001to start. Okay, welcome everyone to the virtual school board meeting for January 7th, 2021. I'm calling the meeting to order at 4.01 p.m. and I'm going to do roll call. Please indicate you're here when I call your name. Cindy, I'm Cindy Anderson here. Megan Alderton here. Rami Gentry here. Jacinta Green here. Margaret Werber. Here. Michelle Reif. Here. Christopher Suarez. Here. Heather Thornton. Here. And we know that Veronica Nolan will be joining us, but she's caught in a work meeting. So we're starting with eight of our members here. I will now observe a moment of silence. Okay. Thank you. Could I have a motion, please, to adopt the agenda for today? Madam Chair. You take it, Margaret. You take it, Margaret. Madam Chair, I move we adopt the agenda for today. Second. Ms. Green seconds Ms.
002Lorber's motion to adopt the agenda. Do I have any motions? I should have a motion to amend the agenda. Maybe Ms. Alderton, maybe. Is that me? Yes. So we're moving to amend the agenda. I have to move, add the agenda item superintendent update to new business. And I need a second for that, please. Second. I will, Ms. Gentry seconds Ms. Alderton's amendment to the agenda. And so now I'll call for a vote on the amendment to the agenda. And so Cindy Anderson, yes. Megan Alderton. Yes. Amy Gentry. Yes. Jacinta Green. Yes. Margaret Lorber. Yes. Michelle Reif. Yes. Christopher Suarez. Yes. Heather Thornton. Oops, what happened to Heather? Yes. Oh, there you are. Okay. Thank you. So that's eight yes and one absent right now. And now we have to vote on the amended agenda. So
003I will call again. Cindy Anderson, yes. Megan Alderton. Yes. Remy Gentry. Yes. Jacinta Green. Yes. Margaret Lorber. Yes. Michelle Reeve? Yes. Christopher Suarez? Yes. Heather Thornton? Yes. So that is a yes and one absent for the agenda. So it is now adopted. And I think we're going to go ahead and move communications, both from the school board student reps and also from the public to this point in the agenda. So we'll... Susan, I think we're going to start with, we have both school board reps here, right? So let's start with them. I don't know which of you would like to go first, but take it away. I'm going to go first. I had to move to the car, so I'm sorry. But I just kind of wanted to really take my time today to talk
004about the effect that yesterday's event had on my peers at school today. This morning, most of our teachers opened up a class discussion about yesterday's events. And the counselors also had a Zoom session for students who wanted to talk about it with the counselor present. And teachers and counselors usually do these same discussions about race a few days. They did the same thing a few days after the death of George Floyd and also after this. And ACPS had... And ACPS held numerous community meetings to talk about everything else that's going on. And getting the chance to talk and speak your truth is wonderful. But it's times like these, and sometimes you get tired of talking. And as a nation, there's so much talking and not enough seeing. If you weren't at the Trump rally yesterday,
005then you were at home seeing, seeing those people for who they are, seeing how they tried to make a fool out of the Blue Lives Matter that they said before that they were fighting for and seeing those people, how those people treat government property. And when I finally turned off my TV after six plus hours of watching it, my mind immediately went to Alexandria. And you know, when you're trying to go to sleep and you end up thinking, getting deeper and deeper into your thoughts. And my initial question was like, how is ACPS going to deal with this tomorrow with the students? And then after an hour or two of like still thinking about it, my question then went to when are we going to stop talking and start seeing and start doing? And so
006like why does something drastic always have to happen before we wake up and we start to get it? Like did a black man's head have to be kneed down into the concrete before we seriously had to think about how real police brutality is? And like yesterday, did Trump supporters have to violently break into the Capitol for us to really realize how bad and real racism is? And so I ask like everyone, and I'm just like saying, like what drastic situation has to happen in order for administration to like make these, make these changes and start like. you know, listening and everything. And I always, and I only say administrators because you guys are the decision makers. And I see, I see like the students as the seers and we're like the seers. And you guys
007are like Congress to us. You guys make the decisions. You guys have like all the control and everything that we talk about, everything that we see in the hallways every day, we see it every day. There are problems that we, these are problems that we face, the students face every day. And so I think it's like up to you all to, it's definitely up to you all if you want to hear it and want to see it. And it's great now that we're talking about it and we're having these conversations, but it's really time that like ACPS, everybody in ACPS, we have to, we have to start seeing each other. Thank you, Lorraine. So my report is just on some of the things that I was doing before the break in regards to student engagement.
008So With Ms. Nielsen, we're working on ensuring that we're establishing that connection with the middle school student representatives now that we have all four of them. So we're working on establishing a connection with them and really fixing that communication in order to understand what's going on at the middle school level. And yeah, that's about it. Thank you. Thank you both. And for that, the powerful words, Ms. Johnson, thank you very much. We're going to now go on to hear from our public comments. And just as always, as a reminder, each speaker, we have 10 speakers. Each speaker has three minutes. The clerk will keep the time and let us know that sometimes we can hear that the... the alarm, but if not, she will indicate verbally that the time has elapsed. And deadline for comments
009are for signing up are noon the day before our meeting. And so we'll get right into it. We also, you should know that the school board does not respond. We are in listen mode. We do not respond to comments from speakers during the meeting. First up, we have Ms. Molly Kamen. Hello? Yes, hello. We can hear you. Thank you. Thank you very much. May I start? Yes, go ahead. The ACPS board will ensure that all students reach their highest academic potential. This is your mission statement in case you need a refresher. The ACPS board is a nine-member elected body. This is also a reminder. For those of you that don't know me, I'm usually here fighting for TAG students. Today, I speak to you not for my children who are managing okay with virtual learning.
010I'm here to fight for the students who are definitely not reaching their highest academic potential. In fact, many are failing or flat out not even attending virtual school. I'm also here to speak on behalf of the parents who are struggling with virtual learning because they matter too. The number of tagged students making Fs more than tripled this academic year from last academic year. And shame on you if you think only white kids are tagged students. Aside from TAG students, let's also address the students who are missing out on two meals a day and can't get to a food drop-off site. The students who are so depressed that they are contemplating suicide. The students who can't even figure out how to get online or manage their daily classwork. The student who is trying to do classes
011inside a closet. Or the student who grew up as I did. Getting beat up by a parent in between Zoom classes. School board, you represent us, the parents, the students. We are the stakeholders, and you should be ashamed. Ms. Gentry, please do not talk down to a mother addressing her concerns. You are elected by us. And school board, remember Dr. Hutchings answers to you. So start representing your constituents. us and not Dr. Hutchings or the teachers and open up the schools for those that desperately need in-person instruction. Thank you. Our next speaker is Kate Taggart. Ms. Taggart, are you present? Why don't we move on to the next? Can you hear me? Oh, there we go. Yes. Thank you so much. Okay. I'm sorry about that. I don't know what happened. Okay. So good afternoon.
012I want to preface my comments before proceeding. The issue of reopening schools in this country appears to have become a political one. And the position that I have is that schools should be open, but is not partisan. It's based on the data and the perspective of our national experts. And also, in no way should my comments be taken as anti-teacher. All teachers are working extremely hard in a time of uncertainty and challenges, and I'm truly grateful for them every day. The data that I reference is publicly available at the Virginia Department of Health and compares Alexandria metrics to CDC guidance regarding the risk of transmission in schools and indicates schools based on health metrics should have opened this fall. In fact, Alexandria has been in the lower risk of category from September all the way
013to the end of November. Despite this fact, the CDC recommendation of six feet between students has been flaunted as the reason we cannot go back to school because of capacity problems. But that is not a mandate, nor is it accepted by the World Health Organization or the American Academy of Pediatrics. I think it's fair to say that the Alexandria School Board and their leaders do not have the will to reopen schools. And in all honesty, based on the skyrocketing rates of COVID, which actually now do exist in Alexandria, it's clear that we're not. Which brings me to another point, which is that the transmission of COVID always exists. You've just transferred the risk to other members of our community. the grandparents watching their grandkids, staff at the Campania Center and the Recreation Center. And those
014people should be recognized as leaders in a dark time in our history. The focus needs to be on the reopening of schools five days a week in September. Currently, there is no plan. I was told it was unreasonable for me to expect ACPS to have a plan to reopen in September by the superintendent based on the unpredictable nature of the pandemic. I'm here today to say that is unacceptable. There must be plans to take into account all the contingencies that may impact getting to school back in September. Questions like what if kids aren't vaccinated by then? If a new strain thwarts the vaccine, what buildings in Alexandria will be transformed to accommodate the three or six feet rule? As I talk to my friends all over the country and the broader world with their kids
015attending public school from New York to Colorado and the UK, I wonder what went wrong in our city. We've failed the kids that lived in this community, especially those that deserve better from the public school system. It seems that we all share the common goal of getting kids back to school, but there's absolutely no plan to do so. Thank you. Next up, we have Mr. Kevin White. Hello, Mr. White. Can everyone hear me? Yes, we can. Thank you. You can start whenever you're ready. Thank you. Good afternoon. I would like to start by thanking the school board for giving me, an eight-year resident of Alexandria that has a second grader at James K. Polk, the opportunity to talk about why I think more needs to be done to reopen public schools in the city of
016Alexandria. The reason that schools should be open are numerous. I could talk about the recent report about how poorly Alexandria City students are doing, how that divergence in grades is unfortunately, yet predictably, breaking along racial lines. I could talk about how other countries and even other areas of this country have prioritized getting children back into classrooms and found that those classrooms are not conduits for COVID spread. I could talk about the mental battle that is taking place for children in this community, how parents like myself and my wife, as well as countless others, react to their children like mine, that tell us repeatedly they deserve something better than Zoom school. They do, and all. of us as a community are failing them. What do you say to your child when you ask them after winter
017break, was it good to talk to his friends at school? And he responds, and I quote, I didn't say anything to them. I usually don't speak during the day. I'm on mute most of the time. What do you say? Because my wife and I, we're at a loss for words. Is this the best as a community that we can do? I could talk a lot more about all of those things, but what I want to use my remaining time to talk about is community. Schools are, and they should be, the focal point in the community. There are very few populations as vulnerable and as unable to represent themselves in a community than children. Schools are not only the place where we educate and mold the future generation, but where so many children find their advocates
018and their voices. Without community, Without neighbors, without neighborhoods, we are just individuals fighting each other. Together, we are stronger than divided. For months, Dr. Hutchins has said schools can reopen only under certain circumstances. Staffing and capacity are mainly school management issues. We could argue over whether ACPS should utilize rec space for additional classrooms or how the wonderful teachers of ACPS deserve hazard pay. But at its core, those issues are for ACPS management and the school board to figure out. However, Dr. Hutchins has also outlined that community health metrics are part of the equation. The problem, however, is that he hasn't told the community what goals need to be achieved. He has said the positivity rates in cases per 100,000 are indicators, but he hasn't stated where the goalposts are. The community, me, you, your neighbor,
019your church group, everyone that calls Alexandria home can be part of the solution, but only if they know the winning endpoint. So I want to say, by closing, by calling on the school board to allow Alexandria as a community to play a larger role in getting our kids back into school when it is safe to do so, by insisting that Dr. Hutchings put clear stakes in the ground. Tell me how- Mr. White, Mr. White, I'm sorry, your time has expired. Thank you for your time. Thank you. Next up, we have Ms. Gina Baum. Hi, I am Gina Baum. I'm a 25-year resident of Alexandria and a community volunteer. I serve on two city boards and have for the last decade. I understand and take the responsibility of serving on boards very seriously. Oftentimes there are
020difficult exchanges between the city and community board members. That's our job. We are the check to balance the power held by city government. I have watched these board meetings with great anticipation, assuming I would see the kind of robust exchanges that occur on other boards. Needless to say, I've been disappointed. Then, in the last meeting, I was shocked with the comments of a board member. I can tell you very directly, Ms. Gentry, the response to your remarks were indeed visceral. I am sorry there is no restful vacation for ACPS employees. There is no rest for parents with jobs who are sitting next to their kindergartners as they work to support their families. There is no rest for essential worker parents who must figure out child care and or pay $1,000 a month for daycare. There
021is no rest for the brick and mortar businesses and restaurants that have had to shift to virtual sales and take out delivery. It is a global pandemic that will not rest. And as such, just like us mere mortals, there is no rest for ACPS either. We are all having to perform at our peak performance and intensity in our work lives and on the home front. I'm sorry you don't like what you are hearing from parents. However, their concerns are valid and should not be met with rebuke from you. You should listen to them, validate their concerns, and find solutions to the problems families are facing now. Furthermore, as parents, we too have heard from teachers. We do praise teachers and respect their work, but their accomplishments are achieved despite the inadequate planning on the part
022of ACPS. There are many, many teachers who don't support or praise APS's current virtual model, but are too fearful of retaliation to speak up. Now it is time for this board and this administration to follow the overwhelming science that says schools are not vectors for the spread of the virus. Now it is time for this board and this administration to listen to the leading expert, Dr. Fauci, who says schools should be open. Now it is time for this board and this administration to function like every other government department in the city of Alexandria and open with mitigations in place. Now it is time for this board and administration to take on the task of opening schools and treat them as the essential facet to the functioning of our community that they are. Thank you. Thank
023you. Next up, we have Melissa Hagerman. Hello. Thank you. Can you hear me? Yes, we can. Great. Thank you so much. I'd like to thank you for this opportunity to present to you today. I encourage ACPS to move forward with return to school plans. I'm a single parent who works full-time, and I would like to share my experience of the Virtual Plus program as it could be reflective of what other single-parent families in our community are facing. My daughter is in the third grade at Mount Vernon Community School. She's always loved school and excelled in it. She loves Principal Burrell and her teachers, and we are so grateful for all of the support they have provided. Unfortunately, a few months ago, my daughter began losing weight. Actually, she lost eight pounds, which is quite significant
024for an eight-year-old. Her pediatrician referred us to a gastroenterologist, and after many tests, the gastroenterologist, pediatrician, and a wonderful therapist I was able to find for her all concluded that she is suffering from anxiety. She started the school year in September sitting in the bathroom beside the toilet with her camera off. I was hopeful that the Virtual Plus programs would help and spent thousands of dollars on the ASA program. The coaches were great and very supportive. However, after a few weeks, my daughter concluded that she was the only one in her class not doing school Zoom from home. Thus, she felt like she stuck out. She began refusing to attend ASA, and this only made her anxiety worse. Now she is doing Zoom school from home. My own work performance and productivity have greatly suffered
025as I have to constantly monitor her as she often hops off Zoom and misses school assignments. On Mondays, I can't schedule professional calls as I have to sit with her while she does her asynchronous learning assignments and then keep her entertained the rest of the day or she will revert to her iPad, which she became addicted to in the spring. As a single parent, it is particularly worrying that I am unable to devote the time needed to my job. My daughter pleads with me to homeschool her or send her to a private school, and it just breaks my heart when I tell her that I can't do either. My daughter's doctors have advised that what she needs most is to return to a normal school routine. This is also what the American Academy of Pediatrics
026has advised in their updated guidance, as they indicate that what is most needed is a return to in-school learning. I would urge ACPS to move forward with return to school plans. Thank you again for this opportunity to present, and thank you for serving on the school board. Thank you. Next up, we have Janice Coupier. Can you hear me? Yes. Great. I'm going to start. Thank you. Good afternoon. My name is Janice Kupiak, and I've lived in Alexandria for almost 19 years. My husband and I opted to stay here once our daughter was born, despite friends telling us that we needed to move to a better school district. We did move, but just a little bit south so that our neighborhood school would be Lyle's Crouch. I still remember that first day of kindergarten. I watched
