001But Susan, I believe I'm supposed to say the time. The meeting's beginning right now at 5.07 p.m. And I need to read off the COVID warning or the message, right, Susan? Just give context to the virtual meeting. Yes, we need the date, time, and then you need to read that statement at the top of the agenda there. Okay, so get ready for my melodious voice. This is a doozy. It's going to be a long one. So it is February 22nd, 5.07 p.m., as I said. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic emergency, the February 22nd, 2021 meeting of the City Council School Board Subcommittee is being held electronically pursuant to Virginia Code Section 2.2-3708.2A3, the continuity of government ordinance adopted by the City Council on June 20th, 2020, or Section 4- 0.01 G in HB 29 and
002HB 30 enacted by the 2020 Virginia General Assembly, which is the Virginia Acts of Assembly. 1283 and 1289 to undertake essential business. All of the members of the board and staff are participating from remote locations through a video conference call on Zoom. This meeting is being held electronically unless the determination is made that it is safe enough to be held in person in the City Council Workroom at 301 King Street, Alexandria, Virginia. Electronic access will be provided in either event. This meeting can be accessed by the public via Zoom at the link that can be found on the website as well as other dial-in information. that has been provided. Thank you. So without further ado, could I get please someone to adopt the agenda for February 2020 Joint Subcommittee Meeting? I move. Second. Great. All
003right. So we're going to begin with the COVID-19 update. Who takes on that one? Who's got that agenda item? Should we start with Dr. Herring to give kind of an update or? Yeah, that'd be great. Dr. Herring, would you mind? Yes, good evening. Can you hear me? Yes. Good evening. Dr. Stephen Herron, Director of Alexandria Health Department. First of all, just some numbers, and that is we've had just over 10,000 cases in Alexandria. Unfortunately, we've had 107 deaths. We'll see a couple more deaths registered over the next couple of days. Those have not been recent deaths. We've heard of deaths that have occurred over the past several weeks that are just catching up in the data that will be reported since Saturday through tomorrow or Wednesday, and those numbers will be about six. So right
004now we're at 107 deaths and, again, just over 10,000 cases in Alexandria. Disproportionately affecting Alexandria is both in the cases, the hospitalizations, and in the deaths that are being encountered or being suffered. Alexandria has vaccinated, fully vaccinated 7,000 people, and 17,000 people have received one dose. of the two-dose series for somewhat over 24,000 people who have received some vaccination for the total number of doses administered. When we looked at different dashboards, you'll see different amounts because some of the dashboards are by what the health department is administering. Some are by what the residents of the person who is receiving it. So those numbers I just gave you are by the health district by residents. We have been really focusing our attention on vaccination efforts for. The 1A, the 1B, 1, 2, and 3, as well
005as the rest of 1B. And, of course, the 1B3 is where the K-12 teachers and the child care providers are. And I think we're doing really well at that when we look at the numbers that have an ACPS email address. It's somewhere close to 1,500 or just over 1,500. But there could be a number of different. ACPS employees who chose not to use their ACPS address. We're not allowed by HIPAA standards and privacy standards to say who they are or even like X number from a given school or X number from a different grade are provided. Well, we wouldn't have that sort of data, but we can say that we've provided vaccines to about 1,500 people who have used an ACPS email address. We'll continue to focus our efforts on the frontline essential workers and
006we're also really focusing outreach. to the census tracts that have the highest social vulnerability as defined by the Centers for Disease Control. And that involves poverty, English as a second language, 15 different social determinants of health. And the way that we do that is we open up a given pod to the residents who are eligible, whether they're age 65 and older or whether they have an underlying medical condition. We open it up to those people living in those census tracts. before we open it up more widely. There are other streams of vaccine that are coming in. One is the Federal Retail Pharmacy Program. We've heard recently that there's an additional pharmacy beyond CVS that will be offering this, and they should be offering this in the coming days. We're hoping that they will use our
007registration list. And then finally, we're hopeful that our FQHC will also be included in future streams. So right now, Virginia Department of Health receives about 105,000 vaccines. And with this federal retail pharmacy, it should be somewhat over 160,000 doses. How much that translates into Alexandria is to be determined. And finally, the last thing is that we're messaging people is when they get their vaccine, it's not a get out of jail free card. You have to continue to wear your mask, have to continue the social distancing. Those things are going to be absolutely critical until we get to a herd immunity where we can start relaxing some of those standards. I shared with Dr. Hutchings recently that Virginia Department of Health has drafted new guidance based off of Centers for Disease Control. updates to their school
008guidance. I provided input to that. That is now being discussed with Virginia Department of Education, and I'm not sure of when that guidance will be issued, and maybe Dr. Hutchings has more information about that as we roll through this meeting. But that's what I have. I know that also I should say that our team has worked really closely with ACPS in terms of meetings in terms of doing town halls and going through exercises as though somebody has a case in a school. The schools have sent us a lot of questions that we're working through and getting those answers back to them. So that's it. That's it for me, unless there's any specific questions. Anyone have any questions? All right. Thank you so much, Dr. Herring. Again, we are so fortunate as a community to have
009your leadership on this. So thank you so much for everything and all of your hard work. Yeah, and I do want to reiterate, it has been a whole community-wide, city-wide effort. Everything you're seeing is really because of so many different departments in the city pitching in to help us because we're not real big. And when you look at a pod, it actually has more people working in a pod than we have working at the health department. So, again, thanks to the school for your all's close collaboration. Thanks. Like I said earlier, I really did think it's the best of Alexandria coming together. We couldn't ask for, be more fortunate, especially during a time of crisis. Like if there's ever a time that you want the best to be coming out, it's during that time. So
