October 3, 2019 Charlottesville City School Board Meeting

001I'm going to call them October 3rd, 2019 school board meeting to order. And we're going to start with a moment of silence. Okay, thank you. And now we're going to do the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge 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 and justice for all. Madam clerk do we have the roll great? Thank you and We're now on the approval of the proposed agenda. There are any changes or comments on it Second all those in favor Any opposed great we're gonna go to the portion of the meeting that is comments from members of the community community members have three minutes to comment, please state your name and your address. And the first person on the

002list is Dee Dee Smith. Hi, Ms. Smith. Good evening. Dee Dee Smith, 2652 Jefferson Park Circle in the city. And I don't really have a lot of prepared comments, but I do have a gift for you. Thank you. And all it is, actually, is a graph of really pages five, I think it's three through eight, actually, of your... your accountability report that you'll be getting tonight and it's just a graphic display really showing the disparity and poverty among our schools and the reason that I wanted to show it to you in graphic form it's you don't have it in graphic form is because I ask you as you explore that accountability report that you consider one you really your key roles as school board members which after hiring a superintendent our policy and budget and

003how your policies and budget have impacted this disparity. I'm sure you feel you inherited it. You did inherit it in many ways, but it's actually gotten worse, and it really is all dependent on how you spend your money and how you enforce or don't enforce your policies. And let me give you a couple examples. At your last meeting, when you approved hiring eight new gifted specialists to add to already an iSTEM specialist in each of the elementaries and Spanish specialists, at the same meeting you cut your EBL literacy intervention in half because it's not in your operating budget. And that just speaks to priorities. Government 101 is if you want to know what values a community has, look at their budget. and look at their policies another example is the you um... you'll have in

004your report the number about a district students that you accept give open choice to you have another almost ninety city families moving around. You have over 200 families in your elementary schools or children in your elementary schools who have open choice, and they're not choosing, by and large, these high-poverty schools. It's exacerbating an already bad situation. The box below the graph is just, again, an illustration. You'll see in most of our schools, average class sizes are about the same. I know you've got different formulas, but they're about the same regardless. The first number, 14 out of 16. That's in Clark. In a classroom of 16 children, 14 of them are low income. In the opposite spectrum, in a school of 20 average students, only four are low income. That's just an illustration of really on

005the ground what this means. It means to teachers. It means to students. It means to the community. And, you know, in some ways, It's so historic, it feels like we should just throw the whole thing out and start over. But in any case, I look forward to hearing your comments as you look at your accountability report. The only caution I have, as I was looking at it, is in some cases they're talking about last school year and in some cases they're talking about this school year. And that's sort of inevitable, but just keep that in mind. Thank you very much. Thank you. Okay, Mario Salas. Good evening, members of the school board and other school staff members who are here, community members who are in attendance. Thank you for this opportunity to make a comment.

006My name is Mario Salas, and I am an attorney with the Just Children program at the Legal Aid Justice Center here in Charlottesville. Our address is 1000 Preston Avenue. So as Charlottesville continues to make much-needed education reforms benefiting all students, I want to echo what Ms. Smith said and emphasize that we should be... particularly sensitive to the needs of students from low-income and low-wealth communities. And in Charlottesville, as we know, these are mostly black and brown students who make up almost half of our student body. These are the communities that Legal Aid Justice Center and Just Children serve. And what we hear from our clients are longstanding concerns around school climate at schools like Clark, Burnley-Moran, Walker, and Buford, schools that have lacked resources for PBIS and similar evidence-based student-centered practices. We applaud all steps

007the schools have taken to systematize these approaches to promoting positive school climates, but there is still work to be done. And moving forward, we encourage CCS to assess school climate through an equity lens, prioritizing making sure that these schools have everything they need to implement these programs consistently and with fidelity. We also want to see the schools do more to keep kids in school when possible, including implementing a tiered system of responses to misconduct that focuses on learning and staying in the classroom. This system should clearly delineate the boundary between police and administrators in addressing misconduct, something that is lacking from the current code of conduct and the MOU in place between the schools and CPD. Lastly for now, we applaud the school board's efforts to fine-tune its draft equity policy so that it centers

008on equity considerations in all decisions and emphasizes self-accountability and community engagement. The most recent draft of the equity policy and the anti-racism policy have a lot in them that CCS should be really proud to stand behind, and we commend the drafters for including these in similar commitments. So just to wrap up, I just want to briefly mention that every year Just Children in October releases a report called Suspended Progress, which is our annual issue brief on the state of exclusionary discipline in Virginia. And the findings have confirmed what we all know about school discipline in Virginia and here in Charlottesville. Black students continue to be suspended at much higher rates than their white peers. Now suspensions are down in Charlottesville from five years ago. We again applaud everything the schools have done to move away

009from exclusionary discipline. But the number are ticking back up at CHS and Beaufort as we see in the most recent data. And moreover, the disparities in discipline by race still exist in our community as they do in virtually every division in the state. Here, roughly 7% of black students in 2016-2017 received a short-term suspension, whereas only roughly 1% of white students have the same outcome. And that's unacceptable. I'm sure we all agree. In suspended progress, we offer a detailed analysis on that discipline gap by locality, as well as evidence-based recommendations for addressing the gap and other data on how discipline impacts students. At a school board meeting last year, Zion O'Brien asked about these data, and she was directed to the VDOE website. And while it's true the data reside there, the system is not

010user-friendly, and it can be difficult and cumbersome to work through if you're not familiar with it. So suspended progress does all that work for anyone interested in learning more about it and it's available for free on our website. I brought some copies with us to your website is www.justiceforall.org. Thank you very much. Is there anyone else in the audience who would like to use this opportunity to speak for three minutes? Please state your name and your address and keep your comments to three minutes. Good afternoon. My name is LaShondra Bryson-Morsberger and I live on Amherst Street in Charlottesville and I just wanted to come. because I guess like other people in the community, I was reacting to some recent numbers, and I just wanted to come publicly and speak out loud. Just to say it

011again, two of our schools recently are accredited with conditions. Those are the middle schools. What was most alarming about that is that those are the areas in our schools where we get the most quote-unquote segregation in the schools, although between tracking and clustering, students are still somewhat segregated in the schools, and the middle schools are where we have the most flight out of the Charlottesville schools. And the other number was that, to repeat again, 52% of African American students are not proficient. grade level versus 89% of white students who are according to the SOLs and we can all agree that that's unacceptable but I just We're 60 years out from the Charlottesville 12 and the most alarming thing is that it seems like we're moving backwards instead of forward and I just want to know

012what measures the school board has in place and the superintendent to make sure that we're not continually getting worse that SOL scores for African American students aren't continuing to go down and to get our schools on track so that they're not accredited with conditions and the other point I wanted to make was the changes to Quest, the push-in model that does get us toward more equity, but what else has changed about the program? Have we changed how we test children? Have we tried different models other than the additional teachers, which is great. It's always great to have more teachers. What else has changed about the Quest program? Quest program aside, if I'm never labeled, quote, unquote, gifted by the schools, I should still be able to read at grade level. And so I'm just here

013to give a voice to those 52% of African American students who are not currently proficient at grade level. And the last thing I wanted to add was... The only teachers that I could talk to about it who felt comfortable are those who are currently retired or no longer working in the system. I have a background in HR, and I just want to know, what are you doing to make it so that teachers feel that they can voice their opinions about how we can move toward more equity, how we can get our SOL numbers up, how we can get our schools fully accredited without conditions, and is it one that is anonymous? And that's it. Thank you. Thank you. Is there anybody else who would like an opportunity to speak? Okay, I'm going to go to

014the next item on the agenda, which is educational highlights for Mr. Faust. He's going to introduce us to that. Good evening, Madam Chair, Dr. Atkins, school board members, and public and community who have joined us here this evening. It gives me great pleasure to introduce two people from our community that have a long history here. Peggy Vaniars, a former school board member, and Kay Slaughter, a former city councilor and mayor here in Charlottesville, are going to come and share with us a little bit about the program Bridge Builders, which Charlottesville City Schools has a partnership with, and they're going to tell us more about what Bridge Builders is doing and going to do. in the near future with Charlottesville City Schools. So Kay Slaughter and Peggy Van Yars, I will let them speak to this

015as they know more than I do. Welcome. Thank you for coming today. Thank you so much, school board and administrators and public. As introduced, I'm Kay Slaughter and this is Peggy Van Yars and we're longtime city residents. Thank you for allowing us to visit with you today to present our book, The Bridge Builders, 2001 to 2016. It recounts history of the last 50 to 75 years through the biographies of outstanding Charlottesvillians. This program was inspired by the life and legacy of the late Drury Brown, civil rights leader and youth jobs program director. It's sponsored by Preservation Piedmont, a 25-year-old grassroots organization focused on central Virginia that seeks to educate and advocate preservation of historic neighborhoods, buildings, landscapes, and cultures. Last year we showed the documentary film Working for a Better Day, the Drury Brown story,

016to students at CHS, followed by a panel discussion including teachers, several of whom had known Mr. Brown. We showed this film again at a Unity Day event this summer and several of you I know were present at that. Today with the book and the film and soon a website. We anticipate collaboration with your curriculum staff and teachers to bring this rich history to every classroom. From art projects among the youngest to oldest students, plus additional educational research, interviews, and writing by middle schools and high schools, there is room at the Bridge Builder table for everyone. We ask today that you endorse the use of these materials and direct us to the next step in collaborating with the city schools as it develops a local history program. Our bridge builders, men and women, black and white,

017were designated as Charlottesville's heroes through their willingness to cross bridges to work with people from backgrounds different from their own in terms of race, income, education, ethnicity. Many, if not all, were involved with the public schools. Eugene Williams was one of the parents who first petitioned the school board in the summer of 1954 in the wake of Brown v. Board of Education to open its doors to all children. School board members such as Ray Bell, Henry Mitchell, Grace Tinsley, Alicia Lugo, and Emily Couric all stepped up to serve at critical periods. Mr. Bell and Reverend Mitchell served as the school's desegregated. Booker Reeves, first as a teacher, later principal at Jefferson School, became an assistant administrator dedicated to easing the way for black teachers and black students during desegregation. And Mitch Van Yeris worked for

018early childhood education at the state level in the Virginia General Assembly. Teachers such as Sandy Snook, Virginia Carrington, Jerry Spidell, and Teresa Walker helped students come together as they taught about building a better community and a better world. Later, Winx Lawrence worked with community sports and mentored young women, and the late Paul Gaston. in his direct action as well as dealings with college students, led the way to opening restaurants in our area. L.D. Cooley opened his businesses, including University Cafeteria, to all people, regardless of race, long before there was a federal law for public accommodations. Franz Stilfried literally gave his life representing the disabled in the community. Jay Worrell and William Washington helped people who were down and out because of their run-ins with the judicial system. And Miss Tilly Miller of Victory Shoes gave

019credit to hardworking people when it was rarely extended to non-whites by other establishments. And there are many more, 37 in all. These people represent the best that is in Charlottesville. We want the children and youth to learn about these local people because history occurs not only at the state, national, and international level, it is also made at home by people who care about their community, who take a stand, and who work to create the change they want. The Bridge Builder book and its PDF format offers this history to students from grade one through high school. This rich resource can help bring history alive through such activities as meetings, interviews, and talks with living bridge builders, art projects such as the Portraits of Bridge Builders, further research in local and UVA libraries on bridge builders and

020their work. The Drury Brown film, which has been digitized now, and other documentaries we've identified, supplemented by panels of people who had worked in this area. The webpage, which is up behind you, a dummy of it now. which we hope will be able to be useful to share lesson plans and ideas with teachers and the public. And finally, promoting the Drury Brown Bridge on West Main Street as a more visible monument to local people through public art, banners, and signage. And we're also hoping to create a walkable tour that will be available to people who come to the bridge, including, of course, classes. In closing, I want to acknowledge Virginia Humanities' support for this website and the project. and the city's sponsorship of the first 800 copies of the book. And we're publishing more now.

021Even as we speak, we're giving you our last copies. But let us know, you know, how we can move forward, how we can collaborate with you. And please ask any questions of us. And we have books for all of you and also for each school library. And then Peggy Vanieres will make some additional comments, my partner in this endeavor. Thank you, Ms. Flatter. Thank you, Kay. I'm really here for three reasons. Kay has done all the work. But three reasons. One, you know I love kids. I mean, I used to serve on the school board for six years, along with Juan and Dee Dee. And I had four kids go through the public schools. I have two grandchildren under your care right now. So the second one is my father-in-law, Mitch Vanieres, as Kay mentioned,

022is one of the bridge builders. I think most of you knew him. He was a beloved member of the community. Counselor, mayor, 25 years in the General Assembly. When he quit the General Assembly, they called him the conscience of the house because he created the first public defender's office here with Drury and Grace Tinsley. He got the state to apologize to eugenics. He made sure the swimming pools that were built in Charlottesville were put in the lower income areas. And he was just an all-around great guy. And the third reason I'm here is today, you know, we're hearing a lot about Charlottesville's sordid past. And we have to admit that we've done a lot of wrong things. Finnegar Hill, massive resistance, and way before that, slavery. A lot of people don't know about these people.

023And since the 60s or even before that, these people fought for civil rights. They fought to make our schools better. They fought to make this community better. And we need our children and our people in the community. We need to know about them. Reading in the Daily Progress, I know you're working on making sure that people who are erased from history are known. But, you know, these people are also. kind of being erased from history too. And we've got five or maybe six or eight living bridge builders, and we're going to be nominating more as time goes on too. Wonderful resources for your students. So we look forward to working with you. Thank you. And then any questions, we're happy to answer. Great. Thank you for your presentation and your hard work on making these

024great resources for our community. Well, it was... truly a labor of love. It was really a great honor to do it. Thank you. Does anybody have any questions? Did you immediately go to print and have like four people that you wanted to include? Pardon? Did you just like, oh, we should have included this person. We should have included this person. No, this program was started after Drury. I was on city council. I was mayor then when Drury died and we had just replaced the bridge and we wanted to rededicate it. So we dedicated it to him. And the rest of the city council came up with this idea of wanting to continue by coming up with names of people every year. And so the program had worked over a number of years and they are

025going to open nominations again. The last ones were in... 2016 and the late Holly Edwards who was still with us then was named at that time. So this goes through the book shows you the people who were named different years and gives you some short bios and they're just it was so wonderful getting to know the ones I didn't know and revisiting the ones I do know. Great. Thank you so much. I'm delighted to have a copy. Any other questions? Again, thanks. Thank you. Thank you. Did you want to say something? Okay. So the next item on the agenda are special recognitions. Dr. King is going to be talking about the resolution on Disability History and Awareness Month and Dyslexia Awareness Month. Good evening, Madam Chair, school board members, and Dr. Atkins. Tonight, I would

026like to present the resolution on Disability History and Awareness Month. Whereas the General Assembly recognized the importance of increasing public awareness and respect for persons with disabilities and informing the public about the many contributions to society and emphasizing the abilities of disabled persons. And whereas public schools, institutions of higher education, the business community, civic organizations, and other interested entities are encouraged to promote and highlight Disability History and Awareness Month, in the Commonwealth of Virginia, And whereas the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 was enacted to end disability-based discrimination and to promote inclusion, full participation, economic self-sufficiency, and equality of opportunity for all people with disabilities. And whereas research has shown that students with disabilities encounter more difficulty being accepted by their peers, making friends, and becoming involved in school, and community-based clubs than non-disabled students.

027And whereas the Virginia Department of Education, the Virginia Board for People with Disabilities, and the Virginia Commonwealth University Partnership for People with Disabilities have provided public service announcements and have sent a DVD containing the public service announcements to each director of special education in Virginia. And whereas the Charlottesville City Schools strongly believe in having the highest expectations of students with disabilities and that each school should strive to have every student attempt to obtain a standard or advanced studies diploma. And whereas Charlottesville City Schools believe that students with disabilities make significant academic and social progress when educated in general education environments. And whereas Charlottesville City Schools in 2018 and 2019 served almost 600 students with disabilities under the Individuals with Disability Education Act and resolved that the Charlottesville City Schools supports Disability History and Awareness Month

028to increase respect for persons with disabilities and inform the public concerning their many contributions to society. And be it resolved further that the Charlottesville City Schools principals and teachers are encouraged through educational and other appropriate activities, programs, and events to promote and highlight Disability History and Awareness Month in the Commonwealth of Virginia this third day of October 2019. Thank you, Dr. King. Are there any comments on the resolution? I would just like to ask our board to change the under where it says whereas the Charlottesville City Public Schools strongly believes in having the highest expectations that instead of to have every student attempt to obtain, we say to have every student obtain a standard or advanced studies diploma. If there's a... I would agree with that. Okay. So I cannot move that, I don't think,

029but... I don't mean every amend resolution. Yeah. So I'll second that. Any comments on that? All those in favor? All those opposed? Do I need to then approve the larger resolution? Or just approving the whole resolution at that point? Okay. With that change. Great. What is the next item? Dyslexia Awareness Month. Whereas dyslexia is a language-based learning disability that causes difficulties with reading, writing, spelling, and word pronunciation, and whereas the onset and severity of dyslexia varies for each individual, and whereas because it takes individuals with dyslexia longer to process phonemic information, the disability directly affects academic growth, achievement, and self-esteem. And whereas it is important to provide effective teaching approaches and related clinical education intervention strategies for individuals with dyslexia. And whereas Dyslexia Awareness Month is an opportunity to acknowledge educators specializing in effective teaching

030strategies and to celebrate the many... achievements of adolescent students and adults with dyslexia. Now, therefore, the Charlottesville City School Board joins the Governor, Governor Northam, in recognizing October 2019 as Dyslexia Awareness Month in our Commonwealth of Virginia and call this observance to the attention of all citizens. Thank you, Dr. King. Any comments or questions? Madam, Ms. Torres? Madam Chair, thank you for that. I do want to just express my gratitude to the governor, but also want to, as I probably do every year, express gratitude to parents. There was a grassroots parents decoding dyslexia group that really has... been on the ground and pushing and working and showing up at the General Assembly and working with legislators to make sure that this is on everybody's radar and the state and VDOE now do annual modules as

031far as training for the new teachers for every year as they need to come up with licensure. It's near and dear to my heart. So I appreciate the school's efforts and the acknowledgement of it. And if you'll just give me a minute, I thought it was interesting. This resolution came up, and somebody that the schools have partnered with, which is Learning Ally. is a group that actually any school or any student that has a reading disability can partner with them and the teachers or your case manager within the school can register that child to or that student to get... or different types of materials there to help them. And there was just some fun facts and it was actually a quiz and I won't bore you with the quiz. But again, with the focus on

032dyslexia, just some facts that I felt were very important. that 80% of students with learning differences do have dyslexia. Dyslexia is the result of a neurological difference and cannot be cured by medication, which is a myth that is often out there. And that's Leonardo da Vinci, Winston Churchill, Walt Disney, Alexander Graham Bell, all were notable figures with dyslexia. 50% of students with dyslexia perform three grade levels below peers on key skills. So just some facts and just the importance and that it is prevalent out there. And a lot of adults don't realize that they had it, but the schools are doing a really great job to identify and to provide those supports and to help our students achieve that advanced diploma. So thank you. Thank you, Ms. Torres. Any other comments or questions for Dr.

