RPS School Board Work Session - October 6, 2025

001Good evening, everyone. We would like to call this school board meeting, this work session for Monday, October 6th, 2025. And to order, Madam Clerk. Mr. Percival. Here. Mr. Card. Here. Mr. Farouk. Here. Mr. Hedgepeth. Here. Ms. Rizzi. Here. Dr. Harris-Mahomet. Ms. Burke. Present. Mr. Jafari. Miss Fernandez, here we have a quorum. Thank you. At this time, I would ask Mr. Percival if he would lead us into 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. At this time, we'll have translation services announcement. Good evening, everyone. On behalf of the Language Justice team, we welcome you. If you need interpretation from English to Spanish, please come see me. I'll be

002at the table in the back with the interpreters. We have interpretation headsets for anyone that needs one. Interpretation in Spanish is also available for those watching this meeting through Zoom. I want to remind everyone to please speak at a normal pace and keep your face no more than a couple of inches from the microphone so that our interpreters can hear you clearly. Thank you, and I will now make this same announcement in Spanish. Thank you. And before we adopt the agenda, there are a few amendments. Mr. Percival. Thank you, Madam Chair. I move to amend the agenda to defer items 3.01, receive an update on Woodville Elementary School, and 4.02, receive an update on the literacy plan, and adopt the agenda as amended. It's been moved by Mr. Percival and seconded by Mr. Jafari. Before

003we move forward with the vote, are there any concerns or feedback? Ms. Burke. Thank you, Madam Chair. I realize we have a long meeting this evening. However, literacy, student achievement is our number one goal. Whenever we defer the opportunity to address our literacy plan, because I'm sure the plan is in place, it's October. And for us to wait until November to get that is very concerning. Our goal is student achievement, all about our students and then some. So I'm not voting in favor of this move. As I stated, student achievement is why we are here. And student achievement should always be first, the main thing. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Burke. Any other thoughts before we vote? Mr. Percival? Yes. Ms. Ricard? Yes. Mr. Farouk? Yes. Mr. Hedgepeth? Yes. Ms. Rizzi? Yes. Dr. Harris-Muhammad? Ms.

004Burke? No. Mr. Jafari? Yes. Ms. Fernandez? Yes. Motion passes. Thank you. Moving right along to Dreams for RPS update, item 2.01, receive update on Dreams for RPS goal number two, graduation. Good evening. Good evening, Madam Chair, Vice Chair, board members, superintendent cameras. I am excited to stand before you today to actually do two presentations. The first one is on graduation, and the next one is on our SOL results. And so before I get into the slide deck as it relates to graduation. I first want to acknowledge that we've made some growth. We still have a long way to go. But I also want to give gratitude to the folks that made this happen. And first, we start off with our scholars, our families, as well as our teachers and school-based staff, school leaders, my central

005office team, and to even the board for your support as we continue to make growth with our graduation rate. And so, next slide, Matthew. So this is where we're headed tonight. And so we're going to take you through our cohort results. We're going to also give you a recap of our graduation strategy and the adjustments that we have made to our graduation strategy. And then we also will take any questions that you have. And so with that, next slide, John. Next slide. Next slide. So what I want to do is kind of give you the headlines. And the first headline is that we have an 8 in the 10th place as relates to graduation. We are at 80 and 1 10th percent. This is the first time that we have been at 80 percent in

006over eight years. And so with that, that is to be celebrated. We know we have a long way to go, but in the past two years, we've actually seen an 8% increase in graduation. And my team will share with you how we've gotten there and what strategies we're implementing. And so, as I noted, we have a way to go, and we'll continue to push and put every effort into increasing for our next cohort. But right now, we should celebrate where we are. Next slide, John. And so again, this slide also talks about the growth that we've actually made within our subgroups. And so we've seen growth within our black, economically disadvantaged, and students with disabilities. And so with that, we also, we saw a decrease in our multilingual and Hispanic learners. We will talk about