010really grateful and thank you so much. Justin, Mr. Mayor, do you want to say something? So Mr. Mayor, this is unusual, but we can't hear you. Sorry. We have no problem hearing you. Can you hear me now? Yep. Okay. It was like everyone's dream there. I was muted. So, Diderian, can I ask one quick question? And it kind of relates to the coordination around reopening. I know I've heard from a number of... of parents and some educators as well in ACPS just about how we potentially deploy testing, whether it's through our curative contract or whatever, for folks returning to school buildings. Is that still something that we feel like should not be part of the reopening state? Or I guess, give me an idea of where we're at on that. Routine screening testing, I'm not
011recommending for a school reopening. It actually can let people's guards down because you can have the false negatives. And plus, the rapid antigen test that you get right there really isn't useful unless somebody's symptomatic. The PCR test takes a couple of days, even from Curative, which uses the PCR test. So we're still recommending to use the testing. when there are cases, when somebody's symptomatic, and when there's close contact. And one of the things that just came out from the Centers for Disease Control, the MMWR, was a study in Georgia where they looked at a school system, elementary school system, and there were nine clusters or nine outbreaks. And one of the things that they reported was that all nine outbreaks, all nine outbreaks involved not following the physical distancing. Five of those also included not
012using masks consistently or correctly. So there's a lot to be learned from a school that's been in session. So we can go back to the White House event that was in the Rose Garden where they were testing everybody that came in, and that turned into a super spreader event, known that people were close together, known that people were not wearing masks. So the way to present the spread is that social distancing and the masking. Yeah, you know, it's one of these things where it's the balance between kind of almost a performative reassurance versus what the public health data shows us and the science shows us. And I get kind of that balance, which is difficult, I know, throughout this. All right. Thank you, though, for that explanation. I appreciate that. Thank you so much, Dr.
013Herring. We actually have no public comments for this evening, so let's continue to move on. Could I get approval, please, of the January 25th meeting summary, which was attached? Move approval. Okay, great. John, we're good second. All right. Thank you. And then we will move forward with our next agenda item, which is the high school project. Well, okay. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Can I, can I step back again? So are we, are we going to get updates on kind of the, the coordinated support of reopening from, from both sides? Do we have updates on that and where we're at? because I know we had talked previously about I'll give a quick update yep that's a good call thanks um from from um so thanks Mayor Wilson uh and we are on target which I'm excited
014about so we're on we're on target uh with with our opening um in our in our process uh we since the last time we've met we have uh gotten information back from our staff uh specifically we um had our staff complete a form to share whether they were able to return or not able to return back to school. Our staff members who were unable to return were required to provide our human resources department with documentation to support their inability to return back into the school building so that we can put that into their personnel files just for our records so that we can make sure we're ensuring. that everybody who is able to return does return back to school. We had about 1,641 of our staff members who are able to return. 463 were unable
015to return due to health situations or things that fall under the ADA accommodations that falls under reasons why they're unable to return back to the work or back into our buildings. And then 255 staff members were unable to return due to child care. And this is related to the fact that, you know, all of our staff don't live in the city of Alexandria. And even some of those who live in the city of Alexandria, if their kids are only going back two days per week, it does bring some challenges for some of them, as well as with the coordination of all these other jurisdictions. Everybody has a hybrid approach, but they're different days, as you all know. throughout this region and that does impact some of our families, I'm sorry, some of our staff members
016and their families. We also had our staff provide us with information in regards to their vaccination data and as our Vice Chair Nolan mentioned earlier, we have to say hats off to the Alexandria Health Department. They have been doing a phenomenal job. Dr. Herring and his team, we've been working with him. very closely. I feel like me and Dr. Herring are like brothers at this point because we've been together since March. And I still love my brother. So that's a good thing. I still love you, Dr. Herring. You haven't gotten on my nerves yet. So just to give you some quick updates, you know, we are not... staff are not required to provide us with their vaccination information by law because this is not FDA, an FDA approved vaccination. However, we do have the right
017to ask, to ask them that. And we had about 554 employees who chose not to disclose their information in regards to their vaccination, which they have a right to do. We have 141 who are not taking the vaccination for whatever reason. We have 264 at the time of this actual form completion. And this was as of February the 9th. We had 264 waiting for their first dose appointment. We had 779 who had their first dose completed and they were waiting for their second appointment. And we had 598 who had their first completed and they were already set for their second appointment. And then we had 36 at the time who had completed their second dose. So our numbers are probably different now at this point because. And on February 9th, I didn't have my second
018dose, but now I do. So I am one week out, a little over a week now, almost finishing my second week since my second dose of the vaccine. That is where we stand right now with our information. We are working with our outsourcing company to provide classroom monitors in our classrooms where teachers are unable to return. And later today, families will be receiving their schedules for our families who are scheduled to return on March 2nd and March the 9th. Those schedules are going out today. And we're also going to be providing with them the most recent data on whether their teacher will be returning or not, because we are aware that some of our families, they want to have that information because some families might choose just to not send their kids back into the