027my little girl go off to a full day of school with a backpack slightly too big for her small body. and a huge smile. We're fortunate to be part of this community over the years and have caring, talented, and dedicated teachers and staff. I never worried about her and knew every morning I left her in the hands of incredible humans doing amazing work. I've had the opportunity to get to know the school and community better as a member of the PTA. Spring was a learning experience and everyone did an amazing job keeping spirits up when they were tanking. This fall I was relieved watching as her teacher bent over backwards forwards in every way possible to ensure every child was having his or her needs met academically and emotionally. The counselor was there to support
028the kids and even the principal would make appearances on Zoom to bring some smiles. Despite all of this, it wasn't enough. We made the incredibly hard decision to withdraw her from ACPS before the holidays and enroll her at a private school meeting in person. I've watched the impact that isolation from friends, not being at school and sheer frustration from all the glitches that have occurred. take their toll. Every time she was kicked out of Zoom, tears flowed. It's been truly crushing as a parent to say the least. Her love of learning has been impacted and she went from being very engaged to doing what was necessary to make it through the day. I'm aware that there has been effort to find ways to have children return to school. I'm also aware that other school districts
029around the country have managed to do it. It's not been perfect, but it's been done. My heart was incredibly heavy when we informed our principal and teachers of our decision because it's a community we love. But as a parent, I need to make the decision that's best for my child. We're hopeful that this move will be beneficial and I can watch the joy on her face and her love of learning return. My faith in ACPS and the ability to return students. back to their schools has been lost and it breaks my heart. I've been a strong advocate for public schools and I'm a product of them myself. At this point, it would be very helpful to all families for ACPS to just be honest about what isn't possible this year and focus on the next
030academic year. Parents may not like it, but I think we can all appreciate transparency and honesty. Thank you very much for the opportunity to share my thoughts with all of you today. Thank you. Next up, we have Bridget Westfall. Good afternoon, Dr. Hutchins, members of the school board. I'd also like to recognize any Virginia Education Association members and teachers. My name is Bridget Shea Westfall. I'm an ACPS parent to Amari first grader Jameson. Jameson is attending an ACPS Virtual Plus partner through the Companion Center at George Mason Elementary School. My comments focus on teacher engagement and child care and phased re-entry. For phased re-entry to be a success, it is important to include all stakeholders. I recognize ACPS teachers for the resilience and grit these 300 plus days of virtual learning. How is ACPS engaging
031teachers? Please consider the impact of the salary step freeze on teacher morale, the economic impact of schools being closed on teachers' incomes, hazard pay, the need for mental health resources, and child care. What resources and incentives can ACPS provide? Additionally, I'm concerned with the rollout of vaccines dependent on being employer-driven for teachers. Right now, only an employer can sign up teachers. How do you intend to make sure teachers are able to access an employer-sponsored vaccination? Does ACPS have a target date for vaccinations? Regarding child care in Virtual Plus, this week parents wondered about operations with community partners in the winter and had many unanswered questions from providers about the continuity of care in the hybrid model. Based on our family needs and my son's request, we chose the hybrid model. After hearing me discuss a
032survey from Campania, my son got incredibly angry with me, lost his temper, balled up his face and cried. The thought of him losing his school, in quotes, which he considers Campania, was too much for him. Absent in-person learning, my son affiliates with his first and second grade classroom at Campania, no longer wears his Mari uniform on Zoom, confided in me. that he focuses on his teacher on Zoom because seeing his classmates, many of whom he has never met or do not remember him, is too hard for him. While his classmates might take breaks at the Maury playground, he has to worry about missing his next class while at Campania, nervous because he just learned to tell time. asked to have his executive functioning skills when he cannot yet read and write. He was one of
033the kids who received twos in the quarter one grades report. This is despite having every resource available to him, a book buddy who tutored him over break, group leaders at Companion, a teacher at Maury who collaborate to meet his academic needs, and a retired reading recovery specialist as a second tutor outside school hours. My son is socially aware enough to have pause about schools being unsafe when he has been in an ACPS classroom in an ACPS school. not his own since September. I encourage Dr. Hutchins and the board to visit these sites and note promising practices for implementing a safe return to schools. Thank you to all the teachers and staff who are doing what they are doing, and thank you to the school board for my time. Thank you. Next up, we have Stacey
034Anderson. Stacey Anderson. All right, so I'm on now. Sorry, you called my name a little while ago, but I wasn't able to speak. So, hello. I am Stacey Anderson, the parent of two teenagers who attend our city's one high school. Thank you for allowing me to speak with you today. We have been ACPS parents for six years now and have a senior poise to graduate this year. We moved back to Alexandria in 2012 and enrolled our children in private school. But after two years, we made the decision to move our children into ACPS. We were impressed by not only the curriculum being offered at both middle and high school, but also by what plans were being discussed for the future of ACPS. We are a military family now retired and recommended to many families they
035consider settling in Alexandria, even correcting what I thought were mischaracterizations by others about our school system. However, I requested to speak to you today out of grave concern for the current state of the academic situation at our high school. While my husband and I give thanks every day for the blessings we have, we are both able to telework, we have two bright and motivated daughters, and we have home, food, and technology security. It is out of an abundance of awareness that we are the fortunate minority at our incredibly diverse high school that I implore the school board to provide leadership for the critical, disheartening, and unacceptable situation many of our city's students find themselves in today. They are the ones who are most directly affected by the large increase in failing grades this year. They
036are the ones who are doing their level best to survive this pandemic, but do not seem to be provided the resources for which we all pay taxes to help them navigate what is proving to be literally a failing school system. Based on the first quarter grade data provided to the school board, I expect you are all shocked and driven to quickly address the dire circumstances that so many of our students find themselves in. As the report states, the largest difference between this year and last is percentage of failing grades at the secondary level. Almost two-thirds of our Hispanic student population and 70% of EL students have at least two D's or F's. 48% of the students overall have at least one D or F in their coursework. And this isn't just about students who may
037be more challenged academically. There's a 320% increase in TAG students in high school with a DRF. 18% of our high school TAG students are failing or nearly failing classes. That is a clear message that the current model is not working. Of incredible concern to me is the data regarding economics and personal finance course. Almost a third of the students enrolled in a state mandated requirement for high school graduation are failing. Another 9% have D, 3% incomplete. 43% of the students may not pass a class that they were required to have graduate. That is wholly unacceptable and should be a wake-up call for the state of our high school students in this asynchronous all virtual learning experience. We are failing our students and family and we must immediately rectify the situation. Continuing down the same path
038that has been driven, that has driven these abysmal numbers will not magically correct itself. Only change will do so. I do not question whether any of you feel you are not doing the right thing. I know you ran for the school board because you want to improve our school system. Many of our children need to be in school in order to have any chance of success. What has been done in the last 10 minutes is not working, and I implore you to make course corrections quickly before it's too late to make a difference in the lives of thousands of high school students. My family has resources, knowledge, and wherewithal to ensure our children stay the course. I'm sorry, your time has expired. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, thank you. I should tell everyone that if
039you want to send us further comments, you could send them by email. It's always good to get the comments in writing as well. Next up, we have Erica Millman. Yes, can you hear me? Yes, we can. Thank you for the opportunity to speak today. I will be focusing my comments on how virtual learning has impacted my child with complex special needs. One of my child's many learning differences is hard of hearing. Virtual learning inhibits his ability to lip read to overcome his hearing loss. The sound from computers is often out of sync with the video and ambient sounds from other speakers interferes with his hearing aid. During virtual learning, he often puts his head down on the table between his hands and says, mommy, my head hurts. This is a reaction to the harsh and
040discordant mixtures of sounds that he is experiencing. At these times, he is not able to access the same school material that students without hearing difficulty are accessing. He used to be confident in the general education setting despite his extreme learning differences because of the nuanced way that special education teachers push into the general education classroom. However, the electronic methods of information sharing that support virtual learning have amplified for him just how different he is from his neurotypical peers. Previously confident in his abilities to learn, he now calls himself stupid and says, I hate myself and I will never learn to read or write or do math. He has also developed extreme behaviors to avoid virtual learning. I have had to install extra locks to minimize his attempts to escape out of the room or out
041of the house during virtual school. When he experiences frustration with virtual sessions, he calls himself useless and has even said that he should kill himself, going so far as to go into the kitchen to retrieve a knife. This behavior from a previously bubbly and confident child is scary. Because of his disabilities, the only way for my child to participate in virtual school is for me to act as a one-on-one instructional aid. As an essential worker in healthcare operations, I am eligible to enroll him at one of the Virtual Plus partners for childcare. However, staffing at those centers does not support his need for one-on-one supervision. The tension between needing to be available to him while also maintaining full-time employment as a single parent has negatively affected his attendance. When I can't flex my work responsibilities,
042he misses school sessions because he is unable to independently use a computer. In sum, the costs of virtual schooling for my student far outweigh the risks of being educated in an in-person setting. Thank you. Thank you. Our final speaker today is James McElhatton. And I'm sorry, I know you. We've corresponded, but I have probably just butchered your name. It's McElhatton, but thank you. I appreciate it. I'll practice. McElhatton. No problem. I want to start out by just, you know, complimenting your student representative there on her initial comments. I've spoken to the board a time or two in the past, and maybe I've considered it routine. But, you know, yesterday's events in D.C. really sort of underscore how, you know. agree or disagree, this is democracy and the ability to come speak my mind is no
043small thing and not something I take for granted. And so. Thanks for having me. I'm reaching out. What I spoke about back then is what I'm here to talk about again, although it's underscored somewhat by the first quarter statistics that speakers mentioned earlier, the increases in chronic absenteeism and in particular grades of Fs just sort of skyrocketing. And I would argue that this stems from an adherence to what I consider to be a punitive and discriminatory zero-based grading policy, which other school districts around us are or have already moved away from. And I don't think moving away from this would be controversial, but it's just simple math. 100 point grading scale, the interval between numerical and letter grades is typically 10 points and 90, 80, 70, 60, and so on. And so with an F
044being a 50, an incomplete assignment that receives a zero is mathematically five times worse than work deemed absolutely unacceptable. And the problem is, is that when you're guaranteed a 50 at the end of the grading period anyway, if you're a student who has missed a couple of assignments, three or four assignments, especially now because of COVID and you've got anxiety and depression, you've completely checked out and you have a couple of zeros, you mathematically have no daylight. You have no chance of coming back. And so you have no incentive to try to catch up because you're guaranteed a 50 anyway. And I just, I'm so troubled by this policy. And I think it really flies in the face of the words that are on the ACPS website, equity for all, in particular, because, you know,
045the report about the first quarter statistics. note that the increasing Fs are, you know, affecting Hispanic, Black, English, and students with disabilities in particular. And I just really urge you to take a second look at this. WTOP, last month. talked about this very issue coming up in Fairfax. There's grading policies that would make a 50 out of 100 the lowest possible score a student can get on an assignment. Arlington already has this policy from what I've seen on their website. So I'd really urge the board to take a look at this, especially now with COVID, because I think this policy is just really burying kids and just... leaving them hopeless. Thank you. Okay, thank you very much. That concludes our public comments section of our meeting today. And so now we're going to go back
046to what had... originally been scheduled for earlier in the meeting, and I'm going to turn it over to Dr. Hutchings for the chair election for this year. And I apologize that my computer has decided again that it's not going to show my video in spite of rebooting and updating my Zoom. I don't know, folks. Sorry. Thank you, Madam Chair. It gives me great pleasure this evening to conduct the 2021 election for the chair of the Alexandria City School Board. At this time, I will open the floor for nominations for chair of the Alexandria City School Board. I see Cindy Anderson. Thank you. Yes, I enthusiastically nominate Megan Alderton for school board chair. Early in our time as colleagues on the board, I recognized her leadership qualities, and these leadership qualities combined with her expertise and
047experience make her a fantastic choice for the next board chair. Mrs. Megan Alderton is nominated. Are there further nominations? I see Ms. Thornton. Thank you, Dr. Hutchings. I would like to nominate Dr. Michelle Reif for chair of the Alexandria City School Board. Dr. Reif has been a huge advocate of our division and our students. And during our meetings, I've definitely appreciated her thoughtful and thorough analysis of very complex issues. And I think she provides a very valued perspective to this board. I think she has great integrity and definitely values open communication. And she has indicated a willingness to put her all into our goal of equity for all. And I think these attributes would serve her well in the leadership role. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Thornton. Dr. Michelle Reif is nominated. Are there further
048nominations? Hearing none, the nominations are closed. Would anyone like to make any further comments regarding the candidates? Ms. Nolan? I'll just briefly say that I appreciate both Dr. Reif and Ms. Alderton for obviously being willing to serve in this role. I will be voting for Ms. Alderton just because I really do appreciate her leadership that she's shown as well as her space in the education field and her willingness to lead us as a team towards our strategic planning goals. That said, thank you so much, Dr. Reeve for all of your commitment to the board, but just again, wanted to thank everyone for their willingness to serve as well as to share that why I'm excited for Ms. Alderson to lead us through the next phase. Are there further comments? Hearing no further comments, the clerk
049will call for the vote. Thank you, Dr. Hutchings. Those in favor of Ms. Alderton, please indicate your vote as either yes or pass when your name is called. Ms. Alderton? Yes. Ms. Anderson? Yes. And just being sure that this is for Ms. Alderton. Yes, this is for Ms. Alderton. Yes. All right. Yes. Ms. Gentry? She was on mute. Oh, Ms. Gentry, could you try again, please? She's off mute, but somehow it's not coming through. Let's see. Okay, I'm going to come back to Ms. Gentry. Ms. Green? I'm sorry, can you repeat that? Pass. Okay, thank you. Ms. Lorber? Yes. Ms. Nolan? Yes. Dr. Reif? Pass. Ms. Thornton? Pass. Mr. Suarez. Yes. Okay. Ms. Gentry. Yes. Okay. Wonderful. Thank you. Okay. Thank you very much. So now for those who are in favor of Dr. Reif,
050Ms. Green. Yes. Dr. Reif. Yes. And Ms. Thornton. Yes. Thank you very much. Ms. Alderton has six votes and Dr. Reeve has three. And back to you, Dr. Hutchings. So Ms. Megan Alderton is elected as the chair of the Alexandria City School Board for 2021. Congratulations, Ms. Alderton. Thank you. And so I'm going to move along in the agenda and we're going to move at this time to open the floor for nominations for vice chair of the Alexandria City School Board. So are there, I see Rami Gentry has her hand up for a nomination. Thank you, Chair Alderton. And congratulations. It is my pleasure and my honor to nominate Veronica Nolan. who has graciously indicated a willingness to step up again for vice chair. I know from my own previous experience being a chair, how
051vital it is to have a partner in the vice chair. And I'm grateful that Ms. Nolan is willing to once again serve as vice chair. Thank you, Ms. Gentry. So Veronica Nolan is nominated. Are there further nominations for vice chair? Okay, at this time, there appear to be no more nominations. So hearing none, the nominations are closed. Would anyone like to make any remarks regarding Ms. Nolan? Madam Chair? Yes. Hi. Yeah, I would just like to speak up on behalf of Ms. Nolan, but also on behalf of continuity of leadership. I'm very pleased that we will have a new chair, but a continuation of our vice chair, because I think that's important for. particularly for Dr. Hutchings. I think it helps the superintendent when there's some continuity in leadership. But I think also as a
052board, it will help our new chair. And so I'm just grateful that Ms. Nolan wants to continue in the position because leadership is a lot of work and I wanna thank you both. Thank you, Ms. Lorber. I see Cindy Anderson. Yes, but Ms. Lorber beat me to my comments. So that's just, I just agree that some continuity, as I have said in the past, is very, very important. So I thank Ms. Nolan for agreeing to do it again. Thank you. And I don't see hands for any other comments. So if there are no further comments, the clerk will call for the vote. Okay, for the position for Ms. Nolan for Vice Chair, Ms. Alderton, when I call your name, please indicate yes or pass when your name is called. Ms. Alderton? Yes. Ms. Anderson? Yes.