007our response to that and our thoughts around why we had that decrease. But again, to celebrate all three of those groups, that is what helped us get to the 80%. will continue to focus not only overall, but when the subgroups move, we'll see an increase overall. So we're excited about the increase that we saw. And of course, we have celebrated this, but John Marshall had a 100% graduation rate. And again, this is the first comprehensive school that has had a 100% graduation rate in some years. And so... These are the things that we want to celebrate collectively. And I want to turn over to John. John is going to go a little deeper into our data. And then my team will share with you the strategies. All right. So pulled out three historical milestones, some

008deeper dive into our data. And the way I did this is I pulled 18 years of graduation data. And this was as far back as I could pull the data. And when I was studying this, I noticed our first historical milestone here is our economically disadvantaged population has reached an all-time high of 84% OGR over the past 18 years. All right. And the next slide here, and this is, I think, even more powerful to see here. We had a huge jump with our black reporting group here by 5%. And this one right here is huge. We hit 88%. That is more than a 5% all-time high in OGR, another data point we're extremely proud of. And then lastly, in terms of just analyzing our comprehensive schools, I really wanted to see, okay, what other comprehensive

009school has reached 100% over the past 18 years? And when I looked at this data, those five lines are all of our comprehensive high schools for the past 18 years. John Marshall is the first one over the past 18 years to have reached 100%, which again is a historical milestone. And before I hand it over to Dr. Blackwell, I do want to explain our OGR and some of the... the change and shift in our student population. So we have increased our graduation rate over the past eight years, but one of the key shifts that we are responding to as a division at the systems level is responding to our shift in enrollment of multilingual students. So back in 2015, our all-time high, we only had about 3% of our graduating cohort were multilingual. And now

010to frame today, this past cohort, one in five, 20% are multilingual. And so this really shapes our strategies and initiatives to improving graduation rates in the future. So I'm going to hand it over to you. John was explaining over the past couple of years, we have seen a significant shift in our involvement. And now our students make up about 20%. Thank you. 20% of the total population. So now more than ever, it's imperative that we are strategic and intentional about the supports that we have in place for our multilingual learners, especially as it relates to graduation. So unfortunately, we did experience a decrease in our multilingual learner graduation rate for this year. um but i believe that this dip was caused by several cultural factors and concerns um that were very specific to the graduating

011class cohort 25. but looking ahead we are we will highlight some of the key initiatives needed for multi-lingual learner success and it's looking like we're already back on track for cohort 26. And one of the other measures is 3Es. And I think you guys know how important the 3E data is. And we have really worked to refine our strategy as the VDOE has clarified what the 3Es is over the past year and a half. And so as you can see, we had double-digit gains overall. We had a 27% increase in our 3E data. There were even some schools that actually were above 100%, if you look at Franklin Military and a few of our other schools. But we're excited about, look at Armstrong. They had a 42% increase. And so we've been very strategic around

012preparing kids for post-secondary. And it doesn't just mean that kids... They should be prepared if they decide to go into a four-year institution, but prepare them for whatever they dare to endeavor into. Just to further unpack some of the 3E results, this next slide is a detailed view of some of the data components the state provides us, or actually we provide the state with the data, and this is their reporting. I do want to highlight two data points. Number one is the increase in AP qualifying scores. That's 195, which is a significant increase. And another one is credentials earners. And so we have 181 there as well. And I do want to also mention that this has a huge effect on our accountability ratings as well at the high school level. Our data is looking

013pretty good for high school. And I know we're going to go over that in a future board meeting. But this is predictive of that. Good evening, Board Chair. Board members, Superintendent Cameron, Willie Bell, personal director of high school, schools and athletics. To recap our graduation strategies, we started with, as you can see, three levels that we were looking at. Then we had some short-term and long-term strategies. We wanted to make sure that we took a look at... of course we've talked before about the ninth grade cohort those ninth graders coming in we want to make sure we have a continued focus on those on those students and thanks to the boy you know we started this year with a stack of stars we could have more of a focus on the ninth grade and we're

014seeing that it's paying dividends so as you read through you'll see the short term and the long term strategies here And then we created what we call a graduation improvement plan, just like schools do, school improvement plans. And you'll see 10 initiatives that we looked at that we needed to add in our graduation plan. Further on in the presentation, you'll actually see the essential actions that are centered around those graduation plans, which we call RPS-6. which those RPS 6 essential actions are aligned to the BDO initiatives and those initiatives they look at school divisions as they make they are making sure that they are on the right track to make sure graduations improve so that first initiative the graduation vault When my first tour duty here at RPS back in 2008, we used to use