033King? Is this something that we need to approve as a resolution? Yes? Okay. I'll take a motion. I move for approval of the resolution. I second. All those in favor? Any opposed? Great. The resolution passes wholeheartedly. Thank you, Dr. King. We'll see you in a little bit. Mr. Faust. Good evening, Madam Chair, school board members, Dr. Atkins, public and staff. I am here to share with you the Virginia School Board Association has declared that October 2019 is anti-bullying month and is encouraging school divisions to adopt resolutions designating it as such. I have here a resolution from the governor of Virginia, which I would like to share with you now. Whereas school bullying has become an increasingly significant problem in the United States and Virginia, and whereas over 20% of the youth in the United States

034are estimated to be involved in bullying each year, either as a bully or as a victim, and whereas bullying can assume many forms, including verbal, physical, and in cyberspace, and can happen on and off school grounds. And whereas it is important for Virginia parents, students, teachers, school administrators to be aware of bullying and to encourage discussion of the problem as a school community. And whereas the Virginia School Boards Association has developed a model policy on anti-bullying to encourage positive behaviors and to eliminate bullying behaviors. Now therefore I, Ralph S. Northam, do hereby recognize October 2019. Virginia School Boards Association bullying prevention month in our Commonwealth of Virginia and I call this observance to the attention of all of our citizens signed Governor Ralph S Northam and Secretary Kelly Thomason thank you mr. fast this is

035another action item madam clerk okay we're proclaiming it as well but we're not resolving no sorry Okay, so thank you, Mr. Brous. We're going to go to board member comments at this point, and I'll start with, first of all, I wanted to say thank you to the members of the public who came and spoke, and I especially appreciate Ms. Vanieres and Ms. Slaughter for your, I would like to nominate Alexanne to be in the bridge builder when that process opens up again. But I also wanted to say hello and welcome again to Adrian. And he's our school board student rep. And you'll be called upon last in this to make a comment if you have any. And so I'm going to start with Mr. Bryant. I will reserve my comments to the end. Okay. I

036will not reserve my comments. So I just wanted to mention a few things right now, a few things that I have done recently. One is that I, just as part of my own learning and my own process of growth on... racism and equity. I took a course this summer called Race, Racism in Schools, which was really interesting and learned some about some of the academic work going on across the country to address these issues. And so it was a valuable experience as well as I participated in an equity webinar sponsored by the Urban League. I have also joined the Arts Education Committee of the Paramount, which is dedicated to equal access to arts education for all students. And this is something that I feel very passionately about, that all students have access to high-quality arts

037education, which I think we're doing a really good job in our school division. With Mr. Bryant, I attended a program at the Islamic Center on bullying and teen mental health. I would just say that I applaud the resolution and the October being the anti-bullying month, but I want to really make sure that we are working on this issue in our schools, that we are looking for and finding any kind of bullying activity that is going on among populations of students in our division, that we are creating programs to prevent that. that we are working to create strong, supportive school climates in all of our schools where bullying has no place. So, you know, it's something that we have to deal with not just in October but all the time, and I hope that we can

038hear more about what our school division is actually doing maybe later in the year to deal with this issue. I attended a screening of a film, a wonderful documentary called A Different Side, led by the Alliance for Black Male Achievement with filmmaker Clarence Green. And this was an incredible project, which was really done by a group of young African-American men who really sort of pulled it together and told their story, and it was very powerful. And I think this film now has been accepted into an upcoming film festival. So it was wonderful work and wonderful to sort of see our whole community come out for this screening. Also, with Mr. Mickey, I attended the Virginia School Board Association Legislative Advocacy Conference, and where we learn about sort of what the General Assembly is doing, what

039the state government, state leadership is doing in the area of education, what we can look forward to. So just a couple of things from that. We learned that the General Assembly education priorities this year are early childhood, school safety, school modernization, and something called labor relations, which means that maybe a move to allow a little more collective bargaining by teachers groups around certain issues in the schools. So, anyway, that was interesting, and we will be meeting with our own legislators, I think, next month to talk about our priorities. And finally, I want to bring our attention to the issue of vaping. which will be a priority for the School Health Advisory Board that I do serve on. It'll be a priority this year. You've seen lots of recent news coverage about this, about the dangers

040of vaping and e-cigarettes. These are unregulated by the FDA, these products, and there's increasing evidence that these products are highly dangerous. and that our children are using them at a rapidly increasing rate. So this is occurring in our communities, in our schools, not just at the high school and middle school level, but even among elementary students who may be offered a vaping product by another kid at school. And I'm not saying specifically these things are happening at a specific school here. This is just what's happening. with this issue and these I I didn't really know what these vaping things look like so you know I was shocked to see them because I would have I saw some other devices and they look like something completely different you know they don't you know they look like

041a toy almost so um I feel really strongly about this. For all the parents who are watching and listening to this meeting, it's really important that you learn about vaping, that you learn what these devices are, what they look like, and that you have the talk with your own children about this and make sure that if anybody offers them to try one of these flavored products that they come to you and tell you. So anyway, Shab this year will be working on educating our parents and our educators within our system about the dangers of vaping, and you can look forward to hearing a little bit more about that. But it has become very alarming to me, and I just want to make sure that we're being proactive on this issue. That's it. That's pretty good.

042So... I've been a little busy during the month of September, and I had an opportunity to attend the Jefferson School Education Advisory Board meeting. And the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center is working with our illustrious superintendent and her designees to look. to develop a partnership where we will offer professional development opportunities to our instructors regarding local African American history. And by local, we mean Charlottesville, Albemarle, and the surrounding counties. And this all comes out of the trip that was taken last summer to... Alabama, yes. And so we're working on that, and we had excellent participation from our staff members here at the advisory committee meeting, and there was a professional learning day on Monday that some of our instructors participated in. And so this is another way that we are working on equity in.

043our schools and with the persons that are charged with instructing our students. I had the pleasure of visiting Charlottesville High School on September 13th with Mr. Bryant, and I am always amazed at the enthusiasm and energy that high school students have, even though that's what I do in my day job. And I would like to say thank you to Dr. Irizarry and his staff for making our visit. and the day that we spent very memorable. We were there for the lunch period, so it was lots of fun. I'd like to give a special shout-out to a very dear friend, Curtis Elder, for giving us a beautiful day for the dedication of the track. Mr. Elder taught my daughter how to drive. And so it means a lot because she learned how to drive defensively and

044she's still here. So thank you, Mr. Elder. Once again, we're revving up for the Grace Tinsley Scholarship event, which will be held in 2020. And as you know, those funds raise money for graduating seniors from Charlottesville High School. And the monies are given to them for their first and second year in college. And if our monies continue to grow, we are looking at doing it over a three-year period. So congratulations to all of our former winners and the upcoming winners as well. I had an opportunity to attend our City of Promise meeting because I am on their board, and our interim director, Mary Coleman, is off to a great start, and she is expanding the good works of our predecessor, Denise Johnson, who is now with us helping. do equity things and making sure that

045things in this city of promise are still moving and growing and we're constantly keeping in mind the mission and vision of the organization and with particular emphasis to the students that are in the footprint and the footprint is the title that is given versus the word neighborhood As you all know, our illustrious superintendent, I call her our fearless leader, nominated me to be on the CUBE Steering Committee, and CUBE stands for Council of Urban Board Educators. Every year, CUBE holds its annual conference, and our district is a member of CUBE. And we are considered a small district because we're less than 15,000 students, and they have some districts that have. six figures in their school districts, so there you have it. The primary focus of CUBE is to address equity issues within our country and

046with those urban and other districts that face equity issues. CUBE has been instrumental in assisting our board in developing and crafting the draft policy that you have seen, and if you haven't seen it, it will be discussed later on. Once our policy is adopted, it will become a part of the CUBE portfolio in order that it is used in training sessions and used to help other school districts around the country develop equity policies. So once again, we're on the cutting edge. Go CCS. As a member of the steering committee, we have assignments. So I was responsible for moderating two sessions. One was called Enhancing Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematic Opportunities for Underrepresented Groups. And the other one was How Do You Recruit and Maintain More Male Educators of Color? UBOND. Yes, BOND is an acronym

047for the program in Montgomery County, Maryland that addresses the issues of African American and brown educators. So I have that information and I will be sharing it with Dr. Atkins and our HR division as it relates to BOND. I was unable to attend our very own VSBA workshop that was held because Bond was at the same time. But I figured because we had a great relationship with VSBA, I could get a pass. So I took the pass. I also attended a session that dealt with trauma-informed and culturally competent schools. A lot of the things that we do in our trauma-informed classrooms were apparent in this workshop. And it was just... refreshing for me to know. I also attended a workshop that dealt with addressing the equity value gap. There was a presentation on my brother's

048keeper, but I felt that with our black male initiative here in Charlottesville as it relates to black male achievement, the things that were happening in that workshop were very similar to what we do. In fact, we probably pushed the benchmark a little further. So that was good to know. On behalf of CUBE and the Charlottesville School Division, as a member of the steering committee, I reached out to our CUBE member districts in the Commonwealth of Virginia that were recently affected by the hurricane. I have received letters from all of the school division's chairs thanking not only the Charlottesville School Board, but the CUBE steering committee for remembering them in their difficult times. And I was also asked to bring greetings to our school district from Cube as well. Thank you, Ms. Puryear. Mr. Wade? Thank

049you. Thank you. I have just a few comments to make. I wanted to say that I attended many of the sessions and meetings that my fellow board members talked about. I just wanted to spend my time talking a little bit about some of the comments that we received earlier today, and I really appreciate them. That's one of the things I like about this community is that... we can pitch in and share ideas and and we certainly have over the last you know since I've been on the board in particular last few years on those things I really appreciate appreciate those comments I can say with confidence that we've made great strides in the school system, but I know that we still have a way to go, and I'm encouraged that we can with the support

050that we're getting from the community. I know because I think I have a pretty good pulse on it that the principals, the teachers, the bus drivers, the janitors, every member of this system is committed, just as committed as this board is to addressing this. And I personally work with many youth in this community and I can, you know, I work with them from usually the fourth or fifth grade to graduation and beyond. And at least the ones I work with, the issues could be fairly complex. And I think that we can address it as a community, but we only have them a certain amount of period of the day. And I'm encouraged by our... our commitment, our partnerships with community partners that we can address this as a community. I have talked about this many

051times that I'm a big proponent of being mentors because we can do so much in this school, but if that young person, if they have someone that they can go to, that they can talk to about how to address maybe some access, some community. programs that goes a long way and I have seen it I can personally attest to this that we can address this this system this community is committed enough we have enough resources in this community we can address this but again where's the school system we can't do it with the hours that we have and we have many after school hours as well but I'm encouraged by the people that have come up spoke and those who have committed to work with us in the community, that we can do this. We're

052going to get a lot of information today on where we stand and where we need to go. And this is not something that we're trying to hide or put under. It is what it is. And we are a community that we know that this is something that we want to address. And because we love... and value and cherish each and one of our students, whether they're black, brown, or whatever. And that's why I have been part of this board for the last four terms, the last 13, 14 years, because of what we do, because of the commitment of Rosa and the staff. It's probably only been a handful of meetings that I've been in the last 13, 14 years that these issues have not been brought up. But they're complex. It's not one thing that

053can do it. I know the youth that I work with, one thing that works for one youth would not work for the other. So if you can imagine that over a couple of thousand students, you see where we are. But I'm encouraged because we have the resources to do this, and we have the commitment, certainly from the staff and the school board, and I believe we do from the public as well. Thank you. I'm stepping down now off my soapbox now. Thank you, Mr. Wain. Ms. Torres? Yes, Madam Chair, thank you. Thank you, Mr. Wade. Some of the things that I've been able to do in the last month, some fun things. Mr. Wade and I were able to participate or represent the school board for the PTO at the football game last Friday. It's

054teacher appreciation. and we were able to help serve some food and listen to the band and be out there, and it was hot and steamy. So I'm looking forward to some cooler temperatures coming up, but that was fun. I also was able to attend the documentary A Different Side. Also, I was able to attend the faculty talent show here at Charlottesville High School, and that was fun. And boy, do we have some talented teachers. So that was an opportunity. I encourage everybody next year, if you have the opportunity to attend that, that's fun to do. was able to attend the recognition at Buford last weekend that recognized the 60-year anniversary of the Charlottesville 12 as they partnered with City Schoolyard Gardens and the interns that were able to work in the gardens this summer. were

055able to work together and collaborated and did some research and decided to make a sundial that commemorated each of the 12, the Charlottesville 12. So that was just a really nice recognition and opportunity to listen to them and be present and that partnership there, and Mr. Wade was there as well. attended the special ed advisory committee, which I am the board rep on that. This year... We have decided to move those meetings around. So this first meeting was at Burnley Moran, and our next meeting will be at Johnson Elementary School on November 13th. And that's at 5.30. And our hopes are that by moving those meetings around, that more people in those communities or in that neighborhood area or that school will be able to attend. So please share that out, if you will. i'm

056also attended some housing advisory committee meetings as i'm the board rep for that so that's it for now thank you thank you i i do not have any comments at this moment great thank you um great i'm going to reserve my comments as well and get us moving on the agenda so we're at the consent agenda anybody have any thoughts on the consent agenda There have been no changes. I move for approval of the consent agenda. Second. And all those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Okay. Thanks. And now we're going to go to Dr. King for approval of the 2019-2020 advisory committees. I'm going to put a plug in. They did a great job. It looks like there's a lot more parents involved, so I appreciate that. I hope the parents really appreciate that we

057are, as advisory committees, that we really are seeking their input. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair. So, yes, I am presenting our advisory committees for gifted education, special education advisory, as well as our SHAB, our School Health Advisory Board, and our Title I parent advisory. Last month we had an opportunity to discuss the representatives, so I'm bringing it back for action for the board. Any questions or comments for Dr. King? I move for approval of the advisory committee boards. Second. All those in favor? Any opposed? Thank you, Dr. King. Thank you. I kind of feel like we need a drum roll for the next item on the agenda. Ms. Gertrude Ivory is going to present about the new pathway for gifted education. Good evening, Madam Chair, members of the board, Dr. Atkins, and

058all here assembled. It is indeed a pleasure. I'm sorry? I'm sorry. Dr. Atkins has some kind words to say first. Ms. Ivory, I just want to welcome you back. to Charlottesville City Schools. Of course, we loved you while you were here, and then you made the decision to retire. And very recently, I'd like for our community to know just how dedicated Gertrude has been to our students and our community. I sent her a text on a Friday night, late Friday night, to ask her if she would give me a call. I needed to discuss something with her because I needed her to come in to cover for another employee. And she texted me back, and early Saturday morning she made a phone call, 9 o'clock, to me to ask and to find out what I

059needed. And I said, if you would consider, and Gertrude moved back to New Orleans when she left Charlottesville. And I said, I need you to come in and cover for another employee. Would you consider coming back? And that was on Friday, on Saturday, and she did not. hesitate she immediately said yes I'll come back so we arranged for her to come back on the 23rd which was a full week away by Monday after I talked with her on Saturday. I called her back, asked her if she'd made her flight arrangements, and she said, no, not yet. I said, good. Is there any way you can come before the 23rd? And she said, well, what do you have in mind? I said, well, today is Monday. Can you get here Wednesday? And she kind of laughed

060with the Gertrude laugh, and she said, yes. So she made her arrangements. She literally landed at the Charlottesville airport at 12.15 that Wednesday, and by 1.30 she was in the office, and she started working about 1.35. And she worked, I think it was around 7 o'clock I left the office, and she was still there. So, Gertrude, we are so happy to have you back. Welcome. You were a delight when you were here, and it is a pleasure and a great asset to have you back in the division. Welcome back. Thank you. Thank you so much, Dr. Atkins. I tell you, I have been truly humbled by the warm welcome I have received as I have returned to Charlottesville City Schools. And the most endearing comment has been welcome home. So I do feel like you,

