to do sometime next week so that families can make determinations about where their child will go to school next year and once we receive those different decisions which we will in the coming weeks we'll be able to determine where all of the kids
141are going and what resources then will follow children to new schools and then from that we'll be able to look at staffing considerations to include everything from content teachers to special educators to leap teachers to social workers counselors and office staff to make sure that the appropriate ratios are in place at not just river city but also the three receiving middle schools there are also a variety of other post-decision next steps outside of resource allocation which primarily include robust communication efforts with families who would be moving to a new zone to ensure that they're aware of this support with scheduling and other operational uh elements as well and then finally while i won't go through it there is an appendix here as i believe there had been some confusion about whether or not the board
142had had opportunity to see multiple configurations and so i was asked to share the four previous configurations that i had discussed with the board configurations a b and c were ones that were interrogated directly by the committee but were shared with the board in our first presentation from those three we were able to have the original first read which is slide 14 and then community members and board members offered feedback on those four different proposals that you had opportunity to review and that is how we came to the fifth iteration presented to the board which is the one you would be voting on this evening i thank you miss rizzi for the opportunity to have provided this additional information tonight and we look forward to conversation and decision making mr dusko thank you so much
143for your work thank you so much for meeting me on the plank twice last week i believe that when someone is willing to step out of a little bit of their comfort zone to meet someone halfway and listen without all the noise you can get some compromise and i appreciate that i appreciate you meeting me i did too twice last week thank you um this is not personal it's not but i know the work you were there all the time so i appreciate that i said it last week i just want to make sure you know that um that your work that you put into this is very much appreciated because not everybody can do it so i just want you to know that so i thank you for meeting with me uninterrupted time twice
144to discuss this and also listening to my suggestions because you don't have to take them but i appreciate you listening to them so thank you so very much for that miss gibson yeah just also real quick thank you for your words um and i do also just really want to though thank the committee um i was there as a support but it was really luke hostetter um and aaron brown and and the tremendous work of the 15 committee mentors that dug in so but thank you absolutely and and i need you to take the love okay thank you don't give it to somebody i absolutely appreciate them but i also have seen because i'm also in this business the stress that it has placed on you and that's real and so you need to take
145care of yourself regardless of what's going on let the noise go okay miss gibson thank you madam chair um i want to thank all the the teachers and staff members at river city and all the schools benford that came today um you know i know you all other stuff you'd rather be doing and um you know you have every right to be angry and you know i'm i share that frustration um there was a service that a sermon that i was at where the minister talked about us being in the middle of a story um and and said it was our job to to trace the thread um and and we're definitely in the middle of the story now this story you know goes back to a landscape of segregated schools so we have very
146small schools because there had to be a white one and a black one across the city the thread continues to folks leaving white flight middle class flight and and then ever since this ongoing mantra of empty seats we've been told about the empty seats in the city um the thread continues in 2015 when elkhart was closed due to mold there used to be two schools uh elkhart and thompson and uh they decided at the time first temporarily they moved those kids to to clark springs and then they combined the communities at the elkhart thompson building and you know that mantra of too many seats was was you know fresh in everyone's mind and so rather than consider uh explore renovating um you know the decision was made to just combine those two schools there was
147no committee that deliberated it just happened and it happened around the same time that the board then was developing a facilities plan um it was called if you go back that far it was like what was it option five um and and that plan uh essentially would have closed consolidated a third of our schools um so a third of our school buildings would have been closed and by the available to demand more information because this is a population of students that you know as we remember back has been bumped from building to building for a very long time now and so for exactly that reason we can't make these decisions hastily and the board and the public has right to get more information this school year um with new school zones an overhauled bell schedule
148every parent including myself was waiting on bus schedules until 8 o'clock the night before unacceptable and i do not intend to repeat this in the in the south side in 2019 the board voted to create a magnet school at carver elementary it never happened unacceptable so we were right to push for a budget and we're right to push for a transportation plan we're right to push for demographic data because we're talking about equality and i still have no idea what the options what what the demographics will look like with the option on the table this board must be making must make informed decisions the school is not just overcrowded it's also too big it's currently enrolled at 1533 students stated capacity per the architect is 1500 so when parents and teachers walk into the school
149and see the number of students they're seeing a school at capacity but the reality is that the capacity at the capacity this school is too large to be comfortable or safe and we're seeing in real time just how bad large schools are for our students and by extension how unjust it is to regulate regulate all of the city's largest schools to the south side we should follow the recommendations of the 2019 rezoning committee i think folks for continuing to stay engaged that were involved then i believe we should explore a new elementary and middle school in the south side i will be voting yes this evening i have a sworn duty to make informed decisions and be part of the process of shaping the way forward we are in a position where we have repeatedly
150asked for information and we are not getting it we still have not i'm going to vote yes because we're in a situation where we cannot allow for the possibility of overcrowding that would be that would be at play however the school board is going to be challenged to play a more active role moving forward we cannot repeat the past no more closures or consolidations no more shuffling students no more mega schools too many elected officials are willing to engage in expedient short-term thinking moving forward we must tackle important matters with time and deliberation that means getting information early that means presenting recommendations in advance of the need for approval i mean a committee is not designed to to do to pick an option for the board to vote the committee's role is to vet and
151come forward with many options there was a teacher that spoke about only having one option on the table in 2019 and that wasn't fair and accurate then and it's not accurate today um moving forward i want to be clear that this is the expectation for the cameras administration i am a member of our policy committee and i would like the committee to explore policy that would require rezoning for an upcoming school year to be final in the fall the year prior i think we can all agree that deciding on school zones four months before the start of the school year time is unacceptable the governing body this time and i own one sentence and the public has a right to throw data provided in advance with time for deliberation community feedback and discussion before a
152vote full stop thank you miss gibson thank you miss gibson miss dore and then miss um paige miss jones that was miss jones miss paige she was before you okay miss page ms brizzy and them as burke thank you for your patience so you all are gonna have to remember to order now help me okay i'm sorry oh you want me to do that one more time miss door miss paige miss jones miss renzi i thought i saw her and then miss birth yep thank you oh and then this way okay all right um there's been a lot of discussion and debate on social media over the past week and i think we probably have a good idea of how the conversation around this issue will play out tonight so i wanted to address some
153of the conversation head on first you will likely hear from my school board colleagues that they have been mistreated called names or harassed in the past week while these experience or experiences are no doubt hurtful and personally upsetting the unfortunate truth is that ad hominem attacks both online and in the press are an unpleasant part of being an elected official in america today i myself have called all sorts of names and have had my integrity and motives questions aggressive aggressively and publicly in the last week in fact there hasn't been a week in my tenure serving on this board over the last six years where i haven't received some kind of negative and in some cases threatening communication from a community member including people showing up to my house threatening to sue me because of
154votes i have made etc all that said i want to encourage all of us to center the conversation around the decision and not the individual ultimately the name calling stings but the policy impact on kids is what matters and i maintain that the decision made by this board last monday to not rezone river city middle school was ethically wrong you may hear from my school be school board colleagues that with their decision to vote no on river city middle school was not about preserving binford open enrollment seats well like one of the parents tonight i went back and listened to the recording of last week's meeting my numbers are a little different but directionally the same binford was mentioned 24 times in the conversation bouchard which is also impacted by the proposal was mentioned zero
155times furthermore no one brought up the fact that open enrollment seats are going to be taken away from brown at all the reality is that the conversation last monday was completely centered around preserving open enrollment seats that advantage what affluent and white families at binford one of our better resource schools you may hear from my schoolboard colleagues that folks wanted more information before making a decision it is not unreasonable to seek information before making a decision but the timing in this circumstance gives me pause why didn't board members ask for information throughout the five-month proposal development process why didn't they ask for more information between the first and second read of the motion i asked the administration uh who reached out to them in between the first and second read and they told me that
156not a single board member who voted against the river city middle school rezoning last week reached out with questions during the time between the first and second read when you ask for information on the night of the vote it is a self-fulfilling prophecy that you are not going to get the information that you want and therefore have an excuse to vote no why not instead be a partner in working to get all the information needed ahead of the night of the vote so that you can say yes especially on such a time-sensitive and critically important policies sadly into the detriment of our kids it has become more routine for members of this board to use situations like this as ones to set up the administration for failure rather than working together to move forward i
157also find it extremely troubling that my colleagues voted no on river city middle school rezoning based on a supposed lack of information and yet felt comfortable voting in support of schools building schools without prior public notice without a budget and without a working understanding of the process of securing critically needed funding from city council why didn't we needed budget or for that matter of public engagement when we voted for schools building schools that was a billion dollar decision that was voted on the middle of the night without a budget and without a first and second read some members of this board have a history of asking for more details and discussion only what is when it is convenient to stall or provide themselves political cover for a no vote furthermore in re-listening to last week's
158meeting after the river city middle school rezoning motion failed the next in motion introduced by the board majority an attempt to salvage what had just been done read quote by our next board meeting the administration will present the board with a plan and a corresponding budget dot dot dot and a rezoning plan that has fewer students crossing the river fewer students crossing the river of course meaning fewer students newly zoned for benford or brown or put another way fewer newly zoned students taking away those oe spots at spinford later the motion was whittled down to just ask for more information but it is disingenuous in revisionist history to say that the only reason why some board members didn't support the river city middle school rezoning was because of lack of information that no vote was
159in part to preserve oe spots at binford you may hear from some folks that wanted more more than one plan before making a decision again then why not ask for it why not say at any time in the past five months or after the first read in order to get my support i need to see more than one plan in a transportation budget it is also worth noting that there were many potential plans presented to the committee and the process was iterative changing based on feedback feedback even from the first read to the second read no one who voted against the rezoning proposal last week asked for this information or for multiple options to be presented to the school board before last monday night when it was too late for the committee which is notably
160separate from the administration to respond you may hear that the reason that river city middle school is overcrowded is because of rezoning decisions made in 2019 i'm more than happy to unpack the 2019 rezoning process at length but in short in the past week i have talked to committee members and board members who represented the south side and they were many contributing factors that led to overcrowding at river city middle school many folks who were intimately involved in the rezoning process conclude our board routinely under forecast population growth on the south side that is why i was and continue to be deeply concerned about building george with too small to accommodate its projected capacity finally even if we have lessons to learn from the 2019 process and i have no doubt that we do that
161does not negate the fact that the decision made last week to not re-zone river city middle school was wrong and dangerous for kids in short we seem to need more details and discussion and time when it suits our agendas i stand by my vote last week and i hope my colleagues will join me tonight in prioritizing the safety and educational well-being of the kids at river city middle school by voting to ensure that their school is not dangerously overcrowded when school starts next august thank you thank you mr door miss page thank you madam chair a motion to accept the recommendation from the administration for the river city middle school rezoning committee final recommendation for approval second thank you ms jones made a motion to accept the recommendation that was miss peace i'm sorry miss