015long paper nail technology. We can go a little bit deeper into technology. The data team has done a great job, as well as the school division teams, in making sure that we're able to see everything. We're able to see credits, see the three E's, everything about a child. Of course, credits they've completed. We can see everything. The graduation plan letter that our counselors go over with our kids at the beginning of each year and continuously throughout the year. Now what we've done also a part of that these initiatives we've created what we call a mail merge that gives a snapshot to our families coming from this vault. And our families can see where our students are all the way through the school year, at least three to four times. And that's just not with the

016graduating cohort. That's with all of them. The ninth graders, of course, you know, they don't have credits until the second semester. So we start in March with the ninth graders. Technical assistance meetings. What we did as a team, collaborative effort with division and school level. We came together and we started having these conversations that we needed to have. Tracking and looking at students, monitoring their progress, line by line, one by one, each cohort. Starting with the graduating cohort, and then we work our way down to the juniors, sophomores, and then freshmen. A lot goes on in these technical assistance meetings. Not only do we focus on... the graduation piece but we also are looking at the attendance anything that we can put some wraparound services around those students that are off track a lot of

017a lot of things happens in this technical assistance this year we're adding an instructional piece where we have an irc tracker which identifies where our teachers are and where what our principals have seen as they have performed or conducted instructional walks but we're looking at that so we can we can better ourselves structurally as well this year. And then I'll come back and close it out at the end where you'll actually see what I spoke of at RPS 6, the actual school improvement plan for graduates. All right. This right here, initiative three, was our dropout recovery blitz. And so for our dropout recovery blitz, every other Friday throughout the school year last year, school division teams, we came into Norrell, the cafeteria, we packed it. Essentially, we contacted every single dropout in Richmond Public Schools.

018And with that being said, there are two ideal outcomes from that. Number one is obvious, is we want our students back into RPS. And I'm proud to say that we had 13 students through this initiative graduate on time last year. And that was because we picked up the phone, we called them, we conducted home visits, and we were just, I mean, we were on it. And school teams were great. And again, this is something I'm very, very proud to be a part of. And then the second outcome is a little less obvious, and that is identifying transferred out. And these students would leave RPS and they would go to New York City Public Schools. And if they don't mention that they are transferring over, the state recognizes that as a dropout unless we code the

019student properly. And so with this initiative, we would call all of our dropouts and we would identify some students that had actually transferred out. And one of the best stories from last year was in the middle of the year, John Marshall had brought their team over. I mean, they're at 98% OGR. We're looking at one dropout. And we're trying to find that student. And then we had actually our front office associate at John Marshall here from another school that social media has been working with. They contacted the parent through social media, found the student's family, and identified that the student transferred to California. And believe me, we celebrated because we were looking at 100%. And so again, this initiative was successful last year, and we're looking to continue with this year. And another piece that

020we're super proud of, and I think if you look at the graduation rate for Richmond Success Academy, is I think we finally have our alternative programs figured out. Remember when I first came to RPS, we had a lot of programs. The enrollment was not that great. And if you asked somebody what was the purpose, you would get different answers. I think we now understand the purpose of Congonis and Secondary Success Center and Thrive. And we'll continue to think outside of the box because we know that for every student, the traditional path may not work. And so with that, as you see, these are the programs that we have leveraged. And again, every year we come up with strategies to get more enrollment and more engagement. And the piece that I think I'm really excited about

021that is also part of the middle school transformation is we now have Thrive Academy for middle schoolers. And so because they're over age in middle school, we want them to be successful. And so we get them early on. And so that they can start to capture some of the credit so that they can get back on track to be a part of their graduating cohort class. And also the other piece that we are excited about, which is also connected to post-secondary pathways and alternative programs, is our summer school program. And again, I think most of you had a chance to probably participate in the summer graduation. And so this year, the numbers didn't look like they did in the past because the scholars graduated at the Siegel Center. Under RSA, we had a lot more

