001Exactly. All right. So I see, Susan, you've hit record. So this is the October meeting, October 26th meeting of the City Council School Board Subcommittee. And so the meeting's called to order at 5.04. And my agenda says that we have the COVID update and then public comment. Is that what we were expecting? Or did we want to have public comment before? We start, I guess we didn't, we didn't do that. So we should get, I don't, I don't, I don't think it matters. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Madam. Chair, could I just ask for you to read the introductory language that I always make the mayor read? So if I don't make you read it, you're going to get mad at me. Sure, we'll do that. It's just that paragraph, just to let everybody know. All right.
002So due to the COVID-19 pandemic emergency, the October 26, 2020 meeting of the City Council School Board Subcommittee is being held electronically pursuant to Virginia Code Section 2.2-3708.2A3, the continuity of government order. and it's adopted by the city council on June 20th, 2020 or section 4-0.01 G and HB 29 and HB 30 enacted by the 2020 Virginia General Assembly, Virginia Acts of Assembly chapter. 1283 and 1289 to undertake essential business. All of the members of the board and staff are participating from remote locations through a video conference call on Zoom. This meeting is being held electronically unless a determination is made that it is safe enough to be held in person in the City Council Workroom at 301 King Street, Alexandria, Virginia. Electronic access will be provided in either event. The meeting can be accessed
003by the public via Zoom. by the link, which I will not read because I will take forever to do that. Joanna's got me trained. I read that excerpt now, ending of like family Zooms now. Yeah, that's quite a lot of words there. Yeah. So, okay. So we did that. So I have my, the first item is COVID-19 update. So I don't know, Mr. Jinks or Dr. Hutchings, who would like to go first? There's not much exciting news on our side, so I think maybe we'll start with ACPS. Okay. Thank you, Madam Chair. And just to give a quick update as to last week, because the board last week did approve for us to continue working towards reopening of our schools, transitioning our most vulnerable students first. And all of this is contingent upon staffing and
004building capacity. And one thing that we did last week was we shared with the board, as well as with our community, some of the... the constraints that are preventing us from being able to open our school buildings tomorrow. And in particular, the building constraints is real as we try to follow our CDC guidelines, meaning that we're trying to keep six feet distancing in all of our classrooms, as well as in our hallways and throughout our school buildings. It is very difficult, of course, to try to bring everybody back and adhere to those CDC guidelines. So that does cause limitations for how many students can be within our buildings at any given time. Also, in regards to our staffing, which is so important for us, is knowing that our staff members are not immune to this
005global pandemic. Many of our staff members have medical conditions, their age situations for some of our staff members who are, you know, above age or that age requirement or fallen within that age requirement of staying away from large crowds. We have staff members who have people who live in their homes who may have compromised immune systems, as well as other family circumstances from child care to, you know, the list goes on and on to even fear in some cases for some of our staff members. But there are things that are preventing all of our staff to be. able to be in our buildings, which causes some limitations as to what we can offer. What we are going to be doing is moving forward with making sure we're updating our board more frequently. In August, we
006had the agreement that we would come to the board seven weeks into this global pandemic of reopening, which we call Virtual Plus. And we realized that seven weeks is too long to not have some form of updates and communication. So moving forward, we will be updating the board on our progress at every board meeting between now, at least through February, just making sure that we're consistently providing those updates. We also are looking to start our first group of transitions next week with our citywide program, our students. who have special needs who are part of the citywide program. We're going to be looking at K through second grade starting next week. And we are finalizing that transition right now. And we've already been in contact with families in regards to who is willing to send their
007children back to school and in person. And we are also working with our staff members to determine who's able. to be in school during this particular time. So more information will be coming and evolving over time. As you all know, this is probably one of the most complex situations. I wish it could be as easy as I just come to the board and say, hey, everybody, this is the thing we're going to do and it's going to work. we resolved all of our issues and problems. But it's just not that easy with so many moving factors and uncertainties that we have each and every day, not just here in Alexandria, but really across. across the nation. So we're going to keep working through this and we're still meeting with our teams each week and we'll
