October 21, 2020 School Board Zoom Meeting

001You can start whenever you're ready. Okay, everyone. Good evening. This is the virtual school board meeting for October 21st, 2020. And we're starting at 7.02. And I'm going to call Wolf, Cindy Anderson here, Veronica Nolan. Here, and I just want to apologize. I'm going to have my video off. I'm driving home from a funeral, so I apologize. No problem. Megan Alderton. Here. Rami Gentry. Here. Jacinta Green. Here. Margaret Lorber. Here. Michelle Reeve. Here. Christopher Suarez. Here. Heather Thornton. Here. So we're all here. We're going to start just with a moment of silence. Okay, everyone. Now we will, if I could get a motion to adopt the agenda, please. Madam Chair, I move that we adopt the agenda for this evening. Second. Ms. Green seconds Ms. Loeber's motion to adopt the agenda. And as I told

002some of you before, we're going to just reorder it so that we deal with our legislative agenda before we proceed with talking about the continuity of learning plan, because that's going to be a shorter item. So I will call for a vote on the agenda. Cindy Anderson, yes. Veronica Nolan. Yes. Megan Alderton. Yes. Amy Gentry. Yes. Jacinta Green. Yes. Margaret Lorber. Yes. Michelle Reif. Yes. Christopher Suarez. Yes. Heather Thornton. Yes. So that vote is 9-0 to adopt the agenda. So we will move on now to the proposed legislative agenda. So Dr. Hutchings. So at this time, I would like to turn things over to Lilla Wise to go over our legislative agenda. I'm sorry, Lilla, I think you're on mute, I believe, or maybe I just can't hear. Okay, can you hear me now? Yes,

003yes, we can hear you. Perfect. Thank you. And welcome. Welcome, Ms. Wise. Good to see you. Well, it's good to see all of you. I'm delighted to be here. Things have certainly changed a lot since the last time we were together looking at legislative positions. Some interesting things have happened. Some of the legislative positions that we've had over the years have finally gone through the General Assembly. For example, opening of school. Now we can open school before Labor Day. Who knows when we will be able to open school. The second one is our in-state tuition for our undocumented students, and that was passed in the General Assembly this past year. Everything that you're going to see here is around funding. Things are very up in the air. We have no idea how much revenue there's

004going to be, but I put together some funding issues and let's see what you think. First is supporting the continuation of the sales tax revenue hold harmless funding. As you probably know, in the special session, there was money put into that. The other thing that's pretty interesting right now is, at least at the state level, they're thinking it may not be such a cut in sales tax revenue. We'll see how that goes. The second is the school supports funding to protect school divisions from enrollment loss. Now, what happened in a special session is they did not take any action on this. However, they said that they are going to take it into the regular session and see what ADM looks like at that point. One of the issues that you guys have been really at

005the forefront has been the at-risk add-on. And during the 2020 session, they added to at-risk add-on. And now, of course, with the lack of funding, they've taken some of that back away. And so we're saying we really want to go back and at least use the at-risk funding, which was approved in 2020. And it may even be more than that. Then you all know that there was the funding for more school counselors and funding additional reduction of the ratio. These were all at one point unfunded mandates, things that we truly believe need to happen, but the state was not supporting them. So we're hoping that we can do that. How funding has been for EL pupil teacher ratios has not been usually done based on proficiency. It's just been done based on the number of

006students. And I think that we all realize that students with less proficiency need more time and more help. Let me move on down here. Obviously, we've had something in our legislative package for years about the support cap. This was done in 2009. And so we're hoping that we can get some reallocation and get rid of the support cap. Obviously, cost of competing is very important to us. And the last one is opposing any diversion of public education funds to non-public schools. And an interesting thing in the special session, there were a number of bills that would have taken funding from the schools and given them to parents if the parents were homeschooling the kids because parents are home with the children. So that's it for now. I have no idea what we will be looking

007at when we get to January. I will be back with Dr. Hutchins when we have new things and see what we can do with the session. We still don't even know how we will work in the session this year. As you know, I've always been in Richmond for most of the session. During the special session, there were no lobbyists around. Everything was virtual. And it'll be interesting to see whether we can get back to some of the things that we've done before in terms of attending the different committees and watching what was going on on the floor. So I'll be glad to answer any questions you might have. Okay. Ms. Gentry? Thank you. So nice to see you again. I hope to see you too. Just one quick thought, and maybe we'll know more after

008our joint discussion with our colleagues on city council. I happen to be in a different meeting with the mayor, and he indicated that there seemed to be kind of a growing awareness at the state level that the state needed to maybe consider putting in more funding for CIP things for schools across the state that, you know, just a recognition of, you know, how, how how old many, many, many of school buildings are, you know, the challenges of, you know, the ongoing challenges of keeping up with facility needs and that, you know, there needed to be. And I guess I was just, you know, any thoughts or things that you had heard along those lines. And if there was something out there, if we could consider maybe adding some language to that. If there's potentially some

009momentum around that idea, we should probably jump on that and articulate that clearly in our list. I haven't seen it yet, but certainly things aren't going very fast right now. They've just finished the special session. And so we're not seeing the same kinds of things that we ordinarily would in October. But I've made note of it. And if there is something like that, I'll be glad to bring it back to you. Great. Thank you. Ms. Green is up next. Thank you, Chair Anderson, and thank you, Ms. Wise. Always good to see you that once a year. It's great to see you. I just have a question about the at-risk add-on, and as you know, it's pretty critical for us here in Alexandria, those dollars. And I was wondering, do you have the actual number that

010was approved in 2020? And is there anything that we can do? as a school board to make sure that this is at the forefront. Anything additional outside of what you do that we can keep this, you know, in top of mind and, you know, just to make sure that we do all that we can do to make sure that those dollars come to us again for the next school year. I think that this is one of the positions that is most popular all over the state. And because there's no losers here. Everybody's a winner. And so you could be in Southwest Virginia, and the at-risk add-on is helpful there. You could be in the city of Richmond, or you could be in Alexandria. So this is one that's on the forefront for everyone. I believe

011the VSBA does have it as part of their legislative package. Now, as far as funding, I don't have... the amount right now. The governor did restore during this special session, money was restored that was taken away, but I don't have the specific number for Alexandria. Okay. As a follow-up, I just hope that you will push really hard for that for our school system. It's truly needed. And one of the people who really pushes for Alexandria hard for that is Senator Dick Sassler. And so if any of you have a relationship with the senator, he listens to his constituents. And he especially listens in many ways to the Alexandria constituents. And so any of you get back to him. Now, I'm always beating on him about it. But that's someplace that you can really push it.

012Okay, thank you. And thank you for all that you do. Next up, I have Dr. Reeve with a question. Yeah, thank you for being here, Ms. Wise. I definitely always look forward to the reports that you send us, updating us on the different bills that are going on during session. And it's kind of similar to what Ms. Green was asking. If there are ways, I would just like to think of ways that... We as board members can get a little bit more active in this process. You know, we do have, I know we have relationships with some of our, you know, our legislators down in Richmond. So, you know, if you ever have ideas about, you know, calling on us to participate in some way, I would certainly like to do that. And I was

013just wondering if you have any thoughts on how. we might partner with our city council or other members of other school divisions in Northern Virginia also. Like what, if you have any thoughts on us for how we can be a little bit more active in this process of lobbying for the things that we need for our school division. Well, you probably know that in addition to representing Alexandria, I also represent Falls Church in Arlington. So a lot of legislators when they talk with me they know that I'm not just talking for Alexandria, Arlington, or Falls Church, I'm talking for all. There isn't anything in the legislative packages this year that all the school divisions, the three school divisions I work with, aren't in favor of and so that really helps too because Then I can

014pick up with some legislators who I might not normally do from Arlington, those in Alexandria or those in Falls Church. So, you know, usually we have a legislative breakfast where we get together with all of us. And I don't know how we're going to do that this year. A virtual breakfast, I don't know. We're still talking about that. And it's hard for the legislators because, you know. They've had a really tough fall. But the other part is that we have legislators who really care about the schools. I get calls from our legislators all the time about anything that they see that has to do with education, especially here from Senator Evans' office. So we really have a good team trying to work through things that we need. Thank you, Ms. Wise. Thank you. Yes, I

015think I shared with board members that I did talk to Mayor Wilson about coordinating our efforts, which might be good for something like the CIP, because, of course, that's a big part of the budget. And so he was going to float it with his colleagues to see if maybe we should have a subcommittee that's joint so that we could. And I think last year when I did. Watch what they you know the session that they had with legislators, you know, asked if we might not be, you know, maybe we could be more included in that rather than sort of last minute as it was last year. So I'm going to follow up with him as well. But yes, Miss wise do let us know if you think of something that we should be doing To

016help things along. And there probably will be between now and the beginning of the session in January, some issues. I don't have anything here that isn't funding because we just really don't know what are the kind of issues that we're going to see. And of course, we've had so much success over the past two years. Some of the things that we cared about for a long time. In addition, of course, to the two I talked about, there were the discipline issues that went to General Assembly last year that were all taught. Now, probably SROs is going to be an issue, both funding and some of the other parts to it. But that's just a guess. And I don't have any real feel for what we would be advocating for or against. Great. Thank you. Oh,

017Dr. Hutchings. Thank you, Madam Chair. I was just going to add on. I know Ms. Green, she had asked about the amounts. And I just wanted to say for FY 2020, the at-risk add-on was $838,260 for our Tier 2 accounts and $98,850 for our Tier 4 accounts, which is combined $937,110. So a little under a million dollars for add-on. That was for FY 20. Super. Thank you. All right. Well, we look forward to hearing more from you when there's more to hear. We may reach out to to brainstorm a little bit with you as well. Of course. Yep. Great. Thank you so much for having me here tonight. Yeah. Thank you. OK, now moving right along, I'm going to turn it back over to Dr. Hutchings for our continuity of learning 5.0. And thank you,

018Madam Chair. And one, I just want to thank the board for allowing our team, you know, to have another week to continue this discussion. Because I think a lesson learned for us is when we came to the board back in August to share every seven weeks, we will be coming to provide an update. The seven weeks is too long. We really need to make sure that we are coming back more often. So we are hoping that every board meeting and every work session, we will be able. to provide updates just to keep the board and the community abreast so that you don't have to digest so much information all at once. And also I'm going to start up my videos again. I know some people have said, Dr. Hutchins, we haven't seen you in the

019video. We wanted to hear from you again. So I'm going to work that back into my... my schedule not for every week but we are going to try to make sure that happens every other week just so that we're keeping the the staff as well as our community informed so I really do enjoy doing those videos by the way everybody but every week is a lot so I'm trying to do it every week moving forward. I also just want to tell everyone that the feedback that the board has provided us last week was very helpful in just making sure that we provided some clarity around some of the constraints. And today we really want to hone in on two of the major constraints, which are building capacity and staffing implications. But we also want to

020just share what can work based on these constraints. what is not feasible. And we want to try to be as transparent as possible, you know, in regards to this. This is a huge decision that we have to make as a school division. And, you know, fortunately, we're not the only school division having to do this. But we are, when it comes to our building and our staffing, it does make us unique because this applies to what our staffing and what our buildings are. And that's not something that is replicated in other school districts in this area, as well as across the country. I also just want to point out before we get into our presentation today, I did thank a lot of our staff last week and everybody who's been involved in this. I wanted

021to reiterate that, you know, over the past several months, we have been at work with this. This is not something that we stopped in August and we just decided to pick back up last week. We have been continuously working tirelessly. That's why I'm yawning tonight still. I was like, I don't know when I'm going to get a vacation. One day I will. I hope soon at one point that I can at least just take a break because we have been working nonstop. And with the information that comes in daily, it does require us to pivot repeatedly throughout this process. So even the plans that we're sharing and the things that we're talking about today, including the data, it's... going to change. You know, it is inevitable. It is actually going to change. And we may

022change our recommendation and we may have to pivot and do something differently. Because one thing that we learned on March 13th, when we had to close all of our school buildings, was that we do not have control over tomorrow. And throughout this global pandemic, we're all being impacted in a lot of different ways. You know, so I'm not comparing who's having the toughest time right now, but I'm just saying that everyone. across this world is being impacted in multiple ways and I just do not want us to forget that. So let's get right into our presentation and I want to talk a little bit about the essential questions that we are going to be able to answer today. And once again I just want to thank the board just for pushing our knowledge a little

023bit and wanting us to come back to share some more you know clear information not just for you but also for our community. Specifically, we want to start off by talking about some of the national insights and barriers in regards to this transition planning and not just for Alexandria and the region. We work with Education Elements, who is one of our consultants, who works with school divisions all across the country. We also follow trends in other countries as well, just to see how things are going when they're transitioning to in-person learning and what are some lessons that we can actually learn from them. We're going to talk a little bit about that. We want to talk about how we assessed our feasibility on what we felt or what we believe is feasible as we move

024into this transition. We also wanted to talk about our current building capacity and staffing constraints. You know, I can't stress this enough. I'm going to stress it as much as I can, and we will today. But these are constraints that are very serious and that they have some significant implications. on us going into this transition of in-person. And then we want to talk about some of the guidance and inputs because we have received a lot of information from not only the board and the community, but internally we work with our staff members every single week and they're assisting us with making informed decisions on behalf of our students as well as our staff. And I just have to say, you know, our staff members are just as important as our students, you know, and we

025have to keep their well-being at the forefront in addition to keeping the, you know, well-being of our students at the forefront. And then finally, we just want to revisit what the recommendation is today, you know, and we do have a recommendation for the board. And we want to talk about what's feasible, not necessarily what's right and what's the best. It is really what is the best option that's feasible at this point. As an educator, I can tell you, and I just said it today, fortunately I had an opportunity to speak on CNN today, and I expressed to CNN and to this country that what we are doing right now is not best practice by any means. However, it is what is most feasible. with the conditions that we have and some of the constraints that

026not only Alexandra is dealing with, but school divisions across this country. So we want to be able to get into that. So I'm going to turn things over at this point to Education Elements, who is going to start off with some of the national trends, because they work with school divisions across the country, just to set the foundation for our discussion today. Thank you, Dr. Hutchings, and good evening, everyone. My name is Natalie Hall, a consultant with Education Elements. As Dr. Hutchings mentioned, we wanted to start off tonight with a snapshot of how we've seen from the consulting perspective, divisions are choosing to phase in students across the country, not only from the perspective of what is really working well, but also what are some challenges that we commonly find these divisions are facing. So

027starting with what's working well, first and foremost, having a solid team structure that's based in collaborative planning across stakeholder groups, setting up dedicated transition teams and task forces is a trend that we've seen bode really well for divisions in terms of phasing and students. And that's certainly reflected in the feedback loops that ACPS has set up during this process. Another great trend that we've seen is adjustments and ongoing refinement to instructional practices that's informed by that collaboration, along with creatively thinking about how to use physical spaces to accommodate staff and students as they transition to in-person learning. Now, the next one is really important because it really hones in on the three main criteria that we see nationally that divisions are considering when thinking about what are our constraints, what's feasible, what are kind of

028our guardrails as we start to think about how might we phase in students and staff. Those three main guardrails that we see are students' instructional needs, staff availability and current staffing structures, and building capacity and facility safety. These are the constraints that we brought up last week and we'll continue to dig into later on in our slides. And they are certainly reflected in national trends in terms of common barriers and common constraints that districts are facing. Related to that and kind of related to this team structure that we spoke to before, continuous stakeholder engagement and simulation planning are common practices for divisions who have successfully phased in their students and staff. Simulation planning in particular is a newer practice, but one that is very innovative and allows various stakeholders to really get into student shoes

029and co-design what the school day is going to look like. So speaking of the school day, let's talk a little bit about some common barriers that we've been seeing. The first and foremost is teacher preparedness. It's one thing to safely transition staff into the building. It is quite another to make sure that staff are continuously prepared for the challenges of hybrid instruction. The instructional tactics and best practices in a hybrid model differ substantially compared to 100% virtual and 100% in-person model. And we've seen various districts and divisions that we work with really step up to the challenge of making sure that their teachers are set up for success. Safety also continues to be a barrier. ACPS, of course, is committed to maintaining the six feet social distancing in their buildings. However, some divisions have opted

030for a three feet social distancing to accommodate returning students. And this, of course, has caused a lot of contention in their local communities. Related to kind of dealing with the challenges and safeties and challenges and staffing models is really maintaining a mindset of flexibility and fluidity across various hybrid models that you might need to shift into and out of depending on the ratio of students and staff that opt into return and perhaps opt back into virtual instruction. So the fluctuating ratio of students and staff, this really often necessitates rapid changes in how divisions are making decisions, how they're communicating changes, and really just changes how they are operating on a division and school level. Fundamentally, this is affecting the culture of learning. The mindsets and morale of our staff and students and families is really

031impacted during this shift. And that really relates to the last point here about the school day fundamentally changing. the wearing of masks, routines that are disrupted, fewer transitions, the greater reliance on small group instruction, students walking to a building and perhaps having completely different teachers than they may have in a virtual setting, no sharing of materials, lunches in classrooms, the list goes on. This really emphasizes that school is completely different, not only on a hybrid model, but simply in-person learning as well. And so with that, if we could transition to our next slide here, I want to briefly spend a little bit of time talking about this prioritization matrix that ACPS has put together, as it is very much the bedrock of how we are choosing to phase in students. On the left, you see

032different categories of students that is not only based in best practices and national trends, but is very much based on ACPS's context. Principals worked very diligently and very hard to identify these groups and also to discern what is the prioritized urgency of return that you see on the right. So this is a visual that we really want to ground this discussion in moving forward as it is the basis of our recommendations. I'm going to pass it back to Dr. Hutchings, who's going to talk a little bit more about our constraints. And thank you, Natalie. I appreciate that. And I do want to talk a little bit about the six constraints initially that we presented to the board back in August. And, you know, the word. I don't know if you all know El Ocuche, but

033Mama said knock you out. I'm thinking of that song when I see knocking out our constraints. And the reason why I say that is because it's important. And this is something I believe Mr. Suarez said to us previously, that it's important for us to talk about some of the things that we have done as a team. And we didn't do our due diligence last week sharing in our narrative. what our team has worked through. And one thing that we have worked through is that we came back in August to share with the board that we needed to go into our virtual plus learning because we had six major constraints. Since that time in the past seven weeks, we have tackled four of them. So we've tackled four out of the six. We have tackled the

034fact that we know how to prioritize the needs of our students. We understand the family preferences and the educational equity that's going to be needed to bring our students back into. an in-person learning environment. We also have tackled the PPE and the health and the screenings and the testing protocols that we're going to need to have when we pivot into our in-person. We've been able to tackle an instructional model of what it could look like. Very complicated, very difficult, but we know that we can pivot into an instructional model if need be. to accommodate our students' needs. And then we also have tackled the transportation component, which was huge, and making sure that we can identify some modified routes. And we've polled our families to see who can assist us with making sure that they

035are taking some of their kids to school, kids who typically ride the bus. So we are getting some supports and some assistance with our community, and that will help us as we transition into some form of in-person. But the two major constraints that remain that are significant to any plan, we can have the best plan in the world, but if we are not able to tackle these two constraints, it will not be possible. And that is our building capacity and our staff ability to return. And we're going to talk about that today in specifics later on in this presentation. But I just want to touch on the building capacity component first, because last week we shared with the board that we would like to be able to explore having these teaching and learning centers. And