022graduates. But again, we'll continue to be intentional about our... our summer school where we actually have test taker academy because not every kid needs to come for a class. They just may need to pass an SOL. And in the past, we just had this one size fits all approach. We've now customized it so kids don't feel like they have to come to school for four weeks and they only need to pass one SOL. And so we have customized those experiences for them as well. And I'll continue to work with Ms. Gunter and her team to make sure that the summer school. It's a great and engaging experience for all of our scholars, but specifically for our high schoolers that need to recover credits and also recover classes. So we have Initiative 6, which is our

023bilingual LEAP tutoring program. Our LEAP tutoring program is a Title III-funded graduation initiative that helps our multilingual learners with the skills that they specifically need to meet their graduation requirements. And so our LEAP tutors really do this by providing small group or one-on-one instruction and really providing a culturally responsive instruction for our students as well. They are providing that personalized support that our multilingual learners need, specifically in order to gain the verified credits that our students need in order to make it to graduation. Next, Initiative 7 is actually one of our long-term goals. So this is improved instruction for our multilingual learners. Last year, our LEAP team adopted the Seven Steps to a Language-Rich Interactive Classroom. And we have just fallen in love with this instructional framework. And so we really started off with providing...

024full staff training to our high ML population schools, Huguenot, Richmond High School for the Arts, River City, G.H. Reed, and Cardinal Elementary School, all teachers, content teachers, LEAP teachers, special education teachers, administrators. We made sure our LEAP tutors were trained on this initiative as well. and since then we've actually trained about half of our rps schools on this instructional framework so we're really excited about this it's also really closely aligned to the literacy plan as well so we're excited to continue that continue that going for the rest of this school year and our goal is to actually have all of our rps schools trained in seven steps by the end of this school year um so this is really impactful um especially because we did see some really great gains which we'll talk about in

025another presentation um on our reading sol particularly for our high school multilingual learners and our reading verified credits My apologies for interrupting. We're getting some feedback that those that are viewing online cannot hear. So for the speakers that come to the podium, if you could speak directly in the mic and try to interject as loud as possible, we would greatly appreciate it. Thank you so much. My apologies for interrupting. All right, and then initiative eight is the mentorship program. So this mentorship program is actually a program that was started a couple of years ago at George Wythe High School. And we really saw the need for all of our students that were identified at risk to have an adult accountability partner at the school. So since then, we have... we have expanded this mentorship program

026for more than just our multilingual learners. It's for all of our students that need that additional support at our five comprehensive high schools. And so for last school year, we actually saw that 96% of the students that enrolled in the mentorship program either graduated on time or... are still actively enrolled in one of our alternative programs, Secondary Success, Konganus, or Test Takers Academy. So we know the power of mentorship and relationships absolutely works. So earlier, we talked about the school improvement graduation plan. So everything that my colleagues have talked about this evening is in this graduation improvement plan. All these initiatives we embraced in this, that technical assistance meetings. This is the structure where we can speak to all of these 10 initiatives. The graduation plan we had, like I said before, we had to

027create some essential actions to make sure that we were headed in the right direction. We had to establish some calls and make sure we had increased communications. And then that last one, Initiative 10, we've added that piece in this year, which has always been there, and that's the instructional piece. We've added that piece to our technical assistance meetings and initiative 10. That's where we want to look at improving instruction because we feel like if we continue to improve instruction, we don't have to worry about graduation. Our stretch goal is 90% and we would love to come back next year at this time and say that we've reached 90%. And with that, part of the... continued success and part of the accountability is we meet together collectively twice a month to go over our strategies and

028then also during our one-on-one meetings I meet with the directors and managers to see if things are being implemented well but I think the biggest change that has gotten us to growth and will continue to get us to growth is our partnership with school leaders and school communities. They will tell you that we live in schools and not in this way where we're being punitive, but in a way of partnership to figure out what they need to be successful. And again, there are times when we give them gentle pushes and pushes to have increases. And we have those courageous conversations, but we are collaborative partners with them. We've taken the feedback that they consistently give us and we make adjustments to our plans. And so. With that, I'm happy to take any questions you may