162pay yeah miss page thank you i'm sorry miss page i had you in my mind to go to speak next i'm sorry ms page made a motion to accept the recommendation did i hear the the current recommendation or the revised or this one or can you i just need some clarity the one that has been presented thank you the um rezoning recommendation that has been presented by the administration ms burke seconded i believe any discussion we have actually started discussion so miss um paige did you have anything after that but the motion can i go to miss frenzy i'm sorry miss jones miss jones thank you thank you i accept your apology i was just going to say yes i made a motion i'll go last miss jones okay i just want i apologize madam
163chad i just thought you ain't seen me down here so um i just wanted to thank all the teachers families and parents that came out tonight to support river city and um i want to just keep this in the moment because we are talking a lot about 2019 i wasn't here in 2019 so um i can't speak to it as you know prolific as um some of my other colleagues but i do want to talk about governance right we mentioned governance but we and i'm going to bring this back up stated that we were going to form a committee um based on a recommendation from the enrollment equity commission and we did not do that had we done that we would probably not be sitting here today because that incorporated specialty schools open enrollment seats
164et cetera et cetera so i want to um implore us to get back to doing what we say we are going to do say what we mean mean what we say um and if we um were aware of overcrowding um all of us as a board why did i personally feel like i had to bring it to the administration and i want to note that getting remind texts which we all do is not advocating for overcrowding that is just a notice to let us know that we are receiving it advocating is when we come to put action to it clean data we gave data we worked for five months and we formulated a proposal that was submitted on behalf of the committee the goal was to get to 75 and we did that that's the
165clean data we also excuses there were no excuses what we just asked or what i'm gonna say i ask for is consistency i want us to keep the same energy that we do when other things come before us when we voted for collective bargaining i don't recall seeing a bunch of different proposals and yes we asked for more information you formulated a committee you came back with the recommendations we approved it so when we mention needing more information i'm okay with that you should ask away we all do that but again we have had several opportunities to participate in this process we had opportunities no one never called myself or miss page if we are working together collaboratively but yet everyone went to everyone outside of the process so how are we working together as
166a board when you had two board members sitting on the committee and neither one of us never received a phone call regarding any questions to how do we move forward and why would we have gotten a phone call because we presented a proposal on april the 11th and it was crickets so i remain uh on that lastly if we are truly working together we just need to continue to be fully um transparent on this narrative right that i want the public and the community to understand this is not a response because we didn't get what we wanted this was a response because we are inconsistent and then we are held to a different standard when other things are brought before this board so i'm fine with asking for a budget i'm fine asking how many
167teachers transportations because you can best believe i'm gonna be asking them same questions and i'm gonna be making sure that my kids get to the bus where they need to be so this is not a plan where we're negating the questions that are being asked but because we don't talk we make assumptions so um and i'm hoping that tonight we all you know are clear on where we are relative to this proposal and we can move forward if there are other things that need to be asked or questions concerns i'm happy to share if not maybe my voice don't matter in this but i would like to like it to be known that we just need to remain consistent when voting and when we're saying that we're going to do one thing because we have
168a history of saying one thing i want to stand on say what we mean and mean what we say thank you thank you miss jones i believe miss renzi is next uh thank you madam chair thank you parents teachers um stakeholders at river city and benford for being here um as someone who has spent my life working for social justice it pains me a great deal to think that you would think that i would in any way support a policy or move that would hurt marginalized students i have to tell the truth about this and so you know if there is some exposure please forgive me i got a call you know i was totally set to support this and i got a call from someone at benvert who was really concerned about the fact
169that as is that school could accommodate no more than 450 students and we're talking about adding 140 to the population that exists there now i was all set to support this until i got that call i then know that this person had talks with administration and facilities and there were some spots or some information that was supposed to be presented at the last meeting that we had that didn't make it to the presentation you need to know that i'm not going to send our babies from river city over to benford for them to have to sit in a hallway or to accommodate sit in a classroom that's not modified to accommodate them you need to know that i am not going to vote to send our kids to benford without some kind of mention of
170how they're going to be transported there especially since in our discussions with george with there was such a you know uh an outrage about transporting young people across the river so yeah it's my first time on the board i wanted to make sure that i had that information before i made this decision and i was true to what i told that person who called me from benford concerned i never once said i did not support rezoning but what i don't support is doing this without having accommodations for the kids and that that was not presented to us a budget was not presented to us it was presented to us for fox so i wasn't going to vote to just throw our babies over there with no plan and if you think that in some way
171i was discriminating against your babies i can only promise you that it was further from the truth or furthest from the truth so now we have our plan now i know how these kids now we know how these kids are going to be accommodated and we are assured that there's a budget i see no problem now but i did when i knew that those slides had been admitted last omit it last week i think that's probably all i can say you know i will say you know my family my son we're all um we were impacted our lives were impacted by mr rick's the coach and custodian who just passed away a couple of days ago and i think he'd be proud of me sitting here too thank you miss wednesday miss burke thank you
172madam chair my heart is heavy but first i want to thank the faculty and staff the administration the parents the supporters throughout the city of richmond that we're here to speak this evening on behalf of the children that are being served at river city having worked in a school at clark springs in fact with 35 or 40 4th graders years ago when i first got started was quite a challenge but we made it through relationship building we made it having first going to shimarazo elementary school which was about 300 over that was i understand the lines of the bathrooms and all the rest but it bothers me greatly and it also makes me reflect upon yes i am a product of the 60s and the 70s of massive resistance it takes me back how rather
173than decisions being made at the given time there was always a what if or what are we going to do if this happens nothing beats a failure but a try and if we continue to go back and forth this isn't going to work that isn't going to work miss jones thank you so very much you're correct i think miss dewey said it also when it was time to build schools yes i'm a part of the team of 2019. i stood in front of george with the current george with school and thought by now the ground would have been turning no discussion no budget just a resolution it was voted on yes a parent said tonight in regards to when elkhart was torn down demolished and the students were moved to um thompson there was discussion
174about building another school at the old thompson site but schools build schools we have to wait on that if ever it's also conversation about building another school in south side what my thought is as stated tonight by one of the parents benford benefit benefit benford benford oh i thought lucille brown had open enrollment too so something's wrong with that picture and i know what it is and many of you do as well so i am a supporter of mrs page's motion how long this is too long at the end of the day as we move forward they're going to be problems and all we can do is fix it and move forward but i would like to compliment armstrong high school's administration and the bus drivers and the persons that are in place because those
175buses are there every day in the morning on time with the hillside court children children from south side and i'm there in the evenings to see them leave as well i've been at river city and i see and can feel it no matter how beautiful it is it's too close it's two-pack this is the year 2022 this is not a destituted island third world country how dare we treat our children that way all i need to know is that we need to make this vote happen tonight and it's unfortunate i'm not taking anything personally i'm not a i i i me me me person it's about the children hashtag every child i'm not important here it's about the children and any decision i make i make it the same as i would for my own
176children and i'm not standing for i will continue to stand strong continue to speak forward because at the end of the day we're talking about folk children doesn't matter your zip code every parent sends his or her school child to school to be successful not to contemplate and go back and research and then come back at the end shame on us thank you miss burke mr young miss white miss page would you still like to speak the miss page and then i will close it out thank you for your patience thank you madam chair and if it's your pleasure if you would consider indulging me relevant to citing a few statistics said statistics pertain to vacancy and or vacant seats open seats who saw 430 430 vacant seats at bouchard benford 255 255 vacancy lucille
177brown 195. vacant seats albert hill 370 open seats or vacant seats martin luther king vacant seats and last but certainly not least tenderson 566 vacant seats madam chair if you tabulate the preceding that's the equivalent of 2178 seats across our middle school portfolio madam chair my point is to say that it would be illogical for the school board of the city of richmond to not provide redress to river city to re-zone and make zero sense to have one school at capacity when we have other schools some schools literally underwater relevant to occupancy i.e less than 50 percent it would be illogical madam chair it would be equally illogical for this administration to pretend as though the only opportunity to rezone and or said differently rezoning is contingent on cutting 270 open enrollment seeds and why
178does it matter matters because every one of our 20 000 some students are individuals and should be treated like individuals four mentioned lucille brown is in the fourth district couldn't be prouder of lucille brown and it pains me that our international baccalaureate program our one ib school for middle will no longer be able to benefit from students from from north side unsure how that makes any sense to decimate open enrollment and provide my point is to provide all of our families yes irrespective of zip code and or address an opportunity to attend a school that provides a kind of programming that all 20 000 of our students merit and demand my point is to say that 2019 we did have a conversation pertinent to rezoning and it was a colossal failure yours truly then introduced
179big bold at least what i call a big bold transformative plan what i characterized as a gold standard pertinent to equity an open enrollment proposal that was not absent its minuses its deficiencies there are no public policy decisions absent trade-offs but my point is to say should we rezone for river city yes should we resign now of course it would be illogical to do anything but to rezone it would be but it would be equally illogical to pretend as the administration has that rezoning is contingent on cutting 270 open enrollment seats when we have 2178 vacant seats across the district so madam chair if it's your pleasure i would propose and i'm glad to support ms page's motion with the addition of an amendment that i would hear and propose and specifically that the school
180board of the city of richmond would add back 270 open enrollment seats across our middle school portfolio madam chair that is mimosa thank you miss page i'm gonna come back to you for a second to see if you're open to that friendly amendment no thank you thank you mr young she's not open i'm not sure if it was friendly madam chair but not nonetheless introduce it i'm i'm just trying to maintain decency in order she has responded no to your amendment um friendly or not and so um madame madam attorney you can correct me if i'm wrong in this because she's not open to your amendment we're back at the original motion hold on i don't know madam chair i think he um absent a second yes we do need a second i'm sorry that's
181what i was going to say thank you sorry about that having some difficulty the amendment would need to be seconded to be in discussion phase and then if it's approved it would be amended if it fails it would be back to the original motion thank you so for for procedural purposes for those who are streaming we need a second to that amendment that mr young made if we do not receive a second then the amendment will fail we are back procedurally and according to robert rule's order back at the original motion which was made by mrs page hearing no second the amendment fails so we're back at and i think i gave it enough time um we're back at the original motion um and so now mr young thank you for that um miss white
182thank you madam chair i guess i can claim my time back there thank you uh miss haddasca i'd like to thank you for coming back with clear discussion and data menu did have a conversation the next day after the meeting and i can see the difference here but my question is because due to the disinformation and the promoting of racial entertainment in the public eye i heard 40 was going to actually transfer to the school i'd like for you to clarify this number of students that will be transferred that we discussed i think the 140 got mixed up somewhere with the 40. and i also would like for you to clarify that if once a student is zoned to whatever school they are zoned to benford lucille that would be their zoned school they cannot
183come back or their parents and say we need to switch a child for whatever reason it is yes thank you um as well for taking the time to speak with me um last week so there are a lot of numbers that are are going around and i recognize um that that may cause confusion and i apologize so i'll clarify i think we're just talking about the benford numbers okay so i'll start with the um students that would move from section three so from river city um to to benford there would be 61 sixth graders 38 7th graders and 43 8th graders that's about 140 students there are currently rising 7th graders so those are the 6th graders that will rise to 7th that's a combination of both open enrollment and zoned kids but the kids