061you know, I spent a long time here and I've made lots of friends and relationships and it does feel like I'm coming home. And honestly, I came in and it, you know, I just hit the ground running. We started working the first day that I was here. So that's really exciting. I'm excited about the direction that I see the Charlottesville City Schools going in. And I have been. able while I'm here to participate in just a number of things that show me that we're working really hard to create a more inclusive community here in Charlottesville and that's exciting. Exciting for me. And one of the things we're doing in that arena is a new pathway for gifted education. So the research says that cultivating inclusive school norms and values is one way of increasing equity

062in schools. And your commitments on the website, by the way, the website on equity. for the Charlotte's Felicity Schools is amazing. It has a ton of information there and the things that we're doing to support students and to make sure people understand that we are about children here in this school division is really, really commendable. The other thing is fostering a sense of belonging for all students. embracing age-appropriate conversations about diversity and social justice, rethinking the use of tracking and ability grouping. And I think that's one of the things we're going to talk about tonight with our focus on the new pathway for gifted education, and then supporting positive relationships between students and school staff. And Charlottesville is doing something in every one of those arenas, and I know that with the continued focus and

063the work that we're going to do, and hopefully what I can contribute to that, we will certainly see a difference in the achievement and outcomes for our students. I would like to bring up Ms. Bev Catlin, who is going to talk about the pathway. I think it's already been introduced. We're just asking the board to approve the recommendation for the new pathway for gifted education. Thank you, Ms. Ivory. You're welcome. And Ms. Catlin, do we have any questions? Are we going to do this presentation? This is just a presentation that's been done numerous times. But we actually never formally had you approve the pathways until we would like that to happen. Okay. Moving forward in this direction. Can we just do that? Yes. Okay. I move that we approve the new Pathways for Gifted Education

064program. I second. Great. Does anybody have any questions or comments on this pathway? I can say to you that we all know that we put additional supports in our schools, so we're very pleased about that. And the push-in model, still there's some areas that we're working out, but the professional development that's happening and the comments that we're getting from our schools and our staff members. We feel like we're certainly on the right track. We're seeing some positive trends starting to develop already, and we're looking forward to continuing to develop the model, continuing to impact the lives of our students with that deeper learning and developing those cognitive processes in all of our students. And I would just like to note from perhaps later, Dr. King specifically for our leader, is how we're going to report

065out on this pathway on a regular basis. I think we can talk about that maybe as a board when we have our retreat, more specifically what we would like. But I definitely want us to note that we will be getting reports on this pathway. It's not just something that we're going to. approve and then be done with. This is obviously, I think, even at the end of this as a journey. And so this is, we're going to move forward hopefully with getting reports and the reports, honestly, that we've heard thus far have been really great and I look forward to substantively talking more about that in, I don't know, a reasonable amount of time. But this... Madam Chair, a lot of members of the community, and it has been expressed earlier this evening, regarding the

066differences of the pullout and push-in. And if you look at the PowerPoint, pages 8 through 12, it shows you what we were and what we are moving toward. And I think that will help address the answers to those questions. And we hope that everyone understands that. in moving forward and doing any evaluations that are done, it will be based on the column that indicates moving forward. So if changes need to be made or things need to be adjusted, it's going to be adjusted from that point and not from what was. And also be cognizant of the new terminologies that are being used as well. And I feel a lot of people have wanted to know that, and it is now in print. And they can see it and refer to it. And if they have

067questions, then duly noted. I also want to note. If I could share also, I have done and will at the end of this month have done a presentation at the PTO meeting at every school, every elementary school and the Walker-Buford CHS combined PTO meeting. We have given parents an opportunity, and we've had significant crowds at each of those PTO meetings. So there's time where we go through the PowerPoint, and there's time for them to ask questions and respond to what's going on. So we've also been trying to use that as a way to communicate with our families. And we've been getting really positive feedback about that. I have not been to those PTOM presentations, but I certainly have heard about them, and the parents are really appreciative of kind of understanding more fully what's happening.

068And I think this PowerPoint, which I think was first presented in June and has evolved somewhat, but not very much, but certainly somewhat. demonstrates the work that the team has been doing at least since last year around this time. So thank you for your hard work. Are there any other comments or questions? Ms. McKeever, just to remind our audience in the board that Catherine Brighton from the University of Virginia continues to work with our elementary school teachers. And on the 30th, September 30th, they had quite a bit of professional learning that went on that day as they're continuing to fine-tune their delivery of instruction. So we want to thank Catherine. Brighton and Carol Tomlinson is continuing to work with Walker through the high school. Great. And so I will go ahead and vote. We'll vote

069on this pathway. And all those in favor of this pathway? The motion? Okay. Any opposed? Okay. Great. Thank you, Ms. Pat. Thank you very much. The next item on the agenda, my cheat sheet here, is the, this hoover is going to talk about the amended 2020 budget. Good evening, Chairman McKeever and Dr. Atkinson, members of the board. I have the pleasure of presenting to you a budget amendment in support of the new pathway for education. The city in August appropriated additional money of $468,000 to the city schools in support of this initiative. I'm here to present this amendment to you it increases our general fund balance to the tune of 73.8 million and our overall budget to 88.5 million this appropriation adds eight new teachers Two are roles. The appropriation supports six teachers, and then

070two of those teachers will be funded from fund balance and open positions. And we are just asking you tonight to approve this addition to the school board budget. Do you guys understand what this is for? Mm-hmm. Okay. Any questions of Ms. Hoover? Happy to have the money. Yes, ma'am. We've hired everybody. Is that accurate? We are fully staffed. That's great. Dr. Blair didn't look up. Fully staffed with gifted. Are we fully staffed? We have filled seven out of the eight more. One additional position, which is at Beaufort. Okay. Go ahead. Any motions, comments, questions? I move that we approve the amended 2020 budget. Second. Okay. Comments, questions? Okay. And all those in favor of the motion, say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And now we're going to talk about

071the equity updates and equity and anti-racism policy. Ms. Ivory, wait, it says Ms. Ivory, but it may be Dr. King. It may be somebody else. Good evening again. Good evening. Yes. We have developed. Our equity and diversity policy and anti-racism policy and Ms. Beth Chuck and Ms. Denise Johnson will share that policy with the board and the audience. Thank you. I just want to, before you come up, Beth Chuck, and I want to say y'all have been working real hard on that website that Ms. Ivory had mentioned was so strong. And I just wanted to acknowledge that it's... With the support I'm sure of people who work on the back end of the website, but also the substantive comments is that y'all? Just you guys are doing an excellent job on the equity portion of

072the website to accurately reflect the work that we're doing and So, thank you Thank you. Thank you very much. Um Yes, please you can open it I think we're going to do, first of all, thank you so much for the time to speak here tonight. Denise and I are delighted to give you, first I believe we're going to go through the updates and then we'll have a chance to review the policies. Great. What you have attached to you is really just a download from where the website was. I think a day or two ago we had some corrections and some additions from staff members come in. So probably what I'll do is give you a final update tomorrow as to what it was today when we did this presentation. But we're just really going to

073go through that website a little bit today. The first thing you should know is that that revised page of the website is really just... a starting point. We've spent some time in the last couple of weeks culling information and getting updated information from colleagues and from folks who are actually doing this work. And so what we've done in that is just... flesh out documentation for what is going on now. In the future, what we'd like to do is add a video to that page, add some photos to the page, probably create a pamphlet or a little booklet that helps people understand what are we actually doing this year. So just to give a little bit of history, as you all know, at the school board retreat in May, Denise and I gave a presentation then

074telling you these are the big themes and the big ideas that we've heard during our long season of listening during 2018, 2019. And here are the four themes that we think are sort of our focus areas for equity during the 19-20 school year. And at that time, we gave you some ideas about some specific ideas that we thought the school division was moving towards and some specific initiatives that we thought were possibilities. And today, I'm really delighted to be standing in front of you today to say that so many of those things are in the works or have become realities. And I think we can just take a moment, I think, when we look through each of these items, just to be... Take a moment to express appreciation to our colleagues for the good work

075they've done and the sense of urgency that I think as a division we have taken as we've moved forward with these initiatives. So the first goal is supported and supportive staff, and this includes diversifying our staff and equipping our educators to succeed and to help all students succeed. And Leslie, if you wouldn't mind breaking out, or maybe I can do it from here. There we go. You can see that for each one of these goals, we have various commitments that we've made and a little update on where we are with those commitments. And now I'll pass the mic over. Yeah, so I'll go through and mention just a few highlights. But as Beth said, the drop-down tab will mention everything we're doing under those priority goals. So we definitely want to mention that 30% of

076our instructional and administrative hires for the school year were people of color. And as you know, all staff members received implicit bias training and all leadership received institutional bias training. We're in the process of building out our equity training calendar for the rest of the year. This may include workshops such as day-to-day equity awareness in school, adult escalation and trigger awareness, and also the adultification of our black children. So the second priority would be diverse, inclusive, and rigorous learning experiences. And the main idea for that is that we should embrace our diversity in classrooms' student composition and in richly varied and challenging learning activities. We've done a lot of discussion around our gifted redesign, and it has been discussed many times, but we are still committed to the process. There is an expansion of our

077honors option at Beaufort Walker and CHS, and that has been highly supported this summer and throughout the year with PO led by Carol Ann Tomlinson. There is also great work being done on revisiting the history curriculum with partners such as Jefferson School and Virginia Humanities. The third commitment is growing relationships, building community. As we help our staff and students feel connected, supported, and safe, we will learn from one another for our mutual gain. As we emphasize learning from one another, it's really exciting to know that the Bring Back the Village initiative has kicked off. And so in less than two weeks, we have had 40 community members volunteer to support our schools with the Bring Back the Village initiative. One of the programs under this initiative is the Voices from the Village. And this program

078incorporates community members and guests who will be guest speaking at Lugo, McGinnis, and CHS this school year. We have also expanded our social-emotional learning practices in every school, which was highlighted from a visit from our Secretary of Education. Secretary Carney visited CHS, I think it was last week, but maybe it's now two weeks ago, time flies. And some of these, the first bullet points on this list, the Green Dot Bystander Training Program that launched that very day, the Teen Mental Health First Aid Expansion, the Link Crew Mentorship Program for ninth grade, some of those things and others were what we were talking about as he sat and met with students, Sarah Elaine Hart of the CHS Counseling Department and some of the administrators from the school and the division. And I think, honestly, it was,

079it was just very heartening for him and for us to see reflected in him. What a good response he had to this. Many of these things, they sound sort of ordinary to us. This is our second year of doing teen mental health first aid. But for him, it was so new. He reminded us that we were one of eight schools in the country to pilot this and that the state is really looking at our implementation of that program. And really, he told the students all of these programs are models for the state. And it was just really encouraging to hear him have such enthusiasm. for that. And then I'll give a particular shout out to the students because they wrote a special email later saying, look, we visit schools all the time, but rarely do

080we find students who are so passionate, so articulate, so committed to doing this sort of work in their schools. They really did a fantastic job. Our last priority goal is our Equity Foundation School. And there is, again, we just want to be systematic and proactive as we make positive change. Let's follow and establish best practices. And now I'll get Denise's face off of the screen so she won't be so embarrassed. In a few minutes, you'll have a chance to offer feedback on the equity policy and the anti-racism policy. All schools have implemented their equity councils and are currently setting their school-based goals. All equity council members will also receive training on how to facilitate courageous conversations and institutional bias. We will also be holding our first leadership-level equity committee meeting in November. So I think

081that's just a quick blitz through this, but we invite you and we invite the public as we continue to update it to just scroll through and learn more about these items. Many of the items have links to some of the news reporting that's been done on these topics. So I think it's just, I hope it's a trove of resources for folks who are curious about what are the schools doing? Are the schools taking these issues seriously? And, you know, as Ms. McKeever said, we'll have to do follow-up later to give further reports, but this is just one tool we have to help people. learn about what's been going on. If you have any questions about this, and again, this is just sort of the first iteration of the site. This is sort of getting the

082words on paper, and now we can make it look more functional and more beautiful, if you will. Well, I think it's really important to get the words on paper, the work that we have been doing, and allows us to kind of demonstrate our focus. and it shows the public our commitment, I think. It's so important, so I really do appreciate your work on that. And knowing how much you all have been doing, and then also doing this on top of it, it's just super impressive. So your team is small but mighty, and thank you for your work. Any questions for our small but mighty team? Well, just another shout out. I think it's really helpful to be able to go from the general principles into all of the specifics that underlie that. I think it

083makes this much more accessible to the public so that people can understand what exactly are we doing. you know, to support these ideas because sometimes it's a little bit hard, you know, you just get the concepts. But I think you've done a wonderful job of laying this out. So thank you very much for that. Any other comments? I just want to say thank you. It's just an amazing job. You've done quite a bit already, and you're only scratching the surface right now of all of the work that's going on. So thank you. I think it is, I just want to finish with one more idea, which is that this doesn't include everything. We couldn't track down the details for everything at this point, so we'll keep building it out. And it also doesn't... Really, there

084are huge commitments on there, like, let's say, the AVID program that we have never, we didn't mention it because it wasn't new for this thing. So on that page, there's a link to sort of what programs that are already in place that are really in addition to those that are on that page. So we're trying to build out that site just to have just some resources. We'll keep working on that just to make it a good landing spot for people to have a comprehensive understanding of what we're doing. I think it's a critical component to make sure that we continue momentum. I mean, it's just a constant theme in my head. It's how we continue to be moving forward. And so I just really can't tell you how vital it is to have something in

085the world demonstrating our basically foundational documents to show where we want to be and how we're going to get there. And I think it does a scratching service, but it really does provide. accountability for for me like we're okay this is what we said we're gonna do and this is what we're gonna do so it's thank you sometimes those things are really hard to organize and put on paper and that you guys have done that is extraordinary mm-hmm and then on top of it the anti-racism and equity policy Part of what was so important for us to do is to lay a solid foundation and groundwork for the equity work that we're doing. And so that leads us to the equity policy and the anti-racism policy. And just a little background on this. If you

086will recall, a couple months ago we came to you with really just an opening conversation about what sorts of things, what is the direction, what is the tone that you want to take in this policy. And from there, Denise in particular really did so much good work on this. She looked at policies from really all across the country. She looked at... Some national groups and some of their definitions on equity and some of the groups that we're working in, Dr. Atkins being part of the Religious Equity Leadership Network cohort, they offered some great resources for this work. She reflected back on what our equity committee had put forth last year in their conversations about what they would like to see in a policy. And I believe you were, in fact, on that little sub-working group.

087So that really is kind of the background for where this comes from. From there, I think... Well, first you met with Dr. Atkins, and then we met with Ms. McKeever and Ms. Torres just to get some additional feedback. And I think from here on, this is just a first reading, and we're continuing to get feedback from the community. I think definitely we've spoken with Dr. Arizari about getting some CHS student feedback on it and just continuing to work with some key partners in the community to make sure that this policy is strong as it can be, both these policies. Yeah, and so just from our perspective, from my perspective, what this is a first reading of this policy and what we are inviting is the public to kind of look at it and say, you

088know, to comment on it and give us feedback. I think we have been working with our partners since we had our subcommittee meeting to ensure that it's reflective of the goals that we have set forth. And so anyway, I hope that it's really we want it to be strong So if you think that there's a way for us to make it stronger, you know, please get in touch with your friendly board member or Miss Johnson or Miss Chuck. So does any anybody on the board have any comments on this? Let's talk about the equity policy draft equity policy first That's amazing. It was quiet. We're feeling overwhelmed. I think it's great. I've looked at it, and it includes a lot of things that we were doing, and I think it kind of puts the paper.