029have about graduation. Before questions, Mr. Kamis would like to share that I think it was Ms. Burke and Mr. Hedgepack, Mr. Jafari. Thank you, Madam Chair. I just wanted to reiterate and celebrate, since I don't think we do a good enough job of celebrating sometimes. that as far back as the Commonwealth of Virginia tracks graduation, so 18 years back, this past year, this past cohort for RPS had the highest ever graduation rate for our black students and highest ever for our economically disadvantaged students. I respectfully suggest to our members of the media who are gathered here today, That sounds like an excellent headline for tomorrow's news. They say that news is that which does not occur commonly. This did not occur commonly. In fact, it's the first time it's happened in 18 years. So I

030just want to say thank you to everybody here gathered this evening, everybody, of course, in our schools. And I would be remiss if I did not recognize... our high school principals who lead this work each and every day, Principal Carter at Armstrong, Principal Olds at Richmond High School for the Arts, Principal Murray at John Marshall High School, Principal Massa at Huguenot, Principal Carlton at Open, Principal Massenburg at Community, Principal Potee at Jefferson, Principal Hudson at Franklin Military, Principal Cheatham at Richmond Success Academy. Principal Davenport at RTC. Principal Burton at Richmond Career, Education, and Employment Academy. And Principal Carney Robbins at Richmond Virtual Academy. And certainly, last but not least, Principal Ford at Virgie Binford Education Center. Please show your love and appreciation for these extraordinary leaders. Thank you. Ms. Burke, you're up. Congratulations. Congratulations to

031all that the superintendent just mentioned and then some. It's a hard job. And at the end of the day, when you make results like this, it's not really a job. It's labor of love and believing in our children and those that serve our children and teach our children. So thank you so very much for this data. I do hope there are some celebrations in place. We talk about celebration, but just clapping tonight, that's not enough. Those people are working hard. Students are working hard. Let's salute them. Do you have something in mind? Yes, ma'am. We had a meeting about how we celebrate not only graduation, but the schools that had SOL growth. And so there will be something rolling out pretty soon, and they will actually come to the board to be recognized at the

032board meeting. That's nice. They're coming to the board meeting. To be recognized. Yes, ma'am. Okay. Can we do some other kind of celebration? Yes, ma'am. In addition to that. In addition to that. Yes. Okay, forget ice cream or a party or a dance. In addition to that, they will come to the meeting. Yes, ma'am. I celebrate this. This is magnificent. All right, my questions are as follows, and I have two. Again, thank you for this data. It's very important, and I appreciate this. This is what I look for when I come to board meetings. This is what I look for. This is about keeping the main thing the main thing. So I commend you for and your team and all in places in the schoolhouse, the neighborhood after school programs, all well done. So my

033first question is, so thank you again for that. You mentioned, I think Dr. Bell mentioned the vault snapshot. My question is. Do we have any data supporting that parents or caregivers are reviewing that information on their students? And I'm asking that for a reason. We can absolutely pull some usage data. But right off the bat, just our experience of the number of emails and questions that we have from schools, absolutely they're looking at it. We're going to be continuing to explore and scale it out even more. I know I've been talking. with Director Schwenk around putting it into Parent Square as well. So we're exploring that option. And so, yes, they are looking at it and I do believe it's improving as well. Thank you for that general response, but I want to see numbers,

034really. And I have a reason for asking that. My first question is, excuse me, Dr. Greenbelt. Good evening. Go right ahead. And then I want to ask a follow-up regarding it. Good evening. I just wanted to follow up with Mr. Grove. We are working to get a lot of this data into ParentSquare. And one of the great benefits of having ParentSquare now is we can see the interactive data to see whether or not, not just if someone's communicated, but if they have just opened the information. So once we get that data, we'll be sure to share it with you. Madam Chair, thank you. So my follow-up question to that is, Frances, when I looked at Armstrong's data for graduation, yes, it did go up tremendously. However, there were still 10 students, I believe, left out.