036I just want to make sure that I clarify what we meant by that last week. We were not intending to just have the middle schools. as the sole location for our elementary schools. We were looking at if our elementary schools were not able to accommodate all of the students who want to return. We're going to have to have some alternative spaces and locations throughout the city of Alexandria to be able to accommodate that. And we're going to talk specifically about some of those building capacity constraints later on in our presentation. But I just wanted to bring some clarity around. It's not let's not focus on the middle school being the location. Let's just focus on the fact that. We are going to have to have alternative spaces in addition to our elementary schools that students

037will need to have in order to accommodate any families who opt in to having some form of in-person learning. We also are going to need to discuss today about the staff ability to return. And one clarification in regards to that, as of last week, is it's not that our staff members do not want to return, right? And this is why we're using the language staff ability to return. Some of our staff members, they are in situations where they have health conditions, where they have age restrictions, where they are pregnant or trying to get pregnant, where they have vulnerable vulnerable family members with vulnerable immune systems in their households. And then they also have multiple other family circumstances that just does not allow them to be able to be in person. That is real. That is

038not something that we can fix by having a training tabletop or by forcing staff to come into our buildings. That's still not going to fix our staffing implications. And it's something that we are going to really need to talk through today because that is going to be a huge constraint for us pivoting into any form of in-person model that we're going to be talking about. So let's go right into our next slide. And I'm going to turn things over to Mr. Page to just revisit our family and staff constraints that we discussed last weekend just to provide some more insight as a foundation into us talking about our building capacity and staffing implications. So Mr. Page. Thanks so much, Dr. Hutchings, and good evening, board and members of the viewing public. So as Dr. Hutchings

039alluded to, this is a slide that was shared last week. and just wanted to frame the conversation in terms of the coming slides around the responses we received from this recent survey as it relates to likelihood to return. So we saw from our families across all families, 64% reporting either very to somewhat likely. And when asking the same question of staff, we saw across all staff, 56% citing very to somewhat likely. And then when we further broke that out, we did see some difference in terms of the very likely to somewhat likely where we saw more families falling in the very likely category at 43%. When compared to staff, it very likely at 23%. So what we always do in terms of data analysis is we obviously want to know where our community stands. And

040then the other point of asking this question is also to begin to use this information as planning factors. So as we begin next phases of planning, taking the most current data and applying that to our context to make informed decisions moving forward. So with that in mind, I'm going to turn it over to Dr. Hart to talk a little bit more about incorporating these data as we begin to look at building capacity as well as staff. Thanks so much, Clint, and good evening, board members. So during last week's school board meeting, we presented on facility capacity given the field verification exercise that my team completed at Samuel Tucker Elementary School. As a follow-up to last week's presentation, we wanted to provide some additional context to better illustrate capacity constraints. So the chart in front of

041you is what I'll be speaking to tonight, and I'd like to use Charles Barrett as an example to walk through this slide. So what you can see in column B is the number of students that are enrolled as of 10-19-20, and that is 514 students for Charles Barrett. Of these 514 students, we are estimating that 370 students are likely to return based on the most recent survey results, and that is highlighted in column C. Column D speaks to the updated socially distanced student capacity, which is 190 students. So this figure includes adjustments for the amount of classrooms that will be used, as well as the field verification factor that we want to make sure that we are considering as we are planning for capacity. As a reminder, we are using the six-foot social distancing model

042for room setup. So given this updated information, what does that mean for in-person instruction feasibility as it relates to capacity? And that's going to be described by the next three columns that are color-coded. So if we attempted to have in-person learning five days a week at Charles Barrett, we would encounter a capacity overutilization rate of 194%. In this case, it would not be feasible to have in-person learning at Charles Barrett. If we attempted to have in-person learning for two days a week, we would encounter a capacity utilization of 97%. So this scenario would be feasible, but could easily shift to not feasible based on increased student enrollment and or more families selecting the in-person option for Charles Barrett. And then lastly, if we attempted to have in-person learning one day a week, we would encounter

043a capacity utilization rate of 39%. This scenario would be the most feasible. Ultimately, this chart illustrates that our facilities would not be able to accommodate student return five days a week across all school facilities within our division. This chart does highlight, you know, our capacity utilization against our projected student return, but we also wanted to look at capacity with student return and our possible return of our staff members. So to that end, I'm going to turn it over to Ms. Erica Gulick, who will review the next slide, which does take into account potential staffing return and the additional impact on capacity. Thank you, Dr. Hart, and good evening. So as Dr. Hart mentioned, this next table is very similar with one factor added in, which is the percent of our staff who indicated that they

044would be able to return or likely to return in the case of an in-person model. So if we take the same example of Charles Barrett, we see the enrollment remains the same at 514 students. Our estimated students to return in person is 370, but our social distance capacity based on the amount of staff who we expect to return has reduced to 108. This is because we, of course, can't teach our students in classrooms with no teachers. Going across the line, we can now see in column E, in a five days per week return in person model, we are now at an overutilization rate of 342%. If we did two days per week, we see that this option is no longer feasible at Charles Barrett, as we have 171% overutilization. And the one day per week

045option remains feasible across all of our facilities in the event that these two factors play out the way they have in the survey. So with that, I will turn it back over to Dr. Hutchings to go through the next slide. So we want to take this a little deeper into what that actually looks like in a classroom. So we gave you the broader kind of understanding across the school division. Now we want to talk specifically about what happens in a classroom in ACPS. And we're going to use the example that we had last week. Last week, we shared with you Samuel Tucker, and we showed how many students could fit into a classroom at Samuel Tucker if we were following the CDC guidelines and having our students six feet apart. I do want to make

046it very clear around the six feet apart because I've heard from several constituents throughout our community and they were emphasizing that some other school divisions are not using that six feet social distancing guidelines and it is so important for us in Alexandria City Public Schools to ensure that we are using the six feet social distancing guidelines. There are several implications if we do not. For one, students are in a classroom all day with an instructor. And what happens if they are sitting in this classroom and it's less than six feet, which meaning we go to a three feet social distancing, we are now putting our students and staff. at risk of contamination. This was information that was not only shared by Dr. Herring, who was our director of the Alexandria Health Department, but also the

047CDC has shared these guidelines with us across the country. So what we are trying to ensure that we're doing is living up to those expectations. So that is one of the reasons why we have stayed very true. to the six feet distancing and not really bending on that particular requirement. So I want to get back to this scenario at Samuel Tucker. So what we shared last week was this was a classroom in Samuel Tucker following the six feet social distancing guidelines. We could only fit five desk and five students with an instructor in that classroom. Well, this is a first grade class that has 24 students. So if we were to do a two by two in-person hybrid model. which means you have a cohort of students who attend school in person on Tuesday and

048Wednesday, and then you have another cohort of students who attend school in person on Thursday and Friday, you have only been able to accommodate 10 students throughout that week. Now, I would remind you that we have 24 students who are enrolled in that classroom. So there are 14 students who are still left to either need virtual learning. or some form of in-person instruction. Well, we cannot accommodate that with just the one teacher who's been assigned to that classroom. So in order to meet that need or the need of the additional 14 students, we would have to hire another teacher to be able to provide whether virtual or in-person learning for those additional students. Now, this is a scenario that's just for one classroom as Samuel Tucker. Across our school division, and this is not every

049single classroom in Alexandria City Public Schools, but several and many of our classes at the elementary level are already at capacity in regards to student numbers, meaning 24, 25, 26, depending on the grade level. This same scenario and this same constraint will occur multiple times throughout the school division, which means we would have to hire a significant number of additional teachers to be able to live up to a two by two within Alexandria City Public Schools. Now, I shared this time and time again. I just wanted to remind the board and the community that it is difficult for us to fill vacancies now, as you all can imagine, during a global pandemic. It is also difficult for us to have hundreds of substitute teachers throughout our school division to be able to fill this void

050as well. So it is not a simple fix of just saying, hey, let's go hire new teachers and hey, let's go hire some substitute teachers to come in to fill these vacancies. It is a significant, you know, constraint for us to be able to pivot into this in-person learning setting. Good evening, everyone. At this time, what I'd like to do is just kind of connect the dots for you in terms of where we are now. First, since March, we have actually with extensive input, internal and external, we've developed five continuity of learning plans. And I think we may in fact develop a 6.0. But tonight, a lot of the focus is around 5.0. In addition to that, We have engaged in more than 50 plus planning sessions. And these sessions, as I mentioned last week,

051have include representatives such as teachers and leaders and parents and students. And even as of today, we were in a session collecting feedback and ideas and solutions to problems. The planning sessions have focused on areas such as scheduling and instruction and materials and professional development and so much more. In addition to that, we have 275 individuals that are associated with our Virtual Plus Learning Advisory Team. And I mentioned that last week, but I really wanted to highlight again to you, for you and the public, to just recognize all of those individuals and to really thank them for their tremendous feedback, particularly as it relates to improving and refining the implementation of Virtual Plus. We are listening to them. We are modifying and making changes. So that feedback is essential for the work that is occurring.

052We want to say kudos to the communications department because as you can see on this slide, there have been 60 plus hits to the virtual plus announcement. So that means that we have. people in the community and others that are really learning a lot from the website as it relates to the implementation of Virtual Plus. You did hear a little last week, I think from Mr. Huffman, regarding the relationship with our partners and how the partners are really supporting academic tutoring and providing supports and services. And all of this is really continuing. to make a difference. And lastly, we just wanted to say with the initiation of the helpline, there've been more than 10,000 calls to the multilingual helpline, tremendous amount of mailings, 80,000 plus. documents, newsletters, all kinds of information sent to a lot

053of our families. And in addition to that, we've had about 15,000 responses on our survey since the initiation of the first survey. So this is really the numbers speak for themselves, but just to share with you some of the work behind the scenes from all of the different groups that are part of this data. Next slide, please. Now, I know that we think that we probably know that with all the work that's going on, there are probably questions surrounding what is going on in those planning teams? What are the principals working on or the division team or the different stakeholders? So we wanted to just highlight some examples of artifacts of some of the types of work that is occurring as these teams are meeting and wanted to highlight again that all of this information

054is posted on our website. When you look at the first illustration there with the kind of red and green and yellow, that is an example of where teams identified and worked with national trends and national reports around how you prioritize your students. And that you've heard some of that tonight. You'll learn more about that. But we actually engage in an activity where. they actually prioritize the students that should return first, whether students with disabilities and English learners, but they were able to do that as a part of the process and with our teams. The second artifact here represents the groups that met and gave us feedback regarding the virtual plus. That was a tremendous amount of feedback from our teachers and others. The third artifact here, school transition team working groups. That was another example

055of how the groups were organized by elementary and secondary, and they addressed certain problems and actually worked together on various. focus areas, again, whether it's instruction and scheduling, professional development. Early on, you heard a little around the school day simulation. That is the fourth artifact on this slide. And this was actually shared with the teams, the division teams and others. And this is just an example of prior to any groups returning, there would be this group that would be responsible for experiencing what it would be like to return, starting with the bus ride. getting off of the bus, entering the facility, walking around in the facility, going to the classroom. But the goal of the simulation is for all of us to get an experience with what it would be like. once groups would return

056and to really identify what are some of the problems or challenges with returning. And the last one is an example of some groups that worked on the continuity of learning plan 5.0. The multiple artifacts that are available, but we really wanted you to know that there is some real work occurring with these various groups in helping inform and guide many of the decisions and recommendations. And now I'll turn it back over to Dr. Hutchins. So as you look at the recommendation that we are making to the board, and what we are recommending is that we have the approval to continue our phased-in approach for in-person learning. And this is for all students in grades pre-K through eight, according to the timeline that we shared yesterday. And I'm going to go through that really quick. really

057quickly with you with the caveat that this is contingent upon staffing and our building constraints that we outlined today. We are still working through our secondary options and the reason for that it's not that we don't have an idea of what we would like to do with our secondary is the building constraints that we're trying to meet for pre-k through eighth grade has implications on additional spaces once we want to accommodate our ninth through twelfth grade. So we are having to make sure that we are accommodating all of our pre-K through eight and then working through how we can provide the additional spaces and opportunities for our high school students. So specifically with the recommendation to the board in the timeline, we're looking at November 5th, having a transition of our students with disabilities in

058grades K through two who are enrolled in the citywide special education program and opt in to our in-person learning. We're also asking for a recommendation on November 17th to expand to include students with disabilities in grades three through five. who are enrolled in our citywide special education program and opt in to our in-person learning option. And then we're also asking for a recommendation or approval to expand our early childhood special education students on November 30th, who opt into in-person learning. And this program will be housed at our early childhood center. And we're also asking on November 30th to expand to our students. in grades K through five who receive self-contained language arts and self-contained mathematics instruction who opt into an in-person learning option. And then to expand on December 30th, I'm sorry, in December, not

059December 30th, but in December, to being able to expand our special education students in grades six through eight who are enrolled in our citywide special education program who opt into in-person learning. And then January, transitioning and expanding all of our remaining pre-K through fifth grade students into in-person and all of our remaining. students in grades six through eighth in February of 2021. Now, all of these transitions are contingent upon the staffing constraints, as well as the building capacity constraints. It is so important for us to keep, you know, honing in on that because without adequate staffing and without adequate building capacity, we are not going to be able to have a plan to transition our students with fidelity. It is not going to be something that is also sustainable. So we want to make sure

060that we are keeping the caveat at the forefront that all of this is contingent upon our staffing and our building capacity constraints. So that concludes our presentation. I'm looking forward to going into our discussion. Our team is here and available to provide more clarifying responses and any more insight that the board may need based on your constituents or just in general. Great. Thank you very much for that presentation. I do have people with their hands raised. I will go in order. And the first one is Ms. Gentry. Thank you again to Dr. Hutchings and the entire team. You know, again, it's, oh, let me put my video back on. It really is clearly an enormous amount of work and a lot of planning. So, you know, Dr. Hutchings, I'm going to try to. put my

061questions into one thing so then I can get out of line and stay out of line. I just wanted to start by saying something that Dr. Hutchings said at the beginning, which I do think a great thing that we've all learned from this is that, you know, one of the guiding principles that we set up when we started this process, one of the guiding principles was ensuring clear, consistent, and frequent communication. And I think a big takeaway from this particular round is how much we'll all benefit from the more frequent updates. So I'm... I'm really glad that one of the shifts that is kind of embedded in this planning is the opportunity for you guys to come back and share with us more often, because I do think that will really help the overall communications

062feedback circle. So thank you so much for that. But it really does help. I think just as one example, I think we really saw how there was such a particular confusion around what was intended by referencing middle school space for the elementary. I think a lot of people really did come away thinking that ACPS was talking about only using the middle school spaces and not using the elementary. So I'm just really glad that points like that got clarified and that in the future we'll be able to tackle things like this in smaller chunks. I also really appreciate the clarity around the space constraints and the staffing constraints. And I really kind of just have a two-parter. One regarding the capacity constraints and realizing that this is only one variable of it. But I am hoping

063that part of the planning process in the same way you guys were able to attach real numbers to the presentation today, I'm hoping that in part of the planning process, you guys will be able to share back in the coming weeks some information about the excess furniture. We've heard some talk about that. And again, I know it's not the one thing that would magically solve this, but I do think it would be helpful for everyone to understand. what it might take in terms of money and time and what the physical space, you know, finding a place to put this excess furniture and how much that might move the needle in terms of number of students. So, you know, just a request for that. And then the other thing, you know, you all did talk about

064the six feet and I'm really glad you did. It's interesting. that you know even this afternoon uh it appears that uh uh came across my you know news alerts that the cdc has even further refined the the six foot so they're they're not moving away from the sixth foot um in fact they're they're they're enhancing it and they're they're saying that uh i'm just gonna just share with everybody that might not be aware of this that um the new definition is changing the definition of who is a close contact of an infected individual. The change is likely, this is from the Washington Post article, is likely to have the biggest impact in schools, workplaces, and other group settings where people are in contact for others for a long period of time. That now it's not

065just 15 consecutive minutes within six feet, but a cumulative, so not just the consistent 15 minutes, but that if you are less than six feet for a total cumulative total of 15 minutes over a 24 hour period. And that just really brings back home why it's so crucial for the staff and why they, I understand now why the staff is really using the six foot as a guiding thing, because the minute the, if we cross that line. and we go under the six feet, there are some real ramifications. And I was hoping that you all could elaborate a little bit on what it means if we intentionally create a situation where we're under six feet and what that might mean for, you know, in terms of increased quarantining or those kinds of things. So if

066you could. a little elaboration on the kind of quarantining implications and again also thoughts about exploring excess furniture moving. Thanks again, everybody. And thank you, Ms. Gentry. First, let's start with the question you just asked in regards to the six feet. And I'm going to ask for Dr. Crawford to also assist. I'll start us off and then she can chime in. One thing that is very important and clear for us to understand is that when we get to less than six feet, and this is what all of the health professionals are saying, that you do raise the contamination rate. you know, it increases. And so we want to ensure that we're not contributing to putting not only students, but also our staff members at risk by going less than the CDC requirements. If that does

067occur. and we do have a positive in our schools and we're not following the CDC guidelines, that does require us as a school division for anyone who was in contact with that particular individual to have to be quarantined for 14 days. When you are sticking to or at least abiding or adhering to the CDC's guidelines of the six feet and face coverings and sneeze guards and all the things that we have incorporated into our planning for any form of in-person. then we will be put in a situation where an entire classroom would then not have to be quarantined when there is a contact tracing conducted because we're following those guidelines. But Dr. Crawford, if you are on this call, if there's anything additional that you would like to add or just to validate from what

068I have learned from Dr. Herring and also Dr. Crawford and the Virginia Department of Health. if you can just assist in that area. Absolutely. Thank you. And great question. Yes, we got thrown a curveball right before the board meeting when we saw the new CDC changes. But actually, I can confirm what Dr. Hutchings just said is very accurate. The impact of the three feet versus the six feet relates to the increase of spread and the impact on contact tracing. And as you said, the self-isolation or something that would have to occur as the result of that. I'm not sure if Dr. Herring is on the call, but I know he frequently reminds us not if, when we have a case in our schools, in our classrooms, that the critical piece of being able to identify

069if the classroom, if the school, et cetera, stays open will be that aspect of contact tracing. So who was within that six feet? Now, the implications, and I haven't talked to Dr. Herring since I saw the CDC guidelines, but I will say the implications that. the 15-minute cumulative has for us is significant because you're also able to pretty easily trace were you close to a person for more than 15 minutes without your mask on, you know, in this six feet. If you're talking about during the course of the day and the intricacies of identifying who may have come into contact with you for more than 15 minutes total, that is a whole different set of questions and analysis that needs to be done. So just great job, Dr. Hutchings. You were right on with what

070you said with the distance and also with the implications of contact tracing. And we do have our health professional on, Dr. Herring. So I'm going to ask for Dr. Herring to speak as well, but he's trained as well. So thank you, Dr. Herring. But Dr. Herring, if you can just comment to what we've already shared and to Ms. Gentry's question. Dr. Herring, I don't think we can hear you. I have to push the star six. Thanks for having me here, Dr. Heron, Director of Alexandria Health Department. Dr. Hutchings, you nailed the answer. If you're within six feet, regardless of whether or not you have a mask, for more than 15 minutes, and Ms. Gentry, we'll hire you here at the Health Department for keeping up to date on the recent guidance, and that means cumulative.

