ACPS School Board Meeting - 10.15.2020 - 5 PM

001Welcome to our pre-show for the Amherst County Public Schools School Board meeting. We would like to share with you some pertinent information about your child's education. Hello. Today I'd like to share with you how we as parents can help our child or children succeed in Canvas. In this new age of virtual learning, we have many questions. And there are a few things that we can do to help our children stay on top of their learning. The first thing that we can do as parents is to familiarize ourselves with the Canvas Navigation Dashboard. Here we have a dashboard for summer school. And on the left, you'll see your account is here, dashboard, the different courses, which this class has five different courses. And your child will have different courses depending on what grade they are in,

002what school they are in. It will depend on the number of courses that you see here. Then we have the calendar and you can link your assignments to the calendar, which is great. Your inbox for communicating with teachers or students, studio, commons and a help tab. So once you familiarize yourself with these buttons here. You will see the actual courses in the middle, and then your to-do list is on the right-hand side. The to-do list is wonderful for helping your child to pace themselves. This way, they won't forget, oh, no, I forgot to do such and such assignment. On the right-hand side, it will tell you every assignment that they need to do, and typically, there will be a due date. These have no due date because, again, this is summer school, but there will

003be a due date that will also populate into their calendar. So help them to pace themselves. Once you are within a module, we're going to visit Miss Howell's module here. And I'm going to go to the student view so you can see what it would look like from your child's viewpoint. So they will have some tabs on the left. It will be modules, grades, and announcements. So in terms of pacing, when your child is within the module, they have to start at the very beginning. It will not make sense for them to jump around, and the modules may not allow them to jump around. So they need to start at the very first one that it will allow them to click on. And they will read through the module. If there are videos, they will

004watch the videos. If there are questions or assignments, they will do those. And then there will be a next button where they can move on to the next module. And that will go all the way through the modules. So it is paced appropriately. Ms. Howell has hers paced per week where the student can go in and get their week's worth of assignments done. As with any course, encourage them not to procrastinate. So follow that to-do list that was out on the home page and follow the modules as appropriate. The next thing we can do to help our children is to use the tools that Canvas offers. Canvas does a great job of helping us Understand the content. We know, especially for young children, it's a lot to take in, a lot of reading that they

005need to do. And it's hard to sit still and look at a screen for a long time. So one that I'd like to show you is the immersive reader. There is another video that goes into more detail about the immersive reader, but it is very simple. I just want to point it out. It's this little play button right here on the left hand side. So let's say I am back into my module on intro. integers, I can push play and it will read it aloud to me. You may not be able to hear it on the video, but if you cannot hear that you can see the highlighting and I can hear it clearly on my end. There is a voice reading it and there are a lot of different things you can do there.

006So if you're interested in that check out the video on the immersive reader. So take advantage of that especially for your young students so they don't feel overwhelmed. The next thing I would suggest is don't be afraid to reach out for help. Your child's teacher is there to communicate with you and they are just a simple email away. So you can go to your inbox and you can communicate with them that way or you can click down here on the help tab. And it says, ask your instructor a question. So you could email your instructor right from the help tab. So please don't be afraid to help out or to reach out and ask your child's teacher any questions or any concerns that you have. The next thing I would suggest is to keep an

007eye on your child's progress by viewing their grades regularly. So when you click on the grades button. this, I'm as a test student, so I don't have any specific grades, but it will total it here on the right hand side. It will say 93% or whatever the grade is. And it will also show all of the assignments that I have taken, quizzes, tests, things like that, and what score I got. So you can go in. This will also populate to PowerSchool. So of course, we as parents know we want to be checking PowerSchool on a regular basis to see how our child is doing but you can also go in right here and check the grades. And then finally, do your best to give your child a quiet space to work that is free from

008distractions. I know that can be hard sometimes if there are younger children in the house or mom and dad are at home working, but as best you can to set up a space for them where they can focus and succeed. I hope these tips are helpful for you as parents to be involved in your child's learning and to help them be the best student they can be. Gentlemen, the hour has arrived for us to begin our school board meeting. Good afternoon and welcome to everyone. At this time, we would ask that we would observe a moment of silence, please. Let us now stand for the Pledge of Allegiance. Pledge of Allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty

009and justice for all. Thank you so much for that. At this time, board members, I would ask for approval of the agenda if there are not any other additions or subtractions. I make a motion that we approve the agenda. Thank you, Ms. Thompson. Do I have a second? Second. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? We do now have an agenda for tonight. At this time, I will turn it over to our superintendent for some recognitions. Thank you, Madam Chair. I come tonight to offer... some long overdue recognition and thanks to several organizations that do a lot to support our students and to support our school system, especially in these trying times since March. Some of these organizations have really stepped up and helped our community. So I would like to bring some of them up

010tonight. talk to you a little bit about what they've done for us. So Ms. Steckley, so this is Robin Steckley, and she is the Director of Resource Development at United Way. Most recently, they donated several thousand, 2,000 copper-infused masks to our staff, so we were able to distribute some more masks out to our staff. But I think it's also important to note what they've been doing for a long time for us. And they are currently a financial supporter. of the power scholars program so as you as you're aware our summer program at madison heights and central elementary school is run is the power scholars program and that comes with a price tag and the united way is a very willing contributor to that and so that's a very important program for us and they're also

011the the educational the smart beginnings is the educational arm of the united way If you did not know that, Smart Beginnings, they deal with our pre-K students and how important it is for our pre-K students to have the appropriate instruction and development to get them started on the right foot. So the United Way is doing a lot for Amherst County, and I just want to formally thank you guys for the work that you do and give you a small token of our appreciation. Would you like to say anything? First of all, I'll say thank you for the support that you give to the United Way each year. We truly appreciate it. We served about 60,000 people in Central Virginia last year, and we know that, as I'm sure many of you already know, about 42%

012of the people in our community are in what's called the ALICE category, asset-limited, asset-constrained, ALICE, asset-limited, income-constrained, employed. And so that's about one in every three people. And sometimes, you know, we don't know who those people are. And the interesting thing is I was in one of the banks here two years ago doing a presentation, and I talked about the Power Scholars program, and a lady who was a teller there came up to me afterwards, and she said, my son was in that program last year, and he really excelled. It was phenomenal for him. And so, you know, I was standing there doing my job, and I didn't realize that I was talking to one of... those people who have been served by one of the programs that many of you in our community support.

013So thank you very much for the support that you give. I want to share one little personal thing with you. On September 29th, I became a U.S. citizen, and tonight was the first time that I pledged allegiance to the flag as a U.S. citizen. So that was really cool. It was very moving for me. Thank you, Ms. Steckley. Next, we'd like to ask Ms. Beth Campbell to join me. Many of you in this community are familiar with Ms. Campbell as she was one of you at one point, one of us at one point. But what she does, and you guys are well aware of this, is she helps run Amherst Cares. And Amherst Cares is a nonprofit organization that specifically helps our students and the young people in Amherst County that experience food scarcity. And

014so I want to talk a little bit about, so specifically what we wanted them to come and say thank you for is that last year in March when all of our students went home, we needed to continue to provide food to those students, especially over the weekend like the Amherst Care Program does during the school year. And we got all of that up and running, but we also needed to transport the food to these these uh homes and so we hired our transportation folks to drive vans around with boxes of food and that comes with a cost as well and the scandal wrote a couple of grants and got some donations and she donated fourteen thousand dollars to amherst county schools to to reimburse the transportation department for delivering the food that you had accumulated

015and were distributing to students. So first, we thank you for that. Second, I'd like to give you a couple of numbers regarding what Amherst Cares has done. So when COVID hit and we started doing the food distribution from April to June. We believe there are 7,000 plus bags of food went home for weekend food delivery. And now we've started again since school has started. And so food goes to our schools, our elementary schools on Thursday. So students that leave can take food home with them. Our secondary students get their food on Wednesday and Thursday. And then we send. vans out on Friday to the students that are ARA. And that's about 500 bags a week. And so obviously, as Ms. Steckley said, there are a lot of folks that need our help. And Ms. Gamble

016and her crew do a magnificent job of helping our folks. Because if our students aren't fed, they have a hard time worrying about things like learning. And so that's so important. And so on behalf of Amherst County Public Schools, I want to thank you and Amherst Bears for their help. Thank you. This is not a one-person show, I guarantee you that. We have about 40 volunteers usually during the week. And without the cooperation and collaboration with the school system, Dr. Arnold and his family come and pack the bags on Wednesday night. Dr. Wells makes sure that everything's okay on Friday. So it's a good collaborative effort by everybody. and I think it benefits our students. Thank you so much for this. In the last group, they're not here to be recognized personally, but we do

017want to mention this has an education foundation. They raise money to give that primarily to our staff, and they provide grants to our teachers if they want to do a project that might be outside of what they would normally do. school year and so they've provided that year after year but what they've done this year is they provided five thousand dollars in extra mini grants to deal with covid related activities and correct me if i'm wrong dr wells they are Working on those this week, correct? Next week they'll award them. We should award next week. We have 16 applicants from teachers, and they'll little that down. $6,030 worth of grants were requested. We have $5,000 to apply to push out, so we'll have to figure out who's getting what tomorrow, but then that'll go out

018next week to our teachers. And they always support our staff through meals. delivery on certain days and they did that during our four-week teacher work week month there in August. So I want to thank the Education Foundation for their continued support and we'll make sure when we see them next we'll provide them with the same thing. So thank you very much. Thank you, Dr. Arnold. And we'd like to, the word thank you is too small for the United Way and for Amherst Cares. So we want to thank you, ladies and gentlemen, for all the great things you're doing. Ms. Gamble and I go back a minute. What a wonderful initiative she had some years ago and has faithfully carried it out. So thank you so much. The United Way has been around for a minute.

019I had not met Ms. Stickler, but it's good to see you and good to meet you. This goes along with our motto here in the county, it takes a village, once again, to raise a family. And so, ladies and gentlemen, we thank you. The Honorable Judge, it's good to have you here as well. I see him back there somewhere behind somebody. Thank you, sir. Thank you so much. Let us give another hand for this great benevolence that we have here. At this time, we will move on to 3.01 for our public comments concerning school matters at this time. If there's anyone who would like to speak to the school board, we ask that you would come now and state your name and address for the record. My name is Ona McKenna. I live at 146

020East Bell Drive, Madison Heights. Good evening to everyone, including those like me who raised a child here in Amherst County. I know that the school board is required to pass anti-discrimination policy for transgender students and employees, and I'm here to help. I am and I'm here to represent persons that many of you may have never noticed in our community. I am a transgender person, specifically a transgender woman. Maybe you've seen me in the grocery store or in Walmart or behind the wheels of a school bus. I lived most of my life as a biological male, but my soul told me all my life that I am female. So five years ago, I made the necessary transition to living as the woman I was meant to be. With God's help and the support of friends, I

021have endured two painful surgeries to align my body with my soul. With God's help and with the support of friends, I have endured the laughing and the gossiping from children and adults that come from making this change here where I work and in the community where you and I live. And I have lost a job because of who I am. I have been tolerated or ignored by most of those who do not support my changes. But I have not had to endure the relentless harassment and cruelty and the stigmatizing treatment experienced by school-age transgender children. You need to know that transgender children attempt suicide at a rate 41% higher than the population as a whole. But here in our community, I have been embraced by many who understand that these changes on the outside do