019hybrid approach if their teacher is not going to be in the classroom, which I can totally understand that perspective. So we want to make sure we're providing our families with that. The other component before I conclude is in regards to transportation, which is still, you know, a huge endeavor for us. You know, there's always hurdles along the way in this world of COVID. And one of the hurdles that we have with transportation that we're overcoming is the fact that We are going to have to do double runs in order to accommodate all of our students to and from school. And that is because we have to still follow the CDC guidelines on our buses. So our buses, you know, they fit between eight and 10 kids on them now with these new CDC guidelines, which
020is a huge challenge that we're overcoming. But we are strongly asking our families and encouraging our families to. bring their children to school and pick their children up from school versus having them ride the bus for the remainder of this year, just so that we can try to eliminate these double runs. Implications for the double runs is that, yes, we're doing it, but it is going to have some of our students arriving at school. at a later time than the school day begins. So they'll be arriving late. Of course, it will be excused if they're arriving late. However, we really would like for our kids to be able to get to school on time. But with these CDC guidelines and the number of students who are eligible for transportation, it was just not feasible for
021us to be able to have our typical routes that we normally have during a typical school year, which as we all know, this is an atypical time. for us. But we're still working through that and we're encouraging our families. I did an announcement to our families out. We're also, you know, sharing that when we send their transportation information to their homes, strongly just encouraging them if they can, because many of our families we know can bring their kids to and from school, but if they are able, they do that. And that concludes my update. Any questions? John, looks like you have a question. Councilman Chapman, yep. So I think my question is actually for Dr. Herring, but I think Dr. Hutchins kind of brought this up. Dr. Herring, do we know how long, and I've
022heard numerous things on the news, so that's why I'm asking the question to you, how long the vaccines are? kind of good for? What does that mean? You know, is Dr. Hutchings and school staff going to have to, you know, make, you know, to keep consistency with school, make appointments for, you know, six, eight months down the line or something of that nature? Thanks for asking that. That's another one of those questions that we don't know for sure, quite frankly. And that's what we'll be monitoring and watching over the coming months and years even. How long does one have immunity to the level that you're not at risk of dying or not at risk of going to the hospital? Because that's the end point that we're looking at generally when we're talking about COVID-19. We
023know that there's at least several months because the Centers for Disease Control, the CDC has recommended that. states can adopt different guidance for quarantining after a person who's been fully vaccinated, two weeks after they've been vaccinated, if they've had a close exposure, what that might mean as to whether or not they need to quarantine. That hasn't yet been determined whether or not Virginia Department of Health is precisely following that guidance. And that's one of the things we're working through. But to answer your question, we're not sure if people will need a booster shot. in six months or a year. My guess is based off of other vaccines that we know of that we will not need a booster in six months, but that we'll have more information in the six to 12 month range as
024to whether or not a booster is required at that time. Thank you. A question I have for Dr. Hutchins. I'll tell you where we're dealing with this over at my employer. This is actually the subject of a big meeting I have to go to. During the course of time. I'll give you an example. For Fairfax, we've had school-age child care in most of our schools helping to handle child care issues. And they've taken up classrooms and been able to spread out. But as we start to have students coming back to the schools, we don't necessarily know what we're going to do with those just yet. Are you guys having a similar issue where other programs have probably operated in school sites and classrooms and space? have the possibility of kind of being pushed out, not
025because you don't want them, only because the space needs you have. And of course, the preference goes to school-age kids that are going to school. Yeah. Our team has been working directly with our community partners and they meet every week. They've been meeting every week since September. This has been a hot topic of discussion and we have been able to work around the different spaces for our community partners and also bring in the number of students that we currently have entering our buildings. If we begin to have discussions in the future around adding more of our families to the hybrid model, then that is going to bring some challenges for us. All of our work right now, and this is one of the reasons why we have not been able to to accept some of
026the requests for families to go from virtual to hybrid right now. Because everything from our transportation to our classroom setup to where classrooms are located are based on those December numbers of families saying they wanted the hybrid approach. Every time we make changes to that, that impacts, it could be impacting a potential classroom or another location in our school buildings, which then have an impact on the community partners. So right now we don't have that significant challenge. But I will tell you, we are going to have that challenge as we get further and further into this and we have more students returning back into our school buildings. I think that's going to be an issue for all school divisions across the country. I'm also concerned even next year when we begin to talk about the
027fall. If we still have those CDC guidelines, there's going to be a building capacity issue with more students coming back into our buildings right now because we don't have 100% of our kids, you know, even wanting to come back as of right now. It's not a building capacity issue, but the more families that start opting for it as we get, you know, this, you know, this curve gets flattened even more, I think we are going to begin to start having some building capacity challenges. So to that point, where are we with, I'm assuming working with the city, working with other folks that might have space to kind of figure out what those next steps might be, even if we don't have to pull the kind of trigger on them now? Yeah, and we are. We're