089It combines the recruitment of minority teachers. I know that's something that we've been doing for many years, but it puts it with the other policies on equity and things that we were doing, and it puts it all together in a very succinct way. I think it will make it easier for us and the public to follow, and I think for U.S. staff as well to follow. I don't have any other comments on this. I think it looks great. It looks great, and also I like the fact, the very end, the last paragraph, that we will continue as a board and the superintendent and as a board to review this equity policy annually to update the community so they'll know what's going on in our schools in regards to equity. So I like that part, and

090the superintendent will regularly report progress on the plan. outcomes to the board and the community extremely important thank you you've done a great job yes ma'am miss with keever I would like to point out what Mr. Bryant just mentioned is that we will use our equity page. Right now we have a lot of narratives on the equity page. Each of our schools, they're in the process now of developing an equity goal. And so on our page you can look in the future we'll have some key measures there and you can watch our growth on that page. So we'll be... pretty transparent in all of this work that's going on and you can watch us grow we have come to the board in october and we have a tendency to bring out s o l test

091data but there's so many other data points that indicate the progress and the direction in which our students are headed so we want to make sure that on that equity page we can see the full breadth of what's going on with our students and that our students are not represented, and our staff and our division by one score. It's represented by an array of different areas in which we're developing our students and developing our school division. I also like how it's basically a collaboration between the division and the school board to come up with and implement system-wide equity plan with clear accountability and disaggregated metrics. Now, we look at the data every year, but I think the mayor said it best, and I will never be able to say it as well as she does,

092but once you start focusing on equity, Like that just becomes the focus. That's the way you look at it now. And so I think it is, this is a new way to look at it, even though it's similar data, but it's going to be just looking at it through this equity lens, which I just think is. growth opportunity for our board and certainly for the division but certainly for for me so I appreciate that I just feel like you know we miss Torres I and I and Miss Chuck and Miss Johnson you just went line by line on all of this and with the you know part of the thing that as a lawyer nothing is original right we just cut and paste a lot and so we but We really made this our own

093with the help and support of the policies that we Acknowledge at the bottom of of this page and So I just really appreciate it and I think you know this gives some real clear guidance to future school board members and future superintendents and also as a model for future for other boards in other divisions in our Commonwealth and our nation, so I just really want to continue to focus on equity and getting the results for all of our kids that we know we can get. Agreed. Thank you. Any other comments on this? So this is a first reading. We invite this is an opportunity for the public to comment over the next month and at the next board meeting we will incorporate any, if there's any changes, we'll incorporate them. If not, we'll have an

094opportunity to approve the policy. There's also the anti-racism policy on this agenda item, I think is, again, a very strong statement. Any comments or questions on that? Is that on here? Is this the time for questions? Yes, she's sitting there. Okay. Yes, this is the time for questions. I had one question about on the anti-racism policy. where it's defining racism as membership in a race or ethnic group. And I'm wondering where religious groups fall in this definition. Are they included in any way? Because I know that there is such discrimination based on that. I think that probably is, there's definitely a reference to the various protected groups in the equity policy. I don't know that religion would be, is mentioned in the racism policy. But it's also, it's mentioned in the non-discrimination clause, which is

095the third paragraph. And so that's where we acknowledge the racism. But is it excluded from? From the consideration of racism? Yes. So racism and religion are two different. Right. And, you know, because there is discrimination of our religious minority groups. And I'm wondering why is that not part of an anti-racism policy or statement? It's part of the non-discrimination clause, but not the anti-racism policy. Yeah, and I'm wondering why. I'm just asking why. I think she said that the religious discrimination is different than racial discrimination. That this is a specific anti-racism policy, not related to religion. But it incorporates the religious aspects. I think for those, there might be groups, and there are groups, right, where race and religion are pretty tightly aligned, and I think in that situation it would be covered. And I think

096that, and I don't want to belabor the point, but I think that's part of why Denise was careful to include the various protected categories in paragraph three so that we would understand kind of the bigger picture of promoting equity for all. Right. Well, I understand that that has to do with employment, the non-discrimination. But, you know, it does seem to leave out, you know, these groups, you know, anti-Semitism and anti-Muslim racism, I guess I would call it, from, you know, where we stand and that we would not be including that in what we denounce. So I'm just... Kind of curious about that. I'd be happy to hear the opinion of the board on it. It really is up to Denise and me to... So this is an anti-race... We have a non-discrimination policy. We have

097a lot of... And this actually defines it as based on race or ethnic group, which ethnicity is frequently related. Is there something that... Because I can't explain. I am not an expert on this. I'm just flattered. I looked up the definition of racism, and does that help at all? I'll read to you what we have as the definition of racism. It's prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against someone of a different race based on the belief that someone's own race is superior. Yes, I understand that. But I'm sure more can be included in that. Okay, well. So, Sherry, am I hearing you saying your concern is you understand the racism aspect, but what if those same acts or negative actions... affect someone of a minority religious class? Why is that not expressed in this policy? Is

098that what I hear you saying? That's what I'm saying. That's my question. Again, I don't have if the board wants to change that, I'm delighted to change that. I would welcome feedback on that. But I do think this policy complements other policies about harassment and other policies that offer specific protections. for wide groups. And if the employer status is troubling in paragraph three, we have two different versions of the non-discrimination list. One is directed towards employment and one is more generally, I think, towards students. So if that would be important to you, we could definitely switch some of the language, take out the employer language and broaden it more generally as we do on some of our publications. Yeah. And, well, I mean, you know, I'm particularly sensitive to this, I guess, because I'm one

099of those religious minorities. And so, you know, I want to make sure that, you know, things like anti-Semitism and anti-Islamic actions are included in just how we think about, you know, I think of them as racism. But maybe you're saying that maybe for this purpose, they're somehow in a different category. I think it bears some study about whether there's a different category or whether it does in fact belong in this category. But again, I don't want Denise and me to be kind of the arbiter of this, so I would definitely welcome some discussion among you all. Okay. I don't want to belabor it right now. Well, this would be the opportunity to do so. I mean, we're talking about the anti-racism. Well, I think I've just raised my questions. Okay. And so I think what

100Sherry may be saying is how will... her concerns or people of a minority class, Muslims, Jews, other minority religious... Or women, frankly. Women. This is not gender here. Yeah, but how would the religious groups, minority religious groups, be protected as it relates to this anti-racism policy? And so whether... Anti-racism needs to be broadened. I mean, racism is racism, but broadened with who we're concerned about, i.e., being protected. Or is there a way to keep this with a potential link? maybe to how, if certain things happen, this is what we will do as a division. I'm not sure how to do that, but that is her concern. She doesn't want to see any child or anyone in our division be... attacked or discriminated against unjustly or unfairly. Well, that's literally everybody in this room. Yes, absolutely.

101And this policy, this anti-racism policy, is, I think we could make it broader, but at the same time... We have policies in place and the equity policy specifically are Complements to all of these I think we should see them as a whole rather than individual but and I can see where the confusion is in paragraph three But I would welcome this is the opportunity for feedback if there is adjustments to be made We should that I don't think you're gonna find a bunch of you know, push back on it. I just think we just need the language. So one suggestion that I heard Ms. Chuck and Ms. Johnson make was as it related to paragraph three. And if I'm wrong, correct me. But what I think I heard you say is that in paragraph three,

102we could make the adjustment. to remove the employer portion and deal with the student portion? I don't know if that would address Dr. Craft's concern, but I heard you say that could happen. Absolutely, it can. Okay. So one of the things that the cross-references all of the non-discrimination policies as well, and I'm curious what... institutional structure we're trying to you know what is the point of the anti-racism policy first of all and then what would be and how would we then like if we incorporated additional what what does it look like in terms of our policies our budget and addition you know because it doesn't include women so I don't I feel like what we're trying to do is say We're looking at this through it. Actually, I feel like I'm not really well positioned

103to make an argument right now, but because this is new information, like this concern, something that we can think about over the next month. And if you have any specific language that you would like to incorporate, then maybe you can. Well, you know, I just want to make sure that. We're not excluding groups where we are seeing, you know, in our country, in our state, everywhere, and even locally, we're seeing an increase in, you know, hatred and racism toward those groups. And I want to make sure that we're just not leaving them out of our consideration. That makes sense. That makes sense, particularly when you spoke about, you know, The panel that you and Mr. Bryant attended, and there were some concerns at that panel about how children were being treated or looked upon or

104talked to and how we address that. So, Dr. Craft, do you think if we did paragraph three to be student-driven versus corporation-driven, that might help? I don't know. I think student and also staff oriented as well because I think any anti-racism policy is for students but it's not solely for students. We're just talking about what the best way to move forward is and I'm happy to have it to talk further maybe as a committee. Maybe just the Dr. Kraft can come and sit with you two and me to talk about how we can incorporate these concerns. Specifically in light of paragraph two, I feel like what we have here in Charlottesville is very specific, and this policy is specifically designed to kind of work with the historic institutional bias in our community and segregation in

105our community and so that and so like I understand with the current environment that we are living in and how terrifying it has been for all minorities and national local it's it's we we have regularly denounced racism in our community and so I'm So I feel like there is perhaps maybe even another policy we should create aside from an anti-racism policy. I just don't know what it is right now off the top of my head. But I am happy to either incorporate these concerns or create another policy that would be more specific. Well, incorporating these concerns doesn't diminish anybody else or exclude anybody else. It's more like, you know, shouldn't we consider this, you know. these other forms of racism as part of our intention. But what is it, what the implications are? Like, what

106we have said is, like, what we're, and again, this is really hard to say, like, publicly, because I don't want to be, oh, you're in favor of discrimination against minorities. Like, that's not what I'm, like, I can see how easily this would be, could be, for me, like, said, I'm just, I'm just. playing devil out kit and arguing that We need to have a strong anti-racism policy, but we also need to have strong Pro gender policies and pro really no religious so all of these Issues are important and what we have been working with over the past year is trying to kind of uncover how our institutions have been historically discriminating or persecuting our racial minorities and that's why I in my that's why I'm having such a reaction about like I want to keep

107our anti-racism policy about how this institution our institutions in our city have hurt our racial minorities And I don't think Dr. Craft is disagreeing. I think she would like to meet with you and Denise and Beth to work out how her concerns can either be addressed through this policy or if we need to develop another policy. And that's fine. I'm not trying to just create more work here. We had Nazis here a couple of years ago. And this is very serious. I think that anti-Semitism is very real. And students in our division are affected by it. They're scared, just like other students are scared for other reasons. with other forms of racism. And we have reacted every time very strongly in terms of our resolution about the dress code. And there is no place for

108that sort of... So why don't we say that if we're creating a policy? Well, we do in many, many other policies. So I think that, you know, before... you know we get down or hold it we it's hard to get out of I think that the two of y'all with staff should get together and talk out the language because you're gonna get into a point where it's gonna be you're gonna look bad for doing a good thing so my suggestion okay if we stop now okay get the language right that's fine y'all don't mind and if there's any other comments on that specifically I think it would be reasonable for the public to weigh in on that Because again, we are not the arbiters of everything. We don't know everything. So if there's ideas out

109there, I'm sure I know that Dr. Kraft and I would love to hear them as well. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I'm sorry. Are there other questions or comments? Okay. Okay. The next item on the agenda are proposed legislative priorities. I'm going to be super quick with this. I have been in touch with other school divisions, and I don't believe there are very many new... topics that are going to be entering into the legislative sphere that we haven't already discussed in the last few years. What you have before you is the Virginia School Board Association legislative priorities for this year. And it seems like these general areas of funding and budget, local control, school safety, modernization, and teacher shortage are going to be, generally speaking, the priorities. for school

110divisions across the state this year. Obviously, and I think many of the same bills that we've seen in the past couple of years will resurface in various ways. And we will also react because who knows, things develop on the fly. And we'll react to that and we'll try to stay posted and keep you posted about that. But I know we have a long agenda tonight, so I don't want to belabor any of this unless any of you have particular questions. I think that's a silence. It's golden. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. And then, Dr. King, you're going to be talking to us about the measures of educational outcomes. Ms. McKeever, as Dr. King is coming up and getting settled, I want to... Oh, is there a break? Are we taking a break? I don't know.

111Dr. King suggested a break. We're ready to get down to work here. Dr. King, no. You have to watch the people that do wrap-up, Ms. McKeever. Yes. You have to watch the wrap-up people. So tonight, as we have done many Octobers, we present to our board our measures, our educational outcome measures. And so tonight we have in the audience with us our principals from... All of our schools are represented here tonight. We have from Burnley Moran, Ms. Elizabeth Korup. Thank you. Clark, we have Ms. Anna Isley. Hello. And Jackson Vial, we have Dr. Justin Malone. From Johnson, we have Ms. Summer Thompson. Greenbrier, we have Mr. Pat Como. Venable, Dr. Aaron Kirshner. I can see people coming around that corner waving. Walker, we have Dr. Adam Hastings. Buford, Dr. Jesse Turner. And from CHS, we

112have Dr. Eric Irizarry. All right. Hello, Doc. What we'd like to do is present to you tonight data points on our students in many different categories for our viewing audience. There is a 65-page document or more that you will find data points that we have pulled from publicly published documents and compiled them in this particular method. If you want additional information on data on any of these areas, most of these reports can be found online, and we'll be more than happy to direct you to the website where you can get additional information. Before Dr. King starts in going over the report, I'd like to sort of set the stage for what she's going to present to you tonight. You may review the... compile documents or you may listen to the presentation that Dr. King will

113give and what Dr. King will be talking about is with the SOL test scores, she'll be talking about accreditation rates. Very recently, our local paper and many papers from around the Commonwealth publish the federal calculation SOL rates. There's a difference in the two. The federal calculation SOL rates do not factor in any student growth. In comparison, our local accreditation rates, which are the state calculations, they do factor in student growth. And what we mean by student growth is if a student did not pass an SOL test in, for instance, third grade, and they move up to fourth grade, and they still do not pass the SOL test, but they go from 300 to 375. In the past, the state has not allowed the student to receive any credit. It was either pass or fail at

114the elementary school level. For the last few years, three years, I think it has been. two years, the state has allowed for the calculation to consider growth. So if the student moved from 300 on the SOL test to 375, the student is awarded a portion of a point. The student doesn't get a whole point, but a fraction of a point. Either a fourth of a point, a half of a point, or three-fourths of a point. So That is factored into the accreditation numbers that Dr. King will be giving. Also recovery, which the state allows. Those are not factored into the ESSA or the federal data that you received. So one of the dangers that our school division and every school division faces when we're trying to be completely transparent in our data and presenting such

115a large volume of information is that there are multiple forms that we can present the data. An example is the percentage of free and reduced price lunch receivers in each school. Some of our schools are called CEPs, which are community eligibility participants, meaning that 100% of the students in the school receive free or reduced price lunch. That skews our numbers. Also, when we're talking about economic deprivation, there's a difference between economic deprivation percentages. represented in a school and the percent of students in the school who receive free and reduced price lunch. A student or family may make the decision not to receive free or reduced price lunch for various reasons. However, they may be counted in economic deprivation. So those two numbers, one may look small, one may look large, depending on the school and

116the circumstances at the school. So we want to lay all the data out so that you can see them and be ready to answer questions and engage in a meaningful dialogue with everyone. I'll also say to our communities that the SOL test in the last year 10, 11 years have actually changed three different times. So the rigor on the SOL test has changed three different times. We can see our students starting to make progress on the SOL test and then there's something about the test that the state will change and we have to make those adjustments. Some of those changes have been. the degree of rigor in the test. Our tests now are much more rigorous starting at third grade than they were three iterations ago. Also, one of the other changes, major changes in

117the test, is that they are now in the literacy area, in the reading area, the test are computer-adapted tests. So the students answer questions at a high level, a medium level, or a low level, and the computer determines the next question that the student will get and the level at which the student will receive that letter. And then there are, I'm sure, a complicated algorithm that goes on behind the scene to determine pass rate on that question. So we've tried to print out all of those data and make sense of the algorithm that's aligned with the level of complexity in each of those questions, and we haven't had much success on that. So just to let the community know that the test has changed three different times. This year, we'd like to let you know

118that our... schools in the reading area. We have six elementary schools and of the six elementary schools, three of them made progress in reading or stayed the same. Three of our schools decreased in the percentage of students that were passing the test. At Beaufort and Walker, Beaufort, Walker, and High School, two of the schools made progress. One of the schools made progress in reading. Two of the schools decreased in reading. In the mathematics area of our elementary schools, four of our elementary schools made progress in mathematics. Two of them... decreased in the mathematical performance and Walker-Buford and high school two of those schools made progress and one did not. I would also remind our community what our schools, our teachers, and our entire division went through last year. Last year was a traumatic year for

119everyone in our school division and in our community. And I want to applaud our teachers, our principals, and our staff for how they worked diligently to make sure that they kept teaching and learning the focus in the classrooms. But last year, with our community forums, the New York Times article, with all of the incidents that were going on in our school division, there was a lot that impacted what was going on in our classrooms. So with that backdrop, Dr. King now is going to talk about where are some of the areas in which our students have had success. where the benchmark is concerned, and we're going to be comparing our students to what is the state requirement with the SOL test. We've done a lot of comparing our black students to our white students. You

120can see where white students performed, and you can see where black students performed in this booklet. What we'd like to do is now tell you about our students and who they are and how our students are performing. Our black students... our white students, our Asian students, all of our students, our English language learner students, how are they performing. measured against the benchmark that the state has set for the students. So I'm excited to let you see how many of our black students, I don't think we often think of our black students as scoring in the advanced proficient area. How many of them did? How many of them are very close to passing the test? And we will talk to you about how many students are making progress almost there. Those are students who are scoring

121between 375 and 399, which is very close to passing. And we also are going to be using numbers of students rather than percentages. In the booklet, you have percentages. What we're going to be showing you on our presentation will be numbers so that you can get a sense of how many black students are at each school. in those grade levels? How many are we talking about? When we talk about 30% or 40%, how many students does that represent? So I'm excited for you to see the presentation, and we'll be glad to answer any questions that our board has or any discussion that the board would like to enter. Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Atkins. Tonight's agenda will cover accomplishments, growth, progress, and performance on assessments, as well as the student-driven educational options and opportunities we

122have in our division, and then actions of continuous improvement for all students. As a school division, we are ranked with the top 3% of school divisions across the nation. Within the Commonwealth of Virginia, we are ranked as the eighth among the school divisions. And then we also have received 11 awards for excellence in music education. Currently, we serve 4,573 students, and we have an operating budget of $84 million, and that's with a per-pupil expenditure of $17,079. Our students speak 43 languages. Also, NISH has named Charlottesville City Schools as the second most diverse division in the Commonwealth. Diversely, racially, I mean 43% of our students are white, 30% are black, 13% Hispanic, 6% Asian, and 8% of our students, the remaining students, are multiracial or American Indian. Niche also named Charlottesville City Schools as the fourth