071Before, there was some confusion about whether it was consecutive or cumulative, but they've been very clear now. And so that means if you're within six feet of a case who becomes symptomatic on Wednesday, you go back 48 hours, they were infectious on Monday and Tuesday. So if you were within six feet, five minutes Monday morning, five minutes or 10 minutes Monday afternoon, that's 15 minutes. And that means that you are a close contact. That's 14 days of quarantine that's needed during the incubation period. And then the other thing, of course, that one has to consider is how often are the teachers getting that close to a given student? And an additional thing that we've been advising schools throughout Alexandria, not just ACPS, but all schools and businesses, is that when you have a case, you

072actually, the CDC guidance is to not use that space. for 24 hours and then do what's called the deep cleaning, the sanitizing and all. So that also has to be taken into consideration of the impact on that continuity of learning. Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Herring, for that. And I also did the second question that you asked, Ms. Gentry, in regards to the storage. That is something that we did investigate about what could be some potential. you know, possibilities for us to store additional furniture. I do want to give a caveat to that is the furniture doesn't take up enough space that will still allow us to accommodate all of our students or a significant number of our students. But there are some, you know, negative implications that comes from trying to store furniture, of

073course. But Dr. Hart, if you can talk to that for Ms. Gentry, please. Absolutely. And thank you, Dr. Hutchings. So as Dr. Hutchings just spoke to my team and I, we are looking at different possible solutions to the excess storage constraint. I will say, you know, we have been in contact with a number of our neighboring divisions as well, just to ask, how are you doing it to help us with our planning? And there have been very, you know, varied responses to that question. we can always utilize our larger spaces such as multipurpose rooms, gyms, cafeterias, but that means in turn we can't program those spaces for a return to school. If we don't store on site, then we would be faced with the cost to store off site, but also the cost to move

074the excess furniture off site, so that labor, and then to move it back once we are in a better space to return to full-on in-person learning. So there's going to be cost and implications. to any decision that we make regarding excess furniture, but we are definitely looking into what solutions we can implement in order to create more space in our rooms, as much space as possible. That's great. It'll be great to get that additional information just to fill out the context as you all continue to work through this. Thank you. Thank you. Next up, we have Dr. Reif. Well, thank you so much for the presentation this evening. I think it was much clearer than what we had last week. And I know that it's a very complex process and it is challenging to communicate

075the information. And I think that having more regular updates to the board, I think would be helpful for us as well as for the greater community. And I acknowledge that, and I hope the community acknowledges that this is a dynamic process and things are constantly changing. And so it's an evolving process in terms of all of our understanding. And I've definitely learned a lot in the last week and some things that I just feel that I really want to share for the viewing public. I've talked a couple times about how I'm a parent of three Alexandria City Public School students. They're second grade, fourth grade, and eighth grade. And, you know, we get emails from people, you know, asking, like, are you, do you really know what this is like? And I can say that

076I think everyone's experience is unique, but I've definitely experienced the challenges, particularly with my second grader, who we're having, like, a really, really tough time. And I've talked to the teacher. The teacher is fabulous. But we're just having a really, really hard time. And I'm really, I have been, have been really looking forward to getting him back, you know, into the classroom. But to be honest with everyone in the last week, I'm really coming to terms with the fact that this is not going to be like regular school if he goes back to the classroom. And people really need to be prepared for that. This is going to be another challenging transition for our children. And I want folks to really understand what that in-person learning for students is going to look like. We saw

077the picture from Tucker Elementary School, and this is socially distanced desks, possibly with that large sneeze guard in front of your child, mask wearing all day, less interpersonal interaction with the teacher and classmates. Your child is probably only going to be there two days a week. This means that the instructional model is going to change. The teacher might actually have to teach your child in person and other children virtually at the same time. There's a chance your child may change teachers or your child may not even be in the same school building that they are familiar with. And if the case counts rise, you know, we may have to pivot again back to 100% virtual, not to mention being prepared for all the quarantine that may have to happen, you know, in response to people's

078exposure. And a point that I really think is important for everyone to understand that if we make this pivot, this transition to in-person learning, that this is going to impact every family and every student in our school division. Even if your family opts to remain 100% virtual, the instructional model is going to change for everyone. So honestly, after everything I'm learning, I'm not convinced that returning the students to in-person learning is the best decision. And this is not about being risk averse. This is about what's best for our children's social and emotional and academic learning. Natalie Woods earlier talked about this culture shift. that schools are, you know, and students are experiencing and teachers are experiencing. And it's a different model. And so we're going to have to like have another adjustment. And so people

079need to be prepared for that. You know, we've received a lot of emails, again, from parents who want to return to in-person learning. And I totally understand that. But I just want to make sure that these parents understand what the hybrid model is going to look like. And I want these parents to also understand that this decision is going to impact everyone when we make this shift. And I want all the parents, you know, even those who want to remain virtual. who are out there to really understand this, that everyone, we're talking about everyone. This isn't that, we're not just, you know, you can't stay on the sidelines and keep having what you're having. Okay. If we pivot, it's going to change for everyone. And so I want to, I want to make sure that

080it's clear to those parents and that they're really having the opportunity to weigh in here about this decision. I think it's, it's just really important. And, and another thing that I want. to also emphasize that I think is important is that when it comes time to make the decision, if you're going to come back or if you want to stay virtual, we may not be able to tell you who your child's teacher is going to be or what building you're going to be in. We're starting to receive emails from people who want to say, I can't make that decision until I have that information, but we don't know how many spaces we have. until we know how many people want to come back in person. So it's a very challenging situation that we are all,

081our whole community is confronted with. And so just to kind of ask a couple of questions now after my speech there, about the K-5 schedule. You talked about the hybrid, this hybrid model, the options of the AA, the AABB day or the ABAB day. So students would either be coming two days consecutively or possibly every other day if we do this kind of hybrid two-day model that's been really popular in other places. And I want to understand, I would like you to speak to this question of... Will our teachers be expected to instruct students both virtually and in person simultaneously? That question as well as are you looking at phasing in kind of separating the K to two from the three to five? And, you know, possibly, you know, the schools could accommodate the school

082buildings might be able to accommodate the K to two to keep those younger learners in a more familiar setting. So if you could just talk a little bit about. That I would appreciate it. Dr. Reed. Thank you for your initial comments because you hit all of the points spot on. And those are the conversations that all of our division level, school level and staff level teams have been having. Exactly what you said. It's as if you were in all of our meetings talking with us. So thank you for that. In regards to, you know, staff having to not only teach in person, but also teach virtually, it's a fact. That is the only way that's going to be possible. We cannot, one, afford or have the human capital to be able to have a virtual

083program going on simultaneously. while an in-person program is happening. They can't be separated. And that will require us to do some very innovative things that I know Dr. Hoover and our IT team have significant concerns about. When you're having staff members in the classroom teaching in person and also simultaneously teaching kids from that class virtually. So meaning they're teaching a full class, some are with them in the classroom, some are with them online. You have to have things such as a live camera that will allow for students to be able to follow that instruction and for them to have two-way communication with the students who are at home, as well as while they're in person with the other students. Well, having live cams in all of our classrooms, of course, course that has an impact

084on our bandwidth. I mean, having kids just have their computers on is one thing, but having a live cam that's doing live feeding is significant. We do not have the technology infrastructure to do that for every building, I mean, for every classroom in a building. That is, you know, it's huge. I know Dr. Hoover is on this call. She may be able to elaborate a little bit more on this because I know her team is investigating, you know, how to be able to accommodate this at some point in the future. because we may be forced to have to do that. But I do know we're not prepared to do that today. But Dr. Hoover, if you can talk to the live cams and the technology infrastructure within our schools. Certainly. Thank you. The feasibility of

085doing something like this definitely depends on the scope of what you're trying to implement. And regardless of the scope, the challenges that have to be addressed is certainly bandwidth, because there's only a certain amount of bandwidth that we could increase in the next several months easily. We also have to look at the supply of cameras and what type of cameras we're going to, we would be purchasing. We have to consider additional tech support. And we also I mean most importantly this teacher in me is consider the professional development and the real challenge and change to have a camera in your classroom as you're teaching you know having your live instructions so those are things I mean we're certainly looking at and we know that they're being done across the country but again the feasibility is

086on scope and there are some real challenges that we would have to look at. Did you mention about separating the K-2 and the 3-5? Yes, I'm sorry. I forgot about that. I remembered it now once you came back on. In regards to trying to separate the K-2 and 3-5, the same challenges that we have for K-5 as a whole are the same challenges we have for each grade level. So I think it's important for us to know that even if we have individual classes, let's say we just wanted to focus on kindergarten. for the entire school division. If we don't have all of our kindergarten teachers able to come back into our classrooms throughout the whole school division, one, that makes it not feasible, right? When you add... if every kindergartner wanted to come back

087and having to have additional classrooms, that means we would have to hire additional staff because we can't pull a first or second or third or fourth or fifth grade teacher who might be certified to teach kindergarten. We can't pull them because they're teaching their classes in first, second, third or fourth or fifth grade. So the challenge that we are expressing for K-5 is a challenge that we have for every grade level. we're just looking at it as a span from kindergarten through fifth grade um but that same uh you know challenge and constraints that we have for that entire elementary group is the challenges and constraints that we have for every individual grade okay uh next up we have miss thornton Thank you, Madam Chair. And thank you to the entire team. I just want

088to echo what my colleagues have said and acknowledge that this has been a lot of work, a lot of time and energy that you guys have spent into this. And I do think that this iteration of the presentation has been very clear in addressing the constraints, which I think maybe weren't as clear to the community and quite frankly, the board initially. So I do appreciate taking our feedback into consideration. I really did appreciate the slides that had some firm numbers, which kind of showed us what our capacity situation really is. I think we all know that capacity is limited in our school division, but to see it like that, I think really puts it into perspective. And one thing that really struck me was that, you know, even if we're assuming 100% staff availability, which

089is what those models do assume, which we know is not the case. we, it is still not feasible, really, to put kids back into school unless it's at one day a week. And that was kind of my takeaway from that. And I couldn't help but wonder, you know, like, what are the pros and cons of having students come in for just one day a week? You know, we heard Natalie Hall talk in the beginning about the disruptions that, you know, school today can have on children as far as their routines and coming back to school that is just not the school that they knew or that they left. So I guess for me, I'm wondering if you all can talk a little bit about how you all will take that into consideration as far as

090having a one-day return in school and what impacts that could have on our families and students. In particular, I'm thinking about families who probably have already you know, as difficult as it was, they probably have already developed some sort of routine, whether that's child care, whether that's having an older sibling develop a schedule to look after younger siblings. But what could one day a week in school, how could that impact our families and students? And how will you consider that in further planning processes? Thanks. Thank you for asking that question. And that was a. Especially. Dr. Hutchings, your sound is messed up again. It's still it's still not good. Dr. Mann, your ears OK? It's better, but you're low volume now. Okay, because I don't have my... There you go. It's fine. Good. Super. I

091don't have my AirPods on today. I decided not to wear them today. So my whole family has to hear our board meeting. I'm like, I'm sorry, everybody. I didn't want to have the challenge. But I was just saying, Ms. Thornton, thank you for asking that question because our principals in particular grappled with this. You know, having kids in for just one day is a significant disruption to a pattern and structure that families have adjusted to. Not all families, so I'm not going to say 100% of our families are adjusted to this schedule, but majority of them have adjusted over the past seven weeks. Because we have our principals on here, I think it's important for them to talk about. what, you know, some of the negative implications that comes from having kids just one day

092per week and how we discussed that we didn't believe it was worth having kids in one day a week, but we wanted to make sure that we presented to the board what was feasible because that was what we have been tasked to do. So any of our principals, if you can just share kind of some of the concerns that we have discussed about a one day per week and how that. just wasn't beneficial. And we had this discussion, deep discussion, even during the summer. Remember, we didn't just start talking about transitioning. We had to go through a whole transition throughout the summer to determine Virtual Plus. But I see Ms. Bynum up front. Hi, good evening, everyone. Thank you for having me speak. One of the biggest... things that we love about being in school,

093either all virtual or all face-to-face, is that children thrive off of routines and procedures. They love it. They perform at their highest level when there are strong routines and procedures in place. And bringing children back for one day of school per week is going to cause a lot of stress and anxiety for our children. Having to go every fifth day and have to... try to remember routines that they had to do five days ago are pretty much going to be impossible for our children to do. Right now, what we're starting to see in the sixth week of school, we started seeing it about the third and fourth week was that the children were starting to get the hang of how to go to Clever and then get to Canvas and about the routines and procedures

094that we set in place for virtual plus learning. And so they're going to have to disrupt all of that and come back to. doing a new set of routines and procedures and everything that any of our children knew about school, except the kindergartners and pre-kindergarten students, is going to change. And so this is going to be a lot of stress, a lot of anxiety. The predictability is going to be gone. And once again, that is the environment that children achieve the highest in, is when there is stability and predictability. It's also going to affect relationship building. and having to get a chance to know each of the adults that are there and the adults to know the children. We're not going to have the social interactions that we used to have back when we were

095in school. So everything that they know is going to be completely different. And if I could add that if you keep in mind, if students are coming back one day a week, then that means that the teacher is dedicated to that group of students one day a week, which means that the remaining students are either doing something asynchronous or since we can't have this camera, which I mentioned. So that means that there is less time that students will have interaction with their individual teacher. If we do something where, you know, people are doing a lot of different things and two teachers are trying to teach something. it might work, but the ideal situation is for someone to have the teachers, have one teacher and the teachers that they've been with. And if you're teaching a

096group virtually, that's time that you will not be able to give attention to your student. I'm sorry, if you're teaching a group of students live, that's a time that you're not able to give to your students virtually. And so that whole logistic was another consideration. And if I may add as well, also the planning part for the students, we thrive off of using data to drive planning for instruction. It's going to be extremely difficult for staff to do meaningful planning that is really going to be tailored for the needs of children if we have children rotating in every fifth day. So assessments, everything is going to be completely different. Yes, that was the only additional thing I was going to add, Ms. Bynum, that our teachers take a lot of great time and care logistically

097planning for the needs of students, even in this virtual environment. And having one group of students that come in one day per week is planning completely separate from the other students that are in a virtual environment. Okay, next up is Ms. Alderton. Thank you, Madam Chair. Ironically enough, I think A lot of questions that I wanted to tackle were tackled. I really want to thank Dr. Reif for her comments. One of the things that I've sort of struggled with since the beginning of the pandemic was, you know, really taking care as best as we can to make sure that the actual instruction isn't sacrificed. And I think what I really want to do no matter what we do as we phase in, really keeping instruction at the forefront, you know, as high quality as possible.

098And I think it's really important to understand that when we start to do too many things, I think that's when instruction really, really, really gets sacrificed tremendously. So, you know, I think that's my biggest concern. And, you know, because at the end of the day, we are an educational institution and we want to make sure the kids are getting the best education they can possibly get in whatever circumstances we have. So, you know, as we transition, just really thinking about not sacrificing the education of our kids as much as possible. And sort of piggybacking off of one of Ms. Thornton's questions, on slide eight, column G, we really saw that the most ideal or the most feasible would be this one day a week situation, which I think automatically when I saw that, I could

099really see, okay, this is definitely going to decrease time that kids... have with their teachers. Is it also safe to say, you know, I mean, I guess I'll just skip to the next question, which is, you know, regardless, we would still be looking at a situation where we're having to hire more people unless we could possibly have the, you know, live cam situation. Is that correct? So yes, there will be some HR implications that come along with that. They're not going to be as significant as trying to meet, you know, two days per week, but there will be some HR implications that will come out of that. Okay, thank you. And then my next question is pretty basic. Slide four. Within the prioritization matrix, one of the things, one of the priorities is the academically

100vulnerable. And some of that is really going to be based on MAP data. And we will not complete MAP testing until the end of October. Is that correct? Okay. So, you know, we really don't have a true sense of who those students are just yet either. So no, so we will not have identification of our students who are academically having challenges until we get those results back from our MAPS screener. And that's one data point. That's in addition to what our teachers, our teachers are doing running records right now for students already. So I do want to point out that we don't wait to take an assessment to determine where our kids stand, but it is an additional data point that will give us, you know, a clear picture as students who have a significant

101academic challenge. And what teachers will do with that is to look at that data and see if it is aligned with the running records and formative assessments that they've been doing throughout this virtual plus learning period. I guess then the question on top of that is like, are we looking at a specific date when we would want to have that decision point as to who those students are? Yeah, so we're looking for the beginning of second quarter is where we were looking to start identifying those students. So the first week in November, first, second week of November is when we're really going to be then determining what students need those additional supports and what our team does, even when we're in person. So this is not something we're doing just because we're virtual. Our teams,

102meaning our teachers and our teams at our school level. they will be determining what students need those additional supports. And this is when MTSS comes into play. And that is some tier one students, everything that everybody gets, they get it in virtual plus, right? Some kids are going to need tier two supports, which are some additional supports, which is going to look very differently for virtual than it did when we were in person, you know, full time. And some kids will also need tier three. So this is when our MTSS model really comes into play as we collect this data. Okay. Ms. Loeber, her hand raised function wasn't working. So Ms. Loeber, do you have a question or a comment? Yeah. Thank you. I have a few. I'll try to keep them. I want to...