022not affect who I am on the inside. I'm not stylish or trendy, but I am who I am. This is not something you do expecting it to be fine. Because I know how it is to be treated differently, I do not want any student or any person to be treated differently because they do not appear to be what others consider normal. In the document entitled, Non-Discrimination Being Considered by the Board, I fully support gender identity being included as a protected class. And I fully support the protections that document provides against discrimination and harassment. In the document entitled, Equal Education Opportunities Non-Discrimination Being Considered by the Board, I fully support the following paragraph. No student on the basis of sex or gender shall be denied equal access to programs, activities, services, or benefits, or be limited

023in the exercise of any amount, privilege, or advantage, or be denied equal access to educational and extracurricular programs and activities. This paragraph has been stricken from that document and it must be reinstated. Because just as amendments were added to the United States Constitution to specify freedoms and rights, in this policy and in this document, rights must be specified to protect students from being stigmatized by schools' efforts to avoid controversy. Many of you I haven't met, but now we have met. And by our meeting, the Amherst community we love will grow. Because transgender persons are here living, learning, working, and contributing to our community. I'm asking you to allow all citizens to fully and equally participate in everything our community offers to each of us, especially in the schools. Thank you, and as this policy develops,

024I'll be back. Have a good evening. Are there any others in the audience that would like to make a public comment to the board at this time? Seeing none, I have a letter that was sent to me to be read. It says, please, I'm going to pull my mask down, but I think I'm far enough away from everybody. It says, please read to the school board during the meeting tomorrow night. Dear Amherst County School Board, I'm writing with concerns on how the 2021 school year is going. I realize the school system is doing the best they can with everything that's happened this year. However, it is not working. I have an elementary student that goes four days a week and in middle school going two days a week and working from home three days out

025of the week. My middle school student and I are struggling on and off days from school. The internet in my house is shoddy and doesn't work great all the time. Therefore, he doesn't have internet access. So he downloads his work onto his laptop with the help from someone at school. On the days he's off and goes to open it, there's nothing there because it didn't download properly. Or if there is some, it requires internet access and that he doesn't have. My elementary student has hybrid at school for three hours a day and four days a week with no teacher there to help him, only the aides. He's told to get on his laptop and go to learning websites. Well, in looking through his laptop, he has been going to gaming websites instead to play kid

026games, not a learning game at all. This was on multiple days every week since school had started. When I called to find out how this was happening, they could not give me an answer except to say that there are no teachers to teach them, only six aides to sit and watch them use computers. There is absolutely no teaching happening during hybrid learning, and I was even told that I could pick my student up from school at any time if I wished to do so. Your hybrid plan is not working either. I have grandchildren that are all virtual that have emailed teachers and get no reply until the next day and sometimes that's too late considering the work is due by 11.59 p.m. on the nights they have emailed teachers. They've also emailed teachers asking for

027a Google Meet with no reply or having to wait until the whole class is on Google Meet. How is this acceptable? It's not. How can our students learn in this way? They can't. I realize this is new to everyone, but school has been in session for over a month and you all say the teachers have been trained to handle this. So why are there these problems? Not all students learn the same. Each student is different and has a different way of learning and comprehending things. They need their teachers to be face to face. My question to the school board is this. How will you fix this problem before our students start failing due to the lack of help for students and parents? Thank you, Jennifer Moore. If there are no other public comments, I will

028close the public comment session at this time. Okay, seeing none, let us go into action. Item number four. Who is that? Ms. Crouch. All right. Madam Chair, members of the board, you have at your place a resolution for additional funding for the 2021 school year. It includes the CARES Act that the Board of Supervisors provided us of $450,000. In addition, we received CARES Funds II, which is a new grant, in the amount of $699,038. Also last year we applied and received a grant for additional school buses. If we turned in four we received $80,000 which provided us enough money with an additional $20,000 to purchase the fifth bus and we were able to do so. I will be glad to entertain any questions. We ask that you approve this resolution so that we can submit

029it to the Board of Supervisors for their approval. Board members, would you have any questions for Ms. Clark at this time? Seeing no questions or no discussion, we'd ask for approval of this supplemental appropriation. Madam Chair, I make a motion this resolution be approved as presented. Board recognizes Mr. Clark. Do we have a second? I'll second. Okay. We have a second, Ms. Wright. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Thank you so much, Ms. Crouch. We now have your supplement appropriation. Thank you. Let us move on to 4.02. We have some revisions to some policies. Madam Chair, this is on the board. I have for you policy KQ. This was presented to you last month as a first read. And KQ is commercial promotional corporate sponsorships and partnerships. And we'd like to consider that for approval

030this evening. Has the board had time to review these policies as mentioned? Are there any discussion or questions for Dr. Wells? Seeing no questions or discussion, I ask for a move of approval. I'll make a motion that we approve policy KQ. Board recognizes Ms. Thompson. Do we have a second? Second. And that was Mr. Grimes. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Thank you so much, Dr. Wells. Moving on to 6.01, administrative services. Go back to 5, consent agenda. Oh, 5? Yeah. I don't know why I want to skip that every time. We do have the consent agenda in front of us. We have the approval of our minutes and the superintendent's personnel actions. Do we have a vote of approval for 5.01 and 2? Madam Chair, make a motion that the consent agenda be approved.

031Mr. Griser, do we have a second? Second. All in favor? Aye. And opposed? Thank you so much. I'm going to put my glasses on. I'm used to that screen. 6.01 now, administrative services. Madam Chair, relation with the board, I'll start with 6.01, administrative services. And where we are right now, the water chillers have been installed. So each school has their water chillers involved. And at your place, you'll see a picture of one of those, an example of one of those chillers that we have as the bottle filler. So what we've done is, because we didn't want students drinking out of water fountains, we kind of plugged the water fountain part of that. But we did have the bottle filling part of that operating. So what it does is also pretty neat that it has a

032counter of how many bottles you've saved. So the kids can go by and look and say, like, at some of the schools, over 500 bottles so far they've been using. So they can look and say, you know, this is how much plastic. And they can incorporate that into the lessons if they need it at that point. But it does show the amount of bottles we're saving using the bottle filling station. It also serves the purpose of not having little drumming lips on water fountains as they try to drink out of us. It kind of fills two purposes there. Um probably glad to answer any questions on that. Uh on a bottom filling stations if you have any questions or comments. Who's who's tracking the filter changes? That's maintenance. Mister Cox crew over here is tracking.

033Is that on a time thing or is it just like an indicator light on the. Thank you. Yes ma'am. Um we install them but are they permanently ours? Yes. Okay. And our goal actually moving forward right now there's about a six month back order but I think our goal moving forward be yearly through our maintenance funds be to install and replace all of our water fountains in our buildings with these. But once we get to the COVID era and we get back into more normalcy to allow the bubbler to be turned back on, it's actually drinking of it as well as filling bottles up. But our goal is to move forward and replace all of our water fountains with this type of system because it is more environmentally friendly. Any other questions? Dr. Wells? question

034I just want to say thank you I know you waited for this for a while. It took a while. Yeah but I appreciate your effort and your diligence. Yes ma'am. Um thermometer the temperature things that we have at each of the doors are they working well? Uh for the most part we did notice there's about a eight tenth of a degree difference between your forehead temperature and your wrist temperature. We take that into account so if a student comes in they're a 99.6, 99.7 range. They're getting sent to the nurse to get some additional temperature screenings done. So we have done the step, but overall it seemed to be working well. We've had a couple glitches where somebody stepped on the cord and pulled the cord out the back. We need to get that repaired

035and things of that nature. I'll say overall they're working well. So all those are in place. We also have the handheld thermometers there as well for safety. Especially if a line gets backed up, a bus dismisses a larger crew. So we'll be able to do that a little quicker as well to keep the lines from backing up. Then also the partitions that... We need it for our hybrid learning areas at Amelon and Elan. Those were delivered last week and have been installed, so those are in the buildings now as well. I also have those at AEC as well. So I have an AEC, kind of help with the ARA because our teachers in the ARA need some more space. So I have some designated space at AEC for that as well as the hybrid areas

036at Amelon and Elan. Thank you so much. Any other questions at this time on this issue? Ms. Thompson, I want to thank you. I think you brought this up in the beginning. thank you for that good ideas I think the age of the water fountain will be gone anyway yes everywhere okay all righty moving right along sir 6.02 is the facilities improvement capital improvement projects that was brought to you by Mr. Bauer last month And again, I'll just ask if you have any questions on that. Our goal would be to answer your questions tonight, but then also in November to bring it back to you for consideration. So we can't answer questions tonight. get some feedback on that and then develop it into a true CIP. If you have any areas you'd like to see

037moved or readjusted, we can discuss that tonight or the next couple of weeks. I don't need that tonight, but if you have ideas or suggestions we can discuss tonight or we can discuss over the next couple of weeks while we develop this, but then bring it to you in November for consideration as we move forward. Board members? Quick question. I know that they had made a recommendation for some additional space at Elan Elementary. Is that in this chart? The cost was not included in the chart, so I do not have what I would consider to be a number I'd want to put in front of you. I could talk to Mr. Bauer and get that cost estimate for that per square footage. And again, our options there are looking at the size of Elan and

038the space at Elan. We have a couple different options. Do you increase the building footprint, or do we look at the redistricting aspect of it for space sites? And that's something, again, a divorce purview. But I don't feel I have a number I could put in front of you tonight for that, but I will have it for you. I can have it for you in a week or so and get it to you. Thank you. and this list with the order that you have it in, is this their recommendation or is this something that is a collaboration between you and the company? We work together on it, but it kind of, he kind of prioritized by grouping it by schools. He felt that was the best way to, when we, when you bring construction into

039a school, you better off to get as much done in one time for scope of cost. But also it was some collaboration of this was basically his suggestions with our input. And if you remember, there were really only two projects that required our immediate action and that's the the the Madison Heights and Amherst Middle School and the grading issues and so those were those were put at the front of the line because they'll they'll cause structural damage if we don't if we don't act on that but everything else they felt like was not a high high need the one thing that we did they put the bus garage construction out to about I think 2030 roughly about 10 years out. If there was one thing to move forward I think there might be something to

040move forward just from a maintenance standpoint of the buses and also the building where our transportation and child nutrition is basically a double-lock trailer classroom. That's an old trailer that we're using so I think if we were to move something forward on this that's something we would probably consider trying to move forward sooner rather than later. But we're still in a good place with it. But if we're going to, if that project is going to move forward with the transportation areas, then I would say let's move it up into the timeline a little bit possibly. And then the high school addition, I guess our big thing, too, we have to consider is for the addition to high school. If that's something we want to do with the auditorium and those facilities, we would need to

041start moving forward pretty quick on that to get it from the Board of Supervisors because there's several things that have to take place before that could come into it. into motion there was getting everything going with that. And we certainly, even if you approve it in November, we certainly can revisit it as often as you'd like to make adjustments to when we do things or what we want to prioritize because clearly things will change over the course of time. So this gives us a good starting place and gives us a good plan moving forward. But if we need to change, we certainly can do that at any time. Any other questions on this, Dr. Wales, at this time? I agree that we do want to move forward. And in November, we're coming back to November

042with what you have developed and in what order you've developed it. And it's not just a wish list anymore, I think. We've had some people look into this. We've had some cost analysis done. And surely if we are... I'll get a little sign here, speaking to the mic. Surely, if we plan to, in our lifetime, see a new auditorium and gymnasium or what have you at the high school, we need to form a committee, hopefully by the end of this year, not just the school board and school, but the county, at our next liaison committee meeting with the Board of Supervisors. We're going to put that on the top. And I said one time before, I think Ms. Thompson heard me, some others. I think the alumni could be very useful in making this project