035So that bothers me greatly, especially with all the support that's in place. So my question is, as we move forward this school year, before you know it, it'll be January. Time is passing that fast. What is the plan of action to make sure that we can move to 100% as expected, or 90%, as Dr. Bell stated? I'll work with that. So I know he stated, John stated... phone calls and that's great. Visits, showing the interest because everybody doesn't take the time to look at Parent Square or whatever else. It's usually, if we look at the data, I know it's going to be different from one community to the other. So we need as much support and then some as possible. So my question is, what is in place moving forward to make sure, well, Dr.

036Green just stated that, Green Bell just stated that Parent Square would be in place. And I look forward to seeing that. Okay. All right. We're very intentional as it relates to every single scholar getting what they need. And so, for example, in the vault, we have every single graduating student from a school in that cohort, and it has all of the information. And so the example you gave about the 10 students at Armstrong. doing dropout recovery or doing technical assistance and championship habits. We have individual conversations with school teams about what they've done in terms of outreach, what they've done in terms of support. And we try to re-engage them and reinvest them. And also the piece that we have used is the mentorship program that Dr. Blackwell talked about. We expanded that beyond Richmond

037High School for the Arts. And so every school has an allotment for mentors. And so for students that we know need that individual support, We connect them with a mentor. And so, again, we also, the reason for starting to send the messaging out to parents is that the parents are a key lever in ensuring that kids come to school and that they are pushed. And so with that, what we realized was that in a lot of cases, counselors would give the form, the written form to the students and never made it home. And again, there was no conversation with the families about what you can do to get your child across the stage. And normally we'd get phone calls a week before graduation. And they're asking what they can do. And at that point, in

038most cases, it's too late, not unless they can do some things through summer school. And so we took that initiative in terms of communicating with parents from the vault and the specialized approach of technical assistance and also the mentorship program to support. I'm glad to hear that and think along the lines of Armstrong. Folk work hard. 30 seconds. People work hard. Okay, let me get this other question in. I just want to make sure they have support. So they already have the mentorship program in place at Armstrong. They do, and we have technical assistance every week, Dr. Bale, or every two weeks, depending on the school. Excellent. So my last question is, with the change in policy from the state regarding cut scores and all the rest, How is this going to affect what we

039currently have in place for our graduation rate? Is this going to affect us? Yes, we actually have a meeting on Wednesday as a secondary academic team. John has already pulled the data. The state has given us the data on Friday. And so we will meet as a team to talk about what pivots we need to make. We firmly believe that the plan that we have in place is solid. But the two things that we do know. is that we need to improve instruction because, for example, in high school, they have to score a 479 now in literacy in order to get that verified credit. And so part of it is, think about it, it used to be 400 and now it's 479. And so we are going to talk through our coaching of how we

040support teachers. Use the walkthrough data that Dr. Bell talked about to support and use our coaches to push in, to provide all the support that we can for students that are struggling instructionally. So tier one instruction will have to increase and get better. And we'll have to see great results from every single classroom. Thank you, Mr. Hedgepath. thank you madam chair i'll uh just echo my colleague um and superintendent cameras also for their their congratulations i think you all have done a great job uh i just have a couple questions the first one is about the the three e's uh could you help clarify for us what the above 100 means so the 3e metric here I like to think of it as three buckets and you can fill up those buckets as much as

041you want. Well, not as much as you want, up to a certain amount of points. And so a lot of our students capitalize on there's enrollment, employment, and enlistment. And so what we do during these technical assistance meetings is we problem solve, we look at their data, and then we problem solve, okay, what do we need to do to fill up each one of these buckets? So, for example, there could be a student who's sitting and enrolling in an AP course or has not enrolled in an AP course, but we know that the student should be exposed to some sort of that enrollment bucket. And so that's how we essentially fill up those buckets and maximize those points. One thing that we are aiming to do is actually try to exceed past one point for

042every student. And this is where, tying back to the school ratings, this is critical. This is the most heavily weighted indicator on the model. And so the more we maximize this, the higher our school ratings will be. And so that's an example. Another example is high-quality credentials. And then pushing our students to get those. Good evening. So yes, our students have worked really hard to earn industry credentials at the Technical Center. With the talent of the counseling team at the Tech Center, we now have completer sequences for all the pathways, which makes a big difference in students being able to complete part one, part two, and then to take that industry credential, which counts for 3E. We've also established CLEP testing labs at Huguenot and Armstrong, which gives students a chance to take college board