123best place to teach in Virginia and number nine of 132 school divisions with the best teachers. Our school division has high quality teachers and professional staff. We have 840. 478 of them are teachers and 362 are our staff. 70% of our teachers, they hold advanced degrees and on average have 11 years of experience. Because of the dedication of our adults within our schools and across our communities, as well as the commitment of our students, our 2019 graduation rates are remarkable. we had 95.7% of our class of 2019 with, that was the on-time graduation rate. And in 2008, that rate was 74.6%. So that is an increase of 21.1 percentage points. Incredible. Also, we can take a look at our dropout rate. Our overall dropout rate was 1.78%. In 2008, it was 13.2%. So once again,

124remarkable, there was 11.42 percentage points that the rate lowered. Also, as an accomplishment, we'll look at the graduation rates of our black students. It comes in at 95.9%. That's on-time graduation. And in 2008, it was 66.4%. That's 29.5 percentage points of an increase. Our dropout rate... is 1.02% for our black students, our black graduates. And in 2008, it was 15.4%. So that is an increase of 14%, 14.38%. I want all the points in there. there's probably more gone down excuse me see I got so excited I was going up but I'm trying to tell you the points went down so excellent excellent work we're very very proud of our students we're proud of our students each year they are able to share they being our graduating class and graduating class of 2019 they were able

125to share what they were planning to do for their post-secondary options. The chart presented before you illustrates the post-secondary plans. You can notice in the ledger at the top Under the title, there's a count of students by race with the total number of graduates reflected in each category where there's an option for the student to attend to. It could be a four-year college, two-year college, military employment are together, and the fourth bar there are other educational plans or no plan. So of the 95 black students, 28 of them planned to attend a four-year college, 39 planned to attend a two-year college, 15 planned to join the military or workforce, and 13 had other or no educational plans. So overwhelmingly, we have our graduates do plan to attend a four-year or a two-year college. Speaking of

126colleges, additional accomplishments are the college acceptances of our AVID graduates. AVID is a program that teaches strategies, so our students are prepared for career and college pathways, choices that they have, and typically AVID is for students who, first generational college. graduates are going towards first college attendance in their family our graduates were popular recipients of our acceptance letters from colleges and universities within as well as outside of Virginia of the 31 Abbott seniors as presented here eight received at least one college letter and eight received three. So with the chart on the left is the number of student recipients and on the right is the number of acceptance letters. Excuse me. So we just went there and ordered from one to eleven the number of acceptance letters they received. So what Colleges and universities said,

127please, please come to us, avid graduates from Charlottesville City Schools. And just a few of them, Wingate, Longwood, Old Dominion, Liberty, Norfolk State, Virginia Commonwealth University, Radford, North Carolina Central University. I don't really get to say that out loud in a Virginia setting. Virginia State, another school that's dear to my heart. George Mason, Virginia Union, and University of Virginia. I'm a graduate of both of those universities. Ms. Hampton on here. So now moving on, I've spoken of accomplishments. And as educators, as community members, as parents, we are often looking at ways that students are performing, what we can do to assist. As an educator, we are constantly, daily, upon the hour, upon moments within our lessons, looking to see. places that are forming our instruction. What are we going to do with the students next?

128As Dr. Atkins pointed out, over the last month, you have either read or watched press releases on our school division and the performance of the SOL tests. And as Dr. Atkins also pointed out, those reports are sharing in percentages of pass rates. And the pass rates, the student scores that are achieved are anywhere between 400 and 600. And for the point of our conversation tonight, you will also hear me talk about nearly passing or nearly proficient. 399, I said 400 was passing, so nearly passing is between 399 and 375. And below is equal to or below a test score, SOL score of 374 is not passing or not passing yet. So, Dr. King, let me make a comment here. As you look at this particular slide, 62, 80% of our... All of our students passed

129the reading in our division. So this goes across all grade levels. And as we continue to look at it, with our Hispanic students, 86% of them made a passing score of 400 or higher. Correct. But if we added in the students who almost passed the test, we would have then... 89% of our Hispanic students passed the test. Our black students, 62% of the students in the school division passed the SOL test. If we factor in those students who were not quite there, but very close, between that 375 and 399, we have 67. percent of our students who have passed or gotten very close to passing their SOL test. Again, that's all the way across the school division. Thank you, Dr. Atkins. and for the say for the overall students you spoke of the 880 percent

130the 4% nearly passing and then it went for the full 100% 16% not passing yet for overall division reading performance and now we'll move to the division math performance overall in the passing range 400 to 600 81% overall our students in math that was their performance nearly passing score 6% and not yet passing 13% So by pulling out those ranges within the percentage marks, you're able just to see another glimpse of how we can target, how we can look and start, how as educators we're looking and pulling apart and digging deeper upon layers of what are the ways... What else does the data tell us so that we can learn not only more about our students and how they're processing information, but taking that and how we can instruct daily using it as one of

131the methods? If we look at our math performance, 64% of our black students pass the test. If we factor in the nearly passing, we have 70% of our black students nearly passing the test. that's across the school division. When we break this down by school, you're going to see a lot of variation in the pass rates as we break that down by schools. What we're going to find is that our elementary school in the third grade, we have a significant number of our students who are in that nearly passing area and then the students who are below. As they go up to fourth grade, we typically see that the scores go up. When they go to fifth grade, the scores will dip again. Sixth grade, they will go up, and then we find variation as

132they get to the seventh and the eighth grade. I'm really excited about our Hispanic students, 84% of them passing, and then if we factor in the nearly passing, that's 90%. 94% with our white students and 96%. So that's a great way of looking at it, and we can actually now go in and identify each one of those individual students that are represented by these percentages, and you'll see a little bit more about that in a moment. Okay, I guess, so I feel like maybe you're answering the question, but the bars seem off, right, to me. So, for example, the bottom, like I'm on division math performance and under other races. You have 88%. That's roughly congruent to the 94%. You know, like that, I can see the distinction there. But then, like, you go to

133the 3% is a very large bar, and then the 9% is a very small bar. Is there... Yes. Is that like a statistical thing that I don't understand? Yes, because the three different graphs just merge together. I put it together, and I took away the axis. So you're exactly right. I wish I was sitting beside you. I would have said, oh, yes, you're right, and I would have tried to adjust it. Because they're two different charts. Okay, so it's basically just like, okay, I just wanted to be clear. It's just optics. It's higher than the... I thought maybe it was something related to statistics. I was not clear. I'm not playing tricks on you. That is all I wanted to make. I just want to make sure. Thank you. You're welcome. You're welcome. The green

1346% is larger than the purple 6%. Yes. It's... Yeah. Thank you, Dr. Atkinson. It's a good way to put it. So I understand the theory of the, it's very helpful to have this. Next. Now we are going to talk about the SOLs. When we talk about recovery, okay, Ms. Thacker, I may start needing some help now. I'm not able to, thank you. Need some recovery, right? Speaking of recovery, the next slide we're going to talk about. Thank you. Thank you. I think so. Yes. Yes. So SOLs, as you've heard us and other educators state, are tests in one point of time and have not taken into account the different levels that students start school or start the gray level, the different levels that they are at. That's typically what has happened. But as Dr. Atkins

135pointed to, in 2017, the standards of accreditation changed. And with that, one of the ways it changed was that it allowed for, to account for the SOLs to show how students learn and show what they've gained in a year differently. Recovery is one of the ways. The definition of recovery is when, for example, a third grade student may not have passed the reading SOL. However, in the fourth grade, they pass. Because they showed progress by getting into the passing student range, they are now a recovery student. Shouldn't have used progress because that's also a different category. The next way that a student can be accounted for because they're coming into the grade level at a different instructional level than peers because we're all different. If they fail the third grade reading test, and in the

136fourth grade, they also fail. However, they make enough percentage gain that their score may have moved from a 350 to a 380. It's still a failing score. However, it accounts for growth. And that is something that teachers, educators across the state have talked to our state board of education as well as our legislature to really consider that, counting that in our SOL test, and they have. Another way has been with our English language learners. For years we've talked about that students are... acquisitioning if you will into the English language yet they're being presented with paper and test with their been held accountable for it can't always show what they know when they're reading print when you're first learning English with that being said There is a yearly assessment that occurs for our English learners. It's

137referred to as WIDA or ACCESS, and it tests students in their reading, their listening, and their writing of English, and their speaking of English. When they make progress on that test... If they fail the reading SOL, the progress that is made on the WIDA test is accounted for as progress with SOLs. With that being said, I thought it was important to share with our reading performance the number by race of our recovery students, growth, and progress. Once again, recovery was also counted in the pass rate, but it was extra points given because that student had a passing score for the current year. And then points were given for the growth as well as the progress. We had 68 students in our reading performance that were designated as recovery. 40 of them were black. 9 of

138them, and I'm speaking of student count at this point, 10 were white and 9 were Asian or two or more race students. With our growth... 53 of them, we had a total of 92 students, and 53 of them were black and 18 were Hispanic, 6 were white, and 15 were Asian or two or more races. Progress made. Three students of the 44 were black, 13 were white, 11 were Hispanic, and 17 were Asian or two or more races. Dr. King, can I just, for my own, and so recovery, students who failed last year but passed this year. Correct. Growth. Students who failed last year but failed again this year but grew. Correct. And then progress are students who failed but made progress according to this other test measure. Correct. Okay. Thank you. Excellent. You get

139an A. That's hard. So now we will look at that information with our math performance. And we had 125 students that recovered in math. 66 of them were black, 21 Hispanic, 25 were white, and 13 were Asian or Asian. two or more races. You don't have to read those numbers. No problem. I mean, thank you, but we got a lot of pages to go. We do, we do, but I want to be thorough as well so I can answer questions. Hopefully it's on the screen for the public. It is, it is. But the total students is helpful. Okay. Yeah. Thank you for that advisement. So next we'll talk about our math reading growth from fall 2000, last fall, to this fall. Math assessments are used to measure a student's growth in math or in random

140reading. Also, all of our students take math in the fall as well as in the winter, so fall to fall as well. The fall assessment gathers a baseline. And it's used to chart a student's academic growth from year to year. And it's given in a RIT score. The RIT score is not a measure of mastery of a grade. It actually tells you, provides information about what a student is ready to learn. I like to think about... If you're a parent and you've watched children grow, when a child about the age of one, anywhere between nine months old, really up to, my daughter didn't start walking until she was 18 months old because I really liked to carry her. She was the youngest one. So anywhere in that range, we are looking for and know that

141students, that kids developmentally are ready to start to walk. And we'll start doing activities with them because... pulling up, allowing them to cruise because they are learning, they're ready to walk. So that's the way that I think about the MAP assessment. It gives us information about what students are ready to do as relate to like to developmentally. But it's instructionally. What are they ready to start doing? So think about MAP in that regards, please. So with this graph, it is an overview of the division reading from fall to fall, 2018 to 2019. And it's divided up in four categories. The first one is to the left. It is of our black students. So last fall, starting the year, 179.1 was the RIT score. And then... Let me try this way. Oh, there it goes. And

142then this past fall, this month, it was 195.3, and that was a gain of 16.2. Our Hispanic students? So as a division, like K through 12 taking the reading? I mean, how many students are we talking about? The number that I know third grade we had about 305, but I can give you the total number. Because the RIT scores change for each grade level. Correct. What the norms would be. That's absolutely right. The RIT scores change at each grade level, but this represents all of the students across the grade level and the average amount of growth that was made with the students. And what we want to focus here on is... The realization that all of our students start at different places So on that ladder they're at different their starting point is at a

143different place and if you notice that our Hispanic students Started three rungs up. Yep, you know as an illustration on the ladder There are other students that have our white students. They've started two four six rungs up now the rungs don't represent a certain range. It's just a way of illustrating where the different groups are starting. So they're all starting at different places. And move them all up, Kendra, and I'll do it quick for you. So where they start in one year and where they are the next year, we're illustrating for you the amount of gain that the students have made in those content areas. This is reading, and you see that our black students started the lowest on the ladder. However, they made the greatest gain in one year. So that means they have

144to cover more than one year's content. during that 180 days of instruction that everyone else has, but they're able to make additional progress and cover more areas and make more progress than their peers during that same period of time. That's right, Dr. Atkinson. We can see the same... growth for students with math, 11.7 gain for blacks, as well for our Hispanic students, it was 11.8 gain. For our white students, it was 7.4 gain. And then for our other races, Asian and, or two or more races, there were... 10.2 points of gainage there. So that you can definitely see. And there's very few data slides that we have presented. Very few, even in my education career, where we do see a discrepancy or a gap with our white students. And the growth that was made, it

145was 7.4 from fall to fall for math for our white students. Dr. King, this is super helpful, this graph. And I feel like it's perfect. I think the map test is one that I rely on a lot just as a parent. And so I just appreciate the way you've illustrated this for us because growth is... really what's happening in the classroom. So I appreciate this graphic. Thank you. Thank you. I think a point that we have to make, though, when we look at the math scores, we look at our black students, and although they made significant gains in mathematics, where they started the school year is still not very much. above the gains that they made are significantly, still keeps them significantly behind their peers. So there's more work that we have to do, certainly

146in reading and in literacy, but we can see our students starting to pick up the pace. But in the math area, we still have significant areas that we're going to be addressing. And I think our new math series is showing great promise in that area. So we're looking forward to watching the progress of our students. Mayor. Thank you, Dr. Atkins. Our demographics are changing. Between October 1st, 2015 and October 1st, 2019, each year we've seen a decline of our black students at the elementary level. The graph shows there's a bar for each year, and it's divided by the elementary schools. You can see for Bowling Mill Land, it was 133 black students that they had in 2015, and 102... For this school year and it started shows every school year for each school a decrease

147in our elementary schools of our black students and one reason you one thing you may be saying why the change and some of the pieces that's just from Conversations and discussions I've heard around the commit community community. Is that better? Has been families are moving to more rural places because it's more affordable. So the rural and just more affordable areas. You can also see some changing with our Walker, Buford, and Charlottesville high school. It's not as dramatic as you saw in the elementary school because it starts to trend back up. Buford was in 2015 were 209 black students, 209 black students, and this year 209 black students. So we do expect to see the changes in elementary move up to our upper levels. We've had some conversations tonight about our free and reduced lunch recipients.

148So at the elementary school, 72% of our black students are... are referred to as free or reduced lunch recipients may not capture all the students. It's just the ones that we know are reporting. You can really see that at the high school for our black students at 71%. And I say that because you're just adding groups of students together from elementary to Walker and Buford and Charlottesville High School. You would think that the number would stay the same or increase some. but the high school is lower than the elementary school levels. 62% are Hispanic students at the elementary level, so our black and our brown students are the biggest groups of free and reduced lunch recipients shown on this graph. I also wanted to show the divide. of the wealth and the poverty lines within

149our school division and it may not be the most accurate. I still think it gives a great view when you consider the non-free reduced, free or reduced lunch recipients. Our black students, so if you're thinking about it as wealth, 28% do not receive free or reduced lunch. 38% at the elementary level of Hispanics do not. At Walker and Buford, 22% of blacks do not receive free or reduced lunch, and 35% of Hispanics do not as well. Then looking at the wealth with whites at elementary school, 82% of the white students at elementary schools do not receive free or reduced lunch, and then 80% at Walker. You can see that and read for the high school. So I do think that's pointing out the, thinking about the impact implications of poverty and what you're experiencing, especially

150with the development of children, because it's already challenging just to grow up, but when you think about what you encounter when you do not have enough money or enough access, it does have implications within schools, what your experiences are. The materials that you may have access to to prepare and keep up in school, it's not going to be the same if you do not have the advantages that money can bring when you do. So we have reviewed information on performances using percentages for pass scores and nearly passing. We've talked about performance by student groups and using the MAP scores. We've talked a lot just about pass rates. Now we're going to start talking about the individual count of students. And we're going to look at the count of students for elementary reading performance. We're going

151to start with black students. This page is to cover the elementary students, what their performance was in reading on the reading SOL. Once again, we're going to look at the count of students, the number, for advanced proficiency, which is test SOL scores that are 500 to 600. Proficient are 400 to 499. Nearly proficient are 375 to 399, and scores that are equal to or less than 374 are not yet proficiency. So looking at Burley Moran, just because it's the first school there, you are able to see that Burley Moran had 38 black students test in third and fourth grade. 2 scored at the advanced proficient, 17 proficient, 2 nearly proficient, and then they had the 17 students that were not yet proficient. In order to meet benchmarks for the state in reading, you have to

152have 75% of the students, of the black students, they had to have 75% of them. actually pass in the 400 to the 600 range. So in order for Borough of Moran's third and fourth grade students to be proficient or 75% or more of that range, they need 10 students to move from the not yet as well or nearly proficient to the proficient and the advanced proficient. So that's 10 students that they need to change with the 38. Then if you moved on and you looked at Clark, I won't read each number to you unless you want more detail, but Clark needed of their third and fourth grade students, eight more students. Greenbrier, six more students. Jackson-Villa, 12 more students. Johnson, seven more students. And Venable, three more students. So in elementary, for black students in

153reading, all of our schools, none of them met the benchmark for the 75% black students in that range of passing. However, using the number count, instead of percentage, you're able to see how small actual students but how small that is the number that worked we're talking about and the point that we're able to identify and touch our students when you see a pass rate that's hard to capture but as our as the educators we know who they are and we know what we're going to do which you are going to hear more about later Dr. King. Yes, ma'am. And I'd like to summarize. You've given a beautiful overview of this slide. Thank you. And so in summary, what we are trying to illustrate here is that at each school, our students carry, each individual school

154carries significant weight because our cohorts of students tend to vary and they tend to be much smaller than other school divisions. with our students here, you can see one, two, or three students make a significant difference in the percentage of the performance. So we have a number of students. If you look at Jackson-Vaughan and... Johnson, you can see that you have significant numbers of students who are passing, but then you also at Jackson Valley have significant students who are not passing. If Jackson Valley had 12 more students to pass, they would have gotten to that 75%. Actually, some of the schools cannot actually hit that 75%. They'd have to hit 80% or above because of the weight of each individual student. So with this illustration, we can actually identify tutors and mentors for each individual

155student because the cohorts are so small, the individual students who have not passed the test. And that's why we lay it out this way. We love being able to point out that we do have our students who are brown and black. who actually do score in the advanced area and that's significant for us to realize. On the next slide, you're going to see that similar performance in grades 5 through 12. We have it laid out in the same manner. Those students who passed, those students who scored advanced, and those students who nearly passed, and those students who did not pass. Giving us specific data on individual students and how to intervene with those individual students, who they are. and what we need to do with those students. Dr. King, I'll go to the next one.