008be providing some more updates. I'll be sharing some updates this Thursday during my superintendent's update with the board, but our formal updates will begin with our first meeting in November. And that concludes my update regarding COVID-19. Are there any questions? Madam Chair? Yes. So I don't know if this is a question more for Dr. Hutchins or Mr. Jinks or someone else, but I guess, can you guys talk to me about what... What we have explored regarding the use of city facilities for facilitating reopening, you know, whether rec centers, whatever, what options do we have and what constraints do we have that prevents us to use some of those facilities to provide for additional capacity, physical capacity to deal with some of those barriers that Dr. Hutchins talked about? Some of the facilities are being used
009now as part of providing space for kids who are on kind of their parents are essential and are in need. We've got a few options, but not really a whole lot of big spaces that aren't being utilized at the moment. We're also still dealing with what we deal with. A few other issues like the winter shelter and whether or not we have to put them somewhere else. So I think if ACPS has, I think we have some capacity to expand, but not a whole lot. And I was going to say that our team is working collaboratively with the city on any potential opportunities. I think that, you know, the bigger issue for us as we're working through our building capacity challenge or constraint is the staffing constraint that we're going to have to really work
010through. We are also going to have to begin because at some point, you know, we do have to set up a structure where everybody can get back into our buildings. And we are going to have to work through some of the technology. constraints that we have. in regards to, you know, as we transition into this whole in-person learning and we're going to have to really do our instruction very differently. And this is a new term. I didn't know about concurrent teaching before. I don't know if Ms. Nolan knew about it in the past, but that's what they're calling when teachers are teaching students in the classroom and also kids who are on like a Zoom at the same time or simultaneously. It is now called concurrent teaching. I learned it last week at our superintendent's
011meeting. new word for me no i understand the concept i just didn't know it was called concurrent teaching but now everybody's using that term so um in order to be able to successfully implement concurrent teaching um as a teacher we are going to have to provide you know professional learning of course but but then have the technology to be able to um to actually implement concurrent teaching with fidelity. And that does require us having live cams where students can actually interact. If a teacher was in a classroom with students, that kids at home could interact through their video and can also follow along with what's happening in those classrooms at that particular time. So we are working through some of those technology constraints as well. and we'll be able to provide an update to the
012board at our first meeting in November. We're planning to provide some feedback on that too. Yeah, sorry. Mr. Mayor. This is Joanna. I was just going to add, just for your consideration with that question, is we've had a lot of discussions, like Mark said, about the use of city facilities for various different uses. And in your ordinance that the city council is going to consider as a text amendment this month and then in December, that's addressing business needs. There's also a section that addresses use of public facilities for multiple different reasons, just in case there's a zoning reason. that public facilities can't be used for other uses to give us that flexibility. So that's also addressed in there. Just wanted you to know that. No, I appreciate that. Thanks, Ms. Anderson. You know, I think
013from my perspective, and maybe Mr. Jenks wants to weigh in on this again, but from my perspective, I mean, obviously, to Dr. Hutchins and Chair Anderson and Vice Chair Nolan, you know, these decisions about how you deliver education and all that and how you organize reopening is all obviously your decision. I want what we have responsibility for is facilities that are not under your purview. And then we have responsibility for money. And so I want to make sure that if there is any real estate that we have available that can help you guys make the decisions you have to make. And if there's any money that you guys need to make the decisions you have to make, that we make that available. And so that's. TAB, Ryan Schuchard, MS, CRC, That that's that's what I
014want to do is make sure that there's no no rock, we have to turn over. TAB, Ryan Schuchard, MS, CRC, To do that, so to the extent we have facilities, including the potential for displacement of other programs that are in facilities. TAB, Ryan Schuchard, MS, CRC, I want to make sure we're considering those because because quite honestly I don't I mean I can't come up with a lot of higher priorities than than trying to deal with these issues, and so I just want to make sure we're exhausting all those options so and maybe that's more of a question for Mr janks but. As Dr. Hutchings said, the staffs have been working closely together and as ACPS identifies needs and we look at opportunities, we'll see what's possible. I think probably the biggest opportunity for space
015in the city that would fit classroom needs with good spacing would be hotel conference room space. I doubt those rooms are being used hardly at all. So we may get a... very good price, very good price or an acceptable price on them. And something like the Hilton Mark Center has tens of thousands of square feet of column-free space and a good opportunity to get more than six kids in a room. Well, I mean again, I guess I'm gonna leave that to you guys But if there's anything I can do to help and get on the phone with anybody I'm happy to do it So to just let us know what we can do to support the efforts and then clearly to miss Anderson's point if there's any Zoning barriers that we run into will we