043a reality on finance. So we'll come back in November with some real ideas about making this happen here in Amherst County. Thank you, Dr. Wells, for the work on that so far. Yes, ma'am. Moving right along. 6.03, I want to update you on some COVID numbers information. I'm going to talk you through this a little bit. I don't have this at your place. I can give you a copy. It's a bit more me talking than having something in front of you. I'll talk you through it. I can give you a copy of it later from my notes. Basically, for positive cases, since students returned to school, we've had nine positive cases among staff and students. That's 37 days between September 9th and October 15th. Again, there were nine positive cases. I say that because in

044the 39 days, Between August 1st and September 8th, there were 12 positive cases among staff and students that we're aware of. Some students may not have known about it because they weren't in school yet, and therefore they didn't report it to us. That being said, I wanted to make that a point because the data suggests that we have not had an increase in positive cases as a result of school opening. I think that's important to say. School opening has not caused numbers, positive cases to increase. As a matter of fact, there are three less. over the same, basically, number of days since school was open than we had prior to that. So there's no statistical number there that would say that school opening costs more cases. We are more aware of cases, and we do

045have cases that are ongoing. And I think as part of our COVID mitigation protocols, we have been placing staff and students on quarantine. That's because of new measures. As you all are aware, you get the messages from Dr. Arnold when these things occur. To date, we have placed 140 staff members. And 205 students on quarantine from anywhere from one day to 14 plus days. The one to two days because the parents' white homes getting tested, the test comes back negative, they get to come back to school. The 14 plus days are because they're quarantined 14 days because possibly a family member or someone else has tested positive. And if a family member tests positive, It's not just 14 days, we have to wait for that person to stop being contagious before we can start the

04614 days. Some of those students and staff members may be out as many as 24 to 30 days just due to the nature of the virus in their home. So that's important to realize, but we have, again, 140 staff and roughly 205 students have been placed on quarantine for some period of time since school began this year. But I will say as a result of the protocols we put in place, we've been able to avert six individuals who tested positive by placing them on quarantine. These folks were placed on quarantine and while on quarantine, after being out over more than two days, then they tested positive, which means we didn't have to come back and contact trace or have those people expose other students or staff to the virus. So because of our procedures we

047have in place, Those six individuals did not contaminate or were not contagious around other people in our buildings because of what we put in place. I think that's a positive for us on that front. And to date, we have not had any positive cases. As a result of spreading their facilities or buses, all the positive cases reported in our schools have been the result of community spread. So somebody home in the neighborhood has been contracted the virus. They've come to school. We've identified that. They've been notified about this in the home. They've been placed on quarantine. But we haven't anybody catch it from what we have from the health department or our own contact tracing that is a result of them being in our buildings. Nobody's caught it at school. I'm not saying it won't

048happen eventually, but to date that has not happened. We've made every effort to be transparent and notify parents and the community when we've had a positive case. When we have a positive case, first thing we do is we contact trace in the buildings and notify staff and parents of a possible contact. So before any message goes out to the general community, we notify the staff who may be in contact as well as the family members, the parents or guardians of those students who may have been in contact. After we do that, letters get sent home with students of the affected school. We notify the faculty and staff of that school. We send messages out to the school messenger, to parents at the school. We post information on social media sites. We send press releases to

049local media outlets. And we do a general notification to all staff in the county that there's been a positive case at one of the schools. Overall, the feedback we've received from parents and the general school community has been positive and they appear to be appreciative of our efforts to communicate with them. We've had very few people call and complaining about us, about our processes and procedures. They're appreciative of the fact we're notifying them of this. A new bit of information that you'll be seeing probably starting next week comes from the health department. Some of you may know this, but they're starting a case tracking page at the health department and it looks at outbreaks. And what they classify as an outbreak is two or more cases that are related in one building. So two or

050more cases that are related, they can relate in one building. So what that means for us, if we have cases that are related to each other and they can be contact traced to the exposure at one of our buildings, then we would be on that list as an outbreak. In other words, if If a teacher comes to work with COVID and she gets someone else sick at the building with COVID or a student comes in and has it and someone else catches the school, we have an outbreak. Just two people. Okay, so they'd realize if you see that, it just means two people. That means the whole school is going crazy. We would not necessarily close because of that. That would not cause us to close schools if we haven't classified it as an outbreak

051just because it's two, maybe three people. would be there. So you may see it doesn't mean we're gonna be shutting schools down. But if those same individuals went to dinner tonight and they caught it at dinner, even though they go to the high school or go to one of our schools, it would be traced back to where they caught, where they picked up the virus. The virus was transmitted. So if they went to dinner tonight and the virus was transmitted while they're eating dinner, it wouldn't be on us at our school. It would be on the restaurant where they ate dinner, where the outbreak occurred. So they do give us some little bit of wiggle room there. So they can trace it back to our building. If it's two siblings at home and they both

052get it and they get it at home, it's not an outbreak for us. It would just be a case, but it wouldn't be an outbreak. Classified as an outbreak for us. So I just want to clarify that. We can make sure you're aware of that. So if you see it on any life sites or it pops up that you see it and you say, oh my gosh, we have an outbreak, it could just be we have two people. So far we haven't had any transmission at school. But again, if we do, we would be one of those outbreak cases that we had a transmission school called Texas, two people, and you can't have a transmission of less than one person. So you have to have two people have transmission. So it would have an outbreak

053once we have transmission at a building. So I just want you to be aware of that. So given all that, if you have any questions on the COVID, I know Dr. Arleson will speak more in general numbers about the community, but specifically our schools, I'd be glad to answer any questions you have. Madam Chair. Yes, sir. Are you still doing all the Magnum PI contact tracing stuff? Yes, sir. You haven't outsourced that? How is it burdening? Last week wasn't bad. This week we had three cases pop up in one day, one of which included one of elementary schools. We had to place 44 students on quarantine and six staff members on quarantine because of it. That was kind of a long day. So it fluctuates from day to day. Today wasn't bad. regarding the code

054of information but we're working on a couple things to get some other supports in there for that which we're working on that kind of Mr. Krauser I'll answer that question since he's not after five weeks of asking them I told them This week that they are to hire somebody to assist them, him and Mr. Patron, with contact tracing. And they're in that process now. I think Mr. Gallagher might discuss that, but that's happening. So we do think Dr. Wells can do his job, but we also want him to. to do other jobs. We're maintaining our sanity right now. But the numbers, you know, as we get more numbers, and especially as we move in, I think I'll speak to this later, about flu season, and there's so many symptoms that are the same. between the

055flu and COVID-19 that we foresee a lot of possible cases popping up in that time frame, which may cause us to have to do a lot more. We're not really doing a lot of true contact tracing until we get a positive test back, but we are doing the preparatory stages of identifying possible contacts. So when it does come back, if it does come back positive, we already have our vet center out. We can just go ahead and move quickly to notify families as opposed to waiting. Because we usually get a two to three day window between when we think somebody's gone out to be tested and the test results coming back. So it usually gives us a two day window at least to get ourselves prepared just in case that happens. And then in regard

056to your comment about the VDH classification of the outbreak, and you said it was on us, is it just a stigma of being an outbreak site, or is there any other implications with it being an outbreak? The two-day is more just, I mean, the minor outbreak part of it would just be more people knowing and being advertised as an outbreak. If we had more than three or more cases that are related in one building, we'd have to do a Department of Labor report. because you have three cases that are related that's a that's a totally report we have to do but as far as that's more just a notification and they started doing this because of a lot of schools in northern virginia coming back and people are starting to concern some might not be

057as transparent as we're being with our community so i think they wanted a way to Yeah, it's become a lot more difficult north and east of here to get back into school. And so there's a lot of arguing going on. And I think they called on the Department of Health to give more information and data that can help them with those decisions. Chair? Yes, sir. Not perfect, but I think it's working as far as the measures that have taken place. And the fear level since school started seems to have come down some. I will say I know I sound stuffy, but I have sinuses. I have to test it, and we're okay. And I just wanted to say, because you brought up the three cases and the two cases. and that is something we all

058have to do, my business has to do it too, it's not just school related, so I mean I'm hoping the media's not just gonna be attacking, oh there's an outbreak in Amherst County because we have two people in a building, so it sounds scary to attach that word, but it's something that Virginia as a whole, we're supposed to be doing, it's not just school related. The transparency has been important, I think, in controlling some of that fear that the parents and the public have had. So I know I've appreciated that a lot. So I didn't really have a question. I just wanted to say those few things. Madam Chair. Yes. So you talked about the outbreaks or the possibility of having outbreaks and having to do the contact tracing. What would be an example of

059when you would need to close a school, an entire school? How would you get there? Well, we look at a couple things. One, if we get a report late at night, say, 10, 11 o'clock at night, and we know it could involve multiple students, multiple teachers, and we don't have a chance to contact trace. Like elementary school starts at 8 o'clock. If I get something at 10, 11 o'clock at night, and I don't have a chance to really go through the contact tracing procedures and identify who possibly could be in contact, then we may have to close school that day to get the contact tracing done. So that could be an example there. It could be also a possibility where... Such a large number of people are involved that we can't teach our staff wise

060that we can't maintain safety in the building and actually run run the program the way you know in a safe manner and effective manner so that could cause us to have to close the school down for a short period of time or such a large number of students were involved or multiple grade levels or you lose you know if you have 150 students and 75 are placed out on quarantine, you may have to do some different things there as well. So far, we've had to close down a grade level at a school and half of a grade level at a school, but we've been able to contain that to that grade level and not the whole school. And if we can do that, that's our goal, would be to just focus on the classroom or

061the grade level that's mainly impacted, as opposed to saying, okay, well, because first grade is... not able to come. We have to shut the whole school in. We don't want to do that because the other grades should still be able to get there. We can still maintain a safe environment for them. Thank you. Yes, sir. How long does it take to do the trace to find out where everybody was in contact? In general, it's taking us 30 minutes to two hours per case on a normal size case. Now, we have to go through, you know, 50 people it may take a little bit longer. Staff-wise we can usually work staff pretty quick. The students, we've been lucky so far that we've had since we have the cohorts we've been able to say okay this group

062of students was with this teacher we know just because it was this teacher and you had contact with close contact and we may have to do this one cohort of students as opposed to going through figuring out every step somebody took in a building so that may take a little longer but we've been getting it done. within two hours for the most part when we have to start doing this for a case. Thank you. Yes, ma'am. Any other questions for Dr. Wells at this time? I will say a lot. That's because the principals already have their information for us because we already told them, hey, you might have, they kind of know something might be happening. They start pulling information. So we have worked out where the principals have already gathered information. So when we

063come to a school, we already have a pretty good idea of who may or may not have been in contact with that person. Teamwork. Yes, it does help a little bit. Thank you so much. And I'll take some comments on that a little later. Moving on to the keep up now. 7.01. Madam Chair, members of the board, you have at your place the budget monitoring forms, the revenue receipts, the budget summary. You will note on that there are several accounts that are in the red. 2,600 unemployment benefits. janitorial supplies replacement of motor vehicles and additional equipment with the cares funds we will be able to offset those deficits and they will come out of the red I would be glad to answer any questions on that yes sir that's what I was when I looked

064at the unemployment thing I was trying to figure out did we move money in somewhere or what's causing that to be in the red Well, when COVID-19 hit and they were giving additional funds per week, we were impacted. Our unemployment for March through June came in at $60,000. Normally, we do not pay any more than about $8,000 for the total year. We were only obligated to pay $30,000 of that. And with the new CARES Act money that just came out, part of the direction that they gave us was that we could utilize our CARES Act money to help offset what wasn't budgeted. Thank you. Yeah, I was glad to say thank you for thinking of that. Any other questions? Ms. Thompson. Yeah, this is just sort of an accounting type thing. When we are over