156Without Hispanic students, what we're seeing in our school division as well as across the Commonwealth, we're seeing performance without Hispanic students. And these are students, some of our students are our English language learner students here who are starting to perform better than our black students and in some cases better than our white students. But it's only on this SOL measure. There are other measures that we use also. And all of our schools for Hispanic students, 75% or more. For our elementary as well, it was also for Buford and the high school. And Walker only needed four more students, Hispanic students, to get the 75% in the passing rate. for reading. Our white students across the division, all schools, elementary as well as Walker-Buford High School has 75% or more of their white students score between

157400 and 600. Also for our Asian and two or more students. also had 75% or more in the categories across in the passing range for the elementary and Buford Walker and the high school our students with disabilities Of the elementary schools, Clark had 75% of their students with disabilities score in the 400, between 400 and 600. But Burley-Moran needed two more. Greenbrier, three more. Jackson-Villa, six more. Johnson, three more. And even with that said, we still... captures our students not only who are proficient but also that when you think of students with disabilities we do have students who are performing above 500 in our elementary school as well as at our at Walker Buford and the high school Charlottesville High School did have 75% of the students with disabilities in these 400 to 600 range.

158Walker needed 20 more students and Buford needed 28 more students. So this also with black students, students with disabilities, also we're able to pinpoint who the students are to start looking at changes that we needed, things that we need to keep and things that we need to change. Our students who are experiencing economic disadvantages in elementary school. You once again will see that of the elementary schools, Clark, Greenbrier, and Venable, they had students, actually I'm in the right place, the three of them had students that performed between the 400 and 600 range that had 75%. With Burley Moran, they needed 11 more. That didn't look like the right slide. Sorry about that. Here we are. Eleven more. And with Jackson-Vaya, they needed ten more. And Johnson needed four more students. Charlottesville High School. They did

159meet for the 75% for students experiencing economic disadvantage. Walker needed 36 more students, and Buford needed 60 more students. And this is an area, regardless of what your race is or your ethnicity, this is... has almost as many students in the category of economic disadvantage as are all. I want to help you remember the slide that I was showing, the large number of students by count as well as percentages of poverty is identified with economic disadvantage. That's why you're seeing the large number of students. that are meeting proficiency and also who are not. So I wanted to bring that to your attention. Because you can be any race. You can be a student with disabilities, English learner, and still be in the category of economic disadvantage. English learners students all elementary schools has 75% of

160their school of their students score between 400 and 600 as well as Buford Walker Buford and CHS Now we're going to move to talk about our math performance. Of the elementary schools, Clark, Jackson, Vaya, and Venable had 75% of their black students in the range of 400 and 600. Burley-Moran needed an additional 10 students. Greenbrier needed six. And Johnson needed four additional students. With Dr. King, I'd really like to highlight some of the great work that our teachers and our principals have done. Clark Elementary School, as I look at their math scores, Clark students, 55% of their students passed the math test last year. For this year, they went from 55% to 68%. So they had a significant increase in performance. Burnley-Moran students went from 58% to 63%. And also... Venable students. Venable students went

161from 58% to 68%. They're black students. So congratulations to all the work that has gone on, but especially to those schools that made such significant gains with our black students in the math area. We really want to commend them for great work. Absolutely. Thank you, Dr. O'Hare. And I see Dr. Irizarry looking at me. So Dr. Irizarry, the high school math, how black students went from 66% to 71%. Congratulations. Great work. So we're going to cover our Hispanic students. At all the schools, had 75% or more of their students pass in the 75% between the 400 and 600 for all, once again, all of our third grade all up to the end of course at the high school. Same for our white students at each of the elementary schools. 400 to 600 was the range,

162and 75% or more of the white students achieved there in all our schools. The same for math for our Asian students and students of two or more races. All of our schools, 75% or more in that range of 400 and 600. In math, similar to with reading, the reading performance with students with disabilities. our elementary schools Clark had 75 percent of our students with their students with disabilities in the range of 400 to 600 and Barley Moran it would need two more students from their seven that did not pass to move up with their ten that did pass Greenbrier would need six more students to join the six students that did pass. Of the ten that did not, they need six more to move from one category to the next, to the not passing to

163the passing. Same with Jackson-Vaia. And Johnson had seven students to pass, and they needed just three students to move from the not yet to the proficient. And Venable needed one more student. For Walker, Beaufort, and CHS, for students with disabilities, they each needed additional students to move from their not yet to their proficient. For Walker, nine students. Beaufort, six students. And at the high school, one more student. And once again, this is something that is hard to see when you have percentages. So our, yes, Dr. King, and if we look at the performance of our students with disabilities, this is an area that we have struggled in the past and we continue to struggle. We see a large percentage of our students, these numbers are small, but when those go to percentages, we see a

164large percentage of our students not passing. And so in those areas, that's where we are realigning our curriculum and... Ms. Ivory is going to talk about that a little bit later on. We're redesigning our curricular guides and aligning them better with our resources and helping our teachers to actually plan for each of the lessons and aligning them to standards so that we can bring more of our students with disabilities in the elementary school into the PASS area as well as at the high school, middle and high school. And so, Dr. King, if we could get to our performance by subject areas with the world, starting with our world languages. Oh, absolutely. Am I going the right direction? Let me go this way. Here we are. We have the world language earned credits. Earned credits, you

165can start with foreign language or world languages. Excuse me. You could start as early as Walker to get an earned credit. An earned credit is a course that will count towards graduation. So that's very good information that we have, that opportunity. And once again, Oh, I said for this year. This year being because they've earned the credit 2018-19. And you can see Spanish is our most popular with a total of 333 students at the high school that take... Earned a credit in Spanish, 70 in Buford, and 33 at Walker. However, we looked at it and we thought it was very interesting that Latin and Chinese, the number, the diversity representation of the students, even with French. I also wanted to take a look at a comparison between 17-18 and 18-19 of earned world language credits.

166And that you can see just the consistency of having diverse students in each of the world languages. This is Walker and Buford. And then at CHS, there's a great spread of what students are wanting to take when it comes to world language and Spanish being the most popular one. So we want to help our communities to see our black students, all of our students, as very diverse. and having peaks and valleys in their learning. That there are some areas that our students struggle in, and be it our brown and black students or our white students, there are some areas that they struggle in, but there are also areas in which they exceed in. And we want to make sure that we highlight that in this presentation. I'm not sure that there are very many people

167in our community who would have thought of so many of our students having earned a high school credit in Spanish. or in Latin or French. At Beaufort, there were 19 students last year who earned, black students, who earned a credit in French. And I'm just excited and elated to look at the number of students across our school division who are part of German, Latin, and Chinese. But a point to make here is look at the number of our black students who've earned credits in German, Latin, and Chinese. And that is something for us to celebrate. We anticipate the more we speak about diversity and the more we talk to our students about what their accomplishments are, that's motivation for the students who are coming behind them to also know that they can accomplish this and

168even more in our school system. Absolutely, Dr. Atkinson. Speaking of opportunities and... that students have a chance to take advantage of, that we encourage students to take. We have advanced placement, dual enrollment, pre-engineering, engineering, and AVID. These are the total count of students that are enrolled for this current school year. And I wanted to point out the current school year, because if you take a look at Walker, The number of students, 367 students, are participating in the pre-engineering class. Just from the recent media article and, of course, the conversations and discussions I am part of, there was a master schedule change at Walker that took into account student interest. We wanted to give students, how could we also increase the number of participants of engineering when students get to Buford and Charlottesville High School? And

169we saw the opportunity that there were skills that students need to practice and have the opportunity to do that. Why wait until they get to Buford to be able to do that at Walker? So there are more class options that interest the students being presented. And I wanted just to give you a visual of that. Last year there was not a pre-engineering class at Walker. And then we have our students for this year. And I also did a comparison with engineering at Buford. And then also a comparison with participants of students in AVID at Buford. All students participate in AVID at Walker. And also, last thing, Dr. Atkinson and the school board with this slide, it helped me connect with when we give our students options, it really influences their college readiness and their career

170readiness and exposing our students to opportunities to test out what skills do they need, what skills do they have, and making connections with what they're going to do after high school. And the more options we have, that's when they get to practice that. One of the ways that we have influenced the courses that our students are taking, starting at Walker and Buford, is by the master schedule. So the master schedule has been a big influence. Dr. Hastings and Dr. Turner, Dr. Turner coming on after a lot of the master scheduling had been done, but he did tweak that. Dr. Hastings being very intentional. about making sure that there are multiple options for our students at Walker including that pre-engineering and we have some data that we'd like to share with you about our arts program

171also at Walker and the changes that have been made. Both Dr. Turner and Dr. Hastings' philosophy is if you can find a course that hooks the students. you are starting then to develop a lifelong learner. And you can see by these numbers, that's what's happening with our students. Correct. You also can see that, Dr. Atkins, with our Algebra 1 Geometry and Algebra 2 Class Enrollments. This is current class enrollments, Algebra 1 at Buford and the high school. Once again, there's students in every double digits, in every category practically. Other races, that's one of our small population when I talked about the percentage race-wise of our students. However, they're really large with Algebra 1, Geometry, and Algebra 2. So another step, another... course that students need to have the maximized options of post-secondary education or career

172options. This slide does a comparison of Beaufort and the high school with the number of students participating or taking Algebra 1, Geometry, and Algebra 2. And you can see each year between the locations the number of students have increased in each category. Fine arts for class enrollment is another way that the master schedule has impacted at Walker. There's a comparison between last school year, 18-19 school year, and the school year, our present school year, with art, band, chorus, as well as orchestra. where our numbers of students, especially our students of color, has had an opportunity. The classes have become available and students have enrolled in them. So you definitely can see the increase over time, over the two years. Excuse me. And there are major changes that have happened with the enrollment of students in

173orchestra and band at Walker. Significant changes in the representation of a diverse group of students in those programs. Dramatic changes. And again, I go back to it is all because of... the hard work and the dedication of our teachers and their commitment to equity and being very intentional with the master scheduling. And the students are having a great time. They're really enjoying being in these classes. Absolutely, Dr. Atkinson. You can see... That's Walker. And moving to Beaufort, once again, the diversity with art, band, guitar, chorus, and orchestra that our students from last school year to the current school year have participated with high numbers. And then the numbers, even if smaller, for example, guitar, chorus, there's still multiple races, groups of students participating. Yeah. And at the high school. I look forward to us being

174able to see the implications of the change at Walker with the students participating in orchestra and band, those greater numbers and that rolling over into Buford and the high school. Dr. King, you've done a beautiful job presenting the performance of our students. So thank you so much for all of the work you have put in this. Thank you so much. Great job. And at this time, I also would like to call Ms. Gertrude. Because not only do we want to show you how students are performing, we want to show you how we're going to ensure continuous growth of all of our students with achievement. Dr. King has been grinding out and crunching these numbers since I've been here. For the past 15 days, she's done a phenomenal job. And the presentation today helps me understand

175where our students are. So I sincerely appreciate your work, Dr. King. All right. Get some rest. Okay, so as Dr. Atkins said, assessments change. The standards get revised. Our curriculum work is never done. And because we want equitable outcomes for all of our students, we have to make sure that the instructional program we provide to students is rigorous. And so we are looking, refocusing our efforts, looking at the redesign and development of our standards-based curriculum in our school division. And the goal is to assure that all students have access to high quality, standards aligned, rigorous lessons every day. The way we improve schools is that we improve the people who work in schools. So while this is focused on instruction, it's really a professional growth model that we are using, helping our teachers understand how

176to design those lessons, looking at what they're doing with the activities, with how they write the lesson, and then... Can they deliver this high-quality lesson with principals going into classrooms to see what teachers are doing with regard to the delivery, using the lessons and delivering the lessons? And I want to tell you this is a pre-kindergarten through 12th grade activity that we're doing because even in our pre-K classrooms, we've infused literacy and numeracy activities and experiences for those children because our achievement... does not start at third grade when it's tested. It starts at the beginning when our children come to us, and we need to make sure from the time they enter our schools to the time they leave, they have access to a rigorous and viable curriculum. So what we're really talking about is

177change, and change is never easy. And as Beth's slide said, change is a journey. It's not an event. and it is continuous. And we're talking about emergent and transformational change. So the day that I came into the division, Dr. Atkins talked to me about the curriculum redesign project. And so I started doing my homework, asking questions, going to people. But it's not one thing that you have to look at when you're getting ready to redesign or refocus your efforts in curriculum. So all the things that you see there... impact what we have to do with regard to changing the curriculum so all of those areas even though it looks like a lot it's the things that we do every day and then all the people in the middle are the people who who will actually

178participate and deliver and participate in this change and make sure that we do what we need to do So emergent change is continuous, open-ended, and unpredictable. And it's a process of aligning and realigning in a changing environment. things are never stagnant in schools so we we have to be ready for that change and that's not always easy and then transformational change is really a change in culture so if we have we have to refocus our efforts make sure we have a culture that focused on equitable outcomes for all of our students and I think it just speaks to the entire alignment that we're doing throughout the school division with regard to equity to make sure all of our students, all of our teachers, since all of us are learners, making sure we all have the

179necessary tools and support so that we grow and that we see in the achievement of our learners what we have done. So we will be meeting with principals to refocus our efforts and create the action plan and put the work at the building level where it belongs with the supports of the people who work at the division level. And I want to tell you we have some of the most incredible people in this country really and I've been around this country in the last four years to several different places and I have not met better group of individuals than the professionals we have here in Charlottesville City Schools who I'd like to introduce at this time the coordinators help us with this particular project. Coordinator of Literacy, Ms. Jen Davis. Coordinator of Mathematics, Mrs. Carolyn

180Swift. Coordinator of Science, Mr. Nigel Standish. Coordinator of Professional Learning, Ms. Paula Culver-Dickinson. And who's not with us this evening is the Coordinator of Social Studies, Ms. Neely Minton. And then we also have Bev Catlin, who is our Coordinator of Instruction. but I can't tell you, hardworking, smart, smart people. And I like to surround myself with people who know more than me. Okay, because if I can't learn anything from you, I don't want to be bothered with you. So, you know, and I can tell you, I learn a lot every day, every minute from these people. The first day I was here, that's right. Absolutely. Absolutely. And that is genuine. That is the truth. And they work hard. They know their business. And I appreciate that. And I pick their brains all the time. Carolyn

181can tell you the first day I was here, I said, okay, Carolyn, come in here. Let's talk. And I sit down and I talk with them. I never stay in my office, by the way. I'm always in schools, either dealing with children or dealing with coordinators or dealing with principals. That's where I like to be, out and about. I don't know what's going on if I'm not in the building to see what's happening. So I definitely am in schools, and you will see me there. So they did tell you what this process is going to be. You can see it on the slide, and if you have any questions or if they would like to nod, I think it's going to talk a little bit about that slide. Madam Chair, members of the board, and

182Dr. Atkins, good evening. On this slide, you'll see the scope of the beginning of this redesign and development project. You'll see that we begin with the standards, revising the pacing guides to be more user-friendly, more accessible, and more understandable. The ongoing and iterative process of building a bank of lesson plans that are available across our schools and across our division. And the beginning of this project has a targeted focus across grades. In order to ensure high quality lessons, we wanted to focus on quality and not quantity. So you'll see that in literacy, grades three through eight will begin this process. In science, it'll be grades five through eight. In mathematics, grades K through four. And in social studies, grades five through eight will begin this summer. And just the last, it's not just, it's not

183the division in this process by ourselves or that we're only focusing on the academics. We are about the entire child. And I asked principals, I knew some, but definitely not the list that we have before you of all the programs, people, actions, initiatives that happen in our schools to support student and increase student achievement. So at this time, that concludes our formal presentation, but I would like to open it to the board for questions and discussions from what you all have heard tonight. I think it would be appropriate to introduce the principals as well. Well, Dr. Atkins did that earlier. I was out of the... Would you like them closer? No, I just say hi and thank you guys. We got to see them raise their hands, but let's get them to come up. Burnley