016will certainly clear those for you rather quickly So, all right Since we're all here together so first off Mary Wilson, really appreciate that conversation, as well as your support as always to the youth in our city. But I'm curious about I've been asked this question. Funny enough, numerous times over the last few days. Have we also considered a joint effort in the springtime of like outside spaces in terms of is that been ever discussed on the table with staff? It's just it's just something that's been asked four times to be in the last 48 hours. So I just thought it'd be something worth asking. I know we had the discussion about outdoor spaces in the fall, this past fall, as well as during the summer. So those are discussions that we have had. And I
017don't have kind of like a definitive answer on, you know, what the actual spaces are. Dr. Hart, I don't know if she's on the Zoom or not, because I don't recall all the actual places. But one of the constraints that we had with that was just trying to work through the logistics. of outside and then when we have situations when it is raining or when the temperature does change and students with allergies, which is a number of things we were working through to try to mediate some of the concerns that came about. But that is definitely something that we can revisit for the spring. But that was one of the reasons we did not put that as an option for the summer as well as for the fall. I think we clearly have wide open
018spaces and having classrooms on a baseball field seems to be more important than playing baseball. However, the logistics of doing something that is just putting up a tent and throw some desks in. It has to be electronics and some kind of treating of the air in acceptable manner, meeting health and safety, fire code regulations, things of that sort. So I think it's less the availability of the land and more as how the logistics and costs of really creating temporary classrooms that are acceptable from a number of points of view. Well, and if I can, you know, to that discussion, in addition to facilities, you know, we also have some capabilities around technology. And I hope our IT folks are involved and we bring in Comcast, whatever we need to do to kind of support this
019from our capabilities, I want to make sure that we're making all those available. And to the extent, you know, Dr. Hodgins and the staff. is maybe not aware of some of our capabilities. I want to make sure they are aware. So we need to inventory all that and let them know. Obviously, the staffs are working together, but just I want to make sure that there's nothing that we're not uprooting here to try to support these efforts. The technology staff work very closely together. Probably besides RPCA, it's probably the department that works closest together since we run the fiber network that the schools are connected to. So those two IT departments work very, very closely. Great. Thanks. Mr. Chapman, do you want to ask any questions before we move on? Sorry, I didn't mean to catch
020you off guard. You can ask the question later. Next up, we have public comment. And I guess I don't know if we have anybody. So if you are here to make public comments at this time, please raise your hand. Use the little raise hand feature of Zoom, and then we can move you over. I recognize most of the names on there, so I'm not sure. Okay. So I don't see anybody raising their hands to use Ms. Nielsen. I do not. So I think I'm good. All right. So next up is the approval of the meeting summary, the meeting minutes from September 28th meeting. So I don't know if I have a motion to approve or if people have looked at them. I move approval, Madam Chair. Second. Okay, Ms. Nolan seconds Mr. Wilson's motion to
021approve the meeting summary from September 28th, 2020 meeting. So all those in favor, say aye. Aye. Opposed? Hearing none, they're passed. Now we're on to major projects, and the first one up is the high school project. So Dr. Hutchings. So yes, I know Ms. Gulick is on to speak on to provide an update for our high school projects. Ms. Gulick? Thank you, Dr. Hutchings, and I'll be brief. We have three key updates for you all. The first being that our A&E, our architect and engineering firm procurement is finalizing. We're expecting board approval on that prior to November 30th, prior to the end of next month. So that's something we're really excited about, good development in this project. The other thing is we know last time we talked about some of the implications of colocation, as
022well as the displaced field use and really needing to get out into the community to start having those conversations. We do have an open house, which will cover all aspects of the project, including those set up for November 19th in the evening. It will be virtual, of course. And then separately related to the high school project, but not exclusively to the high school project, we are developing a prioritization exercise for the school board and city council to work through at the joint work session related to co-location. Of course, the high school project being the most critical project this will impact or the most immediate, but certainly making it a discussion for all future sites. And so that is the update we have for you on the high school project. I know members of the team
