January 21, 2021 School Board Zoom Meeting

001Welcome everyone and this is the virtual school board meeting for January 21st, 2021. So I'm going to go ahead and call this meeting to order and I'm calling the meeting to order at 4.02 p.m. So I will start with our roll call to make sure and see everyone who's here. So when I call your name, please indicate that you are present. Megan Alderton? Yes. Cindy Anderson? Yes, here. Ramey Gentry? Here. Jacinta Green? Here. Margaret Lorber? Here. Veronica Nolan? Here. Michelle Reif? Here. Christopher Suarez. Here. And Heather Thornton. Here. Okay, so we are all here at nine people present. Next, we'll have a moment of silence. And thank you everyone for observing a moment of silence. Next up on the agenda. We actually need to adopt the agenda for today's meeting. Before we begin, I'd like

002to reorder that agenda to move the new business category up to follow the consent calendar. So first, I will need a motion to adopt the agenda. Madam Chair, I move that we adopt the agenda. Second. Okay, so I have Ms. Gentry, sorry, Ms. Green, who seconds Ms. Gentry's motion. And before I call for a vote, I'm actually going to need a motion to add the agenda item update on hybrid phase reopening transition plan to old business. So go ahead, Ms. Lorber. Madam Chair, I move that we move the agenda item or we add an agenda item, hybrid, an update on hybrid education and move it to old, put it in old business. Okay, do I have a second? Second. Okay, so Ms. Gentry seconds Ms. Lorber's motion to add the, amend the agenda by adding

003that item. So first I'm going to call for a vote to amend the agenda. So I will do a roll call there. Megan Alderton, yes. Cindy Anderson. Yes. Ramey Gentry. Yes. Jacinta Green. Yes. Margaret Lorber. Yes. Veronica Nolan. Yes. Michelle Reeve. Yes. Christopher Suarez. Yes. Heather Thornton. Yes. All right. So the vote to adopt the agenda as amended. is approved at 9-0. So now I will call for the vote to adopt the amended agenda. So I will call for your names. Cindy Anderson? Yes. Veronica Nolan? Yes. Megan Alderton? Yes. Ramey Gentry? Yes. Jacinta Green? Yes. Margaret Lorber? Yes. Michelle Reif? Yes. Christopher Suarez? Yes. Heather Thornton. Yes. Okay. So we have an approved agenda for today's meeting. So next up are our communications and addresses to the board. And at this time, we would usually

004have our public hearing on the FY 2022 combined funds budget. So. We did not have any today, but we do, however, have public comments today. So there are two speakers today. Speakers, just be reminded that you are given three minutes to address the board, and we will do our best to stay true to that time. So first up, we have Jennifer Nichols, who is an ACPS parent, and we are ready for you, Ms. Nichols, if you're ready. I'm ready. Thank you. Thank you to the school board for serving. I know it's challenging in the best of times, and I appreciate your service to our community. I'm the parent of a third grader at Charles Barrett. It's been a heartbreaking year for us. I have some requests I hope you'll consider. Please stop making changes to

005the school calendar. Families had just one week notice that school would be asynchronous on January 20th, 2021. Of course, the inauguration was an important event, but live teaching should not stop for important events. It should include them, especially when our kids are in school just four days a week with live instruction. Take a look at the February calendar. There are early release days. Please, I beg you, do not turn off live instruction for the entire day. Please, I hope that ACPS offers summer instruction for students again. We need as much information as possible for our kids. We need as much instruction as possible for our kids to recover from this school year. Please share the schedule and the summer locations with families and teachers now. Parents are currently registering kids for summer programs. They fill

006up fast. Working parents need child care all year round. I would certainly prefer my third grade daughter, she'll be almost a fourth grader then, participate in school this summer. But if I don't have the schedule, I can't make sure that she has child care on the days when she doesn't have school. or the afternoons when she doesn't have school. Please make sure you get this information to us as soon as possible. Please find the money to hire more staff for the next school year. Students are missing so much learning right now. Our schools will need more staff than ever to support individual and small groups of students in the coming school year. The only time my daughter appears to be learning right now is when a teacher works with her in a small group. My

007daughter's teacher works incredibly hard, but my daughter's made limited, if any, progress this year. That digital connection, her teacher tries to use it. It does not help my third grader thrive. She said on multiple occasions this year, I hate school. She's never said that prior to this school year. She's always loved school and went to the bus stop or the Kiss and Ride Lane if we were running late with a smile on her face. Yesterday, after the new president was inaugurated, she looked at me and asked, does this mean we get to go to school again? Because she'd heard him speak of that. I said, I hope so. And for the first time, I saw a real smile on her face for anything related to school. Please find a way to bring our students, especially

008our youngest students, to our building. as soon as possible. Our kindergartners are missing out on so much. I know because a few days a week, I have a neighborhood kindergartner who visits my house and it's pretty heartbreaking to see what her day is like. She tries her best. Her teacher is doing somersaults to keep the kids engaged, but it's simply not. a replica for live in person kindergarten. Thank you. Okay, thank you, Ms. Nichols. Next up, we have Gina Bell, who's an ACPS parent. Ms. Bell, we're ready when you are. Hi. Hey, I want to thank you. I didn't actually get the link, so I jumped on from a former link. I'm Gina Baum, and as I've stated before, I'm a longtime Alexian for your Reddits and have decades of service on community boards. One

009thing before I start my written remarks, I just wanted to comment on the vaccine. As we all know, the vaccine is so effective. that the virus cannot be spread by vaccinated people. I'd like to just say out loud, any person who is disingenuously calling to vaccinate teachers while simultaneously having no intention of opening schools, that would really be a travesty. And I just wanted to make that point quickly. I will send the school board articles referencing the vaccine efficacy. I will also send you all articles about the topic, about my remarks today, which is about a community with will. As I hinted, I'm here today to advocate to give families of this community the option to select in-person learning. I'm sick and tired of hearing school board members recoil from those of us comparing private

010school openings to public school closures. A desk space three feet apart in a private school is no different than a desk space three feet apart in a public school. Fewer students in private school buildings is no different from fewer students in public school buildings. Implementing known mitigation measures like mask wearing is no different in a private school than it is in a public school. Now let's get to those specific differences often used as closure justification. Money, public schools have much more access to money and federal and state funding. Classrooms, public schools have many more buildings, city resources like rec centers. Space, public schools have far more square footage for spacing. Private schools have the same numbers of community spread as public schools, and yet there is no community outrage or clamoring to shutter private schools.

011See, the difference is not facilities or numbers or students or community spread. The difference here is the will to find solutions to difficult problems. Are there not enough teachers for those opting for in-person learning? Is there not enough space for those who want to attend in-person school? The reality is the community just doesn't know. We don't know. The community doesn't know. And I'm not even sure the school board knows for sure. We've only been giving veiled references to all of these issues as justifications for school closures. Why? Because there is no will. There is no will to identify the specific issues. There is no will to find solutions. There is no will to do the right thing. There is no will to open schools. Unlike other facets of the city, city governments, city businesses, city

012entities, and private schools that have pivoted, what we lack here is not money, schools, or teachers. What we lack here is the will to open. Thank you, mom. Extra moms, I appreciate it. Okay, thank you. Okay, so that is the end of our comments. There is one written comment from a teacher, Ms. Heather Rosner, about returning to hybrid and how that will impact musical instruction. So a board that is available to you, please definitely check that out. Okay, usually at this time we would move on to reports from our student reps, Lorraine Johnson and Ashley Sanchez-Vierfara. Unfortunately, both of our representatives had other obligations and conflicts today, so they will not be sharing with us today. I think that Ashley may have something that she plans to send to board members, so just be on

013the lookout for that. Okay, so next, we do have an- I'm sorry, Cheryl. Ashley did send something that she wanted me to report out on the middle school representatives, if I might have a few seconds to do that. Okay, sure. Go ahead. It's to Miss Green. Got sent to Miss Green. Thank you, Cheryl. And Ashley is very upset that she wasn't able to be with us tonight, but she did want the middle school report to go out. And our president at Jefferson Houston, the student government, her name is Giselle Hughes. And she wanted to let us know that they're doing well over there at Jefferson Houston. And they sent out a middle school poll just to check in with people, to check in with the kids to see how they're doing. what the student government

