October 15, 2020 Enhanced Continuity of Learning Work Session Zoom Meeting

001Board budget work session. The legislative agenda item we are going to handle next week, as well as the other one. So that those are the ones that are that Miss Lorber is meaning to remove. Can I have a second? Second. Miss Green seconds Miss Lorber's motion to remove those agenda items. So I'll call for a vote on the amend the amending the agenda. So Cindy Anderson, yes. Veronica Nolan, yes. Megan Alderton, yes. Rami Gentry, yes. Jacinta Green, yes. Margaret Werber, yes. Michelle Reif, yes. Christopher Suarez, yes. Heather Thornton. Yes. So that's 9-0 for the amendment. And now I need to, we need to vote on the agenda as amended. So I call again for Cindy Anderson. Yes. Veronica Nolan. Yes. Megan Alderson. Yes. Amy Gentry. Yes. Jacinta Green. Yes. Margaret Lorber. Yes. Michelle Reif. Yes.

002Christopher Suarez. Yes. Heather Thornton. Yes. So the vote for the agenda is 9-0. And now we'll have a moment of silence. Okay, thank you everyone. Next up, we have our public comment section and we have three virtual public speakers today. And if you have not already raised your hands, please raise your hand. I see four people have raised their hands. Oh, three people. Okay, great. So the first one we have is Christopher Stephen. And so wait so that the clerk can move you over or enable you to speak. Mr. Stephen, are you there? Hold on. Try that again. Mr. Stephen, can you hear us? You might need to unmute. Can you hear me now? We can hear you. Thank you. Wonderful. Thank you. Sorry. Still getting used to this after six months. Go ahead and

003begin. First and foremost, thank you to the school board. Thank you for letting me speak. I applaud the superintendent. and ACPS overall for everything that they're doing during this crisis. Also applaud the fact that you are reopening to our district's most vulnerable children first. I am the father of an autistic son, and I think that it is a wonderful idea to get our most vulnerable kids back in as soon as possible. I am concerned, however, with the superintendent's plan to utilize one central place to bring all of our most vulnerable kids back. That requires busing and transportation from all over the city to one central location. The whole point of the redistricting was so the kids can walk to their home schools and to avoid having kids from all over the city being transported either

004privately or by ACPS transportation to different schools in different districts. Further, I also applaud the city for using school facilities for daycare, for first responders, and for others. I think that that is a good thing for us to do as a community. However, I do believe that schools should be used as schools first and not as other items, no matter what their merits are. Schools are designed to be for schools and for teaching our children, not for other services. As the city is seen utilizing facilities already, like the Jefferson Lee. center for daycare and for supervised care for first responders and others has demonstrated that I don't think schools should be. It makes zero sense to me to bus kids from all over the city to Jefferson, Houston, or to force parents to drive as

005transportation isn't necessarily the best mode of transportation for some families. For example, in 2016, my autistic son, special needs son, was lost by ACPS transportation on the first... day of school, his first day of school. You can go back to the record of September 2016 to see that. So that is an issue, but more importantly, the socially distanced issue. Putting kids on buses, putting them all in one location versus going to their home schools where they can be totally spaced, they can utilize the existing spaces of the elementary schools makes a lot more sense. I understand that it might be more economical. for there to be one central school with one principal, one administrator, one set of cafeteria workers and the like. But I don't think that it is a good use of our money.

006I think it's frankly... not good use of our funds to put all of the kids into one central school with one principal and one teacher, especially for our most vulnerable kids that are rigid, don't like transitions. Getting them into zoom into this virtual learning was hard enough, but trying to explain to these kids that they're now going to a totally different school at a different time really doesn't make a lot of sense. My three minutes is up. I hope I stayed on time. Thank you so much. And thank you for knowing because I was missing in announcing what the rules were for the public comment that it'd be three minutes. And also, so it's Yeah, so that's really it, that it would be three minutes. And so the next up we have Jill Hoffman. Hello,

007Miss Hoffman. Can you hear us? Okay, I'm muted. Can you guys hear me? Yes, we can. Okay, great. Let me change screens and pull up my comments so I can try to stay on track here. All right, I'm ready to start. Thank you. Okay, go ahead. First of all, thank you to Chair Anderson and to members of the school board. I am here as a second grade parent and I want to provide feedback on the proposal released earlier this week. about the pre-K through two adjustment in schedule. But before I do that, I want to first share that our household's experience with ACPS this year has been really been excellent. You know, the adjustment to COVID-19, the absolutely Herculean task to complete the school year last year and return to a period of such uncertainty

008cannot have been easy. The technology needs alone, I know, have been a Herculean task. And everyone has an opinion, I'm sure, about what could be done better at all. points in this. And I, for one, recognize that this entire situation is unprecedented. And we have to be fair with ourselves about that. We're all flying blind and are doing our best to meet the demands of our families, our jobs, and our own sanity as we try to find a path forward. And because I recognize that this process will inevitably be imperfect, I have not been one to complain. And because ACPS has been so attentive to the needs of families like mine, and I do fall into the same category as the previous speaker, I have been assured that the issues of recalibrating the day for

009our pre-K through second grade students is coming and is a high priority for our school district. Which brings me to the primary reason for my being here today. The issue for young families like my son and young students like my son is not just the amount of actual time they are sitting in front of the screen. The issue is the length of the school day in a virtual and synchronous and asynchronous environment. The day is simply too long. And what is even more frustrating is that I have spoken to multiple parents and children and, you know, they have children in middle school and high school too. And the middle school and high school children's days are actually kids days, teenagers, they're actually less rigorous than for our elementary students. And so when I read one

010of the top headlines presented this week in the parent survey that, you know, majority of parents are, you know, folks are happy with the amount of teacher led instruction and indicating that synchronous instruction is a good amount of time. My first question is, you know, where is that coming from? Because that's, is that a combination of high school, middle school, pre-k? I don't know. And I haven't received an answer to that, but I can tell you in our case, that is not the case. And all the teachers and parents, not teachers, the families that I've been talking to. I resoundingly agree. In fact, there's only been one person who says actually their kid's doing pretty well, but everybody else is like, oh my gosh, my kid is too tired. All week long while I'm trying

011to do my day job from home as well, my child has been coming in from school, mommy, I'm too tired. I can't do this anymore. He's exhausted. And I hear this from other parents as well. And so I really think that when we think about the amount of time and how we adjust this pre-K schedule, it was a punch in the gut when there was no reduction in time in the presentation this week. It's all rejiggering the schedule, more breaks, but ultimately they have to come back from the breaks at some point. And that's a problem and we need to fix this. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Hoffman. Ms. Hoffman. And I do remember there was another thing I wanted to say about the public comment, just that people who haven't done this

012before is that we do not respond. We are really in listening mode for this. So don't think that we're ignoring you because we don't respond if there are questions in your comments. Next up, we have Jessica Buchanan. My name is... Oh, go ahead. Chairperson Anderson, school board members, Dr. Hutchings, and the ACPS leadership and staff, my name is Jessica Buchanan and I am the PTA president for George Mason Elementary School. Thank you for the opportunity to speak to you today. Before I address the proposed reopening plan, I would also like to recognize the many contributions that Alexandria's residents, elected leaders, ACPS staff, and essential workers have made to our community during the pandemic. I especially want to thank our teachers and school staff for their dedication and hard work for our children. With respect to

013the reopening plan before the board, I agree that our community's special needs and English learning students must receive in-person learning priority. However, should the board approve and should the district implement this plan, you will be subjecting the vast majority of ACPS students to their families to a full year of virtual learning. We recommend you challenge ACPS staff to develop a hybrid learning plan that will one, provide families to continue virtual learning plus, and two, allow for in-person learning for all remaining ACPS students. This plan should be delivered to you by the end of the second quarter. While Virtual Plus is a preferred method of learning for some families, it is unworkable for others, especially those who have small children. It is even more challenging for families who are juggling their careers while simultaneously proctoring their

014children's schoolwork. It is detrimental to children's growth to spend an extended time in front of a screen without true face-to-face interaction. And we also have severe deficits in technology resources for our Chirilagua and our Landria communities that still need to be addressed. Alexandria is a special place, but its challenges are not unique to those of our neighbors and thousands of school districts across the country who are keeping their kids safe in an in-person learning environment. What we are is behind other school districts and ill-prepared to return. Neighboring school districts such as Loudoun, Fairfax, Arlington, and Falls Church have developed a more proactive and timely effort to adopt in-person general education. We are not asking you to reinvent the wheel, but choose a proven model that could fit our district. Our community understands the difficult task

015it will take to get our children back into schools. Among many obstacles are staffing concerns, safety protocols, and the lack of facility preparedness. We fear ACPS has become stuck in debating hypothetical feasibility and a nine-week timetable with far too little innovation or action. George Mason parents are leaving the school for private options. Some have moved out of the city. due to the lack of faith in our district's ability to reopen our buildings. I urge you to give us a hybrid in-person return plan and a virtual only plan and let the parents determine what is right for their families. We are counting on you, the school board, to be the catalyst to change this troubling trend. Please be the visionaries and leaders we elected you to be. Thank you for your time and hard work on

016behalf of all of our students, and I urge you to reject this proposal and ask ACPS to design and facilitate the return of our students to school buildings and a sustainable plan for the future of our children. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Buchanan. That concludes our public remarks today, our virtual public speakers. And so I just want to let people know that there's 30 minutes of Up to 30 minutes of virtual comments during school board meetings. And in order to sign up, you need to sign up by noon one day prior to the meeting because there's, you know, with our technology that's coming in at the very end is not feasible. There are also 10 written comments associated with this meeting. So those can be viewed by people. And that is also an option for

017future meetings if you'd like to have your comments actually posted with the meeting. Now it's time for our to move on to our communication from our student representatives. So take it away, student representatives. I don't know who's speaking first. I'll go first. Hello, everybody. Tonight, I wanted to give my student perspective on some of the behind-the-scenes work that I've been involved in, specifically pertaining to the reopening of schools. I was honored to participate in the ACPS Division Transition Team Meeting, which I'm going to quote, is a team that guides decision-making. and information sharing around transitioning into in-person learning and virtual plus. I just wanted to say that as a Titan, I know that we pride ourselves on diversity and participating as a student in that Zoom room full of these adults. I realized that these

018individuals really extended the extended diversity beyond race and ethnicity. In this meeting, we had school board members who gave like a political perspective. And we had EAA representatives, which like administrations, teachers, paraprofessionals who gave the educator perspective. And the PTAC representatives who gave parental perspectives. And we had me as a student. and technology specialists who gave the perspective of really our ability to go back to like technology-wise. And the superintendent, Dr. Mizingo, and everyone who was involved was making sure that there was no group left behind. And this made me realize that the district has a lot of ground to cover before the board makes the final decision, but we cannot leave. anybody behind in this process. We can't leave a group behind in this process. The meeting also reassured me that work is being

019done and ACPS is really attempting to involve all stakeholders. When people asked our superintendent when we were talking about reopening schools, why it was taking so long for ACPS to make their decision, he always responded by saying that we are waiting to hear from you. We are waiting to hear from everybody. And this meeting really exemplifies that commitment to transparency. And like, for example, in today's meeting, we talked like in groups, one group was about communicating this learning this in person learning process with everybody else staffing for the next few weeks and school simulation planning. And we were given a few general questions about the reopening process to brainstorm and discuss amongst our group. And for every big question, we identified additional items for consideration. And what this says to me is that we don't

020have to answer, we don't have an answer for every big question at the moment. We don't have all the answers right now. But in order to answer these big questions, specific departments need to need everyone's perspective and they need to address everybody's concerns. And that's why it's saying that Ashley and I really like preach. non-stop about the importance of student involvement and by inviting me to be a part of this meeting it shows that ACPS is giving students a seat at the table and I just really appreciate it. Good afternoon everyone today's student report will be on the student conversations RNNI. have been hosting and organizing over the course of this month. So last week, October 7th, we had our first student conversation surrounding the theme, Where We've Been. Many students participated in this discussion

021and shared their experiences within ACPS and the Alexandria community. I can truly say this first discussion was truly powerful and meaningful. So thank you so much to everyone that participated and thank you to every single student panelist that stood alongside us. And this past Tuesday, we had our second student conversation aligning with the theme, where are we now? And once again, thank you to the students that spoke their truth and showed their vulnerability, but I feel it's necessary to address. what occurred during the second student conversation, which was unacceptable and extremely hurtful. Many of the board members may never know what it feels like to be called this infuriating term, but I can tell you how I felt. And it was fear breaking, anxiety inducing, and most of all damaging. Going through that experience only

022proves to show how critical and necessary the work of racial justice and educational equity are. And moving forward, I just want to say we need to make tremendous changes within ACPS because that was not acceptable. And no student should need to confront something as mentally and physically wounding as that. And I just want to say, although racism operates within without conscious intent, lack of intentionality does not translate into an absence of responsibility. With that experience, I will continue to move forward and hold my head high from this. you utilize this as another thing that only makes me stronger and pushes me to continue this very intentional work. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Sanchez-Villafara and Ms. Johnson for the report. We always look forward to hearing from you. Next up, we have the consent calendar. So

023if I could get a motion to approve the consent calendar, that would be wonderful. Madam Chair, I move that we approve the consent calendar. Second. I think I heard Ms. Alderton second Ms. Green's motion to approve this consent calendar. So I'm going to, is there anything to be pulled? If there's nothing to be pulled, I'm going to ask for a vote on it and call for a vote. And Cindy Anderson, yes. Veronica Nolan? Yes. Megan Alderton? Yes. Ramey Gentry? Yes. Defenda Green? Yes. Margaret Lorber? Yes. Michelle Reeve? Yes. Christopher Suarez? Yes. Heather Thornton? Yes. Okay, the consent calendar is approved 9-0. Now we go on to the highlight of this meeting, and that is the Enhanced Continuity of Learning Plan 5.0. So, Dr. Hutchings? So thank you, Madam Chair, and also thank you to the

024board representatives for speaking the truth. I know that some people may not know specifically what happened, and Ashley did not specifically mention what happened, but someone did call her on the chat. We don't know necessarily if they referred to her, but she was talking when that chat came up, and they used the N-word. They called her a nigger. And that's something that I think needs to be addressed. We need to have conversations like that. And I wanted to say the word so people can understand how disrespectful. and inappropriate that was for somebody to say that in 2020. You know, I had some exchange, you know, through text messages on our Zoom the other day with Ashley. And what I was telling her was that we stand on the shoulders of many people, unfortunately, who were

025called that word so many times. And they continue to fight so that we can have the seats that we have today. So we have to stand tall and we have to look past that. And we have to understand that there are still some people out there that are just ignorant. And that's the only word that comes to my mind when I hear people who use words like that at other people. So I'm sorry that that happened, Ashley, and I'm sorry that that's something like that that would happen in the public light. But it also is eye-opening, and as Ashley mentioned earlier, this is the reason why this racial equity work is so important. So thank you for speaking your truth, and as I told you earlier, you will always be supported. um in alexandra city

026public space so we're here to help you throughout this process So I want to get into our main topic for today, because this is kind of like I've been telling our team all day today. It's game time, right? It is time for us to really talk about how we got to this recommendation. And before I do that, I just want to acknowledge some very important people along the way from the moment we closed our doors on March 13th. Our custodians, our school nutrition officer, school nutrition team, our... technology team, our transportation department, our human resources department, they kept us afloat to get even to this point. And sometimes that is the missing link. And a lot of people are not talking about the hard work that has happened behind the scenes with all of our

027essential personnel. They never have been home. They have always been in our buildings and working day to day to ensure that we're able to operate and provide even the virtual learning for our staff and also our finance team for allowing us to be able to pay our employees during this particular time and going into our buildings to make that happen. So I want to start by saying thank you to all of them that never got the break. They have been a part of this since, I'm sorry, I'm moving. lighting sorry about that um but they've been a part of this from the beginning and we just want to acknowledge uh them i also just want to talk about the fact that the work that we're um going to be sharing with you all today it

028is not the work of dr hutchings right there is a team of people who are working tirelessly to make this possible and we have to acknowledge the staff members who over the past seven weeks have been meeting and working through our analysis, looking at our constraints, talking through our challenges, our obstacles, our celebrations, lifting each other up, picking each other up off the ground when we felt defeated at several times throughout this process. And it's important for us to acknowledge the staff who are doing that. And that's teachers. These are paraprofessionals. These are administrators, school board members, student representatives, P-TECH. representatives. Our director of the Alexandria Health Department and some of our community members as well have been a part of this process. And I just want to tell you that their insight is invaluable

029and we truly appreciate the tireless work that they have given us over this period of time. And, you know, I just also just want to say, you know, as a teacher, and I think about, you know, the joy of being an educator in this world. One of the things that I loved most about being the teacher was the fact that our kids were going to come in excited. We get to see them and play our introduction games and I get to learn all of their names and go over kind of our routines and just have the joy of our buildings opening. It was the best time of the year. And I know a lot of our staff members miss that moment. And I hear our families out there who. are just really frustrated and they're

030really upset about the fact that we are still in this global pandemic and it is now October. And I just want you all to know that this is a very difficult time for all of us. And what we are trying to do today is to provide what we believe is the best feasible option for us. Not necessarily the best thing in the world. We know that best practice is not working in a virtual learning environment. We know that that's not best practice. However, we are trying to make sure that we're keeping the safety of our students. and our staff at a top priority. We're trying to make sure we're having the least amount of disruptions in our children's lives as well as in our staff members lives. And we're trying to make sure that the

031most feasible or the best feasible option that we're going to be presenting to you today that we can actually follow through and that it can come to fruition with the resources that we have within Alexandria City Public Schools. So if you can go to the next slide, I just want to go over just a quick overview of what we're going to be discussing and the key takeaways for our presentation today. And one is to really share with the board, as well as with our community, how we have engaged our staff and our students, as well as our community throughout this whole virtual plus process. You know, we need to be able to reflect. you know, thus far, how we have been able to meet the needs of our students in this very unprecedented time. And

032to talk about some of the challenges that we've been faced with. We've heard from our families, especially pre-K through second grade families and the screen time issues and things of that nature. We want to be able to talk through some of those challenges today with the board, as well as with the community. And we also want to be able to prepare our staff. and our students for safe return and talk about all the work that has been going on since March 13th to prepare for the moment when we're able to have our young people in our schools and in our buildings once again. And then finally, we want to share just some updates around how we are planning to have this in-person work. You know, we shared with the board back in August some of

033our planning. So this is not our first time talking about what it's going to look like if we get back into our classrooms or when we get back into our classrooms. But today we are going to show a recommendation of what that will look like with this phase in approach. for the second nine weeks. When we met with the board in August, we said that every seven weeks we would be doing an analysis and we would be providing a recommendation for the next nine weeks. And our job today is to share what our results and what our recommendations are. from the analysis that we had. And these are recommendations that are for the second nine weeks. We also wanna give a glimpse into what the third nine weeks could begin to look like. And we

034will be sharing more about that as we get further into our presentation. So with that said, I do want to, you know, remind everyone about the guiding principles that we do have within this work altogether. You know, we want to make sure that equity is at the heart of our work. You know, we're increasing equitable access, you know, hence, as we talk today about the transition and talking about the most vulnerable students, and you'll learn more about that from our team as we get through this presentation. We also want to build the trust. you know, with our community. You know, one thing that we are trying to be is transparent. We are trying to make sure that we are being as honest and trying to give as much information as we possibly can. And the

035information that we do have is ever-changing. So it is constant knowledge that we are receiving on a daily basis, honestly, with you all. But we are trying to make sure that we're building that trust and that we're being transparent. We're making sure that they're all voices around the table. You know, I've received several emails, you know, these past weeks. And I have to say, people don't believe that I read all of my emails. And I do. I read each and every one of them. Sometimes there are generic emails that go back out. And it's because I can't reply to everybody with a long-winded response like I really want to. I'm a long-winded person as I'm talking right now. So I have to do my one long-wind email and I got to cut and paste it.