023and myself are available to answer questions. Questions? Okay. Seeing none, we'll move on to the facility assessment CIP planning. And that is also, I believe, Erica Gulick. Did you mention somebody from the city was going to be providing updates? Yes, Catherine Carraway is providing the update. Sorry. Thank you. Sorry, I didn't realize that was my topic. Hi, everybody. And I apologize ahead for the noise in the background. It's a little bit chaotic in my house. So the Joint Facilities Master Plan, we had, as you know, we had our first open house in February and then were hit with COVID. Over the summer, though, we were not, we did not slow down. We were conducting needs assessments. gathering all information from existing plans and studies between the city and ACPS. meeting with various departments in both,
024you know, city and ACPS and synthesizing all of that information. And it's a lot of information because, you know, we aren't creating any, we aren't creating new policy. We are building on existing plans and studies and policies. So it was a lot of work to synthesize all of that. And so we are finishing up that right now. We've also had our second online. engagement with the community in an effort to try to assess their understanding of this process and what we see as the needs and how the needs have been communicated to us. We had about 320 respondents, about 1200, between 1200 and 400 comments across those 320 respondents. And I will say that what it showed us was that there's a little bit of a disconnect on what this process is. I think a
025lot of folks are feeling that we are going to be recommending development on a mass scale for public facilities and even to the point of building on public open space. And that is not the case. We are simply trying to create a process by which the city and ACPS can jointly plan so that we are more efficient with our sites. So in the end, you know, we haven't, we're just starting the... road map stage, the solution stage. But in the end, we're foreseeing that there will be a range of options for each site and things for the city and ACPS to consider if and when a capital project moves forward in the planning process. So that's a very high level overview. I'm happy to answer questions, but I didn't want to get too much in
026the weeds. Anybody have questions? We're not particularly inquisitive about a few things tonight. Some things, yes, and some things, no. But it's good to have that update. Thank you so much, Ms. Carraway. Next up, we have budget update, and I'm not sure who wants to go first on that because they're... I'll be glad to deliver the news. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Jinks. We have finished last fiscal year. The good news, we've got a little less worse than we thought. However, it was largely due to more underspending than on the revenue side. So we are in the process of working on and completing projections of revenue for this fiscal year. next fiscal year. And what we see is we're probably going to be short this fiscal year. And we're trying to get and try to nail
027down that number. We'll be ready to talk about it with council at the retreat. And we can manage that situation. However, the difficulty becomes projecting that in the future and the fact that we had bet this year that we would be back to normal by July 1, 2021. And clearly that's not going to be the case with the hotel and the restaurant, basically the tourism industry. And we're going to see a noticeable hit in commercial assessments, particularly offices. retail, probably some on the multifamily side. So that we're going to see, we've got a big budget gap to close for the next fiscal year. The range, early numbers said the range could be between 30 and $75 million gap, 75 being the worst case. I hope that it's not. that it's going to be less than
028that. And again, when we get to the council budget retreat, we'll have kind of honed in on and picking the best anybody can do in this environment in projecting numbers because there's so many variables that none of us have ever experienced and hopefully never will experience again that can make a big difference in what our tax revenues end up being. So on the city side, we've told departments to prepare. 10% budget reduction options. That doesn't mean we're cutting 10%. We don't do across the board in budgeting. That's not a good practice. However, we want to have a cafeteria of choices. I had to put it in order of magnitude. Our choice level was 2.5%. That's what we did last year in asking departments for the list. So we're asking for four times that amount because
029this is going to be a really difficult budget year. It would be nice if the federal government came up with, starting last May, if not the House of Representatives, passed that. way too generous bill for everything related to COVID. They've been started that as a negotiating position and they've come down and come down and come down. They're down almost by two thirds. And so far they've got no traction with the other side. Obviously the election is going to determine kind of the politics of appropriations and COVID, but we won't know that until really December at the earliest January. maybe. And we really have got to prepare our budget. So I, my budget motto this year is prepare for the worst and hope for better. And unfortunately right now, until January, we probably know what, we'll