014can do to help and just, you know, how people are feeling. They want to get a pulse and stay in touch with everyone. And they're using that to create events. Like they did a Zoom pajama party and things of that nature. So they're constantly collecting information, staying in touch with people, just making sure that they're all right. And she said that... They all hope to be back in school soon, but they're making the most of the virtual learning and that they will stay in touch with us to keep us informed on how they're doing and how they proceed. Thank you, Ms. Green. That's a wonderful report. And I'm glad to hear all the different ways that our students are figuring out how to connect. still, you know, be with each other, even when they can't

015be with each other in person. So that's amazing. And hats off to the Jefferson Houston crew for staying focused on that. Thank you, Ms. Green. So I'm going to move on to the adoption of the consent calendar. And before I do that, I actually wanted to take a moment to thank Amazon, just really good news. We received 6,680 classic edition books for ACPS middle and high school students, and they were valued at $44,707. And so this is just really good news. And, you know, I would say the other hats off needs to go to our community. relations department and Mr. Kurt Huffman, because this is just an example of how him and his team are constantly working to just make sure we are truly connected with our community partners. And we definitely are continuing to

016see the benefits of those relationships. So great news just to put out there for everyone. And again, thank you, Amazon. Thank you, Kurt and team. So with that, I'll, yeah, sorry to interrupt you. I'll tell you that there is another donation on there also to help with our continuation of our child care. And like you said, Ms. Halberton. This is exactly, I have to thank the board for, and leadership for creating this office and also supporting this office because this is exactly a proof point of why this office was created. It gives a clear path for these partners. to strengthen and give a relationship with these partners so that these opportunities do come on. And so Amazon is one of our larger partners and we just continue to see this relationship grow. Special shout out

017to John Porter who works with me and also my office. But this is a tribute to all of you in terms of this creation of this office that is doing incredible things and creating relationships with these partners. So I thank you very much for at least acknowledging that. That's wonderful. Thank you. Thank you so much. So with that said, I definitely we need to move to action and adopting the consent calendar. Madam Chair? Yes. Madam Chair, I move that we approve the consent calendar for this meeting. Second. Oh, who was that? I think I heard Ms. Lorber second Ms. Gentry's motion. And so I will go ahead and 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.

018Yes. And Heather Thornton. Yes. Great. All right. So the vote was 9-0 to approve the consent calendar. Okay, so we are now moving on to new business and we have our comprehensive annual financial report for FY 2020. This is for info and action. And so I'm going to actually turn the meeting over to Dr. Hutchings. Thank you. And I'm actually going to turn it over to our chief financial officer, Mr. Turner, to get us started. All right. To Turner, I think your sound is kind of muffled or I can't really, I don't hear you clearly. Is that just me? Hold on. Can you give me one second? Yeah, that's better. Mr. Turner, are you there? Okay. I'm wondering, because I know we have Mr. Turner, but are Mr. Covington or? I see he's back. Okay.

019Can you all hear me better now? Yes. Okay. Sorry about that. So, yes, as I was saying, before I get started and turn it over to our auditors, I just thank Mr. Michael Covington and all of the accounting team for the hard work that they do each year, ensuring that we had the proper internal controls here in ACPS, as well as putting together our comprehensive annual financial report each year and working with our auditors to be able to provide them the information they need to be able to. do the work that they do each year for us. So with that, this year we use CLA again, they're the city and schools external auditor and they provided us with the clean audit opinion this year, which is good, which we're looking for every year. And with

020that, I will turn it over to Mr. Greg Bussink, the auditor with CLA. Good afternoon. Thank you, Mr. Turner, for the introduction. Everybody hear me okay? Okay. So I am here this afternoon to discuss the results of the audit of the comprehensive annual financial report. I think everyone got a copy of it either before the meeting or in their board package. So usually at this point in the meeting, I hold up a copy of it to show you how thick it is and give you an idea of how big the document is. It's 170 pages. So a lot of information goes into it. Of the 175 pages, five pages come from CLA. So there's three pages of the auditor's opinion that's included on page 27 of the PDF. If you're going through the PDF. search

021function. And then on page 161 and 162, there's a report on internal control and compliance with the laws and regulations. So those are the five pages that we provide. Everything else comes from ACPS, their hard work, finance, budget folks, everyone. When we go through the audit process, we meet with folks outside the accounting department as well to get an idea of risk assessment process and things like that and we perform our own risk assessment. So we want to thank everyone within the school system for their help throughout the process. This year was a little bit of a challenging year with COVID so we performed the entire engagement remotely. One good thing is that the schools have a good financial system and good records. They would provide information to us quickly and timely, didn't have any

022issues getting things to us. So it was a good stress test on your system that you have in place. And so I want to thank the board, too, for supporting management and keeping them up to date on technology and good software systems, because we have some folks that we deal with that have older systems that did struggle a little bit, but no issues with the schools. Thank you for all your support throughout the process. We did issue an unmodified opinion, which is also known as a clean opinion. So it's the highest form of insurance that we can give. And looking at internal control and compliance with laws and regulations, we did not have any issues there. Traditionally, usually at this point, we're done with the single audit. But this year, we're not quite done. The

023city has some CARES Act money that they received. And as part of that, and that they spent. So part of that process requires us to perform the single audit. using the compliance supplement for CARES Act funding. And that compliance supplement came out in late December. So we didn't have the guidance yet to perform that audit. So we're doing that right now, actually wrapping up the process. So we'll be done with that soon. The city and the schools do their single audit together. So that report will be issued separately. Traditionally, it's all included with the city's comprehensive annual financial report. So when we get that done, we'll brief the city and the schools on what the results are. If there's anything significant that the board wants to hear about, we'd be happy to come back and

024discuss that too later on. But traditionally, there's nothing too exciting in that report. Just keep an eye out for that. So when you look at the CAFR, it's 170 pages. There's a lot of different sections in there. But one thing I wanted to point out about the city, the school's CAFR this year, is that they will be applying to get the ASBO certificate and the GFOA certificate of excellence. So those two certificates are kind of the benchmark, the prestigious award to get in governmental reporting for municipalities. For ASBO, last year was, the certificates are always delayed a year. So the certificates you received this year for last year's CAFR was the 17th consecutive year. And for the GFOA certificate, it was the 10th consecutive year. So we're hoping that this year's submissions will be 18th

025and 10 years, or sorry, 11 years. for those certificates. It's a quality document from what we saw. Mays have spent a lot of time and effort into it. So I just want to thank them for doing a good job. And it's a feather in their cap for those two certificates. And it shines on you guys too, because you support them and you're all one organization. So let's see what else. Those are the main things I wanted to point out about this year's audit results. And I'd be happy to answer any questions. Okay, so at this time, we'll open the floor for questions. And let's see, I have Dr. Reif. All right. Well, thank you for the presentation and thanks to the financial services department for all your work on this. I wanted to ask, one,

026can we get a hard copy of the CAFR this year? And the other question was about the employee supplemental retirement fund. I saw in the memo that, you know, it's determined to be strong. And I was just wondering if you could talk at all about how you get to that determination. With the hard copies, you produce those internally. I talked to Mike Covington yesterday. I think he says he has them now. He was going to send us one. Mr. Turner, if you can make a note to get those out to folks. Yes, we do have those. We'll get those out. They'll be going out this week. Okay, and then the as far as the the retirement plan when we take a look at that from an audit perspective We look at record keeping, eligibility. We

027also look at the financial results. So we look kind of, we see what the liability is and that's calculated by an actuary. So we do rely on an actuary report to the calculations there. So overall, I think the market being up is helpful for the investments that drives it. Overall, the pension liability will stay relatively, when I say liability, the portion that's the liability. if you take away what the asset value is. It remains pretty consistent, I guess, based on the level of employees that you have and then the demographic composition. So, but overall, I think it was just, I think the increase in the market or the steady increase in the market has helped the plan. Okay, given that there are no other questions, this item is up for action. And so can I