103echo everyone else to say thank you for all the work and also for the clarity of today's presentation. And I want to thank my colleagues for all of their good questions because it does help a lot. I'm still a little confused about a couple of things. Piggybacking on what Ms. Alderton was just talking about, when you went to the table, the priority table early in the PowerPoint that showed students with disabilities, English language learners. My understanding from the start was that, and what I believe the whole community is on board with, is that we would work first with the most vulnerable students, the students who really cannot get, cannot benefit from virtual learning. And therefore, we start with students with disabilities. English language learners. And then when you had this category of most vulnerable, of

104students who have academic need, who are showing they're falling behind, I'm confused with, because the table implies that we are going to do in-school priority for those students. But what you were just responding to now with Ms. Alderton is... that not necessarily that it could be a virtual, because that was my question. How were you going to, if this was the third priority group, how were they going to be singled out? I guess they'd be singled out by their scores, but then how would they be served in school? Because it suggested that they would be served in school by that chart. So that's, I guess I'll start with that because I was really confused by their being listed as a priority group. on a table that supposedly is addressing who will be served first back

105in school. So one, they were on our high priority list as we were looking at all of our different student groups. When we talked about virtual supports, any of our transitions, and as you look at our matrix, it talks about when we transition like the rest of our K-5 students, that doesn't happen until January, right? We don't want to wait until January to start providing our students with some of the support. support. So because we're still in this virtual world in November, we are going to be doing additional supports for those students that have been identified so that we are front loading some of the academic supports because now we know that there is a deficit in some way, you know, based on their assessments as well as teacher running records. But we are then

106providing those virtual learning supports, academic supports, still knowing that when we get back into transitioning back into school, there are going to be some additional in-person supports that we're going to have to continue with those students. So the matrix gave us more so of a guide of like how we're trying to prioritize needs of our kids. It's not necessarily the guide of, okay, well, because special ed is first, this was really referring to all special ed, but we focused on citywide first and focused on self-contained. It was just giving us a guide. so that we're not so people can see we're not randomly just selecting kids to come back. We didn't randomly put the November through February transition plan or timeline. That wasn't a random thing. There was a prioritization matrix that we were using

107to develop that. So I don't know if that answered your question. Dr. Mazingo may be able to clarify even more. I think that's clear enough. That's clear, yeah. I cannot. Oh, I'm sorry, Dr. Mozingo, did you want to add something? No, I was just saying that is very clear. That was perfect. I understood that. I guess then what I'm feeling is that the vote tonight, again, we look at the timetable and the chart based on the data that you've laid out for us. I guess it's, I mean, if all we're voting for is. saying, well, yes, you may go ahead and investigate the possibilities of doing this, seems to me that we've almost established that it would be quite difficult to serve, you know, other than one day a week, which I don't think anybody

108is in favor of, it will be quite difficult to serve the greater population. And that, in fact, we should. stick to our small priority groups. And again, I think it's fine to cherry pick. If there was another priority group I would pick, it would be kindergartners. And if we weren't trying to put K through five back, then maybe we could get kindergartners. back in live, you know, if they were one of our single priority groups, I just, I feel that the data nationally has said, you know, we really should bring back to school those who have the most difficulty. And so obviously kindergartners who don't know how to read and who, you know, this pretty basic would seem to me a higher priority than, than others. But I guess I just, my question has to

109do with. I think we're being asked to vote for something that we've already been shown is unlikely to be feasible and possible. And before you answer that, I just want to mention that a neighbor of mine works at one of our small private schools in the community. And just today or yesterday, a specialist teacher was... came down with COVID and two grade levels are now quarantining at home for two weeks because of that. And I mean, it just throws the whole small school into a fizzy. And my friend was saying, well, everyone knew that was a possibility, you know, and they've actually had several successful weeks before this happened. But again, I just wanted to, that was such a real example that I came across today. I wanted to share it. But yeah, I'd like

110you to respond. I feel that this vote. based on the data now is becoming, I don't want to hold out there to people, well, yes, in January, we plan to get to work on K through five, if in fact, we don't think we can do it. So Ms. Lorber, one, I just want to say thank you for that clarifying question. And I think this gives us an opportunity to say, you know, the inference that you have made is accurate. And it's not that we can't do it, but what we are, what we were charged to do is to bring what is feasible. So if we're going to do any form of in-person, what is feasible is one day per week, you know, for our students. Do we think that that is the best? No, we

111don't. You know, the same way when we did Virtual Plus, we didn't think that was the best either, but that was what was feasible for us to do. So if we want to pivot into doing some form of in-person, the only, you know, the most feasible option is to do a one day per week. But there's still a caveat to that. And I think that is the pressing point that it's not just Alexandria who has to say this caveat. We may be the... the only school division so far that's being very transparent about the constraints and what is possible and what's not. But the major caveat is the staffing component. No matter how great the plans we put together, no matter how much time we invest and how many expertise or many experts we have

112at the table, if we do not have adequate staffing to actually put this into play and make it come to fruition. It no longer becomes an option. It's something we can strive for, but it no longer becomes an option, you know, when that occurs. And we have to keep in mind the staffing component is not just about staff saying, I don't want to come back to work or I don't want to teach. You know, we've gotten several emails of, you know, community members saying, you know, make the staff come back or Dr. Hutchings would, you know, make a decision. What's your problem? You don't do your job, that type of thing. Right. We can't force people who have health conditions. We can't force people who have age restrictions. We can't force people who have family

113circumstances, whether someone in their home has a loved one who has a compromised immune system. We cannot force them to come to work tomorrow. And that is a fact. So we're going to have to own and understand that, even though that's not the place we want to be. I mean, I am, you know, an educator at heart through and through. I know this is not the right environment, meaning virtual for all of our kids. But I also know that it is the most feasible with the information that we have today. So I see Dr. Herring wanting to say something, I think, or is he saying he can't hear me? Dr. Hutchins, we can't hear you. Oh, I could hear you. I could hear you. That's weird. I could hear you. Me too. I could hear

114you. So I guess it was just me. My apologies. My apologies. No worries. No worries. You didn't have anything to add then. You were just. No, no, sorry. Very, very sorry. Dr. Heron, you're an expert. You can get a man. I apologize. No problem. Thank you for being here tonight. Okay, continue. So, yeah, so Ms. Lorber, I was just saying that the inference that you made is accurate, that what we're saying is, you know, what's most feasible if we want to pivot into an in-person learning with what we have and the data we have today is one day per week. Do we believe that is the best learning environment or it would cause tremendous distractions and disruptions? Yes, absolutely. It would, especially if it's happening halfway through the year, because we're talking January. So that

115means, you know, our... Students right now are transitioning into virtual, but a couple of months from now, they'll be transitioning into something else without their teachers, as Dr. Reif spoke to, which is spot on with a different structure, potentially a different school building for some kids because we can't fit everyone in their base schools. And also having the staffing constraint that we have to keep in mind to do any of the things that we're putting out on the table. Chair Anderson has permitted me to just continue for a minute. I just wanted to not really follow up so much on that as to ask. I've already started hearing from parents who I think have sort of recognized this difficulty. And what I'm hearing is. Will there continue to be opportunities to tweak the elementary virtual

116learning? Because I think while we've made some starts, and I guess we're not discussing that tonight or voting on that tonight, but I think part and parcel of identifying the difficulty of going back to in-school would be... doing our best to adapt to make the virtual learning work better and better for different groups of kids. And a number of families have written to me and said, you know, it's a good start, but still too much Zoom time for my kinder, you know, whatever. So my question is, will we continue to make, to be sensitive and make changes, adjust the virtual learning so that it, to get kids. So absolutely. And a part of last week, we were introducing just some possibilities, you know, that we got from some lessons learned the past seven weeks. But

117we absolutely will have to continue to refine. One thing that our principals stated just this week when we were having our weekly session was that, and we do small group, you know, conversations, is we have to be careful to not change, you know, we can't have changes every week because then that causes inconsistencies for our students. But we're at a moment now where we've had several weeks and some of the common threads have been screen time, has been choice, you know, in regards to students being able to like, I just might need a moment. I can't be on right this second. Also on Mondays, having a little more flexibility with getting asynchronous work completed and not. having to do it during a specific time frame, which is giving some more flexibility. And we did hear

118our families in regards to that, and we're making those changes. We're going to continue to take on some more input and make some changes throughout this process as well. It's an ongoing, I feel like it's very similar to when we talk about like the strategic planning process where it's continuous improvement. This virtual plus is also continuous. improvement. We're going to have to continue to monitor our progress and make adjustments and refinements. Okay, next up we have Ms. Green. Thank you, Chair Anderson, and thank you everyone. I echo Dr. Reif and the fact that this is a dynamic process. with no real right solution, but I do appreciate the greater detail. My first question, Dr. Hutchings, comes from the building capacity update slide. I don't know if we could put that up, but I was looking

119at the numbers. I think it was column D. The numbers just look very large, I should say. And I was wondering, Because that is taken from the current surveys, we will be having additional surveys as this process proceeds, if I'm not mistaken. So these numbers, I'm sure, will change. I guess it's column E there, yes. Did the numbers just seem very large? I was wondering if you could talk to the formula and how we came up with these numbers. Yes, and thank you, Ms. Green, for asking that question, because I know it's always odd to see something over 100% when we're talking about capacity. And the formulas that we're using, and I think Mr. Page will be able to provide some more clarity around this, but the formulas that we're using are very similar to

120what we use when we're looking at building capacity at our schools. Like when we're looking at, like, are we over capacity in our school buildings? It's a very similar formula. So anytime it exceeds 100%, you now know that you're exceeding what you're capable of being able to accommodate. The difference here is that we don't have the flexibility like we do in our typical school buildings, because many of our school buildings are over capacity already right now. But the limitations we have are due to the CDC guidelines. because we do have to maintain that six foot distancing, we can't just use, like for example, right now when we're over capacity in one of our buildings, we just, we can go two above the maximum in the classroom to solve that problem, right? With this particular situation,

121we can't just say we're going to exceed the class size by a little bit and make it work. because we're trying to really stay true to the six feet distancing. But if Mr. Page can talk to the formula that we have developed here, that would be quite helpful. Sure. So I think just most simply, it is really, so in terms of how we landed at that, if we continue to use Charles Barrett as example, the 194%, really what that's telling us is that's looking at the number of students that we're currently estimating to return. So what we're seeing in column C, that 370, how that compares to the number of students we can accommodate. which is what we're saying in column D, given the social distancing guidelines. So it's that comparison of we have 370

122students who are expressing or estimated to express interest in returning, divided by the number of students that we can accommodate, which would be that 190, which then gets you to the 194 figure in terms of all 370 of those students coming every day a week. And then as we adjust the schedule in F and G, you'll see that planning factor incorporated in terms of that 194 is then cut in half because then students are only coming in two days a week, so 97%. And then it's cut down to one day a week or to 0.2% in column G. So that's kind of why you see that reduction from E to G. in terms of the formulas. Does that help? Yes, it does. Thank you, Mr. Page. And then my second question, you know, as we

123talk about the supports that will be given to our most vulnerable learners, which is extremely important, I want to also ask about, you know, the rest of our learners, everyone in general, you know, this is an emotional time for the students. And, you know, I hear the elementary school principals talking about, you know, you know, they understand what is going on. But I want to know, like. If we proceed, continue virtually, or if we go to one day or two day, what is the greater plan? Is there a plan being put in place to reach out to these families for the issues that they're having? As you know, Dr. Hutchings, we're getting pictures every day of children having breakdowns and meltdowns. And the second grader that I have with me each day, it's the anxiety

124that I see in a child that used to love school. and now despises it, you know, it's very difficult. I'm wishing somebody would reach out to me so I could help them. But, you know, what support can we give to our families, you know, as we go through this beyond what we're doing, you know, with the SEAL sessions in the morning? Is there anything we can do? Is a plan being developed? So I would like to hear that more in greater detail. And if we don't have that, you know, is something, is that plan coming? Yes. So Ms. Green, one, thank you for that question. And I'm going to ask for Mr. Sampson to really talk to that because our SEAL team and our SST, our student support team, is in full effect. And as

125you mentioned, the social and the emotional component is real. not just for our students, but also for our staff members, also for our community. I mean, I think everybody, especially people, parents who are at home with their kids, it changed the dynamic. I mean, we love our children to death. Don't get me wrong. I'm sure most parents do. But it does bring an additional social and emotional layer that wasn't in existence prior. to March 13th. But Mr. Sampson, if you could just elaborate a little bit on some of the supports that we're doing for social and emotional needs of our kids and some of the plans that we've already put in place as well as some potential things for the future. Sure. So I really do appreciate that question. It's really interesting to me. I

126had a conversation with a student support team member this morning with an elementary school student who I think was having you know, some struggles. And so I think that your question is really timely because it really got to, it's not just the student, it's also the whole family and the parents who also, I think, need that level of support. So certainly as we continue to develop the SEAL resources, and that's really, you know, both the student support team as well as the equity alternative programs team, you know, we're really trying to think about stacking skills. through there in terms of helping to teach kids how to you know cope with anxiety, cope with changes that may be happening in their lives or within their school day so that all of our students like you just

127said so that every student is starting to get some level of instruction in how to build some of those resiliency skills. We'll also be looking in the next month at the results from the social emotional screener that we've Our schools have been just doing a great job of making sure that they're taking that screening tool. And so we're going to be able to analyze those results, I think, and use that to inform any changes that we might need to make to our Tier 1 SEAL curriculum that, again, is going for all students. And then also start to identify specific students. And I think we always have to look at kids within the context of their whole family, like students and their families who may need some additional. targeted supports and whether that's in small groups

128or whether that's some more individual work with the students. So we do have counselors, psychologists and social workers who are starting to run small groups and some of its, you know, groups that are just focused on helping kids feel connected to adults or to each other in school, kind of like things like informal lunch bunches, but also starting to look at those groups where kids may Again, it needs some more targeted support in building those resiliency skills. I know that, and I don't have all the details, but I know that we're also really the face office, in addition to the Parent Resource Center, are also continuing to think about. opportunities and professional development or sessions that can be done with the community to help families also build some skills for how to better support their

129children, but also take care of themselves as they're working through this very unique time. But we continue to take the feedback, both the formalized feedback from things like these SEL screeners, but also thinking about some of the anecdotal feedback that we're getting from schools and communities and families, as well as from some of the surveys that... have we put out a sort of division wide and we want to make sure that we're constantly using that, analyzing that and thinking about, is there a need that we're missing here? Is there a need that we can, you know, fill based upon the information that's coming in? So I think for us, as with many things, it's a very dynamic process. You know, we've built some things out now and we're going to continue to build new things

130or different things moving forward. Okay. Ms. Green, do you have, is that it? That's it. Thank you, Chair Anderson. Sure. Next up, I have Ms. Nolan. Thank you, everyone, for these great questions. Really appreciate that, Ms. Green, as it's such a critical component of what we're focused on with the students and ensuring their needs are being met in the social-emotional way in addition to the instruction. My question is sort of a two-parter, if you don't mind. It would be great, Dr. Hutchings, if you could just dig a little bit deeper in terms of the barriers. I appreciate so much the creative... problem solving that the staff is working on during this Herculean moment. It's just unbelievable. But one of the concerns I have is in terms of the barriers is that. For example, the one

131day a week just seems really unmanageable in terms of like the cost benefit analysis. And in addition to that, other barriers I'm thinking about is the teaching like virtual and Zoom at the same time. As a former classroom teacher, I just honestly find that would be nearly impossible to manage that. And then the third one of barriers is that testing, like if we could talk a little bit more about like, are we monitoring the cases of where we are in our... jurisdiction as well as like what would the testing be allowed so I guess I guess what I'm trying to get at in general is just the well I appreciate the PowerPoint really on the level of detail and the transparency of like all the things that are being considered it just seems still insurmountable

132and so what what is what is the you know, what is the next step with that? Or like, what is the discussion really that we're having here? Is it the data being presented to share that this probably isn't very doable? Or is this data being presented to share that, you know, we're going to continue working through it? So those are just some of my questions in terms of barriers about, you know, number one, again, the one day a week, the Zoom and virtual. And if you could talk a little bit more about what are the expectations for testing just seem insurmountable. And then two, like, given that it does seem insurmountable, what are the next steps with that? Like what decisions are being made as a result? So thank you. Thank you, Ms. Nolan, for

133that. And I think that you articulated the three major barriers very well. So the three things that you just named, those really are significant. You know, when we talk about the fact that staff would, you know, if we go into a virtual learning and hybrid approach, staff will have to teach both. in person and virtual, because we cannot, it would not be feasible, and it wouldn't even be physically possible to have like a staff for virtual and a staff for in person to accommodate everybody. It's just, that's just not possible at this moment to be able to do that. So that is a significant barrier for us to have to do both. And there are other you know, implications that comes along with that from the professional learning that we would have to do. But

134the major thing is, because I know we can still, teachers can still learn. Our teachers, let me just tell you, our staff, they have been, you know, incredible with pivoting and learning. However, there's also limits, you know, it's like, how much further can you take them? I mean, our staff, they have gone from overnight being in a classroom with students, knowing how to, you know, do lesson plans and working with our kids in person, to having to be online, to having to now do virtual lesson planning, having to do breakout sessions, having to figure out how to do classroom management and engagement, you know, virtually. And they have been doing a bang up job with that. I mean, I've gotten a tremendous number of emails and people always start by saying the teacher and the

135staff, they're doing phenomenal and they're working really hard. Right. But we can't. continue to keep adding more and more professional learning and expectations on top of a stretched staff already. You know, I mean, I don't know how far people can stretch. And, you know, the unfortunate thing is we don't have a comparison of what we did last time because no one has done this before. So we're all just being pushed into discomfort. But I know our staff can do it, but that is a huge barrier, as you mentioned. The other that is a significant barrier, as you just talked about, with the health mitigations. And Dr. Herring can talk to that just a little more in regards to, you know, one thing that we will continue to see. And I just read this recently. Dr.

136Herring, he can validate this if he's still on this call. I think I saw his name on it. Yes, he is still here. you know, we are expecting to see a spike in, you know, positives over the next couple of months is the material I've been reading. I feel like I'm a doctor now, not. I am a doctor, but I'm not a medical doctor, but I'm reading all of these medical reports and looking at all these charts and these graphs. And it's showing that, you know, November, December, January, we are going to see a spike potentially across the country, not just here in Alexandria. I don't know what that's going to look like here, but Dr. Herring, if you can just talk to some of the health mitigations, as well as some of the, you

137know, the health risks that are happening in the city and the region. Sure. Can you hear me this time? Yes, we can. Yes, we can. Okay, good. Okay, good. You know, there's some debate about whether or not we're talking about spikes and second waves and third waves and all that. There's some debate about whether or not we're actually still in the first wave. Because a lot of the stuff you don't know until you're looking at it retrospectively from a much further view out. So what I can say is that our seven-day moving average is significantly lower than it was back in April or back in May and June. But I cannot say whether or not it's going to continue to go down or whether it's going to go up. I can say, for instance, that

138when we look at the CDC school dynamic decision-making, that with regards to the total number of cases, per 100,000 in the past 14 days that Alexandria is at the moderate risk. And they have five different categories. Moderate risk is right smack in the middle. We do anticipate, we've seen various jurisdictions such as Arlington and Loudoun County and I believe maybe Fairfax have been going up in the past couple of weeks. I know that's true in Washington, D.C. and Montgomery County. whereas ours have been steady and somewhat trailing down. But with the increase in the number of the amount of time that people will be spending indoors, we're fully expecting that the cases could easily go up because of the amount of time that people will be spending closer together. So it's not a matter of

139if we have a case in a school, it's a matter of when we have a case in a school. And the whole goal, the whole idea of our providing guidance is that when there's a case in the school, that is a single case. Or if there's two cases, those are two cases that are not related to one another. Those are cases that either staff or students have gotten it out in the community. uh but because of the strategies ideally the strategies that are in place that there is no transmission within the school environment does that address the the the question that was the issue excellent dr harry and if you don't mind dr arjuns you might if i ask a quick follow-up with that Oh, sure. With the follow-up on the health one? Yes, if

140you don't mind. Thank you so much for all the time you've been giving ACPS. We are so indebted to you and for all your hard work and partnership in this effort. So thank you so much. My follow-up question is, where are we with the testing needs that would be required for ACPS? Is that a partnership that we'd be relying on the city for or the state, or is that something ACPS would take on? I'd just like to understand a little bit more about what would the testing requirements be and how would we go about preparing for that? Right. I apologize for my video going in and out. I'm not sure what that's about. There is no recommendation. We do not recommend that there be routine testing for staff or for students. There could be some

141exceptions, and one of the exceptions would be if there were a number of cases in a given setting, say in a classroom or in a school. And it all depends. Every situation is different. that there could be a situation where we would want to test a number of the students who had been in a given setting. But that would be typically rare. What we would do is we would coordinate with the schools and accomplish that. But in terms of routine testing, we're not recommending that because... First, it's a logistical nightmare, if you will. Even just doing temperatures could be very, very challenging doing screening. But imagine trying across all the numbers of students, getting consents, and then sampling all those students, and then keeping all of that coordinated, getting all those results back. And the

142juice basically is not worth the squeeze when it comes to... routine testing for students returning. What we're looking at is more focusing that testing on situations where there are outbreaks, if you will. And an outbreak is And not all outbreaks. It would be certain outbreaks, but an outbreak is defined as two or more students or two more people who don't have other linkages to other sources within a given setting and within a given time period. Does that answer your question fully? Yes, thank you. Okay. Nolan, I just wanted to get to your third barrier because we just covered two, but the third was about the one day per week. And I think that's important as well. And I wanted to elaborate on that because one thing, you know, as the team just mentioned earlier today

143in our discussion, or our principals mentioned earlier today in our discussion, is that that is a significant barrier, just having kids enter into the schools one day per week. I'm sorry, I think somebody's coming in my house and they don't know I'm on Zoom. So I apologize. Hold on for just a second. Sorry. But they didn't know I was here downstairs. But one thing I think is going to be important for us is to understand the fact that that one day per week is going to cause. a disruption in many of our students' schedules each week. It will also cause a disruption with our school operations. And it is just not the best practice. And what we wanted to make sure that we introduced today, because a part of our charge was to bring to