065our budget and we're using the CARES Act funds, then that's going to go into this as an adjusted budget? That's correct. Yes, ma'am. Somewhere along the line, can you give us a list of how much additional funding we have for all the emergency CARES and maybe where we are with the balance of that just to keep us... As that goes down and it gets plugged in over here. Yes, ma'am. I have already set up a spreadsheet so that Dr. Arnold and I both know where the money is going. So I will be more than happy to share with the board. Thank you. That's a very good insight. Follow the trail. In addition, the enrollment is at 3912. You will note that. We budget on 3960. However, when the General Assembly resumes in December, they are

066discussing having hold harmless funds to assist school divisions with the difference in enrollment. So I will keep you apprised, and we will make sure that you are aware of where our enrollment and ADM are on a monthly basis. Yes, ma'am? You said that would happen in December? When the General Assembly resumes in December, yes, ma'am. And part of the CARES Act, what we're calling CARES Act II, also was put in place to help with some of that as well. But I think we're still lobbying to get a hold harmless on the ADM. Thank you so much, Ms. Crouse. Madam Chair? Yes, ma'am. I have a question. I hear you. So the CARES Act, that second wave, that was the $175 per student. Did we get that already? That was the $699,000 that you appropriated. That's

067earmarked for certain things, right? A lot of things. Yeah, it's a laundry list of things. And with that being said, the CARES Act funds won the $805,000 that we received. To this date, we have not touched that money. other than between that and the carryover funds that the Board of Supervisors has said that we can put in our school operational budget once the audit has been confirmed. Neither set of that money has been touched other than obligating the $450,000 to assist with internet connectivity. So the word balancing sounds very good right now. Balancing is good. Any other questions? all right we are moving down to accountability now we're moving out yes accountability who's doing that tonight in the place Mr. neighbors good evening Madam Chair members of the board filling in for Dr. Norman this

068evening do my best to fill those shoes We have several items for you tonight. First, 8.01, update on accountability measures. You have a memo in your folder regarding graduation rates for Amherst County Public Schools. On September 30th, the VOE released information regarding Virginia on-time graduation rates for across the state. Because there are a variety of different calculations, Dr. Morgan will provide you an explanation of those three calculations, how they are conducted. Generally speaking, that personally on time graduation rate is the baby gets a lot of the attention. On the second page, Dr. Mizzou will break down how Amherst County fair with those reports. As you will see, we fair quite well through the work of a number of different people. All of the different areas and every calculation in Amherst County saw growth, in some

069cases significant growth. We also saw, very importantly, a drop in our dropout rate. We were very excited to see him again and came with a lot of work attached to it and a number of different folks. That does put us looking at the all-time graduation rate specifically back ahead of the state average. I think it's also important to note that we are also the highest in the immediate area as a school division. So a lot to celebrate there. A lot of congratulations to go around folks doing some hard work to get those students across the finish line. That was a lot of information she forgot. And that's something that was very quickly. But we have to take any questions y'all might have on that. Madam Chair. Yes, sir. Was there anything in the rate calculation

070that has changed that would have affected this? Or has it been the same consistently? It has been consistent, yes, sir. Thank you. That's a good question. Sandra, we did a good job anyhow. Absolutely. No plug-ins. I don't want any answers there. Well, and it's also good to note that we're comparing apples to apples with other school divisions, too. Moving on to the second component there, I wanted to give you an update on our map assessment we did include in your folder. I know it would be given to you previously, but we frequently ask questions regarding that new assessment that we are rolling out this year. Testing is well underway. We expect to have baseline data available for you at our next board meeting. I did want to note that a lot of effort has gone

071into ensuring that our ARA students can also access this assessment. Many were able to do that virtually, but we also held several Friday sessions where students could come in and those were very well attended in the community. The window is open until the 26th of this month, so testing is still ongoing. We're trying to catch those last few students, but all in all, that has rolled out well thus far. So looking at that, just kind of highlighting the FAQ document that you received. And as a reminder, ultimately moving away from the benchmark assessments, which was more of a snapshot of student performance, the map really does provide that look at student growth and development in those key academic areas. That data is very useful for teachers as they're looking at primary instruction, but then also

072remediation, seeing how that student is developing over the course of the school year and over the course of school years moving forward. We expect that to be a very useful tool for them. Again, a lot of information summarized quickly, but very happy to answer any questions you might have. One moment for Mr. Nabors. Yes, ma'am. Mr. Nabors, will this be given three times a year? At this point that is the case of because we're on a semester schedule with some of our secondary courses that look a little bit different but ultimately that is my understanding that's the plan for the three three components of the year for elementary in particular. And you're going to share baseline data with us? Yes ma'am. Thank you. And I know Dr. Norman had mentioned some correlations she was going

073to do with the lower grades. Yeah. Summer loss and that type of thing. Right. I know we can't do that with everyone, but some comparative data. Yeah, and we'll talk a little bit about that here shortly. Anything else for Mr. Nabors? I'll shout our goals if Dr. Norman is listening and hopefully resting and listening. We hope that you are recuperating. We're thinking about you. Thank you for this good material that you provided, Mr. Nabors, to deliver very well. Thank you so much. Yes, ma'am. Right, go on. 8102, I've been on the Amherst Remote Academy. I did want to inform more that our current enrollment for students that are fully remote is 1,566 students. I know that a question had come up in regards to the transition period that we have. At the beginning of the

074year, we allowed some time for families and students to make decisions, be able to move back and forth between face-to-face and remote instruction. Ultimately, we have over 200 students that actually moved from ARA back into some component of face-to-face in the school building. While we had 76 students that were initially face-to-face, or in that hybrid setting, moved back to ARA, I should say. So it's good to see that. I think there's a lot of faith and trust being put into processes we have in place and things that Dr. Wells was talking about earlier. He's had that impact and families have chosen to send a good number of those students back into school where, of course, we would love for them to be. We do have a distribution event tomorrow at Manellison Middle School that I

075wanted to plug and certainly make the board aware of. It's going to go from noon to 6 p.m. and that is a K-12 event. So anyone in ARA, we're going to be giving out textbooks, earbuds. We're going to have tech support available. We also have some cases for Chromebooks. So we would encourage folks to come out and participate in that if they have questions or still need to pick up any of those materials. To date, we have distributed 4,432 Chromebooks, which obviously goes a little bit above our enrollment, but we do have some buffers in schools and making sure we have devices available as they might be needed. We've distributed 1,304 cases and 1,676 pairs of earbuds. So kudos and appreciation to Mr. Joe Golden and his team. They have been doing quite a bit

076of work getting all of that to our students in that situation. The last piece I will highlight for you guys within that section is an update on our hybrid settings. You do have that memo in your folder as well. And those are as of this coming Monday, 10-19. So some of that is still in the works and being developed. But that is where we will be as of Monday. A few things I wanted to highlight for each school. With Tempest Elementary School, there hasn't been a change in regards to hybrid settings. this point for Amalon and Madison Heights we have now moved to a place where we do not have any hybrid locations within the building we have been able to pull each of those grade levels back into calling self-contained or single classrooms to

077be able to work with that Central Elementary School is down to one hybrid location just for the third grade group there the Inland Elementary School is down to two hybrid locations for kindergarten and fourth grade uh amherst elementary school is school that has added some hybrid locations uh that's for first second fourth and fifth those have been added but the breakdown is there in that number for you as well as a current breakdown of our enrollment in the area so um about the remote learning we have two things going on we have people who choose that route because they can and then we have the middle and high school that have to They do remote, but they can still download the information before they go home. So those are the people I'm worried about, especially

078in my area where the Internet's not so good because they're not really choosing that option. So I've heard just a few rumbles about it. What is the consensus? Right, and ultimately we have heard some of that as well, and we're going to get into some discussion about committees that have been established to address some of those components. But I think continuing to listen to feedback from our families and our staff as well as they're interacting with families, hearing what some of those concerns are. We're continually trying to have events like what we're doing tomorrow in the Nelson, reaching out to those families, trying to problem-solve some of those connectivity issues. and trying to provide as many outlets as possible to get that information to them. But we have heard the same trying to weed out

079a few of those situations where it's just been more difficult to get that data onto the Chromebook or get that physical work into the students' hand to be able to have them have it. Yep. So Ms. Wright, three weeks ago, a sixth grader called me. to inform me that he wanted to speak to you guys to ask how he could get his work because he's at school and when he goes home after he's downloaded his information at school he goes home and it's not there. He doesn't have internet. It's not there. I want to talk to the school board. I said, well, that's three weeks away. How about I come to your school tomorrow and help you with that? And so Ms. Smith and I went, and what I think is happening across the board

080is they're just very minor things. It doesn't have to do with whether you have internet or not. It's understanding what to do with your computer. And Ms. Smith worked with the young man for about five minutes. and it's solved. As a matter of fact, all of his material was on his computer. He had done something wrong to access it. So by downloading it to the Chromebook, internet should not be an issue. I'm pretty sure I went to one of these. Didn't we have things at the school where parents and students could come? Yes. What were they called? Tech Nights. Tech Nights, there we go. So I feel like we're doing, we just haven't let people play. I feel like we've definitely done that, but I have heard those rumblings. If you're going to answer the

081question about hybrid in the committee talk too, you can just wait for that. But my question about that was, initially, was the hybrid plan to be a teaching moment or to be more of a study and get your stuff on your computer and be able to work on it moment at the schools? And ultimately those environments were established to be multifaceted. So there is absolutely an instructional component to that. We want to be able to support those students in those content areas. And we have staff that are moving through to be able to do that. That's also been used as an environment where we can work with students on some of these technical goals. components because there is a very large instructional piece to getting them on these platforms and in turn they understand what

082all that looks like but there absolutely is a strong instructional focus with those areas. Okay and your consensus is that's happening? Yes. Tiburns doesn't have it so I don't know about the copper thing. Yes ma'am. Absolutely. Obviously that's something as you all can see from the memo that has been reduced since the start of the year. We've been able to move away from some of those environments in certain schools but still very much a strong instructional focus. Okay, thank you. Madam Chair. Yes, sir. That's still instructional aides and not teachers in this space, is correct? Or are there actually teachers in this higher space? It depends. It does depend on the scheduling at each of the schools. Okay. Thank you. Madam Chair. Yes, sir. So how has the... IT department been able to keep up

083with things. They went from having how many teachers to being responsible for, and now all of a sudden parents responding. I guess Mr. Goldman would like to address this. Well, I'm not happy about this, but we're about 24 hours from the time a parent calls or emails or calls, about 24 hours to work with them, but we're finally getting to the point where I'm picking up the phone and walking them through right then and there. getting their chromebooks switched out the same day because the camera's not working so i'm embarrassed to say it might take a day but we're getting there and i'll and i'll and i'll bring forward something in my report about how we're going to help with that too and staff um well when school starts it's it's very busy um and

084so about a week for a ticket to be closed unless it's an emergency we're right on emergency If you want your printer set up, it's taken us about a week to get that done. Any more questions? Thank you. Things are starting to slow down. I don't know what your parents are telling you, but from our perspective, the emails and the calls are really slowing down. And you just to close out that section I do you just want to emphasize that as families and students are having any of these concerns we want them to reach out. We are working hard to ensure that we are communicating as much as possible but we don't want anybody to be out there plant-brick with any of us. We want to be able to help them with whatever those concerns

085may be and just continuing to encourage them to reach out to whomever you can get a hold of. We'll get you to the right place and make sure that we're fixing whatever's going on. Yes, ma'am. I appreciate the update information. I think it's really good. And I know that this has been a very difficult year. I guess I want to ask if in your committee report that's coming up, if you're going to talk a little bit about ways that parents can communicate with us as a school system. I mean, for example, you're sitting here and you're saying reach out to us. And I applaud you for that and your willingness. But have we really told the ARA parents who to reach out to? You know, that kind of thing. You know, like we have the