028get a motion to approve the SY 2020-2021? I'm sorry, can I get a motion to approve and accept the FY 2020 Comprehensive Annual Financial Report? Yes, I move. Do we have a second? Second. Okay, so Mr. Suarez seconds Ms. Green's motion. I'm going to 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 the vote is 9-0 and the annual financial report has been adopted and approved. So with that said, we can move on to old business. Next, we are looking at the SY 2020-21 calendar revisions for T.C. Williams, Francis C. Hammond Middle School, and George Washington Middle School. And we're looking at changes to parent-teacher conference dates for the spring

029of 2021. So I will turn it over to Dr. Hutchings. And thank you, Madam Chair. And I'm going to ask for Dr. Mazingo to join us at this time to provide a quick overview. We do have our secondary principals on this Zoom today. But Dr. Mazingo, I want to turn things over to you in regards to our conference schedule. Thank you so much, Dr. Hutchins, and good evening, Madam Chair and board members. Nice to see you again this evening. I'd like to just quickly introduce this item by saying the three school leaders and their faculties are actually requesting not an asynchronous day, but they're requesting to a new date to hold parent-teacher conferences for the three T.C. Williams, Francis C. Hammond, as well as George Washington. Currently, for the high school They're scheduled to have

030conferences on Thursday and Friday, February 4th and 5th, and they're recommending March 11th, 12th for the early release days for conferences. The middle schools are currently scheduled to have parent conferences on Thursday and Friday, February the 11th and 12th, and the recommendation is for Thursday, Friday, March 18th and 19th. And I know that the principals are here, but they did state that some of the reasons for this, number one, it would give them, their staffs, particularly in the elective courses, an opportunity to really get to know their students. They also feel like it would provide them more time, particularly to review some of the data that's essential for reviewing. They feel like this extra time will also enable them to provide more quality and thorough feedback for families when they hold the... their parent conferences.

031The other challenge is that the current days, and they can explain more of the detail, but the current days actually fall within the first week of the second semester, the current first week of the second semester. So that means the students are just starting. And for the elective courses, they really don't have enough time to have enough data to be able to have effective parent conferences. So again, it's not for asynchronous instruction. It's just to move the parent. teacher conferences to a later time. And we do have the three principles here in case there are any particular detailed questions as to, I've asked them a lot of questions. Why, what does this mean? And, you know, we really, can we really do this and why? And so we just want to recommend that we get

032support for this recommendation. Okay. So I will check with board members for questions. And Ms. Gentry. Thanks. I appreciate this. I just want to say I think this makes a lot of sense. I guess, you know, I just want to, you know, I appreciate some of the feedback we've received. You know, it is challenging to work on schedules and things like that. I think it's also very understandable why the schedule that we started with this year has had to change. But I want to support our school leadership. And if they're looking ahead, if they're thinking about maybe some other shifts that they see happening through the remainder of the school year, I just want to really encourage them to go ahead and. you know, let, bring it forward, you know, and, and the, so that

033we can broadcast it to the community. But, but, but just to say, thanks for this. And I think it makes a lot of sense. All right. Thank you, Ms. Gentry. Dr. Reif. Thank you. It makes a lot of sense to me too. I was just a point of clarification. I was trying to understand in the past, has the parent-teacher conferences typically fallen this close right after the start of a new semester? Or was it just something about the calendar this year? And then a second follow-up is, I am curious, I believe in the fall, we did have the half days were asynchronous. So has a determination been made about that yet? So those two questions. Dr. Mocengo. Yes. All right. All right. Thank you, Dr. Reif. For I do remember that the parent conferences always

034seem to hit around early to mid-February. So I don't know what is especially different for the high school at this point in our as we rethought or reimagined our. schedules or schedule for this year, which has been so challenging, is that we do have some of our classes on semester-based classes, which we had not done before. So this actually would be the like third and fourth days of a new semester. So teachers would only know their kids for like three days. And so we naturally saw that we had to move that out so that teachers had a chance to get to really know their kids. So parents are going to be able to have conferences for their semester two classes and also have for any of the year-long courses that are running opportunities to meet

035with them a second time. And I'm trying to remember, oh, on the schedule, I do know that we at the high school made a schedule where the early release days were, ours were not asynchronous. So I don't know if where you were referring to, but we did run our classes. They were obviously abbreviated, much like we would do during a normal early release day, but we ran our classes and then had conferences. And for the middle school, it would specifically be the same. Middle schools did have three parent conference days. We would be running the same schedule as the high school, considering that we only have two parent conference days this time instead of three. And similar to last year, parent conferences fell towards the end of February. And this year, they do fall a

036little bit earlier in comparison to last year. Okay, thank you. Seeing that there are no more questions, this is an action item. So I do need a motion to approve the SY 2020-2021 academic calendar revisions for T.C. Williams, Francis C. Hammond, and George Washington Middle School. Madam Chair, I move that we adopt the proposed amendments to the academic calendar for the three schools. Second. Okay, so Ms. Anderson seconds Ms. Gentry's motion, and I will call for the vote. Megan Alderton, yes. Cindy Anderson? Yes. Ramey Gentry? Yes. Jacinta Green? Margaret Lorber? Yes. Veronica Nolan? Sorry, yes. Michelle Reed? Yes. Christopher Suarez? Yes. And Heather Thornton? Yes. Okay, and the vote is 9-0. Thank you, principals and Dr. Mozingo. Thank you so much. Thank you. Okay, so we can now move on to some old business that

037has been added to our agenda today. Because as usual, we like to stay up to date on our hybrid and phase reopening transition plan. So I will now turn it back over to Dr. Hutchings. Thank you, Madam Chair. And first and foremost, I just want to tell the board as well as our community that, you know, this information is ever changing. I mean, it literally is. And we are trying to make sure that we're not having to put out information, pull it back, pull out something new every other day. that causes more confusion, we believe. So we try to make sure that we take the time to have the most accurate information when we're going live or presenting before the board. Today, some of the information I'm sharing with you, it still is a work

038in progress. This is still not going to be sent out to our community until Monday because we still have another follow-up meeting tomorrow. which is Friday, to finalize some of these items. But for the most part, mostly everything that I'm sharing with you is not going to really change. But I just wanted to kind of put that out there first and just say thank you to our staff. Every moment I can get to thank them for their hard work and their dedication. I will take that moment just to say that. Thank you. And I do appreciate the grace that many of our community members are providing us during these unprecedented times that we all are a part of. But we are working diligently to try. to make sure that we are prepared whenever we pivot

039to transitioning our students back into our school buildings that we're ready for. So let's go right into the presentation. I want to start off with going over some of the essential questions today. One is talking about the new interim Virginia Department of Health guidelines that we received last week in regards to school reopening. I want to talk a little bit about our collaboration with the Alexandria Health Department. We will have Dr. Herring providing his update today as well. And then I want to talk about some of the refinements that are being made to our decision matrix that is based on the revisions to the Virginia Department of Health's guidance that we received last week. Then we're going to talk about how some of those indicators have been refined or revised based on that information. So

040I'm going to turn things over to Dr. Herring to start us off with just the public health indicators for today and give us some insight around where we stand in regards to our community transmission. Good evening. Can you hear me? Yes, we can hear you. Good evening, Dr. Stephen Herron, Director of Alexandria Health Department. Thanks, Dr. Hutchings and School Board for having me here. And thanks to your all's collaboration. We've gone over this chart before, just to review. The upper left is the risk of transmission within a school setting. And it's the CDC's categorizations, and they have the five different categories from lowest to highest risk. At the bottom left, you see the core indicators. And the one core indicator of the number of new cases per 100,000 within the last 14 days, you can