184that are currently there at benford and then there are 141 rising eighth graders so again the combination of uh zoned and open enrollment and then there are 37 rising sixth graders that live in the fan that are zoned to benford this would mean a total projected then new zone enrollment of 441 students and we're recommending 50 open enrollment seats last year binford offered 97 6th grade open enrollment seats so that again is a change of 40. so that's i think 47 that's about where sometimes i think where people are hearing that number 40 as well but that would put the projected total enrollment at 491 for binford binford is currently staffed for 450 students they actually only have an enrollment of 400 students so they could take 50 students with no change to anything and
185so what the accommodations are that we talked about in terms of some of the facilities upgrades would accommodate the additional 41 students that give us the delta between 491 and 450. thank you mr desko and also i think we also talked about what i wanted to see is that the families that weren't notified that i will be um taking this transition to the different schools actually be notified that they will be going into uh one of the schools or across the river because that was a concern with the families in blackwell and hillside because i do actually deal with those families they wanted to know why their housing projects are always split up when it comes to rezoning so that is one of the things the reasons that i had talked to you about ensuring
186that everyone who is going to be rezoned their family knows why they are going to be rezoned but we did have a great conversation and on that note i told you right there that has solved all my uh concerns and you clarify the number and i said tonight because i always i don't break promises but i don't set promises and i don't do favors but i will go for the rezoning and this board needs to know the audience audience needs to know also a board can disagree and agree that's why we are in different districts here and i know i am the second district and i hear a lot about fox for some reason but fox is a diverse school we have 150 caucasian students and we have 150 some minority black students so when
187i hear that i'm trying to figure out where we're going with this because i'm saying i'm not about race i'm about human race and what i can do to make a change in rps thank you miss page do you have anything thank you certainly first i would like to thank the community the staff and all the principals who came out tonight to express their support for us to do the right thing because i know you go above and beyond each and every day to work with our children and thank you i just want to digress a little so we talk about the rezoning in 2019 we knew then that there were going to be problems when the doors opened at river city middle school that's why the discussion was to build another middle school on
188the thompson land and another elementary school on the rough and road site but the majority of the board had another plan school build schools so went in another direction but we were adamant that the rezoning for rivers city river city middle school needed to happen this is not the first time we've had this conversation so when thompson was demolished because i'm sorry elkhart when they were demolished because of the mold asbestos and the students that elkhart move moved into the thompson building and it became a new school of record elkhart thompson and all of this happened we have heard from some so many sources city council other um census data about the south side the rapid growth the census being under counted counted so we don't have accurate numbers but we know for certain that
189there is growth in the south side without a doubt unfortunately right now we need to rectify the problem because the decisions that we have made have will be if we don't correct this decision it will be to the detriment of our children at river city and we know the students of river city come from the 8th 9th district 6th district the fifth district is the time is to rectify it now in 2022 because this is not the 1950s you know and we talk about supporting or doing things for the affluent families in the city the black brown the underserved we mattered to one minute so again we must rectify it and we must do it tonight and yes i agree that we need to rezoning this is not the end of it because if we
190don't address the growth in the south side we'll be back at the table again same thing with george with and i'm really i'm really tired of this because when we talk about open enrollment there are many parents in the eighth district that want to take advantage of open enrollment but you know what transportation is a barrier to many of our families that want to take advantage of open enrollment so i'm not going to belabor the time we need to rectify it tonight and do right by all children thank you thank you miss page ladies excuse me turn myself off ladies and gentlemen thank you so much again for being here i started um this discussion by saying that i want to um clarify something and and please go back and pull the resolution the school
191building schools resolution that five board members supported and voted on and passed has nothing to do with the 2019 rezoning you can't take one entity because majority of individuals are not on the same page or may appear through observation that they're not collaboratively working and then try to attach it to something else that is emotionally driven you can't take an apple and compare it to a orange so i encourage you to go back and pour that we that was not a discussion it has nothing to do with 29.99 with the 2019 rezoning the process of expulsion and the lack of assignments and waiting on a panel hearing for two weeks that's what king started that's what he stated in his speech why am i saying that because our number one job is the next thing
192that's on our agenda student achievement and how we govern not how we make friendships not how we make political ties not how we sit together and play well in the sandbox governance drives student achievement the nea has researched that the association of superintendents has researched that the association of elementary middle and high school principals have discussed that over the years governance directs student achievement and i wanted to share that at no time particularly for me and i asked for other school board members if i could speak on their behalf and they said yes because i didn't want the back and forth the back and forth is not healthy at all this is absent of children it's not healthy for adults to continue the back and forth that's just where i am that's how i was
193raised you don't have to be best of friends you don't have to go out to have coffee and all of that but the governance in this space needs to happen in decency and order and at no time that any of us and i'm included in that us because i voted no last week intentionally went against a principles or committee we did not say that we did not care about you so to hear some of those comments from some division leaders it concerned me but shonda did not respond because that's not who shonda is in addition to that it is our elected duty to ask questions and i and i just um i will say i i just assumed that some things were going to be brought to the table because i have served on a
194rezoning committee before but that it's in my era i should have asked and i'm willing to state that but yet again as one of the school board members have stated several times we have asked for information and is not presented to us that's a governance issue people in the public don't need to have to do not ever should have to deal with our governance that's us that's the 10 of us and we need to stop as a governance team directly or indirectly making the public have to pick up the pieces and deal with that we have to govern better because it impacts student achievement so now that i've said all that and we've heard from my school board colleagues i believe that we are we we are ready to i'm closing the question and the
195discussion ma'am chair yes ma'am my hand has been for a while may i speak i'm sorry um let me finish miss burke thank you we are ready to move forward to vote on the motion that was made by miss page and i believe it was seconded um and then we will move forward to the next agenda item that moves the district ms burke thank you so very much madam chair for the record as stated when the schools build school was brought up by me and a couple other persons but i can only speak for cheryl burke it wasn't in reference to the 2019 decision it was in reference to the as we speak of governance the inconsistency of this board making decisions some with discussion some with details in place and some not so the
196purpose in my stating that we put in place a couple of items that did not have all the research or the opportunity to decipher information and move forward so on my part i'm not connected with the 29 2019 piece my piece was to make it clear that we are inconsistency as the board when we speak of governance thank you thank you thank you duly noted we're ready for roll call vote madam clerk thank ladies and gentlemen who are streaming thank you for your patience and you all as well thank you who are here with us madam clerk mr yes miss white yes miss gibson yes mr young no we we're not we're not doing that good madam clark mrs rizzi yes dr harris mohammed yes miss burke yes miss page yes miss jones yes motion
197passes thank you school board colleagues thank you all very much for um being with us this evening and again i know some of you are transitioning out happy teacher appreciation week and you're more than welcome to stay stay with us through the duration of our school board meeting next item on the agenda i believe is um academic presentation 4.01 mr cameras thank you madam chair and i am going to ask dr harrison to come on up and share the presentation good evening good evening good evening um board chair uh harris mohamed and vice chair gibson superintendent cameras and other board members thank you for allowing us this time this evening again to dr harris mohammed's point of you know really talking about the thing that we're all fighting for today is student achievement when you
198look at our goal 3 academics update it speaks to our high school data we had a chance to show you our early intervention data a few weeks ago and then last week our third through eighth grade data and tonight high school is on day what you all have had a chance to see if you're looking at the first slide you're just looking at the pass rates for the overall reporting categories you'll see it broken down by grade level you'll also see it broken down by reporting categories so what you see here very clearly shows that we still have work to do when it comes to our english learners and our students with disabilities the thing that i can say that i'm very confident about is we have the right team in place it has taken
199us a few years to build that but i feel really good about the things that that team has put together to support our teachers in what it looks like for a student that is in a non-traditional uh space in a classroom our english learners may need a different level of support and our team led by our coordinator dr dewhart has really worked to number one get the right teachers the right number of teachers here by making sure our english learners are counted properly and with that then we have worked to work with our cni department with dr autumn neighbors so that that team is working with our english uh excuse me our literacy specialist ebony massey and the leap team are working together to make sure that there are resources available um i would say
200the same of uh renisha parks who is our exceptional ed director who also works very close closely with our cni team so what you're seeing there is is there's just much more behind that story um coming off of a pandemic we knew there were some things that would look different uh so just want to orient you a little bit to what you see there um when you look at the winner end of course data um you'll notice that it include it it includes students from the first semester and term retesters what are term retesters those are students that may have taken the course last year and did not pass but they're allowed to take it again you know if they so desire we know that um the numbers that you see now are just raw
201numbers when the state sends those numbers back you'll notice that those numbers may be a bit higher because our term retesters do not count against us certainly they don't count against us for accreditation and graduation numbers but we want to make sure we are putting the right things in place no matter where students are being counted we are giving them the right things so they can be successful because that is our standard here in virginia i would also say that thinking about what is required um of course the sols are required uh several to be given several times through throughout the school year you'll notice that um all students don't necessarily take that end of course um tests when they're in the class so in the fall you may see a little less of a
202a pass rate than you would um necessarily in the spring where students you know have had a chance to take the class to fall sometimes shows students that may have taken it in the summer or the previous year so all of those are things that should be considered uh finally how are we well how are things different from previous years again we know that we've had um quite a bit of an impact from us being home during the pandemic uh for you know schools have to do things a little differently and one of the things that we do know is that the state recognized that and they gave us quite a few waivers over the last few years well those waivers are not necessarily in play in this moment so we're getting you know our
203legs under us and getting back to business as usual um or business i would say business that's better because i will say our high school principals have really embraced their charge we have a secondary pathways team led by laura faulken who has worked to put other resources in place but i will say that our high school teams have also picked up the mantle and they are offering more opportunities for enrichment and more opportunities for intervention more opportunities for students to have one-to-one tutoring and so i do know that those things all have an impact on our students passing um these assessments so without actually reading all the numbers to you because i know we sent this ahead of time i do want to give a chance for board members to ask any questions that you
204may have at this point mr young made me aware he had a question and then miss white sure and then i'll go and then we'll close it out thank you oh no thank you thank you thank you man i'm sure tyra thank you and i'm not sure how to ask this question but can you can you talk to me about george with in reviewing all the data this weekend sure there's one school that is the outlier um and it pains me that it is absolutely speak to what we are doing to recognize that room isn't burning room is burned i would absolutely agree on a few points there has been a fire at with for quite some time and i will tell you that this administration has been keenly aware of that and we have
205pushed every resource that we know how to that school so much so our actually one of the best people on our um leap team uh jennifer blackwell is exceptional when it comes to what needs to happen for our english learners so we really had to make a hard choice this year to think about who can we put in that space to support a very young team of counselors who can we put in that space to support teachers who are really trying to find their way to serve our english learners because we know that's a high population jennifer had already been very very deep in the work doing a lot of listening sessions doing a lot of sessions and not just with teachers with students she started with students to say hey how do you feel