028working with the city right now. Honestly, we've been talking to a lot of city officials, our internal city folks, and they're having trouble finding Space Force 2, even throughout the city. I know that has been a challenge. So we're working through some alternative locations as we are going to need them in the future. So we're not waiting until we need them. And it is still being a challenge, though, identifying the actual spaces who also meet the different codes that you have to for any type of child care operations. We can't just put people anywhere. There are special codes and things that we do have to follow in order to, you know, to make those places accommodate us. But internally, we are having several discussions. Our school team with the city team. And they are still
029seeing some challenges with finding these alternative locations, but we're working through it. And to the maybe to the city manager, kind of how has that impacted our kind of conversations, discussions and possibly our budget or possible budget for the rest of the fiscal year? Well, as far as the budget, with a lot of COVID, we just basically make the right decision and then figure out where the money's coming. The good news is federal stimulus money will be, hopefully, the House will act Friday or Saturday, and the Senate, hopefully, soon after that. And so we may have additional monies coming down the pike to be able to use the schools in that federal stimulus money. is $150 billion. I think for public schools in the United States, in effect to deal with, if you look at
030the language that's in the bill, reentry costs, restart costs. And so I think there is, we kind of take a leap of faith when it comes to making financial commitments, knowing that we've got sources and we'll figure a way of making it work. And if we don't and have to dip into school monies or city monies to make it happen, we'll do it. Okay, thank you. Mayor Wilson, I believe you're on mute again. Sorry. Good thing I wave my hands a lot. Thank you. So can I follow on Councilman Chapman's questions? Because, you know, and this is something we've been talking about quite a bit. So again, maybe more to the manager or Ms. Collins, I want to understand. I mean, so we have things that are happening in our existing facilities. today. And in
031my mind, and this is just my mind, I think in a number of cases, some of these uses we're potentially talking about to help ACPS are higher priority than things that we have going on in some of these facilities. And I want to make sure we're... we're having that conversation if we need to displace things and figuring out what, figuring out now what we're going to do when we potentially need to displace programs and uses. I'm thinking of rec centers and other facilities that potentially to accommodate, maybe not in the spring here, but, you know, possibly, heck, possibly in the summer and then certainly in the fall. And so I just, I want to make sure that we're not in a place where In the fall, we're talking about, hey, let's figure out how to
032do this. We're doing that planning now. So I would think that from the RPA, RPCA perspective, that they've been having, you know, some discussions. I don't know if Kurt wants to jump back on here with ACPS. I think that they are, I mean, I think everyone. is engaged in the right way at looking at this situation. And no, it may not be solvable for the spring necessarily. I mean, for example, the Lee Center has been used for winter shelter, but we know that that's going to end pretty soon as temperatures start to go up. But will that be in time for ACPS? Not necessarily. And to Dr. Hutchins' point, we have to make sure that whatever the facility is, that we have it aligned or, that's the wrong word, decorated or created in a way
033that's conducive for students to go there. So I don't think this is something that people are missing. We've heard you. over the last several months asking the question. And so I think that we just need to continue to have those ongoing look-sees at what's available and not just city facilities, but maybe even talking to some of our business partners just to see if there's some capacity there as well. And I think, Kurt, wasn't there a recent... Go ahead. Yes, that's correct. Alicia, Dr. Hart's on here too, our facilities and operations, so she has some additional information, but we've both been asking some questions through different city officials to say, what do you have? What could be possibly used? And you're right, the spring isn't, there isn't any really good openings right now for those type
034of buildings, but we've also reached out to possible commercial. locations and buildings that could be used. And so we're still in those discussions. The greatest thing I can tell you, and Dr. Hart can elaborate a bit, is that we continue to have really good conversations with the appropriate people so that we can continue the discussions. I think that's the main point is we're still looking. Luckily, it looks like we can continue our childcare, school daycare in our facilities as they currently are. But as Dr. Hutchings alluded to, not sure how long that's going to be able to do. So in the meantime, we still continue to look. Correct, Dr. Hart? Can I jump back in here? I don't want to oversimplify what I'm sure is a terribly complex thing. We have been talking about this
035for a while and I'm hearing that we're having lots of conversations. I understand the conversations are happening. What I don't think I see is results of those conversations. I don't see walls being knocked down. I don't see accommodations occurring to make this stuff happen. I don't see plans that reflect that. I'm not trying to steer this. I don't want to. I don't know how this stuff works. You guys do. I'm no longer at a point where hearing that conversations are happening is an answer that is particularly attractive to me. So I want to understand how this is actually happening. And I want to understand what facilities we are looking at, what barriers there are that are in existence, and what we're doing to clear those barriers and what we can do from the policymaker perspective
036to try to help that happen. Because I'm not hearing. Mr. Mayor. It's not me. It's Veronica's running the meeting. Oh, I'm sorry. Absolutely. Go ahead. And I agree with the mayor. And I also don't want to kind of determine how staff does this, but would it be better possibly to give staff flexibility to do whatever they're doing, but kind of give them an end date that you want to kind of see something concrete? That way they worry about the barriers. They worry about how they get that done. And they then have a timeline that they need to kind of come back to this body or the school board or council with some something concrete. Because I agree with you. I think they're working. And I'm not going to doubt any of that work. But I
037also don't want to have them lay out all of the challenges and try to work that through with them. I think they can do that themselves. I just want to see and be able to hear when something's going to happen and what that looks like. And if I can just say, add one small point, staff haven't been involved in the virtual plus. So it's not like the rec centers are sitting there empty while, you know. You know, there are students that are showing up for, you know, some of these locations and they've been, RPC has been working with Kurt and his team. So, I mean, we're happy to go back and come up with, like you said, a concrete date to say, you know, this is what's happening X, Y, and Z. So we will