041see that's at 728. To actually go from that category just below that, from higher to highest risk, so we're in the highest risk for that, to give you an idea of what the threshold is to go from orange to red, the threshold is 200. So we're well over three times the threshold to be in the highest risk. The next core indicator is the percent of tests, of the PCR tests that are positive in the past 14 days, and you can see that's 10.3%. The threshold there is 10%. Then there's secondary indicators. And that first one, the percent change in new cases, this is sort of like what's happening in terms of the trend over the past seven days. Are things going up or are things going down? And things are going down, but you can

042imagine in terms of the seven-day average compared to the prior seven days. But when you look at the chart, the reason that is is it's gone up so dramatically previously that it's... level off a little bit, but still more than double the number of cases that we're seeing on a seven-day rolling average than we saw at the worst times at the beginning of this pandemic. The next two metrics, one's in moderate, that's the percent of hospital inpatient beds that are occupied, the total occupied, and the next one is the percent of inpatient beds occupied by COVID-19 patients. So this gives you an overview of the CDC metrics related to K-12 school metrics. Thank you, Dr. Herring. We're going to go ahead and transition right into some of the decision matrix indicators. And what Dr. Herring

043just shared in regards to the overview, that in itself has not changed. So that is still going, that dashboard that is used by the Virginia Department of Health will still continue to operate. We will still provide these updates on a weekly basis using the same categories because those categories specifically have not. change and the way that is displayed has not changed. So I just wanted to make that very clear. But moving forward with our decision matrix that we're now about to transition to talk about, we are going to be using the updated version of ACPS's decision matrix starting next week. So there are some. refinements that have been made to the document. And before we go into talking about some of the considerations for transitioning between school instructional models, I do want to just, you

044know, point out the fact that now that the VDH's matrix has been released and we were able to really delve into their details and look at our current matrix, there is a lot of alignment with what we developed prior to them releasing their matrix. And what that shows to us and what it validates is that our team, you know, have been using or has been using the actual metrics as well as all of the information that the Virginia Department of Health has released over the past several months. We have been using that accurately and appropriately and effectively in regards to our decision making and we stayed the course with that throughout this entire process. And I shared this with our transition team before. I can't speak to what other school divisions have done or are

045doing, but one thing that we have done since March is we've always made sure that we've worked collaboratively with our health department from the beginning so since march 13th We've also made sure that any guidance we received, whether it was from the Virginia Department of Health or the Virginia Department of Education, that we used those guidance documents to guide our decision making throughout this process. And hence, that is why when you look at the document and the decision matrix that was released last week, why you see so much of the commonalities, even in regards to language, because we are using. all of this information from the data that, excuse me, from the documents that we have received. None of this was made up by Dr. Hutchings or made up by Dr. Herring or made up

046by our teams. We were using the resources that we had to really work on our decision matrix component. I'm happy to know that now, finally, the governor has said, here is a matrix that comes that I'm validating. Now. Granted, we could have written it for you, Governor Northam, but we appreciate the fact that we now have something that is official and it validates that we were on the right track, thankfully. So the revisions that we are making that we're going to go over today are very minor. They're not significant, but they are some refinements that we want to be able to share. So if Dr. Herring, if you can go into the considerations of transitioning between school instructional models. We highlighted the yellow areas to show where those specific changes are from the previous document.

047So the top table lists the criteria. We just went over the two, the number of new infections per 100,000 the past 14 days and the percent positivity over 14 days. And then to the right of that, you can see that there are three columns under level of community transmission. And they're listed as moderate risk or less, higher risk and highest. You can see from the first row that there's no change. That previously we presented that for the number of new infections per 100,000, that moderate or less was less than 50. higher risk was 50 to 200 and highest risk would be greater than 200 so there's no change there the changes here are that previously we had the lower risk at a much lower level we counted that as 5% or less And then for

048higher risk, we counted that from 5 to 10%, and then highest risk at greater than 10%. So what this has done is shifted and made it, I guess you could say, a little more liberal to open on the percent positivity. From me as a health director, a public health doctor, the thing that is actually more important is that first measure, the number of new infections per 100,000. Because the percent positivity can be somewhat artificial in that this is, being a percent, it shows, you know, the numerator over the denominator, and you can increase the denominator by doing a whole lot more testing that might not even be indicated, for instance. So from my perception, there's not a whole lot of change in here except that minor bit with the percent positivity. I'll also talk about

049the first role in the next table because the next table talks about the level of school impact and there's three different criteria. The first criteria has to do with public health criteria. Again, all this language is the same except for the middle, but except for the medium impact from a public health perspective. For low impact from the public health perspective, it would mean that you're not having any or maybe you have sporadic cases, no evidence of transmission. That's low impact from a health department's perspective. Medium impact, what they've changed is from what we have presented before is we said low number of cases and they've actually identified two outbreaks within a short period of time and the rest of the language is the same. Or sporadic outbreaks in a school and the outbreaks, the size

050of the outbreaks remain small. And then finally, high impact from a public health perspective would be several outbreaks in a school within a short period of time and the size of the outbreaks is significant. You could have multiple classrooms or grade levels impacted. And from a public health perspective, that would have a high impact. In regards to the level of school impact, I want to also point out some other additions or revisions that have been made, and that is the student absenteeism based on illness. And this is going to be something we will need to gauge once we open our doors of our school buildings for any form of hybrid instruction. And it's very important for us to see this is based on illness. It's not just. absenteeism in general because we are going to

051have to monitor if we're seeing a spike in students. absent because of an illness or staff even absent because of an illness that we are going to have to work collaboratively with our health department to see if that is, is it, you know, an outbreak? Is that a result of something else that could require us to make a decision about our school buildings being open? So this is one of the reasons why they have included student absenteeism based on illness in our decision. uh matrix um but this happens once our doors are open uh and this is not based on just our overall student absenteeism as a school division this is looking at student absenteeism that's based on our illness You'll also see that the staff capacity component that is still going to remain the

052same. And this is the percentage of our staffing within our school buildings so that we can operate efficiently. 75 to 100 percent of staffing is where we typically are in a normal time, which this is not a normal time, as you all know. So we are not at the normal level. we are currently at the strained level having 50 to 75 percent of our staffing able to be in our schools and in our buildings to allow us to operate efficiently if it gets less than 50 then we are going to be at a critical level. What we are hoping to see, especially with the vaccination that is happening right now, being that our ACPS staff are eligible now to receive their vaccinations. And I have to say, I had mine last week and I'm feeling

053great this week. I had a little tenderness for a day. I think I talked to Dr. Herring one of those days and he was like, that's normal. You know, just move your arm, Dr. Hutchings. It was like, OK, thank you. And especially for somebody who hates needles, too. But I did it right. So if I can do it, folks, I know you can. You can do it. But what we're hoping to see is our staff are receiving their vaccines, that we should go from a strained level to a normal level. um over time that is really we shouldn't be going the opposite direction you know at this point um we should see because where we are right now is with no vacs but you know the numbers that we had from our surveys were from

054november right that was when we didn't have a vaccination we didn't know it was on the horizon and we were going to be in schools you know so people We're still willing at that time through our health and safety mitigations to be in our buildings. Now that we are getting vaccinated, it does give some peace of mind to folks and it allows us to do our part to try to provide the healthiest and safest environment possible for our students moving forward. So we should see a transition from strained to normal over the next couple of months. If you can go to the actual diagram, I just went through this on the other slide, but if we can go to the... decision matrix slide. Thank you. And I apologize. I wish you probably can hear my

055son in the background. But I had the conversation. That's just what he does sometimes. I don't know if he wants to be on air or what, but. I have to talk to him after this. I want to talk a little bit about the actual matrix. And there are some revisions and refinements that we have made to this matrix. Not so much at when you look at the level of school impact with the staffing and capacity component, because that is still remaining. We know that our staffing and capacity could have an impact on facilities and health services and that type of thing. And we're at a strain level. We don't. We don't anticipate going to a critical level. We only anticipate going to a normal level over the next couple of months. But what we did