030not know what better actually is. Okay, well that's all the good news. Well, it was not good news necessarily, but it gave us hope, at least. It gives us hope, some hope. Dr. Hutchings, do you want to talk any about the budget or does anyone have questions about what Mr. Jinks has shared? I just, you know, Mr. Jenks and I, we do work closely in regards to, you know, our finances from both the city side, as well as he's always educating me on the city side's finances. And I'm always working with our team to try to make sure we're making adjustments to prepare for some of this, the budgetary implications that he mentioned. And we are in the budget season right now in ACPS. So we're working with our schools. as well as with our
031staff, specifically working to prepare our budgets based on the budgetary priorities that the board adopted last month in September. So we are first starting with our CIP, Capital Improvement Programming budget, and then we'll be going into... Our operating or combined funds, but excuse me, combined funds budget after the season. So no further comments at this point other than this is going to be a very difficult budget year that is coming for 22 and. One, I'm glad that the city is being transparent about that, you know, so it allows us to work on our end to make sure that we are trying to be, you know, very innovative and fiscally responsible moving forward, which we always are anyway. But this is going to require us to be a lot more innovative and be stretched more than
032we've probably seen in a while. So we just have to get prepared for that. Great. Thank you. Any questions? So can we talk about the meetings and the schedule and all that? So we have our retreat on the 7th, is that right? And then you guys, is Dr. Hutchins presenting at that? Yes. Okay, okay. So he'll be presenting at that. And then we have a joint work session when now? The 17th, I believe is what we're scheduled. But do we have final confirmation about that, Ms. Nielsen? I was told yes. Okay. November 17th at 7 p.m. All right. So we have that and that's going to be just CIP. Is that correct? Yes. CIP. Right. Okay. Yeah. I'll talk about the co-location prioritization and CIP. All right. I know Mr. Turner is on the call.
033I want to see if there's anything he wanted to add because I was speaking, but I didn't notice he was on here until I just looked down and saw his picture because I have two pages. So I see that Mr. Turner is on the call. Yes. So, yes, I was just going to add that. Thank you, Dr. Hutchins. So, yes, you're correct. November 17th, joint work session on the CIP. November 7th, the city council retreat. Dr. Hutchins and I will be there to present on information for ACPS. And with our budget, we know that 82% of our budget is funded from the city of Alexandria. So, with it being a tight fiscal year for... C. of Alexandria, we know that that trickles down to a CPS as well. And we've been developing our operating budget
034with that in mind. We sent out our budget instructions to our principals and department lead. Just like the city, we've asked for some scenarios to be able to reduce our non personnel budget, which is roughly 10% of our total budget. We also know that based on the last year student projections that our enrollment would increase as well. So we're trying to look at several different financial options to be able to provide the resources to our students across ACPS while not having to ask for a large increase from the city or from the state. So we've been going after different grant opportunities that the state has released, and we've been using different financial strategy with our CARES funding as well. We just received another $2.8 million in CRF funding. that has to be used by December
03530th of this year. So we have a strategy to be able to use that to best benefit the students of ACPS. While the $3.7 million that we got in CARES funding has a two year limit. So we're putting in a financial strategy to be able to ensure that if going into next year that we don't have any increases that we can continue to use that for basically to help with non-personnel expenditures into next year if we can get through this year without exhausting that whole 3.7. So that additional 2.8 that we just got, you know, will play into our financial strategy for the remainder of this year and hopefully assist us with what we can do in fiscal year 2022. Thank you. Okay, thank you, Mr. Turner. All right, so no one has any further
036questions on the budget right now, as we will be meeting a couple more times in the next month to talk about it. We'll go on to legislative package. And I imagine. So, yeah, so let me, I guess before we get into this one, I think, Cindy, this kind of built on some discussion you and I had about how we coordinate the partnership between city and schools as it relates to developing our legislative packages. And I think Chair Anderson had reached out regarding. the success I think we had last year in including your priorities in our package and making sure that we were all speaking with one voice down in Richmond. And I think we wanted to try to figure out ways to build on that for this upcoming session. And I know I've had an
037opportunity to talk to our legislative director. about some of those options. And I think the, I was hoping that we could today talk a little bit about that in depth, really around process and how we make sure that the priorities you guys have for Richmond are things that we are including in our package and then maybe building a process going forward for synthesizing the development of it in the future. Yes, I appreciate that. So, yes, so you have yours. We have ours right now. And I haven't. We didn't post that with this so that people could see the two. But do you have already scheduled the similar meeting that you had last November? So where is our Sarah? in the room. Yes, I'm here. Sorry. She's on here. And I should note before we allow