206walking into this building what do you need and so having her there every day i know again the right people are on the ground riddick parker the principal that's over there very thoughtful very capable and i know given the time and opportunity things are going to look very different for width so when i think about what we're doing job one was number one getting the requisite amount of support for english learners through our teachers we have our newcomer academy as well we also have added more support for our outreach i know dr harris leads our engagement team but we took it a step further and we hired someone this year who is working specifically for parents around the challenges that we have with graduation last year we made quite an investment which had paid off
207we saw that in our grad rates where students were getting one-to-one support also on one-to-one support for families there was a place for um people to pick up the phone and read someone who spoke in their language so a lot of things that have happened for with are things that where we really are still trying to build a model that really speaks to um working out the the the kinks that are just in the way due to language barriers it is not for a lack of trying i have had the great fortune of you know talking to and seeing students who if just given an opportunity they're going to show up and do their very best when i look at the numbers of our students in the newcomer academy and the rate at which they
208are you know really closing the gap on how far behind they were coming into the country again it really is us providing opportunities and on-ramps for kids to access so i do know that there's a lot that has been poured into that school and i'm confident in the team that's there but as we all know is the tyranny of the now it's all the things that are coming at us and so i continue to ask for time time for our administration time for mr parker new principal time for you know again our teachers and someone like jennifer blackwell who didn't get there overnight and i know she won't be able to change it overnight but there's no one i have more confidence in to do it than jennifer thank you miss white thank you madam
209chair and thank you miss harrison for this uh presentation but i do have several questions yes ma'am um on the categories each category i was looking at these uh slides for reading science history and writing for the ells how did all them become the raw date of nine percent every last category for ell is nine percent right i suspect it would be you know it's the same students that are at the same level um you know our english learners are they take an assessment um when they first come into the division um that tells what level um they're at when it comes to their language acquisition so the students that are being assessed here if i had to hazard a guest i would say it's probably the same group if they're having a challenge with
210um language then we know that that's the literacy barrier not quite as cut and dry as math with math which is a universal language and my next question is i'm looking at reading by schools and the alternative school is just as high as any of the other schools what are they doing different that has this their their uh percentage up that high from the traditional high school uh one of the things that i would say on with our alternative school is we know number one it looks different um and i will say mr trotter who i believe was in the audience earlier mr trotter certainly provides a different level of support and opportunities for his students and i would also say the number of students is much smaller at that school and so i think
211all of those would play a factor but i can get um again raw numbers and counts so you can see i'm in detail what that looks like and my last question is i'm concerned about the writing by schools absolutely um i know our children have switched over to chromebooks and they do less writing i'm even concerned with my own children because i make them right so this is a concern that i'm seeing these low percentage except for maybe two schools open high enrichment community 100 but as you look at it how are we going to get our children to do more writing we have middle school sols and we have high schools sols and somewhere they have to build on these writing skills so because writing and reading goes together so i just would like
212to know what is the resolution on the writing absolutely um thank you and writing is a life skill our students learn a lot in school and we know writing is the thing that will take them throughout life i will say that um that's one thing i've been very impressed by with the el curriculum because it does provide instructional support for our teachers to go into a level of depth with writing that we haven't had before but we know it takes time for teachers to get up to speed on what does that look like our high school right now there's a strategy that they are working i know our students are taking work keys but with parameters around that assessment because the goal is not for them to just pass a test we want to make
213sure students actually have the requisite skill set and so they're kind of two lanes working we don't want to hold kids back in high school so we knew we need needed to create a path but to me the path is making sure we're really digging in on um what that curriculum provides us and so i will say dr neighbors and her team um they really really took those writing scores and what has come back to heart they know they have you know they're looking up a mountain but again i say we have the right folks in place because that crew truly understands the assignment and and what's in front of us thank you thank you thank you miss renzi thank you madam chair and thank you for the presentation yes ma'am um i you know
214have a similar concern about writing um and then also more specific questions about the ell population you know i know mr blackwell and uh mr black moments miss blackwell and mr parker um they're really great administrators absolutely um their hands are really full um i am looking at you know nine percent of ell's passing most of these um you know skill areas means 91 of them are failing right absolutely and so is that right that's correct um and so i'm wondering what specifically is being done i don't know if we could get a separate presentation you know outlining because this seems to be pretty much you know it's a crisis in a lot of ways right um could we and you know if you look at the math scores i mean they're doing 25 math
215which isn't great but i mean it's better than nine so what we're dealing with are kids who know who can read you know in their own language who have the intellectual ability there is a language barrier that they need to get past and i've met many highly intelligent students um who are kind of trapped in that situation and so it's you know it's frustrating for me to see this because i know it is not representative of what our students are absolutely and so i'm looking to see if you could give us some idea of like what you're doing to try and support those students sure um thank you so much miss brizzy for asking for that i would absolutely love for our team to be able to give you more information on what that looks
216like because we have made quite an investment in what we're doing for english learners last summer our leap team and our team from the cni department actually spent the summer working with teachers to provide scaffolds prior to the year starting to say hey if you are teaching this in el let me show you number one where to find the english the supports for english learners and students with disabilities but also like now how do we help you to actually do those things and so one of the things that we are actually doing in this moment is we're i'm doing those instructional support sessions um where teachers are invited to come and actually see how to do it versus you know just seeing it in a book or you know seeing someone talk about it we
217made quite an investment um in elevation strategies which every teacher has access to if you're trying to teach a concept such as i don't know main idea you're able to go on to that platform and see an actual teacher doing that strategy and what does that look like in practice because our team was so small we had to find a way so teachers could always put their hand on support and so that's one small thing dr dewhart again has led that team incredibly strong she has done a series of sessions with principals in schools with high english high english learner population so we're hearing directly from principals i need this this and this versus us showing up with this is what we have so um i would love to you know really give you some
218in-depth um information on what that looks like but i will tell you our years one two and three were really focused on uh meeting the things that we had to address from that corrective action plan um from d.o.e when we first got here we have made incredible headway on that and so i know we'll keep going but this is the first year where the focus is solely on the academic piece and not just figuring out how do we make sure every student is being served because we've taken care of that piece now we're looking to think about well what does that being served look like so yes we will follow up on that thank you so much thank you yes ma'am thank you miss page and then and if there aren't any more questions i
219have a couple of things that i would like for us to get through tonight sure before we move on thank you okay thank you so just to piggyback on some of the questions that um miss risley had the strategies so i want to see the strategies or the supports are in place for our black and brown population student with disabilities and i'm i'm looking at the disparity in the numbers and i don't want to keep using covet as an excuse but the reality it has had definitely an impact on our children all of our children but i want to see what strategies services and support that we're going to grow these percentages for every child i don't like seeing this disparity and heard someone said that these scores are not indicative of what our children
220can do and will do but we gotta think outside the box absolutely because i want to see 75 or more in all categories so madam chair that's information that um you can provide to the board you know exactly the strategies the supports and when is the check-in to see the strategies that you're using [Music] is making a difference with that student you're requesting strategies and supports from the administration right yes for um we're going to go go three go through yes for these um like the writing the history the science for all the um concepts yesterday in the end of the course writing sol i mean because i see the sols as a cumulative exam which you've learned all year but we know there is a gap with our kids being out of school and
221now in school and making that transition it's definitely and it's not just richmond it's everywhere but right now richmond yes ma'am what is what matters yes ma'am and i will tell you that we are minding that gap we are standing in that gap on one of the things um uh again i'm super proud of we have and she i know she'll blush and she will never accept it but renisha parks i will tell anybody is the best exceptional ed director in this state what she has done to provide supports for our students is nothing short of amazing um us being under corrective action plan for five years i believe and in just under 18 months she was able to come in and build a team and you know that is no more um i would
222say dr dewhart is not close uh not that far behind her and so i know a lot is being done and again i would love to be able to show that to you uh john grove who is sitting here one of the things that we've done for the better part of three years every data set that we put together there is a place on there where we can filter it where we're always looking at our students with disabilities and our english learners and our chronically absent and our student our economically disadvantaged so that we're having real conversations around students with they're not complete obstacles but there are challenges that we must solve for and i will tell you our division team they are keenly aware of it but now our principals are also aware because
223they have the data in hand and the data sessions that we're having their plans that they're making are solving for those acute things that you mentioned so i'm just ecstatic about where we are certainly those are not numbers that we are going to celebrate in this moment but one thing i will celebrate is coming out of the pandemic um again renisha and team were highlighted because immediately they did the one-to-one tutoring for our students with disabilities and when we looked at the growth for students with disabilities in our gen ed students our students with disabilities actually outperform our english learners were actually had more growth so i do know that there are things that are happening that's going to take them a little while to catch up because that's just the nature of the work
224but i do want to be able to show you that progress as we move along because there are people on the ground that are really and truly uh doing what we said we would do for kids so thank you for that opportunity thank you and speaking of opportunities in requesting strategies and supports by board member page i would also like to request a very simple request that has been to my understanding requested for some time we currently have a covet dashboard that um our administration does a good job on updating the information on the covet dashboard this is more so for mr cameras because we don't as board members task employees but the ones that report to us tasks to complete mr cameras i would like to see that we create as a division a
225educational dashboard that completes that excuse me that includes the information right out of ssws excluding the student identifiers now i had a assistant principal reach out to me this morning and she indicated that they do not as building administrators have access to the educational dashboard that is currently updated by your i'm assuming i'm safely assuming and professionally assuming your department sure so what i am asking mister cameras is that that that educational dashboard includes detailed information except the student identifiers to include our enrollment our adm our sol data all the information that ssws has so with that we're not creating anything new because in order to determine where we are the progress we already have is in-house so i would like to see that educational dashboard on our website for two reasons for well our
226building administrators um must have access to all data and i do understand that data from central office and data in the building may differ a few points right because sometimes you all don't get updated um numerators when the building has submitted their data and they have gone back and retested students right so that doesn't help you because they don't send it sometimes in a timely manner i recognize that second a public needs an accessible place instead of going to the doe website that can consistently change every spring where to find that data they should not have to go through multiple steps or a four-year request to receive and obtain information that we can already be transparent and given and excuse me in providing so i'm coming with that request mr cameron's that we have a