184Moran, Dr. Clark, Anna Isley. Come up so we can get you on camera, please. Jackson Valle, Dr. Malone, Justin Malone, Johnson, Ms. Summer Thompson, Greenbrier, Mr. Pacomo. Venable, Dr. Aaron Kirshner. Walker, Dr. Adam Hastings. Beaufort, Dr. Jesse Turner. And CHS, Dr. Eric Irizarry. All right, thank you. And we have also Ms. Jill Dahl with Lugo McGinnis. Please come up, Ms. Dahl. Thank you. I want to thank the principals and our coordinators. You do an amazing amount of work in each of your buildings. You have engaged in the equity work this year with such gusto. It is heartwarming to walk into your buildings and see all of the wonderful work that's going on and your commitment to all of our students. You've made a lot of progress. You've done great work. We have a ways to

185go. But you are dedicated to that and you're doing the right work. So thank you to all of you for all of your work. Yes. And you may head out now. Okay, so I think if we can get started on conversation about comments and questions. Mr. Bryant, is it okay to start over there with you or shall I start on the other side? Look, a fly. I just want to say thank you all very much, principals, as you're walking out. Mr. Bryant. Thank you to all the principals for the great job you're doing in your buildings. Dr. King, what a great presentation. I mean, you just brought it all right into focus. Ms. Ivory, it's so refreshing to have you back. Thank you so much for coming back to Seville. I think it was like

186three and a half minutes. So I'm not going to prolong, but I mean, the presentation was great. Dr. Kraft? I would echo. Great appreciation for everything that you've done and to make it so beautiful and understandable and to be you know, it's so complex and multi-dimensional that's who our students are and that's what our division is and able to Really do that and and see it from all of those perspectives I had a quick one quick question that I just want to make sure that I am understanding this about the standards aligned instruction, what we're doing now. And so what I recall is that the state had sort of moved away from that, from basing things on the standards and sort of encouraged schools to maybe do the same, school divisions to perhaps be a

187little more creative or more, you know. to not be so focused on the standards and it seems like maybe we're swinging a little bit back in that direction now is that accurate or not You made the reference to the state. The state. The state has always said the standards of learning is the curriculum that we expect each grade level to master. In terms of maybe their accreditation criteria, you know, it seemed to change a couple of years ago. I think I'm relating to there has been. conversation over the past years from communities saying that we want our entire student to be our student to not worry so much about testing plus to them I want my student to be engaged in school to like school not focused on the test yes however you can The

188whole point of our realignment is to, we're making sure that we're not just presenting information, the standards to the students, but we are hooking it, hooking them to it. There's a story, there's connections that in our instructional practices, many ways we're doing this very well. But with our achievement data, there are many places that we need to and we must for our students do it better, improve. We owe that to all of them and all of us. So the state has always said standards of learning are critical and essential while we are in school. However, we want students to be happy in learning because when you have emotion with your learning, that's when you master it. Thank you, Dr. King. That was an excellent presentation. And I think what we need to do is distinguish

189between the standards and assessment. Okay, the SOL test, we're not, yeah, we're teaching to the standards, of course. We are not teaching to the test. Thank you. And our lesson planning, the focus that we're going to do is rigorous, and we're making sure that our students have all those components in a lesson that will help them be successful so that they can access the information and then demonstrate performance. Thank you. Ms. Perrier? Thank you for numbers. I'm not a percentage person. You're welcome. Mr. Wade? Yes, I have a few comments. On page 12, just for my edification and maybe the public, if you can define, you know, as basic as possible, economically disadvantaged. I don't know if I can do that simply because it's so much more. If you're referring to page 12, and I

190may need a little assistance with Dr. Atkins because of our school-wide programs where every student gets a free lunch. However, when families apply for free and reduced lunch, there are a count of students that our analysts within our department, our enterprise management, our data management, they really are the only ones that really should know and do know that information. So schools never know who the students are that have applied for and received free or reduced lunch. But that has typically been the measurement. of it. And so that's our free and reduced price lunch students. The economically disadvantaged students are those students who have applied for public assistance. So we don't generate those data. We pull those data from social services or where they have entered into a social services system. So there's a distinction between

191the free and reduced price lunch and economically disadvantaged. So I think that this just kind of goes so that it's not like cutting dry. It's just like looking at different things. And there are overlaps in those groups. Overlaps, yes. So the next question I have is on page 19. And it goes to the number of different languages. And you mentioned 43. And I guess that number is just missing from the top. If you look in the green box, is that? Did I hear it was 43 different languages? Yes, I think it is here, and I do not see it, so I... It is missing, okay, way from 2019. Yes, you're exactly right. I see the empty box, yes. The next question is on page... This is hopefully... It's on page 23, and we talk about...

192The first one is autism, and... It looks like for this year we have 64 students on some spectrum of autism. Correct. As of September, but we'll have the December 1 hit count soon. So roughly, can you let me know, are those students all divided among the different schools? I know we have a partnership with some students maybe at VIA. Is there a way you can let me know? let us know about those yes on the page 23 it accounts for all of our students even if students do not attend one of our on-campus schools because there's as what we've called alternative schools or private day schools they are our students so the page 23 because we influence what they are teaching our students that we send to those schools. Those schools being like VIA. So

193that 64 counts for all of our students. from as early as two and three-year-olds all the way up to our 21 turning 22. So for the students that meet the age requirements, let's say for elementary school students, are all of those students at one particular school? They're divided across the schools. We do have some schools that have a higher percentage of the students located at their school. Jackson-Vaya has the highest percentage of our students who fall into the more significant disabilities and handicapping conditions. Okay. But each school has yes. Yes. All right. Just got a couple more more page 60 didn't that give you these questions? You went over this information, but if you, again, can give a real layman's definition of you use graduation rate. Correct. And dropout rate. Yes. And that still kind

194of confuses me. One was, I think you said 1.1%, the other one was like 94, 95%. 60? Can you explain what that means? He's just talking in general about the graduation rate and the language. So, Mr. Wade, the graduation rate and the dropout rate are not one inverse of the other. Graduation rate depends on the student entering ninth grade. So we count all of the students who enter ninth grade, and then four years later, we count the students who are graduating in the class. We take out all of the students who have transferred to another school, but we know where they have gone. If they leave our school and they transfer to another school and we get a request for their records, then we can take them off and assign them to... the school that

195has requested the records. However, if they leave our high school any time between the ninth grade and they can be in our classroom for one day, if they leave at any time after they have entered our high school and we do not get a request for the record and we do not know where that student is located, the student is considered a dropout. And then, so that then factors into the dropout rate. There are some other calculations that go into the dropout rate and go into the graduation rate. So, speaking of that, I know in the past we have had proportionally high number of group homes here in Charlottesville. And that, you know, and that has played into, you know, students being here for, you know, a week or two. And it just didn't work

196out at that group home. And they would, you know, either for some. some reason they didn't stay and I don't know if that's still the case. We have a better relationship with our group homes and the students who are entering and we have an understanding of how our students enter our schools, all of the students enter our school, but if they have to leave our school, we have come up with a process by which they exit our schools, not only enter our schools, but they exit to schools to make sure that we are handing them off to another school division or another agency. They don't just exit. We ask to plan with the receiving school or receiving agency so that we can have some input in what's needed for that child because ultimately our goal

197is whether they're with us or another school division that they graduate. And just last one on this is that some of our walk students, they may take more than four years, But they eventually graduate and somehow that's factored in? That is factored in. They're not factored into a graduating class until they graduate, but they're not counted as a dropout. They will be in the five-year cohort, so they don't count as a full represented student in the calculation, but they are counted as a five-year graduate, not a four-year cohort graduate. And my last one. comment is just really a comment. It's not, I read recently where I think it's Mecklenburg County that they are phasing out all of their AP classes and concentrating or focusing, I should say, on dual enrollment. And I don't know if

198that's something that you have kind of heard and superintendents around the state, is that a trend or is that just, I haven't heard anyone else really doing that. Specifically, it's just really a comment. I know that that's not anything that we're entertaining, but I just thought that was... Yeah, many school divisions make that decision based on cost because the cost of the dual enrollment or the advanced placement courses, that cost is passed on to students. Fortunately, in Charlottesville City, we don't pass that cost on to students. The board factors that into the operating budget. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Wade. Ms. Torres? I guess I have a more general statement that I can save towards the end, but just wanted to... extend my sincere gratitude to all of you who've worked on this, the presentation,

199sitting with me personally and entertaining my questions, looking at the data as it's been presented in different ways. It can be confusing to look at it differently and just have a much better understanding now that we're year two and two. the new way the state is looking at accreditation. So thank you. And from the public's purview, hopefully they have a better sense of why the data looks... a certain way, you know, presented, you know, say by a media source as opposed to what this wonderful presentation was tonight and that we are all committed to continuing the work in support of our students. And I'll stop now, but just thank you so much. I know this was a lot of work. Thank you. Just, Mr. Mickey couldn't be here tonight and he sends his apologies. And

200then we, because Mr. Anderson needs to study, then we said, this meeting is going quite long, so if you need to go home, we understand. And so I just want to point out, I think it is more... One of the focuses we had at a retreat not too long ago was about the graduation rate. And at that point, it was probably 83% or 84%. And it is a real testament to what we can do as a division when we focus our energies. And it is not insignificant, that jump. The difference between somebody who has a diploma and who doesn't, it's just dramatic and exponential as they grow. So to have a diploma is very important, and I'm very grateful that the focus that we've had on the graduation rate and getting our students to graduate

201and, frankly, improving our whole community as a result. I just think the results are... are dramatic and have had this impact. And so I just really appreciate that. So thank you for that. I don't want that to be kind of swept under the rug because it is dramatic. And we did ask this division as a board to focus on graduation rates. And it has happened. And I look forward to it continuing to happen as we always have room to grow. And I think... given our focus this past year and ongoing around equity and around reading and math which we've also sat down probably the year after and said we're gonna have reading and math especially for children of color be the focus and I feel like we're getting there I feel like you guys have

202a lot of things in the pipeline and that these things do not happen overnight and I'm But the results do play out, and it's just a lot of work. And I can tell that the work is being put in, and especially very excited about the standards, the GPS redesign and development project. I know Mr. Mickey has been focusing on that for a long time, just to make sure that there is a centralized place, but also building the bank around standards-based lessons. I just think it's going to make all the difference. And I think we can see the results already at specific schools that have started to implement this more with fidelity. So I look forward to how this plays out and how we continue to see this. role over the next several years. Again, it's

203a lot of work and I'm really glad to also see the emphasis on growth. Making more than a year's growth in a year is dramatic as well. All of our kids are not starting in the same start line. It's nice to recognize the hard work that our students are putting in and our teachers are putting in to these students to get them to someplace much more than they had or thought that they could be. And so I love that emphasis on improvement rather than deficit. So I thank you for that. And you know, we are definitely... We know that y'all are working hard and you know that we feel like we want all of our kids to be on grade level. So I just want you to know that we support that and the ongoing

204changes that you want to make in order to make that happen for all of our students. Thank you. There's an article that recently came out about graduation and students who attend HBCUs, research has shown that the students who graduate from HBCUs, 70% of those graduates end up working in areas in which their income put them at or above the middle class level. So the focus that we have on making sure that our students graduate and they have a post-secondary plan cannot be underestimated. It feeds directly into helping students, our brown and our black students, make sure that they move from some of the poverty areas that is so prevalent in our community into... incomes and areas of career that allows them to earn an income that pushes them into that middle class. We will be

205relentless on that. I do know that the NAACP very recently wrote us a letter, and rightfully so, to tell us that, yeah, we're putting in in our school division some changes, but however... They still want us to not leave behind or lose our focus on literacy and mathematics for our students. And I will assure them that we're not losing our focus, and I'll be more than happy to sit with the NAACP, answer questions, go over all of these data, and continue the dialogue about... where our students are and what the interventions look like in our school system from classroom to classroom and school to school. Any other comments or questions? I think this is an ongoing discussion that we have every month, basically, when we talk about policy, budget. And so this will continue to

206be an area of focus for the school board, and we appreciate your time. Thank you. So, Ms. Hoover, you're going to come and talk about the proposed budget calendar? We're all on the edge of our seat. I won't be long here. You have in front of you the FY21 proposed budget calendar. These are the public meetings that we will have on the budget development for the 21 budget. Most of these dates are solid except for the dates with the city council. We're still trying to work those dates out. Are there any questions? I already wrote them in my calendar. I'll send everybody an invitation. Okay, thank you. Appreciate it. Thank you. Just so you know, I was just thinking, why do we have a presentation for that? But it's for the public to know. That

207is when you have the ability to have input into the budget. And, you know, just having the timeline out there is critical for public input. And we, of course, value the public's input. And if you do have comments during that time, you can see where the work sessions are. And, like, if there's a PTO meeting or something that you want to go to and talk about the budget, it's all on that calendar and laid out. So the next item on the agenda is the school board visits to schools, which says that I'm leading the discussion, which is probably something. So we have a protocol that says that we visit schools twice a year. So this is that time of year. October is when we go and visit schools. I think Ms. Thacker has sent out

208the schedule and it's time to sign up. Mostly I'm talking to myself. I will be signing up soon. I just feel like I'm at the school all the time. So anyway, they are... So if you see us around the schools next week, we will be there. Some of us will be there. Some of us will wait longer, probably. Some of us will wait longer. More than likely. Okay, so does anybody have any questions about that or what we're doing? Okay, everybody feel good about that? Cool. We had some written reports presented to us. And one was the class program. And one was about human resources update. So if there's anybody, does anybody have any questions? I guess we'll start with the class program. You can just ask us. Just where we are in terms of

209the waiting list? It's down to 183 per the report. It says, oh, there it is. All right. So the, yeah. What they're doing about it. Yeah, sort of how are we. We still have positions posted. We hired, we have hired some. We hired two. And before they actually reported, they resigned. So we thought we were moving forward with some additional class workers, and we got resignations. But we're still looking for those workers. We did have a conversation very recently about what a partnership might look like with Parks and Rec. We do understand that even in a partnership with Parks and Rec, that they would encounter the same difficulty that we are encountering with hiring staff. But we will continue to have this ongoing conversation with the hiring of staff and talking about how might we

210be able to provide the services that our community so desperately needs. What we do encourage our families, however, is when they sign up for class, have a contingency plan. Because obviously we are not able to, with staffing the way it is now, we cannot accommodate all of our families' needs. So I strongly encourage our families to have that contingency plan in the case that we cannot accommodate them. Also, I mean, it's just such a community-wide issue that the school division alone cannot resolve this problem. And so I'm hopeful that we can have a... you know, more large-scale discussion as a community around after-school care. I mean, we have, you know, obviously very significant preschool discussions, lots of collaboration and partnerships there. I think a very similar undertaking might need to happen for the after-school care.

211I just think it benefits the whole community when our students are being, you know, in high-quality after-school care. So that was the class written report. Does anybody, so I think it's the HR report I thought was really helpful in terms of how we're staffing. And I know Dr. Blair probably had to go, but if there's any questions or comments around that, I just wanted to also highlight how significant some of the hirings we've had. Oh, Mitsu. Hi. She's here for questions. I'm sorry that you're the last item on the agenda. Does anybody have any questions for Ms. Clemons? Well, now, let's find at least one. Y'all are doing a really great job hiring diverse work staff. We know that it makes a difference in the classroom, and it's deeply impressive how you've been able to...

212make that change so dramatically, so quickly. So thank you. I will say not only are we appreciative, Ms. Clemons, of what you're doing to make sure that we have a diverse staff, but the state has also taken notice. So thank you very much for all of your work. Okay. So any other comments or questions about the staffing report? Yes, please. Real quick. The box. Ms. Clemons, I'm sorry. This box down here at the bottom, that's all staff count, correct? That is, it's number one, I guess the first page of your staffing report. So the little, I guess it's racial, yeah, the staff in all racial categories. So that's total? Yes. Please come to the mic. So you're new teachers and administrators. Down here, this is? So 62, 21, those are new hires? Please come to

213the mic. So in an effort to be more inclusive, what we have done was taken the other category and broken that down. Because historically, we have always reported on black and white. And so, again, we wanted to be more inclusive and show the contributions of the other staff members that have made impact or will be making impact on our students. So this is reflective of the new hires this year. Great. That's all I needed. Thank you. Glad you were here. Okay, so that is the end of the formal agenda. At this time, we are inviting comments from the members of the community. And you have three minutes to speak. And please state your name and address. And if you would like to speak, now is the time to come up. Hi, my name is Becca

214Saxon. My address is on file. I'm the parent of a ninth grader at the high school, which I can't quite believe. But I wanted to talk a little bit about the anti-racism policy. And Ms. Croft, I completely understand where you are coming from, and I think that the school system has some work that should be done about anti-Semitism, particularly in the curriculum. I know that what my... Sun has learned so far is not necessarily really about the forces that create it and how to combat it and much more the facts of the Holocaust. And it's a lot bigger than that and there's a lot that happened to lead to the Holocaust that is very relevant to now. So I think we need to look at it from a curriculum standpoint and I think it would

215fit into equity there. I hesitate to water down the anti-racism policy, though. And I think this is something that where reasonable people likely disagree. I was having a conversation in the back with Charlene Green, and I think we were actually in... Ranger. Yeah, we had a slight difference of opinion that she could understand why it might go in there, and I felt that given the history of this place, that it's really important not to water it down and to leave the anti-racism policy the way it's proposed. And I think if you look at the deeper, like a deeper definition of anti-racism, that fundamentally racism can even be this idea that we can divide people into groups based on physical characteristics and ascribe behaviors and beliefs and attributes to them based on that. That is the

216underpinning of a whole lot of anti-Semitism, this junk science that was used to say that Jews are different and are a different race than other Europeans. And so we could argue, and I think reasonable people would disagree, and if you were to ask a group of Jewish people what they think, if you asked three of them, you'd get five opinions on it. That's a joke that my grandparents used to tell. You get six, right? Yeah, right. It's not that there's one right answer to this, but I think that you could very much argue that anti-Semitism, because the underpinnings of anti-Semitism are themselves racist and based in debunked science that the Nazis were trying to prove, that it's already included in the definition of anti-racism. The Ibram X. Kendi speech last week, or conversation last week,

217really talked about the... that racism is even the idea that there are fundamental differences between groups of people. And so anti-racism really is anything that looks at that. And I have no time left, but there was no buzzer. So I... You didn't... I turned it on. So thank you for your time. I could blather on, but I think we've kind of gotten it. So thank you. Thank you, Ms. Axel. Mr. Meyer? Good evening, Board. I'll start my observations on the discussion today with the testing scores. What I agree with Dr. Atkins is that testing scores are not the only thing we should consider. They are important. Things I didn't see in the presentation are represented on the state website include the following. Comparison of test scores over multiple years instead of just year over year

218against the benchmarks. Comparison against state averages. If you're going to look at the graphs using Dr. Atkins' refined state assessment scores and SOL scores, you see downward trends for all students, and especially for black students in a number of schools. Black students' math scores at Johnson are an example where there has been a five-year trend downward. Performance gaps for children against other children in the state are growing when you look at the statewide data. I'd suggest the Board request presentations on trends over multiple years in the future and benchmarks not only against minimum standards, but against the rest of the state. Looking at state-level data controls for a lot of variables. Finally, I'm disappointed that there was a whole section on accomplishments, but not a dedicated section to also challenges and failures. We know there

219are failures and challenges in our system, and why don't those get the same attention? Equity observations. There are a lot of good activities that I'm happy to see, however I'm a bit disappointed that no one asked on when the indicators will be approved. Great that we are on a pathway, but how will we know we are going in the right direction on the path? I hope those indicators are finalized soon. For example, suspensions for black students increased last year from 83 to 111, an increase by 34%. 29.8% of the student body is black, but 63% of the suspensions are handed out to black students. Equity in gifted education. The data shows why does Jackson, Veyer, and Clark, your most diverse elementary schools, only have 3.6% and 5.5% respectively of their student bodies designated as gifted?