144the board what is feasible. in regards to any type of in-person option. And the only option that is feasible right now with the data that we have is having one day per week. And I think that if the board is going to vote on us pivoting into in-person learning at some point, I think there needs to definitely be the caveat that staffing and building capacity are two major constraints and that any type of in-person learning is, you know, it's contingent on those two things and that there is no guarantee that that can happen moving forward. So we still have to get some more concrete data as well. You know, now that we've had this deeper discussion and clearer communication, I do believe we are going to have to have another discussion. with our families and

145with our staff around some of the options that we've discussed today. Dr. Hutchings, do you mind if I ask you a follow-up question? Because that actually led perfectly into my second question, is that I noticed that with the updated information, the suggestion was made that in January, we're going to work towards getting K-5 in, and then I believe middle school was on there. So my follow-up question is, is that with the understanding that that would only be one day a week, and then that would be the decision to be made, or I was a little unclear as to what were the factors that... change and made that an updated decision in terms of announcing that we're striving for K-5, I believe it was in January, and then middle school soon afterwards. And then if you

146don't mind also sharing, where are we at with the discussion for the high school? Yes, so that does. So what we are asking is that with hybrid learning, what we're showing to the board is that what's most feasible for all schools is that one day per week. For some of our schools, it is feasible to do two days a week, but that will cause, you know, some concerns on our end. I think I'm sure for families as well, if we have, you know, three or four schools that are able to do a two day a week, potentially. with the numbers that we have today and then all the other schools not being able to do the two days per week. And it also could cause some complications. So what we were trying to highlight for

147the board as well as for the community is that if we do decide to go into some form of hybrid learning, one day per week is what's going to be feasible for every single one of our schools. You asked to follow up to that. Now tell me that. That's okay. Yeah. So I'm assuming that's also for the middle school. And then I was also just curious where we are, where we were at the high school discussion. Yes. I noticed middle school was added into the prioritization list in terms of hopes to get them back in. Yes. So we added the middle school component into the February timeframe. Initially, we were talking about middle school last week, but we were not very explicit around a date or time. So what we wanted to refine the presentation

148this week on was putting a specific date for middle school, but that is still contingent upon the staffing component and the building capacity. Because as we look at the building capacity numbers today for elementary, we know that that is going to require us to identify additional spaces. That's in addition to the elementary schools themselves, but us making sure that we have these other locations. And that does have an impact on how do we then accommodate middle and high school. So we were trying to focus on accommodations for the middle, but it is difficult for us to incorporate ninth through 12th grade. at this moment when we haven't solidified what pre-K through eight looks like. Okay, I'm going to do the last one. Mr. Suarez, I'm learning from you. I'm asking 10 questions and pretending it's

149one. But anyhow, just one last question. Would there ever be any situation where we just say it is what it is, we're going to have to stop with the prioritizing, and then let's say we're just going to bring in K-2, for example. Is that on the table or are we still trying to... you know, look at the whole big picture of the school. And then I promise I'm done. So I think that some of the challenges with that is, you know, it is what it is type mentality, because I want to be able to say that, just bring in our K-2 kids. But the challenge with that is the same challenges we have for K-5, meaning the staffing capacity challenge. is the same for every grade level. So for example, our kindergarten staffing, 100% of

150our kindergarten staffing are not able to come back into our buildings. In us meeting the CDC guidelines, we know that all the kindergarten students are not going to be able to fit into one classroom. So that will require us to add additional classrooms, which will also require us to add additional teachers. Focusing on one grade level, of course, will not cost as much as focusing on K through five. But we have the challenge of trying to fill vacancies currently in a pandemic. So it would be unreasonable for me to recommend to the board that we do something of that nature when we have HR challenges already. it will be a promise we wouldn't be able to keep trying to hire. I mean, even when we're not in a global pandemic, trying to hire teachers in

151the middle of the year or after a school year starts is difficult. You know, we've had it done, you know, in ACPS, but it is a significant challenge trying to do that after September. Okay. Mr. Suarez. Thank you, Chair Anderson. And guilty as charged, Ms. Nolan. I say with mad respect, Mr. Suarez. And today, I was actually going to ask to have a colloquy over a couple pairs of slides as my question. So there you have it. But before I get into that, I did want to say I really appreciated the effort that went in. on account of the staff to update these slides and provide today's presentations. I think this was much clearer than the first presentation, as many of my colleagues said. And I think it's allowed us to have a much more

152robust and thoughtful discussion around the constraints we're facing and the opportunities and the challenges and so forth. And so I just wanted to give a shout out to the staff for their hard work. will constantly reiterate that this is not easy. There are no perfect solutions. No matter what we decide, people aren't going to be happy. And that's just the reality we're in. So I want to just acknowledge that up front. I have one comment, too, on something that was said that I really appreciated that kind of came out of the discussion, which is I appreciate that there's been efforts from the tech team to really think about what is feasible in a physical classroom virtually. I actually had been reading a lot of the literature about these, you know, sort of. in-person learning where

153you have synchronous virtual instruction, you know, with cameras in the classroom and so forth. And I think it's important to explore that. You know, I've read articles in Education Week that that could lead to FERPA concerns, privacy. You know, I've read some articles that talk about, like in Florida, Anais County, having some issues with that and the teachers getting frustrated with it. So there's certainly problems with that. But it's something where we need to explore it as an opportunity because it could provide the opportunity to use a single teacher and with the right supports, perhaps be able to deliver a lot of quality instruction. And I just want to make a comment, too, that one thing I've said throughout the pandemic is that it would be great if we could, within the constraints of the

154law, record lessons more and have more asynchronous sort of. recordings of instruction in ACPS because I think that's equity enhancing. If you're recording AP classes and you're able to asynchronously download those and allow all kids to access those, those are creating opportunities throughout the division. So I just want us to keep thinking about how the pandemic can enhance equity by use of technology types things. And so I just wanted to put that as sort of an aside comment. But in terms of sort of my questions and colloquy, I actually wanted to, if Dr. Hutchings and the board will indulge me, I wanted to actually share my screen because what I did is I put the slides, I think I have screen sharing capability here. Let me see if I do. I believe I do. Can

155people see that screen there? Yes. Okay, great. So this is just going to make it easier for me to ask my questions. So as you can see, I've put the slide four and slide 12 next to each other. And my first sort of questions are around. our educational vision. Because I think what I really appreciated, Dr. Hutchings, what you guys did in this slide is you've kind of provided this matrix of, you know, priorities, what's high priority, what's low priority, a lower priority, obviously everyone's priority. And I think this is starting to allow us to get to the point as a board. where we're articulating what our vision for learning is in this pandemic. And I think that I think that the real one of the struggles we're having is what is the vision for

156learning in this pandemic? Obviously, we're equity for all. Obviously, we're trying to promote equity, you know, as much as we can. We're trying to triage. I mean, essentially, given all the constraints we're facing. And so I sort of have two questions based on putting these slides next to each other. The first one goes to something Ms. Nolan was talking about a moment ago about the high school. And to me, just with all candor and just, you know, thinking about this logically, I read the matrix as it stand now, when I look at it next to the recommendation as saying high school students as a class are very low below all of these groups and that we're not going to. you know, tend to in-person needs of high school students until March of 2021 or after

157February 2021. And so I'm concerned about that, kind of going, now that I see this vulnerable students at risk remotely category, insofar as like these are some groups that have real challenges now that need help now, right? So like students at risk from domestic violence, I don't want them staying home. You know, students without devices, they can't learn technology, you know, without technology. Students without internet access, homeless students. And going back to a question I asked at the last meeting, the special education students. I thought Dr. Werner gave quite a good answer to my question last time about the 11th and 12th. We're supporting them pretty well. So maybe there's an argument that some special education students don't need to go back. But I am concerned that. You know, there are some special education students

158that aren't going to be in a building for five months who are nine to 12 who may really need those services. So I guess my first question in the colloquy is, you know, is there any way we can, you know, think about the most vulnerable nine to 12 students and bring them back sooner because as these these groups are defined here. I don't see why we can wait four or five months. Mr. Suarez, can I respond? Yeah, yeah, no, no, yeah. I didn't know if you were done. Yeah, no, no, that's why I said it's a colloquy, because I have like two questions from this slide and then two from the next one. Got it. Ms. Nolan said she was practicing what you do. But so to answer the first question that you had, you

159know, I think that we have to keep in mind, it's a challenge for us to even address, you know, the needs of pre-K through eight. in trying to do a hybrid, right? So let alone you try to add 9 to 12 into this puzzle. I mean, just from pre-K through 8, the most feasible option is to do one day per week, which we've all just discussed right now. It doesn't seem like it really is the best practice, and it would cause more complications and potentially more disruptions to students and staff. And so it... It's difficult for us to now add a layer into how do we also do it for 9 through 12. And I think this is what this global pandemic is bringing for us. We can't solve. everybody's kind of issue and challenge,

160you know, and I think that that is what makes it the most complicated situation. It causes anger, I know, for the community and staff and also even for me, because I feel that how can we not do something for every single person, you know, like it, but it's just not feasible. under these circumstances and so many constraints when we have to think about the CDC guidelines. Like that is the layer that. which I think is very important. So don't get me wrong, because I'm not saying that I don't want to follow the CDC guidelines, but I just feel that that is one layer that just adds even more barriers for us. So to answer your question, Mr. Suarez, we can barely get more than just one day a week if we're trying to tackle pre-K

161through eight, which we don't believe is the right thing to do. So it's almost impossible to try to add ninth through 12th grade to that. Yeah, no, and I get that. And I guess I would just reiterate, the reason I asked the question is because, not because there are constraints and sort of. making a plan for each group, but because as this is laid out here, that's why I put the slides next to each other, we're saying to the public, we're going to wait five months before we start high school, nine to 12, when there are these students with pretty severe needs. So I guess the logic of my question is I don't understand why those constraints require that long of a time. Does that make sense? Yes, it does. I hear exactly what you're

162saying in regards to if we're saying that our students with special needs, that they are our most vulnerable, and we've gone pre-K through eight, how can we not go through 12th grade? And why are we going to wait until after February to begin to address that? And I think that, and this is something that I know Ms. Werner had mentioned last week, and these are some of the conversations that we have had. We still have to look at the staffing. barriers that even come along with trying to serve our students with special needs. So even though we've identified them as our most vulnerable population, as of right now with the, you know, prioritization chart or matrix that we're using right now, we still have the challenge of the staffing constraints, you know, even though we

163want to do that, you know, and I think that what we are trying to do is to be transparent and upfront about that so that we're not saying, oh yeah, we want to do pre-K through 12, but we still have not gotten all of the commitment to do pre-K through eight, you know? So we're trying, and I think that, you know, I think that I can probably better answer the question about the citywide program in particular once, you know, we... get some more commitments in regards to the staffing component. But as of right now, it just seems that based on our data, it is not feasible to do it sooner than that. And I think that what we tried to make very clear this go round is with the building constraints as well as the

164staffing constraints, that the only feasible in-person hybrid approach would be one day per week. And I think we were also trying to make it clear that that one day per week is not only not sufficient, but it also adds additional disruptions and even more, we believe, disconnects that could occur with with our students, as well as with our staffing, with all of the changes that are kind of evolved around trying to make that one day. per week come to fruition. Yeah, thank you for that. And let me just say, like, I agree 100% about the transparency. We have to be 100% transparent about these constraints. And that's exactly why I think this presentation is so helpful, because it really lays that out. Because I think the public needs to appreciate that no matter what. There

165are going to be children who aren't going to be afforded this opportunity, at least in the immediate term. I mean, CDC restrictions may change, things may evolve, but there are going to be choices that are going to have to be made that are going to be difficult. I'm just trying to push us to make what I hope would be the best choices for all kids. And I know that's all of our interests, obviously. So let me kind of transition to my- Before you go to your next question, I want to just add on. I forgot. Yeah, go ahead. Go ahead. is one more thing I think that's very important for us to have on the record and also for the community to know is that it's not that we're in a situation right now where

166all of our students are doing nothing. Right. And I think we have to make that very clear because our staff, they would send me all kinds of nasty emails after this message if I didn't put out there. No, no, no. How hard they are working virtually. And it may not be the best learning environment, but even with our students with special needs, our special education teachers, our special education paraprofessionals, our school psychologists, our counselors, you know, our staff, they are still working in this virtual world. which is very different from what they do in person. But I just wanted to make it clear that it's not that, you know, nothing is happening for kids and they're just sitting around waiting, which unfortunately that is the case for some students across the country. But that's not

167our situation in Alexandria. And I just wanted to just make that very clear so that people in the community don't make the assumption that, you know. we're not doing anything for kids who have special needs or there's some kids who are getting nothing at home. It may not be the same environment that they had prior to March 13th and we're not able to replicate how things were prior to March 13th, but we have a new way of providing learning for our students in this virtual plus world. I just wanted to make that clear. Absolutely. And I would say I agree with that 100%. You know, we're doing the best we can in the circumstances. And, you know, in many respects, as many people have acknowledged, we were ahead of the curve, rolling out the technology,

168getting people, you know, into the virtual learning. And so, you know, and we've improved the virtual learning this year. And a lot of parents and families have commended that. And there are students who, which I've said before, who are thriving better, particularly at the high school level. um you know in this type of learning relative than they would have before and we have to acknowledge that so i appreciate you making that point um so my second question and i'll transition to the second slide to kind of make my question um synthesize my question in the one question it's kind of i'm going to frame it around the k to 2 piece so i created two slides with the constraint these other constraints now that i want to talk about so for the k to 2

169um I share the concern of other board members that, you know, why can't we bring them back sooner? You know, we've had this goal of K-2 literacy in the division. As a former teacher, like I want to acknowledge and validate the fact that kids benefit from routine and consistency. That is super important. So I want to acknowledge that, you know, and I also would agree with the points that going back one day a week, you know, is probably disruptive and probably suboptimal. Now, I will say, if you look nationally, if you look at private and public schools and you do the comparisons. it's very clear that a lot of divisions around the country are doing the two and two, you know, and I think you can have routines and consistency with the two and two.

170And I want to say further that I appreciated the clarification, Dr. Hutchings, when you were speaking with Ms. Nolan about the fact that, you know, these constraints are across grade levels. So we can't just do K-2. because their constraints are K-2, they're 3-5, they're consistent across all the different grades. But I guess what I wanted to ask, and it's kind of going back to the vision, if we are clear about who we view the most vulnerable learners are, and we set forth criteria that allow us to say, the most vulnerable learners are coming back in K-2, You know, given notwithstanding the constraints that are, you know, here in this in the slide on the right, particularly with the staffing, you know, would we be able to look at our staffing and say, OK, well, for

171this school, we have one teacher in each grade for K to two who are amenable to coming back. And that gives us this many students. And we know that, you know, these, this group of students is particularly vulnerable of not being able to read by the grade, grade three, which we all know is the huge cutoff. So therefore, let's get them moving back into the classroom sooner, you know, to facilitate their reading. And I want to say, again, I validate all my board colleagues, you know, statements about what's the vision for learning. Is the in-person necessarily better? I know that there are those arguments, but I just want to understand, like, because I will say this candidly, I have felt a little bit, and I could be persuaded otherwise, that the one day a week,

172you know, constraint as it's been presented feels a little like a straw man to me. It doesn't, it feels like, like, we can get around that if we, you know, prioritize, you know, and figure out how to get to two days a week. So, Mr. Suarez, let me take the first stab at your question. I'm going to ask any of our colleagues to chime in on our team. But first and foremost, I do want to say that... If it was feasible and if it was possible, it would be in our presentation. Like we would inform the board that we can do this because we want this just as bad as everybody else. So if we could do two days per week, it would be on our recommendation list. But we know that it is not

173feasible. And the biggest constraint really is the staffing as well as the building capacity. But I think we can overcome some of the building capacity constraints. The staffing component, that is, it's a big hurdle. And I think it would not be in our best interest to state that we can do that when we already know we don't have the human capital to make it possible. Because we know for sure that we have staff members who have health conditions. We know for sure we have staff members who they're in an age bracket that shouldn't be out in public consistently each day. We have staff members who have family members in their homes who have, you know, immune systems that are compromised. So we know that there's a portion of our staff that are literally unable to

174be in our buildings. And that applies to every single grade level. kindergarten, first grade, second grade, third grade, all the way through and including pre-k. So I think that that is a major fact. that we just can't resolve until a vaccine comes, you know, for that group. We can resolve people nervous about coming back. We can, because we can work through that. Hey, this is, this is the precautions we're taking in place and all that. We can, we can resolve all those matters. I believe over a period of time, we can't resolve people who have legitimate health issues and cannot return. And that is a population that offsets. everything that we want to do. You know, that is what the huge barrier is because it just makes it not possible. Even if we tried to

175focus on the K2 and I think our K2 literacy, you know, it is one of our areas of focus. So we are just as gung ho about it as you are, Mrs. Suarez. I can promise you that. And that is why we're working on how can we still provide the K2 literacy supports virtually, you know, because we're not putting everything on hold because it's virtual. We're just trying to find some other innovative ways. And it might not be a replication of how things were prior to March 13th. But there are strategies and literacy strategies that we can incorporate, that we can begin to learn how to do so that our kids are not falling further and further behind. Now, can we replicate in person? No. And I don't even want to make anybody think that

176we can do that because we cannot. We cannot replicate in-person instruction. But we can find good and best practices for virtual learning that once our teachers begin to master, which they are doing a phenomenal job over the past few weeks. But as they begin to master it and get better at it, I do believe we can start seeing our students reap some of those benefits. So Dr. Mozingo, I don't know if you want to add anything to this conversation or any of our chiefs if they want to chime in. The only thing, good evening, everyone, again. And thank you, Mr. Suarez, for asking those questions. I just made a, I want to bring, I had three points. One, I think is if we go back, I was reflecting on the data, the survey data. And

177I think based upon the survey data, what it did show us that at this point, for the most part, there are improvements, of course, along the way, but the high school kids are moving along and making some progress. I've also, like you, read several articles and had been learning about the major challenge for the high school would be, and this came up today even in our meeting as we were trying to prioritize groups, it would be extremely complicated for the high school to change their schedule. That would also result in a tremendous amount of communication. And the other challenge with that, one day a week, even with the high school, we would slow the curriculum. It would probably also increase learning gaps at the high school. So my main point is, if I go back

178to the survey and go back to what we have learned and what we are hearing at this point, we can continue to perfect the virtual, particularly for 9-12. But that's... not where our greatest needs are occurring right now for majority of the students. I think the other challenge would be the logistics at the high school level, the logistics, again, of a new design and a new schedule at this time of year, particularly when that high school has over 300 courses. So we're just trying to figure out. I just don't think logistically. that is feasible or possible. And that was just a statement that was made today by someone as we were looking at a possibility of what this could mean and some of the implications. And the other part, again, is just that we don't

179want to introduce a new model that would continue to accelerate gaps in learning. And I just wanted to bring up something really quickly. Can we go to slide nine just really quickly? Because I think this can help explain the point that I was making in regards to some of the challenges that we are faced with, with the staffing component. And I want to use slide nine because this was the Tucker example of a first grade class, you know, so this is the first grade classroom. This is a, you know, our first graders who are learning to read and it consists of 24 kids. Us trying to do the two days per week. In this particular model, because this is not going to change just because we're just, let's say we just wanted to do K-2,

180this model is still going to look exactly the same. Nothing's going to change about this structure. If we're trying to do the two days per week, it only affords us to meet the needs of 10 students in person. We still have 14 more students that are going to need either virtual or in-person instruction, which will require us to hire. an additional teacher to make that work. And that is just for that one classroom. So let's say we take kindergarten classrooms across the entire school division. We're talking 40 to 60 kindergarten classes across the school division. That's 40 to 60 potentially because almost all of our kindergarten classes, not all, but almost all of them are in this same situation where we're at capacity. in classrooms that will require additional teachers, which adds up very quickly.