036But when you follow up. you get a response right back. And that's the key. Follow up and I'll respond to you individually, families. And then also, we want to embrace the flexibility while we're facing these unprecedented times. You know, everything that we present today, there could be changes that happen a month from now. two months from now, not just here in Alexandria City Public Schools, but within the city of Alexandria, within the region, and also across the nation. So we just have to be prepared to be able to pivot when needed and to be flexible throughout this process. We want to learn from all the lessons that we have had since March 13th. I can go back and look at survey results. from the first time we administered to our most recent. And we still

037have bumps in the road, but we are not where we were back in March. We are continuously growing and trying to learn from our mistakes as well as to learn from the things that we are doing well and to build on those celebrations. Then we want to make sure that we're providing clear, consistent, and frequent communication. I think sometimes we try to be so frequent or try to get our communications out so quickly to meet our deadlines that we move too fast on our end. And we have to make changes and resubmit information because we're trying to keep up with. the requests that we get from our community, but we are definitely striving to be clear and consistent and frequent with our messages. And then the final two guiding principles deals with valuing community coordination

038and collaboration, which is so key in order for us to be able to make it even this far. It requires every department in Alexandria City Public Schools to work hand in hand. It requires every department in Alexandria City Public Schools to also work with our city hand in hand and to work with our families, our staff, and our students. This is an all hands on deck approach. That's the only way we're going to be able to provide the best feasible option for our community. We cannot take other plans from other school divisions and replicate them here in Alexandria City Public Schools. We may sometimes meet. eye to eye with other school divisions, but our intention is to make sure we're doing what we believe is right, or really not right, but what we believe is

039feasible for the city of Alexandria, for Alexandria City Public Schools, and to do what we believe is most feasible for our staff and our students. And then finally, we want to ensure that all of our students have access. to the technology and the connectivity, because that is our lifeline as of right now. And that is how we communicate. That is how they're learning. And that's how we're able to keep in contact with our families. So I wanted to set the stage with that. And I'm going to turn things over to our director at the Alexandria Health Department, Dr. Stephen Herring, because it is important for us to begin. with the health mitigations, with where we are in regards to our city, as well as the CDC and the Virginia Department of Health. So Dr. Herring

040and his team, I just want to thank you publicly for the collaboration that you have provided us. I know, you know, Dr. Herring said, you need to make sure you call me before you make any decision, or I can't support you 100% because you didn't ask. So I've been making sure that we are calling on Dr. Herring before we make major decisions, because we do not want to be in a situation where our decisions have contributed to any uptick or any issues within the city of Alexandria. And we also want to always make sure that we're following the CDC guidelines, because that is what we are trying to use as our health guidance. So Dr. Herring, I'm going to turn things over to you. Thank you very much. Can you hear me okay? Okay. So

041thanks, Dr. Hutchings, and thanks to your team. I really appreciate being able to work with you all. I should clarify to everybody that the health department does not make a decision that, hey, it's good to open or it's not good to open. What we do, what our role is, is more to provide information, provide guidance, provide assistance. And one of those ways has been to work with Virginia Department of Health and through the Virginia Department of Health, the Centers for Disease Control, and really to gather all the guidance that's coming through because there's lots of guidance as well as information. The information comes by way most recently of this dynamic school decision-making tool. Now we've been using various pandemic metrics since June and have been sharing them. with the superintendent and the chief administrative officer,

042the city manager, for some time since July and August. Most recently, the CDC came up with this dynamic school decision-making tool, which involves what you see here, three core indicators, as well as there's five secondary indicators. And these three core indicators, the first one is the number of cases per 100,000 population in the last 14 days. And as you can see going across, there's the lowest risk, lower risk, moderate risk, and higher risk, as well as highest risk for each of the various indicators. CDC has decided what those levels are for each of the indicators. The second indicator being the percentage of the PCR test that have been positive during the last 14 days. Now, those two indicators, as well as the secondary indicators, and I should tell you there's five secondary indicators, and three

043of the five secondary indicators actually have to do with hospital metrics. How many hospital beds are there? And I believe it's the percentage of hospital beds that are occupied by COVID-19 patients. But be that as it may, I'm saying all that because... the important aspect is to recognize that the third core indicator actually has five different domains to it. And those five domains are things that actually a school or a school system has control over. It's domains that a family, an individual has control over. And those domains include the consistent and correct use of face masks, social distancing to the largest extent possible. hand hygiene and respiratory etiquette. the cleaning and disinfection, as well as contact tracing in collaboration with the local health department. So these are the decision-making metric. They're to inform decisions that

044are made about restarting school or pausing or decreasing in-person learning. They're not green. Even though you see green and yellow, orange and red on here, they don't give you... Hey, it's okay to open. It's not okay to open. It's to inform the decision making process. So with that introduction, if you'll go to the next slide, please. And this shows where the slide two here shows where Alexandria is on those on the left side, the first indicator. We're in orange. It's the total number of cases per 100,000. Again, we're between 50 and 200, so that puts us in orange. And the second indicator is the percentage of PCR tests that are positive. I should tell you that this slide. is actually taken from yesterday and it's available if you can see in the small print down

045below updated daily it's available on the Virginia Department of Health website. The secondary indicators are listed. Three of those secondary indicators are listed. And you can see one of those is in red. That's the percentage of new cases per 100,000 in the past seven days compared to the prior seven days. So we're actually at a pretty high level, 24%. In the day before, I think we were even higher. Because again, these things will change from day to day. You can see that the next two. hospital indicators are in the green. But again, I'm coming back to those core indicators that are not marked on the Virginia Department of Health website. This is something that each community has to assure that is being done of the ability to adhere to the mitigation, the correct and consistent

046use of mask, the physical distancing, hand hygiene, cleaning, disinfecting, and the collaboration with the local health department. All this being said, The health department, again, doesn't make a decision whether it's okay or not okay to open. It's very much like practicing medicine. Everybody has different tolerances of risk. And so the community has to make the decision and each family needs to make the decision about whether or not they're wanting to return or stay virtual or some combination thereof. My final comment will be that One of the things that I think we as humans do not like is uncertainty. And there is the phrase deterministic versus stochastic. And deterministic means you have these parameters and we can predict what's going to happen based off of what we know right now. But stochastic is what we're actually

047dealing with, quite frankly. As we learn more and more about this virus, we're recognizing that we cannot predict with certainty what the numbers are going to look like. We do know a lot about the virus in terms of how it's transmitted. So we can predict how we can reduce our risk of transmission. And it has to do with these core indicators. With that, that's pretty much my presentation to lay out to everybody. If there's any questions, I'm certainly available. Thank you. Let me look and see. About the questions. We're going to hold the questions if we can. Oh, till the end. Yes. Yep. Okay. We're holding questions till the end. So hopefully you'll stay around and stick with us here. Thank you. Okay. Very good. Good evening, everyone. It's good to see you again. You

048will recall when the work was done around 4.0 and working with education elements, and they're still working and supporting ACPS in this work. they introduced the concept of sprints. And we wanted to just highlight that we are continuing to utilize that approach as we work towards really improving the fidelity of Virtual Plus. And we'll give you more examples of that. But that has really been a commitment is how we improve the implementation of Virtual Plus. Also, we have been working towards milestones that relate to in-person learning. And you will see on this timeline that the work, as Dr. Hutchins mentioned earlier, started around September the 21st. This slide indicates that the work ends tomorrow. But to be very honest with you, the work continues. But we wanted to just lay out some of the big

049milestones with, again, virtual plus and in-person learning. On the next slide, I love what the way Ms. Johnson-Lorraine described and used this concept, the seat at the table. So I thought I'd rework my notes just a little because in Alexandria, there has been this commitment. In 4.0, there were the cross-functional teams of more than 200 individuals. And in this 5.0, It's the same concept of the seat at the table, identifying various individuals with different roles and different perspectives to help inform the work and inform the decisions so that we're not operating in isolation. And Dr. Hutchins identified some of those particular stakeholders. Again, your principals and parents and the Educators Association and PTAC and school board representatives and division staff. and thought partners. So we've continued that process. What we did in working with the

050teams and education elements, we actually decided this time to organize the work around four distinct teams. There's internal, external, but four distinct teams with a larger learning advisory team that comprises the four teams. In the top left, you'll see the virtual plus learning advisory team, which is the entire team. Below we have the Virtual Plus instruction which comprises teachers in from kindergarten, first grade, second grade, third grade. It also involves department chairs or content representatives from the different elective areas. So the Virtual Plus instruction is just a group, a very large group that's helping us think about and respond to areas around particularly instruction and teaching and learning. And that group meets on Mondays. They go back and they share out. So they kind of identify what some of the buds may be, the thorns,

051what's working well. And they take that information back to their schools. They bring information back to the larger group. We also have the Virtual Plus Partners. You will hear more about that this evening, this afternoon. And that really is a positive effort underway. to provide support for many of our families. And we do know that there are a lot of families that have these needs, but you'll hear more from Mr. Huffman later this afternoon. On the right side, you'll see the school transition team. That consists, they meet every Wednesday. That's our principals and our assistant principals and other leaders, and they meet on Wednesdays. So what really happens is the information. that is folded into the school transition team and they give feedback to help and also inform the decisions. And then we have on

052Thursdays, like she said today, we have the division transition team and project leads. So in the center, you have this diagram that really just shows the feedback. from these various groups. And we use this, we use it, utilizing this feedback because it's critical. It's critical for informing, informing the work. And we just wanted to really highlight that for you because the complexity of the perspectives, the, the issues, the, it's just a lot of feedback back and forth and redesign. So I just wanted you to be aware of. how we've organized this process. We have about 260 some teachers, but beyond that, we have more individuals that are involved in this kind of collective process. And this slide is just sort of, I think it's just kudos in many ways, just quickly, just to again, highlight

053some of the work that has continued to focus on Virtual Plus. We did not want to shy away for the implementation of Virtual Plus. We wanted to make sure that everyone's working to improve that process. Access has to do with the work led by... Dr. Hoover and her team and making sure that in particular for us in instruction that they have access to the curriculum using the technology, the child care, the partners is the one of trying to make sure a lot of the essential employees or essential workers have access to programs for their children and students. The helpline has been enormous for the division because the helpline has allowed those voices that are not typically heard to get a chance to be able to voice their concerns or raise issues and that's monitored and

054managed by communications and they've done a great job in that area. Virtual Plus Learning is our teachers, our administrators, really, and you'll learn later about some adjustments to the schedule. And I just want to say stars. I think the Virtual Plus Food Access, they really get gold stars for the work that they've done because our basic needs are making sure that our families and others have access to food and those types of resources. So this is just kudos to the work that is occurring, but we're also learning how to continue to improve the process, particularly with all of those that have a seat at the table. Now we're going to turn it over to Mr. Clinton Page to talk us through some of the data and some of the results. Thank you so much, Dr.

055Mozingo, and good evening, board and all those viewing. Pleasure to be with you tonight to talk through some of the results from our most recent survey, which closed a little over a week and a half ago. So starting with a slide around participation, and the key message point here is we're continuing to see, as we have throughout the pandemic period, a strong participation. in our surveys across stakeholder groups. So a little under 7,500 family survey responses, just under 6,000 student survey responses, and a little over 2,000 staff. survey responses. As it relates to a couple highlights within groups, for our family survey responses, we continue to see a reduction in underrepresentation across specifically race, ethnicity groups compared to where we've been historically, while work remains to fully eliminate some of those disparities. And you can

056see those statistics there. We also did see one in five of our family survey responses being completed in Spanish. which is a testament to the outreach being done both at the school level as well as by Mr. Huffman and his team in engaging families. So that is positive and fantastic to see. Among staff survey responses, we're at approximately 77% of all staff having responded. And certainly, you can see there in some of the subsequent bullets are working through some targeted outreach. to ensure we're hearing from all staff in potentially specific areas where we didn't see response rates that we had hoped. And as always with surveys, we need to discuss limitations. One of the things we've talked about throughout the pandemic period is that surveys really are a snapshot in time of what people's perceptions

057are when they're filling out that survey and that those perceptions can change over time in response to either changing context within the immediate. family unit or staff perspective, as well as changing context, either locally or nationally in terms of. where we are with the pandemic. So really viewing this as a snapshot in time and also that the survey data as we walk through it is but one data point and should be used in a triangulated method to corroborate or look at and unpack all the other data sources and information that we have coming in as it relates to making an informed decision and decisions as we move forward. So just wanted to start with a very high level in terms of where we are as it relates to Virtual Plus. and the overall feedback that

058we are hearing across stakeholder groups. So from an overall perspective, we had approximately four out of five citing satisfaction with academic supports and instructional resources. So you can see those numbers there at the very top. And then three out of four generally reporting satisfaction with social emotional supports within Virtual Plus. Certainly as we begin to disaggregate those data, we begin to see differing trends and emerging things. So we did certainly begin to see that families of older students reporting slightly higher rates of satisfaction compared to families of younger students. And I know that's something that balances with some of the feedback we've gotten through other mediums as it relates to some of the youngest learners within Virtual Plus. We also saw... some of the larger differences within groups, which you can see here in the

059figure, particularly for our special education families, as well as for our families who are citing still having a need for childcare, reporting lower levels of satisfaction with the academic support and seeing the lowest levels, again, within special education, for example, within our youngest learners. So that is just a high level overview of some of the overall satisfaction measures. Then delving into some additional areas that we wanted to be sure to question, and this is something that I think is truly a fantastic finding, knowing this is something that divisions and districts across the nation are struggling with as it relates to technology resources. And we had over, we had 93% of families and 95% of students citing adequate technology resources within Virtual Plus. So that is a fantastic finding and a testament to the work done

060by our technology services team as well as the schools in getting those resources into the hands of our families. And then we also wanted to be sure we're checking in on the messaging as it relates to the Virtual Plus model. And we saw 90% of staff and 93% of families citing that there was regular and timely messaging around Virtual Plus. So that is a positive there. We also know that child care has been a challenge and a topic of conversation since the opening of school. So we wanted to have a question around that. And ultimately, within this survey, we saw a reduction of 45 percent in families that were reporting a need for child care at the beginning of the school year compared to where our families are now. I think that's a testament both

061to the partnerships and offerings that have been able to be created throughout the city. as well as our families leveraging resources and making decisions for their families specifically. We also wanted to touch on and ask families around the biggest challenges that they're currently experiencing within the virtual plus. So we asked families as well as all stakeholders to identify the three biggest challenges that they're experiencing within virtual plus. And I think the thing that clearly jumps out at us when we begin to look at these data is the amount of screen time clearly emerges as the biggest challenge as reported by our families, by our staff, and by our students. We saw some other areas of challenge also come out around distractions during the day as well as staying on track during class. But I think

062screen time you can see there truly has the greatest rates as it relates to being one of the largest challenges. We also see that that trend is heightened when we look at our youngest learners in terms of too much synchronous instruction. And we're seeing increased reports of too much synchronous instruction, both from families and staff of our youngest learners K to five, which is the figure you can see there at the bottom of that slide. And with that, I'm going to turn it over to Dr. Mann. Thank you. Good evening, board and all those watching. The principals and I will tag team this slide, but you'll see here that we're going to cover four areas. The pre-K to five instruction, supporting our staff, assessment and progress monitoring, and also, as Mr. Patience mentioned, synchronous and

063asynchronous instruction. Mr. Pascal is going to go in depth about our K-2 schedule adjustments. So I'm going to start us off. And so right now the instructional specialists are working on our K-5 packets and actually pre-K-5 packets. They've been working around the clock. So thank you team for working with each other and also getting feedback from staff. And then also, as Dr. Mozingo and Dr. Hutchins both laid out, we've been getting feedback from teachers. And we had our first meeting with the instructional team and the teacher leads the other day. And so getting feedback from them on what we need to define. and making sure that we meet their needs. And so one thing that has come through loud and clear are these last two bullets, defining breaks for families. And so in the updated

064schedule, when all of this goes public, when they make all the final adjustments, we'll define how many breaks will be in a language arts block and how much time. And then also our instructional specialists for physical education actually developed a movement break template. So families can also use that with their students. And then also defining our breakout rooms and helping making sure that we're using that pre-K to 12th grade. As we know that those breakout rooms are pivotal for our reading instruction and our lower grades, but also for our special education students and EL students to receive the services that they need. And also just refining our many lessons as we presented to the board in August that we really go back and define those. defining, refining, and making those adjustments. And as Dr. Hutchings

065mentioned, we are constantly taking the feedback. So thank you to Ed Elements and all their help in organizing all the six different groups that are meeting. And so at this point, I'm going to turn it over to Ms. Bynum. Hi, good afternoon, everyone. So we have been working with our staff at each school to ensure that our staff is taking care of themselves. We, of course, are in a pandemic. It's unprecedented. Virtual learning is new for all of us. So we are encouraging our staff to take time for themselves. We're making sure as school leaders that we're very mindful of the amount of demands we're placing on our staff during planning time because As the children need a break during the day, so do our teachers. And we need to ensure that they are being

066told that they're doing a great job because they simply are. They're working very hard and we want them to understand and know that in order to sustain the amount of work that we have to do, they have to take care of themselves during the day. And that is disconnecting from technology, going out, taking a walk, and just taking care of themselves. So that segues into my next point. They are working incredibly hard all week long, and especially on Mondays. Mondays are the days that our staff, we participate in professional learning community meetings. We have staff meetings several times during the month. We have school-based professional development. We are actually planning in communities with our teacher teams and across departments. And we also have IEP meetings. That's the Individualized Education Plan meetings for our children who

067receive specialized instruction. We also have 504 meetings. There's just a ton of meetings. And so we are working very hard and we are providing our students with asynchronous learning so that we can do the professional development and meet to plan meaningful and instruction for our students. And on. The professional development, we do have school-based professional development on Mondays several times a month, but we also just received in October this past week a full professional development day of offerings for our staff as well so that we're able to. be ready to present technology to the students and continue our learning with technology, continue our learning within our content areas for encore and electives, and also for mathematics, reading, social studies, and science for all of our core instructional areas. And that was all staff. The SST,

068that's the psychologists, the social workers, the guidance counselors also had training. Our paraprofessionals and support staff within our schools also had training as well. Thank you, Ms. Bynum. And I'll pick up with assessment and progress monitoring. And so October marked the opening of our fall division testing window from October 6th through November 13th. And the fall testing window provided data, will provide data for our teachers and administrators to inform instructional practice, but also intervention for our students. And so specifically at the elementary level, students are taking the PALS and MAP screener testing. And PALS testing is administered for students in grades K through 2 and for specific groups at grades 3, for example, are new students. The PALS screener provides teachers with instructional data on students who meet the minimum competency and early literacy skills,

069as well as students who require additional intervention. Now the MAP Screener Test is administered for students in grades 2 through 12 and the MAP Screener Test is an adaptive test that will be administered in Language Arts and Math and is the shorter version of the MAP Growth Assessment. And this students taking this test will receive roughly 19 to 20 questions and the Screener Test provides instructional data in instructional goals data in math as well as a Lexile score for reading. And so specifically the Lexile score provides data about the student's reading ability as well as the difficulty of text. And then finally, headphones for EL students are currently being administered at the school level. So headphones for use with Chromebooks have been purchased for all EL students. And so the distribution process for all EL

070students is currently taking place at the school level throughout the month of October. And parents will be notified through the school newsletter and as well as to robocalls. Thank you, Ms. Peters. And then lastly, before we turn over to Mr. Pascoe, we've heard from our partners and also from our teachers in the feedback sessions. And thank you to Mr. Huffman and Dr. Hart for leading our weekly meetings with our partners from the city and getting feedback from them. So when we talk about asynchronous engagement, we've heard that we need to. reassure our families where they can find all the asynchronous instruction in one place, what the expectations are. And then as I've been stating and the principals have also stated that we're going to continue to refine and tweak our guidance for our teachers, students,

071and families. So we're clear on the expectations and then how we'll also continue to gather feedback. And so at this point, we'll turn it over to Mr. Pascal to go over the K-2 schedule adjustments. Good afternoon, everyone. I'm going to address the what, the how, and the why of our proposed enhancements to Virtual Plus for our students in kindergarten through second grade. Before I dive in, please note that the three schedules here are just samples intended to represent how schools might sequence the scheduling of course subjects in a variety of ways. So the what, what's new? So the model you see here reflects a reduction of at least one hour of screen time in grades K, one, and two. The reduction in synchronous screen time allows us to create more asynchronous time, which could also

072be used by teachers to connect with small groups of students. That's noted as the new time on each of those schedules. So the how, how did we get this time? The hour of reduced screen time is made possible by two key modifications. First, the integration of two chunks of core content, science with math and social studies with English language arts. This allows us to shift 45 minutes to asynchronous learning and decrease screen time. The second modification is to reduce encore from 45 minutes to 30 minutes, keeping it live instruction, but creating an additional reduction of screen time by 15 minutes. So why? Why are we doing this? Well, the developmental concerns about screen time and Zoom fatigue have surfaced consistently across time and among all stakeholder groups this year. The most recent formal ACPS survey

073confirmed the need for an attention to screen time, especially for our youngest students. We're proposing these enhancements out of consideration for the unique impact of certain elements of virtual learning on five, six, and seven-year-olds. We've tried to be thoughtful and intentional in proposing changes that allow us to preserve consistency with their current schedule while providing significant relief from Zoom and exposure to the screen. Just as important as what has changed is what has stayed the same. We are committed to applying the principles of continuous learning to our virtual plus model. And that means, as others have said, we're going to keep making changes in order to make virtual learning the best experience it can be for our students. School leaders and teachers will continue to listen and to work with families to address individual concerns.

074So one more time, what's different? Reduction of about one hour of screen time. integration of core content instructional blocks. Encore moves to 30 minutes and there's the creation of an asynchronous block to include a rotation for small group support. Principals would be working with their school teams to create and communicate details of school specific schedules with their communities by the end of the month. Thank you. Hi, good afternoon or early evening. Board members and community members, my name is Curt Huffman and I'm the Executive Director of Community Partnerships and Engagement. It's my pleasure to provide an update on behalf of multiple departments about our current Virtual Plus partners and how we're addressing the existing wait list for child care, school day care that we have. As I have continued to report, we are so fortunate

075to have such a caring, incredible set of Virtual Plus partners who have really adjusted their strategic plans to support our students and families during this time. As an example, in a true collaborative effort with multiple Virtual Plus partners, We have put into place a system of free school day and child care in a place that's serving approximately 260 of our most vulnerable students throughout Alexandria, as you can see on the on the slide. We've also, we have also additional virtual plus partners and community partners who are providing school day and childcare for hundreds of additional students of all ages through a sliding scale, scholarship, income-based programming. Both of these are on a rolling increasing enrollment. In addition, let's not forget that we also have about 250 students in our after-school programming through what's called the

076Link Club. Shanna Sampson from our office manages that along with her team. And there's about 250 children that have after-school through our 21st century grants. If you think about that, it's just truly remarkable what has been accomplished through this time with all our Virtual Plus partners. But we know we need to continue our efforts to support as many families as possible. So each week on Tuesdays, thanks to Dr. Hart and some other department leads with me and her kind of facilitating, we meet with these Virtual Plus school day and child care partners each week. And we discuss with these partners. We discussed enrollment increases. We discussed challenges. We share successes with each other. We talk in detail about all the components of this school day care. And I'll be honest with you, those meetings have

077really strengthened the relationships between our partners in ACPS, but also our partners to each other. I've never witnessed it before, but you can see that we're unified in the fact that we're all doing everything we can to support our students and families. And that has come out in these Tuesday meetings in a large way. In addition to those weekly meetings, I want you to know that our team responds, and so do our partners. We respond to requests individually. Let's say a child care, a family needs child care. I got an email today from a family that needed child care still. And I, my job is then to connect them to potential providers that might be a good fit for them. And I do that on a regular basis. And sometimes in this case, they went

078to the provider that I thought was going to be great, great for them. And that provider said, you know what? I think another provider or partner is a better fit because of location. That's a pretty cool thing that's happening. is we've got this connected network to help these families. We've got our helpline leading them to potential places of child care. We've got our FACE team. We've got a website that lists all the providers. So we're trying to give multiple outreach methods so that any family that needs child care or school day can find the right fit for them. And then more good news on the child care and school day care. The Alexandria Emergency Child Care Collaborative and the City of Alexandria, as seen on the slide, has received CARES Act funding. And they're using

079that funding to fund an additional potential up to 150 that are on wait lists currently to get them into child care or school day care. And that's from birth to 13 years old. So I have some cool data really quickly. So far, for free, for the free child care slots that students and families that have been identified for, we've accepted about 260 children into those programs. But we've offered it to 530 students. And for various reasons, transportation, or maybe they found other child care while they were on the wait list. Out of those 530, 260 accepted and are on there. So if you think about it, we have about a 260 left on this wait list for free child care that have been identified. But if you take off the 100 and potentially 150 from

080the city that I just talked about that program, we're down to about 100 students potentially that are still on that wait list for free child care. And then in addition, like I said before, we have these fee based. programs, partners that are also on an ongoing enrollment and have slots available. So we're trying to fill them, fill their slots. So it's talk about a collective collaborative of trying to get as many students into place that we can. We're using the PTA also to get this outreach out to them. I think that's pretty cool data and it's impressive stuff. And it's only because we're all working together. And then finally, don't forget that we have 30, about 30 partners. additional partners, virtual plus partners, who are working during the school day on Zoom with students. They're

081doing supplemental academic instruction with these children. That includes STEM, mentoring, literacy, arts, dance, health and wellness, and more. You know, we've got these great partnerships working within the school day. They pivoted to Zoom. And that's amazing to me. We have new partnerships like Amazon. and that latest announcement about their partnership with us. And we have current partnerships like DASH that are still very important for our students and families. So finally, you know, again, this doesn't happen unless you have strong relationships and a collective collaborative. And as we said before, a guiding principle of this 5.0 is still valuing community coordination and collaboration. And I'll tell you, this is one of those areas that certainly has been evident. I know whatever model of instruction is next, our virtual partners and community will continue to collaborate and

082we'll meet the needs of our students and families as much as we can. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Huffman. So I want to, so earlier we walked through some data from the survey as it relates to the virtual plus model and feedback we heard from stakeholders. And now I'm going to walk through over the next couple of slides, data as it relates to likelihood to return as a planning factor, as we discussed 5.0 and transition planning. So on this first slide, just at a very high level, we're seeing that. 64% of families reported being either very or somewhat likely compared to 56% of staff reporting similarly very or somewhat likely. An important variance in that data is when you begin to unpack the very or somewhat likely category. And what we see is increased ratios

083of families falling in the very likely category at 43% compared to 23% of our staff falling in that very likely category. Then as we continue to further disaggregate and look into the data, we also wanted to look at any potential differences by group within families. And so what we see here in the figure in the upper left is we did see variability in terms of the likelihood to return. The families still citing a need for child care, reporting the greatest likelihood to return in person. when compared to our English learners special education and talented and gifted programs. And then when we look at race ethnicity, here we see our white families reporting the highest likelihood to return in person and our black African American families reporting the lowest likelihood to return. And you can see