038just make sure we do that. Yeah, what I'd like to see is the quantification to the degree it's even somebody's best guess of what's needed. And then we can match that up with, okay, where might that fit regardless of what's there now? And then say, what are the barriers or what are the, what you have to give up in order for. the space to be able to be used or is the space just not because of life safety issues. It can be used as a rec center, but it can't in its current condition can't be really used for anything else. I think we need a specific list that we go through and see where things are based on what the schools think they need and where they need it. Yeah. And remember, it's not about
039after school. We can make the needed, you know, you can have those on site because after school is a little bit easier. It's that school day hours for children in school aged grades that we need space for to continue. And I'll again put it to Dr. Hart, but I can let you know. Just in plain language, we have asked if there are any other sites that could be used to house. We have about 260 students who have free child care through multiple partners through our Title I identification process. Luckily, with the great work of our facilities and operations, we are able to keep them on site. Boys and Girls Club is the only one that's off site. They have their own location. But for the rest of those, there's 260 children. We have those on
040site. But as Dr. Hutchings said, at some point it may get to where we've tipped the scales and we can't have all those children. We don't have space, even through the rec centers, like Deborah was saying. Also, we have a couple hundred other students through Campania, Alexandria Soccer, those that are using our facilities. So it's a balance game of trying to fit those children in and following all the guidelines. And so that's why we said to the city, through the representatives that Dr. Hart and I reached out to, we said, what do you got? Do you have anything available? And unfortunately, they responded that there's nothing available at this time through the city spaces that we could use. Just to let you know, that's the result that we've gotten. Well, so, and then maybe Mark,
041this is, I was going to say, this is back to us then, you know, if like. we don't have anything is not a good answer from us either. Like we got to figure out a way to make that happen. So again, I don't want to be in the middle of this. I don't think we should be in the middle of this. I just asked ACPS at this point, they have a request for space. It comes to me. Okay. So we can frame it right and make staff. clear. It's possible there are trade-offs that we may have to make as we go through space. The answer may be we can't and here are the reasons why. But without a formal process, I think we're all going to be lacking the information to understand why we are
042where we are. Yes. And what I'll do is we have all the information in regards to all the numbers and everything we've shared with staff. I'll be sure to send it directly to Mr. Jenks so he can see that information. But we have all that all laid out of what we need. And just to add to the other piece of this, Ms. Nolan, sorry about that. Just to add to the third piece of this, how is the communication happening with the private sector? Who's running that? Anybody? Hello? Is my thing working? Can you hear me? Yep, we heard your question. So who's the appropriate person to respond to that? I'm sorry, Mr. Taylor, I didn't hear you. Yeah, I'm sorry. So I know there was mention about ACPS reaching out to the private sector as
043well in terms of another option. How is that conversation going? Who's leading that? What's the timeframe on that as well? Yeah, so that's all within our community partners group. So that is consisting of city, schools, and our community partners are all working through that. That's a team, a community. They meet every Friday. No, don't quote me on a date. But that will come out of Kurt Huffman's team. He's kind of facilitating that discussion. And so, so can Kurt give us an update of how that's going with the private sector, I guess, un-city related, unrelated to the city. How that, those conversations, is he working through ADP or is he working through broker? Okay. Correct. Dr. Hart and I, Dr. Hart and I have reached out to the chamber and just see what's out there. Correct,
044Dr. Hart? I don't have the contact in front of me, but yes. Accurate, Kurt. Yeah, and not to kind of belabor the point, but I think, again, the concern is even if we're talking about something six to seven months from now, there's a runway on some of this stuff. And I think we want to... We want to make sure to the extent there's big investments required or things like that, or kind of transitional plans that need to occur to accommodate some of these changes. We want to allow sufficient time so that we're not, you know, we're not behind the eight ball. And I'm also, you know, mindful of the fact that we're going to be, you know, both sides, both schools and city are going to be benefiting from a significant amount of federal investment
045here coming our way. And if we need to prioritize that investment for some of these purposes, we need to know that. And that requires us identifying this. So thank you. Great. Thank you so much. Any other questions before we move on to the high school project? Councilman Chapman, Mayor Wilson? No? Okay, great. Thank you so much. So then Greg, do you mind sharing with us who is responsible for the high school project? topic of conversation. I know we have Dr. Hart and Erica Glick on here. Erica, Ms. Glick will be able to provide us with an update in regards to the high school project. Sure. Thank you, Dr. Hutchings. And good evening. So just a couple of updates on the high school project. The first being last week, last we spoke with you, we indicated
046that the school board was about to vote on the inclusion of affordable housing at the Minnie Howard campus. They did unanimously vote to exclude affordable housing from Minnie Howard, citing really the need to provide flexibility and not knowing what our enrollment will look like in the future. And just knowing land is that is that such a premium in the city of Alexandria as the primary. reasons for that. So then we then jumped right into developing our site-specific ed spec, which the school board is now reviewing and considering. And it also includes some of the other community partner co-located uses in that document as well. And the school board is set to approve that on March 4th. There will be a work session on March 3rd as well to discuss that in greater detail. And then