053Ms. Gentry? Yes. Ms. Green? Ms. Lorber? Yes. Ms. Nolan? Yes. Dr. Reif? I will abstain. Ms. Thornton? Yes. And Mr. Suarez? Yes. Okay. We have eight for the candidate, Ms. Nolan, and one abstention. All right. Thank you, Susan, and congratulations to Ms. Nolan. Thank you, Chair Alderton. This might be not proper, but do you mind if I just say something for just one minute? I just really want to thank Ms. Anderson for her service as board chair. You really have done a phenomenal job. You put us, you know, I don't know of any chair that wanted to lead during COVID, let alone some of the other contentious times that we've had. But I just want to thank you so much publicly for all you've done. your integrity, your commitment to the division your entire life,
054your thoughtfulness, your ability to bring us all together, as well as your understanding of what a school board role is versus what a staff member role is and supporting Dr. Hutchings in the way that's appropriate. I think we've all benefited from not only as a board, but a division, but also a community. So again, sorry to take us out of line, but I just did want to thank you so much for all you've done tirelessly. for us not only the five years, but particularly as Ramey can share, to be chair especially, you just really put the hours in and we've benefited both from Ramey's and your style of just serving us in a way that's appropriate. So thank you so much for everything. Thank you, Chair Alderton for the opportunity. Thank you, Ms. Nolan. I
055think we have some more comments folks wanna. Give some kudos to Cindy. So I'm going to go in this order. We'll do Ms. Lorber. Miss Green and then Miss Gentry. Yes, similarly, if I stole, Cindy, if I stole your lines when I was discussing the continuity. Yeah, I'm wondering, in fact, is there any formality, any formal way that we recognize, I mean, a chair who puts in, what, two years of being chair, right? Two sessions. Get a really cool gavel. It's, oh, that's what you get? Oh, you get to use a cool gavel? Anyway, I just. I know a commemorative one to keep. Okay. Oh, so you do get that or we're going to give her one. Oh, okay. All right. Thank you. You answered my question. Anyway, I just want to, I think we're
056all grateful. Cindy has a very balanced way of, of leading and making people feel included. And I think we're lucky we've benefited greatly. I think Dr. Hutchings has benefited from for his first two years, having someone like Cindy at, at the head of the. at the head of the board steering us through these sometimes rough waters. And so thank you, Ms. Anderson, tremendously. And thank you all. I think I just, you know, I think we're, I love this board and I'm grateful to everybody. So. All right. We had Ms. Green. Yes. Thank you, new Madam Chair. And congratulations. Thank you. I'll be calling you new Madam Chair, at least for the next couple of weeks. I just want to thank Cindy as well. Two years is definitely a long time to be a chair on
057any board, but particularly a school board when, you know, you have strong personalities and, you know, all of that, everything that goes with that. And she definitely wants to make sure she keeps everyone included and she makes sure everyone is heard and I really do appreciate that. particularly those texts as I send her 11, 1130 at night. So Cindy, I greatly appreciate you as I know we all do. Cindy is a type, if you need to know something, anything about anything that's gone on with the school board in Alexandria, Cindy knows it, or she can find out, or she'll say, let me go to my attic and get a newspaper clipping. So just the extensive knowledge and, you know, it's just, you just, you can't, you know, ask for anything better as a chair to
058have that. And I know we'll still have her here and be able to go and pull those newspaper clippings, but the knowledge that she has makes her such a strong leader. And I'm just grateful for your leadership and just wanted to thank you. Ms. Gentry. Thank you. You know, Ms. Anderson has worked so hard on so many things even you know even before chair working on redistricting she was a constant presence for the school board and sort of eyes and ears on the ground during the really intense complicated process of the and I can't believe I'm forgetting the name now after I heard it so many times but something along the long range you know, city schools, community, the task force that was that was really going to try to tackle how we planned a
059long term for for CIP work and the knowledge that that Cindy brought into that and the leadership that she displayed with that was was really tremendous. I also think Cindy has been a really big part of helping. to improve and strengthen the relationship between the city council and the school board. And I think that that relationship between cities and schools is truly important. So thank you so much, Ms. Anderson, for all of the years and work that you put in and congratulations on rolling off as chair. Thank you, Ms. Gentry. Dr. Hutchings. And congratulations, Madam Chair. And I just want to say, Ms. Anderson has been phenomenal as a chair. I've had the opportunity to work with two chairs, too. Ms. Gentry, she's also a phenomenal chair. And now I'm going to have a third
060chair, and this is my third year. But I do appreciate all of the dedication that Ms. Anderson has given throughout this time. I mean, a lot of times the community cannot see the behind-the-scenes work. that occurs. um and miss anderson she is always prepared she is reads everything that um that is given uh to her and she really asked the right questions to help me even prepare for meetings uh when i need to and to bring things to my attention when needed and i just truly appreciate uh the dedication um that miss anderson she has as a fellow titan too i just also appreciate the fact that we do have something in common uh because we are titans and alexandrians uh through and through. But thank you for your service throughout this time. I know
061you're not going anywhere. You're still around. I have a great relationship with all of our board members in all very different ways because I try to meet everybody where they are, right? Because that's important. I don't treat you all like... You're treated the same, but not the same. I got to adjust. That's what good teachers do, too. They adjust to the kids. Not calling you kids, though. Don't take that the wrong way, board members. But I do appreciate working with all of our board members. And I think the board superintendent relationship is probably one of the most important things that's going to allow us to achieve the strategic goals that we've set. And Cindy or Ms. Anderson, she has definitely been the example of showing how it can work and how it should work. So
062thank you, Ms. Anderson. And also thank you, Ms. Nolan, because you get to stay with me, you know, on the board leadership and you're kind of like the ride or die side, right? You're always on the side, but you're there and you're always pulling us back saying, hold on, wait, you got to think about this particular thing. And you reach out to me when needed as well. And I do appreciate the relationship that we have had over the past two and a half years. And I'm looking forward to continuing that as the vice chair. Happy to serve. Thank you, everyone, for your support. Thank you, Dr. Hutchings. And Cindy has her hand up. So I have to get used to going last now. Thank you, Madam Chair. Congratulations. I just wanted to respond. I wasn't
063expecting all that, but very much appreciate the comments. And I have enjoyed working with everyone. And I'm not going away. And part of me is thinking, oh, no, we didn't plan this in the time. We're going to run late on our meeting. Because that's what we've been working on for a while. So I appreciate it. And I'll have to say, I was on a call. call yesterday with some school board people and two of them had just rolled off of chair and they had this elation. They were so celebrating that. So it really set the stage. I was laughing about that. So I will be here, but I appreciate all the comments and sorry that, again, that my video is not working. Thank you, Sunni, and you will always be Madam Chair. So, and, you
064know, I'm going last, but I definitely, you know, want to chime in. I think what is so lovely about Cindy is, you know, even when the going gets tough, which we've had, I think we can say we've had a lot of tough moments. She has always been sort of that calm and steady. And so that's very helpful. in the rough times and it's very helpful in the good times. So just really thank you, Cindy, for serving for two years. And I'm elated for you to just be able to, you know, slow down a little bit. So you're really appreciated. And Ms. Nolan, you're going to be my new ride or die. So I'm looking forward to it. And thank you for serving again as well. Looking forward to supporting you. Thank you for being willing
065to take on the chair role. All right, so moving along in our agenda, and Susan, you can correct me if I'm wrong, but I think we definitely need to go back to the communications and addresses to the board because we didn't complete everything in that portion of the agenda. Is that correct? The only thing we had moved was the student rep and the public comments. So everything that, so you'll just follow the agenda normally. And we'll just skip those two items. All right, thank you. Okay. So, and everybody will bear with me today as I'm new at getting through this agenda. We've already adopted the agenda, so that's good. And we need to move on to the consent calendar. Is that correct? I think first I may have to do the rest of their other
066election things that have to be done. Yes, you need to go to item number eight. Item number eight. Thank you. Okay. So item number eight goes over to Dr. Hutchings, if you'd like to say anything, but this is an action item, so we will have a motion for it. And we need to approve your designees. So do you have any comments at all, Dr. Hutchings? No, other than that we want to keep the same superintendent designees moving forward. That is the Chief of Staff, Dr. Steve Wilkins, and our Chief of Teaching, Learning, and Leadership, Dr. Terry Mozingo as superintendent designees. Okay, so I will need a motion to approve Dr. Stephen Wilkins and Dr. Terry Muzinko as designees to the division superintendent. Madam Chair, I move we keep the two individuals named as the superintendent
067is designees. I keep Stephen Wilkins and this is ridiculous. I'm so sorry. I've got it. I've got it. I've got it. Second. All right. So Mrs. Green seconds Ms. Lorber's motion and I'm going to call for the vote. Megan Alderton, yes. Cindy Anderson. Yes. Ramey Gentry. Yes. Jacinta Green. Yes. Marguerite Lorber. Yes. Veronica Nolan. Yes. Michelle Reith. Yes. Christopher Suarez. Yes. Heather Thornton. Yes. Excellent. And the vote is 9-0. Okay. We have another action item on the agenda. We need to approve the superintendent's recommendation for clerk and deputy clerk of the board. Unless there are any comments, we need a motion to approve Susan Nielsen as Clerk of the Board and Chanel Hill as the Deputy Clerk of the Board. Madam Chair. Ms. Anderson. I move to approve Susan Nielsen as the Clerk of the
068Board and Chanel Hill as the Deputy Clerk of the Board. Second. Okay. Ms. Green seconds Ms. Anderson's motion. I'm going to call for the vote. Megan Alderton, yes. Cindy Anderson? Yes. Ramey Gentry? Yes. Jacinta Green? Yes. Margaret Lorber? Yes. Veronica Nolan? Yes. Michelle Reif? Yes. Christopher Suarez? Yes. Heather Thornton? Yes. And the vote is 9-0 to approve the clerk and deputy clerk of the board. Madam Chair, could I just interject an apology to Dr. Wilkins and Dr. Mozingo? I so apologize. My head was off in a cloud and I was planning to simply, I didn't think I needed to get the names out that quickly, but I meant no disrespect. I'm very embarrassed, but I apologize. Thank you, Ms. Lorber. Okay, so we can move to the next item in the agenda. We are back
069to communications and addresses to the board, but we are looking, we need to actually affirm our code of ethics and our standards of conduct. So we will not read through these. However, we will need a motion to approve the code of ethics and standards of conduct of the board. Is that Ms. Gentry? Yes. Madam Chair, I move that the school board affirm the code of ethics and the standards of conduct. Second. All right. So Ms. Anderson seconds Ms. Gentry's motion. I will then call for the vote. Megan Alderton, yes. Cindy Anderson. Yes. Ramey Gentry. Yes. Jacinta Green. Yes. Margaret Lorber. Yes. Veronica Nolan. Yes. Michelle Reif? Yes. Christopher Suarez? Yes. And Heather Thornton? Yes. Okay, so we have affirmed our code of ethics and standards of conduct. We must also move to affirming our rules
070of order and our bylaws. So I will need a motion to do that. Madam Chair? Yes, Ms. Gentry. I move that the school board affirm the rules of order and the bylaws. Do I have a second? I think I heard Ms. Anderson first. So Ms. Anderson seconds Ms. Gentry's motion. I will call for the vote. Megan Alderton, yes. Cindy Anderson? Yes. Ramey Gentry? Yes. Jacinta Green? Yes. Margaret Lorber? Yes. Veronica Nolan? Yes. Michelle Reif? Yes. Christopher Suarez? Yes. And Heather Thornton? Yes. Excellent. The vote is 9-0. Okay. We have lots of action tonight, guys. So we actually need to... approve the consent calendar. So do I have a motion to approve the consent calendar? Madam Chair. Ms. Gentry. I move that we approve the consent calendar for this meeting. Second. Okay. Ms. Green seconds Ms.