227educational dashboard that includes those data points for i first have administrators have access to it however and if they were having access to it then that's not what i was told secondly for our public to view without those identifiers and i think i you all know what i mean yeah by those identifiers thank you madam chair may i briefly yes i do want to note that the state's data for every school is directly available on each school's website so that is all they're very easily accessible we also have a number of dashboards [Music] that are most definitely not only available but used on a daily basis by our school leaders so i would welcome the opportunity we've shared some of them but happy to share more and if that administrator who reached out to you
228is i would welcome an opportunity to talk with them to understand what it is they're referencing because i personally sit down with the team and review the data in those dashboards on a weekly basis so i did want to just make sure that was clear for the public thank you mr cameron for providing that clarification as i stated earlier i don't know that's what was shared with me however i want to focus on the number one task which was the number two as public accessibility and so if we have the covet dashboard i would also like to see the educational dashboard because here's the thing we just put it in another place it's not that difficult for real for real it's not it's just somebody being tasked to get it done so i would like
229to see that done thank you sure okay and um just to speak to um superintendent cameron's uh charge about the dashboard all of our administrators should have access to that and if for some reason they don't you know who whoever that person is uh john grove is our person literally he can do it like that um and so yep that is john grove you know so that's why it's good for you all to be here because we as board members don't know all of you okay so i heard the name but i didn't know who john grove was it's this and now it's like where is waldo here he is so i appreciate that um thank you thank you so very much i look forward to having that educational dashboard i i don't want to
230have to put that into motion because i do feel as though when the um covert dashboard was requested that was not a motion i think we can work together as a governance team with the superintendent to make sure that those things are up there sure um and so i look forward to that i know it's not going to happen this week and i'm not asking for that because we are in the middle of sols for the public to know or schools are moving into sols but um before the end of june because we're coming out with some new state data sure after fourth of july we need to see that up and running and thank you for being here with your team because this is the section that drives student achievement and we need to
231spend more time on this instead of stuff that doesn't really matter so thank you very much doc appreciate that all right thank you madam any other questions awesome thank you all right thank you thank you to our academic team as well thank you absolutely all right next item on our agenda is personnel actions miss lee good evening the talent office brings forth the following personnel actions for your consideration tonight the nomination of one employee the change of contract of six employees and the resignation of four employees thank you board members do we have any questions about the person personnel agenda miss white i'd like to have a close yes ma'am we were going into close for legal yes ma'am thank you miss lee i'm good but we're you know coming to close for a few
232minutes and then yep thank you so much next item on the agenda schoolboy colleagues is do we have any on board travel or district activities madam clerk yes ma'am we do okay we have a district activity request from ms rizzi in the amount of 250 dollars for swansboro elementary school arts supplies we also have district activity requests from ms jones three hundred dollars for teacher appreciation lunches at each of the ninth district schools jail francis cardinal miles jones red reed and river city and lastly we have district activity requests from ms burke in the amount of 240 for each of the seventh district schools for end of year celebrations including armstrong high franklin military bellevue elementary chimborazo elementary marsh elementary fairfield elementary and woodville elementary thank you we've heard the request from my school board
233colleagues for their district activities to support their schools and activities do i have a motion i move that we accept the district activity funds as presented thank you do we have a second second thank you miss white it was properly moved and seconded to accept the district activity request madam clerk do we have any discussion madam clerk roll call vote please mr yes miss white yes ms gibson [Music] yes mr young [Music] abstain mr rizzi yes dr harris muhammad yes miss burke yes miss page yes miss jones yes motion passes thank you madam clerk thank you school board colleagues next on our agenda remember we moved up the river city um school rezoning um head start grant is anyone here to present that oh thank you doc dr harris mohammed i have to say you're
234putting a lot of pressure on me calling me doc not quite yet not quite yet i put it into an existence i speak it thank you thank you so much i apologize no worries at all okay as far as our um head start grant i know this is our um second read christy d'souza who is our lead for all things early childhood is not with us this evening so i'll be presenting on her behalf and so again in 2018 rps was awarded a five-year grant for head start and that grant was to serve approximately 850 students um which is about 9 400 um per student which um adds up to about uh 8 million dollars and so with that eight million i know it seems like a lot but quite a bit of that is
235going into personnel um when you look at all of the places that we serve with our head start team uh you let me give you just a little bit of the numbers um as to who we're serving in this moment um so right now there are 56 slots for uh richmond children ages six weeks to two and a half years and they're served through child care partnerships there are 714 slots for children ages three to four and then there are 315 slots with students that are served in preschools 395 are in child care centers finally we have 136 students that are in petersburg 17 in powhatan and 17 in goochland the program serves uh it's a regional uh program and so that eight million dollars is slated to serve all of those different uh program
236needs so uh one of the things that christie included was a budget narrative just that kind of tells you how we got here again i won't read that entire thing because i know you all had questions about the actual summary and so i want to open the floor for those since this is the second read um and i'll do my best to you know convey you know her thought process yes ma'am any questions on the information that has been presided and provided thus far miss white thank you dr harrison um for presenting this um but i do have a question yes ma'am i don't know if you got the pages available to you yes ma'am i have i have it here in front of me okay this is the grant for the eight million right
237correct yes ma'am have uh this been uh vetted through the policy committee uh i think the policy approved it right if if i'm not mistaken the policy council asked for more time i know it was sent to them and the last um conversation i had with chris which which was actually earlier today um they asked for more time that's why it was delayed but she did send it to them for review oh okay so what is the deadline what is the time the deadline time do not believe that she had given a deadline on that but i can um get that information to you mr cameron's may the sixth what i think the six is in my head but i may be wrong i believe it i'm sorry no it's okay uh may 9th okay
238so monday it's due monday may 9th so they're going to get a sec they're doing their second read now for more time to what the end of this week was they i know they have it in their possession because there were more questions that i know christie and her team were sorting through with them and so um they do the intent is to give them enough time so that they can weigh in with whatever questions and things that they would want you know to have answered before we said yes this is good to go for um approval from us for the board to say we're in agreement with what's here one of the things that christie wanted me to convey is although there may be some things that don't quite um necessarily meet what we
239would do in this moment remember that grant was written five years ago and so they would like to take next year which is almost like a gap year to start to prepare for the next five-year grant so there will be some things shifting but nothing major in this moment so um since they have time we won't be voting on this tonight is that this our procedure and process has been that when we come for a second read now i want to make clear this did not have to be vetted through the policy committee this is a grant not a rps policy um it has been our procedure that we have introduced and walked through the second read and we have voted that evening on the information that was presented for a second read i cannot
240recall right now how many meetings we've done that in but we have done that where we have been presented information for a second read and then we voted i wanted to give i wanted to be transparent and give the facts we've also not have done that because we've had board members had additional questions they wanted some additional feedback the only concern that i have about delaying this is that one if it's not my understanding i requested the superintendent to ask for an extension which he did we received that on the ninth i met with the school board attorney mrs lilia miss thompson on friday to go through the concerns okay wednesday and thursday of last week i believe there were two meetings with the head start policy council that i participated in and with the
241head start individual who was there dr colada i believe and so the information from attorney ms thompson was sent right to them what was sent to the superintendent for him to filter it through where it needed to go and then it was sent to the policy council now to be very honest with board members there was a delay there was some miscommunication between the policy council and the head start leadership team however i believe that because we have what the policy council concerns are right and i am trusting uh and miss lilly can speak to we spend a while remotely talking about is this clean is this good and so the pieces that attorney thompson had to review school board colleagues it are the sections that the head start team cleaned up if you will
242because that was the direction that was the task since then in the moment the policy council fair enough has had their concerns because they weren't received well in in the middle in the interim i think that we can move the application forward while addressing the concerns between the policy council and the head start team because within that is governance yes ma'am within that is a big lack of communication and a lack of communication should not at any point keep this from moving forward and here's the second thing i wanted to say that and then here's the second thing for transparency if we don't pass this tonight which i do have some concerns about i really do um that would mean board colleagues we would have to come back for a special meeting before the 9th
243to to vote on this and pass this and then i need for people to look at the calendar in the head and then give it back to attorney thompson because i'm not going to allow it to go forward you know as chair unless they have their legal review that that's just a clean process then we got to come back as a board so we're we're out of the night we're past may 9th because the school board clerk has to notice every meeting and so i want we have an opportunity to to walk in what we just said tonight trust the process trust the process and i'm gonna lead that because it does start with leaders i think this should go through share our concerns with the superintendent in writing and cc and me and then
244because i sit on the policy council express those concerns and we are having training because a lot of the things as to why this has been kept up now the policy council has valuable concerns and they're valid but governance trust and communication are the three that's tearing the two entities apart i'm not gonna allow that to delay what we need to do as a board so i'm gonna walk in what um i just described to trust the process so yes ms white emma ms jones i'm sorry miss burke thank you madam um chair i'm going back to my question um i'm just i had one question that i um i was reviewing it one page 31. and it's yeah and i heard you said that you're going to i think she may have relayed this
245that it may happen next year for the next five years um but i'm saying that said the program provides transportation to all families is that something that is going to happen within the next five years for preschool in this moment i would like to uh really confer with our team that works in transportation i know we had some challenges at the outset of the year that the team was able to work through i know that is something that we aspire to because we know transportation can be a barrier but before i say yes absolutely with 100 certainty i would like to conspire not conspiring i'd like to talk with our uh our um consult with our uh team in transportation because it does say provide transportation to all families so we you know find that
246i kind of clean that up sure uh miss jones and then ms burke yes thank you madam chad i just had a quick question for clarity are we saying with the proposal that's in front of us um and the budget the two budget summaries that we're okay with moving that even though we don't have a full breakdown we're gonna move that forward and get that information on the back side is that what we're saying what i'm saying is the information that has been provided to move the application forward um we're going to have to trust that mr cameras is going to work with the administration because of timing if we even though this is for the 2022-2023 school year from and i'm going to speak from my experience just for a little bit we've requested
247an extension and if we don't meet this deadline on time they're coming for us yeah to ask why what you know what is going on and that's okay yeah being transparent but i think that um we can stay on top and now and i would like for you all to trust that i'm gonna do my due diligence sitting on the policy council to bridge that gap so we can make sure that the information is provided because really what this is about is communication they one group didn't get the information in time the other group said that you know whatever they the other group said and yinging it but back and forth we can relate to that right and so then the importance of it got lost both are right but we need both to work
248together to make sure we rectify so what i'm asking is if we can right um and then as um i've already shared some things with mr um mr cameras and mr dusko and then work on these pieces because we don't want our most vulnerable the baby babies to be impacted because at any time they can pull that funding so could it be i mean i'm in full support of that and could so can we for our next i guess meeting in june maybe have a follow-up on the agenda absolutely talks about this and talks about the breakdown of what because it's not a lot of clear information okay and i agree with you because i stated that in the meeting if that was the if this was the presentation they were going to present right