086one letter that was read at the beginning. So there are very specific concerns in that, which I know you as a staff, you will address that and probably have already addressed it. But I'm sure there's other parents out there. So, you know, we've met and you've talked about trying to get that communication out there of specifically who to contact and what situation. So will you talk with us about that at the next? I will. Yeah, the third committee. Yeah, I think we might also be able to pull Mr. Crawford in on that as well, who is with us today. Go ahead. But I thank y'all for getting those hybrid numbers down. I know you worked hard at that. And that was one of our main big concerns to start the year off. So you've done

087a great job with that. Do you need a mic? What he's going to say, I'm sure the public wants to hear. When I get home at night, people say, I couldn't hear. So you can have my smiley face. I love it. Okay, so pretty much everything that's been sent out to ARA families has had four email addresses that they could address their concerns to. And that would be for secondary, myself, which is jcrawford at amherst.k12.va.us. Also, Seeger Jordan, who is also there with us. elementary would be jen cruz and also mandy cassisi and so those four email addresses have been shared pretty much on every document we've sent out we've also put that miss cruz is at amherst elementary i'm at temperance elementary and i can assure you that Parents are not having a hard

088time finding us. You can ask Ms. Campbell. I know she's watching right now. But ask her. And, you know, we receive quite a few phone calls daily from ARA parents about questions, concerns. Most of the time it's technology right now. So we just get them hooked up with Mr. Goldman and his staff. I wasn't here at the beginning, and I'm sorry for that. But in speaking of regards, I think you read a letter from Ms. Moore when I was out. We, her and I, have become friends. One of the ways that we kind of keep ourselves connected is we monitor like Facebook as well. And when a parent posts any type of frustration or type of dilemma, I respond to it immediately. If not on the Facebook, I'll reach out by phone call. And that's

089what I did yesterday at about 6.45. I had a long conversation with her yesterday and also today. get some problem solving to get both her grandchildren to a better place but that isn't a viable way you know if she feels like she's not being met on reaching phone calls you know that kind of thing we do want to that type of situation as well so we can make sure so i know miss moore if you're listening hello she is yeah she is yeah she was somebody and i'm still working with some things as far as her other grandchildren that she needs some support on so we are listening and we are trying to keep our ear to viable means other than maybe phone calls and emails to kind of stay connected in the community and

090what they might need. Thank you. And we'll continue to offer the support nights and those kinds of things as well. And I knew you all were on it. I wanted to make sure the public knew how to get in touch with you. Thank you. And I'll probably address some of that again in the committee reports, which we're now moving into 8.03. Still. Dr. Arnold, who is the first committee report person? That would be me again. Okay. Mr. Nabors? So in that spirit, I think that's an excellent segue. Ultimately, we want to continue to be accountable and adaptive. So thinking about the amount of change that we have had this year, certainly one of the most prominent, which is this availability of remote learning and having that in place for students. We are hearing that. We're

091getting that feedback. We're understanding that there are still concerns, even though the plan. was developed and laid out and has been executed very well. We know we are not above having things that we can continue to work on and grow and put in place for our students and their families. And so with that, we have established three ad hoc committees to look at three key component areas of the feedback that we've been receiving thus far from all stakeholders, so students, families, and the staff that is working in those environments. The first is our grading, which also become our equity committee. It's being led by Dr. Holly Jennings and Mr. Craig Maddox. Ultimately, looking at this idea of now having multiple environments. We have students that are face-to-face. We have students that are in a hybrid

092situation. We have students that are remote. Wanting to make sure that the grading and practices and the divisional policies we have in place are equitable and meet the needs of those different environments. We find ourselves that they've done some tremendous work already, but ultimately... they're really working on asking those essential questions, looking at assessments primarily. How often are we giving those? Are they appropriate in length? Is it equitable when we think about the location in which students are taking those face-to-face versus in a remote setting or remote situations, really trying to dig into that, look at that research, get that feedback from the key stakeholders involved, and be able to move forward with recommendations that are going to be able to fix some of those concerns that we have. within that particular area. Also looking

093at the idea of feedback in general. So thinking about grading ultimately as that mechanism of being able to provide feedback to the student, wanting to make sure that we provide the perfect professional development to staff working in those realms, exploring that question of what is quality feedback and what does that look like in these different environments that students are in, and spending a lot of time talking about formative versus summative assessments. Are we seeing that progress? Are we tracking that growth of our students talking about very similar to what we were discussing earlier with the map assessment and wanting to see them on that trajectory and making progress within those key areas. So that group is doing a lot of work in that area and making sure that we're accounting for those key components because

094we have to make sure that we are still providing that quality feedback. We have to make sure that we are still getting the data from our students that we need to see as they are progressing. The second area, second ad hoc committee I should say, is student engagement and teacher observation. Obviously two very important concepts and two things that have been impacted significantly by this change in availability and environments. Dr. Wayne Lommel is heading that up. doing a lot of work. They wanted to focus on creating an observation tool for administrators. So how do we observe and provide feedback to our staff working in these remote environments with students? Obviously that looks very different than what we would typically see. Wanting to give them a tool to be able to provide that feedback to that

095staff. But then also working to develop strategies and supports for teachers to help engage students as they are involved in remote learning. Dr. Lyle's group has already developed that tool and that's kind of going through that process of being reviewed and approved and put into our system for to be able to use by administrators really focusing on those key areas that have been identified. We're thinking about delivery and providing student choice that specific feedback. We're looking at how much time students are talking versus how much time staff or teachers are talking with their for engagement. Are we seeing that use of technology? Are we seeing visuals? Are we seeing manipulatives? All those things we know are going to be more engaging to pull those students in for the instruction that is occurring. So excellent progress

096being made in that area. But yeah, try to listen to that feedback from our families, from our staff members, from our students themselves to make sure that we're providing what we need to in those areas. And so, yeah, the last one is program evaluation, which I'm responsible for. And so ultimately, Everything we're doing is different and we have to figure out a way to determine whether we're being successful or not. And so our committee is working on how do we evaluate our in-person learning, how do we evaluate our hybrid learning, how do we evaluate our remote learning. And so we work with an organization called Hanover Research, and they are going to provide us with a kind of an inclusive survey that goes out to all of our stakeholders. We're going to do that at

097the end of this month because we wanted to get. just like a full nine weeks in so people could actually once we've kind of gotten over a lot of the the the bumpiness of starting the school year to actually have people experience things the way it's supposed to be experienced and then we're going to send out a a a survey to all of those folks. We're going to analyze that. We're going to kind of start to determine whether some things are working, what's not working. But that's ultimately, that's just a kind of a qualitative measure of how people feel things are going. What we're going to use to get more of a quantitative, and this goes back to your question, we're going to use the MAP baseline data. Then we have a mid-year data point

098and then an end-of-the-year data point where we can determine, based on where you're learning, what your growth looks like over the course of the year. So we'll be able to look at it from both a qualitative approach and a quantitative approach. But once we get that information, and you know this, that as we get feedback from stakeholders, We're adjusting daily, but this data and the analysis of this data will help us make larger. kinds of more structural programmatic changes that are going to benefit students, staff, and families. And so that's what we're working on right now. We're almost finished with completing what the survey is going to look like, and then that's going out in a couple weeks. So we hope to be able by November to kind of give some of that reporting back

099to you guys. That's the hope. Because, you know, sometimes with surveys, it takes a little longer for everybody to participate. Yes sir. One of the questions I was going to ask is about the, are we tracking or trending towards doing some synchronous learning? Is that something you would anticipate this data that you get back to maybe? make that decision or what's the status on that? Well, I mean, I think one of the issues that we experience as a school division is that our remote learners are accessing material in three different ways. We have some of our students who have reliable internet that could do synchronous learning, but in the same class we have students that don't have internet. They have to download to their Chromebook. And then we have a third group of students who

100have chosen to take paper packets. And that has become a very difficult hurdle to be able to provide equity of services for all of our students. And some of the information that we've received tonight have to do with not having good internet. And so I imagine it will come up. There are some things we've been talking about based on how you're learning and how we separate our groups of students based on whether you have internet or you don't have internet. But ultimately, we've got to try to provide the same types of services to our students to be equitable. But yeah, but I can't say until we crack the internet issue is how much synchronous learning we can do. And I understand, but I just, one of the things that frustrates me with, and I'm all

101for the equity and trying to spread, but I don't want to jeopardize, because it seems like, what do we have majority-wise as far as internet connection in the county? 60%? 60, yeah. I mean, that's 60% of a student body that could potentially benefit from some... some synchronous education and trying to figure out how to bring the others up. I mean, that's the constant juggling. I don't want to forego it just for the sake of meeting the other 30%. We agree. I don't want to sound insensitive, but that's... Dr. Arnolf, I could jump in. You have several courses at the high school level that are synchronous currently. So I think that would be a good data point as well to be able to pull from and see how some of that's going. It's a limited number

102of courses, but it's at least something in that realm to be able to tell us how we're moving in that direction. Thank you. I know you guys are doing a good job with it, but I just... Well, that's the frustration. I mean, we share it. And I wanted to piggyback on what you were saying and talked about this. I too understand the equity, but in the same vein, being an educator, I understand differentiation and that that's very important. Different students learn at different modalities, different speeds, and they have different learning needs. So I do not want to see us just say, okay, we're going to do the bare minimum for the sake of equity without offering some differentiation and keeping those high academic standards that are there. Not that we want every student to have

103to jump over the highest hurdle, but we do want to make sure that we are providing that incentive and anything that we can do to help some of our students and our learners. that maybe get through the material very quickly or those that are feeling like they're still in the review mode or something to move their learning forward, I think would be appreciated by a lot of the parents and the students. And I know you talked about some enrichment activities that y'all were working on to try and help in that area as well. So if we can communicate some of that to parents, I think that would be helpful. Any other comments on this? I was just wondering how are children with disabilities that have received services, how they are doing? Thank you for asking

104that. The feedback I've received thus far has been overwhelmingly positive. I think the biggest piece is making sure that our IEP teams and 5-4 teams are continually talking about how our students are responding to these different environments. We've had a number of service providers that have had to adapt to new teletherapy models. seeing their students virtually as opposed to face to face but tremendous amount of work being done on that side and for the most part how is that working with the students can you tell the difference and how they're progressing with doing it through the talent at this point again it's a relatively early stage but it doesn't appear to have a significant impact at least the feedback i'm receiving we have been overwhelmed by how well our students and families have responded to

105it. We actually have a number of teachers that have their entire day scheduled in 30 minute blocks and we have those students that log on right at their set time and they have that conversation about what's going on, what help they need. I've been able to sit in on a few of those and just kind of see how some of that's going and it's been great to see that collaboration because it's really what it is between the teachers and the families getting some of those students on that computer and making sure they're getting what they need. all right thank you so much anything else ladies and gentlemen for the committee reports Dr. Arnold does that conclude the committee report yes ma'am all right we'll move on to human resources Mr. Gallagher yes Madam Chair members

106of the board I have a brief human resources update this evening. I'll start with just a vacancy report update. At this point in time, we continue to have two bus driver vacancies open, one speech pathologist and one full-time sign language interpreter. Those last two, we continue to contract, and we certainly would like to hire full-time positions. With bus drivers, we continue to try to locate and train quality individuals. There is some movement there. We may have somebody moving into one of the positions that's been trained very soon, so that's hopeful. From a substitute capacity, we continue to need substitutes. I mean, you kind of hear the numbers we talked about tonight, how the different quarantines and how that impacts us. Right now we have 112 substitutes. What's interesting about that is that's up from last