047just letting you know that as we move into developing the concepts kind of at a rapid pace, there will be a lot of community webinars coming up in March and April. And specifically, the next one will be on March 8th. So that's pretty much all I have on the high school project. Councilman Chapman? Thank you Ms. Gulick for that. With some of the other co-location options, will there be kind of possible costs or cost ranges involved? I know I had heard talk about possible aquatics uses at Minnie Howard and so I know because that will have a city portion and I'm assuming we'll probably run that. I'm assuming there's the cost attached to that and maybe has the city done some cost estimates on that as well? Thank you, Councilman Chapman. So we do have
048some early cost estimates as a part of the educational specification. So and specifically in the school board's last presentation from last week, we went through kind of those big ticket items. We basically expressed that based on the school board's funds, we can't afford the pool. or the underground parking by ourselves. And so those are strong things that we want to include for collaboration. We will need additional funds as part of that. But I would also say that the specific co-located designated, for example, health department or DCHS uses that are currently included, there is a separate line item for that estimating those costs as well. So those are things we are looking at now to make sure the school board makes. an informed decision on the aspect. Mr. Mayor, Mr. Chair, this by share on Wednesday
049night, City Council will be talking about the CIP. We're leading off with a discussion of debt service and our debt ratios and how much they increased. And then basically I'll be telling council you we've got the certain rails. This is the moment how much money we've got and we really shouldn't plan on substantially expanding that. So I just want to. put that warning label on this discussion because it's going to be really tough for us to pay for already the high school project at Minnie Howard and everything else we've got in the CAP, let alone add more to it. Any other questions? Thank you for that, Mr. Drinks. Any other questions or follow-up with regards to the high school project? Okay. Then we're going to move on to the next agenda item, which is the
050facility assessment and CIP planning. Good afternoon. It's Catherine Caraway with the Department of Planning and Zoning. I just wanted to make sure you all were aware that we're having a community meeting on March 1st for the Joint Facilities Master Plan. That's from 6 to 7 p.m. It's a virtual meeting. And essentially, we're going to be updating folks on where we are right now. We'll be providing... a recap of our needs assessment and our planning framework that we've already discussed with the community, but we'll also be introducing roadmap themes and giving folks an idea of the direction in which we're going. We anticipate having one or two more online feedback opportunities after the meeting and then Fingers crossed. We have draft text to provide the community by the end of March. So that is that's generally
051the update that I have for you. If you have any questions, happy to Erica. Do you have anything to add? No, she may have hopped off. So I'm happy to answer any questions. Great. Thank you so much, Miss Carraway. Councilman Chapman. Yes, ma'am. Ms. Carraway, in terms of all the needs assessment, the things that you were looking at and all the needs assessment, was there any discussion of that area behind, I think I mentioned this to one of the school board members, the area behind Hammond? Yes. Sometimes known as- Yes. Yes. Yeah. Lower Hammond. All right. Lower Hammond. I'll work on that. Yeah, we did. We did look at that site and we do have options that will be presenting to the community. Okay, great. Great to hear. Great. Thank you. Okay. Any other questions?
052Thank you so much, Ms. Carey. Really appreciate it. Moving along, then we next have on the agenda item a budget update. Sorry, I got one more. Oh, yeah, absolutely. This might be for Dr. Hutchins. How long do you see these needs assessments being good for? I know school board has been in the far back in the past, but as we do these needs assessments, how long do we think those are good for? I know things continue to age and probably break down and then get fixed. Just putting a pin in it so future councils and school boards can kind of think about when they might need to do something like this again. Back to her. Thank you. So if we're speaking, Councilman Chapman, specifically to facility condition assessments, what our team is planning to do
053is either on every three to five year basis, we are actually in the process right now of finalizing a procurement for our current comprehensive facility condition assessments for all of our facilities. To use that as an additional baseline, in 2019, we completed targeted facilities assessments, but now we're moving in the direction of the comprehensive assessments. And our goal is once those are completed, completed to help that be our baseline to then every three to five years complete another round of facilities assessments just to make sure that we are continuing to re inform our CIP, you know, request and planning from a school's perspective. Okay, perfect. Thank you very much for that. Yes. I just wanted to quickly add to what Dr. Hart said. So obviously the ACPS facility condition assessments, the targeted ones are included
054in the facility master plan needs assessment. But this is anticipated to be very much a living document, living process. So all of the information that comes from the city or ACPS on an annual basis will get implemented into this process, into this framework. So that will update the needs assessment on a holistic level. That answers your question. It does. Thank you. Great. Great. Thank you. Any other questions or comments? Great. All right. So next we have on the agenda a budget update. Dr. Hutchins, do you want to let us know who's taking care of that agenda item? Yes. So Mr. Easley, our director of budget, is going to provide an update. So much, Dr. Hutchings. Good evening, everyone. On behalf of ACPS, I would like to thank the city and the city manager's budget for
055fully supporting the ACPS budget. As of last Thursday, the school board approved the budget with a couple of adjustments for the superintendent that acknowledged an additional $2.1 million of state revenue, of which we included in our adjustments to add a senior buyer, a 1% incentive bonus for those employees that are eligible to receive that, as well as additional funding that we were asking to support some MRAs for employee groups that were highlighted in the second phase of our compensation study. Again, I would like to thank the city for fully supporting the budget in the city appropriation. And for next steps, we are actually looking at and we're evaluating a couple of state budget amendments, which could be in our favor as well. There's a house bill that is proposed to increase school salaries by 5%.