249that i and this is one of the things that i said they have been with this board for over a year they should already know how we are right and be prepared for what some of the questions that we may ask i appreciate that trust um we are gonna have training i'm gonna be a part of that training so we can move forward and we won't run into this again thank you thank you miss burke thank you sure thank you madam chair and thank you for the information before us um very chair i'm in agreement of moving forward at this point thinking in terms of since we had an extension and if we continue to wait that means we may lose the grant which means one thousand of our students will not have the opportunity
250to be in head start plus about 200 employees if we don't move forward they will not have a job so i do like the suggestion that was stated early in terms of since this is the end of a five-year period in writing a grant that the next fiscal year we enhance what's in place yes ma'am therefore madam chair i make a i'm making a motion please i move that we accept the head start early head start and head start programs grant application is given second second thank you it was moved and properly second to move the head start grant forward any discussion madam clerk roll call vote please mr yes miss white yes ms gibson yes mr young aye mr rizzi yes dr harris muhammad yes miss burke yes miss page yes miss jones yes
251motion passes now that's governance in action yes ma'am thank you for your work thank you for your work thank you for you pressing this thank you absolutely absolutely mr um okay go ahead thank you madam chair next up we have the exceptional education plan and grant and i would call up dr parks not yet mr cameras good evening madam chair madam vice chair school board members and superintendent cameras my name is renisha parks and i serve as the proud director of the challenging yet rewarding office of exceptional education tonight i am seeking your approval for the approval of the 22-23 annual plan as a reminder the annual plan is submitted yearly to the virginia department of education and it outlines how we will expend the money that is granted to us by the individuals with
252disabilities education improvement act in service of our currently 3 361 students who are students with ieps as well as 504 plans as well as our 93 students who are served by service plans at private schools although the final award has not been solidified we are expected to have level funding last week i know dr harris mohammed you had a question about 619 our preschool information the 619 funds are used exclusively for our early childhood special education programs it's a very small amount however it is used to support one teacher's salary benefits materials and supplies okay yes and then our 611 funds support pre-k through 12 and it is used in much of the same way except we have to set aside 15 because we are a coordinated early intervening school division which means we have
253been identified as being disproportionate for it could be a myriad of six disability categories but for us currently it's other health impairment as well as young men with emotional disabilities and so for that we have to satisfy 940 953.90 again that is not absolute but we are expected to have level funding for this particular area additionally the monies will be used in support of some of our intervention programs that we have we have reading interventions such as language live read 180 the wilson program as well as orton gillingham professional development we have letters which actually teaches the science of reading to teachers our region one autism consortium which supports our intensive support program as well as coaching for teachers and staff for child fine mandates throughout the summer months we also as stated before provide
254services to students who require service plans those are students who have been parentally placed in private schools throughout the city of richmond there are students who have been identified as students with disabilities however the public school division is not responsible for providing a free and appropriate public education for those parents who have determined that private school is the best placement for their children a portion of the funds will also be implemented for our tier 2 and tier 3 programming that support not only academics but also our behavior and social emotional efforts and with that i do ask for the board approval of the 22-23 annual plan thank you we have a request to accept and approve the annual idea grant do i have a motion miss jones miss burke oh do you have questions yes
255ma'am miss jones thank you for your presentation mr parks i have a quick question when you spoke about um the 15 set-aside yes um for um to help reduce the disproportionate representation of african-american do you have any breakdown of that what does that look like what is the plan what how do you how do you um how do you allocate that funding and where does it go and to what does it support so indicator four which is how the set-aside is determined it looks at discipline so hold on a second where's indicator for it's not listed in this particular plan i was trying to give you the origin of it so where the set-aside came from and why we have to set aside those funds for services but happy to discuss the exceptional education indicators
256with you because they do impact everything that we do so for example indicator one is graduation indicator two is drop out indicator three is assessment and so on and so on there's fourteen indicators in which exceptional ed programming is solidified on as far as the state goes and then the state reports on 20 indicators so they have six additional indicators that they report on [Music] so that's not included within this plan but just giving you the origin of it indicator 4 refers to discipline and because richmond city public schools have been identified as disproportionately suspending african-american males who are who have an emotional disability or other health impairment we're required to set aside funds for preventative measures and so three years ago when i came into this position as the interim we looked at academics
257as well as behavior we've been able to work through our rti and other intervening services to really make some gains in the areas of academics however our focus now for this year and the coming years is to develop the mtss model in conjunction with our culture and climate team so that we can really look at improving outcomes for students who require some social and emotional supports i appreciate that but i would like to see some of that demonstrated somewhere i don't know how we could get that but i would love to see that especially for those of us who serve on a disciplined committee we know that sometimes there's a disconnect between um you know the um special education or those with ieps and i would just like to see that kind of mapped out
258a little so that we can have a better understanding as to how that's working can i make a request of you ms jones can you please send that question i want to make sure that i have clarity so that i can give you information that's actually useful to your inquiry rather than just giving you a bunch of rhetoric she's going to send it to the superintendent cc me and then he's going to forward it to your team to you yep so we can capture everything that miss um jones has indicated which is critically important because um [Music] we have missing links to her point not to belabor the point but we have some missing links with our students with disabilities that come before us um as the discipline committee so something is is missing so
259we need to see that i absolutely agree with you dr mh and the mr link is communication and we are finding that out slowly but surely uh all of our teams are going at lightning speed and so we may be working on one set of initiatives and then another committee is working on something else and then it's in times like this where we have to bring together a final product and it's like oh we have it so i think communication is that missing link but happy to give you that information thank you we appreciate that and possibly maybe for the june meeting miss um jones because our main meeting is looking very our next maybe it's looking very heavy yep miss burke did you have a question and then miss renzi i was going to
260make the motion but if mrs rizzo miss rick's comment i'll wait until she's done i'm sorry miss white and miss white also miss white direction and stayed there my i'm sorry thank you miss parks i just had a question with the purchase services do we have the lexus services for our students and the other one is because i see speech set aside for speech and the other one you had mentioned social and emotional services how would that be tied in would you be uh getting more services more um another group of people to help how would that tie in to this we spend an ex an exponential amount of money on contracted services unfortunately when you have therapy such as speech therapy occupational therapy physical therapies those types of providers are very very hard to
261obtain on a consistent basis and what we have to do is reach out to contractors to provide those services and so in essence the contractors come on but they come on for exorbitant rates so anywhere from 69 to 72 an hour so we end up spending millions of dollars because unfortunately the law doesn't allow us to say what we can't do we have to do what's in the best interest of our students and of course just provide the services that are written within the iep so yes we do spend a lot of money on contracted services particularly in the area of speech most of our students are found eligible for speech services in preschool and for whatever reason school teams determine that that is a service that cannot go away we are unfortunately a consent
262state fortunately but unfortunately so if a parent feels like i still want my child to have speech services and they don't provide consent to release them from those services even though they may have the data we still have to provide those services and so the average caseload for speech is 68. we like to keep our providers at around 60 because we do have a high turnover rate with our contractors and we have to be able to spread that case load out equitably thank you miss punks thank you miss renzi and then we'll wrap it up thank you madam chair well to go along with what you just explained um is it that people get paid more to work for these contractors than if we like offered ftes um you know through through you know through
263rps so we have actively sought out community colleges universities to see if they have people who can serve as assistants who will be supervised by our primary providers as well as fresh graduates we're just not attracting the talent for those specialty areas and it is not just rps in isolation but because we still have a responsibility to provide those services to students we have to go with our headhunter contractor companies who will bring in people from all over and the rates depending upon the level of degree and also other certificates that they may have attached to their credentials they will demand higher rates okay um and then you indicate here that um you're expecting an increase in funding could you talk about that a little bit is it from the state that you're expecting the
264federal government um gave some additional funds to states for exceptional education so the final war has not been finalized just yet we know for sure that we'll have level funding but we are anticipating that we will receive more money now that that those funds have been released thank you we have a motion on the floor and it was seconded by was it miss jones madam clerk roll call voted i'm sorry it was i'm sorry i wasn't i'm sorry i'm going to sleep i'm sorry that was the other one it's not mostly all right um i moved that we received the idea grant as presented thank you thank you it was moved by miss burke to accept the idea grant as presented it was seconded by ms page roll call madam madam clerk mr adore miss
265white yes miss gibson yes mr young aye mr rizzi yes dr harris muhammad yes ms burke yes miss paige yes ms jones yes motion passes excellent thank you so very much very much thank you next we are at um to receive for first read and this was uploaded over the weekend the design services for george with high school mr cameras thank you madam chair uh given the hour and given that this is a first read i will be brief i am overjoyed to be able to present to you the contract for design services for a new george with high school to cut to the chase we have selected rrm as our design firm i want to thank the evaluation committee and highlight the role of principal parker his service on the committee was invaluable particularly
266given some of the earlier conversations that we had tonight it was a massive investment of time on the part of everybody on the committee but certainly for a sitting principle it was that much more so um i do want to note the contract uh adjusted for the 1800 student capacity per the board's resolution on april 11th comes in at just shy of 6.4 million design services at approximately 5.9 million and just under half a million for additional services such as ffne and all sorts of other studies and reports that need to be done the prototype that has been selected is the prototype that was used for grass field high school in chesapeake virginia and you can see we have a couple of images of the actual grassfield high school but then if you keep scrolling
267down you can see some renderings of what the george with uh development would actually look like you also see some site plans uh in short the new school would be built on the athletic fields and the existing school would then be demolished and that is where the new athletic fields would go assuming board approval at our next meeting the next step of the process is an engagement process with the design firm going out into the community to share the prototype and get feedback on the prototype what areas community feels need to be adjusted tweaked and so on and so forth also one of the things we're hoping to bring back to the board soon is the thematic focus so that the design firm can build that into the ultimate design i'll pause there uh take
268any questions again just so grateful to everybody involved in this process and excited actually to begin the work of building a new georgia wood high school thank you thank you mr cameron so we have any questions mr young thank you madam chair a couple of questions tend to be brief as it relates to the cost i'm i'm curious why the the cost for one school costs more than what what it cost for three schools only a few years ago that's my first question and then my second question is if the administration has any pause relevant to contracting with rrm because of what we heard this evening specific to river city and the many complaints of that design as as for the cost uh it was a competitively uh bid process i was not on the
269evaluation committee so i can't speak to the specifics of what the other bids entailed and what the prices were obviously this is a high school as opposed to elementary schools and a middle school also it's been a few years and we all know costs have escalated over that time but i again since i was not on the selection committee i can't speak to that specifically and i'm i'm not certain what is able to be shared given procurement regulations but i'm happy to go back to the procurement team and ask them that as for rrm um no i don't have pause but i do think we have learnings and i think uh the feedback uh that we're hearing uh is helpful as we plan for george with and i think this upcoming community engagement process will
270be extremely important to make sure that school personnel feel that the design meets their needs so that is certainly something that you know we feel is incredibly important we also have dana fox our director of new school construction dana is there anything else you'd like to add um just to the question of cost and what i can give you from the vdo e records for the contract year there was not much new high school construction in the commonwealth during the pandemic time but for falls church in 2018 their design services contract was 6.2 million dollars again that was 2018 and then for henrico for their two prototypes of highland springs high school and j.r tucker high school which were identical prototypes uh they went with mosley architects that was at 7.8 million dollars but they