071Gentry's motion. Is there anything to pull? Okay. If there are no items to pull, I will call for the vote. And Ms. Anderson? Yes. Ms. Nolan? Yes. Megan Alderton, yes. Ramey Gentry? Yes. Jacinta Green? Yes. Margaret Lorber? Yes. Michelle Reif? Yes. Christopher Suarez? Yes. And Heather Thornton? Yes. And the vote is 9-0 to approve the consent calendar. Okay. So we are on to, oh, I'm being asked to call five minutes for recess. Is that nobody? Okay. I'm sorry. Yes. Madam chair. Oh, okay. And I'm presenting next. I'm sorry. That's weird because you're, it was not your name that came up. So my apologies. Okay, I'm happy to call five minutes for a recess. Susan, is that okay? Do we need approval for that, Susan? We don't need to vote on that. I mean, you know,
072we don't need a motion for that, correct? No, we don't. Okay. All right. We're going to have five minutes for a recess because Dr. Hutchings is next, and we will see everybody in five minutes. Ms. Green is back. Okay. And you have everybody you need, Dr. Hutchings, back. Okay. Great. So we can move along in the agenda and we are on to new business, which is our presentation of the FY 2022 combined funds budget. And this is for information, not action. So turn it over to Dr. Hutchings. And thank you, Madam Chair, once again. Congratulations. And thank you all for giving me a little break. Nature called. I'm a human being like everybody else. Thought I could wait all day. Can't. So that's a good thing. But first, before I even begin, I just want
073to commend Ms. Johnson for her comments earlier today. It is always great to hear our young people speaking their truth. You know, I always say it's important for you to speak your truth and be an advocate. And, you know, I know you all watched or probably were glued to your televisions last night like everyone else across the world. And what happened yesterday, beyond just some of the acts, that occurred, I think it's important for us to point out just the context of everything that transpired. When you compare yesterday's events to the time when the Black Lives Matter movement was wanting to be on the Black Lives Matter Plaza in Washington, D.C., and you compare how the police and how D.C. prepped for those two, quote unquote, protests. And I think back to during the time
074with the Black Lives Matter movement and how they wanted to refer to peaceful protests as violent and riots. What we saw yesterday was violent and riots. That is what a riot looks like. And I think that what I hope that what we can start doing is talking to our, you know, to pointing out at least the truth of where we are in America. You know, I've heard many politicians talk about this is not America. Well, I believe this is America. I think America just got to see it. firsthand on our national television. But this is what America has been prior to yesterday. And I hope that we now do something about it because as Ms. Johnson mentioned, the time is now. And if we continue to condone this type of behavior and to allow for
075our country to have so much systemic racism that we constantly see and know about. there will be no hope for the future. So I hope that we can make a difference. And I'm looking forward to talking about our FY22 budget to talk about how we can do our part to try to make a difference. But I had to get that off my chest so I can focus on this budget component. So before I begin and go into the presentation, I do have some opening remarks that I just wanted to make. So just bear with me because I want to make sure that I acknowledge folks and just set the stage for the presentation today. So first and foremost, I have to say that this FY22 budget, as you all know, it is many months of
076planning and critical thinking and innovation, you know, so that we could do our best approach to tackling the challenges that we have faced over this past year. I mean, who would have thought we would still be in this situation that we're in right now, where we're remote, virtual, and assumed for our board meetings. But what we have to prepare for is how we forge ahead. And the FY22 budget is about maintaining our excellent instructional program and making sure that we have an emphasis on learning loss and recovery from this learning loss to make sure that we're still able to recruit and retain the best of the best in regards to our staff, to support our teaching and our learning, as well as our leadership within our schools, and also to reignite the confidence. for the
077love of teaching, learning, and leadership within our school division. And that is in spite of this global pandemic. And I'll call this a dual pandemic, and I'll talk a little bit about that during our presentation. But I do want to say that this budget would not have been possible without Mr. Dominic Turner and our finance team. I just want to say hats off to them for working so diligently and tirelessly over the past several months and our chiefs for being innovative with our approaches. Our chiefs had to work with all of the different departments to ensure that we were making the best decisions and being fiscally responsible. That did require us to be really creative. with our solutions because there are a lot of tough conversations that happen behind the scenes and I just commend
078our chiefs for being able to do that. I also want to thank our communications team because they have done a phenomenal job working collaboratively with our finance team and also working with me to prepare for our proposed presentation and making sure that today as we present it's not just presenting numbers but it's also telling our story. So just thank you to the communications team for preparing me and helping me to be able to articulate what I'm going to share with the board today. This budget, you know, it, and I've said this time and time again, we are in a dual pandemic. You know, we have this health crisis with coronavirus and COVID-19 that has forced us to reimagine education. And we've also had this reemergence of issues surrounding racial inequity across our country. And we
079must keep our eye. towards the future. And this budget, I really believe it accomplishes both. You know, it works to address the uncertainty that we know we're going to face July 1 when we begin our new fiscal year. And it also provides the resources and the supports that we need to continue our efforts moving forward. I also want to point out some of the lessons that we have learned because we have been through so much over this past year. I just once again, I commend Madam Chair Anderson for all of her leadership over this time and all of our board members. This has been a tough year for all of us. We closed our doors in March. None of us were prepared, meaning this school division, the school divisions across this country to pivot into
080100 percent virtual overnight. but it caused us and forced us to grow closer together. And one thing that surfaced is one of the main lessons that surrounds all of the things we've gone through is we're going to have to recover from this learning loss. There's learning loss that is happening for many of our students. There are social and emotional needs that are not being met right now on some counts for some of our students. And I do want to commend our instructional and our support team. for doing everything possible to make sure we're providing a high quality education even in this virtual plus world our teachers have been phenomenal our principals you know i think about the fact that we've had our instructional i'm sorry our facilities and our operations team and our school nutritional
081team and our bus drivers doing screening and our security officers doing screening and our custodians and our builders doing all the cleanings and things of that nature and all of our community partners we've done an all hands on deck approach and i want to thank everybody for that. But in addition to that, I know that our families are saying we're anxious to get back into our buildings. And I know that our staff, they're also saying we're anxious to get back into our buildings. And we also know that in order for us to get back into our buildings, we are going to have to keep safety. and health at the forefront. We are going to have to make sure we're being innovative with our approach and knowing that, you know, once our students had this interruption
082with this whole in-person learning, you know, once their in-person learning was interrupted, we have to understand that it is going to require us for the remainder of this year and beyond to come up with some recovery strategies. And you're going to see that presented to you all today. And I just got a couple more final things that I want to say before we get to the presentation. And that is that, you know, our budget, it is aligned with our continuous efforts, you know, to recruit our high quality staff, to remain competitive and to retain the staff that we have. We want to make sure that as we are trying to provide. our students with some continuity because we keep saying that continuity is so important and having some sense of normalcy is so important. We
083have to realize that this has been a tough year for our teachers, for our leaders, for our staff members, and we're going to need to help reignite some excitement about teaching, learning, and leadership within our schools. And we're hoping that this FY22 budget is going to afford us that opportunity. as well because we're nothing without reigniting them. And I'll just, you know, finally say that, you know, you've heard me say this time and time again, that this pandemic has not, you know, I mean, it's given us a lot of challenges, but it also has given us many opportunities as we move forward. And one thing that we cannot do is we cannot go back to how things used to be. You know, prior to March 13th, I'm just going to, you know, I wish I
084had a bell to ring right now. We put this strategic plan in place because we weren't getting it right before March 13th. So we have never had it 100% right in ACPS. We haven't had it 100% right in public education across this country. So let's use this opportunity to reimagine what we can do in our classrooms, to reimagine how we can recruit and retain, to reimagine how we can reignite. And even though this is a lean budget, You know, we understand that racial equity will continue to have to be at the heart of our work. So I'm excited to share the details with you all. I'm optimistic about the plans and I want us to just go ahead and get started so I can get off of my opening remarks and my soapbox right now.
085So let's go right into the presentation. So first and foremost, I want us to start at where our commitment and our responsibilities lie. You know, we made a decision. back in June of 2020 to say that we have adopted a new mission, vision, and core values in ACPS. And this is our opportunity over the next five years to stay true to what we've said we were going to do for our students as well as for our staff members. So everything that we're doing today evolves around the commitment and the responsibility that we have taken as school board members. as superintendent, as staff, as a community as a whole to ensure that every single one of our students are successful in whatever they choose to do. Next slide. Why we do this work, and this is
086something that is important for us to always remind our community about, this courageous and bold work is for every single one of our young people. There is a misunderstanding of the population we serve in the city of Alexandria. I'm going to say that every time I talk about our student demographics, because people make assumptions based on who we are as a city as to what our schools look like. We are probably one of the most diverse school divisions in this country. And that is the greatest asset for us as a school division, but it also brings some challenges. our responsibility to make sure that we're overcoming those obstacles because our students from over 145 countries and speaking over 132 languages are counting on us. Let's continue. No need to go and rehash all of our
087budget priorities because you all know these very well. But one thing I want to point out to or just remind the board about as well as to our community is the fact that our budget priorities are aligned with all five of our strategic planning goals. And the board spent time this fall, this past fall, to develop our budget priorities. These budget priorities. in addition to working with our different departments were used to guide our budgeting process as well as to help us to balance the budget that we are preparing for you and presenting to you today. I think it's always important for us to talk about our ACPS accreditation journey. I know this isn't everything, but it is a significant achievement for us. I mean, we have to look over the past five years, just
088in 2019 and 2020 school year was the first time 100% of our schools were accredited. That's a huge accomplishment. It took us 20 years to get to 100%. And it doesn't mean that, you know, this is our end all be all, but this. It validates the hard work that our staff and our students have been doing over the past several years. And even when we received this recognition of having 100 percent of our schools accredited, I wanted to make sure that I honored the previous superintendents and previous school boards who made decisions on behalf of young people that also impacted this significant achievement. I wish I could share every accolade that we have out there. There are many, you know, every week there's something that our staff or students are doing to make sure, I'm
089sorry, are being recognized. Our staff and students are being recognized. And I think it's important for us to make sure that we are demonstrating and also highlighting some of their. accolades. And one thing that, you know, we are very proud of is having more than 84 nationally board certified teachers and counselors within our school division. That's an investment that we made several years ago that we're staying true to and did a different awards. We've gotten from the Virginia Board of Education and from the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education, as well as the donation that we received from Amazon, you know, just recently, a few months ago. And I think that it's so important for us to highlight. what our staff and what our students do, because this really shows how the dollars
090in our FY22 budget and any budget, how they do have an impact and a positive impact on our staff and our students. So as you all know, we're battling this dual pandemic, right? And we had been, I believe, forward thinking prior to George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. We were already talking about how we needed to dismantle systemic racism and how we needed to make sure racial equity was the heart of our work. And it came to fruition when the board adopted our strategic plan. You know, now, as Ms. Johnson mentioned earlier, you know, now it's our time to show some action. And we have it in writing and we stated what we want to do and we understand that we're battling this dual pandemic. Well, now we have to start putting our money where our
091mouths are and we have to start showing some action. And we're hoping that in our FY22 budget that you will see some of the things that we value as a school division and some of the priorities that we have set are outlined and highlighted within this FY22 budget. You know, we're fiscal stewards and we try to be as responsible as possible. Love the fact that I'm able to meet with our city manager quite often every other week. That relationship is continuing to go strong. I just think it's important for us to remind not only the board, but also our community of where our revenue comes from. And 82% of our revenue comes from the city of Alexandria. That is a very important fact for you all to know. 17% from the Commonwealth of Virginia. And
092the importance of knowing this. is that when the city of Alexandria is impacted, such as now, right now we're seeing an economic downturn during this global pandemic. You know, everyone's not here taking advantage of all the historical sites and the hotels and the restaurants that we have to offer here in the city of Alexandria because of this global pandemic. And that in turn does have an impact on our revenue source. And we have to keep that in mind. And we had to keep that in mind as we're being fiscally responsible throughout developing this FY22 budget. But I just think it's important. It's telling to see that majority of our revenue is from the city. So when the city is impacted, we must know that we are impacted. And a prime example was we were celebrating
093last spring with our FY21 budget and then COVID hit and we had to revisit our budget and make some very drastic cuts. to our budget, you know, in regards to freezing compensation for our staff and putting a freeze on hiring procedures and things of that nature. And we have to realize that hopefully we won't be in that situation this spring again, but we have to understand that it is still potentially a possibility that we may have to revisit this budget in the future. And I just want to make it clear to the community. that you know when the city's impact that we are as well. So let's talk about how we recover because you know our theme today is all about recover, retain, and reignite. And if you look at this picture right here and
094you see one this is families picking up their technology devices. You see the mask and you see our staff they're working to assist families and we're going to have to recover from this global pandemic. I mean, this has had such an impact and it's taken such a toll, not only on our students and our families, but also on our staff members. And we want this FY22 budget to reflect some of the steps that we are taking and the initiatives that we're putting in place to ensure we're setting ourselves up for success as we transition back to some sense of normalcy moving forward. So I talked a little bit about our global pandemic. I wanted to point specifically out some of the challenges as well as the opportunities. I'm speaking to the choir when I talk
095about the social, emotional, academic learning challenges that COVID-19 has afforded our students as well as our staff members. And because those social, emotional, academic needs have been impacted, that also has an impact on our staffing and our building capacity. which in turn impacts transportation and school nutritional services and health services and the instructional delivery and the list goes on and on. This is why the situation is so complicated in regards to transitioning back into our school buildings and trying to have what we used to have prior to closing our school buildings. Our technology infrastructure is another component that brings some challenges for us. Our technology team they've done a phenomenal job. Thank you to Dr. Hoover and all of our IT staff who've been able to provide the devices and the internet access. But we
096still have technology infrastructure challenges that come along with broadband and everything else throughout our city. And then we have the economic downturn that I just referred to. But with these challenges, there are many opportunities that we must take advantage of and that we put into consideration while developing this budget. And that's reimagining our educational opportunities and how we deliver instruction in our classrooms and expanding our technology within our school buildings, making sure that the infrastructure is improved so it can accommodate. all the additional resources, especially technology resources that we have put into our school buildings due to this global pandemic. And then finally, being more innovative with our professional learning. I mean, there wasn't a time that I was able to speak to all of our staff members in the entire organization at once. And
097through Zoom, I now have been able to do that. That is something that... we weren't able to do before. Now we can communicate with a lot more people at one time when we're doing professional learning. And we want to use these opportunities that have come to fruition through this global pandemic beyond this global pandemic. I've talked about our reimagining component. One big area that I didn't discuss that I think is so key is our high school project as we're reimagining education. You know, just a year and a half ago, when we were talking about the educational design team, we were specifically kind of struggling with how do we expand the satellite option? How do we look at virtual courses for students? And then the global pandemic hit and everybody went virtual. So now... we have
098realized it is possible to expand virtual learning. We've now tapped into some of our students and some of our staff members who really embrace this virtual learning world and experience. And we're going to need to make sure we use that as we're reimagining what our educational programming will look like in the future. Our social, emotional, and academic learning needs, I can't stress this enough, that's why it's coming up again, but I want to focus on our special ed and our EL population as well as our Hispanic males within Alexandria City Public Schools. You know, it's going to be key for us to make sure we have the appropriate supports for our special education and our EL students. as well as our Hispanic males because these are some of our most vulnerable populations that we're going
099to need to serve. And when we come back, there are going to be additional challenges to the challenges we had prior to closing our school buildings on March 13th. And we want to be prepared to provide those additional supports so that we are giving them the best learning environment possible. This goes back to our just highlighting our most vulnerable students, you know, beyond just our Hispanic population, our free and reduced lunch and our SPED. We are going to have to make sure that we are providing the necessary resources for our families. You know, one thing that we are putting in this budget. is increasing the Amharic and the Arabic support. This is a conversation that came up last year during the budget process, and we weren't able to get it in in the FY21 budget.