056want to highlight, and this is something we have been following and actually doing, we just wanted to make sure we're highlighting it under the levels of school impact. That is the health and safety mitigations. And I just want to say hats off to our team, our facilities and operations team, our student services team, our Alexandria Health Department for working collaboratively with us throughout this process, our bus drivers, our meal providers, our nurses. I mean, the list goes on and on because we are already in a position where we are. um living up to these health and safety mitigations as a school division we were very adamant about the six foot distancing social distancing in our classrooms uh as you all know we got some comments about that in the past and this is why i'm

057glad we stayed true to that because the virginia department of health is also recommending six feet social distancing in our classrooms everybody um the correct use of face coverings at all times. You know, we are already at that level where we were requiring and also our city. Thank you to our city manager and our mayor for requiring us to have masks and our face coverings in the city of Alexandria. But that is something that's already in place. We have our hybrid schedules that have minimal transitions. It doesn't mean there are no transitions, but they're minimal transitions that we have already in our schedule. So we have mitigated that. We have our cleaning protocols in place. They've been revised and refined. Thank you to our facilities and operations team. We have to keep in mind we've

058had people in our building since March. So it's not like the day all of our kids start coming back into our schools that it's our first time having people in our schools because our community partners are already in our buildings and cleaning protocols and things are in place now to make sure that we're doing the appropriate health and safety mitigations. We have handwashing guidelines. That's including antibacterial gel dispensers and soap dispensers, GW community. They are all in those bathrooms. Last week, I was able to visit every one of our schools for three days. I've been to all of our classrooms and they are ready to go. and I saw the soap dispensers and the hand sanitizer dispensers in classrooms. I think we had a couple of classrooms where it was a back order for their

059hand sanitizer dispensers, but we have the big kind of like... tub of, you know, hand sanitizer. For right now, it's just temporary. So, but they'll be here. Hopefully, they'll be here in the next week. We have isolation rooms that are already identified in every single one of our schools. And that is to provide a place if we have a student that or a staff member that is experiencing, you know, some type of, you know, sickness or they have they feel like they have a temperature that we have a location and it's during the school day to put them so that they are in isolation. We have our temperature checks already in place. We have our contract tracing that we've worked directly with the Alexandria Health Department in place. And then we have our communications plan

060in regards to positive cases because we have had some. positive cases already in some of our buildings. And we have had some practice with implementation of this communications plan. So in regards to the health and safety mitigations, we are spot on with that. That is not going to be a barrier to us getting our staff and our students transitioned back into our school buildings. But that is an additional component that came out of the Virginia Department of Health. And I'm glad we were already ahead of that because I was in their stuff in the past, as well as the assistance from Dr. Herring and his team. to make sure we have that in order. But let me talk about some of the things that have been refined. If you look at the actual decision component.

061So for example, I'm going to go back to doing our little practice. So our hands-on activity, right? We know we're at the highest risk level. And we also know we're at a strained level in regards to staffing, which means that if I had to make a decision today, we would be at 100% virtual with... Child Care Services and SEAL Support Mondays. And everybody's like, okay, well, what's SEAL Support Mondays? And that's what I'm going to talk to you about a little bit today. We already know about the child care services. Our child care services are currently in place and they have been for a while. That is all of our community partners, such as the REC program, such as the Alexandria Soccer Association, such as some of our other child care providers that are within

062our schools now providing some of our services. We wanted to make sure that we were acknowledging that in our decision matrix so that people can understand. Yes, we have our instruction being delivered 100% virtual, but there are some students who are in our school buildings because one of the indicators or some of the guidance that we got from the Virginia Department of Health was to make sure that we're providing accommodations for people who have child care concerns and issues, and they are getting those services. And fortunately, we were already doing that with Virtual Plus from August till now. So we've been doing that, but we wanted to make sure that we. uh had that included so that people are aware everybody is learning virtually but everybody is not outside of our school building some kids

063are in our schools even today What we did add was the SEAL support Mondays. We're still working through specific logistics around this, but we wanted the community and the board to have an understanding of where we're going with this SEAL support. And really, this is in-person support for students on Mondays. This SEAL support, also known as social, emotional, academic learning. These supports are already given to students virtually right now. So they're already in place virtually. Some students are not really responding to the virtual supports. So these are students who are having academic challenges and they're not responding with our academic support virtually. These are students who are having some emotional challenges and they may not be responding to our supports virtually. They may have some social challenges and they may not be responding. to our

064supports virtually. On the SEAL Support Mondays, this will afford students, you know, pre-K through 12 that are having significant challenges and are not able or are not responding to the virtual supports that we have in place. We're working through some specifics in regards to what... The criteria is going to be, of course, we're going to be using our MTSS model for our criteria. We are looking at specific data points that we're going to be using. We already have a significant number of data points from grade distribution to map scores to our SEAL assessments to just kids maybe not being engaged during Zooms. So from teacher observation. But our team is working through all of those logistics and we're going to be bringing some more information. before the board at our next update about what this

065looks like and what it can potentially be as we move forward. So this is a work in progress, but we wanted to make sure that the board was aware and our community was aware that this is forthcoming. This SEAL Support Mondays is something that is going to be offered whether we're 100% virtual, modified, or in a full hybrid. Because we have to keep in mind with our hybrid schedules, it is still a Tuesday through Thursday schedule and Mondays are asynchronous days. So regardless of whether we're at 100 percent at a modified hybrid or a full hybrid schedule, we are going to still be offering the SEAL support in-person Mondays. And this is for students who are not responding to the virtual supports. Another thing that I want to show on here that is a new

066kind of, I guess, more clear to our community is 100% virtual and all ACPS buildings are closed. And this is a specific area where we have an executive order like we had back in April where everything shuts down and we can't open our school buildings. We wanted to make sure that was captured here on our. actual matrix so that people can know, well, what is the most severe case? You know, that means we're not in the most severe case right now, right? The most severe case would be no one can be in our school buildings. There are no community partners and everybody's virtual, right? And that is going to come through some form of an executive order to get to that level. But we wanted to make sure that we highlighted that here. Another addition

067that you'll see is a clarifying indicator under the hybrid component. And you'll see it says hybrid, including athletics and extracurricular. One thing that the Virginia Department of Health really is adamant about and recommending to school divisions is that you first, as a school division, work on transitioning students into the school to provide them with the appropriate academic learning environment. And then once you have transitioned students, that you begin to incorporate athletics and extracurricular activities. That has been our philosophy prior to this VDH guidance that just came out last Thursday. We have stayed true to that. We will continue to stay true to that. But the goal is we do want kids to get back into their athletics. We want them to get back into their extracurriculars. We just want to make sure that we are

068doing our transition of our students. So we're going to have transition of kids. And then once kids are transition, they will automatically start. our athletic programs, programming, and we will automatically then begin our extracurricular activity schedules. Of course, we still are going to have to follow whatever CDC guidelines come out with all those different components, but this is giving kind of a clear understanding of when athletics and extracurriculars will matriculate in or when we will transition into those specific areas. So I kind of went through this verbally with you all, but the next slide is going to show you kind of a visual of everything I just said. So this is giving you a quick overview of hybrid and how, you know, it's a phase entry. Athletics and extracurriculars resume after students are transitioned. Child

069care partners are still there. Social and emotional and academic learning supports are still on Mondays. You'll see on the modified specifically. And I didn't mention this on the last schedule, so I'm going to mention it now. Sorry, I missed that one. was there were questions in regards to which groups specifically when we're doing the modified hybrid, which groups are we focusing on? And one thing that came out of the Virginia Department of Health's guidance is we really want to focus when. our first group coming into our schools, we really want to focus on students with disabilities and students who are English learners. That is the first group you really want to focus on, on any type of modified. And you want to focus on students who are receiving those types of services at the early

070grades. So we focused on our modified hybrid, that first group that we are going to transition in if we ever get to the point, which I hope is going to be soon. where we're at a higher risk level versus the highest risk level like we are right now. that we can go ahead and start transitioning our pre-K through third grade students who are receiving special education or English learner services. We are going to have to, once that transition happens, if we keep seeing that trend go down, then at that point, we may look to transition some additional students after that. But the goal is to at least get that first group. of students in at a modified level. That means we're going to be between 8 and 10 percent for a positivity rate. And I