271received a substantial cost savings of over a million dollars just by using utilizing the prototypes for both schools and that square footage for those schools is comparable to ours at about 265 000 square feet you have a follow-up mr young uh yeah i mean my only concern relates to i mean if i recall correctly superintendent correct me if i'm wrong but i think we spent five and a half million dollars for the rrm um bill last time for three schools and of course a new high school is going to cost more than a middle school and middle school is going to cost more than elementary but i'd be remiss if i didn't point out that it's hard for me to square spending that kind of money i just spoke too relevant to three buildings uh
272yes obviously everyone in the room knows what has materialized relevant to inflation but my point is that kind of money for three buildings and to be paying this kind of money and dana heard yes i understand other jurisdictions jurisdictions and what they're paying just a lot of money thank you i would if i may i would like to note um melissa chasteen who is here tonight who is our procurement construction procurement manager was able to recognize a negotiated cost savings of almost 830 000 from their initiated initial design services contract and again adding the 200 additional the the price went up by about 145 thousand dollars but for the market and today's rate i that's kind of all i can all i can say to that in terms of historic numbers and what's been happening
273over the last couple years ms gibson thank you madam chair a question regarding also regarding costs so the projects that were in henrico were those you had mentioned that their prototypes were they um based on you know so they were was it a brand new prototype that they were designing or was it based on another project that wasn't you know what i'm saying so were they were the were they repurposed designs i guess i'm saying just to make sure that we're comparing apples to apples yes ma'am they already had a school of that same prototype in the district okay um and so then my i guess my other request would be then at our next meeting um if you could bring the um the associated costs for the prototype that we've selected or that that
274has been selected so when this project was built whenever it was i think you said chesapeake or you know where it was if you could include the design services cost during that time for the project as well as the square footage cost for the constructed project just to have that data and in terms of the rfp was it structured in such that each firm only presented one design concept or did each firm present a couple and i'm wondering if um you know if each firm printed a couple like what what the process was in narrowing down the design so if i may the first part of your question in terms of the design costs for the grass field prototype that school was built over a decade ago i don't think that it would be an
275apples to apples comparison but i will absolutely provide that information because we do have it i just don't have it right in front of me so to the second question per the rfp the firms were allowed to bring up to two prototypes and we had several that brought two and several that brought one and so from um from what was presented with rmm we selected the grassfield prototype just based on the requirements of the rfp and what we thought would be a nice fit for the community for george with i thought what was good thank you um and is there any possibility that the decision about you know if we were to move forward with rmm is there any opportunity for the community to be able to weigh in and to consider both of the
276prototypes that they brought forward just to allow additional community feedback in the process so yes and total transparency the other prototype that was brought forward was the river city middle school prototype um and so with that being said and then with with what we were trying to do with with and providing them a school of their own a school of george with there is nothing nearby that is anything like it we don't have three of these in the district this is why we went with this prototype but certainly we could entertain that conversation through the community engagement and piece piece but i just want to be clear that that would then um prolong the community engagement and the design portion of of what we're trying to accomplish quickly but full transparency it was the river
277city middle school prototype thank you sure miss white and then mr young then we'll wrap it up this is for a first read i just have one question uh miss fox and thank you um my question is because we have talked about construction menu with the clock springs and you are the director of school construction and when you manage the construction projects because i'm a little confused i've i've heard that the ceo will manage construction process the projects i'm sorry and how would you correspond into the construction with the seal managing i would probably think that you would uh manage that construction projects so i'm the director of the school construction department and then i have a project manager whom you've met at clark springs that she will be managing the day-to-day on-site of george
278with the ceo is certainly is my i report to the coo as school construction as part of the operations team i don't i don't know mr cameras could speak more to maybe what you're asking i'm just i'm an accent based on your roles dealing with construction and knowing construction would not be a part of you managing the construction projects versus uh i know your answer to the chief operating officer but wouldn't that be your role as to manage the construction projects or the person under you no absolutely i manage i manage the the project in its entirety and however many projects we have happening at the same time but in terms of having boots on the ground those would be my construction project managers so it i i would not be capable to be on
279the job site daily for multiple projects however i will be heavily involved in managing those projects um and managing their budgets and and so on the whole from cradle to grave with the right with the project i just wanted to hear that thank you okay thank you mr young uh thinking about you just real briefly because i don't want to belabor the point but we we heard a recurring theme this this evening pertinent to inaccessibility to bathrooms crowding in the hallways at one per at one point an individual teacher uh alleged that i forget how she said it but it was gridlock i think she said and i recognize its apples and oranges because this is not the river city but it's instead another another building but uh i pray between now and when we
280convene next madam chair that we perhaps if it's the will of this group and uh date under your leadership we will have done some very substantive fact fact-finding pertinent to some of what was conveyed this evening and perhaps juxtapose it with attendance at uh the grouse field correct because that's how to pronounce the the prototype and and if they experience uh and if the students and or teachers there experience any of the same kind of concerns and their problems that were alleged to be materializing at river city again recognizing it's a little apples and oranges understand we're talking about two different designs but frankly because we're talking about the same same firm it seemed to me be a prudent and investigation of what was alleged this evening you know if my colleagues concur with any
281of that thank you so if i may respond to that um so the grass field prototype that was a substantially larger school than what you're seeing now they actually had to downsize it for width they have a capacity of over 2 000 students and so with that in their downsizing it was adjusting some smaller spaces but the core spaces in this prototype are to accommodate 2000 it's based on the the original prototype of grass field so some of those numbers for the cafeteria for example accommodate 660 people the main gymnasium will accommodate 600 people 800 seated each side the auditorium can accommodate 15 about 1580 to 1760 depending on the size of the chair so based on an 18 inch chair to a 22 inch chair it can accommodate more the corridors can accommodate i
282think i believe it was 600 people at a time so all of those core spaces that you look at in the prototype are already existing to to accommodate a larger number a capacity of students and staff however it was downsized for george with based on our capacity and then we've added eight classrooms into it to come to the 800 1800 student capacity so i don't think that there would need to be any adjustments to that because again it was a larger prototype to start with in terms of those core spaces and some of the concerns that were raised here tonight thank you miss renzi the miss burke uh thank you for the presentation um are we able to go visit if we want to do we have like you know are we able to contact
283grassfield and ask or tour absolutely so i have already kind of headed that up with rmm for us to do sort of a field trip to to visit there we needed to wait until we have a contract with them for them to set that up with grass field but we are absolutely welcome to visit that school whenever we'd like it's a couple hours away but certainly thanks ms burke thank you madam chair ms foxwood we have thank you so very much for this report i'm glad that you explained that um we would have ample space based upon the and our core spaces to accommodate all the students my concern is something that was shared with from river city at length often this evening regarding spaces additional spaces rather than no school no school should be
284over 75 78 filled to capacity per se because you need extra room for um counseling extra room for tutorial spaces extra room so my question is do we have just the cutoff point for classrooms regular classrooms or do we also have additional classroom space for those special classes that we do have during the school day as well sure so i want to be very clear with everyone that the floor plan that you're looking at nothing has been tailored to george with this is the floor plan that was presented as a prototype so as we get into schematic design those are conversations that we can have any of this space that you see on the floor plan nothing has been labeled per george with so once we get into that if we want to reconfigure spaces
285and to that effect we have some changes that we can make not too far off base because we do want to stay with the prototype and we have a couple of customizations that we are allotted within our design fee however everything that you see labeled there was as submitted there was nothing that we did as a committee to change anything or to make it specific to with because that would be part of the community engagement that rmm and rps will have with folks for george with thank you one last question mr young and then we're moving on to the william fox update and we still have an update on the school nutritional service contract just real quickly the original motion that was introduced and passed in the spring and or summer it's hard for me
286to recall the chronology we were at this for so long but pertained to 260 000 square feet when the board revisited that decision a month ago something something like that all the conversation pertained to capacity i from 1600 to 1800 but the vote which yours truly uh did not vote to affirm uh only it only spoke to capacity so my my question is presumably square footage was accommodated i think to miss burke's point from 260 to 280 or square feet or help me understand what's what helped me understand if that was accounted for and and the revised proposal sure so per the rfp the specifications and the scope was 1600 capacity up to 260 000 square feet that's on page 10 of the rfp so adding increasing the capacity took that well what was submitted
287by rrmm the original submitted submit a submittal i'm sorry was 259 673 square feet so just shy of 260 which was per the rfp so adding those classrooms brought it up to 266 597 square feet which was a difference of just shy of seven seven thousand square feet so does that answer your question uh it does i'm just i'm sorry this first read so we can talk about it when it's not 11 o'clock at night but i'm just i'm just trying to figure out the the variance and cost for 7 000 i mean it increased significantly from the first contract iteration to the second for seven thousand i'm just trying to wrap my head around that the only thing we did for the increased capacity was add eight classrooms eight general classrooms um four upstairs
288four downstairs so that that was all that was adjusted on this prototype but the but the cost was revised up revised upwards of what again 145 000 for the design thank you mr cameras update on william fox thank you miss fox um given the hour very briefly uh uh all things are moving forward with fox teachers were there today i had a chance to visit them over at clark springs that is um and so work is underway i have uploaded the post remediation mold report for the board and the public to view in the executive summary it indicates that the site is ready for occupancy i also have some good news on the hanover avenue structure the original fox structure tomorrow morning you will see a crane at the site you will see another one
289on wednesday they are coming out to begin the shoring up work on the structure so many thanks uh to dana and her team but also the city and their team and all of the contractors uh for getting underway so starting at 7 00 a.m um there's gonna be a little bit of of noise as they get get to work um but that is an exciting development uh to get the structure shored up which will allow us to do the debris removal the uh abatement and prep the site ultimately for renovation so that is the brief update thank you any questions on that on the update and i know you still meet weekly with are you still meeting weekly with the staff yes ma'am on thursdays thank you miss white right yeah thank you madam chair
290um what's the cameras i would like to know i saw the recommendations in the um mold testing are we going to um take on some of the recommendations i know they asked for you could do a survey to identify the existing problem of that roof leak and also are we going to complete maybe quarterly mold testing since there will be some rain i know that uh the the roof will leak until we get a new roof so that's some things that we can also do for rem renewation i'm absolutely happy to engage with a testing vendor on a quarterly basis or whatever seems to be appropriate to continue to monitor the situation you are correct as we discussed uh last time the the roof is going to experience leaks um we'll patch them and address
291them as they appear but it is old and it does need replacing ultimately that is something i do hope to discuss with the board uh soon and how the board wants to think about the prioritization of that roof versus other capital projects so looking forward to that once i suppose our budget is formally adopted in june we can explore that if not sooner thank you thank you if you have additional questions on any of the 6.1 6.01 6.02 please email the superintendent and cc me on that email mr cameras the update on the school nutritional service contract thank you madam chair uh very briefly we are proposing to not move forward with a new contract for vended meals given where we are in the school year as i shared earlier we only received one viable