107time I spoke to you last month, but where we are last year, we were last year, was about 28 more than that. So we tend to grow quickly with substitutes throughout the year. We have not grown as quickly this year. So as the year progresses, the gap's kind of gotten a little bit bigger. So that is of concern. And as we continue to have individuals out, that could be an impact factor. Which moves me on my second part which is additional support positions that we hired and this Thompson you mentioned last or meeting just talking about making sure we're meeting everybody's needs and part of this is related to that making sure that we're fully staffed in our programs and we're able to meet all of our folks needs out there in the buildings we

108have hired two licensed teachers as substitutes for full-time sub support That'll be helpful as I'll be able to identify where some of the greater needs are and help deploy those individuals out on a full-time capacity and they're qualified in license, which is also helpful. So there'll be some continuity of learning there. It would not be much of a drop-off. Our aim is to hire four. I hired two thus far. I have an interview for a secondary person tomorrow morning. And that's very promising as they're moving out of the area and they're very well qualified. We've hired three instructional assistants since the last board meeting, two of those at Central Elementary and one at Amherst Elementary. We were able to hire one more at Amherst Elementary. That brings us to a total of ten of those

109positions. These are all one-year positions, so if the need discontinues next year, they would not be there. But they are very helpful this current year. And we've hired two custodial positions since the last board meeting. Pretty good shape there. We continue to have a need so I will tell you that substitute support continues to be one of the biggest areas of need. We did talk earlier about contact tracing. I don't have formal information on that as we have not formalized exactly the position that we're putting into place, but we are taking action quickly to try to post and hire so that we can provide for additional contact tracing support. We'll be hiring a position that hasn't been formalized. It does impact some folks, but my hope is that we'll get that in place beginning as

110early as Monday on an interim basis, and then we'll hire quickly. to fill the need that we have to make sure that more permanent support with the contact tracing as well as some other duties and responsibilities that both Ms. Patron and Dr. Wells share because that is a piece of work to keep that rolling. That's all I have for updates from HR, but I'll certainly take questions about any of those pieces. Any questions for Mr. Gallup? Yes, ma'am. I had a quick question. For the two teachers that you still need to hire, for which grade level, what subject? Well, they're not grade level and subject specific. They need to be licensed teachers. I am looking to hire two elementary and two secondary if possible. The two individuals we've hired thus far are elementary endorsed. They

111have elementary licensure. The interview I have tomorrow morning is for a secondary licensed individual. Because they'll be serving in substitute capacity. They're not going to have to be endorsed in a specific area where they're covering as a substitute, but where we have individuals who are out on a long-term quarantine basis, it's going to be able to provide some continuity in those situations where they're needed. All right, thank you. You're welcome. Any other questions from a scout or Ms. Thompson? Did I miss you were going to talk with us about what you were going to do with technology? Did I miss that? I will. Yeah, I will talk about that. Okay, thank you, Ms. Gallagher, for all that good hiring information. And we're excited tonight to have our two student representatives here. Dr. Arnold, did you

112want to lead that call? They're right there. They are ready. Ladies and gentlemen, would you like to go right ahead and welcome again? All right, I'll start. Okay. Turn it on. My name is Colson Davis, as you can see from the nameplate. I'm sorry. I'm going to talk about... What are we going to focus on this year? Which is morale. This year has been very challenging and as a student leader I want to do the best I can to make the environment in Amherst County more enjoyable. Now this topic of morale has been a focal point across all of my leadership positions. From National Honor Society to student government to theater, finding an atmosphere of positivity can be difficult. I have learned from these three programs that they intertwine, and I can give my perspective

113from this. The biggest bummer of the school year is that with the traditions we have, they're not able to happen. However, with some out-of-the-box thinking here, I hear a few ideas. Having pep rallies always gets students into a peppy mood. One thing I suggest is possibly moving us to the football stadium, to where there's more area to social distance. We could incorporate games that are both safe and fun. And I think that's going to be a focal point for that. Secondly, we want to incorporate the students that don't have the luxury of going to campus. We were talking about that today during the board meeting, that reaching out to those kids, we still want to have them and include them. What I want to suggest is one of my favorite things to do in school

114is Kahoot. Kahoot's a big, giant, I guess, game to do in school. And I guess it incorporates the people that aren't allowed to be on campus. Now, if you're not familiar with Kahoot, it's a game show type game that displays questions and you simply just answer them. Now, this is really like hype amongst the student body. We're all really fun when it's Kahoot day in class. And I think that would be something that would boost morale even with the kids at home. And something cool with this, we can pick the topics for each Kahoot game and also the winners at the end of the game can even win prizes, which I think is a cool idea. And then something else that surely will get students back interested in student life is one of Amherst County's

115favorite pastimes, which is dances. One of my favorite moments from high school has been dances. One thing I can say is that even Mr. Crawford taught me how to tie a tie at homecoming my sophomore year. So I think that's something I'm definitely going to remember for the rest of my life. We know that safety is our number one priority, and trying something similar to this feeling will be a priority of what we focus on this year. Now these are just some of the ideas I've gathered from multiple areas in which I'm involved in. And if you have any questions or ideas, don't hesitate to ask us. We're open to any suggestions. I said it once and I'll say it again. This school is in need of positivity. We are in unprecedented times and it

116has been extremely difficult to stay positive. Our number one goal this year is to boost morale and make this school year as memorable as possible. And the key to that, one positive mindset. Thank you. Wonderful. Yes, ma'am. I know that this year was not what we expected, which is why the student representatives have thought of some ideas to bring back some school traditions. Put the microphone down. School traditions safely can create supply. We are currently trying to form a group of students to come up with ideas that can boost school morale, which would be proposed to Dr. Brown. One of the concerns of the community and school is contact tracing. Contact tracing can be difficult, especially when it is hard to know where students have been in contact with people. However, an idea we've come

117up with is promoting the Virginia Health Department's app for COVID-19, COVID-wise. And something as simple as encouraging students to keep a journal. The students could write simple things like where they've been and how they're feeling. The journals could be done for extra credit and would help the students' mental health and look back to see where they've been to help contact tracing. We've also thought of ways to lighten up the classroom. We could let students teach their classmates and teachers something educational for five to ten minutes. because it is sometimes dull staring at the teacher's lecture for 75 minutes. Another simple and easy way to boost school morale is to play music during the class changes, where there could be different themes for each time. These examples are just ideas that we hope to discuss with

118a group of students that represent the school and offer proposals to the principal to make the school feel safe but also entertaining at the same time. Thank you all. And so as I've talked to these guys, one of the things, obviously, is that the events and the traditions and those kinds of things have kind of gone away. And if you remember back in the spring, we had some time to deal with things like graduation and the Golden Day Ceremony and those kinds of things. But now the adults are spending all of their time with... the management and getting school back and going. And so there's not a lot of bandwidth going towards these kinds of things. And so as we talked about it, we thought it would be a great idea for the students to

119give their perspective. I know Dr. Brown has a couple of teachers that are working on this. And so they'll come together and identify what those traditions are. and then maybe ways to have those traditions continue forward in this COVID world. And so I'm really excited about the work they're going to do. And some of those are ideas. And of course, they have to work with Dr. Brown to make them happen. I like those ideas. I'll comment on them a little bit. Moving on, Dr. Arnold. Okay, so. What I wanted to talk about a little bit was just the start of school and what I wanted to say first and foremost is how proud I am of our staff. We've talked a lot about the difficulty and I want to make sure our community understands we're

120only one of 35 school divisions out of 132. that give the option to all of their students to come into the building for in-person learning. I think that's pretty amazing. And the fact that we chose to do both at the same time, in-person and remote, that's the hardest option. We chose the hardest option. And so it is understandable that our staff is working really hard just to keep it going. And I do want to make sure that people understand how hard they're working, how much time and effort they're putting in. And I just want to say I'm very proud of them. They've all learned new things, a lot of new things, and they're trying to make those happen on the fly. And so I just I think it's important for me to publicly state how

121positive I am with them. You know, on the whole, the return has been extremely positive. You know, we've experienced hurdles and we've experienced setbacks. But I think what I need to assure you and the public is that we hear feedback every day. We adjust every day. And then, you know, and so we're learning how to do this better every single day. And I will say, you know, five weeks in, every single week it gets better. Yes, there are still issues that we have to deal with, but the guarantee is that we will continue to deal with them. But I think that it's important for our community to understand that in order to get. our students back in school, you know, that a lot of effort has gone into doing that safely. And I want to

122thank my staff for that. And I also want to thank our community and our students for doing the right things to get us there too. Which leads me to some health news. Dr. Wells talked about the school health news. I'm going to talk about Amherst County and Central Virginia's health news. And it's not as rosy. As a matter of fact, the number of cases in Central Virginia currently is at its highest that it's been since this has all started. In Amherst County alone, two weeks ago, we were at seven cases per 100,000. Today, we're up to 28 per 100,000. And so there is, and Dr. Wells talked about the groups of people that are are more likely to become infected. But the impact that that has on us in the schools is enormous. He's talked

123about all of the community transmission. If these things are happening outside of the school, it certainly impacts the school because all the people that we ultimately then have to quarantine, and that's staff and that's students and that's interrupting education. And so I just want... to plead for folks to remain vigilant, to remain safe, to think about the things that they're doing because we want to keep school going. It has been so positive being back in school with our students and we don't want to get into a situation like you asked, Mr. Terry, of when do we actually have to close it down. And ultimately that decision comes when we don't have enough adults to to run a building. And so if we continue to see community transmission rise, then that becomes a reality for us.

124And it's just something we don't want to see. You know, moving forward into what's flu and cold season for us, you know, like Dr. Wells says, the symptoms are the same. But what's happening now is that every time you get a sniffle or you have something like that, and we urge you to contact your doctor, your doctor. tests you. I mean, there's really no question at this point. And that pulls you out for two or three days. And it pulls people in your family out for two or three days. And so... One of the positive things, though, about cold and flu season, the southern hemisphere in June, July and August went through their cold and flu season. And they actually found because of all of the mitigation strategies that were in place, like handwashing and

125social distancing and mask wearing, that. The actual flu almost disappeared in the southern hemisphere. So I've got my fingers crossed that at least those things will decrease because of the added mitigation strategies that we have for. COVID. And so I just I think I think it was important to kind of give you know both sides of the story you know that things are going well with COVID in the building however we are impacted by what happens in our community and so I just urge that folks do their very best to to make wise choices. So that's that piece. The other piece that comes up is about facility use. So you know that our athletes and our extracurricular folks right now, and you've seen Virginia High School League put out schedules. about activities. And so our

126students currently, since we're in phase three, we only allow them to do certain activities and they have to follow a mitigation plan. Well, what's come to our attention in the last couple of weeks is, of course, as we get towards winter, the rec department, who they've been doing things outside, now they have activities that need to come inside. And so we met with the rec department today. I want to report that we're in a really good place with them. They understand that, you know, like our basketball team can't even have practice like an actual basketball practice right now. And so until the governor moves us forward and allows us to do those types of activities, that our buildings aren't going to be available for those kinds of activities for the rec department either. And they

127understood that. And they certainly... agreed to work with us. One of the things that we've told them is that we want them in our buildings when we can get them in our buildings. And what they'll do is provide a mitigation strategy just like our teams do, because there are kids too, right? I mean, they're the exact same kids. And so if they come in our building, anybody that comes in our buildings have to follow certain protocols. But because our facilities are public, I think it's important for you guys to know kind of where we are with that, that the amount of folks that come in, as we stated early on in this, is going to be limited until we enter into another phase as a state, and we're not there yet. And so I just