071forgot what the level of what the per 100,000 is, but we have to be at the higher risk level in order for us to get to this modified hybrid section is the point that I'm trying to make. But that is the first group that we're going to have transitioning in so that people were asking, well, what group would that be? And now we specifically are stating who they are and who will be transitioning when we get to a modified hybrid level. Everything else I've already covered on the previous slide, but this is just a quick overview for everybody to see. And then I think that's it. We're going to open the floor for some questions from the board. And I know we have our team here that can answer, I hope, any questions that you

072all may have. Okay. First up, we have a question from Ms. Gentry. Thank you so much. I've got a couple, but I think they're tiny. Is it okay if I? Okay, great. Going back to slide five, just kind of a, I think, I understand a lot of this information was coming in fast, but just ultimately, I think this is a slide that people are going to be looking at and referring to. And I think it will be helpful. At some point, when I look at that line about student absenteeism, I think it might be helpful for people, since the other ones have numbers or percentages to it. I'm imagining you guys are going to be able to go back over previous years and understand what is typical, what is baseline student absenteeism, like what's a

073typical percentage or something like that. And if you guys can maybe... incorporate some percentages into that because then regardless of which box you're looking at you're you're seeing some percentages or some numbers so i i that's just one kind of one thought i had um or or if if not then maybe just a little bit more description um because i i can see that one being a little bit harder for people to parse right now um I had a clarification question for me on this one as well. So the asterisk at the bottom, when it says a cluster is defined as two or more, but then there's also references to outbreak. Are those meant to be the same thing? Yes, that is correct. So could we maybe pick one word just so that or use

074both this outbreak or cluster? You know, I'm fine with that. I'm not sure if we took that directly from the VDH document or not, but essentially that is the same thing here. So I would be fine with us changing that first asterisk to an outbreak is defined as two or more individuals. Okay. I just, or if it's better to use both words, just, you know, I just didn't want people to be confused about not knowing that one is the same as the other. And I think also, Dr. Herring, I was going to say, I think that we should just clarify when we look at the revised version, because we were really trying to stay true to the language that's in the guidance. So let's see whatever language is in there and let's use that just

075so we're being consistent with the language. Yes, and I appreciate your bringing this point up. Thank you for noting that. That's great. Thank you. And then for slide eight, for the SEAL Mondays, thank you a lot for the description about that. I think that's going to be a really welcome support that a lot of families will appreciate. I do think maybe this is another one of these, though, that there might need to be some clarification. Would a Seal Monday always be at a student's assigned school? Or could there be possibilities where, depending on the number of kids or something like that, they might be going to? And you might not have an answer to that. I'm just saying that this might be something that, as you guys further clarify this, I think it's going to

076be really helpful for people to understand. You know, and I think one thing that we should we should probably include on that is that it's a work in progress so that people know we don't have all the details on it yet. Right. And we may want to be more explicit about that when we share this out with the community on Monday. But to answer your point, the goal is to try to have students at their schools and not to have clusters of students. Now, they might not be, for example, if a student is receiving some type of academic learning support. It might not be from their teacher. It might be from someone else. Because the purpose in this is not to have an additional day of teaching and learning. Right. It really is supposed to

077be a day for kind of additional supports that are above and beyond what everybody else might be receiving at this particular time. And that one caveat to this as well is this is going to be specifically. for those students that are not responding to the supports that we're doing virtually. So if a student is already receiving supports, which many of our students are, and they're responding to that right now virtually, we're not going to say, well, now you got to come in person to get that. We want to keep, if things are working, we don't want to cause another disturbance because then it's going to be another issue that she'll be faced with if we were to do that. But we'll have some more details as we move forward over the next couple of weeks.

078That's great. And final clarifying thing for when you, you know, I think it was really helpful when you clarified the idea about that the modified hybrid is that pre-K through three and students with disabilities and English learners. But just when you say students with disabilities, are you meaning a student that has an IEP? Is it a student with a, I mean, what is the kind of IEP? So specifically what it is, it's students who are a part of our self-contained language arts or math. So we will definitely, I'm glad you pointed that out. That's things that we already discussed with our team. I just heard that from Terry Werner this morning. So we don't have that listed on here, but with the final version that we release, it will be more explicit around students who

079are receiving self-contained. services and citywide program students. So we will be more specific with that. I think that's a really good point. Yeah. Yeah. Because I think someone reading just students with disabilities that that could potentially be a larger group. And I wouldn't want people to get watching this tonight to get confused about that. So good point. Thank you all very much. Thank you, Miss Gentry. Miss Green. Thank you, Chair Alderton. Dr. Hutchings, can you talk a little bit about, you know, we're all very excited about the rollout for the teachers getting the vaccine. Thank you to Governor Northam and team for that. Can you tell me, and it may be a little bit early into the game, what percentage of teachers have gotten it the first week? I know there was some... People weren't,

080you know, like slots weren't available for teachers. I know more were opened up. Is it too early to get information or data around that? So it's too early right now, but we are working through that. What we had to do, and Dr. Heron, he'll be able to elaborate on this a little more, is what we had to make sure that we're doing is because this is a vaccine and this is a part of somebody's medical history, we have to be very careful with how. One, we're gathering information, who's getting access to that type of information because people are still protected. And right now your status is kind of associated with your email, which your email has your name in it and your name has what school you're at and all that information. So we're trying

081to work through how can we have a way to really document, you know, our staff. but not in a way where everybody can see who that person might be. The people who need to know, of course, like health department, they got to know that information, who that person is. The community, they're not supposed to know that information. They can't know. I mean, I'm sharing with you that I had my first dose of vaccination, but it's not public information for you all to know that. I don't have to tell you that. I'm just choosing to tell you that. So what we're trying to do is work through a lot of those logistics. And last week, VAS, which is the Virginia Association of School Superintendents, the council who works with VAS, they provided us with an overview

082with their attorneys. And we're right now working through that information to provide an overview for our staff. But that's taken us some time to get. to go through one, all of their recommendations to make sure that it's aligned with, you know, our policies, practices and procedures. But we are in the mix right now, midst of trying to get this, at least an overview of who got vaccinated, like a percentage and a number. But Dr. Herring, you may want to give some more insight about that. Because that was just a, that's a recent thing that we just started doing this week. Right. And thanks to your all support and everything we're doing, including, for instance, the ACPS nurses serving as vaccinators to help us. One of the things that we've done in the health department is

083we have followed the prioritization list of the 1A and the 1B. And you know that 1B got expanded from 75 and older to include 65 and older and plus everybody 16 to 64 with an underlying medical condition. And so that means if you look at it globally, half of Virginians are actually eligible for vaccine at this point, but vaccines not available at this point. So what we're doing is we are prioritizing according to people that are most at risk for, quite frankly, for dying or for needing a hospital. So we're really focused on those 75 and older first. In sequence with that, we're also focused on the 1A. 1A are the health care providers. So those are the school nurses and the paramedics and all the health care providers in Alexandria. We've clearly have gone

084through the 1A, and we're in 1B1 and 2 and 3 particularly. We're not excluding the 1B4 through 9, but 1B1 and 2 are the firefighters, sheriff, police. And 1B3 are the K-12 teachers and child care. So we have focused, we've gotten all the teachers and staff, custodians, school bus drivers, everybody uploaded into VAMS, that's the Vaccine Administration Management System. And it's going to get confusing in the coming weeks because we're going to be transitioning to another management system. But for now, we have everybody uploaded into VAMS. And we've actually sent out a second survey to K-12 teachers, both public and private teachers, just today to find out, hey, have you registered into VAMS? And if so, have you had trouble getting an appointment? So we'll be doing outreach to those folks. And then the other