084those differences there represented within the figure. And then last but not least, we also know from a planning factor needing to look at these likelihoods by school site. And so what this table on the right shows is the high levels of variance, specifically within some of our schools as it relates to families likelihood to return when compared to staff likelihood to return and how we as an organization best work through that to meet the needs of our stakeholders. Then we also took a in-depth look at our special education and L families. And so what we see here are our students with disabilities by grade band, their likelihood to return compared to our staff. And so what you'll see again is increased likelihood to return for our youngest learners. And then you can also see the

085variability in terms of in particular the very likely to return category with just as an example 53% of our special education families pre-k to 2 saying very likely compared to 22% of our staff. Likewise we see those trends within our L category as well and you can see that on the right hand figure. And then last but not least, stepping out of the likelihood to return question and into questions that relate to we know in a return to in-person, we are going to have to collaborate and partner with families to ensure we are meeting CDC and other required guidelines as it relates to a safe return to in-person learning. So we wanted to ask families around some specific areas where they may need some additional division support. as it relates to some of those safety

086measures. So what we see here is that we see 39% of families saying that they would need some additional support in supplying their learners with a clean face mask on a daily basis. 35% saying they would need support in taking their students temperature before sending them to school and that 42% would need support. and ensuring appropriate social distancing in the coming and going to and from school. So for instance, at the bus stop or for our walkers, what that may look like. Then we also know transportation is a constriction as it relates to the social distancing guidelines. So we wanted to see where our families were as it related to that. And we see that 31% of families are feeling as though ACPS transportation would be their option of choice. in the return to in-person

087and we saw higher rates of transportation preference from ACPS with NRL and our SWD families. And with that, I'm going to turn it back over to Dr. Hutchings. And I'm going to have a stop right here because I want us to, if Madam Chair is okay with this, to allow for the board to ask any questions that relate to either the health mitigations, the virtual plus learning piece and component with some of the adjustments that have been made, as well as with the survey data before we pivot into the assessment of our feasibility plan. I think this is a good stop for us to take some questions for the first half and then we'll go right into this. second half if it's okay with the Madam Chair. Yes, yes, that's great. I have Ms. Gentry

088up first. Thank you. One question that I have with regards to the survey data, just as a heads up on, this is sort of previewing some questions that I will probably be asking later. I do think it's helpful for us to have a sense of what kind of information gathering we've been doing versus what kind of information gathering has been happening elsewhere. I think Mr. Page gave some examples of some very specific questions like, would you need help with temperature checks? Would you need help with masks? Those kinds of things. My question for you all is, do you have a sense of, has that level of specificity in terms of reaching out and surveying populations happened in our neighboring jurisdictions. So I can start and Mr. Page, if you want to tap on if that's

089okay. So one, you know, one, first and foremost, I have to say that every school division is really approaching kind of the gathering of data in a lot of different ways, because we all serve so many different communities. Fortunately, we do keep in contact with our neighboring districts through our Northern Virginia collaboration. And this was a team that has been developed since COVID-19, where we are able to bring our groups together. And these are superintendents, our chiefs. Anybody who is dealing with the academic side, as well as the HR side and accountability side as well. And then we also bring our health directors from the different jurisdictions to come together periodically. And also our city managers as well into this fold. And what we have learned is that there are... a couple of school divisions

090in this area that has gathered data similarly to how we have gathered our data. And specifically, you know, polling families to determine who is, you know, more likely to return back to school to get information in regards to how the virtual learning component is going thus far so that they can have a general idea. who should they transition first. So there are a couple of divisions in this area, but not all who are conducting that type of survey. Mr. Page may be able to provide some more insight from the accountability research side because he works with many of our colleagues as well. All right, thanks Dr. Hutchings. And one thing I can say is We have been leaders in this work as it relates to allowing for timely and periodic feedback. And so I think

091some things that we've been able to share out with our neighboring jurisdictions, as well as nationally, all the way to Seattle in terms of, you know, we're all grappling with the same thing. So we're trying to learn from one another. But the brevity of the survey is something that obviously has trade-offs, but ensuring that We are asking the things that we feel are most critical and must knows and not those nice to knows. A lot of times you can get surveys that are the 75 item, you know, March through 30 minutes to complete. So I think we've done a great job in prioritizing the topics that we're asking our families. So, and I think that is something that we've led the work in that way. And I do know we have a... group of local

092educational research and evaluation network called ARIN, which has all the local evaluation departments within Virginia and Maryland. And I know others are doing like work, but many times not as formative as we're doing and also not as targeted. So I think with that question, Ms. Gentry, and I appreciate you asking that. I know that we have education elements who are on this Zoom as well, and they've been working collaboratively with us. They also work with school divisions all across the country. So I'm just wondering if Natalie Wood or Natalie Hall, Sam Arango were able to just speak to, not speaking in regards to other school divisions by name, but just talking about some of the work that we're doing here. in comparison to some of the other school divisions across the country. I can chime

093in here, Dr. Hutchings. Yeah, so I think I'll just reiterate everything that Dr. Hutchings and Clint shared. There's, in gathering the data, I think each division is figuring out what is the most important data to them, what's the most important. to help you gather information from your families and to help inform your plans. And so there's not one right way to gather data. There's not one right way of questions that you want to consider and put together. And just listening in to all the conversations that the planning teams are having, going back to what the student Lorraine was sharing, we're really working on these teams to bring lots of people together to make sure. But the questions that we're asking are helping us get the right answers. Okay, thank you. Next up, I have a

094question from Ms. Alderton. Thank you, Madam Chair. My question is related to the elementary schedules. Because I'm still having a little bit of a hard time fully grasping it. So I think for me, it boils down to the screen time is reduced by one hour. So how much time in total is synchronous now? And then during the asynchronous time, what are the activities that the students might be doing? And let me answer the second question first, Ms. Halkman. And of course, Ms. Bynum and Ms. Johnson are here to help support as well. So the work during the asynchronous time will be supported by the learning packets. Teachers also have been working with asynchronous timeframes for some time, and they also have things that they're doing during that time. So the creation of the new asynchronous

095time is a result of basically collapsing the synchronous time, the asynchronous time, out of the science and social studies block. Other core contents that are still there will still have a blend of synchronous and asynchronous time. So the reading and writing block, which is 90 minutes, I'm certain that in every K1 and 2 classroom, there's a portion of that time where the kids are either by themselves in a breakout room or perhaps they've even closed their screen completely and they're reading independently. from anywhere to 10 to 20 to 30 minutes as it could be in second grade. So the schedule that we provided does not break that down the way it did when we first looked at schedules at the beginning. When teachers communicate to their parents, they will clearly communicate, as Dr. Mann said,

096what the break times are. Does that help? Yeah, so my follow-up would be during the asynchronous time, the kids do not have to be at the screen. Not at all. Not at all. And the largest part of every core content block should be asynchronous time. So that I do, we do portion, which is the teacher guided part of the lesson should for kindergarten, first and second grade last approximately seven to 10 minutes. And then the children, they are working on projects. They're working on stories that they're writing. They're working on creating sentences. They could have. time to do independent reading. And then the teacher is working with, you know, individual or small groups of students. But we are heavily encouraging children to move away from the screen. They can go and work anywhere that they

097would like to within their home. As long as they can still hear the teacher periodically check in to say, does anyone have any questions? The teacher stays on the screen so the children can come back to ask questions as if they were in the classroom, because we do want to make sure that. any child that gets quote-unquote stuck can get unstuck with the assistance of the teacher. I'll just add, Ms. Alderton, the packets were a direct request to help with the asynchronous time. So a teacher could say, as Mr. Pascoe and Ms. Bynum just indicated, they could say, okay, we're going to now turn to page 10 in our packet. And that means everyone can actually go off and do that. that page there. So we're trying to figure out each way we can to

098have our youngest students have. less screen time. And I think for all of us, we all know that at this age, as I think Dr. Hutchinson said, as we've talked about our priorities for K-2 literacy that the board adopted, that they're also learning to read. So it's trying to balance the screen time with also saying that Gerald and Greg are trying to learn how to read versus Gerald and Greg who are in middle school. They already have those foundational skills. So we're the principals and even the staff, I think are struggling with the balance. Everyone is across the country with. We have to make sure our students can read, but we also want to balance the asynchronous with synchronous time. And so the packets with the combination, as we all stated, just helping everyone understand

099the expectations and how we're going to check. And if we need to continue to refine the schedule, we'll continue to work on that. And so the principals aren't done yet, and we're not done as an instructional support team with helping them, but it is trying to balance the need to make sure the students learn to read. but also making sure that we provide them activities to do with the packets and defining breaks and what we can do during asynchronous time. And might I just add really quickly is that this is something that they've had to learn to do. The teachers didn't know how to back away from the screen and the kids didn't know that they had permission to do so. So this is a continuous work in progress. And we even have to teach

100the kids, push this button, push this button, still hear me. I'm going to ring a bell so that you know when to come back. All of that had to be taught. And in the beginning, I think everybody was trying to stay on the screen for 90 minutes in language arts. And we just, some of it isn't that we expected asynchronous to be on the screen. We had to teach them how to do work asynchronously as well. And some children don't want to leave the screen. Right. I literally was in a classroom doing a walkthrough of a third grade class and the teacher dismissed the students to go off to encore. And there were still three of the babies just sitting there. And I'm like, guys, go away. You have to leave the screen. Yeah. No,

101that's good. It makes a lot of sense. Thank you. You're welcome. Okay. Next up, we have Dr. Reeve. Well, thank you so much for the presentation so far. And I have a bunch of questions, but I want to zero in on one right now. But just to kind of piggyback for a second on what Ms. Alderton was saying, I do have a second grader and he likes to back away from the screen all the time. That's my challenge with him. And I certainly had, you know, a reaction to this plan. Like I think a lot of parents out there like, oh my gosh, I really need to get my kid back into the classroom. But, you know, with my school board hat on, I really understand the constraints that we're dealing with. And, you know,

102when Mr. Huffman was talking, I wanted to just ask a question about the community partners piece, because I think this is a question I've gotten from a lot of parents. I hope I'm not kind of jumping ahead a little bit with your presentation, but I get asked this a lot. Why if rec... can come back in person or the Alexandria Soccer Association can use the school grounds and come back in person. Why can't ACPS come back in person? And I think for parents hearing the excitement in Mr. Huffman's voice about the work with the community partners, they might actually get upset because they think we're pushing ACPS's work onto them. The way I'm understanding it is one of our biggest constraints is staffing and this community partnership. Like if you think if your kid is

103if your child is going to come back into the classroom under social distancing guidelines. OK, only half of the students in the class can come with the teacher at a time. So someone else or someone has got to be teaching them while they're at home. Right. So the partners are a bit of an extension. of our staffing capacity. But if you could just answer that question, why are we allowing like having the partners bring kids back and ACPS is not doing that? Mr. Huffman, are you there? Yes, sorry. Yeah, I think Dr. Hutchings may be able to provide more information. When we decided that this virtual plus was going to find some way to identify those most needy families in terms of essential workers, that we knew that there would be a small percentage. Yes,

104I'm very pleased with what has been able to be done in this short time period. But we also have to remember, it's still a limited amount of children based on social distancing. And also... Any provider or partner will tell you they aren't teachers there. They're just supervising. And so it is a different situation in terms of how they can handle these students in small groups. They don't have the same requirement. You know, they have 10 students in one one area, but there's different grade levels. It's not the same as having school, quote unquote, school, to be very honest. It is a wonderful thing that these providers have shifted to all day care. But even in that, we just have to remember that this is different. They are supervising children who are on Zoom with teachers.

105And so the only thing I can say is, yes, I'm very proud of the way our partners have jumped in and can help. But listen, this isn't the greatest scenario for our students in terms of. you know, if Dr. Hutchinson said this more, if we could have everybody back, it'd be great. But listen, we aren't in that position right now. And so we have to do what we can for those that are most vulnerable in terms of needing that school day care. And that's what I think we've done so far in a limited number. I do get excited, but we have to remember it is such a small percentage, again, of students that we can do through these programs. I hope that helps. Thank you, Mr. Huckman. And just to add on to that, to

106answer the second part of the addition of Dr. Reeve's question and explicitly saying why we can't have school, but we can have daycare. And the biggest thing is when we're having school, all kids are not back. So it's not easy. Everybody's going to be back in school. If everybody's back in school, we could. have school, right? It'll be just like it was prior to March 13th, but we're still going to have some of our students who are not going to return back to in-person. We're still going to have some staff members who are not going to return back to in-person, and we're going to need to be able to provide the educational experience for both the virtual and the in-person. And then when we're in-person, Yes, we're right now servicing our kids at a limited

107number through our child care providers. So when we're bringing kids back into the building, we are also, I'm sorry, that's my own kid making a noise. We have to. Sorry, he just got me off track. But when we're bringing them back into the school, we have to also keep the CDC requirements intact. So now we're talking about a larger percentage or a larger number of kids, but still having to follow the six feet distancing, you know, and all of those CDC guidelines, which adds an additional. complication to the scenario. So it's not that it's impossible. And even today, as we're going through all of our scenarios, when we pivot into assessing the feasibility, it's not that we can't do this at some point. It's that it's not feasible right now to do it and to

108do it right. You know, we don't want to say, yes, let's bring everybody back, but then we can't serve your kids. And now we're operating similar to how it is currently with like child, our child, child care providers. We, if we're going to bring kids back into the buildings, we want to make sure we're bringing them in and we're doing our in-person teaching and learning. not just another kind of virtual world. And they're now just in school doing the virtual world. You know, we're going to have to make sure if we're bringing them all in, we're actually doing school. Okay. I have Ms. Nolan up next. Thank you, Chair Anderson. Just have a comment and then a question. Thanks so much, Ms. Alderton, for your comments about and questions about the screen time. And I'm

109just assuming that given that that was just such a significant percentage of concern amongst the parents and families that we'll continue to monitor as a division, is that one hour the right mixture? I know for some families and teachers, it's going really well and that, you know, there's even maybe a bit of a concern that they don't want less time because then that's other. you know, barriers for parents to keep their kid occupied. But on the flip side, it does seem, according to the data, that that was a significant area of concern. So I'm just hoping that we'll continue to monitor with that one hour making the difference that people were seeking. So that's just a comment. My question is, again, thank you so much, everyone, for all of your hard work during this exceptionally

110challenging time. The presentation, especially the verbal one, is helpful because I know it was a bit confusing to the community as to what... how to unpack this presentation without talking points. But one of my questions I came away with is, where is the sixth through 12th grade information on this presentation in terms of like, what is the plan? And I'm wondering if someone can unpack for us as a boarding community, what's going on with those grades? Because I didn't notice them in the presentation. Yes, and we're going to be talking about six through 12 as we pivot into the assessing the feasibility component. That's going to be our next part of this presentation. But as of right now. I'm sorry, did we want to wait on those? I didn't know if we wanted to just

111do the first half or no. Do we want to go ahead and answer that? Is that fine? Sorry. Because I'll be honest, even when I went through the second half of the presentation, it wasn't. It wasn't clear to me that that's when we were going to discuss 6 through 12. Yeah, so that's why I'm mentioning to you now that during that time, we're going to be able to talk about the feasibility and the second nine weeks. And a part of that discussion is going to talk through why we haven't been discussing 6 through 12 for the second nine weeks. why we are first starting with our elementary students. So that is going to come out of our discussion in the second half, and then we'll be able to answer any more questions if we don't

112answer what you're trying to get to, Ms. Nolan. in the next part, but it is not explicitly on the presentation. So you're right, you're accurate that you're not going to see it in print on those PowerPoint presentations. But as we're talking through how we even got to discussing K through five or pre-K through five, that is going to help answer some of your questions. Thank you so much. If I may just have a follow-up since we're going to get to that part afterwards. Is there going to be, I know, again, there's so much to be discussed verbally during this meeting. And while I significantly appreciate the amount of community members who are paying attention and watching this meeting right now, there are significantly more that are not. So I'm curious about after this meeting, will

113there be either another document or ACPS Express notification that's going to clearly outline? what happened during this meeting, what decisions are made, where are we going towards, just because I'm nervous about the community having to pay to watch a school board meeting in order to learn this information. So I'm just, it'd be great, especially like, for example, six through 12 is not mentioned on the PowerPoint, but they're going to be mentioned verbally. So I'm just, if we could maybe also at some point, and now is not the right time, just touch on what's the communications plan to allow the community to know what's going on would be super helpful. Yes. So, yes, we are going to touch on that in the second half, but I can tell you that I'm going to ask Ms. Burgos

114to come on. But, yes, we will be providing a communication out that goes out tomorrow, actually, to our community. And we also have a communication strategy to make sure that we're reaching all of our families in multiple communication channels to provide the highlights. of what we're doing today because we know that everybody, I mean, even right now we have 265 people on this Zoom. We serve 17,000, almost 17,000 students. So we want to make sure that we are utilizing, this is similar to what we did with our first go-round to opening schools. The day after the board presentation, we went right into our communication strategy with a special... report or a special edition of our ACPS express and then also emails and information that went out through the schools. Now that we actually have kids

115who are here with us because we're still meeting with students now we do have a lifeline very different than it was in August. We're able to make sure that we're relaying our information to our to our families but Ms. Burgos I don't know if you are if I missed anything from that because I can't see everybody in the zone right now. No, I think you outlined it well. And in addition to the express insider extra edition that we'll be, we'll be actually releasing tomorrow after the school board meeting, we've also prepared a frequently asked questions document based on some of the questions that we have received this week after we posted the PowerPoint online. So that will also accompany that express insiders so that it can answer a lot of the questions that are more

116detailed. as part of that presentation. So you should be seeing that after we finish up with the board meeting, sometime afternoon tomorrow. If I can just, I'll make a limit. This is my last comment. Thank you so much, Dr. Burgess, Ms. Burgess. I really appreciate that because obviously we want the communication to be set really clear and transparent during this time. It's like everyone's stressed and has a lot going on. So just some concern that we don't want parents to have to watch a school board meeting in order to get the information. So again, we are super fortunate to have you here with us during this time so that we can make sure that our communication is very clear and transparent. So thank you. Thank you. And I just also, I did fail to mention

117that it's going to be a little more detailed. So it's going to have a few highlights of what is being discussed today. So it sort of points people in the direction. And so if they don't want to watch the meeting for whatever reason, at least have sort of the nuts and bolts of what we discussed this evening. Yes, I hate to break it to you, but I think we've lost some viewership as we've been going along already. So yes, it is to Ms. Nolan's point, we do need something else. I have Ms. Green next with a question. Thank you, Chair Anderson. And my question is also about the change in the elementary schedule. And I was just wondering, what is the reasoning behind cutting Encore by 15 minutes? I too have a second grader with

118me. all day every day and encore is quite frankly her most favorite part of the day. And honestly, I get asked that question all day long, Ms. Green, when is Encore? And it takes us or the whole class to get on. You have to go to another Zoom link to get into Encore. It takes a good 15 minutes for everybody to get ready with the teacher there waiting patiently. So that cuts another 15 minutes off of your Encore schedule, which is a vital part of the day with in-person. schooling, and even more vital right now in a virtual environment because it breaks up the monotony and also gives their teacher a break. So just some reasoning behind that would be helpful. Thank you. So I'll sort of tackle that one. So originally in the schedule,

119the encore was 30 minutes synchronous. And the last 15 minutes was independent work based on that synchronous, something they would give the kids to do independently. What they were finding, especially with the K through two, that the amount that they could do was, for example, go and do five more jumping jacks or go and draw a picture of this. that that extra 15 minutes was not live instruction. That what the kids enjoyed and were doing most was that 30 minutes of live instruction. And so the 15 minutes. was not taken away from what the kids do enjoy, which is the live instruction. The issue of getting started on time and doing all that, I think is one that I'm glad you brought up. It didn't come up at my school, but I can see it

120being an issue. And I think that's something that we need to take back to our schools individually to have teachers and everybody to get this started quick because we do know how the kids value it so that they can have that true 30 minutes of. synchronous, which has always been in the plan. The last 15 has always been off screen. And for K-2, it's been really minimal do things on your own that kids would probably do anyway. Great. Thank you. I'm going to insert myself here. I'm going to take advantage of having Dr. Herring on the call because I'm interested in where we are with testing. And because that would be, you know, in terms of coming back, that's going to be super critical. And having that experience with that in a private company and

121knowing, you know, it's not just a bill, it's availability of tests, but it's also the turnaround of tests. Has there been any thought about the protocol? quarantining. And so, so basically, I guess I'm looking for a little summary of the kinds of things, contact tracing and things that the city and the health department have been involved with that may be very useful for us to know. Sure, I'll take a stab at that. And part of this will also be answered, I think, by ACPS. One of the things that we did back in June and finalized it in July is we developed a handbook, a COVID-19 handbook that we've given to all the private schools, we've given to daycares, and we've given to, of course, ACPS. And in that handbook, it outlines a lot of guidance.