220Greenbrier has 12.6% of their student body designated as gifted. Why can't schools who are currently underrepresented And the gifted programs have more children designated as gifted. Finally, on the class program, this is a perennial problem. 183 students on the wait list. Charge more to the wealthier families in order to pay more and attract the staff needed. This is BACUS basic operations. Thank you for your time. Thank you. Is there anyone else who would like the opportunity to speak? Okay. We'll close public comment. And move on to the next item on the agenda, which is board member comments. This time I'll start with Ms. Torres. Thank you, Madam Chair. Again, thank you to all those in the audience who made public comment. And also, in light of Mr. Mickey being absent. Tonight and we miss him

221he did send a great email and and has a great historical perspective of the board as do Miss Puryear and and mr. Wade and miss McKeever your Getting there. Getting there with some years. And as a parent of a senior, I've watched and been privy to some of the changes that the board has expressed as far as desires and listening to public as far as do we want to focus on testing, do we really want to move away from that, and there are consequences to all of those decisions. where we are and I think we're on a great path and I fully support Dr. Atkins and your staff and the teachers and the work that they're putting in to support all of our students. I've always been conflicted about testing, the SOLs, the pressures associated

222with those, the anxieties that that creates for some of our kids and some of our parents of kids. The preparation going into that, the anticipation of whether they get that notification of whether they pass or not. I think we're all sensitive to those things. With that being said, we have to adhere to what the state is asking as far as accreditation and what they have in place. I do applaud and support the fact that they've changed how they're accrediting schools and how we're now able to acknowledge and celebrate the progress that these kids are making and the growth that they are making. And I think that's important. you know every every child deserves a champion and I think you know the first champion that they see or meet or the relationships you know are so

223crucial and and key and so as a board member and as a board I mean we I hope dr. Atkins you know that We support you in what you need as far as what the teachers need to continue to build relationships, but also to continue on these paths with the new GPS and the lessons and all of that hard work that you guys are putting in. It is just incredible. So gratitude to you for that. But however we can help when it comes to budget season and budget, looking at... Whether, like Mr. Mickey said, whether it's more mentors or more tutors that we can put in place for some of those kids. The fact that we're able to pair out the kids, the students that were close to passing, but not quite there, but have

224made significant gains throughout the years. So whether we're identifying them through that process or, again, the MAP assessment, I remember when that was first introduced and just the strength and the potential that that tool offers as far as really being able to identify and differentiate instruction for those kids. So pairing those things together, I'm assuming you're doing all of these wonderful things. So, I mean, I think there is opportunity to really identify and support. the kids who need different types of supports. There's no doubt in my mind that our division celebrates each student's progress. I am grateful for each and every principal and teacher. I wish that they were here right now, the principals. I should have said this before they left. As they continue to embrace the current results, They're going to continue to

225build those relationships between the teachers and the students, the principals and the teachers, and then on to the students. Their intentionality is they differentiate that instruction again and continue to just support the students and all of the successes. So I'm rambling at this point, but thank you for everything. No additional comments. Ms. Perry here. I think the purpose of the report in identifying actual numbers of students versus percentages was something that people needed to hear to show that the students that were in a category of showing progress, almost making it, are the students that we are targeting. I don't think that our school division has ever shied away from wanting and desiring to help students that may not have made the benchmark. But I think one of the things that often happens is that we

226get so caught up in 46% didn't do this, 66% didn't do that, 82% didn't do that, until the children in that category begin to feel that none of us have value, none of us have worth, none of us can do anything, and that is not true. If I was a child that was showing progress, that meant that I am working and I need support. This division has never shied away from giving support. Some of it is verbal, some of it is known, and some of it is unknown. Some of the things that we do are subjective and cannot be quantified or qualified. I think when you look at our students and their ability to express how they feel, regardless of what their scores are, you can see progress. We are no longer pulling out, we

227are pushing in. It was very clear in the presentation that certain things will happen because of a push-in model. certain ways of identifying children to be in a program are also being changed and I think people need to understand that when we had the pull-out model there were children that were upset that they were being pulled out and their friends were being left behind and that went in the other direction as well And so when changes are made, often you don't see results immediately. But I think we must continually remember the effects of what we say and what we do that they have on children. Everyone says children are resilient and children bounce back. Children experience trauma when they're being told they cannot or you're in a particular socioeconomic group or you're in a particular

228statistical group. We accept each child in this division for who they are, what they are, and where they are, and we will continue to work to move them ahead. Ms. Dr. Kraft? I feel like our division does monumental work in dealing with the learning needs of our students and dealing with the factors that affect the learning of our students while they are here in school. I think we always go the extra mile. And, you know, there are many challenges that we face, but we're constantly looking for what we can do better, what we can do differently, working as a team together, you know, stepping back and looking at our equity issues. I guess what I'm feeling right now is that, you know, we do have to have the conversation about the larger factors in the

229community that affect these children that come to us to learn. And these children, the children who are coming from poverty, and many of them are children of color, they come to us developmentally behind. And we can't just make that disappear. You know, it's something that happens from, you know, very, very early on, and they don't have the same resources. They don't have the same advantages. So I think that we always have to understand what our community is like for these children and these families. And I do think that some of the, there are going to be some big, game changers with our reconfiguration. I think that is going to make a big difference. The early childhood preschool center, we can do so much more with a structure like that to really help these kids catch

230up and to help these families engage with school. So I want to put in a plug for that. I think that the configuration of our schools also does contribute to some of the problems that we're having, and we're dealing with that. We're going to deal with it. It's underway. It's going to happen. So, you know, we're... You know, there are things we can do differently, but there are other bigger factors that go beyond what our school division can do alone. We're part of a community, and I think the community needs to be part of all of the decisions that we make on behalf of our kids. Mr. Bryant? I had some prepared remarks, but I'm going to deviate from the script. After listening to tonight's presentation, I felt a sense of resilience. Just, I felt

231lifted. I spent 29 years in the school system as an educator. And many of the issues surrounding equity and the students that are having issues with achievement, many of those students I taught. And one of the things that I learned in my 29 years in the system is that those students went far and beyond the call of duty to be successful in the classroom. If you make those connections with those children, great things begin to happen. We are moving in the right direction. I would not have considered getting on this board if I did not think that we are going to not only serve black and brown children, because these are the children who have struggled for a long, long time. And now we are beginning to see and to put programs in place that

232are going to enable these children to be on a level playing field. You are looking at one of those students, one who grew up in public housing. Parents didn't graduate from high school. I had a high school guidance counselor. When she looked at my address, Hardy Drive, West Haven, and when she called me into her office and she asked me, what are your future plans? And I said to her, I am going to college. She looked at me and she said, what? You need to get that notion out of your head and take up a trade. I will never forget that. So this is why I have spent nearly 40 years of my life working with young people, mentoring young people. It's not about a test score, because if it was about a test score,

233I wouldn't be sitting in this chair. I worked hard. all of my life to get to this point in my career. So we can't always base. Like Dr. Atkins said, we have to focus on the goodness, the strengths, and then everything else will fall in place. But if we continue to focus on the negative, 50% of this can't do that, 50% is not doing that, the children are going to feel like they can't do anything at all or excel at all. So we're now beginning to turn the tides and I am so proud that I'm a part of this journey this board and Dr. Atkins our superintendent who is committed to ensuring that all children are going to be successful in the school system Thank You mr. Bryant I I feel like I shouldn't say

234anything, but I'm going to. One is that the Harvest Festival is tomorrow. Go to Beaufort and see them, 530, 730. I know you're going to mention a little bit more about that. I've been meaning to say it all meeting. It's a great community event. Reconfiguration is also a note that I have here. I just feel like if you look at our numbers around the middle school, the transition years, 5th, 7th, 9th grade, those are years that our students are suffering. And I think that these numbers make more clear, more evident that investments are needed at our middle school. especially around the infrastructure. And I think the less transitions, the easier it would be for the kids and to have that steady presence in one building for three years versus two years, having the same adults

235in the building. All of those things that we've talked about for a long time, I think... Every October I like to put a plug in for reconfiguration because the numbers at 9th grade, 7th grade, and 5th grade just reflect how difficult academically those years are for our students. And the investment, I think, is very worth it. So with that, I will let Dr. Atkins have her comments. Thank you, Madam Chair. And thank you for our board comments, but also thank you for our community comments. I ECHO WHAT SOME OF OUR BOARD MEMBERS HAVE SAID. IF WE REDUCE OUR STUDENTS, AND SPECIFICALLY OUR BLACK STUDENTS, DOWN TO JUST ONE PERFORMANCE, AND THAT'S THE SOL, AND WE DETERMINE THEIR VALUE AND THEIR ACCOMPLISHMENTS BY THAT ONE TEST SCORE, WE HAVE DONE THEM A DISSERVICE. THAT IS AN

236IMPORTANT ASPECT OF THEIR LEARNING, BUT IT IS ONE MEASURE. And I dare say if you think about the slide that Dr. King had with the ladder, it clearly indicates and illustrates that our students don't all start at the same place. And sometimes I think we do our students a disservice when they say we tell them. Our expectation is that all of our black students or all of our white students or brown students will all be at the same place because the calendar says this is the time of the year that we want to test you and you should be at that place. I'm not sure human development progresses in that manner. And we are, whether it be at the state level or the local level, to reduce a student to that and to reduce them

237to identifying their potential and their ability to one test data, set of data. is a complete disservice for our students. When we look at the number of students who may not have passed a third grade SOL test, but they're graduating from high school, shows the potential that our students have. Not only graduating high school, but leaving high school, going off to post-secondary education, and being incredibly successful. That's what education is all about. Education is not that you come in and at third grade you have everything that you need to be successful from that point on. It's about understanding our students and understanding what their needs are and supporting our teachers and our principals and our leaders as they provide for our students without... losing focus on the importance of literacy and making sure that we

238do an incredibly good job in teaching all of our students and especially our black and brown students and getting them on grade level with literacy. We will not deny that our students need to make more progress. But we also will not deny that our students are very complex and that they have made incredible progress. They have great potential, and they are not defined by one test score. Also, we have spent a lot of time in our school division, and as I have presented each October to our school board, talking about how our students have failed. We've done that year after year after year. And I believe strongly if you continue to tell a group of students who they are, they will believe it. And we have made the decision that we're going to tell our

239students without relenting on continuing progress. But we are going to tell our students, you are beautiful. You are brown, black, white, and yellow, and that you are achievers. You are not failures. You are achievers. Because when they believe that, they will live up to that. So thank you for your comments and hold us accountable. You have done that. You can continue to do that. And we will continue to celebrate the successes of our students and to improve our practice to make them even more successful. I want to congratulate Dr. Janice Underwood. She was appointed by Governor Northam as the first Director of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion for the state. It's refreshing that we have an administration that's willing to acknowledge in multiple ways our need for discussions, courageous discussions around diversity, equity, and inclusion. and

240we look forward to working with her from the state level. Walker, Walker-Buford, and CHS, the principals of each of those schools, Dr. Hastings, Dr. Turner, and Dr. Irizarry, presented on September 11th at the PTO meeting. They held a forum to talk about the unleveled classes and to talk about changes to the master schedule. They fielded questions from the parents in the audience. and did a really good job helping our parents to better understand what the unleveled classes are and the changes in our master scheduling at those levels. It was really heartwarming to see how engaged our families were and how appreciative they were of the dialogue that they had with the principals. Congratulations also to... Daniel. Daniel Fairley. Daniel did an incredibly good job with the premiere of A Different Side. on September the 12th.

241Daniel Farley is the director of the Charlottesville Alliance for Black Male Achievement, and he worked with Lighthouse Studio to present the film. There were many of us who were in attendance, and the film now has been moved forward to the... to be recognized at the film festival. So congratulations to Daniel and his team and to all of the wonderful students who participated in the film. The students actually came up with the dialogue and the questions and the conversations in the film. So congratulations. Burnley Moran did a good job the other morning with their school-wide meeting. It's a meeting to get them started on the right foot. They recognize accomplishments of their students and were presented with an award that all of the students can go for. So thank you to Ms. Korb for all that

242she's doing there. Johnson Elementary School had a school-wide meeting the other morning in which... they recognize their students who have a birthday in that particular month. They also talk to the students about what the learning lepers of Johnson, what their values are and have them to repeat those values. They have energizers. And I had the pleasure of reading a story to the entire school. So thank you to Ms. Thompson for that morning meeting. Also, congratulations to three of our one board member and two employees who were recognized on the Inside Out Charlottesville board. Ms. Lear Peryear, Denise Johnson, and Tamara Diaz. Tamara was AATF Executive Director. Now she's one of the Assistant Principals at Venable Elementary School. They were featured on the wall that acknowledged all of the many, many, 120 different activists in our

243community who have contributed in significant ways. to the progress of the Charlottesville City community. So congratulations to them and thank you for all of the work that you have done. I believe one of our students was featured. Ms. Zianna Bryant was also featured on the wall. So congratulations to Zianna also. Update on class, you've seen from our report the number of students who are still on the wait list. It's an important service that we offer to our community. And I say this with all the love I can in my heart, but I have to remind our community that our core business is teaching and learning. So providing the after-school services and making sure that we can accommodate as many families as we can adds to the activities and responsibilities that the school division has. So

244a partnership in this area is going to be very important because it helps us to continue to focus on our core business, teaching and learning, while still supporting... the needs of our families for after-school care, but doing that in partnership with other agencies in our community. So we look forward to developing those strong relationships in order to provide those services for all of our families who need them. Again, the fall festival tomorrow. And I would invite our community to join us on October the 23rd. at 1 o'clock p.m. Johnson Elementary School. We will be commemorating Mr. and Mrs. Eugene Williams. with a plaque commemorating the desegregation of Johnson School, and that happened in 1962. So there will be a plaque that will be erected there and a resolution that we will read at that time

245to acknowledge the work that Mr. and Mrs. Johnson, I'm sorry, Mr. and Mrs. Williams, He will. I know he will. Mr. Williams, I know your name. I'm sorry. Mr. and Mrs. Williams did, in moving forward, a lawsuit against Charlottesville City Schools to have their children and other children to integrate Johnson Elementary School. We commend them for the work that they did. It was courageous work to move that initiative forward, and we will have a chance to formally recognize their work and contribution to desegregation of schools in Charlottesville on October the 23rd at 1 o'clock p.m. Madam Chair, thank you. Okay. The work session wrap-up. Dr. King. Madam Chair, we have two items. Change the wording in the resolution on Disability History and Awareness Month, which was also voted on. And the other one was determine

246what will be the measures of the new pathway for gifted education. Great. Thank you. And then... Upcoming meetings. We have an upcoming meeting November 7th at 5 p.m. here. That's our next board meeting, regular scheduled board meeting. And then on November 12th, we are having a school board meeting with our legislators at 5.30 at KTEC. So I'm going to get a plug in for the forum on October 16th. City Space? Where is that? City Space downtown for school board elections, which are happening between now and our next school board meeting. And, yeah, so the public is invited to come, and it's a partnership between Seville Tomorrow and VPM, so it's very exciting. So thank you for hosting that, Seville Tomorrow. And we'll see you guys, and we're going into closed session next. as I but

247then so but hearing no objection we are going to stand adjourn until we go to closed session