038Ms. Taylor to start that it is her birthday. And so it's just ridiculous that we're asking her to do this on her birthday. But so, so, but we'll allow her to do it. So no better party than a city school meeting. Wow. Seriously. This is the good stuff. Yeah, we have. So we actually don't really have anything on paper yet either to this point. We have our schedule scheduled. Our draft will go before city council for first read at the first legislative meeting in November. It will be on public, it will be up for public hearing on, hi, on that Saturday of the same week. And then it'll be up for final approval in the first legislative meeting in December. With the idea being that it gives us time. to figure out what January is
039going to look like maybe before we set anything in stone and gives us time to engage with. all the stakeholders for the package, including the delegation and you all to make sure that we are in sync as far as priorities go, as far as language choices go, as far as any specific actionable requests we are making of the delegation go. And I would be happy, obviously, you know, to work with you all to ensure that we are on the same page. To this point, I don't know that we have anything specifically actionable related to K-12 other than, you know, continuing to repeat, you know, what we... we generally say about K-12, more money and more money for early learning and ensuring that any revenue shortfalls that are COVID related don't trickle down to localities to
040make up for. I think that's something that's been important. And we saw during the... special session that they were able to make up the sales tax shortfall using money from gray machines to make that up. So it didn't fall to us, but I think ensuring that that moving forward doesn't fall to us is really important as well. Yeah, yeah, we have, I mean, we have, I think, eight different things that we're asking for, you know, but I, but I, some of the things and one of the things I shared with Mayor Wilson was about something I understood from Arlington, you know, from, from actually our communications person who came from Arlington about the way they work together and, and did some things around net zero and changing it so that it made it so that
041they got credit for. the extra energy that they generated. And so that made me think we're doing a lot of building. And so maybe there's something even together around the building and the environmental kinds of things, net zero sorts of things that we could, you know, put a bug in the ear of the legislators. about supporting? Yeah, we actually did the non-contiguous net metering two sessions ago, so we should be able to do that where you offset, you know, if you can't apply the full value. of what you're generating at a site, you can apply it to a non-contiguous meter. We worked on that. But of course, if there's other specifics related to that that we can work on, we actually worked off of the original Arlington legislation to get to where we were. So
042there may be other things we can do in that area, but certainly. And then obviously, one of the things that we've continued to talk about is the need for state money for... school renovation and new buildings with the, you know, the. the point in Alexandria being not only an older community with older buildings that need to be, you know, renovated, but also a growing community that just needs new facilities. So certainly that, that will continue to be on our, on our radar. But I don't know how much your, your, how much Lilla has talked to you all about what January is going to look like. But this is going to, it's a short session. So it's already only going to be 45 days. There are significantly, there are bill limits on both House members and
043Senate members, not only on the number that they can file, but the number that they can draft. It's an election year. And we have no idea what this session is going to look like practically, whether it's going to be a virtual, whether it's going to be hybrid, whether it's going to be, you know, what it's going to look like or how we as lobbyists and the general public can engage with legislators during that session. The special session we just had was particularly special and gave us, you know, sort of a flavor of what a virtual environment looks like. And it is challenging. And then add on to it a challenging revenue, the potential for a challenging revenue environment. And I mean, I've told everyone in the city that this is a year for wants or
044needs, not wants. This is really, you know, being very clear about things that we need in order to deliver services or lessons that we've learned from COVID that is sort of shined a bright light on kind of soft parts, vulnerable parts of our systems. And so anything with a COVID nexus, anything sort of is in response to what we've learned from COVID is going to be priority-ish. But I would caution us to keep it very focused on needs and that this might not be the year for brand new, exciting ideas. Right, right. Great. Okay, well then we can add that to the list of known unknowns. And we know that there are a lot of unknowns, right? That just gets longer and longer every day. Okay, thank you very much. And then the next thing