122It has a whole lot of appendices. And the appendices include everything about how to clean up afterwards, how to notify the parents, how to notify staff. The actual handbook itself is only a few pages. It's more of the appendices. But one of the critical parts of it is for each school to have a COVID-19 team. and to have a designated liaison between that school and the school system and the health department. So that way we have a coordinated response when there's a case in the school. And I emphasize when, I don't emphasize if. There will be cases in schools. But with those mitigation strategies in place, our hope is that there is a reduction of the risk of transmission within the school environment. So that being said, with regards to testing, there are... The health

123department, along with the city, has posted a lot of places and resources where people can get tested. We are partnering with Neighborhood Health and helping them to conduct a community test once a week. Testing to actually return to school if you're not symptomatic does not have a role at this juncture. There could be roles. for testing going forward if there was an outbreak at a school to determine who in a given situation may have been exposed and became ill and or actually became infected but were asymptomatic. But we don't, I don't see that as a routine role in terms of like population level testing. That would be more. individual based. We have a lot of guidance that we've also have developed and provided regarding when does a family return a sick child to school? What

124are the parameters to actually consider if your child has a sore throat, a runny nose, a fever? And that's one of the things that we'll be doing actually with tabletop exercises with the schools. And ideally, we'd even do a town hall with parents so that they understand what they should be doing, what the school will be doing, and what the health department will be doing. Did I answer all your questions? Yeah, I think except for the turnaround time. So in private industry, the issue is, for instance, you know, the office being shut down twice in like the last couple of months, really what ended up being a... a negative. However, because of, of, you know, it's a situation, um, then, then the test, how long does it take? Because I'm worried about the ping-ponging back

125and forth, you know, even if there's not really, uh, as you said, it's a matter of when, not if, but you also have the, you know, the near misses kind of thing where, where you have someone who might be in the household, you know, and, and that kind of thing. So what is our turnaround time in Alexandria? Yeah, the turnaround time varies because it depends on the actual medical practice and what laboratory they use. You know, there was a period of time that turnarounds were seven to 10 days, and that's virtually useless. Those have been reduced to two to three days, which is, of course, much, much more helpful. There are, I should say, a couple of different tests because you might hear, well, wait a minute, isn't there... much more rapid tests that you

126can actually get right at the point of care. What I'm talking about is the PCR test. It's a molecular test, and it's the gold standard to determine does a person actually have or not have the virus that causes COVID. The other test, the one that's not a PCR, it's called a rapid antigen test. It is not a good source. except when there's an outbreak. I know a lot of people are using rapid antigen testing, some medical practices are, but they're not using it appropriately because they have, they're not real sensitive. They have a pretty high false negative rate. And that's not useful because what we want to know is, does the staff member, does the student have COVID-19? We don't want a false negative that they've come back into the school environment. We want to

127know that a negative test is a true negative. Okay, great. And I think I'm getting ahead because I do remember that the tabletop exercises are in the last half of this presentation, but I just wanted to get those parameters because I can say, you know, being involved in a private business that this has been a critical issue and it's not so much such a problem when you have a bunch of adults with laptops who can quickly pivot to home, but it is more disruptive if we're talking about children suddenly having to. pivot to home. And then after all, you have to do it, but it may even be a negative. It's just that there's been an intersection with the community, the classroom. And that's where the challenge has been. And as we've been consulting with

128the CPS, advising them, you know, a single case in a school or maybe even two cases, if they're unrelated at the same time in school, doesn't mean that we need to close that classroom or that wing or that school. But so it would be more our doing an investigation of. who is a close contact and how many potential close contacts there are that would be the driver for that. And that's why those, that issue of the six foot distancing is absolutely critical. And I know that really puts a bind on the number of people that can be in a classroom, but that's the reality we're all dealing with right now. Right. Okay, great. Thank you so much. I have a question from Miss Lorber who you might not see her hand raised, but she had

129a battery issue so her hand was raised and so I'm putting her in now because she has not asked a question yet. Miss Lorber? Thank you. Thank you so much. Yeah, suddenly my, I thought I had plenty of juice in my laptop but what do you know. First, like everyone else I just do want to thank this, thank everyone who's been working on this monumental effort. And it. concerns me sometimes when I get Mayo being critical of we're not moving fast enough in this next stage when in fact the kind of work that's gone on to bring us to the point where we are has been so incredible and the idea that you know what do we think we've been home twiddling our thumbs doing nothing in fact we've been putting on this virtual program

130that's really quite outstanding and so I've been pushing back on some of the folks that are just chomping at the bit. And I wanted, though I did want to thank Veronica, Ms. Nolan for making the point, I think it was an excellent point that as much concrete information as we can get out after today's meeting that clarifies the PowerPoint. I didn't blame people for feeling confused when they read the PowerPoint because it was confusing. And I think now we will be able to clarify things. I think Mr. Paschall did such a nice. So I think the more we can do that, the better. Okay, now I'll get to my question, which is something I'm always harping on. This doesn't just pertain to this next stage. It pertains from the very beginning. From the start, one

131of my biggest concerns has been how do we reach these families who don't speak English as their first language? And I think I know I make random phone calls sometimes to families I happen to know, and I've been fairly pleased at what the feedback I get, but it's very anecdotal. Last night, we were at a town hall, George Mason School put on a town hall, and they presented us, they have a community outreach committee that has been polling, surveying families in the Arlanda Chitilawa community, the families that attend George Mason, and unfortunately finding a lot of unhappy information about problems with internet, problems with communication with the school system. And, you know, I, every day I read the newsletters that come online from all of our different schools. And I would think to myself, are

132these newsletters reaching everybody? You know, what do families who aren't online, how are they finding out about every these they're fantastic and principals and schools are putting out very detailed, incredible newsletters. But if you can't access them. I've been wondering how do people find out. And so I'm also aware that our IT division, our IT office does not have Spanish speaking staff, which is, you know, difficult. I know that our family engagement program and network are apparently is on network. They're working hard on this. But I do feel as I guess I say any number of times that. as good a job as I think we have done in terms of trying to provide interpretation, outreach, et cetera, I think we have to continue to be aware that there are many families out there who

133are not getting these newsletters, who are not connected. And I think our IT people know that, but I was pleased to see that the families had done this research. I think they've sent this in to us. I haven't seen, they gave it to us, but I think it's being submitted to the board as a whole. And I hope we can take yet another look at, again, the survey revealed that the underrepresented, you know, the groups that participate the least in these surveys are the parents who don't speak English. And it's a huge challenge. I'm not. understating the challenge, but I just always want to remind us that it's something we have to continue to work on, and it might mean also hiring a few more staff throughout our system who speak a variety of languages,

134particularly Spanish, but others. I don't know what my question is. I think I got your question. And I think we have two people who are going to speak to respond. One, I would like for Ms. Burgos to talk about kind of our readership and how we are reaching out to our underrepresented families. And then if I could have Dr. Hoover speak to the fact about the technology and the access as well as the technology devices within the community. So let's start with Ms. Burgos. Thank you. And this is actually really timely because Dr. Hutchings is posting a board brief tomorrow that has a lot of this data and how we've been reaching families, particularly our multilingual families. So you'll enjoy reading that. But I will sort of go over a couple of things. Of course,

135we translate everything into the three languages, but our FACE team particularly has been reaching out to families, and you'll see some of this data in that particular report, making tremendous amount of phone calls, text using WhatsApp, various communication channels to be able to reach those families. The addition of our helpline, which we knew was going to be critical for this time of year to help families navigate, again, you'll see this information in that report, but we've had over 10,000 calls to that line. as of October 6th, and we started in August. And so that has been a really great service to our families, and we are going to continue to have that line open for the rest of the month, and we're talking about how we can maintain that effort moving forward. We realize, and

136what we've heard from our families that are accessing that line, that it's been wonderful for them to actually be able to talk to someone in person in their language and be able to resolve some of the issues and help them navigate some of the things that they're dealing with. We've also went to see a little bit of her thunder, but we worked with her over the summer to make sure that we had all those communications about technology and so on and so forth in those various languages. We also work with them on some webinars and did those in the various languages to help families figure out how to connect to their laptops, how to even get online, how to get on PowerSchool. So there's been a lot of effort in terms of the background. and

137working with families to make sure that we're reaching those hard to reach families. I think, you know, the other, and I agree with you, it would be great to have more staff people in the various languages to be able to reach out to those families. And we have definitely been using our resources really well and looking for some creative ways. I think our FACE team has really been pounding the pavement and working to make sure. The other thing is like with the survey, for instance, we had... increase results because we've been working with Clint and his team when we know the surveys are coming out to make sure that we have a plan so that our team is ready to go. So they've been reaching out to families, they sit with them on the phone,

138complete the surveys, reach out to them, text them. and all different languages. So we've been using every possible communication channel that we have to be able to reach those families in various languages. And of course, we always have our language line for our staff that do not speak those other languages that speak English. They have the use of the language line. So we have definitely added some enhancements and some reinforcements in those areas because we want to make sure that our families are being well taken care of. Just for instance, I'll give you a today. We met with Dr. Mazingo and some of her team, as well as Dr. Hoover and our FACE team, so we can learn more, so they could learn more from the ground, from our FACE team. What are some of

139the specific challenges that our families are dealing with so that we can come up with solutions and not wait for months from now? What are the on-the-ground things that are happening right now? And they've been great to help us think through some of those things. And so, I mean, I can go on and on, but we have definitely been paying attention to this and making sure. that are our families that are hardest to reach that we are making sure that we that we connect with them in every possible way. I just want to say I am not critical. I believe that our family engagement team and including your involvement has been outstanding. It's just that that's such a huge problem. And I was slightly surprised by this new report from the two parent PTA members.

140this outreach committee that had apparently very recently been interviewing a number of folks, which just said to me, as fantastic as, you know, as hard as we're working, we may need to work even harder. That's all. But thank you. I really appreciate what we're doing. Dr. Hoover was going to answer your question regarding the technology. Yes. Thank you for bringing this up because we actually have several Spanish-speaking technicians on site at TC, and they work. We know how many Spanish-speaking families we have. They work very closely with them, and we use language line for the families that speak Amharic and Arabic and other languages. So I'm sorry that information was not accurate. However, we can always do more. In the spring, we had challenges because we couldn't do. you know, a face-to-face student help desk.

141We did not have everything translated, but all of our help forms are translated in four languages. All of our tech tutorials on the family help desk are translated in the additional languages. So we have done that. Always happy to get more feedback, how we can improve. I mean, we never stand still. We are ready to make any additional changes. And I have to say the work of FACE has been phenomenal. We are true partners with them. We problem solve together the helpline. We are always giving helpline information so that they can answer the families. And that's been a highlight, I think, of this. this experience and we're always looking for something to appreciate, but I think overall that's been a real area that we could grow. And I do know, we are fully aware that

142there are some sites, areas in the city that are really challenging to get internet access. We did many things in our Landry this summer trying to put mobile devices, I mean a mobile access device in some of those neighborhoods and It's hard to get through those buildings, some of the construction. So Internet Essentials and Khajiit are not, they're not always the panacea for all problems. But if there are other ideas out there, we are happy to hear them because it's something, you know, I personally feel very passionate about. Yeah, again, I also want to say I've been in awe of the work that you and your staff have done. It's just, once again, about the Khajiits, they were saying, they're reporting they aren't working well. I think sometimes it's just hard to be everywhere. And

143so, you know, but I know how hard everyone is working. And again, it's just, it's startling to get this kind of information back from the grassroots. And so I just wanted to bring it to the, and also because the survey data, but I, you know, I think we're, we are doing. And I just want to think that we met with Hammond staff last week just to go through any specific, sometimes the specific children that were saying they had problems with internet access. And we were able to problem solve. So the communities are having these issues. There are partners as well. And we're always happy to problem solve together, share resources, and take ideas. Thank you, Dr. Hoover. I do know that we are going to share, and Ms. Luber, thank you so much for sharing

144that information with us. It was shared with me. I shared it with Dr. Hoover and the team, and we will be following up with the George Mason community just so that they can have a response and some more accurate information too that we have that we use as well to share. Great. Thank you. Yes, some of our construction types would be considered bunker. Bunker construction and doesn't really work very well with internet signals. Next up, I have Miss Alderton. Thank you. I'm going back. One more question that popped up for me about the elementary schedule. So I'm just going back to the elementary principles because I love them so much. No, I love all the principles. Pete, you're good. I'll love you. But when I was working with one of the, when I was, I

145dropped in in one of the teacher work groups. And one of the things they discussed that came up was the possibility of having a common lunchtime at every school, particularly for families who had, because it could be much easier for families who had kids in different grades. And I know that came up and was shared. What we didn't know when we were discussing was whether that would be, you know, a master scheduling nightmare for some. So I just wanted to check in on that and see. was that determined to be a possibility or not? That's exactly what I would have said. One of the things as we even start to try to think about adjusting the current schedule, we have to understand that we have some schools, like our Title I schools, have a lot

146of students who have reading intervention, and we've already planned where that is going. We have students in special ed, we've already planned a special ed teacher might be teaching grades K1 and 2, and so they've got to do that schedule and make sure that they can reach all the kids. And then if you look at our dual language programs, for our dual language programs, you have Spanish in the morning and English in the afternoon. And those having to have certain numbers of this and certain numbers of that, you almost didn't have a lot of wiggle room to where you could put lunch at all if you were going to try to honor the... the dual language, English and Spanish. So of course we all started off saying, let's try to do this. But when you

147have so many different needs and issues, different communities, every community has something different. You know, the West side has more L than the side. It became impossible. And in addition to that, just to add on, Ms. Johnson, encore time. We can only use the encore teachers to have one class, and we have to have each grade level have planning time slash encore at a different time. And then this starts, and literally at a large school, the encore teachers are working literally sunup to sundown, and there's very little wiggle room as to, you know, how to move them around. So it would be a logistical nightmare. Some of us do have a common or very close to alignment where there's a lot of overlap with the lunch schedule. I do know in a conversation with colleagues,

148several mentioned that if they need to make any adjustments based on the new guidelines, that they will look to consider that. I mean, I think everybody holds that up as the ideal. Yes, and some of us did put our lunch schedule and recess time back to back so that there's some wiggle room. So a family could have lunchtime, you know, where the children might cross for 20 minutes so that there is still some time that a family would be able to have common, you know, lunchtime within the same household. We have heard from parents and we... do understand that it is difficult when one child is eating and the other one's hungry, but they're in breeding class. And so, and we do apologize. You know, we try to make it as easy as possible. So

149we have been putting some courses back to back so that there is some wiggle room for families to take advantage of. Thank you guys. Next up, I have Dr. Meath. Yeah, thank you. My questions are also related to the adjustments to K-2, and I love having the recess and lunch together, too. I think that's really helpful because it reduces the amount of transition and it gives the kids a little bit longer break. We have heard from some parents who've asked us things like, you know, can you reduce the day? Can encore be optional? I was wondering if someone can speak to... the required number of like days or hours and what kind of flexibility we have with that. And then my other question is about the learning instructional packets. If someone can talk about the

150thinking behind bringing those back, because I know we had them in the spring and then we didn't use them in the first quarter. I think that some of the materials that came home in the spring, like the hand to mind manipulatives were great, but in my experience from talking with parents, I don't know that teachers were talking about those materials maybe with the kids and so I'm not sure how well they were used and I've just been wondering about why we're not also distributing some of the textbooks because I know they're like these consumable textbooks that might be good resources for the students to have and the teachers could you know work with them and that's that's also an opportunity for them to get their you know, eyes off the screen for a while instead

151of using like a book that's, you know, it might be the same book that's available online to them, but some parents have indicated they would prefer like the actual textbook. Dr. Mann, I want to get involved and answer the instructional questions, but I'm trying to make sure Dr. Mann can answer, but I love that area also, but he can give you the background on the packets and the encore, and I can add some too, because there was a commitment to provide those and why. Thank you, Dr. Reif. So the packets, we, the team is, like I said, was working around the clock. I know some of them as we speak are listening and working on packet material. So part of the thinking for the packets is directly to get students off the screen and so

152that a teacher can say. everyone we're going to do x page in the packet please turn your laptops close your screen you can stand up and I think Ms. Bynum said it or Ms. Johnson that at least so you can hear the teacher if she calls everyone back And then two, one of the things that we're actually discussing, I have several emails today from my team leads, what are the directions to the staff? And so as you mentioned, some teachers weren't talking about it. And so now is and we'll get feedback from the staff. with the TLL group. Is it a mandate that you have to use the packet? Because people are spending an inordinate amount of time working on it, but also we want to make sure that it's used. And so also the

153training aspect for it, that this is how we want you to use it. And I think our principals highlighted that piece on how do we make sure all of this happens because our teachers, as Dr. Hutchins said, are first responders and they are learning all of this at the same time as we all are. And so too, as I think I stated earlier, part of, and elementary principals can speak to this better than I can, is the balance between a second grader being totally independent and not losing in whole year. And so do we say the day is only three hours when we want to make sure that they have plenty of time for reading instruction, also math instruction. Ms. Green, you're right. We know, and Andrew Watson and Ms. Donnelly, RP and arts people

154constantly are telling us, please, and don't cut. on core because we want kids moving and the brain development. So it's trying to balance it all for our youngest learners. And so I'll stop there and let our principals speak to the schedule, but the packets are a direct correlation to trying to have less screen time so that they have something to work on. And then lastly, your point about passing out books and textbooks. The schools are telling us at central office everything that they've sent home. And so we're trying to not inundate parents or come pick up a packet. Then the next day we tell you to come pick up a book. So we're trying to also phase some of this in so you can pick up a packet. You can, I know Patrick Henry and

155William Ramsey are having book drafts. We're trying to stagger it so parents aren't overwhelmed with. always coming to the school every single day and making sure that also our school's staff have time to plan for it and also can feel safe for the pickups one of the things that i um as far as um adjusting the schedule or what we have to do. As of today, as far as we know, SOL testing is still happening. It is still the expectation that we master the skills for third grade for all third graders. And what had happened, what happened in March, we were like, we're only going to do our priority skills, but teachers were feeling really concerned that the kids weren't learning what was expected to master in the whole grade level. So we just don't

156have enough time to master all the skills that are expected by the state in certain areas. So I don't think any of that has been laxed. We still have, we're still so far expected that third graders master third grade skills and that be assessed via the SOL. So if we don't have any room to, that the state isn't giving us guidance on what not to teach, we don't want kids to continue to lose more and more and more. So we do have to have some, this is the minimal amount of time we can have to make sure that we try our best to teach all the content that students need for their grade level to be competitive. Oh, I'm sorry. Go ahead, Mr. Pascal. Okay, thanks. I was just going to speak about the state

157regulations for Encore. We are required to have physical education twice a week, and we're required to have general music once a week. So that's already three of our four days that we have to have encore and the state has not relaxed those requirements. Just as Ms. Johnson was just saying, we have not had a modification of the standards of learning that we're supposed to, nor the assessment limits that we're supposed to have by the end of the year where we're told. this is the minimum that the children have to know by the end of the year, because once again, SOLs are still going to be occurring. And if we cut any of our standards for first grade, well, we don't know how we're going to make them up when we get to second grade and

158then on and so forth and so on. And although in sync with my colleagues, I would also hope that all of us. currently and with these modifications would continue to work with families based on their individual circumstances. We cannot just say to a family, you don't have to come to PE. But I can support a family and say, if you can't come to PE tomorrow, we can work with that on a case-by-case basis. We want to engage families as much as we can and not have any of this stuff in virtual learning to push families away from schooling and away from what we have to offer. But there's a tipping point and we as leaders in our building do value the opportunity to be able to work with families to take their individual situations into

159consideration and to keep engage them and to work with them in the best interest of their children. And I wanted to just say that I think we are also trying to be very agile to some of the requests of our families. We have had a number of families that requested the learning packets. They said they saw that as a way to really engage students. So we wanted to be responsive. And that's why Dr. Mann and his team are actually creating the actual learning packets. Also, and as someone said earlier, we will continue to collect feedback and make modifications. as appropriate. There was a recommendation recently about the ability to be able to compact some of those objectives and skills and the possibility of maybe offering some of the encore through SEAL. So I think it's

160not saying that's going to happen, but as we continue to get feedback, remember we have all these teachers providing a lot of feedback, we'll continue to get feedback on this schedule and try to find ways to modify it. But I just want to about the learning packets. And I think personally and professionally, we just wanted to create some more engaging ways in which our young children could learn and be engaged as a way to respond to the synchronous requests and decline in that type of instructional mode. Okay, great. I think that we are probably ready to move on in the presentation for the last part. So I'll turn it back to Dr. Hutchings. Okay, Madam Chair, thank you so much. And we were actually, I believe, on slide 20 at this point. And that goes

161into our assessing the feasibility for 5.0. And specifically, I think it's important for the board as well as our community and staff to understand that we had to look at six specific areas as we were determining what was most feasible or what was the best feasible option for us with our reopening. And first, we had to look at the building capacity component. going to be sharing with you more specifics of what the layout of classrooms will look like during a global pandemic. You know, a lot of our families and even some of our staff, the only point of reference that we currently have is how things were prior to March 13th. us now opening our doors, it does require us to operate very differently, significantly differently. And that whole in-person learning experience looks very different

162from the furniture to the learning spaces, to the hallways, to how we do our routines and our transitions in between classes. We also had to look at our students. And specifically, we wanted to look at what were the specific student needs. We had to prioritize those needs. We had to prioritize the educational equity for our students, as well as our family and staff preferences as we move forward with this. But we had to keep our students in mind based on some of the data that we have received, because that's all we have right now to make some of these informed decisions that came out of the surveys. We had to specifically look at our PPE. as well as our health and safety training. I know that Dr. Hart, she's going to be sharing with you

163all some more details later on in this presentation for the second half in regards to our PPE and some of the measurements that we have put in place and procured, as well as our cleaning protocols and our ability to monitor our students' health, as well as the health mitigations that our Alexandria Health Department is monitoring throughout this process. as well. But these were all our assessment components to determine what was the best feasible option. One of the key factors is our staffing availability. You know, we have to keep in mind that our staff throughout the Alexandria City Public Schools, that some of our staff, you know, they have health conditions and they have situations that do not allow them to return to in-person. And all of these factors have to be put into consideration to

164determine if we're able to feasibly offer. an in-person session for all of the requests or all of the families who would like to be in in-person. Can we accommodate that? And we had to put all that into consideration as well as our direct instruction and the virtual roles because even when we pivot to having in-person instruction, we are still going to have those students who will be virtual and we need to make sure we have a structure in place to serve students whether they're in the building or outside of the building. Then we had to look at our instructional model and we touched on this a little bit earlier with just some of the adjustments we made for elementary. As you transition for the elementary virtual learning experience. As you transition into in-person, it does

165require us to make adjustments with our scheduling. And one fact that we have to put out there on the table that every family has to know now is that when we begin to transition some of our students, we are going to have to make some adjustments to schedules and student schedules and teacher schedules. That is the only way that this process is going to work because we're going from a online or virtual world into a hybrid, meaning some virtual and some in-person. And we cannot replicate what we're doing right now when we open those school building doors. So we are going to have to make some significant adjustments to our schedules. And that's why some of this timing piece is going to be important to us as well, so that we are not causing too

166many disruptions for our students. We're already disrupted with being virtual and the global pandemic. we're trying to just control some of the additional disruptions that are inevitable and will happen at some point. The technology component falls under the instructional model. As I mentioned earlier, for the students who are home, there will need to be additional technology devices to determine how can students from home, if the teacher's in school and some students are in school, how can they still be engaged in that in-school instruction? whether it's through live cams or some other technology devices, these are all components that we have to have in place to ensure that these are happening accurately and effectively and efficiently for our students. And then finally is our transportation component. You know, the one thing that we're not having to

167do while students are virtual is transportation. But our team has already begun to modify routes to determine how we can accommodate our families. That was why we had one of the questions on our survey to ask our families specifically. would you be able to drive your student to school or would your student be able to walk in that type of thing and who was eligible for the transportation component. So we wanted to make sure that we're making those modifications because if we can't get kids to and from school, that really... It defeats the whole purpose of us opening our doors. So we've already started those modifications of our bus routes and our bus capacity, by the way, which is impacted by our CDC guidelines that we must follow in order to bring our students back

168to in-person. And then our buses, like our bus monitors and also our bus drivers is another piece. So I do want to pivot into the who, the when, the what for in-person. One thing that I want us to be able to share out tomorrow when we send our communication out to our community is that the who, the when, the what for in-person is really for the next nine weeks, for the next second quarter. And it is not for the whole year. What we are supposed to do and what we planned to do and said we were going to do back in August was every seven weeks, we were going to make sure that we were evaluating our situation, doing an analysis, conducting surveys to obtain data from our families as well as our staff members

169to make informed decisions. And when we conducted that data, some of the very important information that we received from that was that the student populations that appeared from our data to be the most vulnerable were our special our students with special needs. And then that next group was our EL students. And then we began to get into our early learners and our K through fifth grade. So what we are trying to do is to make sure that we are following our data that we have received and that we are making sure that we're using these priorities. to kind of allow us to transition because the goal is to have all students at some point back into our school buildings but it's like stepping stones that we have to incorporate we have to make sure that

170we're getting what everything right so we had to start with first you know working with our most vulnerable in regards to our city-wide program and then expanding that then looking at our self-contained students and then expanding that looking at our preschool preschool elementary, I'm sorry, preschool early childhood center students in expanding that. And Ms. Werner is going to be able to talk more specifically about that in the next slide. But before we get to that, I do think it's important for Mr. Page to just share a little bit about the data around the elementary and the secondary, because Ms. Nolan, she brought up a very good point earlier. in regards to the fact that you know when you look throughout the presentation we're not talking about 6 through 12. um we've been focused on pre-k