100We were able to put it in the FY22 and focusing on the customer relation management specialist. One thing that we have been talking about, I know Ms. Nolan, she says it time and time again about being good customer relations and having good customer relations for our families. And she's been talking about this since I came, since I was hired. So we're now seeing it finally come to fruition. And it is in our budget. When it's in the budget, we know it really can happen now, right? It's not just lip service and a discussion, but we're working towards that. And our multilingual helpline, we incorporated this, our communications. team and our FACE team incorporated this during our virtual plus learning experience. And we've maintained it and we're going to continue to offer this beyond because it
101has been very helpful for many of our families who speak English as a second language. And we think that it's going to be important for us to continue to have that kind of connection with some of our most vulnerable families within Alexandria City Public Schools. So as we are recovering, we're going to need to make sure that we're retaining highly qualified staff. And I look at this picture. This is from our leadership institute that we used to have every summer. We didn't have it this past August, which we did have it, but it was virtual. It wasn't what we typically do. I know everybody misses being around. I miss seeing you all, honestly, in person. This is really where we want our staff to be. We want them to be coming together, to be happy,
102to collaborate, to be able to really appreciate one another. And one thing that we've done in ACPS is we have seen a paradigm shift in regards to our culture and making sure that ACPS is a family. You know, we just had, you know, we had a session today with all of our ACPS leaders and it was an R U OK? meeting. Right. And we broke out into these breakout sessions and we had a community circle about some of the events from yesterday. That's the atmosphere that we want to have for our staff. We want them to feel welcomed. We want them to know that this is a safe space for you to speak your truth or for you to lean on one another. And that is how we're going to be able to retain, you
103know, the highest quality staff members. But in addition to that, we're going to also have to have that compensation, which I want to talk about next. So everyone, I had to put the Hollywood picture on here. I couldn't put A-list actors because it would violate some of the copyright laws. So I had to just put a picture of Hollywood. And I'm putting a picture there because look at what we value in America, right? Our A-list Hollywood actors, they're making hundreds of millions of dollars. That's their average salaries, right? Almost a quarter of like our full budget, right? That's just their salary for a movie. It is so important for us to value, to appreciate, and to support our staff because honestly, they are the real superstars in this. You think of having to pivot from
104brick and mortar to virtual overnight and having to figure out how to reteach and relearn how to teach. and refine your teaching practices and relearn how to clean our buildings and relearn how to do screeners because we didn't have screening sessions and temperature checks and things of that nature. And relearn how to do breakout sessions on Zoom. I mean, the list goes on and on. You know, our real superstars are our ACPS staff. And I hope that they understand that we truly value, appreciate, and will continue. to support them, just like we've been doing, and even more as we move into the future. We can't go back to how things used to be. This is our beginning. We got to move forward. So let's talk about compensation, because we have to make this commitment to
105a competitive compensation package for our staff. And, you know, here is the average salary of a teacher, because this came out of WayB. The WayB report shares this information. We're ranked at number four right now. But beyond our teachers, we have to make sure that we have a competitive compensation for all staff. And in order to do that, each year we are dedicating our time and our funding to making sure we have an employee compensation study conducted by a third party. That is the only way that we're going to continue to provide competitive compensation, not only to just our teaching staff. but to all of our staff. So we're going to have to look at our different employee groups and come up with strategies to make sure that we are providing them with the best
106compensation that we possibly can. In the FY22 budget, you're going to see that we are asking for a step increase for all of our eligible staff members, for those who are not. eligible due to being at the top of the scale or at a hold step that they receive a 1% one-time payment so that everyone can walk away with something. We want everybody to get some kind of compensation. We've been working hard these past few months and we were not able to give this step increase last year for this FY21 budget. So it will behoove us to make sure we are committed to doing this moving forward. Our professional, not professional learning, valuing our staff. This is just an overview, a quick overview, just to give you an understanding of, you know, 86% of our
107combined funds budget is all personnel, right? Which is a large percentage. That is really showing you that we do value our staff. And this is why it was important for us to show, you know, the board or to remind the board and necessarily show the board, but to show our community that, you know, your money is what you value. And our personnel, we genuinely do value. And we're going to have to keep having these competitive salaries. We want to have the platinum health care plans that our staff are able to be a part of right now and the defined benefit retirement plans that they have as options right now. These are important factors to helping them understand that we do genuinely care and value and appreciate and support and support them. But beyond the funding,
108there are other things that we can do to make sure that we are valuing and supporting our staff. So we want to commit to professional learning and personal growth. And, you know, we have many leaders. And I say our leaders are not just principals and directors and chiefs and senior leadership team members. You know, anyone who works in ACPS is a leader. We want them all to possess vision, integrity and passion. And that, to me, demonstrates leadership. But one thing we heard from our staff was that there are a number of professional learning opportunities that are being offered to them. But the quality, they want to make sure that we have quality professional learning and not focus so much on having a plethora of options for them. So in this FY22, we're really focused on
109having quality professional learning opportunities that focus on equity and that really enhance the professional capacity of our staff. We want to continue with our Grow a Teacher program. Many of our instructional assistants, they have gone through this program. They're now teachers in ACPS. And making sure we have executive coaches for our leaders. I even have an executive coach as superintendent. I think it is important for any leader to have an executive coach that's non-evaluative, is someone that you can really have as a thought partner, and someone who you can really open up to and speak to about challenges that you might be faced with in a non-evaluative way. And this is all about... our commitment to that professional learning and that personal growth. And then finally, I want to talk about reigniting our community. You
110know, how do we reignite our students and our staff? And I look at this picture. Kids can't even take a picture like this today, right? We got to have masks. We got to have social distancing. And we have to be able to really understand that our staff and our students, they are at a place, many of them are at a place where they are hurting. They're at a place where they are second guessing, you know, is teaching what I'm supposed to do, is learning what I'm supposed to do, right, is leading what I'm supposed to do. And our responsibility is to make sure that we are reigniting that fire. We're helping them to see that we still have light at the end of the tunnel. We still are looking forward. to what we are going
111to accomplish as a school division. We still believe in our mission and our vision and our core values and believe in children. So as we talk about our reignite, I want to talk about our passion in reigniting our desire to teach, learn, and lead. One thing that I'm so proud of our board, and there's many things I'm proud of, but one of the things that most recently I'm proud of is the fact that the board has approved the renaming of T.C. Williams and Matthew Morey Elementary School. You know, it is a symbolic act. However, it is showing action. It's saying that we will not allow for our high school to be named after a segregationist and a bigot, that we will not allow for our elementary school to be named after a Confederate soldier, and
112that we're going to put the funding into that to make sure that this renaming process comes to fruition and that it actually happens. You know, the fact that we want to ensure our students who are at our high school that we are having flexible scheduling so that they can do jobs that are paid, that they can do internships, and they can do work-based learning experiences outside of our school buildings, especially with some of our Hispanic male and our Hispanic families, because many of them are dropping out of school because they're being forced to have to work outside of the school. And we want to set up, you know, a system where we're able to do that for them. you know, we have some great partnerships already. We need to expand that and have a very
113or solidify a process for them to be able to take on these employment and internship opportunities. And another major focus is the summer learning that we need to have in place for all of our students so that we are making sure we're addressing the academic loss that is happening even right now. We started last year, lessons learned from the summer learning from last year. We have to continue that moving forward and needs to really be a part of our budget moving forward. Having some form of summer learning for all students at no charge so that we can assist with some of the academic loss that is happening. And then finally, just reigniting our passion for lifelong learning. And, you know, as we do the professional learning on racial equity, we are also going to have
114to have professional learning on the learning loss recovery, because that is going to be a different way of trying to engage our students and make up for time that has been missed. And not all kids, but some, you know, that's even through the virtual world, it's just not working with some of the additional supports that we are putting out there for them. or sharing with them. And then we also want to expand our graduate program cohort. We currently have cohorts for master's programs and we have cohorts for your principal leadership certification. We are expanding this to have a doctoral program that's aligned with our ACPS strategic planning goals for leaders in ACPS. You know, it's all about how do you grow your own? How do we really generate employees? who are the epitome of lifelong
115learning. And getting a terminal degree is definitely one demonstration of that. We're going to be working with identifying a higher education institution to make this very innovative approach happen. This is not something that other school divisions are doing right now because we want to customize our doctoral program so that it is meeting. what we need in Alexandria City Public Schools, and coupling it, of course, with the mission, the vision of a higher education institution. But you're going to get some more information about this in the future, but this is a part of the FY22 plan. This is just a quick recap. You know, I'm going to conclude by saying that, you know, our whole theme is about recover. It's about retain and it's about reignite. And we have to recover, as I stated earlier, from
116this global pandemic and really this dual pandemic that we're that we're going through and making sure that we are addressing the learning loss and the social and emotional needs of our students that have to be addressed moving forward. that we are retaining and recruiting high quality educators and staff members within Alexandria City Public Schools so that we can ensure we're providing the best learning experience possible for ACPS students and that we're reigniting the desire to want to teach, learn and lead in ACPS. And this is definitely an area. that we're going to have to stay true to being that everyone's coming out of this global pandemic. Some coming out stronger and some we really going to have to meet some additional needs to get them to where they were before. So this is just a
117call to action for the board. This is the outline of all of the important dates that are coming forward. I'm going to point out the most important date next week, which is going to be our opportunity to do a deeper dive into compensation and our benefits package so that we can have discussions around that. And then we'll go through a series of an additional work session and our add-delete process and co-sponsorship. And then this will go on to the city where they will go through their process from March through late April with the goal of us adopting our approved combined funds budget as well as our CIP budget on June 3rd of 2021, which it seems so far, but it is very close. And I'm looking forward to that day and I'm hoping that we
118won't have to revisit in the future. our budget like we did last year with some of the things that we had to do with revisions because of the economic downturn. But as Madam Chair stated earlier, this is for informational purposes. I know it was a lot to share all at once to try to put this all in a nutshell. It's very difficult when you all get your budget books because there's a lot of information in there. But I do, again, want to just thank Dominic Turner, our Chief Financial Officer, Mr. Robert Easley, who was our Director of Budget and Financial Systems. for all of the supports that they have provided throughout this entire process, as well as the team who has supported me to prepare for this proposed budget. And that concludes the FY22 combined
119funds budget. Great. Thank you, Dr. Hutchings. So the binders, the documents are going to be uploaded at the end of this meeting. Binders are going to be delivered to board members in the morning. And just a reminder, we're not taking budget questions at this meeting. So I think those are the three key things to end with. And then Mr. Suarez, I see you have your hand up. comment or any more information or question? I think this question is in order because it's not specific to what's in the budget. But if it's not in order, we can punt it. Basically, my question is this. Obviously, it's been a very busy week in the national news. And obviously, you know, we learned that the United States Senate is going to change the majority. the new majority leader
120Schumer has said something to the effect of stay tuned, you know, it's just some things that are going to happen. And I think one of the implications of that is going to be that a lot more federal monies may be coming down the pipe than might have been initially projected in the giant binders I'm looking forward to receiving shortly. And so I guess the question is, are we going to sort of start looking into that and think about what what additional items we might want in our budget should a huge influx of cash come in? Because I think this is just a unique situation where there may be a huge additional pot of money that may be coming to school districts around the country potentially, depending on what happens. Yes. So we are focused mainly
121on our socially, emotional, and academic learning supports. That is definitely where we got in the additional funds, where those funds would go towards. Right now, we are still working. This is why we put a dollar amount in the FY22 budget for that, because we're still working towards the specific needs. of our students, you know, being that we are only halfway through the school year right now. We're making some inferences as to what we're going to need, but we know there most likely going to be some additional needs as we progress through the rest of this year. But that is really where a lot of our additional funding will be allocated as well as the technology component. That is probably the most expensive. buckets that we have in the FY22 budget, the technology piece and the
122social, emotional and academic learning component. But there will be opportunities as we get to the superintendent, I can make recommendations and adjustments. There is a part of our process to do that in the next couple of months. So as new information may come in, this has happened in the past before too, where we identify additional funding and then we bring it to the board with a recommendation on how those funds could potentially be used or incorporated. Thank you. Okay. Thank you, Dr. Hutchings. So. We're going to move on in the agenda. And again, look forward to your big budget binder coming tomorrow. I'm sure you'll be thrilled and excited. So we're moving on to the superintendent's update. And this was the info that we added during the adoption of the agenda. So Dr. Hutchings. Yes.