128wanted to kind of share that. I know Dr. Wells was in it with me today, and it was a very positive conversation. They were 100% in support of what we had talked about. moving along to technology. So there are several updates I wanted to give and one of the things that we've experienced is how do we help folks with technology, parents, students that have these problems that very well could be solved pretty quickly, right? And Mr. Coleman, when you talk to these people, or Ms. Smith, when she talks to these people, that is a fairly quick fix. And so we have a group of people who are more adept at handling technology issues than any of us, and that's our students. And next week, we will begin a student help desk. that will be available

129for parents and students and anybody, even teachers, to call into. We're working with the NHS. They have hours that they have to get in to be in the NHS service hours. And so we're going to have students man an email address and then at some point maybe even a phone. But we think that that might help. Mr. Goldman, significantly in just dealing with some of these issues that I think can be solved pretty quickly. But if it's one or two people in the technology department who have another job, it backs up. So that's getting started. Jennifer Harrison at the ITRT at the high school, Donna Ratliff and Renee Bruner, another technician, will be. doing that work for us with the students. So we're pretty excited about getting that out there. It's a great learning environment

130for our students as well to do hands-on work. Last time we talked about the transparency of our board docs and the ability to access information off of board docs like the agendas and the minutes and the recordings. And that work has been done. If we had screen, we would show you where those things are. But basically, everything now is one click, right? You go to agendas, you click on it. there they are. They're all hyperlinked. You can go to whatever agenda you want to see. The minutes that have been approved are all now hyperlinked and the Facebook Live. recording will be on there as well. So we just wanted to make sure you guys were aware because that is a concern. We don't we intend to be transparent. And so the Cecil's worked very hard

131with getting that stuff out and in a place where it can be accessed by the public. Finally, with technology, want to talk a little bit about our fiber work and You might have heard recently that the governor, and this isn't through the schools, but it's through the state. The governor's put out some broadband grant money, and the company CVEC, who got the work to do fiber build-out through FireFlaw from the Board of Supervisors, is also working with this grant to expand even further. And we're working with CVEC as well as they keep moving. keep expanding into the county, then at some point our money then can kick in and they can keep going. One of the things we did receive some of that vision grant that we had referred to, we did not receive all

132of it for the broadband, but we did receive a significant amount. So we're going to have a significant amount of money as a school division to put towards infrastructure as well. So while I understand that that's not a solution today or tomorrow. I think it's more important for us to get it right. when we have the resources to get it right. And that way it won't be a problem for years to come. We do have one solution that is a now solution that we're working with SCS Broadband on. They have developed these mobile units that are solar powered. They have a small little tower that connects to their satellites. And we're going to have those. spread out around the county as well. So now we have our buildings that you can go to to access

133the internet. We'll have these mobile sites. Once they're up and operational, we'll make sure everybody knows where they can go. But it basically allows a thousand feet radius around them where they can pull up and use the internet as well. But that's a more of a now solution than the fiber. I'll stop there if there are any questions about any of those those things first. they're not being sneaky or anything sure that everybody has the information um the what's is there any security or anything for those mobile sites of you know so that's available for anybody to to access well i don't mean that from the i.t perspective oh yes there is yeah there is yeah you couldn't be able to they're locked up and okay they won't be able to be pulled up i

134guess you could but it would take take a lot more effort What kind of sites would they be at, like churches, schools? Yeah, so, well, we're looking at, we've identified five sites across the churches. We are looking at Tanglewood Mobile Home Park, so out at the office there, because we have a lot of students in there that could come up and access the Internet. So we've looked at where we have a lot of students that don't have access and then tried to find public space. or at least someone that would partner with us to use their facility. Well, I think what we were going to offer folks is that they could use the Internet for a year if they allow us to use their place. Absolutely. Thank you. Did you say that's already up and

135running? No, it's next week. Next week. Yeah, next week. So we'll get all that information out as soon as they're working on it. Yes. Yes, and Dr. Wells and I were still working on the specific location because, one, it has to be able to connect back to whatever SES tower there is. Because we had a couple of sites that we thought would be good sites, but once we did the research on it, it was blocked. You know, the area was blocked by trees, and it wouldn't work. So we're still doing that work right now. Yeah, yeah, understood. Okay, I'll continue on. Something that we talked about this time last year and we haven't talked much about since after Christmas is the comprehensive plan. And I just wanted to give you an update that we're at

136least in a place where we're starting to think about our long-term future again. And so we have kind of started back up with our committee work. the committees that we had formed last spring that were all actually being scheduled. in March. And so we feel like we're at a place where we need to start pushing forward again. Many of those committees can actually help with the things that we're dealing with right now. And so I just wanted you guys to have an update as to where we were in that process, because it's kind of, we haven't mentioned it in a long time. So I wanted you to know that that's still out there. You might be familiar with VTSS. That's the Virginia Tiered System of Supports. And every one of our schools now has that

137in their building. And we have received a grant through the state to have this program. And really what it provides is a systematic way to bring about change in your building. And much of what our schools work on is is behavior and culture and those kinds of things in their building. But what I wanted to talk to you about was that there is a division team. And sometimes the division team comes up with initiatives that we want to see pushed out into the division. We have chosen this year not to do that. We have chosen to do our work this year is going to be specifically geared towards supporting the schools and helping them get through the things that they're dealing with every day. And one of the things that we know we can get

138better with. and I think you all have experienced is being able to communicate better, whether that's between central office and schools, between administrators in school to teachers, teachers to home, school system to community. We just need to continue because there's so many details. that are associated with being successful this year. You know, so many things that people need to know that's not normal to what they've always had to know. And so working on ways to communicate is what the focus of our group is this year, this VTSS group. And as a matter of fact, we met today. That's something that you just be aware of that. We're still working on getting better at doing a better job communicating with our people I think we're doing an okay job, but we can always do better because

139if anybody has Questions or they feel like they don't know then we're not doing the very best we can do in our communication strategies The last two things fairly quick. There is on your board docs a budget calendar. So I just want you to review it. As you'll note, we're in a short, the General Assembly session this year will be a short session. And therefore, we should have something by the end of February in terms of a state budget, which will then allow us, not February, March. Yeah, allow us to do our work in March and approve in March to get to the Board of Supervisors for what they have to do in April. Remember that in March we add those extra dates in there that might not have to be used. You know, we

140didn't have to use it last year or the year before, but it is possible that. They will be necessary so we do have them on the calendar if we have to have some work. But there's no action that needs to be taken on that right now. Yeah, the next board meeting we will vote on making that official. But I wanted you to have it first so you could look at it and if there are any issues or any concerns that you could let us know. And finally, VSBA, their big conference is coming November 18th through the 20th. And Ms. Ligon, you and I are going to be there. And if you are still interested, you're not too late. And you can register if you'll just let Natalia know that you're interested. Then we can get

141you registered. And the VSBA every year also provides awards based on credits that you've earned by going to different trainings. And so I will hand these out at the end, but I will just say what they are up front. So, Ms. Thompson, you have received the award of recognition from the VSBA, which means that you earned 15 credits by attending things. So congratulations. David Cassisi, who's not here, also got the award of recognition. And Amanda Wright, you have received the award of recognition. Ms. Ligon? you have received the award of excellence and will receive a pen and that is for accumulating up to 48 credits in two years and I also received the award of excellence and so I'm really excited I'll have another pen to wear. I just think it's important as a board

142that we always continue to learn and figure out better ways to conduct our business. And so by going to those trainings, it is very useful to us as a board and for our community. So that is my report for the evening, and I'll certainly take questions. If not, you can move on to your reports. Ladies and gentlemen, we're going to combine our committee report with our individual item. Is that illegal? That is. Madam Clerk? Okay. Mr. Terry. So for our committee, I'm on the STEM Academy Committee. We have not had any meetings, but I am happy to say that they have not had to. closed down the facility, canceled any classes, anything due to COVID they've been able to manage. They've had a few students be out on quarantine, but that's to be expected. So

143they have handled that relatively well. For my comments, I would like to say that as far as a citizen of Amherst County, I think everybody should be proud, especially if you look at The input we had from the United Way and the Amherst Cares and the Education Foundation, it shows that the community cares about our schools. They have gone above and beyond, done things that we didn't think we'd have to do. We didn't think we would be here, and they've done a phenomenal job. I'd also like to thank Ms. Clinton for showing up and speaking. We need to hear everybody's opinion. We need to hear the for's and against's. So I applaud everybody for coming out and speaking as they do. Reagan and Colson, thank you guys for showing up and doing what you do.

144What I would like to ask you guys to try to find out for us is how do your classmates feel about how they're getting their work. We hear from parents. We don't necessarily hear from students. You guys are on the front lines. So just, if you don't mind, see what you can find out from your friends. It's important to us. And Dr. Arnold, I'd like to thank you and your staff. You guys have always got a world of information for us. It's always very thorough. I'd like to point out, you know, we've talked about IT struggles. These guys are doing a great job. what they've been handed to them. Like I said earlier, this is not where we expected to be 12 months ago. We wouldn't have thought we were right here. But to take

145on the task that they've taken on, they do a phenomenal job. So hats off to them. And I would like to reiterate what Dr. Arnold said, remind everybody, parents, teachers, students, do the right thing when it comes to social distancing. wear your mask, hand sanitizing, all the things that we know we should be doing during cold and flu season. We just need to step it up and make sure we do it year round now. I think if we can all do the right thing, we won't get into a situation where we have to close the school, we won't have to cancel a class or whatever. But more cases are coming, we know that they are. But if we can all do the right thing, hopefully we'll help mitigate a lot of that. So hats off

146to everybody who's doing their part and stepping up to know what we need to do. So thank you, everyone. Thank you, Mr. Perry. Mr. Brasen? thank you chair again I'd like to thank Dr. Arnold and all the staff for all the work that they do each week thank you for the COVID notifications that have come up the transparency on that has been excellent I think I want to specifically mention the substitutes the bus drivers and the custodians because I always scared that we're not recognizing them but when I say staff I mean everybody on this team that puts us together so I want to make sure that they understand the appreciation of those who continue to step up to help us carry out a good school year I appreciate that I also want to thank

147Annetta for coming up making her comments I think empathy is a very important trait I think in We're too quick to lean on our own judgment and biases. And whether or not you agree with what someone does, I think it's important to show empathy, cuz I think it shows compassion and it helps us get along as a community. So, extremely moved by the ability for Onida to get up and share. her since Reagan and Colson first of all Colson was that a full Windsor that mr. Crockett taught you where was did he just yeah okay but thank you all for your work with the with the students morale is a very admirable thing to tackle it is very subjective and it can be mean a lot of things to a lot of different people so

148good luck with those efforts and kudos to you and all that positive attitude is again i like to hear when you said it but thank you to both Finally, I'm a big boy and when I do something wrong and make a mistake, I like to own up to it. I think that's the best way to move forward. Last meeting during our public comments section, when Mr. Wilkins was approaching, I allowed a comment to be uttered from my mouth that was picked up by the microphone. No one heard it here, but still, that does not make it appropriate in the slightest. I immediately called Mr. Wilkins the next day. to apologize to him. I also apologize to my fellow board members. I assured him that it did not affect my ability to listen to his comments.