171through five and why is that um so i think this is a good opportunity for us to talk about what the data has shown us and why we started with the pre-k-5 for the second math weeks Thank you so much, Dr. Hutchings. So just from a high level, what we saw within the analyses, and we certainly looked at data across grade bands and considered students within six through eight, as well as students within nine through 12, to see what our families were telling us, as well as our students and our staff. And what we began to see across the indicators that we collected survey data on were increased needs within the elementary grade bands. And that is the reason, you know, in terms of findings and kind of what we're talking about or what I'm

172talking about when presenting the survey results is the focus on those key findings. Now, that is not to say that there, you know, we're not areas for improvement and refinement within the 6 through 12 because there absolutely are. You know, it may be that we were at you know, let's just say, you know, 78% satisfaction within K-2 and then 84% satisfaction 9-12. So that, you know, still speaks to the fact that there absolutely are refinements. And I know through sitting on all the different groups and discussions that we have been collecting that information in terms of refinements needed within the 6-12. grade bands and I know that's information that our schools are working with and continuing refinements there as well. Sorry I was on mute. One key point Mr. Page as we transition into the

173next slide is that it is important for us to understand that when we're looking at the elementary school data there was additional concerns that came out of that and some of that related to students being home and child care needs that went along with the academic. component for our elementary, which we did not see some of those additional factors with our secondary. So what we were trying to do in lieu of trying to solve all problems at once and say we're going to go pre-K through 12, we were trying to really chunk our strategy so that we were looking at one, the most vulnerable, but two, looking at our elementary level students first and then pivoting at some point to our secondary but today's presentation is geared towards what we're planning to do for the

174second nine weeks and in within the second nine weeks we do not have our secondary students as a part of the transition it doesn't mean that they're not going to transition at some point but we are trying to build on the most vulnerable and then look at our our students who have special needs and then go into our EL and then into our early learners. So I want to transition into our student prioritization matrix because this is something that is very important too before Ms. Werner begins to speak on this is that this student prioritization matrix, and I think this was some of the confusion that was out in the community and that we want to be able to clear up while we're speaking to this. This is in regards to our students who are

175part of the citywide program. This is not in regards to all of our K-5 students at this point. A part of this student prioritization matrix was to look at, okay, if we're saying that our citywide students are most vulnerable right now, these are students who typically have nurse assistants or paraprofessionals and one-on-ones. constantly throughout the day to help with multiple things from walking to eating to using the restroom. All of these different supports that are needed that we are trying to find a way to support them more. through this in-person setting first and working our way from kindergarten through fifth grade and then also bringing in our early childhood special education students as well as our self-contained students in K-5 for language arts and math. But if Ms. Werner can go specifically into the student

176matrix that is about the city-wide program. and not all of our K-5 students. But Ms. Warner, if you can go into this slide for me, please. Good evening, Madam Chair, members of the board. I appreciate the opportunity to share information with you this evening regarding our... proposed return to school for students with disabilities. As Dr. Hutchings referenced, we are looking at our most vulnerable students. The United States Department of Education and the Virginia Department of Education have made it very clear that we retain all responsibilities for students with disabilities and that they should be a priority when we are looking at returning to school. So as we started this process, we looked at our youngest and most vulnerable students, who are those students in the citywide programs, pre-K through fifth grade. So I want to

177clarify for everyone what we mean by citywide program. Those are the students who receive their special education programming for a full day in a special education classroom with a reduced student-teacher ratio. Most of the students are in classes with one teacher. All students are in classes with one teacher and two paraprofessionals. Some of the classes have a maximum of six students, some have a maximum of eight. We particularly focus on the students with intellectual disabilities, autism, multiple disabilities, and social-emotional needs. So when we started to look at students, we broke them into priority groups. The first group that we are focused on returning are those students in the citywide programs, as you can see, who are in kindergarten through second grade. We have the potential of returning 60 students to school, but there are also

178constraints regard around that. And first of all, whether or not parents are willing to send the students back to school and staffing issues, as you noted in the slides from Mr. Page. That group is targeted to return November 5th. The next group of students are those same students we identified previously that are in grades three through five. We have approximately 55 students in that group who we are focused on returning two weeks later to make sure that everything flows, that everything works, that all the planning I'll talk about in my next slide works, and that we have time to address any issues that may arise before we fade up. So that next phase in group is scheduled for November 17th. The next group of students we have are the early childhood special education students. Those

179are two to four year old students. We have approximately 125 students who would be eligible to return in this group. And the last group, and that is scheduled for November 30th. The last group that we are also looking at are those students who typically access their services in a general education setting, but either get their direct math or language arts instruction in a separate setting from a special education teacher, or they get a special reading or math intervention. We have approximately 175 students who fall within that group, and we are looking at returning those students to school because their direct instruction comes from special ed, like it does in the citywide programs, along with the pre-K students early childhood on November 30th. So what I'd like to do in the next slide is talk to

180you about the process that we undertook in terms of planning for this process. We started in August, working very closely and very collaboratively with Dr. Alicia Hart's team. We first started to look at with Anita Cordova, the PPE and the facility cleanliness and sanitation protocols. We needed to ensure that we could. provide all the PPE necessary for our staff. These staff members will require enhanced PPE due to the needs of students in the classroom and the inability in many of the cases to maintain some of that social distancing that we've discussed so far. Many of the student needs are going to require close proximity and we need to ensure that staff have all of the enhanced PPE that they need to do that. The next aspect that we had to address was transportation. Did we

181have the protocols and the ability to provide transportation? Scott Merriman has worked very closely with us looking at bus routes and coming up with very specific protocols as to how students would load and unload on buses, how the buses would be cleaned, one bus, one group of children. We've worked very closely around that. We then worked with Cindy Hormel and her office about providing food, and we have a plan for breakfast, lunch, and snacks. We then really worked along safety and security were part of this. Mr. Contreras and his team, we've also had multiple consultations and work on our team with student services and Daryl Sampson to talk about the staff, supplemental staff that we would need, and I'll get to that in a minute. The schedule that we determined would be most feasible for

182students, we looked at an AABB schedule, which means Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday, Friday. And we looked at a half-day morning or afternoon schedule, so A group, B group. Office of Specialized Instruction staff believes that the best option would be a half day so that students had consistency. And the operations office thankfully agreed with us on that. And so we have a very specific protocol about how we can turn classrooms over. We've written a grant. We've got special electrostatic sprayers. We really have a great plan in place for that. So we then worked with the Human Resources Office to survey those teachers who would be willing to come back to school. So we have a pool of teachers and paraprofessionals who have indicated their willingness to return to school. And we then sent out a survey

183to parents. We translated it into all four languages and sent a survey to parents. asking whether or not they would be willing to send their students back to school. We included some very specific information about the PPEs, the sanitation protocols, transportation, and so we put some information in there. So once that survey was out, we then met with the administrators and the staff. We met with about 70 administrators and staff that were potential sites for returning students. to school. We had a very extensive meeting with those staff members. We went into breakout rooms and we asked four guiding questions. We presented the information to them about PPE and then we asked what additional information do you need about PPE and sanitation in order to return to school. What logistically do we need to consider as

184we are moving students through your building? Because our plan, as you've heard from Dr. Herring, is to really keep the students in a bubble. We are going to have the students come off the bus. They immediately go with their instructional staff in a group. They move straight to the classroom and they are in the classroom for three hours. focused on reading and math and instruction, and then they come back and get on the bus and go straight home. So we are looking at being very careful about not cross-contaminating and that we don't have additional staff coming in and out of those classrooms. So as a result, students will still have a half day of virtual instruction, which will include their related services and their Encore options. So we talk logistics with the school-based staff. The

185third question we ask is, what other supplemental staff would you deem necessary to be in the building? For example, many of our programs are very highly supported by the SST team members, the school counselors, the psychologists, the social workers, as well as specialists from the Office of Specialized Instruction. So we really needed to ascertain who would be necessary and relevant as well as school nurses. The fourth question we asked was, what did we not ask you? What other things should we be considering and what else should we be asking? So we have gathered all of that information and through the planning that we have right now, we have ascertained that the most Feasible process to bring students back to phase them in is to do it in one school setting. We have chosen Jefferson Houston

186because Jefferson Houston was specifically built and designed to handle the K-8. students with multiple disabilities and that that program is not affordable. We can move materials and supplies for the rest of the program to Jefferson Houston, but we could not move what Jefferson Houston has to any other setting. So we are now focused on returning the groups of students beginning November 5th to Jefferson Houston. We have had a meeting with the Jefferson Houston staff to begin discussions about what that would look like. And we have several plans in place, including a simulation run. We're going to do a dry run on October 27th. bringing buses and working the whole process. And we are scheduling tabletop with Alexandria Public Health. So at this point in time, we are finalizing class formations and working on the next

187steps of implementation. Thank you. Good evening, board members and viewing public. I have an opportunity tonight to present on what safety looks like within our classrooms. But prior to getting into this visual conversation, I wanted to highlight a few key points to just help provide context. Dr. Hutchings alluded to earlier PPE and what it is that my team has been doing to make sure that we are prepared for a return to school. I think it's important to note that Really since March, we have had staff in our buildings to include my team, our essential staff members. And over the last few months, we have had other groups be able to go into our facilities to complete assessments, to do administrative work, so on and so forth. And all of that took us being able to

188provide the necessary personal protective equipment for our staff members. So to that end, we have been ordering and keeping an inventory of PPE. to include disposable face coverings, gloves, face shields for certain employee groups, wipes, hand sanitizer. Sorry, I lost the word for a second. Hand sanitizer. And for some instances, we've actually been putting together PPE kits for particular groups that have multiple PPE needs outside of just a face covering. And we will continue to do so as we are ready to return to school. I do want to give a... great kudos to the maintenance and custodial services team. They have been instrumental in not only ordering this PPE, but making sure it is distributed to the groups that need it. And we are continuing to meet regularly. We are working with multiple vendors. We

189are also working with procurement because some of these items just based on the bulk in which we have to purchase it, we do have to follow certain procurement guidelines. So that team has been great in assisting us in this process, but just wanting to reassure everyone that PPE is available and we will make sure that for a return to school that every student and staff member that needs PPE will definitely have it. I also wanted to provide some context in regards to capacity within our schools prior to speaking to the visuals. Over the past summer, we presented a capacity estimate based off of two different scenarios. We had a scenario of maximum number of occupants that could fit into our buildings based off the social distancing guidelines, and then also a scenario of having no

190more than 10 individuals in a room. When we completed and shared that capacity scenario, the one thing that we were mentioning and want to continue to mention is that we will have to update some of these capacity figures really based on the configurations of each classroom. In the examples that you will see, you will see different iteration of what a classroom currently looks like, the ways that we would have to modify that classroom for social distancing, and just knowing that some of those numbers may change. One thing I do want to keep in context is that there will be some classrooms that will be able to fit more students than what it is that we'll be showing tonight. So just wanting everyone to understand that we are not saying this is the only amount that

191we can fit in each classroom, but wanting to share some visual examples to help provide context to those who will be walking into a room that looks much different when we return back to school. So with that said, the first grade classroom at Samuel Tucker is an example that we will use tonight. for our visual presentation. What you see before you is a classroom in which we completed social distancing of our desk. You will see to the far right corner that we had to move all of the excess furniture over as far as we can in order to accommodate the five desks that you see here. If we were able to remove that furniture and store it elsewhere, we would have been able to fit one additional desk. I think it's important to note the

192configuration of this particular room. In the far back you will see that there is a built-in bookcase which takes up some room. To the far right you can't really see it in this picture because the desks, the excess desks are covering it, but there was also cabinetry that juts out from the wall that takes up additional space. And then to the far left, again you can't see it in this visual, but there is a slight area that would allow for segmented cubbies. So these three different items really did remove some space that could have been used for student desk configuration using the social distancing guidelines. This is a view of the exact same room, but from the entryway looking in. We wanted to provide a visual taped guideline for teacher and instructional benefit as well

193to give a point of reference in terms of where would a teacher relatively stand within a classroom while providing instruction in this setup. As you see, there's an arrow pointing to a line, and that line indicates six foot of distance between that line and the front row of that student desk. So a teacher would have to stand behind that line in order to maintain that six foot social distancing as they are providing instruction in the classroom. This is the same room, but from the student perspective. As you can see, each, well, the desk in front of you has a sneeze guard. Right now it is colored blue, but it's important to note that that is a protective film that can be removed and will be removed. So the screen would be transparent. It can be

194affixed to each desk. It is not a permanent affixure, but it is one that we believe is sturdy enough to... prevent students from just knocking it over or from intentionally being able to remove it, particularly at the elementary school level. My team also wanted to provide examples of what social distancing markers throughout the school could look like. So here's just an example of a sticker that would be affixed to the floor. The sticker just says stop here and maintain six feet. One thing that we would strongly advocate for is a communication campaign of common symbols and what those symbols mean. We understand that our students as well as our staff would be coming back to a building that looks much different than the way it was when they left. And we want to make sure

195that everyone has a level of comfort to what these symbols and markers mean prior to physically coming back into the space. The team and I also wanted to provide an example of social distancing and directional signage and markers throughout a hallway. Again, this is still Samuel Tucker Elementary. This particular hallway measured 12 feet, so this was a prime example of how we could create a two-way directional hallway within a facility if the hallway is wide enough. completed and had directional arrows on the ground as well as signage, the social distancing markers. You will also see that there are cones that help indicate to stay within those bounds and not to walk down the middle aisle because the middle aisle is the six-foot social distancing marker. To conclude the visual presentation, we also wanted to provide

196some guidance for stairs because we understand that this will be really individualized based off of school. But what our recommendation is, is that during student arrival and student dismissal, that our stairwells are maintained as one directional. One way that we can help indicate the direction of our stairwells is by using a two-color cone system. You can't see it in this example, but one thing that we noticed, we had green cones at the bottom of this stairwell, which would indicate that the direction is up. And at the top landing, we would put red cones to indicate not to go down in that direction. We also show an example of having social distancing sticker markers on the wall in case students had to stop on the stairwell for any reason, they can still have an indicator of

197how to properly be socially distanced. And so after completing this on-site analysis, my team and I had some takeaways that we wanted to share. The first is the excess furniture in the classrooms. And so one thing that is really important to continue to emphasize is that there will be excess furniture in classrooms, such as excess desks, file cabinets, and any other type of instructional material that is not. would not be deemed needed in terms of this particular social distancing scenario. So some questions that we had is where would we store this furniture? We understand that every piece of space we have in our facilities right now is prime real estate. And so if we did take the position to try to store it on site, that provides less space to be able to program for

198instruction if needed. So this is something that the group and the team will still have to work through. Student belongings was another question that came up as we were doing this sort of simulation. Specifically, it's because we want to make sure that we are maintaining enough circulation room around each desk for students to comfortably be able to get in and out of their chairs. To that end, we have questions for rooms or for schools that may not have lockers or separated cubbies to where students can store their belongings. Does that mean that they keep their belongings with them throughout the day in order to avoid commingling? Or is there some other option that we can provide? for students so they don't have to necessarily. I'm sorry, so they don't have to. Thank you. So they

199don't have to keep those items with them throughout the day. And then transitions. I know that this has been mentioned earlier in the presentation, but one thing that we have to have continued conversation about is whether or not we are going to allow transitions throughout the day, or should we maintain a cohort in the same classroom for the entirety of the day. As we transition into the next slide, I think that our simulation process will definitely help answer some of these questions. And just to give you a preview of our simulations. We are going to do our first simulation October 27th at Jefferson Houston to prepare for the citywide program that will be launching there on November 5th. This will be a collaborative effort. It will not just be facilities and operations, but we are

200working very closely with teaching, learning, and leadership, student services, as well as the Alexandria Health Department. And the goal is to make sure that we are completing a simulation at every school prior to or by January 2021 as we continue to prepare for an eventual return to school for all of our students. And so with that said, I will turn it back over to Dr. Hutchings. Thank you, Dr. Hart. So we want to get to what the recommendations are for the board and what we're recommending to the board. And specifically, I think it's important to stress the fact that the recommendation that we are making today to the board is that we have a phased-in transition into in-person learning. It's starting with our most vulnerable students. And what we're defining as our most vulnerable students

201are students with disabilities and who are part of our citywide program. We're also recommending that with this first cohort of students who will begin our transition into in-person learning that we start on November 5th with our citywide students who are in grades K through 2 and that on November 17th we expand that to grades 3 through 5 of our citywide students and then on November 30th we expand to our early childhood special education students which will be housed at our ECC which which is our early childhood center as well as our students who receive self-contained language arts and math instruction in grades K through five. We're also recommending that this transition of the first cohort of our students that it be housed at Jefferson Houston pre-k-8 IB world school and the point in that is

202because Jefferson Houston is equipped to accommodate the wide range of grade levels and can accommodate our students who have some of these disabilities. We also are asking today, recommending to the board, are asking for the board to allow our staff to proceed with our plan to continue to phase in some of our most vulnerable EL students. And this is a phase in that we are hoping to begin in January for our most vulnerable EL. And that we're beginning with K-5 for this particular subgroup. And that we also want to be able to develop a plan that will identify additional groups moving beyond the K-5. We're also recommending today for the board to provide support to the staff to begin to explore and design a teaching and learning center. And I specifically want to talk to

203this because we didn't touch on this earlier because we are focused on our second nine weeks. You know, we said we were going to come in seven weeks to share what our analysis, what our recommendations are for the second nine weeks. But I want to begin to start preparing beyond our second nine weeks. I want to give an example and I'm going to use some of the information that Dr. Hart has shared earlier in regards to layouts in our classrooms. Let's use George Mason Elementary School for an example. We know that based on our data right now that we surveyed our George Mason community and about 80% of our families at George Mason, they are likely or somewhat likely to, so they're either very likely or somewhat likely to send their student back to school

204into our in-person learning environment. In order for us to follow our CDC guidelines, meaning six feet apart in our classrooms, making sure that we have one way in, one way out, making sure that we have the appropriate kind of structures so that the flow of the building will allow us to adhere to all those CDC guidelines. A building like George Mason, because of its size, is not able to accommodate 80%. of our students in that building or in that facility. So what we're going to have to begin to do, and this is just using George Mason as an example, but what we're going to have to be able to do is to how can we set up a structure where if there are more students who want to come back to a particular school, then

205we have building capacity for how are we going to be able to accommodate those students? So this is why we are looking at an option of potentially having these teaching and learning centers, one on the east side and one on the west side, so that students in grades K through five can be accommodated if parents choose for them to return to our in-person instruction and that we're not in a situation where we're not able to accommodate those students. at their initial school location based on the CDC guidelines. Now, the CDC guidelines could change over the next month. They could change tomorrow, potentially. But we want to be prepared if they do not change and if we're going to have to adhere to them, that we can accommodate all of the families who would prefer for

206their child to be in an in-person setting. This also will require us to have to assign or reassign our staff members as well. So the student component is one issue. The staffing component is another issue. If we have 80% of our families, and I'm going to use George Mason as another example, wanting to come back, and then we have less than 60% of our staff wanting to come back. into the school building, then there is a disconnect right there because we may be in a situation where we don't have the staffing to be able to accommodate the need, meaning the students who would like to return. So having a central location will allow us just to have some more options and opportunities to utilize more staff who might be able to accommodate these requests of

207students returning. So we want to just be able to go into the design phase and the exploration phase of doing that in case we have to continue to follow the CDC guidelines so that we can accommodate those student requests. The final thing is to have the board endorse a development of a plan for us having a full-time virtual school learning option. And this is for students in pre-K through 12. Even after this global pandemic, we still will have families who just don't feel comfortable sending their children back into an in-person setting. And we are going to still have to provide an educational learning experience for those students. And this is putting us in a very different situation. It's changing the name, I think, the game, the name and game of public education. But we are

208going to have to start looking at. a 100% virtual school learning option that can be offered to our students and our families for students in grades pre-K through 12. And what we need the endorsement of the board to be able to do is to start developing a plan for that so that we're not just developing a plan for now, but also beyond this global pandemic so we can accommodate our families. So with that said, I want us to go right into our questions for the second half of the presentation this evening. Okay, we'll start off with Ms. Gentry. Thank you. Can you all hear me? Yes. Okay, great. So again, I want to thank everybody that was a part of putting together this. really thorough presentation and all the thoughtful work that's gone into enhancing

209the Virtual Plus program that we're doing right now. It's very important that we do that. As Dr. Hutchings just said, there's no doubt that while we can't predict exactly how the future is going to go, it's clear that at least some portion of our students are going to need to continue in a fully virtual learning environment for some time. So I'll just say that I certainly think that that's a sound approach for us. to keep that as part of our planning. However, as much as I appreciate all the information that we've received, I'm still left with a rather large overriding question. Our neighborhood school divisions have presumably gone through their own work in planning for reopening. They've reviewed health metrics. They've gotten feedback from families and staff. They've done analysis of their facilities. And they

210seem to have reached noticeably different timelines in regards to their reopening. In many ways, there's strong alignment between our plan and theirs. Most jurisdictions have also made a prioritization order similar to ours, with the first students returning being those receiving specialized instruction, then acknowledging English learners, then younger students, and finally older students. But where there is a divergence is in the timing of bringing these different categories of students to the classrooms. As we meet tonight, Fairfax County is having their own school board presentation. I've had an opportunity to have an admittedly brief review of their slides, but I was struck by the familiarity in the content, sequence, and flow of their slides. Like us, they opened with information about the CDC recommendation for health metrics to review when considering reopening. Like us, apparently Fairfax County

211is also experiencing what they displayed as a red metric on the degree of newly reported cases with lower green numbers and some of the other metrics. They also provided information about staff availability for return to in-person. However, their presentation diverges when it comes to timeline. Their tentative schedule calls for a return of a hybrid schedule of two days a week in the following manner. November 16th for kindergarten, November 30th for grades one through two, January 4th for grades three through six, and February for secondary students. And we see similar patterns for return dates in other jurisdictions. For example, Arlington has K-2 returning November 10th, third through fifth, December 1st, and secondary by January. I will not continue to list divisions, but I will point out at this time, in a comparison of the current tentative

212plans that have been released by our neighboring jurisdictions, we appear to be an outlier. We have no plan for return for any of our general education population to any form of in-person learning. And while I want to make clear that I understand that any references to the second semester or the third quarter are only extremely preliminary, our extremely preliminary plans, again, are an outlier with no real reference, substantive reference to secondary students. I want to reiterate that in all of my years as a parent, committee member, and a board member, I have learned that we cannot do a straight apples-to-apples comparison between other jurisdictions. We do have unique characteristics that make our situation different from these other jurisdictions, but I think we need to shine more of a spotlight on these differences in this instance.