123So thank you, Madam Chair. And I wanted to provide the board with just a quick update about our transition as we're transitioning into in-person learning. And right now, our timeline is to begin transitioning students as soon as January the 19th. And one thing before I go into this presentation, I think it's important to share is that now the educators and K-12 or K-12 staff have now been placed in the 1B group for vaccinations. And that's an important fact for us because that means that we'll be the next group to be able to get the actual vaccination done. We don't have dates yet. So dates, nobody in the Commonwealth of Virginia has dates, not just an Alexandria thing, because we are still working through when vaccinations are going to arrive and things of that nature. And
124they're still focused right now on our health professionals. But as soon as we get more information about that, you all will receive. that information. What we're doing as of right now is developing our database to share with the Alexandria Health Department. So when vaccinations are available, that we have all of our staff members information from names to contact information so that they can begin to receive the appropriate um contacts when it's time to get their vaccinations and that is how they deter you know that's how people are informed about these vaccinations and we'll provide another update with you all this is all new information that really just came out today um that our team is working through, but we'll share an update with the board about that. Also, the governor, hopefully at some point in
125the future, may be sharing some new or a revised decision matrix for reopening schools at some point in the future. I don't know a tentative date for that. I just know in the near future, we're going to get some more information. So just know we'll make adjustments as new information arrives in ACPS. So can you bring up this the PowerPoint presentation because I do have a few slides I wanted to share with the board. You can go to the next slide. I wanted us to revisit the actual timeline for our phased reentry. As you can see, there are three additional columns that we've added here for you all. And I want to just go over what those three additional columns are. So you're already familiar with the phased reentry date. So that you'll see is
126the fourth column from the left. And you'll see our first group is January the 19th. And this is our K through second grade citywide special education students who are planned to return, families who have opted to be in the hybrid approach. So we're going to make sure that on January 6th that we were confirming and updating our staff availability. So reaching out to our staff members. And what we're doing with that is our staff members, they've already completed their intent to return forms back in November. What we're doing at this point is sharing with staff members the rosters for their classroom so that they can actually see how many students have selected the hybrid on their roster. And then also asking them if anything has changed in regards to their medical condition or household medical
127condition or child care issues or needs. or they may have had a birthday and now they're 65 or older over the past couple of months, or they're experiencing some type of fear or anxiety. And if they are experiencing fear and anxiety, we want to know specifically what that is so we can help mitigate that fear or anxiety. So we are asking kind of if anything has changed from the time that they've been, from the last time they completed their intent to return form so that if there are any fears or anxieties that are stated there, we can mitigate. Then we are going to be sending out. schedules are the hybrid schedule to all of our families who selected the hybrid option two weeks prior to their scheduled time to start. So for example, now, of
128course, we were not exactly two weeks before the January 19th because we had just returned on Monday. So you'll see that for the January 19th group, their schedules are going to come out on tomorrow, which is Friday, January the 8th. But We want to make sure that our families who selected the hybrid option, that they are aware that you selected the hybrid option. These are the days that you're scheduled to attend, because remember, they're either going to come on Tuesday and Wednesday or Thursday and Friday with the hybrid. So we want families to know the days that their children will attend the hybrid. And then we also want to share with them. whether the teacher status is in-person or virtual, because we think that is a key factor that many families have asked about. Is
129my teacher virtual? Is my teacher in-person? And that gives... all of those hybrid families and opportunities. So we will open the power school when those schedules go out to them. They will have power school open to them once again, because some people might opt to change their hybrid option. They may say, I no longer want to be hybrid because my teacher's not in person, or I may not want to be hybrid now because I've been looking at this new strain of. of the coronavirus is now in the United States of America, or I now don't feel comfortable with my child going back to school for whatever reason. But it does give families who had initially selected the hybrid option to make a change based on the information that they receive. And then a week before
130any transition occurs and on a weekly basis, so every Monday and starting this Monday, we're going to be providing a communication out to our community regarding our decision. And we're using our decision matrix that I'm going to share with you next, just so you can get an idea of how or the community can have an idea of how our decisions are made. a week prior to any type of transition people are then informed so we're not in a situation where a change has occurred and it's the day before you're supposed to arrive. It gives you a week's notice if there is something that might that might change so that's going to be a Monday every Monday from now moving forward that's going to be our decision day to really inform the community about where we
131stand and that's going to go out as a video each Monday. It will be in multiple languages for all of our families. But that information will go out on a weekly basis. And then you just see that same pattern for each of the transition groups. So you'll see the same pattern with the transition group for January the 26th and the same pattern for the transition group on February 2nd. So the goal is to always have a two weeks kind of notice for schedules to those hybrid families, a week's notice for the decision on whether we are proceeding with opening or not based on the decision matrix. So that is kind of the kind of protocol that we're going to be using moving forward. Go to the next slide. I want to share specifically what our
132decision matrix looks like. And you can flip through because I want to get to the major components that we're using. And one is you're familiar with us looking at the total number of new cases per 100,000. Dr. Herring, that's the information he comes to share with us each board meeting. And he shares where we stand, what level we're at in regards to community transmission. um and then also you are familiar with us having our key mitigation strategies uh in place so for example ppe social distancing face coverings all the things that we talk about uh when when we meet uh with you all i'm sharing this because all of the information uh that we've used to develop our dis our um decision matrix that i'm going to share with you uh in just a minute
133um all of the information that we've been using over the past couple of months comes from the VDH, comes from the CDC. We've just now taken it and created an actual matrix with that information to hopefully make it more user friendly for our community so that they can understand how we make our decisions about reopening and not having to have a complicated discussion or go look at multiple resources. We're trying to make it user-friendly for the community. And I'll see how user-friendly it is when I share it with you in just a minute. So let's flip through. This is just going off what I just said. I'm sorry I went ahead. You can keep going. So these are in a nutshell as to what Dr. Herring refers to at each of our meetings. Specifically, he
134is talking about our number of new infections per 100,000 population over 14 days. And then he also talks about our positivity rate, which is the number of new positive tests over seven. day average. And this is a metric that we're going to be using that we have been using, but this gives you an idea of how it works moving forward with having a moderate risk level, a higher risk level, and the highest risk level. It also, he looks at some secondary kind of criteria as well, which he always shares with us, but specifically there's a school impact that we are that we're looking at and i'm going to talk a little bit about the school impact component too in the in the next slide so our level of school impact is based on three particular
135areas or three particular levels so we've been talking about staffing and we've been talking about building capacity as being constraints for us reopening. When we look at this at levels, a normal level is having between 75 and 100% of our staffing and operations, right? We're not at that level right now, but that's a typical year that we're 75 to 100% of our staff. That means we can operate normally. Everybody can be in school all at one time. Everything works as it did prior to March 13th. We're not there yet. praying that one day we will be at that point meaning normal. Where we are today is at a strained level where we have between 50 and 75 percent of our staffing in our capacity and that does allow us to do more of an innovative
136approach whether it's hybrid or modified hybrid schedule depending on the community health metrics but a strained capacity still allows us to provide a hybrid learning experience for our students, but not a normal learning experience for our students, but a hybrid learning experience. And then critical is the third level, which we haven't gotten to this level yet, but the critical level is when we're under 50%. And that is when it makes it really difficult to be able to operate as an organization. We're not there at that point, thankfully, but getting to the critical level could have significant, a significant impact on what we are able to do in regards to reopening our schools. And, you know, the staffing and the capacity levels, not only does, you know, it have some impact on us mitigating some of
137the health and safety measures. It also impacts facilities. It impacts health services, our school nutritional services, our instructional delivery, transportation. You know, staffing will impact all of those areas, which will have an impact on how we operate. And this is why we have to put the level of school impact into consideration when we're talking about reopening our schools. So this is what the document actually looks like. And this is the decision matrix. And I'm going to walk you through how to read a matrix like this. First and foremost, I have to tell you, I mean, it's complicated to try to get all of these documents into one thing, right? We worked very closely with the Alexandria Health Department. Thank you, Dr. Herring, for all of his hard work. He's been working with our team over
138the winter break to finalize all of this, and we do appreciate that. But you'll see the two major features that we're looking at for reopening are the level of community transmission and the levels of school impact. So the levels, the level of community transmission, that is when Dr. Herring is sharing out about the per 100,000 cases and the positivity rate. And he's saying it's either green, yellow, orange, red, you know, those colors. This is where his health perspective or expertise comes into play for our decisions. And then on our end, we have the levels of our school impact. that come into play, which is normal is 100 to 75% staffing and capacity. Strained is 50 to 75% staffing and capacity. Critical is under 50% staffing and capacity. So I'm going to give you an example
139of how we would make a decision if I had to make a decision today, right? So if I'm making the decision today about whether we're going to open or not. We are right now at the highest risk level in regards to our community transmission. So as of today, we're at the highest risk level. Okay. So we know that as one metric. And there are multiple metrics that get us to the highest, you know, because he's looking at the per 100,000, he's looking at the positivity rate. And in some cases, he looks at some of the secondary indicators as well. But right now we're at the highest risk level. We are also at a strained level in regards to our school impact, because we know we're at a between 50 and 75% staffing and building capacity.
140So if we're at a strained level, and at the highest risk level, our decision is going to be where? Anybody? If we're at the highest risk level and the strain level, we're good. 100% virtual. 100% virtual. You just made my decision, Ms. Nolan. You just made the decision for Dr. Hutchings. We're at 100%. I'm sorry, we're at a strain level, meaning we have 50 to 75% staffing and capacity, and we're still at a strain level. We've been at a strain level since we've done our data. So I don't know if that's going to change in the future or not, but we've been consistent with the strain level. But the highest risk level. We're at 100% virtual if I had to make a decision today. I'm going to be doing this activity every Monday. every Monday
141to let our community know where we are based on our community transmission and our school impact. So then people can understand our decision-making. We also have links to the Virginia Department of Health people who want to dig deeper. So you can see what specifically falls under, you know, the community transmission and how they come up with the highest risk. We have links to that. These are documents that we've already shared with the community, but we will have links to them because they've been available since July and they got revised in October. So we've been using this over the past several months with our decision making. And now we also have a better idea about our school impact since we've done the survey. So I want to share another quick data point with the board. And
142this is about the family choice forms because these went out right. They ended the day that our winter break started and we wanted to make sure that we shared with the board. This is going to be shared out with the community tomorrow. Tomorrow we're doing a special ACPS Express. We waited to do it on Friday versus Wednesday this week so we can include all this information and we wanted to make sure we were sharing it with the board first. But you'll see that overall 40%, or a little over 40% of our families have selected the hybrid. And that's overall, meaning the entire school division. So 40.5% of our families have selected a hybrid option. 59.5% have selected the virtual option. Now, I do want to point out that, you know, we had a great turnout
143with completing our surveys, you know, 83%. That's... unbelievable to have 83% of our families go into power school and complete these intent to return forms. Thank you to all of our schools, our face team for reaching out to our families. But we still have 17% that we couldn't get a hold of and couldn't get, you know, answers for. And that 17% of those families, it automatically went to. a virtual option. So that was a default to virtual. So the 17% that we couldn't get a hold of, wouldn't return calls, wouldn't, you know, respond via email and that type of thing, then they were defaulted to our virtual. So I want to make that very clear in regards to our overall virtual component. But then we also broke it down by race, which you can see
144here. I'm sorry. As you can see, some of the differences seen across all of our race and ethnicity. And it's a wide range, you know, from 53% of our white families opted for hybrid to 27% of our black families that opted for the hybrid. approach. But this just gives just a general idea to the board as well as to our community when we disaggregate it by race and ethnicity of where we stand as a school division. And you'll also see some of our special programming levels from talented and gifted to English learners to students with disabilities who opted for the hybrid. So you'll see that that's also another range. for us. There's really no difference. It's not a significant difference as much as with the race and ethnicity, but it just gives you an idea
145of the range that you'll see with those special program groups. Next slide. This is a breakdown of each one of our schools. And you will receive a report that has all of these details tomorrow. And it's going to be as a board brief tomorrow for you all. But you'll see that these are the percentages of families that chose hybrid by school. And then you'll also see the percentage of families that chose hybrid by grade level. And it's not surprising to see that majority of our lower grades. You're going to see more families who would like or prefer the hybrid at the lower grades. I mean, research is saying that across the country. It seems like that's been the trend. So there's nothing special with that. But it's good data for us to have as we
146are making our decisions. But it is interesting with the wide range of our hybrid selections at our schools. And there are a number of inferences that we have come up with on what has contributed to these numbers. But it's a wide range. I mean, from 68% at George Mason wanting the hybrid to 26% at Patrick Henry that wants the hybrid approach. And then everything in between. So it is, you know, a very wide range about this hybrid selection. And that also... brings to us just some implications as we couple this with our staffing intent to return forms. You know, we're doing that at every school as we're developing those schedules now, just so that we can work through how these schedules will work within our schools, which... We're going to keep working through our principles
147are doing a great job of working through our note. I've been stressed. So thank you, principals. I know how much we have put on your plate with these schedules. But as I told you before, the light at the end of the tunnel is coming really soon. I don't know how soon, but it's coming one day. It's coming one day. But thank you all for your hard work. We can go to the next slide. So I think that that was it for for this. component of the update. As I mentioned before, I wanted to be able to give you all some context because you will receive this in document form, but it is important for you all to have an opportunity to hear a kind of analysis around this. And Madam Chair, I don't know if
148you want to open the floor for questions. We're open for them. Yes. So thank you, Dr. Hutchings. And right now I do have a question for Ms. Thornton. Thank you, Madam Chair. And thank you, Dr. Hutchings. That was definitely a lot of information that you try to make concise and understandable for the community. So I do appreciate that effort. Regarding the decision matrix. So I definitely understand the two kind of main criteria being the level of community transmission and the levels of school impact. But one thought and one question that I know a lot of people have had regarding the community transmission deals a lot with the fact of recent reports stating that, you know, schools are not high areas of transmission. And so I know some people may have that question when looking at
149this on the decision matrix, like why are we using the community transmission levels and not information pertaining to specific school transmission levels? So I was wondering if you can speak to that. And then secondly. How will it, so regarding the level of school impact, there's a number of factors in that particular area. And so will those Monday reports indicate which factor is affecting the level of school impact? So will it indicate that this week it's transportation or our staffing levels have gone down? Will it get to that level of specificity or will it just be a general? high or strained or I forget what those three areas are. But can you discuss a little bit more about how much information the community will have for that? Yes. And I know Dr. Crawford is on this