149The motivation, the proclivity nowadays is to try to throw some kind of political spin on this, but it had nothing to do with Mr. Wilkins' political standing and more to do with his standing in the community as far as his importance and his legacy. And when I saw him here, I immediately assumed or it corresponded to me that this issue with that policy had really, really been escalated to a whole other level that I think the board had intended to be looked at. So I owe him an apology. I owe him and my board members an apology. I do not want to do anything that directly brings discredit upon this board, to this school system, or to this community. And so for that, I am sorry. And I look to move forward from that. So

150thank you, Madam Chair. Yes, sir. Ms. Burns? Yes, I wanted to put another special thank you out to United Way and also Amherst Cares. It's not just every student every day, it's every family every day in Amherst County that we all need to reach out to and work with. So again, thank you for that. And also a big thank you to all our staff, to our parents, to our students, to our grandparents, everybody that is coming together and working to make this. this process possible I guess is the only way to put it and things are going to get better and everything's going to get back to normal but until then everybody's doing a great job and thank you so much. November meeting so there's no update there I do have several things a couple

151of things I didn't know we're squeezing this in about the risk thermometers but I don't need any feedback but there has there have been several comments that they'll read the same temperature every time for the same person or the same people in a row so I just want to make sure we're watching that I know you talked about it being off a little bit but that we're watching that too I do, I guess, have a question. Are we storing that data for any reason? Is it matching up to a student? No, it doesn't. It takes, yeah. I mean, I think you could do that, but we don't have the time to attach. I know the thermometer wasn't working one day at temperance, and they were taking four head reads. So we are not taking that

152data down per student. Right, right. So we don't have to look for anything like that. And we have, and we just had folks out working, calibrating, making sure that that was happening this week, actually. Okay. What happened to our discipline? There have been no suspensions. So that is positive. Sorry. I want to again thank CARES, United Way, and the Education Foundation. I know they've already left, but their work is important. The student representatives, I agree that morale is definitely something to hone in on. Learning and getting an education is the return we get for our tax dollars, but education is so much more and students are missing out on a lot that they would experience being in school with their friends not having to follow some of these rules. I want you to know that

153your voices are heard here and I'm glad that Dr. Arnold is working with you. I don't think we take any action on what you want to do, but I want to charge the administration with helping bringing some normalcy back and implementing some of these ideas that you want because it is important to the whole learning. for the students, so we definitely hear you and I love some of that. I wish I had some of those things that you came up with when I was going to school. I love that. So, not to diminish anybody on the team, we all are making this vote float, everybody from the bottom up, but tonight I wanted to, in listening to some of the updates, specifically highlight Dr., I'm sorry, Mr. Gallagher and HR because I couldn't imagine dealing

154with that nightmare. and I hope we never get to the point where we have to of course shut down a whole school or whatever but it was already we from the beginning of the process being on the board I see how hard it is to find teachers and people to fill positions anyway in a normal era and you're having to do it under just I just can't imagine what you're having to go through so I just wanted to highlight that specifically tonight and then lastly I'm glad to see the graduation update and that forward momentum continuing here at Amherst. And the overwhelming feedback that I've received on how Amherst is doing has been positive. We've actually been held up as examples for some of the surrounding areas of what they would like to see their

155system moving to, their school system. So I really want to implore parents and any other stakeholders to reach out to the school. Dr. Arnold's talked about a help desk that's coming. Facebook really isn't helpful. We saw that last month. Things take fire. Problems become, molehills become mountains quickly. We are definitely trying to work with you and for you, not against you. So our helps are there. And lastly, I agree for the people that come and give us public comments or send emails, that's important feedback from the community that we need. And the good, bad, and ugly, we need to hear it. We don't respond to public comments, but we take that information in. So thank you, everyone. Well, I will just reiterate what everyone else said. So for the sake of time, I'm just going

156to hit a few highlights. I want to start off and I want to thank Reagan and Colson. When you did your presentation, it was such an uplifting moment for me to be reminded of what education really is about. There have been so many tough decisions, committees, details that have to be worked out. It's almost like, you know, you lose sight sometimes. you were able to bring that refreshment back to me, remembering what it was like to be a student in school. And I think that everyone needs that. So thank you very much. I look forward to working with you on that. I also want to thank our community members, our parents and our students, for the recognition that we had tonight. You know, just all the support that's been given. I just want to say,

157you know, thank you for Amherst Care. So you know, either way. I also want to thank Dr. Arnold for his reflections tonight. I agree with you. I think it is important to show that we really do appreciate what every single member of our school system is doing to help make this happen for our kids. And the fact that we have no discipline at this point, you know, makes me think that the kids are appreciative of being in school. That also reminded me, I know we signed up for SAC and discipline last month. And I think we were going to get that out in an email. So just a reminder so that we all have those dates. I don't think I've received that yet, but I could be wrong. So thank you, Dr. Arnold, for those

158reflections. I think they were very positive. And I just want to reiterate that every member has done such a wonderful job. I'm very proud of Amherst County and everyone here. And I'm really, really proud. of our school system for being responsive. You know, we've gotten off to a good start. We've opened up school, like you said, we're leading in that, we're paving that way. And it's been hard, but we've made it work. And in the midst of that, you're still being responsive. You're still responding to committees, the surveys, listening creatively and responding via Facebook. So I just have been very impressed, and thank you. Also, good job on the graduation and dropout rate. A wonderful way to celebrate. Good? I'm not going to be lengthy. I just want to echo all of the great sentiments

159we've had from the board members tonight. I want to thank the board for being so responsive to the comments from the audience and from the public. Dr. Arnold and your crew, we want to thank you again. The word thank you goes a long way for all this great work that's being done. I think Ms. Wright had an interesting title there. There's some grumbling out there. You know how storms are. You have a little grumbling, then the sunshine. So I'm looking for great sunshine. The IT world is complicated anyhow. I may go home right now and can't, it's not because I don't have internet, I just can't figure out what I'm supposed to be doing. So we understand the frustrations of parents and grandparents, and the IT help desk that you're getting ready to incorporate is

160going to be exactly what I put down here to get plenty of help, chat lines, whatever we need to do. And there's still going to be some areas that we just can't cover. But I wrote a note down. They want to encourage parents to contact proper people. Start with your teacher. And then from there to your principals, assistant principals, and then to administration. Because we all are working together, but we might can't get to you all at one time. But I trust the building principals to get right on this thing. I want to thank the IT people for what they're already doing. And Dr. Arnold, I'm excited that you're going to add some help there. Even what I do for a living, I'm calling PACS and people all day long, Microsoft, everybody. and they'll come

161in and push one button and things just light up. I don't know. So this is not anything new. So I can imagine you got three or four kids at home pushing all kind of buttons. Internet went poof right out the window. So I just made that as a joke, but I'm just excited about getting some help. As far as my personal... committee. We continue to be a part of legislative offices. All of you get those JT Kessler reports. I read them and we're going to be doing a delegate assembly in November. So if you have some new policies that you would like me to take to the state, please get those to me by email. Also, this is Bully Prevention Month and even though we're hoping not to have anything going on, we still want

162parents to be encouraged if there's any cyberbullying going on. Who would they call, Dr. Arnold? That would be the same with their parent. Go to their principal. Kids can do things online that's not good. So we don't want that going on out there. And I'm wearing my pink because of Breast Cancer Awareness Month, just because I have several friends who just even recently come down with breast cancer. We want to consider that as we go throughout what we have to do. Gentlemen and ladies at the high school, I love your ideas. So you want to do a little more Rango, huh? Okay, I'm there. You want to do a little line dancing? Social distancing? I'm there. Let me encourage you to not let what we're going through hold you down from good morale. Have you

163ever heard that happiness is in the heart? It is. So come to school best you can every day feeling good. How about some virtual fun? You know what I mean? So I want to see some good virtual. videos going on out there. You can have some pep rallies and I agree. I told you I'm still in the darkness of my football, you know, so whatever y'all come up with on that football field will be fine with me. So as I end, I just want to thank you again, thank the board. I don't think we've missed anything, Dr. Ong, have we? No, ma'am. We've covered a lot tonight. One more time, encourage the parents to reach out to the teacher, to the principal. and see what can happen there and we'll all get through this together.

164If there's anything else from the board, then we have to go into closed session. Dr. Ong, we need a reason for that. Yes, ma'am. Because there's more... Wait, wait. I have one more thing. Okay. I just saw Ms. Bev Jones. Is she part of the education? She is. Well, let's just stop. Thank you, Ms. Jones. Earlier we were recognizing folks for the support of our students and our schools and we recognize the Ed Foundation. And so since you're a member of that, we want to say thank you for all that you've done, but specifically the many grants that are going out next week. Okay, there's other work being done in the county that was they need this room at 730 So here's what we're going to do once we go to closed session when we

165come out. We'll go to the old boardroom down the hall and close up the night. So, a closed meeting will be held to discuss personnel matters, superintendent's contract, Code of Virginia 2.2-371A1. Action may be taken concerning this matter. Can I have a motion to go into closed session? Madam Chair, I make a motion to go into closed session. Second? Second. All in favor? Aye. We are in closed session. All right. Public Service Announcement is brought to you by Amherst County Public Schools. Hello, I'm Rob Arnold, Superintendent of Amherst County Public Schools. Unfortunately, the positive COVID-19 tests in Central Virginia and Amherst County have dramatically increased in the last two weeks. That is the bad news. The good news is that we can change these outcomes and get our students back to school by committing as

166a community to follow several health recommendations. So join me in flattening the curve in Amherst County. Join me! Join me in social distancing. Public service announcement is brought to you by Amherst County Public Schools. Affirmative recorded vote and is in accordance with provisions of the Virginia Freedom of Information Act. Oh yeah, thank you. Do I have a motion to come out and close the meeting? I make a motion to close the meeting. Do I have a second? Second. Okay, now we're certified, right? Okay, go ahead. That's me. Yes. May I read this? I'm sorry. Too much going on. Okay, I'm good now. Whereas the Amherst County School Board has convened, don't you all find me, a closed meeting on this date preserved to an affirmative recorded vote and in accordance with the provisions of the

167Virginia Freedom of Information Act and whereas 22.3712, the Code of Virginia, requires a certification by this school board that such a closed meeting was conducted in conformity with Virginia law. Now, therefore, be it resolved that the Amherst County School Board hereby certifies to the best of each member's knowledge only public business matters lawfully and exempted from opening meeting requirements by Virginia law were discussed in this closed meeting to which this certification applies and only such public business matters as were identified in this motion convening the closed meeting were heard, discussed, or considered. Motion to certify. I make a motion that we certify. Second. Ms. Ligon? Yes. Ms. Thompson? Yes. Ms. Bright? Yes. Ms. Byrd? Yes. Mr. Griser? Yes. Mr. Terry? Yes. Thank you. On July the 20th, 2020, at the school board retreat, the Amherst

168County School Board concluded the superintendent's evaluation. At the September 10th, 2020 regular school board meeting, the board notified him of his desire to renew his contract through June the 30th, 2024. At the conclusion of tonight's closed session, it is the Board's desire to consider with the Superintendent's concurrence to terminate the Superintendent's contract ending June 30, 2022 and reappointing him as Superintendent to a term effective October 15, 2020 and ending June 30, 2024. A copy of this proposed contract with the changes have been provided to each Board member. The changes are highlighted in yellow and have been reviewed by the school board attorney and are in accordance with the policy. Do I have a motion? Madam Chair, I'll make a motion. Current contract will expire in 2024 with those highlighted areas. Okay, do I have a

169second? I'll second it. Okay, all in favor of the new term contract and termination of the old contract? Aye. Any opposed? The ayes have it. You have been rehired. Now, can I ask for a motion to adjourn? Second. All in favor? Aye. Good night. You now have a new superintendent. What is his name? I do not know.