213Slide 20 broke out the categories to consider when assessing feasibility for return in person. And it was in slide 20, it was building capacity, students, PPE and health and safety training, staff availability, instructional model and transportation. And what I I apologize for the long windedness, but. I'm doing this because this is my one big, big, big question. And I'd really like for Dr. Hutchings and your team to offer your thoughts on what you think led to these other jurisdictions to go through the same analysis process in these same categories and reach a different conclusion. Why do they believe that they can provide at least some measure of in-person instruction for the general education population? Are these elements of feasibility? that we have deeper dive information on and that perhaps other jurisdictions are overlooking? Is there

214something particular about our buildings, about our student population? So I just, you know, I do understand, you know, why this is a question that I think we are getting, not just from the community, but also from myself as a board member. So thank you very much. Thank you, Ms. Gentry, for that question, very in-depth question. And one, I do want to say that it is important for us to understand that Alexandria City Public Schools, that we've had a building capacity issue prior to this global pandemic. As you all know, this is one of the reasons why we've gone into this major capital improvement project over the next 10. plus years because all of our schools are over capacity. That is not the same situation that many of our jurisdictions, bordering jurisdictions have. They have it

215in some of their schools. We have it in all of our schools. It's every building. And that's a huge challenge for us. We also have to look at our staffing data. And I have not looked specifically at our neighboring jurisdictions staffing data in particular, but our staffing data does not make it feasible for us to actually have the staffing to address the percentage of families who would opt in to having their kids in person. So that makes it not feasible. I do think that it's important for us because Natalie Woods, who's one of our consultants that is working with us. And I know that Ms. Wood, she works with other jurisdictions throughout the Northern Virginia area, as well as across the country, that she can chime in a little bit to talk more specifics around

216our data collection in comparison to other school divisions without naming those school divisions, of course, but just talking to how our data collection may differ and may be the same in some ways and how our approach may be different as well as the same in some ways. Thank you, Dr. Hutchings. Yeah, really good question. I think as other districts around start opening, whether it's a couple miles away or a couple states away, it definitely brings up this question for all of us. So some of the things that the Alexandria team has really been thinking about is students. I think somebody might be there. We're good. Is thinking about the students that are requesting in-person learning. Also from that, thinking about the staff that are willing, able, comfortable in coming into the buildings. And it all

217comes down to a numbers game as well. You're comparing students that are interested and the families that want to bring them back in person. For all those students that want to stay virtual, you have to make sure that your staffing matches that and you have the staffing that's available to meet those needs of virtual and in person. Very similar to what other districts are doing. So trying to gather those preferences, gathering information from families and students, looking at building capacity like Dr. Hart was sharing. It's a really important piece of that. There's so many different comparisons that everyone's thinking about. And I would say that in comparison to other districts around very similar approaches, one thing that is really important to the Alexandria team is making sure that everyone that is coming into buildings is

218comfortable and they feel safe and they feel supported to enter their buildings. I just think that's an extra piece that's really important to consider. I think it's a really good question and lots of people are considering it. There's also a lot of timelines, like when Dr. Hart was sharing about facilities and operations to be able to open back up. transportation has to be routed. You have to figure out which students are coming in, which days of the week they're coming in, how often they're coming in, how we're going to get them to the building safely, how we're going to get them home safely, how we're going to communicate that to their families, how we're going to communicate that to our staff, how we're going to communicate that to our school leaders. We've heard from a

219couple of school leaders tonight that are helping to plan that process out at their schools and thinking about from a virtual environment to a hybrid environment, how that adjusts their schedules as well. I totally appreciate all that complexity. I'm not sure if we're experiencing a noticeably different level of complexity about those logistical questions or about a potential gap in staff. um eagerness to return versus family willingness to to return so i'll look forward to hearing questions from members but but but again i i i really think it's um We often have to make decisions that are not always unanimously embraced by the community. And I'm comfortable with that and accept that that's a part of leading a complex organization. But I do like to be able to explain. to explain how we reached the decisions

220that we made. Yes. And Ms. Gentry, I think the main explanation to this is the fact that our staffing percentages and our student percentages, they're not equivalent. They're far off. And specifically, when you dig into the data a little deeper, the way we presented the data and the slides that... that were presented today, it included both are somewhat likely and very likely. When you disaggregate that, and you'll see this in the appendix of the actual data report, I don't remember what page, but I know it's in the appendix, you can actually see the very likely, meaning you're going to return. that discrepancy is significant. And we're looking at numbers for like 20% of staff in some cases, or 20 something percent of staff in some cases, with 60 plus percent of students wanting to return

221or families willing to send their kids back. That is where the disconnect occurs. We would end up putting ourselves in a situation that we open our doors and we don't have the staffing there to actually teach in person to our particular students. So we are trying to go from an angle of how can we start off with this first wave of transition to show, and maybe this will hopefully get some more confidence from our staff that, hey, we can do it. We can follow the CDC guidelines. We can do the temperature checks. We can have the flow appropriate. We can do the building capacity component. And we then could have more staff members comfortable coming into our school so that we can move at a faster pace. But with the data we have today, It

222just doesn't look that way. But it could change. We are still going to have to survey our staff and our families again. So this is not the last survey that we do. And we're going to have to survey every throughout this every seven week kind of period that we're looking to gather our data. And we might see some changes now that people are actually being able to see what a classroom. And when we get into our simulations, I think that's going to help even more with our staffing, too, that we will be able to catch up with some of our neighboring jurisdictions as we move forward. But right now, our data is just not allowing us to do that when you look at the student percentage versus the staffing percentage. That really is the main

223reason why it looks different in Alexandria than all of the other school divisions. Okay, I have the next question from Miss Alderton. Thank you. I don't know if it'll be helpful for me to chime in. Sorry, we can't hear you, Miss Anderson. Oh, Miss Anderson. Sorry? Yes? Did someone else want to speak about that? Oh, no. It's me, right? You called on? Oh, okay. Sorry. Alderton, did I not say Alderton? You did. You did. I think maybe Dr. Hutchings can't hear. But, oh, hello? Yeah. Okay. I don't know if this is helpful to add on to what Dr. Hutchins said. I did have a question, but in participating with the planning teams, it was really important. I think overall people felt like we didn't want to start from an angle of making teachers feel like

224they were forced. to do this because of the ramifications of that as well, not being necessarily good and causing additional problems. So there was a lot of discussion about, you know, a way to make the situation comfortable and, you know, starting with a particular group and having people be able to see, oh, this is working. you know, maybe that builds a little bit of confidence. So I was just adding that on to what Dr. Hutchings had to say. My question was a little more specific, and I think it's for Dr. Werner. I was just trying to get this clarified in my head. So we're talking about 60 K through 2 students in the citywide program to start. Is that correct? We have a pool of 60. A pool of 60. A pool of 60 potential

225students will return based upon parent preference and staffing availability. Okay. So, okay. So we don't really know yet because my next question was how many certified staff? Well, if we had all 60, do we know how many certified staff we would require? It would require our full complement of teachers at this point. And we have, we, well, so let me just tell you, three K-5, we have 35 special education certified teachers and almost 50 paraprofessionals. Okay. So, but, but that we wouldn't require all of them to do the citywide K-2. No, it would be a lower number of that. So I think I understand what you're asking. And so I can tell you right now, we have somewhere between 25 and 30% of the instructional staff who have been polled who are willing to return

226at this point. So we are working now with the parent preferences and gathering that information to determine the last composition. Okay. And do we know how many classrooms we would need? At this point, we're still gathering the information regarding the number of students. Okay. All right. And then my second question was about, I was trying to frame as we move along in the continuum, we're looking at elementary students who are self-contained ELA and math. Are these, I couldn't capture if, because I know you mentioned a half day. Is this essentially a half day for those students and then they would do their encore in science and history virtually? They would only be coming back for their language arts and or math instruction. Okay, thank you. And a part of that advantage that we had by

227doing the half day was because we wanted them to come in. daily versus two times a week. A lot of school divisions are doing a two and a two, two days on, two days off, that type of thing. That is not best practice for students with special needs because they really need that consistency. So for this particular group, we were trying to make those adjustments based on the need of the population and not doing the general, everybody does a two by two. So we tried to structure it in a half day so that we can get. half of the students in in the morning, half of the students in in the afternoon, and they can consistently come to school every day versus doing two days in school and two days out of school. Thank you.

228Next we have Ms. Lorber. Thanks so much, Madam Chair. I wanted to follow up on the question that Megan asked, a little different with Dr. Werner as well. When the parents were surveyed about whether they would come back, the parents within the citywide programs, were they told that this was going to be in one site? Was that part of the question? Would you bring your child back if the program takes place at Jefferson Houston School? Was that something they were asked? No, ma'am, because at the time we developed the survey, we were still considering multiple options. Started considering returning students to five different sites. originally and then based on logistical constraints we then started to look at narrowing the focus as to where we would open a building because when you start to look at

229all the supporting staff that was necessary it seemed to make more sense to come to the program this way. I was going to say in addition to what Ms. Warner was just saying is that another key component is that what we've learned through just this process and looking at the transition of our citywide students, not only can we just rely on the survey data, like that has to be the first aspect to determine kind of like some of our planning, but then we do have to follow up with a specific commitment, like, yes, I am going to return. And what we are in the process now of doing is contacting each of our families to have the discussion around these are the safety precautions that we're taking. This is what the day is going to

230look like. This is how our transportation process and everything is going to work. And now we need a commitment about coming back to school for in-person instruction. So we're going to have to do that for this. We're also going to have to do that as we transition in our other grade levels in our other student populations. We cannot just rely solely on the survey data. We are going to have to do those follow-up commitment data. No, of course. No, the reason I ask the question is I think when we do the follow-up from based on mail I'm getting and calls I'm getting, when we do the follow-up, survey with specificity, I think many of the families who wanted to come back may not want to come back if Jefferson Houston represents. a new school for

231them because they're concerned that their children will be uncomfortable in a different environment than they've known to date. Or the other thing I think some people are concerned about, and again, I understand that because of COVID, I understood immediately the practicality of one versus many locations. It's just practical. Same with the east side and the west side, K through five locations. But as practical as those are. I think they do pose some problems for community acceptance. And for me personally, the one thing I get nervous about is grouping all students with disabilities in one place, just because that's something we've worked so hard to get away from. And I only worry that because of COVID, we might get back into a pattern of doing that for convenience. But most of all, I think the challenge

232we have, I think we have to be very clear with folks that we have a tremendous challenge, both of teaching lack of teachers and space. I mean, I think those points, the points you made early on, Dr. Hutchings, are really key. But I really was just curious if you had already polled the families about the location because of the mail and I'm getting about what you're going to send us all the way over there, et cetera, et cetera. So anyway, I could put this in a context for you that I think will, will change perceptions. We hold ESY at Jefferson Houston every year. And the students all come as part of the ESY program to Jefferson Houston. And they transition beautifully. They come and they meet and they work with teachers that they've not had

233before. Some get their teachers, some don't. I am telling you, that program runs flawlessly. And many of these students have already made that transition. Granted, it's our pre-K to two. But these students have all been with us since preschool and all of them have come to Jefferson Houston. Most of them have come to Jefferson Houston and transitioned with no issues. So the other aspect is it's a very familiar building to them and we are going to follow very much the ESY model in terms of how we supervise and structure the program while they're there. So I actually am not nearly as concerned as I would be if we were going to TC Williams or something like that with this group of students. In addition, let me assure you the citywide classes are going right back

234to where they started from as soon as we have the general education population back in the building. Okay, so thank you for the clarification. That's very interesting about the ESY. I appreciate that. Thank you. If everybody starts to think about it in the ESY context, it becomes a very different picture. That was a very helpful point. Thank you. Next up, I have Dr. Reeve. Thank you. Before I get to my main question, can I just ask one quick clarification about this, the citywide programs? Will the students be staying with their same teachers? Are you trying to keep them with their same teachers, if possible, that they're working with now? Or I was just wondering how that factors in. So Dr. Reed, I'll put some safety as opposed to this year. We have some, we have

235at my last count five citywide vacancies. We really had a very difficult time with COVID recruiting teachers this year. So we have already kind of consolidated students across schools. So for example, we have a program for students with intellectual disabilities at Mount Vernon and at John Adams. We have clustered the students and divided them between the three teachers that we have at those two schools. So students already this year may or may not have had their teacher from last year, but we have worked very, very hard to, as we call it, cross-platform and have the students work with new staff. We will bring back into face-to-face instruction the students who are that we can handle with the capacity that we have. And I'm going to be very upfront right now and tell you, we have,

236as I said, between 25 and 30% of our available staff, which means we will be able to handle about 25% of the potential pool of students. Those students will work with the teachers that come back, and we may have to transition some of the students' instructional program to other teachers, but their case manager will remain the same. So the person who is responsible for communicating with the parent, making sure all of the IEP components and other things are followed. providing progress reports, that person will stay consistent throughout the year. But we may have, and we often have case managers and instructional staff who are different and they collaborate and share that information. So we will have to maybe pivot a little bit and may have to rearrange some students. But at this point, we only

237have the capacity to return about 25% of the students. So it will not be a massive uptick. Ms. Werner, just to add on to what you said, because Dr. Reif, that was a great question to ask, because that is going to be the case for when we transition our other students as well, because of the fact that we just can't replicate what we're doing virtually into a hybrid. or in-person learning transition, that there will be situations where some students might be assigned to a different teacher. Some teachers might be assigned to different students. Some of the students potentially might not even be from your current school because depending on the way the percentages look right now, it's almost impossible for us to accommodate all of the students with the staff who are able to return.

238I also wanted to understand if the city, if the secondary students in the citywide program are determined to be less vulnerable, is that why they're not being included in this program? Actually, as Dr. Hutchings said, we focus on this quarter. Okay. They are slated for next quarter. Okay. We start to move to secondary, looking at secondary phase in the third quarter. We really. we really focused on this quarter and what we could put into place for this quarter. Okay. The other question I wanted to ask, I'm sorry, is about the teaching and learning centers. And it's also like a little bit related to what you just said, because I think... I understand that we're doing these nine weeks every seven or nine weeks, like reevaluating the situation. But I think that in the community, folks

239want to get a sense of like, where are we? Like, do we have the direction we're going in long term? Because I think people are just really confused about that. And maybe we're just taking it one quarter of time, literally, and we're not even really thinking about quarter four. I'm sensing that people want to understand what you're thinking about quarter four, but to the teaching and learning centers, there's the impression that these are like kind of similar to what's happening with like the rec program or the other, you know, the partners program right now. And I'm just, I want to understand if it's. if that's going to be like, what is the instructional model that you're thinking about at these teaching and learning centers? And am I reading this correctly that the planning for those

240teaching and learning centers won't begin until January? Is that what I'm understanding? So if you could just talk a little bit more about those. So first, in regards to the teaching and learning center concept in general, it is to have in-person learning. So it's not to be set up or structured the way our child or day care programs are right now. Your audio is breaking up. static. No, it's not better. Could you switch to your phone? What if you get on your phone? I think it's the button. Lose the AirPods. Is he frozen? I think he's frozen now. Is he frozen? Oh my gosh. Okay, well, I think Old Town had a cut yesterday, but I think Old Town's not the best internet in our city either. Somehow, I guess it's... Our lights just flashed.

241I wonder if there was... I'm not that far from Old Town. That's true. Is he gone altogether? He's trying to log back on, I think. Oh, okay. So he moved. Say something else, Dr. Hutchings? Okay, can you hear me now? Yes. Oh, so much better. All right, sorry. I mean, I don't know what happened. Just stay in that one place. That's going to work. You're all like flinching at what you said, but it wasn't what you said. I forgot what my question was. What was the question? Teaching and learning centers that they're really not, they're not like the daycare. They're, they're. Oh, yeah. They're different in the program. So, yeah, so the learning, so I know that Madam Chair was listening. Thank you. So the learning centers are, you know, the teaching and learning centers

242are not designed to be like the daycare happens right now. So it's not going to be students are housed in a location and still participating via Zoom. The goal is to actually have in-person instruction and wanting to have the teaching and learning centers is just to afford more classrooms. for the elementary level because in order for us to accommodate the building capacity, we were not able to do that in some of our school locations. So to prevent us from having to have like maybe one or two schools that they might stay on campus, but then all the others have to share other spaces, if we house them at a larger facility, it will allow us to accommodate the in-person request. And we've been focused so much on the elementary component because. Based on our data

243right now, as of right now, the push is to try to get our elementary kids into the in-person setting due to child care needs and being younger students and having to have that consistency. Whereas, according to our data, our secondary students, they are just performing a little bit, especially at the high school level. They are a little more accustomed to using computers. because a lot of them already have electronics and things of that nature, that it is easier for them. I'm not necessarily saying that it's the right thing for them, but it is easier for our secondary students. So if we're going to have to choose to be able to accommodate all elementary kids, we are going to have to determine how do we build more capacity to make that possible. And is the planning

244starting for that? Is the planning starting in January? No, that planning is starting as soon as the board tells us yes. So we got to start that planning right away. We're hoping to be able to go into some form of transitioning in January is the goal, is that, you know, once we are able to come up with. the actual design and plan that we are then able to really start transitioning as early as January is the goal. But we need to be able to explore and design that first. We did not want to, you know, do that. a possibility because there are some implications for going down that path. One is being, as Ms. Nolan asked earlier today about the secondary. Well, if we're using our middle schools, well, where are the middle school kids

245going to be able to go? So then we may have to have a discussion. Do we use the high school for middle school and high schools? So it is going to be a domino effect that is going to occur from this conversation. But what we're trying to do is not resolve all of our issues pre-K through 12. In regards to in-person, we're trying to chunk it because when you look at the CDC guidelines, and I don't know if other jurisdictions are having this discussion too, but when you look at the CDC guidelines, you're now kind of decreasing your building capacity. And for a school division where our capacity is already over capacity, so that means we already have more students than we need in our buildings, it makes our issue even more of a problem

246when people want to come in person. Now, if we have less families who want to come in person, we wouldn't have this issue. But it seems that majority of our... schools are at least at 50% plus who want to return and each building can't accommodate that. Currently with the current data that we have, but it can change. Okay, thank you. I have Mr. Suarez up next. Thank you, Chair Anderson, and thank you to all the staff and everyone for your thoughtful presentation, and I know there's an immense amount of work that has gone into this and that there are no easy solutions. I do have a few comments and a couple questions and just would like to kind of hear thoughts on them. So globally, I just think that One of the reasons that some

247of my colleagues and I have been struggling with the sort of plan and the presentation has been kind of the way the presentation was structured. And I think personally, and I think we've kind of drawn out some of these issues as we've had this conversation. I think it would be helpful if going forward, the presentation would almost kind of be flipped around. And I say this in the following way. I think the community needs to understand at the front end, you know, what is the landscape of the buildings look like? What's this landscape of space look like? And sort of what is available in terms of space? And what is available from a staffing? standpoint, because going back to Ms. Gentry's question, it kind of took us a long time, took us three hours about

248to get to that understanding of these building and staff constraints really sort of ultimately led to this decision. And so I think that going forward, it would be just, and maybe this is because of my learning modality too, but like, I think it would be really helpful to just sort of see visually, you know, what are our What buildings do we have, whether it's ACPS buildings or city buildings, partnerships, or what have you? What is the capacity within those buildings? This kind of goes back to something Dr. Hart was talking about earlier. I know before we had seen some of this, you know, information about like what the capacity might be under the CDC guidelines and so forth. But really kind of understanding what that looks like and then layering on top of that our

249current understanding of. what the staff availability looks like based on staff risk aversion and the preferences and so forth. Because that really allows us to see in the community to understand, what are we working with in terms of the landscape? And then from there, we can use the sort of equity lens to sort of see, okay, how can we use that space? I think using that approach might be helpful and I think could clarify a lot of the things. And another comment I have, which is on a more positive front, is that I do appreciate and respect the fact that this has to be a phased-in approach. We cannot just go open up the floodgates and open willy-nilly. We need to make sure we're methodical. I really appreciated some of the comments about how You

250know it's important to be incremental to to give teachers, the reassurances that we're doing things safely we're following the right protocols all those sorts of things, so I want to validate that and acknowledge that. as well. But I do think, though, just going back to my first comment, I think the transparency around that and showing that in a clear way is going to be really important in terms of the staff availability, in terms of the building availability and what we're working with. And just to show the community that we are exhausting all our options. We are looking at every possibility. I think we've done that, but I think in the presentation, we need to kind of show our work, so to speak, and make sure that... we've shown that to the community. So, and I

251guess, I guess my next comment is I'd like to understand a little bit better some of the rationales behind some of the decisions. And I kind of, it kind of goes back to what Dr. Reed was just talking about. Like, where are we going? I too have the concern that We haven't really had the discussion about six to 12 during this conversation. I do think that going forward, we're going to need to just be again, transparent about, you know, how, how does each set of learners fit in? Because what I think we're ultimately doing here, going back to sort of equity for all and sort of the vision of the school division is there is a bit of triage here and there is a bit of prioritization that inevitably has to happen because of the

252constraints that we've been talking about. And so I think it's going to be important in future presentations to kind of, you know, set out, here's what we're doing for K to, you know, five, here's what we're doing for six to eight, here's what we're doing for nine to 12. And sort of here's the reason for that. And I guess that sort of gets me to this sort of one question I have, and I probably have three or four, but the first question I have is sort of, What is the sort of plan in terms of ultimately sort of figuring out how we're prioritizing need, you know, as we do open up over the next several months, you know, and what does that look like and how are we going to, you know, map that out?