181You know, we have a challenge right now trying to hire teachers in September. We had challenges trying to hire teachers over the summer and in the spring of last year. We still were hiring folks. So thank you, HR. Thank you, principals and their leadership teams for still conducting those interviews. But it is a huge challenge, human capital challenge. in October to be able to try to fill those positions to accommodate this strategy. So I wanted to hit home on this one because this gives a visual of what a kindergarten, I'm sorry, what a first grade classroom today, what it looks like right now if we were to open our doors right this second. I think this helps explain why we want to be able to do something and why it's not feasible. in the current

182situation we're in. So thank you for sharing that actually, Dr. Hutchings, because I think this goes exactly to what I wanted to hone in on in response to your comments, which is this is why the transparency is so important. And again, the community needs to understand that we are operating within constraints and no matter what we do, Chris, you're coming in and out. Well, maybe you're fixed now. No, your video is not working. Yeah, yeah. Sorry. Sorry. Is it better now? A little bit for that sentence it was. Okay. I had a thing pop up saying internet is unstable and then it went away. So it's better now. It's better. Awesome. So just to push you a little bit on this example, Dr. Hutchings, I guess that's getting to my point where I'm trying to

183just, you know, and this is partially a conversation with you, partially a conversation with the community. Like, you know, in this scenario here. If we were clear with the community, you know, we have a sort of understanding of who the most vulnerable students are K-2 and who are at the most risk for not being able to read by the grade of three, you know, and we, you know, lay out like these are our criteria, and we're going to have 10 students, you know, come back physical. And this means that that one teacher is going to be in the classroom. That means for the students who are not in the classroom. assuming we can't afford another teacher, they may, the other students may have to learn asynchronously, videotape lessons, worksheets that are handed out, and all

184these other things, right? And that's part of the conversation, you know? And so, and maybe those are conversations you've had and run the ground, you know, but I can see one scenario where you do that, or there's another scenario where you, like you said, you have to hire another teacher so that you can deliver, you know, parallel instruction because one of the teachers is in the classroom with the 10 students who have the highest vulnerability and risk, right? So, Mr. Suarez, with your first kind of example, that would be a challenge because what we would be saying now is that all of our students who do not have academic deficits, that they're going to now continue learning through asynchronous, watching videos, and then they're going to have even less social interactions, even though the social

185interactions are virtual now, there's some kind of interaction. Right. our teachers, which I think, I don't think that would go over well with our community or with the staff because. And I'm not endorsing that. I'm just, I'm the point I'm making is this is the kind of conversation we have to have with the community and the transparency we need to have around what the strengths are. So I agree. I agree. And I think that with your second point in regards to hiring the additional teachers, we have to keep in mind that that issue and that problem of the hiring that one or two additional teachers happens for every classroom that's in this situation, which becomes a significant number of teachers in our budget right now. They're about one hundred thousand dollars, including benefits and salary.

186each that depends on what kind of teacher. So we're talking a significant amount of money. Not only that, we have the challenge, the human capital challenge of hiring people, you know, well into into the school year. And everybody's going to have that. It's not just Alexandria, but anybody trying to hire people after the start of the school year is huge, especially when you add the global pandemic to it. It just makes it even more challenging than it was when. everything was back to our old normal. Okay. Mr. Suarez, are you finished? Yeah, I mean, I was just going to make one last like 10 second comment in response to one of the points that Dr. Mazingo made, which is that I hear what you're saying regarding the high school, you know, some of the feasibilities

187there. I guess I would just go back to, you know, why are we being categorical for that whole group when, you know, you, for example, for special education teachers, I can have a single teacher meeting with that student who is extremely high need. But in the plan as proposed, we're going to wait five months for that teacher to see that teacher who may be amenable to meeting with that student in person. So that that's kind of my my more my concern, you know, for for for for the high school. I'm not saying open the floodgates. I'm just saying, you know, we need to think about the needs of our most vulnerable students. Okay, thank you. I have not spoken yet and many people have asked questions and I had, but I think that, you know,

188what I'm feeling is, I think we need to do more work on some of this, you know, we need to maybe go think, continue to think creatively, but we don't really have a way forward on some of what is in. the possible motion that was that we were thinking we're going to have today because of the one day per week. And so I don't think we can move ahead with that. But I do not want to. So I want to make sure then that we're doing the citywide stuff that was at the beginning of the timeline. I want to make sure that we're doing that. best possible that we're going to really go back and work with the people who are in that category so that we know. I mean, I guess one of my

189questions is, are we going to go back to that group with the more detailed information about how it's going to work to make sure we still have the same number on board? In other words, they don't have all the information. they didn't have it all when they did the survey so how are we going to proceed about that yes and thank you madam chair for asking that clarifying question because we are scheduling a meeting this week to meet with all of our um city-wide program teachers so that we can have a deeper discussion and take a deeper dive of you know the information that we share with the board today i know that miss werner is on um this this zoom right now uh you can speak to that we're also going to be reaching

190out to all of our citywide families with this information as well so that we can get new numbers because when we initially did our survey it was a couple of weeks or several weeks ago um we when we initially polled our staff um that was several weeks ago um as well so we are going to need to get some updated numbers uh in regards to commitments um but i i do think that Ms. Werner can speak to. I don't know the date. That's why I wanted you to be able to chime in. I just know it's coming up soon this week, I believe. Yes, Dr. Hutchings. Thank you. Here, Anderson, we have pulled all of the parents of the citywide students in our K-2. parameters. And we do have, as of this afternoon, exact numbers

191of all but three of the families that we have not been able to reach. So we have a very good idea of the numbers that we are interested in at this point of students who wish to return and students who wish to remain virtual. We do have a meeting scheduled tomorrow afternoon at 2.30 with all of the citywide teachers prepaid to five discussing all aspects of a potential return to school. And we have a polling form ready to get an updated response from them tomorrow at the end of that meeting. Great. Thank you. And I just, you know, some, somebody else mentioned it, but I just, I think of our constraints, like the, the space one, I I'm thinking that community members may be questioning why we were talking about the middle schools for elementary

192this year, this, this week, last week. And now this week, we're not talking about it at all. Like I understand we have the staffing issue still, but, but is, I guess I'm wondering what happened to that sort of. Yeah. So last week, as I mentioned earlier today, I wanted to make sure that we were not honing in on a location because I feel like that was taking away from the fact that we just need additional spaces. That, you know, our elementary schools alone solely are not going to accommodate all of our students who want to opt into an in-person learning environment. So we stopped specifically talking about the middle school because we. want to just state that it's the middle school and could be other places as well. You know, last week when we brought

193that to the board and if you look, if people can go back and reference the actual document, we were asking the board to be able to design and explore that as an option. We weren't saying that this is what we wanted to do. We just wanted to make sure as we internally were looking at potential locations to accommodate the spacing. that the board was aware that these were some potential locations. We also are going to have to look at other places as we expand the space or the building capacity concern. But in addition to the building capacity concerns, so that's one thing that I think, I believe we could tackle, honestly. I think that the building capacity, we could tackle that. we still have the staffing component that is significant. The more classrooms you add

194to accommodate additional students, you have to have a teacher in those classrooms to be able to teach those students. So every classroom equates to another teacher. So we have to keep that in mind. That is not something that we need to take lightly. And it's not just about finances, because I want our community to understand that, you know, we financially will do what we need to do if we need it to have finances to accommodate our students' learning. We can't make people apply to a bunch of vacancies in the middle of the school year. We can't make a pool of highly qualified teachers to be able to teach in Alexandria City Public Schools in the middle of the school year and in the middle of a global pandemic. So the human capital concerns are even

195broader than the financial. concerns and the building capacity concerns that we have. So the reason why we're not speaking to answer your question, Madam Chair, because I'm getting a little long winded here, I'm sorry it's late, is that we did not mention the middle schools this week because we really want to focus on the fact that the elementary schools are not, the building capacity at our elementary schools are not enough to accommodate all of our elementary students who would like to return. And we have to have you know, just some contingency plans on how will we accommodate those additional students and where will they be located when they cannot fit into our elementary schools. Yeah, I guess my, I guess my thinking was that the, you know, the classrooms and of course, again, it wasn't,

196it wasn't popular. It was not a popular idea necessarily, but I'm going back to the limitation on a per classroom basis that if we actually had a larger room, it does make it, better for the staffing issue too, because you can have more people in the room. So that, that's kind of where I'm going with that is, is that, and I don't, we're not going to solve this tonight, but I just, I just think that that's still something to think about, like being creative about space that maybe could allow us to have more. more people in the same classroom. Like I'm wishing we had lots of room dividers that are, even though those were, some of those were dangerous, right? But so that we could open up and make, you know, a double classroom and

197maybe have more people in that. And we would still have space problems, but I don't think the space, as you said, I don't think the space thing is as big a problem as the staffing. So I'm then looking for bigger space, right? So that we don't have as much to... to lessen the staffing issue is what I'm aiming for. But again, it's not something we're going to solve tonight. So I have Dr. Reif and I have Ms. Gentry. And I think then we can maybe think about what we can vote on tonight versus what we need more information about. So Dr. Reif. All right. Well, after the turn this conversation has taken, I'm a little having a hard time probably articulating myself here. I guess, first of all, I think it's obvious this is a

198complex situation and this planning process is very dynamic. There's new information becoming available and there's, people are having light bulbs go off in their heads at different times, right? So we're all kind of understanding, I think all of the constraints in phases, if you will. I guess one question I have is, About the one day a week, because that did surprise me a little bit, I'm going to be honest. The one day a week is the only thing that's feasible for an in-person learning was a little bit of a surprise. And I'm kind of concerned, like, well, I'm kind of wondering a couple things. One is why... why in the recommendations to the school board for January and February, you have this recommendation to expand to include all students, you know, pre-K to eight who

199opt into in-person learning when you've articulated that you don't think it's really an educational best practice at all. So I'm a little bit. confused why it's even honestly listed here as a recommendation. But then beyond that, just looking at the phased reentry, the big plan that just went online too yesterday is just trying to understand why that doesn't, it doesn't really communicate anything about the instructional program, I guess. It doesn't really say that it's going to be the one day a week. So I think that I think this might be something that Chris was getting at, Mr. Suarez, excuse me, is that this is a challenging situation to communicate. And if we don't communicate it effectively for people to understand it, they're going to think we're not being honest with them. I mean, basically, they're

200going to think that you can do it, you just don't want to do it. Because, I mean, so I guess... You know, I'm wondering, like, number one, why do we have it as a recommendation on here if it sounds like you don't think it's really a good idea? And what is our strategy for communicating? Because I think that, you know, again, the phased reentry plan that's up on the website right now is inadequate as it's presented. And so how are we going to... to fully communicate everything to the full community. Thank you, Dr. Reeve. Can we go to slide eight in the PowerPoint presentation? Because I think that will help me with the comments that I'm going to make. And I think it will help everybody follow along with that. And I'm showing slide eight

201in particular because if you look at the G column, right, you see it's green. That means it is feasible to do one day per week for every single school in Alexandria City Public Schools, right? So no, we do not, I mean, or yes, we do not believe that it is the best option in the world. However, it is feasible. So if the board wanted to provide some form of in-person, the only way to do that would be that one day per week, which we don't condone. We don't recommend. We don't think that is the right thing to do. But I think in full transparency, as you stated earlier, Dr. Reif, if we were to say, oh, we can't do it, people will say, well, it shows that you can. So we want to be very

202transparent that it is feasible, but it's not. even the best feasible option because there's so many disruptions that come along with that. And we still have to guarantee that we have the staffing in order to make that work. Even when you look at the recommendation, the recommendation in that first couple of sentences are so important because it says contingent upon staffing and building capacity. We've been adamant about that. We have said it. time and time. I said it last week, I'm saying it this week too, and I'm going to keep saying it. All of the plans that we are putting together are still contingent on those things. And the plan that we posted just recently is to help the board as well as the community to understand that we do have a plan on how

203to pivot or how to transition into an in-person learning model. And we did not intentionally put the one day per week because we needed to help people understand where that one day per week came from. You just throw numbers out, everybody gets confused. We learned that from last week. So our job now is to be more, you know, clear. So when we say why it's one day per week, now we can, you know, articulate to anybody who asks why that is the case. Our job was to show what was feasible. What is feasible is that one day per week. We do not recommend it. That is the right thing to do because there's still staffing implications. And in the recommendation, the key point in that recommendation that we're asking the board is that this plan

204and any plan is contingent upon the staffing and is also contingent upon the building capacity. So there is no guarantee. Your audio is messed up again. It's still a little bit. Try again. All right now. Yeah, great. It's great now. Yeah, I was going to be contingent on the building capacity and the staffing. And that is a part of that recommendation that I think is a key point. Okay, don't remove this slide because Ms. Lorber has indicated she has a question about it. Thank you. Thanks so much. I bet this slide has been bothering me the whole night. I just want to be able to, oh, not that one. The slide we were just looking at based on staff. Yeah. Okay. Can you hear me? Yes. Yeah. Okay. The thing that confuses me on this

205slide is it seems to suggest that, okay, so say Charles Barrett, 108 staff will return. said indicate an interest. Okay. The staff don't come. I mean, it's the students come in and need to be served. The staff, it seems like they're being counted as a group that's in the school all the time at the same time. I mean, when they're figuring out the building utilization, I don't understand why the staff are counted in the same way because one staff person goes in each classroom. But the staff won't all be there at the same time, or they might be. I mean, but it just, I don't quite, I can understand where the space is a problem. But suddenly, you know, once you add in staff, it jacks these numbers way up. But it almost seems like,

206I don't know, I could be right. It just seems odd to count the staff in. Wayne, to you? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Maybe if this could help a little bit and Dr. Hart can chime in if she needs to as well. So when you add a staff member into the space, we have to keep in mind that the staff member also has to be six feet away from the students. The staff member is not going to be normal how they normally walk in there talking to kids and they're touching kids on their shoulders. And that's not going to be the case. They're going to have their space the same way the students have their space. The staff are going to have to have their space too. So they have to be in that room and they

207have to be there the whole time that the kids are there. That's why it's going to be some challenges because that is going to require, you know, we need to figure out how that lunch period and that type of thing because kids are going to have to have lunch in that space too. You know, all these things are going to have to happen because you have to limit the number of transitions that kids are having throughout the day. So to answer your question about the teacher being in that room, they take up space in that room because they have to be six feet apart too. We can't say, well, all the kids are six feet apart and now the staff member doesn't have a place to be. So that impacts, you know, the square footage

208for everybody else. And that is why they have to be calculated that way. When we did the numbers in the previous slide, that was just identifying if there were no adults in the whole school. It's just putting all kids in there, right? Just to show people that's where that number comes from. But the number decreases. when you add the staff to it. And that's not even putting 100% of our staff back in there. So if 100% of our staff came in, the number would be even lower than that. That is just putting a staff member in every classroom. And just to follow up on that. So I can understand then we've demonstrated very well that schools themselves can't accommodate the one day per week. But how does this address if we did it differently? again,

209sticking to our priority students, but if we find other locations and... I mean, I think it was really important for people because there's been a, you know, everyone is, people are very concerned. They want their child to go back and be in their own school and have their own teacher. And I think this makes it really clear that that can't happen. But I agree, I guess, with Chris and others who've said something about this one day a week, like we, why did we do this? I mean, it's almost as though it does feel like we were just, we're trying to. proved to everybody that fact that in-person learning just isn't going to work. And I'd rather that we demonstrate very clearly that it will work for certain groups. And that was our proposal in the

210first place, that we have certain priority groups and we're going to continue the most vulnerable groups, the ones who have the biggest struggle with virtual learning. and that somehow we will continue to do that so that we don't come out saying, I mean, I'd rather, I don't know who already said this, but I'd rather not even talk about the one day a week. I'd rather say, I mean, we can use this as a way of explaining why people can't go to their own school, but then I think I'd just rather have us focus on doing a good job with the priority vulnerable populations. And as a number of people have said, forgetting about, you know, it's unless we believe that things could change so dramatically in January and February, that in fact, we might be

211able to do something besides the one day a week. But holding out there that when we say we vote yes for January and February, knowing that all we're proposing is one day a week. That doesn't make sense. I mean, it would be one thing if I felt, okay, well, January, February, because we're thinking maybe something will change, get better. More teachers are going to decide after discussing this, et cetera, that they can come back. We're going to find new spaces. And if that's what you mean by us giving you permission to continue to look into it. because you're going to look into more space. You're going to be working with teachers to help see if you can make it easier for them to come back. You know, yeah, but if we are certain that what

212we're talking about when we say coming back is one day a week, then it's like we're holding out something that we know nobody wants, and it just seems that we shouldn't do that. So we have Miss Alderton. Followed by Ms. Gentry. Okay. So I guess my understanding is that, and I guess that's why I asked some of the questions about Colum G earlier, because my understanding that the one, I think we're stuck on this one day a week, and I think we should probably get unstuck on that. My understanding is that one day a week really isn't feasible. It's not feasible if we aren't sure that we'll have the additional staff to make it happen. And it's not feasible if we're not sure that we're going to have the technology in every classroom. And it's

213also not feasible because of the, I imagine, the significant disruption it will cause to students who stay virtual. I think, I guess how I'm seeing it is, and this is what I thought was how it was being presented is. Those elements that we saw, you know, I think sometimes we're like trying to just deal in numbers and it's not just the numbers game, right? It's because there's so many other factors attached to those percentages that actually kind of decrease the likelihood of it even being a successful thing to do. You know, I'm not sure, you know, I don't see the 1% or the one day a week as presented today as feasible. And did I miss somewhere in the recommendation that it said that we were recommending to open schools one day a week? I

214haven't seen a recommendation for that. We're not recommending to do that. We wanted to express, you know, based on numbers, it is feasible. We're not recommending to do that because we do not believe. that it is the best feasible option for us because of the disruptions. We also wanted to point out in the recommendation, all of this is contingent upon staffing and building constraints. So any additional staff or any building constraints that come along with even the one day per week, if it's not permissible or if it's not possible, then this will that plan will not come to fruition so we are not recommending you know to to do the the one day per week we're trying to make it very explicit Very disruptive. One day a week, principals talked about it, that it's not

215going to be the best learning environment. It is going to cause disruptions to students as well as to staff. There will be some implications, but the implications are not as significant as trying to do two days per week or five days per week. So, you know, it's not that it's impossible for the one day per week, but it's not a recommendation that we are making. Okay. Okay, now I have Ms. Gentry. Hi, everyone. I think this has been a really helpful conversation. And I think, once again, we've received a lot of information really, you know, you know, just in the, you know, fairly recently. Again, I think it just makes it, it's worth reemphasizing why I think, you know, the path going forward for more frequent updates will be so helpful. you know, what I'm

216focused on right now is to help us move on to the next logical incremental step. And as I believe some people mentioned earlier, you know, I think we all agree on the critical, you know, the identified group of our students are. students with disabilities and the ones that are in the identified programs and getting those in. And we have a very clear program lined out for that with a lot of the questions and issues resolved. And I do want us to get to a point where we can get that in motion. As we've heard tonight, there are potentially a lot more issues and concerns with some of the larger rollouts of larger populations. And while I think it's worth us continuing to gather information and share information, I think we want to make sure that