292bid for that uh several weeks ago and did not feel it was appropriate to move forward given that uh certainly not at this point and so what we are proposing is to move to a fully uh in-house program next year which is what we aspire to have anyway that will require the transportation of food from some centralized locations to a few satellite sites most notably our preschools but a few other sites i've listed those in the documents that is the direction that we would like to go and i assuming the board is supportive of that we'll work up all the details for you to to see and review but that is certainly the direction that the state nutrition department would like us to go in it's certainly a direction i would like us to go
293in and so at this point my recommendation is to not move forward with the vended meals contract and proceed with all urgency towards the full in-house model thank you miss byrd thank you madam chair that's good news to hear in regards to our persons on staff that will be preparing the meals is that correct yes ma'am so for summer school will that stop for the summer or this will start this fall that is a good question i would have to check with the nutrition team on that one okay thank you all right great homemade rolls wonderful thank you and our next meeting in may and then june we'll be discussing this all the way through and i want meeting in july if we um need to school board colleagues i sent you an email earlier
294indicating that the superintendent needed additional time so we're not going to talk about 6.04 i didn't receive any questions about that for my email so we're moving on to board business very quickly the great city schools has sent every board member and the superintendent i believe an invitation for an interview just check your email check your spam and i just wanted to share with you all that as many of you know we're moving into um sol times so when we visit schools as all of us have done all of us have been to schools in our district and other schools in the division i would um check with the administration to see if if there is any assistance that we could probably provide because it's sol time you know just man in the hallway or
295working in the cafeteria you know just something like that um because it becomes a lot and you know just wanted to share that with you um any questions about 7.01 and 7.02 i kind of meshed them together all right discuss federal funds editions mr cameras again given the r i'm just going to be very brief the one remaining item for the federal funds budget was the addition of 20 cte ftes we've put forth a proposal if uh you have any questions we can take them tonight or if you would like you can certainly email me and we can follow up i do want to be sensitive to the time and cc me on that email please if you have any questions michelle can you come to the mic just going to say um our colleagues
296the ronda has been here and is happy to take questions on cte tonight because it is important to get board direction this evening so that we can submit an amendment to the arp as needed and move forward with hiring decisions so hopefully we can get clarity this evening ms white can you thank you can you explain uh exactly what does a child care lab eight i'm seeing two here for armstrong and george with and then i'm seeing another child care lab at the bottom a new program will do good evening board good evening madam clerk i mean chair sorry it's gotten late my name is rhonda turner i'm the cte manager so with regards to the child care lab over at armstrong high school we have a child care lab that services students who have
297infants and we have one teacher over there she's actually an aide and so in order to increase capacity of us to be able to serve additional students we would need a second person there so we would need money to fund that there has been need expressed but we have not been able to fulfill it based on our current ratio the other expressed interest is that we have students over at with um and huguenot who have the same needs and instead of having those students move to armstrong to service them we would like to establish a lab in this side of town [Music] thank you are there any additional questions so um she can move forward miss burke and then ms paige i just like to add a comment i love the child care facility at
298armstrong it's always great to and it's been great that students can bring their children with them to school and pick them up at the end of the day but i was surprised because at one time george with years ago did have the program as well so i'm glad that we had the opportunity now to bring that back and i hear that a few students have had some challenges yeah so this is this is excellent good news thank you thank you so much thank you miss burke miss page i just want to say this is excellent information and i fully support a lab child care care lab in the south side so thank you yes ma'am thank you thank you miss page i do as well years ago i believe the late earl pappy was the
299principal when that um child care center was there miss miss renzi and thank you madam chair so with the addition of the nine ftes um at the richmond technical center does that mean we can expand programming there and offer it to more students and will there be a push to expand the program yes our goal is to increase enrollment at rtc with the addition of the additional teachers the core content teachers that would allow for students to remain at that school and not have to do the transportation back and forth which can be a hindrance to our enrollment okay thank you thank you any other questions so the cte team the cte manager can't move forward any other questions oh ms jones i just had a quick question um you mentioned the expanded programming so
300that students could stay there all day versus going back and forth is that something that we as a board um have we made that decision or is that something that's in the works mr cameras it's my understanding that that was the intent of these extra ftes to allow students to not have to go back and forth and so that is what we are hoping to achieve as much as is possible do we have follow-up do we have that in writing anywhere i believe it was an emotion but i'm not certain mr young i believe it was part of a motion that was indeed the intent of the budget that was approved by the school board of the city of richmond it was follow up madam chair we keep saying intent i'm trying to understand intent
301and and and approval is two different things so are we saying that we approve this motion that students will stay at the tech all day or did we approve positions we discuss both at once at once and it was a part of the discussion that this in order to have the ftes would serve the purpose of having the students there all day mr young and then mr cameras uh perhaps not this evening but i gladly would introduce that for my colleagues consideration whenever madam chair it's your pleasure that was a part of the the discussion so mr cameras i understood the resolution to indicate a desire to have the students not have to travel so that's what we're going to use the ftes to try to achieve we won't be able to do that for
302all the students but that's certainly what we will endeavor to achieve per the board's directive [Music] and i believe from that that was the consensus that that was my understanding miss burke as we move forward to spend more time on this at another point um there there is a model and i cannot remember where i was recently told that but since every monday and wednesday whatever schedule you're on you will be at your home school taking certain classes and other days you will be at the tech center all day so uh that's that's what my understanding was that you wouldn't be at the tech center five days a week but you would be there depending upon your the block schedule of what you're on so maybe i'm and i'll try to remember where i heard
303this beforehand some school systems in the area that do something similar and that um that require that ms burke yes requires that that those secondary schools will be on a four by four yep so yes and the middle feet of middle schools they have to be on the same schedule yeah mr young and then we want to close this out because we you all did say we wanted to go and close yes yes ma'am when the director of cte marika and i we got together just probably a month ago i think he he shared that that's in fact what miss burke burgess spoke to if i recall correctly is the model they're moving to all right any other questions it miss white and then let's close this out so we can move on and going
304to close i just got a statement i don't have a question because i see you had the jrotc cyber program instructor and i think that's a good thing because i do know that u.s army cadet command is giving like 200 000 to uh franklin military and i think that's a real great thing because you have to be like a top 10 school to even receive that from the army so i think that is a great thing yes ma'am we're part of a pilot and we're one of nine in the nation that was selected to be part of that pilot yes i think that's a good thing thank you so much let me be clear we don't need any action the board does not do we need to have some action on this no ma'am the
305board already that's what i thought yes we just wanted to provide clarity so that yes thank you thank you board colleagues um for your purposes you can check board docs for the update on the virginia department of memorandum of understanding we had a meeting with them april 14th and um if you have any reports from from your meetings that you have attended please send those to ms richardson so we can upload those i will share with you that i am waiting on information to attend the head start um training but with our head start management team of rps and policy council um and also um attended the code rva meeting a week ago madam secretary of education participated in a tour it was very delightful um also um i will upload the just the event
306flyer with code virginia event that was also wonderful so if you have any reports attending meetings please um upload that at new business excuse me um our march financial statement has been uploaded and board docs and i have emailed you all just a reminder of our school board governance training date which is in september agenda is forthcoming the closer we get to it new business do we have any new business miss white miss ramsey and ms burke i'm going to um request this again i would like for new business for next the next school board meeting to uh cover extended day programs for next year the process ms burke than miss frenzy okay i'd like to request that we bring back um to the table for our june meeting a discussion on the facilities assessment
307facilities assessment for our journal meeting yes ma'am miss renzi actually what i have is an announcement so i just raised my hand okay all right thank you miss paige yes i would just like to request again that we um revisit our on board norms for our meetings to end at 10. thank you yes ma'am thank you that's going to require the whole board but thank you duly noted um any other miss burke an announcement today we were privy to have the secretary of education secretary cardona did i say his name correctly cardona cardona along with um senator kaine and our former secretary of um education two of them dr lane who's now in dc and dr ed mrs ann holton so the armstrong students and i know they were at some other settings as well
308had an excellent tour and i'm very appreciative of business as usual at armstrong and it was an excellent tour addressing our students as well as the rtr program thank you thank you actually dr lane was the state superintendent and yeah that's okay because it we all we always get them the titles mixed up miss jones and then i have an announcement and then we're going to that's brizzy yeah i'll go after him as busy good miss vincey thank you um i uh participated as a judge for the second round of the inaugural poetry slam tournament rps poetry slam tournament this past saturday at the visual arts center it was a phenomenal event hosted and organized by roscoe burnhams who is our city point lord and um it was just phenomenal it was i mean i
309encourage you i know they recorded it so i really encourage everyone to take a look at it the student poetry was just amazing i mean i still hear their words resonating and so hopefully this is an event that will take place every year but um really really it was an exciting exciting just well done event i just want to shout that out thank you miss jones i just want to give a shout out to principal delaney and miss amanda catalinas over cis spam of family engagement over at reed elementary who spearheaded the launch of our outdoor classroom and community garden that we've been working with numerous community partners wrexham park parks and rec i'm sorry i can't think of chica's name his organization i can't remember he's going to kill me i'm so sorry chica
310um and then the toolbank if you get a chance stop by um they had recently had a um i think it's sol math night and it was over like 300 families there so kudos to them and again if you get a chance to stop by thanks thank you miss white thank you madam child just wanted to let everyone know that fox will be having their strawberry festival this saturday please drop by at the new clark springs we'll be there thank you i also want to celebrate two of our easton schools martin luther king jr middle school the u.s department of secretary clint mr um excuse me cardona secretary cadona visited mlk this morning for about 10 12 minutes took t uh pictures without with the eighth grade staff brought donuts and talked about the teacher
311loan forgiveness program so just mlk just rocked it the principal and admin team they were prepared not that their the school is not prepared um but i just want to send a huge thank you to the front office staff who was truly running the show so thank you so very much and also for breakfast also shout out to ms burke has shared it as well armstrong team fabulous job as well so thank you so very much for just want to say to the u.s secretary of education thank you for choosing richmond public schools thank you senator kaine and ms holten for choosing richmond public schools to visit today there aren't any other announcements we are going to be madame i'm sorry miss page yes i i would be remiss if i did not give a
312shout out to the bouchard middle school and celebrating their spring fling last week um just wanted to thank everyone that supported that effort it was well attended the fire department of richmond and a lot of community supporters but again i just want to give a shout out to miss waller and her fabulous team at the bursar middle school thank you thank you uh madame clerk who has the information for close okay ms door can you read us in the close pursuant to sections 2.2-3711a12 and 7 of the code of virginia 1950 as amended i moved that the school board of the city of richmond can be in closed session to consider the assignment appointment permission performance to mission salaries disciplining or resignation of specific public officers appointees or employees of the school board or for
313discussion consideration and review of the respective candidates for employment and the personnel actions for today to consider the admission and matters concerning re concerning compulsory attendance related to student matters 2 1 2 2 13 14 and 15 where the discussion would involve the disclosure of information contained in a scholastic scholastic record concerning a richmond public school student and for consultation with legal counsel pertaining to actual litigation in the legal matter 2022-02 where such consultation or briefing and open meeting would adversely affect the negotiating or litigating posture of the school board thank you we got a motion on the floor can i get a second second second by miss jones madam clerk mr yes miss white yes ms gibson mr young aye ms rizzi yes dr harris bahamut yes miss burke yes miss page yes miss
314jones yes motion passes thank you we're going into close