253I'm just sort of wondering what the initial thinking might be around that, how we're going to get there. And I guess that relates to one of my questions, which is. I understand the importance of making sure that we're allowing kids, students with special needs who are in the citywide program to come back first. But to me, on some level, the sort of cutoff at K-5 seems somewhat arbitrary. And I think some parents in the community have expressed that concern. And so, you know. What is the rationale behind that? Like, why aren't we, you know, allowing some students who are maybe in 10th grade who have really severe needs? Why are we not welcoming them back vis-a-vis the K-5 students? I think we need to articulate that. And I just want to understand that a little

254better. And then just one other thing is. Um, with regard, I also want to understand a little bit with regard to K to two, because I feel like a lot of the comments we've gotten in the community have been about, um, really having concerns at the K-2 level that it's harder to keep kids engaged at K-2. They're not able to, you know, focus as much on the Zoom calls, all those sorts of things. And, you know, a lot of school divisions regionally and nationally are prioritizing K-2 going back. And because a big board priority is literacy, you know, and making sure all students can read by the third grade, because that's such a huge benchmark. I am wondering if we should be putting our thumb in the scale a little bit more to get K

255to two back, you know, because of the, those high literacy needs. And. I'm just trying to understand what the thought process has been around that because apart from students with special needs who I think are high priority globally, not just K-5, but also 6-12, I would see another very high priority to be K-2 literacy because if our kids aren't able to read by the third grade, we all know the data, we all know the statistics. And so I'm just kind of wondering what our thinking is. thinking is there so um i know i've said a lot and i've made a lot of sort of different points um but i'd appreciate and that's what i tend to do but i this time i waited three and a half hours to speak so i feel like i

256had to make my points um So I'd appreciate thoughts on all of those issues, because I really do think that this K-2 piece is independently important. And I'd like to understand, you know, why aren't we pushing harder to get all K-2 back, you know, and making that a global priority? Yeah. Mr. Suarez, one, I just want to say thank you for your comments and your commentary and questions. Because I had to listen to the commentary first. And I'm like, all right, what's the question? I got to get it. But I think I have it. First, let me get to the first point about the pre-K through second grade. Because I think it's going to be important for the board, as well as the community and staff, to understand we... When you isolate, let's just look

257at pre-K through second grade, and we bring them all back, knowing if when we add three through five, we can't accommodate them into that same building, we're going to have another issue. We're going to say, yes, we've accommodated pre-K through second, but now we can accommodate three through five in this structure at your school. what we were trying to do from our angle is to look at pre-k through five and to come up with a plan to so that if everyone wanted to come back we could accommodate it and not have to turn people away um And I think that one key piece to this is that our building capacity, I don't want to underestimate how significant the building capacity component is. The further we get into this and we start demonstrating that we can

258accommodate having students and we can follow CDC guidelines, more people are going to want to come. And the more who want to come, Trying to live up to those CDC guidelines becomes more and more difficult in our very compact schools. It just makes it almost impossible. So I just think that we have to, if we did the K-2 right now, we would be in the same boat that we're in with secondary. You know, it would just be, the issue would now be 3-5. It would be like, yes, you accommodated K-2, but how are you going to accommodate 3-5? It would be the same problem, just a different group. So we're trying to, you know, focus on the younger grades in that grade span of pre-K through five first as a priority. And then we're going

259to have to work through what that secondary component is going to look like after. Now, I didn't get this. What was your because you had two questions. I got the commentary around flipping our presentation and I appreciate that. And I, you know, we can talk with our team with that at a different angle, but what was your other question? I guess the other question was basically, you know, what is our, it's clear from the presentation that there are certain sort of prioritizations that are being made based on need, right? Like in terms of special ed citywide, EL, and so forth. And obviously, I think the board would agree that those are high need priority groups. I don't think anyone disputes that. But at a certain point, you know, right now we're doing something very, you're

260proposing something very incremental. But as this becomes a more opened up situation, There are going to be questions, you know, and there's going to be mismatches, I think, as you've alluded to, between how many teachers are coming back and how many students and families want to come back. And so I think that inevitably creates a situation where there needs to be some sort of needs matrix or prioritization based on need that may need to happen. Now, hopefully. everything is perfect. The number of teachers who want to come back and the number of families want to come back and match one-to-one, but we're not in a perfect utopian universe and that probably won't happen. So what, so my question was sort of, it was sort of a meta question, but it's an important question of, you

261know, what are we doing now to sort of think about what that prioritization would look like? And I think, you know, that. That sort of got back to my struggle with why are we saying K-5 citywide special ed come back and not 6-12 when, from my standpoint as someone who's represented kids with special needs in court, I know that some of the kids who are in 6-12 may have extremely acute needs, not to trivialize one need over the next, but there are kids in 11th and 12th grade who need to be ready to transition. into the workforce who might have severe special needs, for example. So I'm just trying to understand what, part of my question was understanding why we didn't. think more holistically for the citywide special education students. But also, I just want

262to look into the future, going back to, again, Dr. Reif's point about where we're going. How are we going to make sure we're thinking about who we're going to be letting back, you know, as we open up and as we expand the in-person option going forward? So I'm going to open the floor for Ms. Werner and Dr. Mazingo to talk to Gary for Citywide. I can answer the second part of your question. And I just want to reiterate our transition, our phase in transition is laid out through fifth grade. So right now what we're looking at is we're trying to transition in our Citywide students and that's pre-K through five. We're trying to transition in our special education students who are receiving self-contained classrooms for language arts and math. We are also trying to transition

263our early childhood special education students as well. And that is all through the second quarter. We are also a part of our plan is to then transition our K through five students. And that's the gen ed population. That's all of our K through five students beginning in January. We do have a transition now where it does stop as Ms. Nolan pointed out earlier today, it stops at fifth grade and we have not included the secondary component into this. And some of the reasons for that is if we make that commitment right now to transition all of our secondary students, we still don't know if we have the capacity for the elementary. So we have to first, and with the data we have right now, it's still not definitive because, you know, a month from now,

264we might have more students, which is going to make the problem even more difficult. You know, the more kids who want to come back, the more difficult it is for us because of our building capacity in our schools and meeting the CDC guidelines. Now, if we didn't have CDC guidelines, this would be an easy, no problem. We would be able to. have people come back like we normally do, have our class size with 23 up to 24 students. But with the CDC guidelines, every classroom has a different number of kids. And that's the first issue. Every school is a different size. That's another issue. And we can't accommodate every family that wants to come back. The extra, you know, kind of like wrench into all this is the staffing component. And for all the people

265who are back, if we don't have the staffing in person, there is kind of a disconnect. Doesn't mean it's impossible because then we're going to have to start looking into having live cams in our schools and maybe a teacher teaching from home and the kids might be in school and they can watch the teacher from home teaching and somebody's watching. So we got to get into all that too. But the biggest issue is our building capacity. and the disconnect between the staffing return and the student return. They're just not matching. It doesn't have to be a one-to-one because that's not, you know, our numbers are never one-to-one with students and teachers. But it can't be so drastic where you got a 25% to 60%. Like that's going to cause some significant challenges. And even with

266us trying to fill teaching positions at a time in which... for HR is a challenge. Us trying to fill substitute teaching positions during a global pandemic is a challenge. And then you add when we do pivot into, you know, in person, when we have situations where there is a positive in our schools and people are having to be quarantined for 14 days, we're going to go into this rotation of maybe having some blocks of times where you got to shift kids around again. So we're just trying to ease into it. It's not that we're trying to avoid it. We just don't want to jump into this transition right away. And we want to try to get through some of these kinks with a smaller number of students before we open up the floodgates. But I

267don't know if Dr. Mazzinco or Ms. Werner, if you all can talk a little bit about the secondary. citywide program students because that was the second part of Mr. Suarez's question. Thank you so much. Just briefly, Mr. Suarez, thank you for asking that question because I wanted to, I think, comment on the first portion of your question, which was about the appreciation for the incremental. kind of meticulous process moving along. What I wanted to say though in collaborating with some of the divisions in this area and looking at some of the systems that may be a little further along than Alexandria, most of them started out just like we're starting. I just wanted, they started with like students with disabilities, they moved from there to English learners. And then what we're learning on some of

268the calls that I've been involved in, they're beginning to look at CTE. So it seems that it's a similar process. The other part is that, as Dr. Hutchins mentioned earlier, even with the notion of the virtual school as a possibility. systems that have done that, you have to, as he indicated, you have to, what's so complicated again is, and I hate to just repeat it, but it is, you have to have the staffing. You also have to give families and communities an opportunity to be able to apply. Some systems have said, even with that kind of model, they don't have enough teachers that can do both, that can meet the virtual and the in-person. Lastly, one of the other things that we've talked about, and that's why, you know, like he indicated, trying to get

269some support tonight is if you just look at the number of K-5 students, let's say 8,000 students, the question is, how do you rotate all those students through? given some constraints. So, but although we, as he's indicated, there is a focus and a commitment for K-5, but those are the kinds of constraints that we have to consider and put in place the amount of time, even if you do a hybrid model, systems are having problems with that three days in site, three days on site, two days off, particularly at the high school level. it's difficult for them to be able to meet all their course requirements. So, but those are decisions that we have to consider and design for. So I just wanted at a larger picture to be able to state some of that.

270We're reading, we're reviewing, we're talking, but we also know that there are these constraints. And as I think he said earlier, is the commitment is to try to, we wanna get students and kids back, but we wanna do it in a way. that is feasible and that it works, if that makes sense. But most of the systems in this area are looking primarily at CTE programs at the high school level right now. Mr. Suarez, I would like the opportunity to talk about the 612 citywide students. The one thing that I think is important to know is to look, first of all, the reference you made to the students at the high school level and the need for the job training and things of that nature. That's actually happening now. We have actually in our high

271school citywide program an incredibly high level of engagement, incredibly high. We have made contact and our students are engaged in the citywide. high school program on a daily basis. We have a very extensive academic as well as career prep process and program going on. We also have students who are out on job sites. Our project search students were not allowed back into the hospital, but we have placed all of our project search students on alternative job sites and they are out working. In addition, we worked with our partners, as Kurt has referenced, we have some amazing community partners. And those job sites that had existed prior to COVID were pulled and almost all of them are willing to have students come back. So we are phasing students back into the work setting. So our high

272school program, I will tell you, I actually feel is very robust and we are definitely on schedule to phase the citywide students back into school. It is my plan to be looking at the middle school students for returning after the winter break. We really wanted to ensure that we did it right. And I think you've heard everybody talk about it being. It's slow, but it is very deliberate and very considered because we want it to work and we don't want things to go wrong. So we have taken a very measured, very incremental approach to this. And as we started this discussion in August, we said that we were going to work to phase the students in. Hopefully by the end of October, we were a week off. But when you start to look at a

273two-week process to phase students in, we really have run up against the winter break to be able to effectively return students. And it didn't make sense to really start looking at secondary now because they might have been back in school for a week before we go back out for Christmas break. So we... Definitely focused on the elementary, and this is first quarter, but I do want you to know that we will be considering working on middle school coming back after Christmas break. But we have a very strong, very robust high school program, and I know that that's important information for you to have as well. Thank you for that. And that was very helpful. And I think it just kind of underscores another point that, you know, kind of related to my point about the

274presentation. You know, I think that Right now, especially, you know, not just because of the direct issue we're talking about, but just the climate in the country right now. People just need to see, you know, light at the end of the tunnel. They need to have some, you know, an uncertainty is something that is really scary to people right now. I think this in general. And so I think the more we can, because that was super helpful in sort of providing a justification of why we may want to bring back the K to five citywide. first, but not, you know, the 11th, the 12th right now, you know, and I think the more we can in subsequent presentations sort of articulate, you know. Here is the sort of prioritization we're following, you know, and, you

275know, I think that would be really helpful because, and I guess the reason for the question was because, you know, there may be situations where a seventh or eighth grade citywide special ed student may have more need than a K-5 student. And so thinking through an equity lens, I'm asking myself, why aren't we bringing some of those kids back first? Right. And so I just want to say, so I think the more we can articulate that going forward, I think that would just be helpful to the community and helpful to all of us as we make these invariably difficult and imperfect decisions that we're trying to make. Thank you. We are, I am aware of the time. We have three more questions that are hands raised right now. And the good news is that we

276have delayed the vote on this until next week. So I think we'll do these three questions because we have a big work session as well. And we have a little bit more in this meeting to get to. So I have Ms. Nolan followed by Ms. Thornton followed by Ms. Green. So Ms. Nolan first. Thank you, Chair Anderson. And I apologize, I do have two questions, but I'll be concise. My first question is, is that, is there an opportunity to understand what is the end game? Like, what is the end result we're hoping is going to happen in June and then work backwards, as well as understanding, like, what guideposts are we using to make these decisions that families can follow? So for example, if the numbers are at this, if the staff is at that,

277you know, like what are the determining factors that we're using to make these decisions that again, the family and community, the board staff can follow so that we can understand like, what is the end game that we're working towards and move backwards? Because one of my concerns is that, and I'm a humongous, I do believe as Mr. Suarez said earlier, that we should be phasing in the vulnerable populations. And I absolutely think it's the right thing to do to start with the special needs, but I think we have to be candid with the community. that we right now in this meeting are talking about less than 4% of our student population and that we do not know as of yet what's going to happen with half our population, which is high school, the secondaries six

278through 12. So if I'm watching this meeting and my takeaways, I'm not sure anyone from secondary levels going back. And so, because what you said earlier, Dr. Hutchings, that if we let incrementally the students in the younger years go back. then that leaves nothing left if there's nothing that changes with the social distancing guidelines. So I think if that's the case, we just need to own that and let the community know. And also like at what point, what date are we pulling the lever and deciding, you know, what's happening with the secondary students? And then the other thing I would say is that similar to what Mr. Suarez said, I had this in my notes, but it's worth repeating that I do think it'd be helpful to understand the phases of vulnerability. it sounds like

279we're saying special needs first, then EL, then K-2, then perhaps students who are two grade levels behind. It'd be also great to understand when we're thinking about what's the end game, how are we measuring, when to make those decisions and how, and then who does it include, I think would be really helpful so that we can continue being transparent with the community. So not sure if any thoughts on that, if that's a possible way to proceed. And again, what's the end game? How are we measuring it? Who does it affect? And then when would those decisions be made? Is that perhaps a possible process to proceed with? Yeah. Can you all hear me? Hello? Okay, I got it. So I wanted to make sure, now I'm nervous that you can't ever hear me when I'm

280talking. So to answer your first question in regards to the June endgame, it's very difficult in full transparency to think about June because things changed from two weeks ago to right now. And I think it would be a disservice for us to put something out into the community over the next six to seven months when who would have thought? They'll be where we are right now today and then have to backpedal and say, oh, but now we're not going to do that. You know, so people's hopes get up and then we just can't really accomplish that. I do think, though, that it's we can provide to the board as well as to the community kind of like incrementally what this. should look like in regards to, we talked through the most vulnerable, meaning like our

281citywide program and our self-contained students and our ECSE students, and then our K-5 self, I'm sorry, our K-5 students, and then go into what are the other areas, you know, and maybe we need to have the caveat. So we're providing the full transparency that if all elementary students do end up returning or a large percentage of our elementary students do return of what is the lack of space and how many more can we accommodate after that and I think that's something that's reasonable so then we're being up front with it's not that we don't want the students back in school but if we don't have the building capacity this is what we can accommodate. You know, and I think that's something we definitely can share up front. So we will just need to do some

282more in regards to our calculations. You know, on that, we were trying to be, you know, more incremental and focus on just these next nine weeks and not really go beyond that. But I think that we can start really going beyond. and putting those numbers in to see well how far can we go like how many students can we actually accommodate after can i mean after fifth grade excuse me um so that's something we definitely can do great thank you so much i apologize for the second question but my second question is really given how necessary the staff is in all of this it'd be wonderful to have a quick update from dr wilkins and from the hr department and my concerns is threefold is number one um i noticed that there was 25 of

283the staff that noted that they're having um severe stress and mental health concerns. And so what are we doing to support the staff during an exceptionally stressful time? And number two, I know that we're asking a lot of the staff during professional development. In fact, I even heard from one teacher that she had to take off a day of leave in order to do planning on a vacation day because there's so much being expected in terms of professional development and meeting. So I'm wondering if that now that we've gotten through the first quarter, is that going to perhaps ease up so that teachers can have more time to get their needs done? As I know, there's a It's hard, right? Because on the technology, there is so much professional development that's needed. But on the

284flip side, we want to make sure that we are benefiting their mental health and what their needs are. And then the third piece I'd love to understand from a staffing perspective is where are we if there continues to be a disconnect in terms of families, the ratio of families that want to come in and the staff? Like, what support is the staff? what communication, what support is being offered, like what do we do moving forward with that? And so if we could just, being that staff's so critical in this, if we could get a brief update from Dr. Wilkins with that. And again, the three things are supporting mental health, the demands on the teachers and staff's time significantly that's not allowing them to do their lesson planning and other individual needs. And then the

285third is what kind of support and communication are we doing to work with staff and letting them know. whether or not they're coming back or what the needs are and what are their concerns things of that nature. Thank you, Ms. Nolan. Dr. Wilkins, he can speak to some of the social-emotional supports that we're providing our staff. I think Dr. Crawford can also mention or talk to some of that as well that we're doing, not just for our students, but also our staff. And Ms. Nolan, you bring up a really good point. And this is why we have to, I don't know, being sensitive is the word, or maybe empathetic around the staffing and then returning back to school. Our staff members are experiencing some of the same anxiety and, you know, challenges that some of

286our students are. And one thing, and I think these are some lessons learned that our group even talked about from other school divisions across the country. When other school divisions across the country are saying, you have to come to work or you're going to lose your job and you have to come to work and you have to take all your leave and that type of thing, that is causing. staff to go right into even more of a mental health crisis. Because now, because of their anxiety or their fears, which we are in a global pandemic, it is impacting everybody in so many different ways. And we do have to respect that and be empathetic about that. It's not a typical day. People just trying to be home and get paid. That we're going to have

287to keep that into consideration and a part of how we transition our staff back. into the schools. I will be curious to see what school divisions across the country, how it pans out with them saying either you come or you lose, right? Either you lose your job, you lose your leave or whatever. I'm curious to see how that pans out and how that works. We are trying not to have that type of pressure. on our staff up front. We are really trying to be a little more empathetic about the situation, meaning the global pandemic, similar to how we were in the spring when we had to go into this whole virtual world. We're trying to maintain that and keeping staff first. But if Dr. Wilkins can talk to, and Dr. Crawford can talk to some

288of the social emotional supports that we are providing our staff members, as well as... You made three points. No, you covered the third one, which was the ratio of staff. Also, like how the Mondays are being dedicated for staff professional development, because it seems like, well, I completely appreciate the fact that the school division is offering so many great opportunities. And this is a whole new world that we have to learn to how to conduct ourselves. I'm just concerned about teachers having the time they need to do the lesson planning. working in their learning groups and cross-sectional support with each other and things of that nature. What we'll do is I'll have Dr. Wilkins talk to the social-emotional piece, and then if I can have Dr. Mann or Dr. Mozingo speak to the professional learning

289component, because we did survey staff in regards to that piece, and we heard some of the same things. Dr. Too many meetings too much fresh alive on Mondays for for example, but we'll have Dr. Man follow up on that. So Dr. Wilkins. Dr. Thanks. Thanks, Dr. Hutchings. I'll make three three brief comments with respect to the mental health. What we've experienced so far is Dr. We have some staff who are serving on-site, if you will, right? Our custodians, our workers, and so on. And we've been monitoring their mental health and performance really since March. And we have experienced great success with taking care of those employees. So I feel confident that our supervisors are watching our workers, and I'm also confident that they're doing the things that they need to do for their own self-care.

290What's really complicated as far as creating a lot of anxieties to your question is with respect to job security or job stress. And as Dr. Hutchings has mentioned, we take a more empathetic and understanding approach to appreciating, again, what... we are going through, but particularly that our teachers are going through with respect to working in this remote situation with their own family situations, as well as working with our students who are online. So we are sensitive to their mental health and stress. We'll continue to work and support that effort. With respect to the class time, again, Dr. Mann or Dr. Mozingo may chat a little bit more about that. But so far, at least at the HR level, the school principals and school leadership have been able to manage it at their level. We have

291not had to take any, if you will, extraordinary interventions at the HR level to deal with that type of stress. And then finally, with respect to the school ratio question or the ratio of teachers that would come into work, that's the question that is ongoing right now with respect to our surveys. We know that we have a distinction between an essential worker and a voluntary worker. And the approach today, of course, is to ask those teaching staff or instructional staff, right, about their availability to come into work, right, in a more or less voluntary basis, right, their availability, their willingness to come in, right, without having to force them in under some sort of, if you will, kind of an employment contract perspective. So we're working through that. And again, we'll see how that develops.

292you know, as we go forward. So I'll stop there. I'll turn it over to either Dr. Mozingo or Dr. Crawford. Dr. Hutchings? Dr. Crawford, she may have any, I don't know if you have anything to add in regards to the social and emotional supports for staff, and then we'll pivot into Dr. Mann talking about professional learning. Thank you. And thank you, Ms. Nolan. This is an outstanding question. And it's a huge need in every profession, but particularly in ours, where we know that our staff members, you know, strive to give everything they have. And in this environment, having hit the six month mark, there's actually some conversation and I think research on that's a that's a real. downer for people, right? You can get through the first couple months, you think this isn't going to

293continue for this long. And once you reach a point where we're at six months, you start to think, well, is this what things are going to be like for an extended period and there's not an end in sight? We have heard that from all of our staff members, the challenges of burning the candle at both ends and not being able to give what you don't have. So one thing I will say that we've done with our work with... teaching, learning, and leadership. I was going to say instruction. And the city is making sure that we're modeling what we want teachers to do. But even though we did a lot of SEAL work over the summer for students, we always went back to the reference to the staff too of checking in with yourself. These are

294things that you could use as a resource. We model in all of our... that we've done the mood meter. I think you all had the opportunity to do the mood meter. We actually used it in a city meeting the other day, which allows a principal just to do a quick check-in. And people can put their responses up anonymously, which helps you gauge what's going on with your staff members. I will say from the HR perspective, Michael Carson was able to send out to our leaders the other day an ADA workshop on monitoring the mental health of your staff. So from the HR and student services, really just trying to make sure that we are monitoring the health of our staff, promoting things like EAP resources, other resources that are available. It's a real focus of

295our city, our DCHS support and all of our city resources. So what we get with that with respect to mental health, we push out to our staff members and just being here as a resource when we know someone might need a little extra help working with the principal. if it's a large group, you know, looking at doing a restorative practice type circle, a community circle with our adults to check in and see how are people doing and what can we do to support them. There's so much going on right now and it's just, you know, it's really pressure-filled time that this is a critical area for all of our staff members so that they're feeling like they can support our students. I hope that's helpful. Yeah, no, thank you. And that was actually going to

296be a follow-up question as to how is the information getting shared with staff so they know what resources are available to them? Because I know sometimes it's sensitive to go to your supervisor and say, hey, I'm not doing so well. So I think, you know, I know we do a phenomenal job in ACPS that we have an ACPS insider, which, you know, updates staff. So I think if... we continue sharing these resources and making, you know, that'll allow people to take them up on it. So thanks for sharing that, Dr. Crawford. Really appreciate that. Sure. And we did over the summer and we, I don't think we've had one since we started, but we did voluntary wellness circles. So in keeping with like a restorative practice and a proactive approach, just open up to staff.