043level assessments. which also contributes to the 3E rate. CLEP is a substitute test for verified credit. Thank you, Madam Chair. Another question? Sure. Thank you for all of that. I'm worried about the graduation rates for our multilingual students and our Hispanic-Latino students, as was mentioned earlier. And I'm wondering if, you know... Undoubtedly, the uncomfortable political situation that we are in at this moment has an effect on that. And I'm curious if there are other causes that you might believe would lead to that lower rate. Yep. And I'll let Dr. Blackwell speak to it. But we have had conversations because we've talked to families about. They don't want to send their children to school in certain places because of, you know, the fear of deportation, et cetera. And so what we have done, of course, you

044know, we trained everybody on how to support. But also we have. reiterate and remind folks around it, but we have also used our family liaisons and our school teams to contact families to let them know that this is a safe space. We'll continue to do so. And also as we look at chronic absenteeism, we also look at dropout recovery blitz. That's when we'll actually be able to centralize and focus on those individual students. And we take notes and we know the situation and scenario, and then we use the right supports to support the family. Mr. Camers. Thank you, Chief Jefferson. You know, he was able to touch on the fact that we want to see our students in school every single day, and this is absolutely the safest place for them. We are staying just

045on top of the situation, and, you know, if there are any changes, we are ready to pivot our graduation strategy and plan as needed. I think the number one priority is making sure that all of our students have access. to their education and of course, being able to achieve graduation as well. As it relates specifically to cohort 25, there were various factors for this graduating class, such as coming back from COVID as everybody did, but specifically for English language learners. Having a mask on all day, it's very difficult for language learning to occur when we cannot see the clear patterns and usage of the mouth as well. So, for instance, that was occurring. We also had established our Newcomer Academy at George Wood High School the year before. And moving from that online environment to

046then an in-person environment. But then in that same school year, we also had made the decision to send students that were all coming in from various parts of the city, first to George Wythe, back to their home schools. And so after that shift happened, there was actually a decline in enrollment and dropout. So we don't really know what that communication looked like as students were leaving George Wythe High School and then... they were supposed to re-enroll at their home schools. Specifically at George Wythe for the students in their 10th grade year. Just wanted to remind the board that our beloved Principal Parker had also passed away unexpectedly at the start of that school year. And so at the time I was an assistant principal at the school. And so just the instability that we felt

047every single day. was just something that's hard to forget. And especially for all of our students, but for our multilingual learners that didn't necessarily have that bilingual support was extraordinarily difficult. And so we saw increasing behaviors happen. And unfortunately, it led to other incidents that school year as well. We were very... intentional with our dropout blitz supports that happened in that following school year. But unfortunately, I think because a lot of the cultural concerns specifically, you know, that happened at George Wythe, we had lost a lot of our students already by April, 2023. It was difficult to re-engage them at that time. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Jafari and then Ms. Rizzi. Good evening. Thanks, Madam Chair. My colleague, Mr. Hedgepath, hit on the multilingual learners and families. I know that the city

048itself is experiencing an increase in the population, but it's never more obvious than in the 8th and the 9th districts. And so as I look at the figures, That is a very high rate. I think I saw something like 40% of the students were leaving school. Do we have any idea where they're going? Are they simply just leaving school and going nowhere? Do we track those families? So, yes. So some of them actually are working. Jobs right to support their family and that's why we beefed up congones and secondary success Because we know that that is a way to engage some of our students. They want to get a diploma They just can't do the traditional work hours And then the other pieces so as I talked about with the blitz and also the technical

049assistance We talk about you student on a case-by-case basis But but the other piece that I think that we've done a really good job with is also the welcome center and using the Dr. Blackwell's team is hands-on, supportive, and we also have given, I think, all teachers the tools to support multilingual learners with the seven steps. And so we'll continue with that professional learning and support. But again, we are tracking the growth, for example, where the housing developments are, you know, arising so that we know how to support our learners. But we're consistently looking at our strategy to see if we need to adjust. And one of the adjustments that we talked about is... you know if there's a student that does not want to come to school face to face are there some other