056or to ensure that our salaries are increased by 5%. And there's a Senate budget adjustment that is looking for a 3% adjustment. If it's the Senate bill, we feel like... the inclusion of our step increase and the 1% bonus, we will in fact meet the state's requirement or the Senate bill requirement for a 3% salary increase for school employees. If it's the house budget amendment and we're hoping it's somewhere in between that, there could potentially be additional state revenue to help us with that. And likewise, that could potentially be an additional ask of the city, but we're evaluating those adjustments or those amendments that are being set forward. And hopefully we'll know soon where the state plans to land in terms of the additional funding that the state is going to offer up for school
057employee increases. Next phase, there is a next, there is a joint work session that we plan to discuss further on our budget developments on next Thursday, March 4th. So hopefully by then we will have more information to come and I will open it up for discussion or for questions. Madam Vice Chair. Yes, Mayor Wilson. Thank you. First of all, thank you for the overview, Mr. Easley, and the information about the implications of the various pay increase options that are pending in Richmond. I did send a letter today on behalf of the city with a bunch of input on the budget process to the leadership and the conferees from both the House and the Senate. and noted that depending on which alternative they go with, there could be additional budget implications for us and requesting that
058if they go with the higher option, which obviously we want to see our educators get as much money as possible, that they remove the local match requirement or figure out a way to come up with additional resources to support us at the local level so that we're not on the hook for such a huge share of that. I think particularly in Northern Virginia and other jurisdictions that don't benefit as much from the LCI, this is a big hit. So, you know, I'm hopeful they'll... they will be favorable on those kinds of requests. So we'll see where they end up. One thing I wanna put out there and we're gonna be talking tomorrow night at our council meeting about how we look ahead to the next round of federal funding that's coming and how we want
059to prioritize that. I'm sure we'll have a good discussion on that. It seems to me that, cause I know you guys are getting a fair amount as well in the pending legislation. And it seems to me that we should figure out how we work pretty closely together about how we're allocating those funds on both sides and have some real coordination. Because I think there's an opportunity to coordinate how we expend those funds in a way that could be even more beneficial than us all going it alone. So maybe this is a conversation for the next agenda next month. Particularly then we'll probably know the exact numbers, but I think it would be really useful for us to all be on the same page. As well as the fact we provided during the last phase some
060of our CARES Act money for you guys, obviously a very limited amount. And I think we'll have similar opportunities on both sides to work together and help support the important investments that we need to make in this environment. So I think it's just a good opportunity for us to all coordinate as we go forward. I know that's happening on a staff level. I think as we use this as a forum or the joint work session that we have. to make sure we get public visibility on all that coordination, I think that would be good. So just throwing that out there and maybe put that on the agenda for next month. So. Sounds good. Any other questions or thoughts? Okay. Thank you so much, Mr. Easley. And I just want to also echo Mr. Easley's gratitude
061just on behalf of the board. Like we could not be more fortunate to have such a strong partnership with the city and that how supportive you all have been, especially I know Mr. Jinks that. This has been exceptionally challenging fiscal year, not only in projection, but also in terms of revenue that was coming in and just how hard this area got hit. And so to have, you know, Mr. Jenks, you and your team support as well as Mayor Wilson and also councilmen, council members, excuse me. It's phenomenal just to have your support in terms of education and in particularly a tough environment. So we really, really appreciated the support. I have to say, I appreciate that very much. It was a tough year, but with good hard work of a lot of folks, we were
062able to come up with a reasonable budget. And we might call it the trifecta, 100% funding of the superintendent's budget, the school board's budget, and the CIP. So we're in a good place and ought to savor it because I'm not sure we'll be able to do that every year. Yeah, no understood and we just couldn't be more grateful for like the partnership and support we're exceptionally lucky to have your leadership overseeing all of that and well as your team focused on it as well as I know the mayor and Councilman Chapman and your colleagues are also exceptionally supportive of the school so we really benefit from that partnership so it's really appreciated sincerely. Thank you. Mr. Easley, did you want to say something? I will be remiss if I didn't actually point out Morgan, because
063Morgan has worked with us very closely. So I appreciate your work and your collaboration with us. Thanks. Thank you, Mr. Rapp. Much appreciated. Thank you, Mr. Easley. And thanks, obviously, also to you, Mr. Turner, and your team's work as well on our end. Much appreciated. And thank you, Robert, as well. Great. Thank you. All right. Dr. Hutchings, last but not least, we have our final agenda item is the Amazon Virginia Tech Partnership. So who would you like to spearhead that conversation? Yes, Mr. Huffman is going to give us a quick update on the Amazon Virginia Tech Partnership. Thank you so much, Mr. Hoffman. Yes, just a quick update. With good, perfect guidance from Dr. Hutchings and collaborative discussions, our next steps are going to be to get together a group of leadership from Virginia Tech,
064Virginia University, Amazon, Northern Virginia Community College. Who am I forgetting? I hope I'm not forgetting anybody, but a group of these leaders. And we're going to talk through just... I'm sorry, can you hear me? Science Foundation. I'm sorry. Yes, NSF. Thank you. We're going to talk together just in general about this STEM ecosystem, this pipeline of starting the progression through the grade levels and looking at where they believe that they can provide support and collaboration for our school system. We have a meeting with Virginia Tech next Tuesday. John Porter and I are starting those discussions with David Baker from Virginia Tech because COVID and all the things that have been going on have just put a little bit of delay in this. And now we're getting back into it. And we're going to say yes.