297members, anybody who wanted to join, talk about things. We communicate, as I said, a lot of our communication is either through the principals or our SST leads to push out when we know we have a good resource or an opportunity for staff to support positive mental health. So the express and insiders one way, but also just relaying the information that either we have, or as I said, it's been a real focus of the city to support the staff members as well. Thank you. Thank you. Ms. Thornton. Thank you, everyone, for the discussion so far. I'm glad I'm following Ms. Nolan because my question actually was pertaining to staff as well and their willingness to return. It seems to me that if this is the biggest constraint that is really affecting our decision right now, as

298far as our ability to transition students back into school, you know, it is a little concerning to me that it seems like, comparatively speaking, we have lower rates of confidence from our staff or willingness to return to school. And I am kind of wondering, like, what are those factors that's contributing to that? And just based on this survey, from what I could find on the question that asked specifically about staffs, their willingness to return, it looks like under half, like close to half of the respondents indicated that their unwillingness to return was not just pertaining to health reasons or health issues. So, you know, there's childcare issues. There might be just lack of confidence in the safety protocols. So I am wondering, like, have we dug a little bit more into that data to understand,

299like, what are the main factors causing that lack of confidence from staff? Because again, if this is our main constraint, if we don't figure out how to address that now, I don't think it's going to get easier moving down the road. And so like one thing I've been thinking about and thinking about a question that Ms. Anderson asked earlier to Dr. Herring, you know, asking about testing. You know, the CDC, according to the last time I looked, is not necessarily recommending that school divisions require all staff and students to be tested. But, you know, in thinking out of the box and trying to be, you know, proactive, maybe that's something that we consider looking at to offer to our staff as a way to increase their confidence to return. So I would just really like

300to hear kind of more thoughts about why that might be and how we can kind of improve confidence from staff. And going off of that. You know, I'm wondering too, in looking at the data, I know that we're kind of looking at our transition in person according to like bands of students. And I know we've grouped K through five together, but I'm wondering, have we looked at exploring staff's willingness to return for individual grade levels? So we may not be able to do all K through five, but is there a possibility that we could expedite kindergarten? if the ratio is improved for that grade level. So I guess for me, it's hard to talk in these generalities. And I know that you kind of have to do that when planning. But for instances like this,

301I think it really can help to kind of go into the nitty gritty and look at the data and maybe do it by grade level instead of these groups and bands of grades. So number one, just kind of how are we increasing staff's confidence? And two, have we looked into kind of breaking down the grade levels a little bit more to see if we can expedite some for in-person? So thank you, Ms. Thornton, for those questions. I'm going to have Mr. Page answer the first question and talk a little bit about some of the data because we did collect some data in regards to staffing and some of the reasons why they are not feeling comfortable to come back. So Mr. Page, can you start with that? Yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much for the

302question. So on page 30 in Appendix B of the board attached report, we do have data as it relates to the reasons for staff who either selected somewhat unlikely or very unlikely. We asked them why that was their selection at this point. And for a third of staff, they indicated that there was a documented health issue. for them, for their person. We had 28% of staff select the documented health issue for a household member. We had 24% of staff cite childcare needs and requirements within their household, making it difficult to return. Then we had some lower rates across a few other options. And then we had 35% of staff select other. in which they had some free response options and those ranged across a wide variety of topics. But I think similar to what we've

303heard in discussions with staff on this, it's typically things like uncertainty about the adherence to safety protocols, the ability of students to wear face masks throughout, those types of things is what we're largely hearing in that other. category. So that's the kind of the next level of data that we have around the for those staff who did select within the survey, either somewhat unlikely or very unlikely in their return. I know Dr. Herring can speak a little bit to some of the confidence as well. I do know that when we met with Don Lucas, our EAA president, recently, he was just saying how there is some lack of confidence in just making sure that we're cleaning appropriately, that we're going to make sure we're following through with the safety protocols. And this is why we

304really wanted to have some of these simulations done so that we can you know, just demonstrate how our cleaning protocols and things have changed based on COVID so that we can have some confidence from our staff as we transition back. But Dr. Herring, he may be able to talk to some of the health kind of cautions that have been taken. Absolutely. And, you know, the concerns that the staff are expressing about having sick people or people with comorbidities, I should say, at home are real. The thing that will build confidence as much as anything is actually the experience. And I'm speaking this from both the health department, what we've done here, which we've never really shut down. And we have not. had any transmission of infections that have occurred among staff. In other words, staff

305have gotten infected, they come to work, we find out about it later. But because we're maintaining that six foot distancing, we're wearing masks, we have sanitizing, hand hygiene, the respiratory etiquette, all the things in place, staying home when sick. That actually builds the confidence of staff. We've helped city agencies through this. We've helped a lot of different businesses through this, through our ALX Promise program. We've also helped daycares with this issue. So again, I think the thing about testing is that It has limited limitations in that it's only a point in time and literally right after taking the test, you could be exposed to a virus from somewhere else. One of the interesting things that we're actually finding is that many people are actually contracting this not while they're at work, but while they're outside

306of work. You know, they start to lose their guard. They go to a barbecue with, and I've seen this in a number of different organizations, businesses, nonprofits, where they get back to work, they're working, and then they go out to a restaurant or a pub or they have a barbecue and they drop their guard. They don't wear their mask. They're within six feet. So a lot of the transmissions aren't even happening within the organization. I think when people come back and they see all the measures that have been in place, everything from what Dr. Hart's done with the HVAC systems, with the setups of the distancing, the one-way walking six feet apart, all these things I think are going to build a lot of confidence. The other thing is when there is a case in

307a school and we do the investigation along with that we routinely do when there's a case and people find out, well, no, actually, I was not a close contact to this case. I can carry on as usual. That that, too, will build confidence. Thank you, Dr. Herring. In regards to Ms. Thornton's second question about looking at individual grade levels, potentially, it still puts us in that situation. And if we do it incrementally by looking at just grade levels and not looking at can we accommodate the whole. span, we're going to put ourselves in a situation where we'll have kindergarten and then we might do first grade and then we might do third grade. And then now we're trying to figure out how we're going to get fourth and fifth grade. So then we would have

308to come up with a whole nother plan to be able to accommodate them. So we're trying to go into this saying we already know that to bring K-5 back into our elementary schools, for the most part, if everyone wanted to come back, we cannot accommodate them, right? Even if 80% want to come back, we cannot accommodate them in our building structure the way it is right now because of the CDC guidelines. Now, if the CDC guidelines go away, whole different ballgame. Like all of our plans will be totally different than they are right now. But us trying to live up to those CDC guidelines, it puts some limitations on everything. So we have to, on the front end, be proactive in saying, how can we accommodate K-5? Like, how can that work? Not just using

309their school, which then impacts other schools. So there are going to be other grades that we can't, but we're trying to do a trade-off on. if our data right now is saying our most vulnerable overall, we know it's special ed, but overall our most vulnerable are our elementary kids, how can we put together a plan to accommodate them first and then determine what is the additional capacity we have and what more can we do after we do, you know, accommodate all of our elementary students? So that has been the biggest challenge, you know, for us. And I'm curious to also We'll see how it is going to work in some of our other jurisdictions. But I do want to have that caveat. Every school is not at overcapacity right now. Right. But that is our

310situation in Alexandria. And we know that. And it's always been. That's why we're building new schools. But that has an impact on us when you're now limited when we already had overcapacity. It makes it just even more of a challenge for us that we can work through, but we're not going to be able to resolve pre-K through 12. I just don't see how that's going to be possible with the CDC guidelines. If I might just have a quick follow-up, Madam Chair. Understanding that most of the information received is a snapshot in time and understanding that things will change by the day, how frequently should staff expect to be surveyed about their willingness to return in school? Is this something that we're going to do just every nine weeks or will it be more frequent? So

311we're going to be doing it within every seven week span. So it's going to be within every seven weeks. We're going to be not just serving our staff, but also serving our families. When we're getting closer to transitional time. So, for example, like our citywide families who are about to transition in K-2, we're going to be doing more of a commitment, not necessarily a survey. It's more of. are you committed to coming with these safety precautions so we can have clear data and not just the general kind of data that we currently have with the surveys. So we will always be surveying families and our staff, but when we're transitioning group or a grade span, we're going to be having more of a commitment for me. We don't have the name for it yet, but

312it's more of a commitment that families are making. It's not like it's more of yes, I am or no, I'm with those transitions. Great. Thanks. We got in just under the wire of your breaking up again. So, Ms. Green. Thank you, Chair Anderson. Four and a half hours in. When is Encore? Last but not least. Sorry. No worries. I will make this quick. And Dr. Hutchings, I haven't seen much come out about. What we plan to do about high school athletics and with no near plan to bring our high schoolers back, I was wondering when might our 940 student athletes be able to start conditioning, practicing? I know that sports associations here in Alexandria have been doing it. Are there, and other restrictions as well, are there any CDC guidelines around that? Will they be

313able to start in this next phase? Is that? a part of what we're doing now. Just any information around that would be helpful. Is he frozen? I don't know. He looks frozen. He looks frozen. There he is. I think I'm... Can y'all hear me now? Yes. All right. I'm sorry about that. So the question was about, I believe it was about the athletic program. Right. And transition back into athletics. And specifically, we were trying to focus on the academic program first, especially with the Virginia High School League, keeping our, you know, saying that our fall season wouldn't start until at least December. So we are now. going to get into kind of like the planning phase of when do we transition some of the athletic components but we wanted to focus on the academic piece

314first knowing that the season technically wasn't going to start until at least December based on the Virginia High School League's information. Dr. Hutchings, if I may, just because Dr. Herring is on the call, I think this is a good example of collaboration, Ms. Green, because Mr. Parker has been working on, even though Dr. Hutchings just specified what the schedule is, he's been working on the reopening plan and bringing the kids, the student-athletes back since August and actually provided a plan to Dr. Herring and his team for review and suggestions. So there has been dialogue going back and forth. just in preparation for that. So I just want to assure you that that work is being done at TC, obviously under the schedule of the VHSL with the support of the health department. Thank you, Dr.

315Crawford. So with the season starting in December, when can they start practicing and conditioning? I would have to pull up his exact schedule of that. I don't know. I don't have the specific answer, but I can certainly get it. I'm not sure. We still haven't set a definitive date on that. What we have started doing, though, preliminarily is trying to determine which athletes were wanting to come back and families willing to allow their students to come back, which coaches were willing to come back, similar to what we were doing for our educators and the students. And then we have not set definitive dates, though, for that transition. What the communications that we've had with Mr. Parker was we were trying to first get our academic programming plan in place, and then we were going to

316begin to focus on the athletic plan. So now that we're working into this transition or in-person planning for academics, we can have that space to start talking about what the athletic program will look like moving forward. So I'll have some more information in the future for you. Thank you. Okay, thank you. I had missed that Miss Alderton had one more comment to make and then we'll move on. Thank you. And I'm sorry to be, to add on because I know we have to move on. I did want to, I really appreciated Miss Thornton's question and I wanted to just share a little bit of some perspective that I'm just getting. you know, with teachers and even, I would say administrators globally, not just ACPS, around that sort of reluctance. I think the health concerns and

317issues are definitely one, but I don't think they're the only thing. And of course, Clint brought up like data points, childcare, all those things. I think it's important to note that In this profession since March, teachers have been asked to flip-flop and jump and change from one model to the next. So essentially, we've transitioned them from like, this is what I'm used to. Now I had to flip in March to learn to do virtual instruction. And now I'm going to have to flip. again, to this hybrid world and really what I'm calling COVID school, which is very, very different. I've actually had the opportunity to walk around in a school that's set up with the social distancing guidelines and everything. And it's almost traumatic, I'll be honest. And I think people... I think emotionally they're

318spent from all the change. And it is a little scary to think about like going into this type of environment that is going to be very different, very challenging in different ways that they are not used to. And so I think that plays a big part in that hesitancy too. And so, you know, it is a delicate balance. of just figuring out how to ease people back into essentially what may be a new normal. And one of the things I've been cautioning with the work groups about is that we need to be prepared even for those who do come back because it is a new environment and because it's going to feel very different. There may be some emotional support that we need to provide to the people who are in the buildings that we

319didn't. think about because we just don't necessarily understand how that's going to feel until you're in it. So it's super, it's complicated. And I think probably nobody ever thought we would be here or just imagine this. This is a part of the job now. So I just wanted to provide that perspective too, because I think there are some clean data points, but I think there are also some things that are just hard to grasp. and understand because you're, if you're not in the midst of being in that role and for principals too, I think for principals, they'll stand up and be strong, but it's, it is a lot that will go into this and it's not going to be easy. So just wanted to throw that in. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. We're going to,

320have this on our agenda on Wednesday the 21st and at that time we're going to have a vote about this next stage. We're going to move on past the legislative agenda because we removed that from the agenda and now it's time for the CIP Reserve Account Update Recorder 4. And I'm going to transition and have Dr. Hart go through the PowerPoint. I'm going to ask if we can try to get through the PowerPoint in five minutes, if we can, because I know a lot of the information. board members have read and some of it was shared this summer. And the reason I'm asking for that is because I do know that we have the chief and we have some of the police officers and they're back. And I know that they're on schedules too. And

321I'm just, I would like for them to be able to participate in the work session, but I understand if they can't too, but I'm hoping that we can try to get them to be able to participate. So Dr. Hart, I'm going to turn things over to you. Thank you. I think the first part that we're presenting is the CIP reserve, correct? And I'm asking. Yes. Okay. Thank you so much. Which you can go right into and the quarterly report is something that we should vote on to accept, but not the, not the reserve. Okay. Thank you. Susan, can you pull up the memo, please? Thank you so much. So I will take on the board memo for the CIP Reserve, and then I'm going to introduce and turn it over to John Finnegan for the

322quarterly report presentation. And so just very briefly, our CIP Reserve account balance is $235,759.77. We included two attachments with this particular memo that speaks to how we have come to and maintain this balance. We also provide background of why it is that we provide this information and I will be more than willing to answer any questions if we have any regarding the CIP reserve account balance. Okay, I see either their buttons are not working anymore or there are no questions. So I think we can proceed. Thank you. Okay. And so now we will provide a very, very brief update from the quarterly report. As I mentioned earlier, John Finnegan, who is the acting director of educational facilities, will get through these slides as fast as we possibly can. To Dr. Hutchings' point. Back in September,

323an update was provided to the board regarding some of the projects we were able to accomplish over the summer. This quarterly report will go a little bit more in-depth about certain projects, as well as give a glimpse into some of the progress that's been made through quarter one. So, John, I'm turning it over to you. Thank you, Dr. Hart. Good evening, Madam Chair, board members, ACPS colleagues, and public. We will get through this very quickly. So Susan, if you'll please work with me here, you can go ahead and continue on to the next slide. The essential questions, that's something that we do each time. We can keep going to the next slide, please. Okay, so this is a breakdown of everything and we'll go into these in just a little bit more detail, but obviously

324the facilities component is over 93%. If we could have the next slide. So the current spending progress, and again, this was for the fourth quarter, which comprised April, May, June of 2020, $22,643,000 is what's remaining. The total budget was over $67 million. We can go to the next slide. There is a reiteration of that without all of the detail. Susan, if you could go forward, please. We did work with technology services. That was a big undertaking. They did a great job through fourth quarter. They continued with the virtual learning, increased the network capacity, and then they purchased and distributed Chromebooks in the FY21 first quarter. So I just want to highlight that as I'm going through these, since the summer, we've been preoccupied with COVID. April, May, June was fourth quarter of 20. And now

325that we're already in October, I will probably speak real briefly about first quarter of 21 too, because a lot of these projects kind of rolled through and continued into the summer. So Susan, if you could continue, please. Next slide. Sorry, my screen is frozen. One second. Oh, okay. Hold on. Sorry. Let's try it again. Sorry, John. I don't know what's going on here. One second. No problem. And again, I'm going to go through these really briefly for Dr. Hutchings' recommendation. So at the end, I will take any questions if there's anything that I went over too quickly. There we go. Next slide. There we go. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. So the people transportation warehouse, we are currently working on electric charging stations. We are purchasing some electric buses through the fourth quarter. We've been

326working on participation agreement with a bunch of local participating localities and with infrastructure. designed by Dominion Virginia. Then the participation agreement was concluded. It's being signed. We're still working out some easement details, but we have started some of the work related to the work outside of the easement. So that project is moving on. We're excited about that. You can go to the next slide. I'm sorry, John, my computer is not helping tonight. That's all right. I don't know what is going on. Let's try it one more time. Sorry. This is my new computer. Okay, thank you, Susan. Douglas MacArthur. So everything from the old Douglas MacArthur was moved over. Interior renovation reached substantial completion. The auditorium was renovated into a gymnasium. HVAC issues were repaired. Roof was patched, etc. The exterior renovation is nearing completion

327with new parking lot, sidewalks, etc. And then on the new Douglas MacArthur design development phase finalized, engagement continued with advisory group meetings, community feedback event, et cetera. And currently value management activities and cost estimating is ongoing. We can move to the next slide. Okay, Cora Kelly, this is a couple of pictures of the new flooring that we installed. So as with a lot of our flooring projects, a lot of our facilities are very old with VCT and it's got asbestos mastic underneath. So when we do a flooring project, we actually take on an asbestos remediation project as well. So we move through that throughout Cora Kelly and I'm happy to report that almost 95% of that school is free of asbestos. We have a few small areas to get, but all of the hallways throughout

328the school have been changed out into luxury vinyl tile. And we're very excited about that because this is a nicer product than we've used in the past. We've taken advantage of some vendor pricing through COVID. This flooring is more stable, more durable. It's water resistant, stain, scuff, it's scratch resistant. And it's also much better for our maintenance. This just needs to be broom swept and wet mopped. No more stripping, buffing, and waxing. And we've done that at a handful of schools. And we can move to the next. Thank you. John Adams Elementary is just one we're highlighting here. We've got the construction documents out in phase four. We posted the invitation to bid, to be evaluated, and hired a contractor. The phase one was completed through the... quarter one, in other words, over the summer.

329And then because of COVID, we moved right into phase two. We've done that with a few of our roofing and HVAC projects. And that has allowed us to really condense the schedule because the phase two on most of these would not have been completed until next summer. So we're really getting a lot of work done while we can. If you move to the next slide, please, Susan. Mount Vernon Elementary School. What we're highlighting here is the courtyard, but what we've done is a comprehensive drainage study around the site. There's a low point in the auditorium that we keep getting flooded with hydrostatic pressure during... substantial rains because of the groundwater level is coming up. So we've done a comprehensive study. We will be making improvements around the site to get all stormwater into pipes into

330the ground as opposed to dropping it in the courtyard, on the lawns, etc. So some of that we will try and tackle in a phased approach, but we are in for permitting for redesigning the courtyard, which will be key because with COVID going on, it will allow us to have a new, nice outdoor classroom space. T.C. Williams High School Stadium. I know that this has been a little frustrating for a lot because of the delays. However, through the fourth quarter, we were able to post an invitation to bid. That's important because we were only about 90% done with the construction drawings. However, we decided to go ahead and go out for invitation to bid and get a contractor on board while we were still going through the approval and permitting process through the city. So

331just in August, we were able to get the demolition permit and start the work. So now we have completed demolition of the press box, the concession building, and the building pad. And we are currently demoing hardscapes and sidewalks. And then on... October 9th, we just received our building permit. So things are really going to start moving. They'll start to see more activity over there, but that's key again, that we were able to go out in the fourth quarter, even though we didn't have the drawings, because if we would have waited until we got the permit to go out to bid and get a contractor on board, this project wouldn't be starting until next spring. and it wouldn't be completed until next summer. And also by doing that, we saved approximately 100 to $125,000. So that

332project is moving. Next slide, please. So now just real quickly, some key upcoming projects. Francis Hammond Middle School, we've got the old tennis court back behind the turf field that is being converted into a multi-sport court. That's a significant project because we've got to... get away all the old layers of asphalt and regrade around there. George Washington Middle School, we will be doing comprehensive HVAC repairs and replacements. There's a lot of rooftop units on that school, so that's a significant project that will be phased. Lyles Crouch Elementary School, we will be replacing windows throughout, same with Matthew Morey. And then Mount Vernon Elementary. We touched upon briefly the drainage and again the courtyard will be completely renovated. It will be a lot of improvements to the stormwater, the downspouts, etc. as well as outdoor learning

333spaces. Those are some of the key ones to highlight. Susan, if you could move forward. So this is just the year-end financials. It shows each of the four quarters and where we remain with project year-end balance. And of course, some of that balance there will be billed out because again, this was April, May, June as some of these summer projects were just getting kicked off. We have some of our large expensive projects, roofing projects, et cetera, that had not been fully built through the end of that quarter. Next slide, please. Okay, so that's pretty much it at this point. We will take any questions. I know I moved through that pretty quickly, but if you have any questions. I do not see any. Well, we have Ms. Nolan. Thank you. And I'll be brief. Thank

334you so much for the presentation. Really appreciate it. And again, we couldn't be more grateful for the facilities department and all they've been able to do during this time. And special thanks to Dr. Hart for her leadership. We're really thankful to have you in the division. My question is, is that I know, and I apologize if I got the information wrong, but was there still some asbestos somewhere that are we still working on that? Or, I mean, it sounded like we had the majority of it taken care of, but is there still plans to take care of the remainder? Yes, there's a little bit, but the important thing to note about the asbestos is it's not friable, meaning airborne. So when we undertake some of these projects, it's layers underneath the current floor, and it's

335usually the glue or the mastic. So until you are replacing that floor, you're not disturbing anything, so it's not a danger. Got it. At Cora Kelly, yes, we've now completed about 90 to 95% of all the asbestos in that building. And we will be getting the last little bit over the next couple of breaks. Got it. And I apologize if I missed this as well, but how are we doing with progressing with the mold issue at GW? So GW, we are due for another indoor air quality. test. So we have been kind of attacking things here and there. We've gone throughout and cleaned. We've also vacuumed out grills and replaced diffusers. We've cleaned where visible mold was and also we are currently undertaking the last couple of sections of roof. So now over the last

336three and a half years we've replaced almost the entire roof throughout all of those buildings and sections. And then we have a little bit more to go with piping insulation. So the chilled water pipe condenses and sometimes that drips onto ceiling tiles and after a few days that can turn to mold. So we've also replaced some sections of pipe as well. So we're kind of doing a comprehensive move throughout the building to tackle each of those issues. And we will be done in the next probably month with the rest of the chilled water piping and the roof work will be done. probably towards the end of November, early December. So most of those mold issues are currently not an issue anymore, but after all of those things are completed, we feel very comfortable. Got it.

337Thank you so much. I appreciate the update. And if you could continue, especially with GW, to keep us updated. And I only say that because the amount of loss of instructional time the students have received over the years has just been significant, much more so than the other schools. And also, I know we're all concerned that thanks to the leadership of the division, we're all trying to get the kids back in school. So it's going to be paramount that the facilities are in shape because we don't want the students to have to remove themselves from a building. And obviously. In COVID times now, it's really up the ante in terms of the amount of cleanliness the students are going to receive. So really appreciate, again, all the work of facilities because you all are really

338helping to close our achievement gap because the more kids can be inside their classrooms and also the more time we can ensure that our instructional leaders are focused on instruction versus a leaky roof, all the better for kids. So again, thanks so much for all of your support during this time. You're welcome, and we will keep you apprised. Okay, thank you. Yes, I was waiting whether to make the comment about the asbestos that it was that it was the glue. And then I thought, well, I'm not sure if people are going to be worried about that. But Ms. Nolan answered that, that people might be worried about that. So thank you. All right. This is the thing that we are supposed to accept. So if I could get a motion to accept the. The CIP,

339the fourth quarter CIP report for FY 2020. That would be great. Madam Chair, I move we accept the report. Second. Ms. Alderton seconds Ms. Gentry's motion. And so I will call for a vote. Cindy Anderson, yes. Veronica Nolan. Yes. Megan Alderton. Yes. Amy Gentry. Yes. Jacinta Green? Yes. Margaret Lorber? Yes. Michelle Reeve? Yes. Christopher Suarez? Yes. Heather Thornton? Yes. Okay, it is accepted at nine to zero. Now, we are, the next thing will be on some people's agendas, but we have moved it also to next week's meeting on the 21st, and that is the draft presentation for the Joint City Council School Board Budget Work Session. So then on this meeting, the next thing is a report from me, which I will try to be brief, but I've been asked to mention the public hearing

340for renaming, for the naming of schools, renaming of schools on October 29th at four o'clock. And you can sign up by visiting the website. The deadline to sign up is Wednesday, October 28th at noon. Also on the 19th of October on Monday at 630, there's a community forum on the budget. And you should call or email to request language interpreters if you need that ahead of time. And we are still in the process of finding a date for the joint work session, budget work session with the city council and the next joint city council sub. School Board Subcommittee meeting will be Monday, October 26. So now it's time for a report from Dr. Hutchings. And Madam Chair, I do not have the report today. Okay. And next on our agenda is reports from announcements from

341school board members. I feel like we haven't been here together long enough. So I have a report. It's going to last about 45 minutes, 50 minutes. Everyone take a seat back. So, you know, let's like giddy up. Let's, let's, let's all talk some more, you know. Oh, come on. You're going to, we're going to lose some, some more of our attendees. Oh no, no. There's no party like a school board party. So we've got more to come. Board people to tears. Okay. So now we're to the adjourn adjourning time. before I work. Madam Chair, I move we adjourn this meeting. Or was it not just a simple motion? Yep, that's right. I'm waiting for a second before I say anything. I think I heard Ms. Gentry second Ms. Lerber's motion. So I will call for

342the votes. Cindy Anderson, yes. Veronica Nolan. Yes. Megan Alterton? Yes. Amy Gentry? Yes. Jacinta Green? Yes. Margaret Lorber? Yes. Michelle Reeve? Yes. Christopher Suarez? Yes. Heather Thornton? Yes. So that's 9-0 to adjourn the meeting and the time is 9-0-1.