217we're not inadvertently doing something that commits us too rigidly in one way or the other. So with that in mind, I'm going to make a motion that I hope will accomplish all of that. I'm going to read it. I'm actually going to, I wrote it down. I'm going to read it twice, actually, just to give everyone a chance to hear it. I move that the school board approve pursuing a phased-in approach for in-person learning for all students, grades pre-K through 8, beginning with our most vulnerable students with disabilities and English learners, and later consider expanding student participation contingent upon capacity and staffing. I'm going to read it one more time. I move that the school board approve pursuing a phased-in approach for in-person learning for all students grade pre-K through 8, beginning with our most

218vulnerable students with disabilities and English learners, and later consider expanding student participation contingent upon capacity and staffing. So, again, not committing to any of those necessarily January or February expectations, not necessarily committing to, you know, one day a week or any kind of approaches like that, but it does allow our staff to move forward with the students with disabilities group. Did you extend the motion? Do you need a second? I would appreciate a second. I'll second it. Thank you. Ms. Lorber seconds Ms. Gentry's motion. And so I'm going to ask for any discussion on this. I see actually that Ms. Nolan had her hand up, but is that from before or? It could be for that. I just think that, so first off, Ms. Gentry, I really appreciate the motion as I think we've had

219a robust conversation and are prepared to move forward. The only feedback I would suggest is that. I think we just need to be super clear on that recommendation slide because it does come off at first reading if folks aren't following the conversation, which again, I don't expect the community to have to follow a board meeting in order to understand what the thought process is. It just comes off like that we are going to provide anyone and everyone that's pre-K through fifth grade who's interested in coming in in January to go in and then same with the middle school. So I just think that we need to just maybe. add some language or something about that, like the constraints of time and, excuse me, staff and buildings, because that just isn't clear. And then the only

220other thing I would add is that we're still not addressing in any way, shape or form the high school students. And so even if it's just that we will revisit high school by such and such date, I just think those are the two pieces of feedback I would like to suggest in order when we communicate the presentation from tonight's meeting. So thank you. So to be clear, you're not wanting to put those in or motion, but just into the communications about what happened at the meeting. And the reason I was willing to make the comment then is I just appreciated Ms. Gentry's. that, you know, the constraints of staff and buildings. So I just think that has to be reiterated in the communications as well, because as of right now, at first glance, it's my

221assumption that everyone's being welcomed in. So. Yeah. Based on, on the information posted with the meeting. Yes. Correct. I agree as well. So thank you. Thank you for providing that clarification in the motion. Okay. Mr. Suarez. Thanks, Chair Anderson. And thank you, Ms. Gentry, for the motion. I appreciate the spirit of the motion and your intentions behind it. And also your point about that we don't want to... push ourselves too far in one direction or the other in terms of constraining ourselves. You know, sort of piggybacking off Ms. Nolan's point, I do struggle with supporting a motion that doesn't include grades 9 to 12. I haven't been persuaded from the answers I was given that we can't. bring back some of our most vulnerable nine to 12 students within the next five months. And I

222think the message us adopting a K to eight approach would send is that we are, you know, holding off. So I'm sorry, Mr. Suarez, I don't mean to interrupt you, but my emotion language actually does not say K through eight. Okay. I heard K to eight. It's not, is it K to 12? It doesn't say either. It actually. I heard you say K to eight. It does in the first sentence, but then at the end it says, and later consider expanding student participation contingent upon capacity and staffing. Right. No, I think I heard that. I still think that, yeah, so I know, and that's why I said I appreciated the spirit and the intent behind the motion. But I feel like... I guess my view of it is, I understand that we may not be

223able to get to those students immediately. But again, going back to that slide, if I understand correctly that there are students who are at risk from domestic violence, students without internet access, students without devices, I just don't understand how we can wait another day to allow, to work to get those students an opportunity in. person if they're literally like that suggests to me that they're either in a untenable situation or that they literally are receiving no like virtual learning like that and so if my premise is incorrect i'm open to push back on that but it it seems to me it would be more in the spirit of your intent ms gentry if we were to say, you know, we agree to move forward with K to 12, you know, pre or pre K to

22412, you know, process, it's a phased in approach, it's subject to the constraints, you know, that we've talked about today. But I guess for me, given the context of today's conversation, I guess maybe it's a procedural question. Are we going to then have another vote for 9 to 12? It just seems to me that we're doing something that is not sending the right message. Mr. Suarez, are you asking for a friendly amendment to just change the 8 to the number 12? And will that... Will that? Yeah, I think that would, I think that would allay my concerns, you know, and I, because I think I feel that we as a board need to send the message that there are vulnerable groups that we need to be tending to as soon as possible. I understand the

225staff is facing some constraints and I respect that. And I, I think, you know, obviously the phase in is going to have a prioritization still, you know, but I think we need to convey to the community that, that, you know, we are. We are working to get all of our students pre-K to 12 back in person, prioritizing our most vulnerable. I'm willing to accept that friendly amendment of changing the number eight to the number 12. Okay. And do, Ms. Nielsen, do I need a second for the friendly amendment? It has been a while. It's been a while for me too, but I believe you would, yes. Okay. Is there a second for the friendly amendment? Can you reread the motion, please? I can. I move that the school board approve pursuing a phased-in approach for

226in-person learning for all students grades pre-K through 12, beginning with our most vulnerable students with disabilities and English learners, and later consider expanding student participation contingent upon staffing and building capacity. Do I hear a second to the first? Yeah, I'll second it. Okay, Ms. Lorber seconds Mr. Suarez's amendment. And so, Dr. Reeve, did you have something? Yeah, I mean, I guess speaking just to this motion, I'm going to say that I'm not comfortable supporting it because I feel like it's basically... indicating that we would support a phased in approach to in-person learning at one day a week. And I absolutely am not willing to commit to that right now. So, I mean, that's, I was actually gonna ask a question about the citywide program though, because I, I mean, I am committed to doing a

227piloted program of the citywide classes. you know, for pre-k to eight, you know, as recommended here to the school board. I was going to ask just a little bit of a clarification about, you know, supporting that, which is that my understanding is that that program is going to be four half days a week. And I was just wanting clarification about what's going to happen with those students in that program who do not opt to come back in person. Are they going to continue to be taught virtually? And do you know who will be teaching that? I'm trying to get to understand that this is not going to be a situation where their teachers are going to be having to teach virtually and in person at the same time. That's what I want to understand. So

228if you could clarify that. I would appreciate it. So Dr. Reif, thanks for that question. I know Ms. Werner is on the call. I know I'm under the impression that tomorrow we are meeting with our citywide teachers to really solidify or get confirmation on who is able to teach in person. And we're also still contacting all 60 of the K-2 families as well. to determine and solidify who will commit to returning. And that will help us to answer your question better. What I can tell you though is, and Ms. Werner, she can chime in as well, is that depending on that number, it could be a situation where our staff may have to do both if there's a large number or we may have to change staff who are assigned to our students so that

229the in-person staff members are now working with those students in person and then the other staff members who are virtual they will continue working with our students that are virtually. but it really is going to depend on the number of students and the number of staff who opt to return. Ms. Werner, I don't know if you want to add additional language or clarification to that. Yes, Dr. Hutchings, thank you. Dr. Reif, based on the information that we have, as I noted earlier, of what turned out to be exactly, Dr. Hutchings was right, we were using a number approximately 60. But we have 57 students under consideration at this point. We have made contact with all but four of those families. And so we have a very clear number at this point as to how many

230want to return and how many want to leave. remain virtual. Right now we have 28 students who wish to return, 13 that wish to remain virtual. So we were planning for that already. And so we know that we will use those teachers that wish to come back. We will take those teachers and we will constitute classes of students. For those students who want to remain virtual, we know that we will still have teachers who will be teaching virtually. So we will have students virtual, we will have students in class. For those teachers that teach students who come back to school face-to-face, their full-time teaching assignment will be face-to-face instruction. They can only teach students in their classroom. We are looking at one-to-one staffing. The schedule has students half day morning, half day afternoon. So those

231teachers full instructional day will be in front of students. The teachers who are remaining virtual will teach the students who are virtually full time and will also provide virtual for the other half of the day. So we do know that we've got staff that can cover both aspects. We have said that while there will be two types of responsibilities for all of those of you that know our special ed program, we have case managers who are responsible for all of the procedural aspects of a student's life. Many of them are the direct instructors, but many of them are not. And they work with those teachers who have instructional responsibilities. So we will have to reconfigure student groupings like we've had to do already this year based on teacher shortages. And we're already very effectively doing

232that as it is. So I know it's a lot of information, but we have teachers who will teach virtually. We have teachers who will teach face-to-face. We have teachers who will have instructional responsibilities for students. And all teachers will retain their case management. That makes sense. Yeah, that makes sense. And I and it sounds like a great plan. I know that these students really need to be back in the classroom. And, you know, I fully support doing this. And I know we'll make adjustments along the way as we need to. So, again, I I am definitely in support of moving forward with this, especially because it's really clearly laid out to us. But the other aspects of, you know. The motion on the table I just am not comfortable supporting that right now. Well, I

233think it's not, we're not committing to the one day a week. I think what it is, I mean, you could, you could actually look at it another way and we can right size who goes back by who we could, you know, if, if, if I think it needs more development is, is what it's saying. And, and yet we don't, I think it's, I think it's people are feeling it's important to put in there because we don't want it to seem like we're done. You know, like we, we looked at this once and we can't, we don't. One day is not something that is recommended. So I think there's a lot that's going to be learned by rolling out the citywide and maybe new opportunities will arise. Or as others have suggested, we need to narrow

234it to the more vulnerable of the people who are willing to come back and see and take a look at that. So I think, I don't know, is that seem? Dr. Hutchings, does that seem sort of like a valid description of what you're getting from our motion is that we're not endorsing the one day per week. We're saying, you know, it's there needs to be more developed in terms of looking at the most vulnerable and what we can do. for them. Yes, and I would agree, Madam Chair, that it is not a commitment to the one day, and it's also contingent upon the staffing and the building capacity. I think that's a major component that, you know, I appreciate the fact that Ms. Gentry included that into the motion, because that is one of the

235determining factors on whether this could actually come to fruition, any of the plans could come into fruition. Yes, Madam Chair, what it is, it's not making, I'm taking it as if it's not making a commitment to the one day per week is how I took that motion and that it's all based on contingency upon staffing and building capacity. So really moving forward beyond the citywide, beyond the things that are clearly have a timeline, it would require coming back to the board with more specifics. Yes. And, you know, one thing that we did have in our presentation last week that we did not have in the presentation today were the additional updates. So moving forward, I mentioned it at the beginning of the presentation today, but it wasn't in one of our slides. But we do

236have those set dates to report. to the board at every board meeting and work session between now and January. So that will be opportunities for us to provide continuous updates to the board on our progress. OK, so anyone else have discussion before I call for a vote on? Yeah, I'll just I'll just make one summative comment. You know, it doesn't sound like my colleagues support this amendment, but I'll just reiterate that. you know, to me, We are leaving students on the table who have extreme vulnerabilities without this amendment. And I haven't heard reassurances that we will be getting these nine to 12 students who have very high needs into the classroom without this language. And I think that, you know, what the spirit of the motion is to, you know, in those situations where you

237have a student with an IEP who has. very extreme needs to make sure that they get the opportunities they need, you know, under faith and under the law. And also, you know, these students who have very difficult situations with risk from domestic violence without devices. I personally just don't see why we wouldn't state as a board that that needs to be on the table now. I'm not saying we need to open the floodgates to, you know, immediately have high school open up. But I just personally think it sends the wrong message if we're categorically taking a whole population of our students off the table for in-person options. My view is that with the amendment, the superintendent has an incredible amount of latitude still to do this in a manner consistent with the parameters that Ms.

238Gentry set out in terms of. you know, the constraints and all of those sorts of things. So I'm not intending to be prescriptive in any way with that regard. I just worry that we are. taking a broad population of students, excluding a broad population of students from this option. And obviously there's some language in there about looking at things later, but I don't know when that later is. And at the point, there are some students who right now may have this need. And I haven't been persuaded otherwise based on the questions I asked. I feel very strongly that- those students need to be on the table. And again, it just goes back to transparency and communicating what that means. Doesn't mean TC Williams is open. Doesn't mean, you know, the floodgates are open. It's a

239very incremental, methodical approach, you know, regardless. But that's just my personal view. I'm sorry. Excuse me. I just, I'm confused, which I thought Ramey had. amended to say, did you try to add another amendment that we didn't? No, no, we have to vote. We have to vote both on the amendment and then on the original motion. So, so we, so, so we haven't voted on anything yet. So I just, I was letting having discussion because after the emotions, these were not ones that were. totally anticipated like they are sometimes. So I'm having discussion after the motion because usually we've had robust discussion beforehand as well, but these were not motions that were necessarily anticipated in the form that they're in. Can somebody do a share screen and put the written motions up? Yeah, I want,

240did you send someone? Yeah, maybe you guys could share the screen of what you've, I think, Rami, you're reading it for sure. And I don't know if Chris, sorry, Ms. Gentry, Mr. Suarez, it's getting late. Yeah, Ms. Gentry wrote the motions. I just changed an eight to a 12, so. Okay, okay. Folks, you're muted. I think at this point, Ms. Abruzzese has the language, or perhaps Ms. Nielsen has the language. I have the language, but I don't have it on my screen. So one second. I think Jennifer. Okay. Okay. And I'll have to say that a comment from Ms. Abruzzese was the all learning for all students, because we're not going to be able to necessarily phase in. all students from pre-K through 12. I really think that is a good point. I would hate

241for us to have to have yet another friendly amendment for what I consider more of a slip of my tongue. But I will defer to the board clerks as to whether. Well, I think if Ramey changes it, isn't it? Hello, Ms. Nielsen, Ms. Aberdasey. I'm thinking that it can be amended. I believe it can, yes. And if Ms. Abrazezi disagrees with that, she's welcome to chime in. No, I think she's fine with it. So, all right. So, Ramey's striking. So, both for this amendment, yeah, both for this amendment language that we're looking at, and if for any reason that all is in the other one, if we end up going to that, that word should not be there. All right. Dr. E. Just looking at this, though, I guess one question I would have is,

242you know, it's we're doing this pilot program right with the students in the citywide specialized instruction program. And we also have English learners here. And then Chris mentioned different groups of students that are highly vulnerable that are that are not listed here. So. i'm just concerned about the the wording it's um should we just say i don't know beginning with our most vulnerable students and i don't know and take off the with or something because it's just yeah i i have my motion and it's based off of what we where where we are in the planning um that as as i understand it um well they okay so the l students were not coming back until january but um I guess. Okay. I thought they were, I thought the L students rather were coming back

243with the general education classrooms. Maybe I'm mistaken. Well, there's some coming back. There's some specified as coming back before then. So it's not, it's the ones in. Dr. Hutchings, could you clarify that? On the, there was, wasn't there a group of L students coming back before? Maybe not. No, the L students are coming in in January. It was specifically students with disabilities were the priority. Can I ask a question? and this is for Dr. Hutchings, the intent of this language, you know, and maybe for Ms. Gentry as well, like wouldn't be to exclude the other groups, because I was literally just going off of what's on slide four. You know, so slide four says vulnerable students at risk remotely, and then it says, e.g. all these groups, special education, homeless, EL learners, and so forth.

244So like, you know, I guess is the, the intent is not to exclude those groups. That's still the highest priority. And the intent is to still bring those students back first. Right. that is right so i mean as is i we have no problem with the motion that ms gentry and the modification that was made or amendment that was made by mr suarez we our team um that's aligned with what our team has been discussing in regards to the prioritization adding the pre-K through 12 component, it does allow us the flexibility to extend it further than pre-K eight as we initially talked about. So I think as is, this is aligned with our prioritization matrix in the direction that we were going. I see the point of Dr. Reeve is that the disabilities one has

245very specific dates and the other doesn't. But I think, again, that we, I don't think it's really that big of an impact in terms of how general it is with the. Yeah. You know, the dates. I don't know. So I'm going to call for a vote on the amendment, which is adding through 12 instead of 8. And so I'll go through the list. Cindy Anderson, yes. Veronica Nolan? Yes. Megan Alderton? Yes. Ramey Gentry? Yes. Jacinta Green? Yes. Margaret Lorber. Yes. Michelle Reif. Yes. Christopher Suarez. Yes. Heather Thornton. Yes. So 9-0 for the amendment. And then for the overall motion, call again. Cindy Anderson, yes. Veronica Nolan. Yes. Megan Alderton. Yes. Ramey Gentry. Yes. Lucenta Green. Yes. Margaret Lorber. Yes. Michelle Reif. Yes. Christopher Suarez. Yes. Heather Thornton. So that's nine zero in support. Okay, everybody.