045on our agenda is the Amazon Virginia Tech update. Well, here, before, sorry, before we close out of the legislative package and before Ms. Taylor goes off to her birthday party, the, so I guess what's the best way, because they're preparing on the ACPS side, they're preparing their package now. Should we? come back next month at this meeting and have them provide kind of an overview of those specific priorities and we figure out how we incorporate them or should we invite them to come to one of our legislative committee meetings? What's the best way to take the next step here? I think it can go either way. I think either we can invite them to come to a legislative meeting and sort of front load the meeting with, you know, talking about, you know, K-12 related
046things and sort of compartmentalize that piece of it. I think that would certainly work. The flip side would be to come to the next one of these meetings and timing wise that would work. It wouldn't be too. Our process would already be involved, but nothing will have been fully baked at that point. We'll also have gotten some input from the delegation at that point. And so we might have a better feel for what they're thinking priority wise and what they're thinking. I mean, the election environment has already started talking about the idea of investment in K-12 being a priority for the next. period of time. And so we might have a better feel for, you know, what else we need to know from that. But I think it could, I think it could really go
047either way. And either one would work and be, and be productive and be a good way to approach the, the creating some synergies with our packages. Okay. So I guess what we could do is, is see basic, maybe on availability of people, you know, being available on the, on the different dates, do you think? Yeah, I mean, I think maybe the best bet is we get them a section at the front end of a legislative committee meeting and invite them to see if they're available. If they're available, great. That's probably the best way to do it. And if they're not, we'll figure out a plan B. Great. That's what we're doing, the real nitty gritty development of the package as it is. Yeah, absolutely. That's sort of when we're in the weeds hatching things out.
048And so that would make sense. Yeah, I will get the next date and time or the next dates and times to folks at the board and see if we can make that happen and front load an agenda to include discussion of K-12. Great. Put them right at the end after the stormwater bills, the firefighter presumption bills, all that stuff. Make sure we have a good- All the fun stuff. Yeah. Absolutely. We'll have a conversation before we get to schools. Definitely. Condo conversions. There'll be after condo conversions. Yes. We'll talk about that for a few hours before they get there. Definitely. We'll put them at the front end. We'll put them at the front end. With Zoom, you know, we can just go away. You guys can just get off. It's not the same as sitting
049there forever on those hard benches, right? Wherever we want, as long as we check in. So, yeah. All right. Well, thank you for that. And thanks for putting that on. Happy birthday. Yeah, happy birthday. We would sing to you, but you may not like that. I'm going to go eat all the cupcakes now. All right. Enjoy. Enjoy. Thank y'all. Okay. Now we're moving on to the Amazon Virginia Tech update. I'm not sure who's taking that. I know at this time, I don't think we have, well, on our end, we don't have any updates in regards to the Amazon Virginia Tech since our last session, but I know nothing on our end. I don't know if the city has any updates though. Probably the primary update is council approved the development special use permit, which is
050the design, the layout of North Potomac Yard, including Virginia Tech's building. Also very innovative energy conservation plan to go along with it. So we are, you know, the staff worked all through the summer and worked out all the details. So they're right on schedule. We hope they keep that way. and can get their building up and running. They have a new term members title as dean or provost, a vice president of the campus. So there's actually a person who's now in charge, who's actually lives in the city and is here. And I think that has been one of our challenges before. We've been dealing with a committee down in Blacksburg. And now we've got a person who has a lot of experience. He comes from Cornell. He's dean of College of Engineering. And he worked
051closely with the New York City school system. And I think we've got the right person to be able to work with us in our community and our educational needs. And I know that, you know, I've had the opportunity to meet with Dr. Collins now a couple of times and he is, I know that he is excited about the opportunities of working with our schools and I know he's already had a couple meetings with you guys as well and he just seems very energized by the collaboration on the school side. So I think we've got a good partner there, which is good. Great. And I think maybe since the last meeting, isn't that when we got the donation of the... The MiFis? Is that right? From Dr. Hutchings? Yeah. Yes, from Amazon. Yeah. So I think
052that happened probably early this month. So we did have a press release. But I think the press release went out early in the month. All right. So anybody else have questions? I think that's the last thing on our agenda. So anything else? Nothing else over here. Okay. Well, then there's nothing that says we have to go for an hour, right? We can go for 50 minutes. That's a good sign. All right. So I guess you need a motion to adjourn, though, right? I move we adjourn. Second. So Ms. Nolan seconds Mr. Wilson's motion to adjourn. And so we will adjourn at 5.50. Thank you, everyone. See you later.