085question we're asking, have you tried to register into VAMS but you've run into difficulty? We'll do outreach to them and get them loaded up into VAMS. So our focus is, again, those 75 and older. And then the other focus is, at this juncture, our K-12 teachers and child care providers. Dr. Herring, can you tell me if the child care providers are in VAMS yet or they still have to wait? No, they should be in VAMS as well. Yes. Thank you. Okay. Thank you, Dr. Reeve. Thank you for the update, Dr. Hutchings and everyone. If you could pull up slide seven, please, which is the matrix. Thank you. Yeah, for me, I think like the level of community transmission is very clear. The one thing that I'm still, I guess, trying to get a little bit

086more clarity on is around the staffing capacity. And I know everyone's excited about the vaccinations, and we're hoping that that's going to increase our teachers and staff ability to return in person. And I guess I'm just trying to understand how we're gathering. changes in staff ability to return? Is there like a, are they being asked weekly? Do they have to report it whenever there's a change? Kind of how is that working? And then I'm also wondering, you know, how this hiring of school monitors is affecting the staffing level, because if a teacher is not able to return in person, but we've hired a monitor, then, you know, are we counting that in the percentage of staff availability? Another kind of thing I've been thinking about is how we, you know, had the six students who

087were in the citywide program come back to Jefferson Houston, you know, in the fall. And at that time, we were at a strained staffing level too. So just wondering, kind of like how that fits into the decision making. And if the, if we're going to be looking at it, breaking it down by school, because I think I believe I saw in one of the school newsletters. that it specifically, it was shared out the staffing level of the school impact at that particular school. So are we, you know, would we be in a situation where some schools would be able to come back maybe before other schools based on the staffing capacity, understanding that things like transportation, you know, may serve the full division. So if you could just try to help me understand a little

088bit about how we're working through the staffing capacity and understanding that. Yeah, so it's a great question Dr. Reif. First and foremost, we do check in with teachers when we're sending out our student schedules. So anybody selected hybrid because we want to make sure we're putting the appropriate status on the student schedule. So that happens consistently. We've already done three groups as of now. So we've You know, we've checked in with three groups of teachers. So that is how we're doing a checkup in regards to teachers status. We have to keep in mind that staffing is beyond just teachers, though. This is why it was important for us to include facilities, health services, instructional delivery, school nutritional services, and transportation. Because this teacher component, that impacts the instructional delivery, right? We know our solution right

089now for that is we're doing the co, not co-teaching. My brain just went away. Concurrent teaching. Thank you. Our concurrent teaching. Yes. I just lost. I lost it for a second. But we're doing the concurrent teaching model, which affords our teachers, if they're unable to return to the building, to still be able to teach their students virtually and to have that classroom monitor in the classroom. So we've been able to mitigate the instructional delivery component by having classroom monitors. We still have impacts from. If we are in situations where custodians are not able to come back into our school buildings, if we have nurses that are not able to come back into our school buildings because we do have isolation rooms and things of that nature that have to be worked through, school nutritional services

090because we still have to provide meals in our classrooms. And as of right now, we're at a strain level, but we're not at a level where it is critical. Now, once our schools open, our school buildings open. we may begin to see some disparities that occur because you could have an outbreak in one school and not in another. So we're going to start beginning to see things not be a division-wide type kind of like decision. It is going to be on a school-by-school basis and maintaining for them to stay open or not. And that's why you'll see as we move once we... open our school buildings, it's going to start being more at a school level. So each school is going to have to be monitored and looked at individually versus as an entire school

091division. But that is going to happen once all of our doors open up. And that's something that we are going to have to put into consideration as well as the student absenteeism, because you might have a high absentee of students or a high percentage of students who are absent due to health. reasons at one building and you might not have it at another, right? So these are all the factors that we are going to have to look through on an individual basis at each one of our schools. In regards to the classroom monitors, we are right now working through working with the current pool of substitutes and other staff that we have on hand, part-time staff members to see who is interested in our classroom monitor positions that we do currently have available. We're hoping

092that once more of our staff members are getting the vaccine, and we're able to have more staff members into our buildings that we should have less of a need for these classroom monitors over the next couple of months. Doesn't mean they'll be obsolete, but we will, we shouldn't need the same amount now, two months from now is the expectation and the goal, but we just have to play that out. We are consistently, like we always do, we're always monitoring like staff. in absences and subs and that's something that we just do anyway even if we were in normal in a normal atmosphere we do look at those reports and are able to run those reports and then you had a third question what was the third part because that I got the first and second.

093I had asked about, you know, when we did do the small group of students in person at Jefferson Houston and kind of how you would say that that fits into this decision-making model, like why, you know, we were able to do that at that time, but now our division is at the strained level. And so that's... So strained is not a bad situation. We're actually... good to be at a good place to be at a strain level because I think many school divisions are probably faced with having less than 50% of their staffing being available. So being at a strain level is really not so bad for us. So being that we were at a strained level. previously, meaning when we transition our citywide students and us still being in that strain level, I mean,

094that's pretty consistent because we haven't had anything to cause a huge jump for us to, you know, increase staff members able to return. But now this vaccine is available. That is giving us some opportunity to have more people who may not have been able before to now be able. So we should see an increase and we should move out of the strained kind of level to a normal level over the next few months. I mean, that's the goal and that's how we hope it will all work out. But we just have to see. And there are other, I just wanted to add one other component. There are other things that we're looking at as well in regards to mitigating our staffing components. So let's say a nurse is unable to return. We're looking at how

095can we outsource a nursing service for that particular school so then we don't have to shut that school down because we are required to have a nurse in every school building through this pandemic. If school nutritional services, if we had somebody that was out, we'd have to find a way. to have somebody in as a sub during that particular time. So then we are still able to provide these services. But there could be a time, right now is not the time, but there could be a time in the future if there was an outbreak or something that we may not be able to have time on our hands to be able to identify somebody by tomorrow to come in if there was a big outbreak, you know. So we may have to shut it down

096just because we don't have anybody that can come in and help. to fulfill that particular void. But these are all going to be future issues that are potential. But we do have plans in place to mitigate them when they arise. Ms. Thornton. Thank you. I just wanted to, I understand that the SEAL Support Mondays is something that's still in progress as far as getting more information, but I definitely just wanted to kind of bring up some of the immediate questions I had, and hopefully they'll have some answers by next week. But I definitely think, you know, this staffing issue is definitely affecting, I think, any program right now, but especially with the SEAL Support Monday, I would be very interested to know you know, understanding that it won't necessarily be the student's teacher that will

097be in person for that SEAL Support Monday. It would be helpful to know like which staff might be the ones primarily present for those days and understanding too that these are going to be the most vulnerable students as identified by a set of criteria that we're going to see at some point. But it would be helpful to know too whether or not parents or students will have an opportunity to opt in. to this day, assuming that they may not, you know, at first sight meet whatever are the general criteria. I'm sure a lot of people would be interested in having that support in person as well. So it would be good to know whether or not they'll have that opportunity. And also too, I was wondering right now, do we have an anticipated start date

098for when those sales support Mondays will start? Will they be aligned with our transition plan or is this something that we're hoping to do within the next week or two? Yeah, so I don't have a start date yet because our meeting with the SEAL team is tomorrow. So I don't want to give a date and they would kill me if I did. So we'll have more information for you once our team meets. We just wanted to let everyone know this was a work in progress and that we are trying to accommodate our students whose needs are not being met virtually at this time. to know from many of our families as well as our staff have shared some concerns around students that are just not responding to the virtual supports that we currently have but

099I will have some more updates for you in in the future. Okay. And I'm actually, I'm going to throw myself in here, Ms. Nolan, because my question is related to SEAL support as well. And I apologize if you said this already, Dr. Hutchings, and I missed it. But my question is around for staff who are chosen or come in to do the SEAL support? Like given that that is usually a day of teacher planning, team meetings, like they're prepped for the week, are we thinking we might do some financial, additional financial compensation for those individuals? So, yeah, so our team is talking through what that would look like in regards to staffing, working in person on Mondays and what type of or what form of compensation would happen for that. But we definitely know that