150call for your first or the Zoom for your first question in regards to the community spread. I know Dr. Heron, he's not joining us tonight, but typically what he would share, because he shared this with us in our weekly meetings, is that You have to be careful with some of the information that people send us about, you know, how the community spread is analyzed. Because right now, with a lot of the research that's out there, because many schools are not open, there's not a lot of research about what a community spread looks like in a school. Now, we talk about our private schools that are open, but we have to keep in mind our private schools are smaller. They're not multi-buildings. It's just a number of factors, you know, when you compare it to a
151school division. And one thing that he told us to be just careful about is some of the data that we receive. And one thing that is a fact is that students and young people, they can be a carrier of COVID-19. And a lot of people keep saying that they're not, and they can be. and they may not have the same symptoms. that someone who might have a compromised immune system or someone who's older may have, but they can carry and transmit COVID-19. Dr. Crawford, would you like to elaborate any on that? Is she on the call? I am on the call. Thank you, Dr. Hutchings, and thank you for the question. You actually just made most of the comments that I was going to say through our conversations with Dr. Herring. why we look at
152the percent of community spread and the school board is very familiar with the total number of new cases per 100,000, as well as the second indicator that Dr. Hutchings referenced earlier about the percentage of the PCR tests. The importance of that, knowing that that's one of those two of the three that the CDC and the Virginia Department of Health put out for us. We the balance with that is exactly what Dr. Hutchings just said. We're using that as our community because right now. We do not have the data for in-person instruction since our children are not back at this time. So you said everything that I was going to say and, you know, be happy to follow up with Dr. Herring later after the meeting. Thank you. And for your second part of the question
153in regards to the decisions on Monday, when we release our decisions on Monday, we will talk to either the level of school impacts. So, for example, it would be that we're at 50 to 75 percent. So that means we may be strained. And then we will also talk to the per 100,000 population number as well as the. the positivity rate for the community spread or community transmission. So those are the key factors that we would be sharing as we make our decisions each week. One thing that we are going to need to talk about in the future is that when we begin to transition our students back in, we might be in situations where some schools might be at a different level in regards to the level of school impact than others. And we may
154have to make decisions. for one school that we may not have to make for another school. It's going to be very difficult for us to have a blanket, you know, kind of statement or matrix. We have to do that to open schools in general, but then we start getting into individual schools after a period of time, especially when we begin to see, if we begin to see numbers rise in certain schools and they may not rise in others. we're going to have to treat schools differently and we just need to be upfront you know about that we can't have like one kind of one-size-fits-all approach uh to this uh we do have a one-size-fits-all we're talking about the school division as a whole to operate as a whole um but once we start getting into
155individual schools we might see some changes with uh what our strategy or mitigations might be at one building versus another dr reeve Great. Thank you, Dr. Hutchings, for that update, for everything, for the budget update, and then this update. I know it's, for anybody who's listening in, we always do our budget rollout on the first January meeting, so that's always a very important and big presentation, but I'm really glad we were able to get this update on the re-entry planning, and I think, you know, I just want to thank you for sharing out this matrix. I think it's going to be... really helpful. I think it's probably going to raise questions as well and I do look forward to continuing to have more discussions about it. I have a couple questions. I'll just try to
156mention them quickly. The first is just how the kind of like the next steps for sharing this out is they're going to be can we expect an express or something going out tomorrow. I know there was going to be an update, an updated plan submitted to the BDOE. And then we have a work session next Thursday, which is focused on the budget. But I had seen in the agenda setting meeting that we might also be getting an update then as well. So I just want to, for anybody listening in, I want to see if we can let them know. when they can expect to receive more information. And then my other questions were with the citywide program, I wanted to understand if the hybrid model was going to be, you know, when we were doing
157the Jefferson Houston program, it was four half days a week. And so I was wanting to understand if we had made a decision now to go to just the two full days for the citywide students at their schools. And then another question I had. is about the staffing capacity. You mentioned how it might vary from school to school. And I was just kind of wondering how the hiring of sort of like the classroom adult supervisors was going to be kind of tied in with that. So that's a lot of questions. So the communication to the community about this information, the citywide program, and then the adult supervisors. So for the first question, with the communication piece. So tomorrow we are doing a special edition of our ACPS Express, and it's going to have the decision
158matrix included. There's a video that I did today that explains the matrix to our families. And then there's also a version that's for our staff members as well. And then there's information in the ACPS. ACPS express tomorrow that will go out about the results from the family choice forms as well. So all of that is going to be released tomorrow to our community. We also are going to have an update next Thursday. So yes, it is an item on the agenda for next week. So we will have. an update next week. And then Ms. Werner, I know you're on the call. You may want to talk to our two full days. I know, I think they're coming back two full days, but I wanted Ms. Werner to explain. Yes, Dr. Hutchings, that's correct. Dr. Reif,
159they are coming back two full days a week because that was the way that we could ascertain It was the best way we could ascertain that teachers could keep their own students and keep their case rosters. That was critically important. And we had gone through too many shifts and case management shifts trying to work with students on the first round. And we felt it was critically important that teachers and students maintain that relationship. So in order for that to happen, they're coming back two days a week and they will be on the AABB schedule too. Then the final question about the adult supervisors. So that is something that we're working through right now as well. We do have a list of some of the... the numbers that we're going to need based on the intent
160to return forms that we did back in November. And what we are working through is how can we mitigate some of that with internal, internally. And then also we are in the process right now of how can we hire some of our kind of monitors that could be in the classrooms with. for teachers who are unable to be in the class or in person so that we can make sure we have the appropriate supervision. We're still finalizing that. I'll probably have more, I will have more information to share with you all next week. We're trying to really finalize everything. I know tomorrow's our final meeting this week, so then we can start executing this process. But I'll have more information to share next Thursday with that update. That'll be part of the update next week.
161Thank you. Mr. Suarez. Sorry for the delay there. Yeah. Could you put up the matrix? I just had a question on that and it'd be easy if it's up in front. And while we put that up, I did want to also say thank you, Dr. Hutchings. I thought the presentation was really thorough and it was really helpful to kind of give us a sense of the direction we're going. And I really appreciate the transparency that we're doing our best to provide the community. So my question basically is sort of on the matrix and how we're going to make the decisions here going forward. So one question relates to sort of, you know, I appreciate you kind of mentioning nuance before, you know, that there might be some schools where the capacity is strained and other
162schools, maybe it's not as strained and things like that. So that's one thing I really appreciate that you commented on. And I'd like to just understand sort of what are we going to do sort of in the close cases and then how are we going to have a communication between the board and the superintendent on those close cases? And the reason I ask is because, you know, especially once we start transitioning to more in-person school, you know, obviously with these sorts of matrices, you've got to have to draw a line somewhere, you know, and you've got. 75%, 50%. And we've a theme of a lot of our conversation has been to that families don't like disruption, right? We don't want to have this, like we're in school one week and we're pulling back the next,
163and then we're going to school next week and we're pulling back the next. And so I guess my thought, my question is if these numbers kind of bounce around and let's say, you know, we're in the normal level of school impact and the higher risk level of community transition, or actually a better example would be we're in a strained level of school impact in the higher risk situation with regard to community transmission. And we're sort of right on that border between. modified hybrid and 100% virtual, and we have already sort of started the transition to modified hybrid and going toward hybrid. In those close cases, is there going to be some discretion, I guess, you know, that takes into account, like, if it's 1% over the line, are we just going to categorically say, go
164virtual? Or are we going to take into account kind of the trajectory of, you know, how things are going, you know, the data in the buildings, all those kind of things. Because I could see like the numbers kind of bouncing around in funny ways. And I just want to kind of understand how we're thinking about that. Because there's, like you said, there's a lot of nuance to this. So, so one, thank you for the, thank you for the question. I think that one thing that we are going to have to kind of put into consideration is a lot of the flexible, because that's really flexible, right? We don't want to be okay, it's at 74%, you know, or 76%. You know, like we want to make sure that we are looking at multiple factors. I
165mean, now we're looking at all of these areas, right? And that's why it's so broad. Facilities, health services, you know, these are key functions that we're going to need in order to operate. If those are significantly impacted, that would prevent us from being able to function, you know, to function properly, but we don't want to focus too much on if it's a 1% difference now, everything just closes, you know, because we will have to look at other factors, like you just said. Can we still function in this space? Are we still able to have the right busing, you know, for the kids, even though it's 1% less than it was yesterday? You know, these are the types of questions that we are. going to have to ask and work through. And I also think that
166every school will be, as we move through this process, we are going to be in some situations where some schools might be impacted in a very different way than another school. And we can't do, we can't make decisions identical. You know, like we have to look at that. scenario, that school, that population, that staff, you know, that building, instead of making general, like we have been doing, you know, thus far, everything has been kind of general. So I don't know if that really answers your question. But I do want to get to the first part of your question as well, because you were saying, you were talking about the modified hybrid, like if you had a modified hybrid, can you clarify what you're saying, Mr. Suarez? Yeah, well, I guess my question was sort of,
167the initial question was sort of. How are we going to receive, as a board, receive communications about the recommendations? You had said that you're going to, every week, maybe perform some sort of analysis. I assume that's going to incorporate both the changes in the health data from week to week, but also changes in the staffing, because now we have the vaccine, and maybe more staff are going to start getting that, and they're going to start feeling more comfortable. So the capacity piece is going to be going to... be changing dynamically as well. So I'm just kind of wondering, what do you envision the procedure being in terms of each week you do that assessment? Is there going to be some communication with the board and you consult the board on that sort of recommendation, you
168know, on a board meeting, the board meeting basis? I just kind of want to understand mechanically how you're envisioning the iteration and the sort of decision-making process. So I envision us on Mondays providing the communication out to the community and also sharing that information with the board. I still believe we need to continue to have our updates that we had scheduled for all of our meetings. So every meeting, there will still be a formal update like we're doing now. Unless the board wants to meet every Monday, the information is going to come to the board. via email with some analysis attached to why or how we got to that decision, the same way we're going to be sharing out with the community. The goal is that we're trying to be as transparent as possible in
169regards to how we came to that decision, not just we're 100% virtual, you know, like we want to explain why and how we came to that conclusion. in our explanations each week. And as you talk about the vaccine, which I'm excited that we actually now can talk about a vaccine that we have, hopefully over time, we're gonna see us go from a strain kind of level of school impact to normal. The more I'm signing up and be the first one, I keep saying, I wanna be the first educator in Alexandria to get that vaccine. I know there are two rounds of it too. So it's not just the one time we don't have the... The vaccine is a one-time vaccine, I believe, that Dr. Herring was selling us. So there are two kind of rounds.
170But over time, we're hoping to see us go from that strain to normal. the more our staff are being vaccinated. And then once our students and things and our families begin to get vaccinated, we can get to a more kind of normal range, even at the student level, because the barrier that we have right now from having a normal day in school is the social distancing. That is what's preventing us from having every student building at one time. It's not that we can accommodate every student building at one time, it's that. we don't uh we can't abide by the the CDC guidelines and you know one point that I really do want to make I was on a call this week with the Virginia Department of Education um and our superintendent of the VDOE and
171he explicitly stated that the VDOV is recommending that schools use the six feet social distancing. They put the clause in there for that three feet for people who wanted to have, you know, some type of, they needed, they just couldn't make it because some rural schools and things, they just, they can't do it six feet apart. And they wanted to give, you know, I guess them some grace for that, but that's not what they're recommending. And he made it very clear, very, very clear. I'm glad that he did. I hope he does it publicly as well so that we're in a situation where we've been following that all along. Even when the VDOE, whenever they release a decision matrix, I'm hoping it looks similar to what we have because we're using their resources to even
172develop this. We're not trying to create our own thing. We're not asking Dr. Heron, hey, give us something special here in Alexandria, which I do believe many school divisions across the Commonwealth of Virginia are doing that are not aligned with the Virginia Department of Health. But I just wanted to point that out because I know it was a comment earlier today around why are we even following the six foot distancing? And I'm glad that we are because it is recommended not only by the Virginia Department of Education, but also by the CDC in the six foot distancing. Okay, Ms. Nolan. Thank you, Madam Chair. Dr. Hutchings, I really appreciate how thoughtful everything's been listed out into what the tiers are and what's going into the decision-making process. One thought I'm having, though, as I'm looking
173through the information is that, does staff, when they're mapping out particularly the timeline, do you have inside your minds, like, what is the probability of this taking place? Are we 100% certain this is going to go according to plan with the dates and the number of people? I mean, are we sort of like... yeah, you know, if the cases are the same as now, like this is going to get scrubbed. I'm just trying to understand like the likelihood, because I know there's so many families that are on pins and needles, like really banking on their students able to return. And so I just want to make sure that we're, you know, as always being overly transparent with folks and just like what I'm just concerned as to like, what is the probability of all this
174in terms of timeline and the number of percentage of students that have requested to go hybrid in person? What is the likelihood we'll be able to serve them? So right now, and I'm glad you asked that question, Ms. Nolan, right now, as we're looking at the data, so for example, today, right, the data today on January the 7th, our community transmission level is at the highest level possible. and we're at a strain level. So we're going to be at 100% virtual between now and probably tomorrow. I don't know how much that's going to change by Monday. I really don't. I mean, I can make a prediction that it probably won't change that much because what I'm hearing from our health experts is that we are going to continue to see a rise in the... per
175100,000 cases, as well as in the positivity rate. And you'll see even in school divisions around us, this is why you're seeing, and even now states are closing down again, and they're having discussions around how do they get this back under control because it's starting to get out of hand, once again, in regards to our numbers. And then now we just last week started hearing about this new strain. which I think is another concern that health professionals are talking about. So if I had to make a decision today, it would be 100% virtual. And I'm just not sure that things are going to drastically change between today and Monday. which means that on Monday, we will, unless something miraculous happens in the next three days, we most likely will still be at a 100% virtual
176decision based on our numbers. But that's just what the inferences that, you know, Dr. Herring is making just based on trend data, you know. Reality, sometimes it changes. It's not exactly what they have, you know, inferred or predicted. But right now, it looks like things are probably going to be worse than they are today on Monday. So if I may ask a follow up, then it's aligned with us. So what do we do about that as a school division in terms of a communications perspective in that? How do we make sure that we are, you know, sharing the plan that's at hand that we think is realistic, but on the same time balancing the realities of. you know, the health pandemic about this timeline. I'm just concerned that like people aren't going to grasp, they're
177going to see the date, January 11th, January 19th, February 4th, whatever the dates are. I apologize. I don't have them memorized, but like, what do we do about that balance of, you know, being transparent and not getting people's hopes up, but also moving ahead with a plan if possible. I think right now, honestly, I think that when I when I was being extremely transparent and telling that numbers and things were going to go up, I was criticized for trying to scare people into we're doomed. I'm making excuses. I think we keep doing what we've been doing. That's why we're getting a lot of, that's why everyone's saying we don't have a plan or everyone's saying, I really don't want the schools to open because I'm sharing that the numbers are gonna go up and they're