246So now we, now we put work, now it's back on to you, staff and Dr. Hutchings, right? In terms of next steps and implementing the programs. And so now we have one more, one more thing, everyone. And that is, about the draft presentation, which we're not going to take very long on this because we're just going to get some comments and then we can also have comments by email. So this is the first time we're discussing this. And so we're just going to spend 20 minutes on this. So Dr. Hutchings. So, yes, I'm going to ask for Dr. Hart and Ms. Gulick, as well as Mr. Turner, to be present to go over the draft presentation. And this is for our city schools joint meeting in regards to our CIP. The caveat, or I guess

247not the caveat, but the preface to this presentation. I can't get all my words in my head at this point. is the fact that, you know, as we're going into the whole CIP budget season, we're going to have to keep in mind that, you know, our budgets across the board. are going to be a challenge for FY22. With the economic downturn that we've seen from COVID-19, it will have an impact on us. And I just hope that we can go into this budget season keeping that at the forefront and knowing that we are going to have to once again prioritize on what we believe is most feasible and possible. I do want to also state that we and our team did a great job of just trying to shift how we present this information. We

248took the feedback from the board as well as from the city council from last year's joint meeting and tried to really focus on having key takeaways for the city council to have as well as providing a narrative around. um what we are asking of the board so i'm of the city council so at this time i'm going to turn things over uh to to mr turner um and i apologize for being long-winded and stealing your thunder mr turner i talk too much i'm sorry No worries, no worries, but you did steal some of my words there. So good evening, school board members and those viewing from home. I'm joined tonight with Dr. Alicia Hart and Ms. Erica Gulick to discuss our draft presentation. As we put this presentation together, we heeded the board members' advice

249to tell our story and be concise so we can move to the discussion part of the work session. Susan, if you're there, if you could pull the presentation up for us. Next slide, please. So our story that we would like to convey is how our CIP got to where we are, the past, how we are tackling those challenges in the present, and where we would like to take our capital improvement program in the future. So now I'll toss it over to Ms. Erica Goulet. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Next slide, please. So I'll just go over the past and really quick. You all have seen this before, but just to say that even on the conservative end of the life cycle of buildings, we would expect our buildings to last 60 years. This is just showing

250that the average age of our buildings is 55 years. And that's really because of our five new, really new facilities. You can see all of the buildings towards the left. of the of the column are at that 55 are close to that 55 years or greater. This increases our maintenance costs so it's not only impacting our capital budget but also our operating budget and so we just need to be more efficient in making sure we're considering our aging infrastructure in our capital improvement program. We can go to the next slide Susan. So growing enrollment, I will caveat that this enrollment chart is based on last year's enrollment numbers and enrollment projections. Certainly this year will be a complete outlier and I'm looking forward to the challenge with working with the city on doing the enrollment

251projections this year, as we do expect that COVID has had an impact on our enrollment. But in the overall and looking at our enrollment growth that. was expected at least based on last year's projections. Even with all of our capital projects that we anticipate proposing in this year's CIP, we anticipate still being 2,000 seats short of what we need. So certainly capacity will continue to be a driving force for this upcoming budget. The next slide, please, Susan. And then just looking at our needs gap. So these are all things you're familiar with, but just reiterating it for our city council. The years of deferred maintenance and a lot of last year, we focused on the targeted facilities conditions assessment and the prioritization of those projects. And it's just important to know that we're still in

252the just addressing the critical needs of our buildings position in this year, in our early years of the CIP. Additionally, we're trying to maximize our capacity in the modernization projects that we do have to ensure that we're able to accommodate our students. And then lastly, we know that our CIP has expanded to include more of, it's not just a facility budget anymore. We include transportation, but as well as technology and textbooks and curriculum and instruction materials. And we know that during this pandemic, those funds have... have proved to be needed now more than ever. I'll turn the next few slides over to Dr. Alicia Hart. Thanks so much, Erica. And so Erica presented on the past. I'm going to tackle the present and really wanting to quickly focus on a few key areas in regards

253to the CIP budget. So as Erica alluded to earlier, we continue to focus on completing our priority projects per the targeted facilities assessment. This was a limited assessment that addressed our most critical needs at five schools and a transportation facility, and it was completed in 2019. We also wanted to share the impact that COVID has had on our CIP program. And essentially for us, it has been, you know, as terrible as this pandemic has been, it has allowed us an opportunity to advance some of our projects versus taking the phased approach over multiple years. So some examples of that are flooring installation projects, roof replacements, and some of our HVAC upgrades. And then we've also been able to implement some structural changes within the CIP budget to include the funding of eight full-time employees within

254the CIP budget, as well as reorganization of the Educational Facilities Office to better manage our CIP portfolio and our overall maintenance program. Next slide. So you all have seen this slide before in another presentation, but just wanted to be able to share with our city counterparts, again, some of the notable projects thus far this year has been us being able to begin the stadium renovation at T.C. Williams. We've had kitchen and servery upgrades at both Cora Kelly and John Adams. And we are currently working on the elevated gymnasium at Bernadette T. Day. Next slide. And so now we're transitioning into how we are envisioning the future of the CIP budget. One thing that we've spoken to the board about is just our greater focus on collaboration with financial services department, as well as other key

255stakeholders as we are developing this budget. We are working to establish a process for recurring FCAs. Again, it is best practice to have reoccurring FCAs to help further inform and develop your CIP program. We are working on improving the accuracy of our cost estimation practices. We do understand that, you know. When we are presenting estimates at that time, it's a snapshot at that time. It's not always taking into consideration the multiple factors that could escalate that cost. So we want to be more aware of that as we move in the future planning process. And then we also want to make sure on the operational side that we are continuing and maintaining our focus on increased preventative maintenance because we understand that ultimately that plays a part into our CIP projects as well. Next slide. And

256so this is another slide that school board has seen, pretty familiar with, so I'm not going to go through this verbatim, but we want to make sure that we are stressing the fact that we are aligning our 2022-31 CIP priorities to the equity for all 2025 strategic plan and those various plan goals. And so we want to be able to include this slide for really the city's reference so they can understand that it is important for us to focus on tying our CIP back to the equity for all 2025 plan. Next slide. And so now, again, still focusing on our future, we're separating this out to speak to specifically some of our capacity initiatives and our non-capacity initiatives. So on the capacity side, we will continue to reevaluate the high school project budget. We are

257speaking of evaluating co-location opportunities, incorporating the Cora Kelly and George Mason preliminary feasibility study cost, the elementary swing space consideration. We are talking about deferring transportation project due to the Witter Wheeler study and also focusing on the Patrick Henry completion funds. For non-capacity, TFA stands for our targeted facility assessments, using those assessments along with assessments of our major systems to include HVAC, roof, and security assessments, continuing to update our kitchen and playground projects, reevaluating and confirming all of the projects that are currently within the CIP budget, and then the field upgrades for the displaced mini-howard uses. Next slide, please. And so now I'm turning it back over to Ms. Gulick to finish out the presentation. Thanks, Dr. Hart. So just to go through briefly, we're not anticipating some major changes to our capacity projects as

258proposed. We do know that we had a significant deferral of high school project funds in the spring in the FY21 to 30. CIP and so we anticipate that will continue to hold those dollar values in the years that they are the one change we are proposing is. The city has been working on a winter Wheeler campus master plan study and holding our transportation facility replacement or modernization project. funds in reserve that project was intended to be on fyi 2022 we are proposing to push it back, just because we don't anticipate that a solution will be. it has been presented to us or that the funds that we currently have in our CIP are necessarily capturing the full need of that project. So that's the only significant capacity change that we would talk about. We could

259go to the next slide. As far as Douglas MacArthur, now this is kind of getting into what we anticipate will be the key focus areas of your conversation at the joint work session, but we wanted to talk about some of what we're doing to address some of the cost exposure that we've discussed in the past related to Douglas MacArthur. I will say for the project team, we have made significant we've had significant success in getting the price of the anticipated project costs down. So we will certainly provide an update on that to the school board at some point in the future. But just so you know, the types of things we're looking at on our side is reduced program. which we have included reduced extended learning areas as well as removing the community room. I

260don't need to read all of them, but these are the types of things that we're considering doing on our side. And there are certain things that we are requesting from the city. And so we thought it would be a good opportunity to put these in here, including potentially designating parking. we have a requirement to underground utilities. And so either to help get us the funding for these things or to help see if there's a way that maybe we could pursue these at a later date or something to that effect. If we can go to the next slide. And so then just the key discussions and really the things we think you're probably planning to talk about and we're hoping we're certainly as a staff hoping that you do so co-location on the school sites. This

261is especially critical for our high school project as we are hoping to have a decision on the full space program for that project by the beginning of next year. As I stated before, the Witter Wheeler master plan and the impact that that will have on our transportation facility and operation potentially on that site. as well as a permanent swing space. The feasibility studies that we were doing for George Mason and Cora Kelly prior to closure in March have been temporarily put on hold and there's just been some further study that we've been doing related to those things. So we do know that the swing space discussion will still need to be had as part of this CIP. And if you can go to the next slide, I believe that is it. And so we also

262wanted to say that we do know now that the joint work session is anticipated to be after the superintendent's proposed CIP. So we will be able to add additional attachments and information to this presentation for the joint work session once we have that budget and all of its associated documents developed. Dominic, were you supposed to say that? I'm sorry. I'll turn it back over to Mr. Turner. No, no worries. But yes, the joint work session is scheduled for November 17th, 7 p.m. What we're trying to do is finalize your presentation by the 1st of November and then be able to post the presentation and all of the attachments, including the superintendent's proposed VIP budget on November 13th. So the school board members and the city council will be able to have the materials a few

263days ahead of the actual joint work session to be able to review all of that material and be at the work session prepared to have a conversation around those key decision points. Thank you. So do we have any questions? Oh, yes, we do. I just hadn't scrolled up. I scrolled down to where I need to be. Ms. Lorber. Yes, I just wanted to say to thank you all for it. I think it was a, this is the first year when we've had this draft report shown to us that I don't feel like it needs to be changed in a million ways. Obviously, there are going to be some changes if after the budget's presented, but this was, I loved it. I read it. It's clear. I think you can understand everything. So I just wanted

264to say compliments to y'all. I hope I'm not the only one who feels that way, but it really seemed great to me. So thanks for all your work. Great. Next up, Ms. Green. Thank you, Chair Anderson. And thank you, Mr. Turner, Ms. Gulick, and Dr. Hart. My question is for you, Ms. Gulick. Do you think you will have the updated enrollment numbers before the November 17th meeting? It would be wonderful to have the most updated information that we have in our presentation. So we'll have and I believe Ms. Runkle does an enrollment report and if it's not November 12th it's November 5th where we'll have final enrollment for this school year. The enrollment projections then are in development kind of through the month of November and I anticipate we'll probably take just a little extra

265work this year because of the COVID impact to enrollment throughout the Northern Virginia region. So the enrollment projection will not be final for November 17th, but the enrollment number will be. Thank you. And Dr. Reif. Thank you for the presentation. I do agree that I think it was a little more streamlined and I thought there were a lot of improvements. I've made this comment probably many times, but just to again emphasize that I think like less is more. And, you know, we only meet with council so many times and people are really interested in having a conversation. And I noticed when I've been in those meetings that. during the presentation on both the city and the school side that a lot of people are doing other things because they've already maybe reviewed the presentation. So

266just thinking about how best to approach that. And then as I kind of like went back and looked through the presentation like a little bit more closely, I'm going to just go out and say that, you know, don't take this the wrong way, but I thought slides eight through 10 were like a bit of a word salad, a word salad, you know, like. a lot of it was kind of redundant actually to what I saw in slides five and six. So that's a place where I think it could be pared down because again less is more and that slide in particular that talks about our priorities which I mean it's our priorities it's important but whenever I look at that I just have to say because it's like aligned with the strategic plan that It

267feels like one of those things where like when everything's the priority, nothing's the priority. And the other thought I had when I was looking at that is what is, has council received like a copy of our strategic plan? Like, are they up to speed on what our new strategic plan is? Because I think that's another thing that would be good to kind of like introduce at this meeting in case not everyone on council is familiar with the strategic plan. Those are a few bit of comments. Thank you, Dr. Reap. I just wanted to just say we never get offended by feedback for a presentation that we're going to be presenting. This is the opportunity for us to hear back from you all. So we value that input because we want to make sure that we're

268delivering what the board would like to see at this particular meeting. So thank you for the input. I'm just going to. jump in here for a moment before Ms. Gentry. One of the things we talked about is doing some sort of prioritization exercise. Actually, Dr. Reif made me think of it because trying to get the more people more engaged, some sort of prioritization exercise around the co-location option. So I don't know, is that still a possibility or do people feel strongly one way or the other about that? Is that? Yeah, I mean, Dr. Hutchings, is that something that we talk about so many things. I don't know if you remember that, that we talked about that. Yes, actually, as you just talked about it. Yes, I do recall discussion during board leadership. And I think

269that is definitely something, you know, if the board would like to incorporate, we can incorporate that. I know. I guess we don't need to talk about it tonight, but if you think it's a good idea or have some ideas about that, just because I feel like otherwise that that conversation might go around and around. And I think it'd be good if people actually just, you know, that it might make it clear what the priorities are for co-location. I don't know. Anyway, so next is Miss Gentry. Thanks. And again, similar to some of my colleagues, I thought there was a real crispness to this that I really liked and focused. And in particular, I'm thinking of slides 13 and 14. You know, I think the reality is that in the space of this time and in

270this kind of format, to say we're going to discuss the 10-year CIP is not realistic or particularly helpful. In contrast, so I think I like the approach of like, let's really drill down to some very specific topics. So I think having the slide, I believe it was slide 13 about Douglas MacArthur was great. You know, I think it might even be helpful for maybe the staff to, you know, maybe continue to send the board just a little bit more info, particularly on that, just so that we feel. ready to go and ready to kind of talk about that. And the same thing in particular, if you could actually show, I believe it's slide 14, if you could put that up. Maybe it was the pre, I'm sorry, it must have been 13. So I was,

271all that time I was talking about slide 12. So the previous slide. I don't seem to make it go back one second. Okay. Let's see if I can just reference it. So it's after the Douglas MacArthur side, the key discussions, the co-location of the school sites. There was already a discussion about maybe we do an exercise about that. The the the the Witter Wheeler master plan transportation facility. My goodness, we've been talking about the transportation facility so long, but I'm not sure that we've had that conversation with the city council. in our joint session. So I actually, you know, I think my feeling about the CIP overall is, you know, It is a 10-year plan. It doesn't have the same gigantic changes. I think, you know, we can send them information before. I think each

272of us as board members can reach out to the people that we're the liaison to on the city council and say, you know, here's the, you know, we've received the presentation. If you've got specific questions about the CIP, you know, happy to, you know, track down those answers for you or discuss them with you. But let's use, this idea of key discussions and and really think about that being what we do in our in our group setting because that's such a unique specific kind of moment so rather than a kind of I think sometimes these meetings, and I don't mean this in a bad way, I think it's just it's kind of what happens. It just basically turns into a big list of a sort of random assortment of questions that various people are curious

273about and then they get answers to. And it's not really utilizing what could happen if there's a group discussion around some of these more complicated issues. That's really my only feedback is I love this approach and I'm encouraging us as we just, you know, we've got the slide deck now, but if we're thinking about overall flow of the evening, you know, to think about really less about some of the, you know. facts because we can deliver all those beforehand and make ourselves available to answer them and more about the discussion. So thanks again, everybody on the team for doing this. Because I know there, you had plenty of time this week and there wasn't probably anything else that you were having to work on or do that was taking up any of your time. So

274I'm glad you had all this extra time to put this presentation together. Thanks again. Mr. Suarez. Thanks, and I'll actually be brief this time. So my only comment is that I think it would be helpful to add to the presentation our, you know, mission and vision that we just adopted in the strategic plan. You know, I think it's really important to, you know, explain to council that we recently adopted a new strategic plan, that it has these equity for all principles. And so forth, and I particularly think that's important if we do get into these discussions about co location, I think you know it's going to be important that whatever we discuss you know along those sorts of lines and terms of collaboration. You know, is aligned with the vision and the values of the

275board. So I think it might be helpful to include that and I would just add to that, I think I understand that years ago there had been some sort of effort to sort of. brainstorm a common vision, you know, for ACPS and city council, like where we kind of come together. And I think it would be good to have that kind of conversation at some point and revisit that again. I believe there were consultants that came in with the last board and kind of started that process, but it never really. led to something concrete. And I do think to Ms. Gentry's point, these conversations kind of ramble. And I think that's because there's not like a joint vision that the city and the schools have really been working towards, you know, that's been sort of

276written down. Yes, yes, that was facilitated. And that was it. Yeah. So there, I guess we, you know, so much time has passed since that, that we'd really have to sort of start over again with so many new people. And I know there was the discussion at the time whether to do it right away or not. And there was the worry that if we waited until the new board and council were on that. you know, we lose too much steam. But now in the end, we just lost it, but at a later time. But that does bring one, the only thing I'm thinking about is, you know, do we talk about our master, our joint master planning, whatever that's called? Do we give everybody an update? Do we come to a common understanding of what

277that is? I don't know. Is that too much? Is that not pure? I don't know if what my school like thinks about that. And I don't even know where it is. So we can start. Sorry, Dr. Hutchings. Oh, sorry. Yeah. Sorry. I was wondering if Ms. Gulick knows where that is. Definitely knows where it is. I was going to mention that. I think we may want to use our city schools meetings to kind of talk through where we want to go with that. So then at least it's the city and the schools determining. Right. That's a joint effort that we cut and then we bring it to the board and then they bring it to the city council. Right. Right. that way versus the board kind of making it part of what we want to

278talk about. Let's make it a joint effort. Yeah. But I guess we just need to be updated on that as a board. Maybe not during that meeting, but maybe go into it knowing. We should probably know where it stands going into that meeting is what I guess. And I would recommend we actually do an update for the board. Individual so that you're not familiarizing yourself while the city council is right there too, you know? So right. Right. Yeah. Cause I, I just could see it coming up and questions about it. And I would feel like we'd want to be as up to date on our information as possible. about where we are on that. So yeah, so I think that's the right thing. And that we have an update that's added to one of our

279board agenda meetings. I mean, one of our board meeting agendas. That will allow the board to at least have a better understanding of what the Joint Commission is all about. Right. Okay. All right. I don't, let's see. I don't see anybody else. So maybe we're, oh, whoops, somebody, oh, Mr. Turner has his hand raised. All right. Yes. You know, at the end of these, I always have to do my checklist to ensure that we have everything that we need to update your presentation for you. So I took my notes here and we want to try to make these edits and then get it back to the school board for another once over before we actually finalize this presentation. So what I heard was we're going to try to make the presentation a little more concise

280for Dr. Reese while adding in. slide on our strategic plan and our mission and vision for ACPS. And we also want to have a little more discussion around co-location as well. I think that's something to consider just because I don't want to have it. I feel like it needs to be somewhat structured because otherwise I don't want it. You know, last year we had just kind of went off the rails there and half of us didn't even know what was going on. So I think it might be good if it's structured because we need to come to a conclusion. at a particular time, I worry if we don't structure it in some way that we won't get the answer that we need, the joint, you know, the meeting of the minds that we need to

281move forward with the decision on the high school project. Mr. Turner, if you could please add in updated enrollment numbers, please. Thank you. So one of the things that we did want to do with this presentation at the end with the key discussion points is focus everybody at the meeting on those items that we really wanted to have this meeting be about so we didn't go off the rails. Obviously, everybody has the opportunity to talk about what they want, but we wanted to make sure that this presentation focused them on a couple of specific items that we as a school system needed. to have decisions on and then have a robust conversation around. Super. Sounds great. Thank you so much. Dr. Eve? To that point, Mr. Turner, it might be helpful rather than to just

282list the discussion topics to actually put discussion questions. Like what is the question that you want to try to have the two bodies answer before the meeting is over? Maybe that would be a way to structure it. Sounds good. All right. I think we're good. So if you have anything else, then please direct it to Dr. Hutchings and we'll see it again. We'll see it again, I guess, on the 29th, probably, because we tentatively have our meeting on the 17th. Susan, is that right? Of November. You're muted. Can you hear me now? So that meeting is on the 17th and I believe that Mr. Turner did confirm that they would like it at seven o'clock. So I think we're all set for that and we'll get that on the calendar. Great, thank you. All right,

283everybody, it's getting to be that time that I don't think we have anything else to talk about. Except I have, it's now time for my report. So I'm just going to give some information about the upcoming public hearing on the 29th at 4 p.m. about the renaming. So you need to sign up by Wednesday, October 28th at noon on the school board meeting page on the ACPS website. And then also there's a joint city council school board subcommittee meeting on Monday, the 26th. Those are starting at five. And then, yes. And then the joint work session that we just talked about. So, Dr. Hutchings, you have a report. Just one quick update, and that is we are going to have our special kind of like edition of ACPS Express to go out in regards to

284the conversation and vote that took place this evening. That's going to go out on Friday. I know we're not going to have it out tomorrow because we're still going to be working on that tonight and tomorrow, but we will have this out on Friday. So I just wanted to make the board as well as the community aware that we'll be sending out highlights from the meeting today. And to be clear around. what we discussed and what the vote was all about so that we can be very clear about that. I will send a draft just to the board because I think it is going to be important for you all just to see, to make sure we've captured everything accurately. So we will send it out and we probably will have a fast turnaround, but

285I'll be sure to inform you when it comes out, what the timeframe is and when we need some feedback from you. Great. Yes, it's very nearly tomorrow now. So, yes. All right. So now we only have one more thing to do and that's to adjourn. So, anybody? Madam Chair, I move that we adjourn. Second. Okay, there's a lot of seconds. Everybody's like with it now with the adjourning. Okay, I heard Ms. Green first. So Ms. Green seconded Ms. Gentry's motion to adjourn. And so I'll call for the votes. 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. Great. So nine, all nine, nine. Yes. For adjourning. And so remember tomorrow at eight o'clock, we have a meeting

286again. I am very sorry, but it will be short. It will be short and it's important. I don't know. I can't, I can't, you know, so I apologize, but I will see you. And I wanted to remind you of that. So have a good evening, a good night, everybody. Thank you. Night. Bye.