100if staff are working on a Monday at a time that they are doing planning or professional learning or doing. their staff meetings and now doing something in person that they can't do both at the same time. So there will need to be some compensation, but we need to talk through specifically what that compensation is and how that will all work logistically, as well as what the funding source will be, because we are looking at, you know, our CARES Act funding and multiple things that we're going to have to use to help fund. all of these different things that are being, you know, concerns for everybody because of this pandemic. But that is really what this funding is supposed to be for. But we have to still monitor the amount of staff that who will be

101needed. And we really won't know that number until we first complete our criteria so we can identify the number of students at each building. And then that will help us determine what the number of staffing we're going to need for that. Thank you. And now, Ms. Nolan. Thank you so much, Chair Aldrich, and thank you so much, Dr. Hutchings, for the presentation. I really appreciate the update. And just thanks a million times over. I know we always say it at every meeting, but to the Herculean task of you and your team, just really appreciate it. As we know, this is a lot of moving parts. And as always, really appreciate Dr. Herring's expertise. We're so fortunate to have you and your support during this time. My question is, I just wanted to revisit something that

102was brought up at the last school board meeting in terms of the week-to-week decision timeframe. As I just keep worrying, I think I mentioned this last time, that that's just perhaps not enough time for both families, the community partners, staff, your team to have to adjust and pivot that quickly. And I'm just wondering, given that you've now had a little bit of experience, I think it's been like a week or so, like has there... Have you noticed any strain? Like, is that something that we can keep up? I'm just, I'll be candid, just really concerned about that from just everyone's perspective that it might be better to even just say, look, we're all going back. even if it means like giving it a week or two. And again, I'm also concerned about losing out on

103community trust if we keep moving the field goals and changing the date of when people can expect to go back. And so I just was thinking maybe with more certainty, people would be able to prepare more and be in that space. I just was wondering to get your feedback on that, Dr. Hutchings. So we've had this discussion as well. As of right now, we're looking, our current decision matrix is looking at it on a weekly basis. What the Virginia Department of Health's guidance is saying to look between two to four weeks for changes. So they are looking to not go beyond four weeks. They think that that is just. It's too uncertain to go beyond four weeks, but they're giving us a timeframe of between two and four. So our team is still having that

104discussion around where we stand with that. But that will come out with some of our information this Monday. Great. Thank you so much for the consideration. Appreciate it. Okay. Ms. Thornton, your hand is still up. Is that just by accident? Sorry, I forgot to put it down. Thank you, Madam Chair. Just checking. All right. So given that, I'm sorry, given that there are no more questions, as usual, you know, you can ask questions in between now and anytime that you need to ask questions. And I appreciate, again, I think I have to echo what we continue to say, but the task is, it's huge. And I, you know, I get to, I've had the opportunity to sit in on just about every single division transition team meeting and hear the questions that the principals have.

105And, you know, again, it's one of those things where it's tough because I think as educators, we like to have the answers. We're all, even though we're all about critical thinking, but I'm, you know, I've noticed as everyone has navigated this process together that it's like a constant. critical thinking process that doesn't end. And just when you have an answer to one question, you're figuring out that you have to work to answer others. So I appreciate the staff and I know we'll get through it. I know we will. So with that said, I'm gonna go ahead and move on. It's time for the chair's report. And so items that I would share, just so everyone knows, we sent a gift and flowers to Cindy at her home in recognition of her services chair for two

106glorious, wonderful years. And I will say, oh, and vice chair. Can't forget that. She also vice chaired for two years prior to that. So thank you so much, Cindy. I know everybody keeps saying it, but I think you were an amazing, steady rock needed at a very difficult time. So thank you, Cindy. And we hope you like your flowers and your gift. Just so everyone knows, updates on the identity project, the polls for both TC Williams and Matthew Morey are active on the website. So the public can go in, take the poll once for each school and choose to endorse the name already provided. Or the public can also select other to add a name that is not already listed. So that is moving along. Other events, just so you know, there's a community meeting

107coming up. Parker Gray Stadium Neighborhood Forum is happening on January 27th, and that will be from 6 to 7 p.m. It will happen via Zoom, and there is a link that can be found on the ACPS calendar. Finally, just some reminders about budget dates as we are in the throes of the budget process. January 28th, we will have our FY22 combined funds work session number two, obviously, if needed. February 4th, 2021, we'll have a public hearing on the 2022 combined funds budget. February 10th, we will have, so the 10th and the 16th, the 10th will be our first add-delete work session. And if we need an additional, there will be an add-delete work session on February 16th. Finally, our goal is to adopt the FY 2022 combined funds budget on February 18th. So a lot

108going on. As usual, if you have questions, definitely let me know. We are on to our superintendent. Do you have anything else to share, Dr. Hutchings? No, I've shared enough today. I can't even think of concurrent teaching. I can't think of anything else. Dr. Hutchings, I'm sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but we were going to give the renaming update. Oh, that's right. I'm sorry. Yep, you're right. Thank you. I do have one more thing to share. Thank you. I'm so glad that you stayed on, Ms. Burgos. I wanted to, thank you, Madam Chair, I wanted to provide an update on our identity project, because I do know there's been a lot of time and energy and effort put into this. We've had an extremely robust community engagement and consultation process. Thank you

109to the board for allowing us to go through this process. Thank you to our communications team and everybody else who was a part of this, because now we are. and phase two and that is us really identifying the new names for both T.C. Williams High School and Matthew Mori Elementary School. So a part of this second phase is to make sure that as we're selecting these new names, that it was really designed to ensure that we have our students, our staff members, our community members, our alumni, our families, as well as our community at large, that they have an opportunity to really be heard. And more importantly, we wanted to make sure that our students had a voice throughout this process, as well as our next generation of leaders and learners in our community. And

110to assist, of course, you all know this, but we had our students submit entries for. Our essay and poster campaign, and we were really excited about the fact that our kids were so excited and so engaged in this work. You know, I'm happy to share with you that we had 119 student entries representing 50 different name suggestions for T.C. Williams High School, and we had 29 different name suggestions for Matthew Morey. elementary school. And these suggestions, they've already been posted to our website for our community to consider. We've had community members as well as our students also add some additional suggestions. But our community suggestion poll is still open and it's going to remain open until January the 27th. So if you all know anybody out there that just has this bright idea and hey,

111we got a lot of names from just yesterday's events. I mean, some names might come out of that. But go online and post that. We really do encourage everybody to participate. And if you all can talk to your constituents out in the community, it will be greatly appreciated. To date, we have received 10,235 legitimate entries with 86 different name suggestions for T.C. Williams. 10,235. That's a whole lot. These are legitimate entries. Now, it's a lot other entries that came in, but these are legitimate entries that have come in. We've had 1,842 legitimate entries with 59 suggested names for Matthew Morey Elementary School. And our goal now is really to narrow down the names for the second poll. And that's to help us prioritize the nominations from our local community. We definitely want to make sure

112that we're making decisions. based on feedback from our community, not from people all over the world on what schools will be in our city of Alexandria. We really want to show priority to our local community, especially our students and our families. The second poll launches on February the 3rd and that's to get us closer to a name. So just please be on the lookout and let your voice be heard out there in our community. And that's all I had for The superintendent's update. And thank you, Ms. Burgos, for reminding me because you prepped me for that. And I apologize, I forgot. Thank you, Ms. Burgos. Thank you. So at this time, are there any board members that have announcements? Okay, so with that said, we need a motion to adjourn. Madam Chair, I move that

113we adjourn. Second. Okay, Ms. Anderson seconds Ms. Gentry's motion, and I will call for the vote. Megan Alderton, yes. Cindy Anderson? Yes. Ramey Gentry? Yes. Jacinta Green? Margaret Lorber? Yes. Veronica Nolan? Gosh, you'd think I could learn by now. Yes. That's okay. Michelle Reif? Yes. Christopher Suarez? Yes. And Heather Thornton? Yes. All right, so the vote is 9-0, and we are adjourned at 5.43 p.m.