065Here we go. Let's talk about what we've done so far, where we want to go, and then bring in the other leadership and go from there in terms of the timeline through the rest of the school year of how do we really start to formulate a plan that can really address some of the needs that we're identifying for that STEM pipeline and that progression, that STEM progression throughout the grade levels. Thank you so much, Mr. Huffman. Mayor Wilson, do you have... A question. It looked like you were preparing to ask. No, you're good. No, no, no. Councilman Chapman. So I think I have a not really a question of Kurt, but something Dr. Hutchins might want to consider as well. And Kurt, too, as part of this, this is something that's kind of bubbling up
066at the regional level. One of the things that. A number of us have not seen with some of the STEM activity and energy that's happening in Northern Virginia is any real. action or partnership or collaboration with any of the local or regional HBCUs. And so seeing how we can get one or some of them at the table as well. There's a number of elected officials that are going to probably put together a small task force and approach the governor about trying to get some resources to get some of these HBCUs involved in. all of the energy that we have going on up here. So I would consider, I would, it's an outside thought. I'll admit, I don't want Kurt to kind of shift things around and try to do this, but if at all possible
067in the future, there'd be maybe a possible avenue for an HBCU or some type of collaboration there. Just kind of putting that out there. Some of that collaboration with Virginia State is one that we have started to collaborate with. We also, I've been working with Howard University as well. So we do have partnerships that are being established with both of them. It's more difficult with the Howard University being a private institution. And just, I mean, so many logistics in regards to that and funding that they're not eligible for that state institutions are. But our work with Virginia State, the Trojans has been, It's been pretty good and solid, and we're hoping to be able to make that even broader than where we are. Right now, we're focused on teaching our teaching pipeline and not necessarily
068STEM in the work with Amplifon, but this is one of the reasons why we wanted to bring the National Science Foundation into this conversation because they're right here in Alexandria. There really needs to be a push to have more black and brown scientists out here in this world, and why not use the Alexandria City Public Schools that has predominantly black and brown children in this city where Virginia Tech and Amazon are located, they should be tapping into ACPS to have that pipeline of their next generation of scientists and STEM professionals. So you're spot on, Mr. Chapman. No, I appreciate that. And very good to hear that you're developing those partnerships. I'll probably reach out to you offline to kind of talk more about. what I was talking about in terms of elected officials kind of
069trying to engage some HBCUs in the area. So it's really good to hear that you guys are developing that. So thank you. Great. Thanks so much for the question, Councilman Chapman. Any other questions or thoughts about or feedback for the Amazon Virginia Tech Partnership? Okay. Then we have the illustrious last agenda item is called Other, apparently. So is there any other final thoughts, questions? feedback people want to share before we conclude the meeting? Yes, Mayor Wilson. Just a quick question. What's the latest on MacArthur timing? Will we be underway soon? The McArthur, Douglas McArthur is on schedule. We sent something to their community last week too. We're working through some of the logistics for getting the demolition of the building, but that's not having an impact on the overall timeline of our overall project. And
070we wanted to make that clear with the community in their newsletter last week. I know the principal also met with the parent body last week. Friday or was it the week before? Maybe that was two weeks ago. It wasn't last Friday. It was the week before that when we met. But we are on target with that. Dr. Hart, I don't know if there's anything you want to add. You're spot on with that update, Dr. Hutchings. We do anticipate actually having contractors on site mobilized, hopefully within the next few days, so more to come on that. And I'll be sure, of course, that Ms. Gulick's office provides an update if anything does delay those plans. But right now we are definitely on schedule. Okay. All right. So demolition soonish is what it sounds like. Yes, sir.
071Okay. All right. John will keep me updated. He's closer to there, so he'll let me know. I run by it every day, if you believe that. Run? Like run or drive? I drive up to it and then run around. Uh-huh. All right. I'll come meet you there. We want to run. I'm happy to help. I'm okay. I'm okay. He's on top of a hill, and he just dropped off at the top of the hill and runs home. Wow. Even Mark's getting in on this. Jeez. Come on. Hey, Councilman Chapman, now I owe you a workout. Remember you said- Oh, gosh. Are you just going to bring that up in the meeting, huh? Is that what we're going to do? We're going to do that? Okay, I see. Veronica, you got anything to say? Can we
072add that to the agenda next month? I think we need to follow up on that. I heart you, John. That's all I got to say. All right, with that, let's give everyone back their evening. Thank you so much. Do I have any, who can- What is it? At the meeting. I need any day. Movie adjourned. There we go. All right. Perfect. Great. Everyone, thank you so much again for all the hard work and efforts, especially during such a trying time. I appreciate it. Thanks so much, everyone. Have a good evening.