178gonna be higher than when we closed in Thanksgiving and they're higher than when we closed today. But we just have to keep, I think we're going to have to just keep sharing that same messaging with the community and also sharing the fact that we are prepared to pivot whenever we need to. That is what our responsibility is, is to be prepared when it's time for us to pivot and to welcome students into our school buildings, that we are ready to do that. that we have our staffing in place. And that's why we're getting our staffing in place from making sure we're going to hire these adult supervisors for our classrooms to having the PPE in our buildings, doing walkthroughs on Monday and Tuesday in all of our schools to make sure the classrooms are prepared
179and ready to go. So we want to be ready when it is time so that when the green light comes, we're on. But I think to your question, Ms. Nolan, we just need to keep. sharing that this is based on community health metrics, staffing and capacity. And we've been saying that since the fall. People don't want to hear it, but we have been saying we want to open, but it's based on staffing capacity, community health metrics. And that still is the same message that we have to move forward. So just to clarify then, like, do we have a high level of confidence that the timeline we've laid out this tonight's meeting is we're going to be able to proceed for it? Like, do we have like, I don't even know, like how we measure this
180like percentage or probability of confidence on that. I think it's difficult to say what three weeks from now is going to look like. I'm just saying from to what Monday's going to what Monday's decision is going to look like. But it's hard for me to say what three weeks now I think it's still going to be bad. I don't have any insight to that. And Dr. Herring hasn't told me it's going to be really bad three weeks from now. But what we've talked about is between now and Monday, realistically, when we're having our discussions, we're typically looking a week ahead. It's hard to make an inference of three weeks ahead, even with their numbers. you know, with the positivity rates as well, we're looking at it by seven days versus 14 days so that on
181a weekly basis, we're able to provide, you know, some real clear insight versus a guess. Whereas if I start talking about three weeks from now, that really is a guess. And I don't want us to start guessing. I would rather us be able to give some concrete data that supports why a week from now, we think something is not possible. But it's hard to say three weeks from now. Thank you. Ms. Green. Thank you, Chair Alderton. Dr. Hutchings, well, Chair Alderton, if you don't mind, I have two questions, if I could go forward with both of them. Thank you. All right, Dr. Hutchings, can you tell me if we're still working on it? And thank you so much for this presentation. Easy to follow, very thorough. But I wanted to know, are we still going
182to be breaking down this information further so that those communities out there that aren't following school board meetings? that aren't pulling presentations, that aren't looking at their email. I mean, how are we reaching them? Can we do something one-sheeter style? I know the communities I work with in Alexandria, I actually type up stuff myself and give it to them when I see them. And that is how they get their information. So I was wondering, I mean, what can we do? People don't know. what's going on out there. A good segment of our population doesn't know what's going on and how do we reach them. And even for, you know, people that are following along closely, something one cheater style would definitely help, particularly if we're going to be assessing this week by week. Yes, that's
183why we really want to do the video on Mondays. and have it interpreted because that's something easy we send out by text and email. You know, we're able to send out those video links quickly to everybody. And we did have a really good following when I was doing the updates early on into this whole global pandemic when I did those sessions every week and those videos out to the community. So when people begin, our job is to make sure that everybody understands that on Monday, these are the days that we're going to be informing you and that you don't have to go watch a three-hour board meeting to find out what's happening. I'll be able to give this information more so in a bite. And people can go to our website and look more specifically
184at all the data if they want the big meal, if they choose to do that. But the videos on Mondays are intentional because that is really what gets, especially our families that are hard to reach, the videos are easy. easier for them to having a lot of language that you have to read through because I'm then just speaking about how we've gotten to that decision. So that's going to happen on a weekly basis moving forward, which didn't happen, you know, in the past. I think that's going to help. Okay. Thank you. And then my second question is about athletics. As you know, our student athletes are really, really itching to get back into practicing. And I believe tryouts are coming up in February for this next go round of. athletics and also Arlington and Fairfax
185are playing right now. So with this week by week decision, where does that put our athletic teams? So one thing that the Department of Education has been talking about is making sure education first and wanting us to make sure that, and this is what he's been encouraging and talking, the state superintendent has been sharing with all superintendents is that he is finding some difficulty seeing that people are having athletics, but students are not in the schools. And he really wants to make sure that you first focus on your planning to get the educational system intact and working. And then you begin to. you know, trickle down into the extracurriculars and the athletics components. So what we hope to see is as we're transitioning students into our buildings, that we are transitioning into, you know, all
186of our other activities such as athletics and our clubs and our extracurricular activities that do happen after school. So we're going to be working with the athletic department around what that plan looks like. But we had to first get this educational transition. submit it first, but we'll have some updates for the board once we get this educational component finalized, which will be next Monday, we have to submit our plan to the state. So we'll have that kind of under wraps and we can start working on the extracurriculars and athletics. Thank you. Ms. Lorber. Thank you, Madam Chair. Yeah, I didn't realize that was next. I thought Dr. Rube was next. It's okay. I just wanted to follow up a little bit on Ms. Nolan's questions because I kind of felt like the direction she was
187moving. But I think we have to acknowledge there are members of the community who simply don't buy. They're reading research that says schools are not transmitting agencies. They are definitely in another frame of mind. I've been totally committed to the path we've taken. And. granted, it feels it's very difficult to say for sure what's going to happen. And I agree. I think Dr. Hutchings was right when he said he gets in trouble when he says he seems to be predicting doom. But I think the fact of the matter is we have to live with this incredible uncertainty. You know, do you want your child to be alive or to be educated? And I think at this point in our lives, you know, you have to speak out and take a position and I don't fault
188those in the community who have spoken out and said. that all of the CDC stuff and health department stuff is bunk, that they don't agree with the approach we're taking. But I think a careful, gradual approach that we've been taking is the safe approach. And no, of course we can. On the one hand, in all seriousness, we're trying to present a gradual re-entry to the school system. On the other hand, yeah, it could look like we're just making up a bunch of dates because we know, they think, that... COVID is never going to go away. Well, the fact is with vaccination, with all the steps that are happening, some of these dates will become a reality. And I think what was comforting to me is, and I think what Dr. Hutchings' response was, we are
189getting ready. We could now, if the rate went down, if they declared that tomorrow... next week the rate is very low. We can put kids back in school. We're ready to do that. Classrooms are ready. All of the PPE is in place, et cetera, et cetera. But I think we're fooling ourselves if we think we're going to give an answer that's going to satisfy everyone in the community, because many people in the community, not many, but some, do not accept the premises that you have to take many steps in order to prevent the spread of this pretty serious pandemic. Thank you. All right, so we're back to Dr. Reif. Yeah, I just wanted to follow up on Ms. Nolan's question about, you know, communicating with the community. I had raised this idea before, Dr. Hutchings,
190and just wanted to ask you about it. you know, the timeline is based on the priority group. So, you know, one thing we consider, we could consider is having the priority groups, you know, identified and then letting, you know, every Monday, letting people know, are we on target to start in the next, you know, the following week? Something like that, I think might be more helpful because every time we lay out these dates and we don't meet them. I think it is very, you know, very frustrating and discouraging and people kind of plan around the dates and they might not, you know. be following the full discussion again. And so if we could talk about the priority order that we're going to reenter, and then every Monday we're sharing out the metrics. I know when
191I asked this before, you said, well, we have to plan for the dates and everything. But if everyone kind of understands the timeline, then that might be a way to deal with this challenge. I know Ms. Burgos, she's joining us right now. And that was one of the reasons why in the first slide that we added those other three columns to the entry plan so that you can, so families can know when the communication is coming. We wanted to make sure that, you know, because it's kind of like if we share right now all of this information for February and we get off by a week, right? It shifts things. We're trying to get things so we can be as close as possible to the date you're supposed to transition. So you feel like you're
192informed and that you also understand what to anticipate moving forward. That's why the Mondays we're being consistent on. So it's always on Monday and it makes it consistent. Two weeks before you transition. So if I know I'm transitioning on January 26th, I know January 11th, I'm going to hear something. I'm going to get my schedule, you know, so that people can anticipate when to receive. uh this information so that it can help them feel uh like at least they know when they're supposed to be informed they don't have to keep asking when do you want to hear from this or what are we going to learn something you know we're laying it out uh but miss pergos i don't know if you want to add anything to to the communications comments Sure, thanks. And I
193think that, you know, this is actually something that we've discussed at great length in terms of, you know, to many of the sentiments that you've shared tonight, we don't want to over promise. and under deliver. But at the same time, we want to make sure that the community understands that we haven't stopped working, you know, like even over the break, lots of preparation and plans have been put into place to prepare, you know, just like Ms. Wilbur said, like if we, if, you know, all went away tomorrow, which we would love that we could open the school, you know? And so I think that that's the thing that we're trying to convey, but at the same time, knowing that week by week that we are getting. you know, lots of different information that makes things,
194you know, complicated. And so, so that's why we came up with the plan that Dr. Hutchings shared that every week we will share where we are. And so that that way people can expect that and know exactly when that information is coming out. And that he, in fact, you know, that was one of the, as Ms. Green asked earlier, when we looked at the matrix and And Dr. Hutchings shared this earlier this week with our principals. We looked at it and said, wow, this is really complicated. And people are not going to be able to read this and go, oh, this makes a lot of sense. And so which is why Dr. Hutchings put a video together so that he could talk through it and hear the same information that was being shared. So we've
195been thinking a lot about how do we convey this information so that people can digest it. Of course, when we put out Express, it'll be translated. So it'll be in other languages. The video will also be translated in other languages. And we'll be doing that on a week by week basis. In addition, we wanted to let the community know and express tomorrow, this will be outlined as well, that just like Dr. Hutchings shared, that if your cohort is starting, then two weeks prior to that, you will know. you will know that to be prepared so you can make your arrangements and so on and so forth. And if for some reason we can't open, you'll know that as well. And so I think we've kind of laid out that whole plan with our team in
196terms of how we're going to communicate that information so that people are getting that on a more timely basis. And knowing that, you know, it's not always going to be what everybody wants to hear, but we're still going to give the information. on a Monday and people know that it's coming out so they can look forward to it and that they will hear directly from Dr. Hutchings. He will explain anything new that's going on, anything that has to be conveyed. And so, so it's, you know, I know it's a lot of information. I think that's one of the things, you know, Helen and I have been really struggling this week because we've, since we were closed for two days, we have a lot of stuff to put in Express Insider tomorrow, but at the same
197time, you know, so we kind of get worried about putting too much because people say it's too much, but. At the same time, we don't want people to feel that they don't have enough information. So, you know, so I don't know if that answers your question, but it's like we have definitely thought about how do we make sure that people are getting information, that we're not misleading, that we are making sure that people feel that they're informed. But at the same time, people know that we don't have all the answers. We definitely have to look at it week by week. Everything changes, especially when we know that we just went through a holiday. all the health experts are telling us that things could change. So we're sort of prepared for that. But knowing that we
198were ready to open, we've done the prep work if we have to do that. So I hope that helps to answer. Thank you. And I'm just going to throw myself in here last because one of the things that was helpful for me was how Things were framed a little bit in the Monday meeting with the division team. And so I'm wondering if like maybe a super concrete example would help sort of clarify. So I'm going to say, you know, I'm looking at the chart and my cohort is slated to return on the 19th. Two weeks prior to that, I would have. I would be receiving a schedule for my student. Then that following Monday, I'm going to get an update as to whether we'll be able to actually open a week later. Is that the
199sort of process? Yes. And what we said in the... We said those actual words in the video for the family. So it says that the date that your child is scheduled to transition, and this is for the hybrid families, right? That two weeks prior, you're going to receive a schedule and that schedule is going to include the days your child will attend for hybrid learning, either Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday, Friday. And that schedule will also include the status of the teacher, because that has been a question many families have been asking. Is the teacher coming back? And it really puts some of our teachers in an awkward situation. The staff is calling saying, I mean, parents are calling and saying, are you coming back or not? Why aren't you coming back? You know, because then
200you're getting too detailed. Like if a teacher's out sick, you can't ask them why they're sick or what their sickness is, you know. So, but. So the message that comes out of the video is that also with the schedule, you're going to see the status of the teacher. And then it explains that if you choose to make a hybrid change. based on the teacher status or based on the new strain of the COVID-19 or based on the community metrics right now or whatever other reason that you'll have that opportunity to do that because we do need to know that kind of information because everything from our hybrid numbers is setting up all of the schools to operate the way we need them to. That's everything that we have set up right now is based on
201our intent to return form from our staff and our family choice forms. But it does explicitly state that way, or I explicitly stated that way on the video. Okay, thank you. If I can just add something. It's interesting that you asked that question, Ms. Aldrich, Chair Aldrich, because this is something that we've gone back and forth with. We've said, you know, should we send out schedules to everybody? You know, here's what. you know, if you're coming back in six weeks, here's what it looks like. But we also grappled with, you know, if we send something out and then we have to pivot that we might upset the apple cart. You know, it's like, well, you just told me that we're not opening, but you sent me a schedule, you know? So it's like, so we
202wanted to chunk it as we open and bring in the different cohorts so that. you know, the information you receive today is very relevant to a closer time. And so, so we've kind of gone back and forth with that because we don't want to send that, you know, we want to have hope, but, you know, but also not cause so much confusion. Like, you know, I'm coming back in six weeks, you gave me the schedule, but now you're telling me that everything's changed. And so, so that's why we've opted to do this sort of like modified cohort. and bits and pieces so that that way people get it in a much more timely way and they're not getting it so far out when things could change so drastically in four weeks, three weeks. Okay. Thank
203you. So I definitely think we could wrap this portion of the meeting up. Ms. Lorber, your hand is up. Is that just up from last time? Okay. Sorry. It's okay. So, and again, everybody remember if you have questions after this, definitely send them along and we'll get you some answers. So at this time, we're moving on to the. Chair's report. I do not have a report, but I will just give some updates for what is coming. So everybody's aware and up to speed. So we have our retreat on January 12th at 6 p.m. Look forward to seeing everybody there for that. The FY 2022 combined funds budget work session is going to happen on January 14th. And that will start at 5 p.m. So enjoy your budget binders and bring your questions along. And we
204will have a public hearing on the FY 2022 combined funds budget on January 21st at four o'clock. So for the public sign up for the public hearing is linked on the school board meeting page and the deadline to sign up for that is noon on January 20th. So with that said, I will speak no more and I will move on to Dr. Hutchings to see if he has anything else that he wants to report, if he just wants to talk some more because he's talked a lot tonight. And I'm out of water. All right. Do we have any announcements from board members? Okay, well, if there are no announcements, we need a motion to adjourn, folks. Madam Chair, I move that we adjourn. All right. So Ms. Green seconds Ms. Gentry's motion to adjourn the
205meeting. And I will call for a vote. Megan Alderton, yes. Cindy Anderson. Yes. Ramey Gentry. Yes. Jacinta Green. Yes. Margaret Lorber. Yes. Veronica Nolan. Yes. Michelle Reif. Yes. Christopher Suarez. Yes. And Heather Thornton. Yes. Okay, so we are adjourning. We are adjourning. The vote is 9-0. And thank you, everyone. We'll see you soon. Thank you. Goodbye. Bye. Bye.