050options such as virtual and so my team is digging into that right now um but again would mean that we would need some teachers and we need to find the capacity in space but we're having those conversations right now if you know as a alternative in addition to what we already have in place thank you madam sure i think did you want to add to that mr blackwell i just saw your hand up I just also wanted to raise that I think part of the beauty of the team that we have working on the graduation strategy is that we're able to see it from various points. And so particularly with our multilingual learners, if they are in school and they don't see the real world relevance and application, it's very difficult to keep them motivated

051to continue to come to school when they can go to work and they can find different sources to make their lives continue to work as such. And so what we've developed as a team is also a very strong post-secondary plan that includes the importance of celebrating bilingualism. And so I just also wanted to speak on a point of advocacy that we really need to make sure that we have the seal of bi-literacy in Richmond public schools to ensure that we are continuing to celebrate and spread the message of the superpower that is bilingualism for our multilingual learners, but also for all students and the importance of learning another language. Okay, thank you. I really appreciate that. In wrapping up, I think that the Surinamese name commended, and I didn't want to, I'd be remiss if

052I didn't recognize the progress that we've made as a division. particularly with the strategy of actually going out directly and reaching out to quote unquote the dropouts, instead of sitting and twiddling our hands, we went out and did something about it. And as a result, that was 100% graduation rate. So I really do applaud you guys and just encourage you to keep up the good work. Thank you. Ms. Rizzi? Ms. Rizzi and then Ms. Ricard. Thank you, Madam Chair. So yeah, I want to... Talk a little bit about them multilingual learners or yeah You know I've been in schools and I've talked with them and I hear that right like why do we need school like why are we here and It kind of makes me sad that so many of them feel that way

053Because there's value in education just for its sake right and that's a hard case to make especially now when students are more and more seeing education as a road to employment there I mean we have an education so that we have an informed electorate right it informs citizenry And I don't know how now we communicate that to our students. But I tried. I don't know if they believe me, but the times that I've talked with them, I have tried. And then I've also asked them, aren't you proud of being bilingual or that you can speak more than one language? And they looked at me like I was crazy. I mean, unfortunately, they've been made to believe that that's a deficit, which... is bizarre to me. I'd love to be able to speak Spanish, you know?

054And so, honestly, there's a good chunk of them that see it as a deficit. And that's really sad. You know, I've watched that over the years. Change, even at my college students, were really proud of being bilingual, and now they hide it. And that is disturbing. So I hope we all work to counter that. I know you are. As far as being work ready, I think graduation rates are great and I do want to celebrate those, but I think the purpose of them is so that our students are able to leave and earn a living wage and take care of their families and be independent. So are we, I know that we have, Dr. Ward, you talked about the tech center. I know we have those opportunities, but for students who aren't able to attend

055the tech center, how do we know that they are leaving with what they need to go out there and make it in the world? Yep, and we put as much attention into our schools, such as Ugenaut, our comprehensive schools, to support the CTE programs there. And I can tell you, part of technical assistance, not only are we talking about 3Es, but doing championship habits. We also have the department chairs from CTE, et cetera, at the table, because we don't want to leave them out, because we know that it's part of the instructional experience and part of the academic experience, right? And so with that, we're supporting our... Schools just as much as we are our technical center and the other pieces we also I think we talked about this in another presentation We're focusing even

056more on middle school in terms of the exploration of the actual Sequences and also even in our elementary schools. We have programs I believe is Four or six of our elementary schools that we actually have programs with and so just to expose them to those particular pieces But I can tell you the other piece that I was excited about and I think this Ricard was there and so was mr. Farouk is that we have doubled the partnerships over at RTC. And not only are they supporting RTC, we can also use them to support our general CTE practices. And so it's good to see that the community is all in and supporting our scholars. And so with that, we'll continue to be very strategic in supporting 3Es and CTE and all the initiatives. Thank you, Mr.

057Jefferson. You know, I also... would like. I can't tell you all what to do, but I would like to see the start of some kind of blind tracking where we randomize a selection of students and we follow them and see where they are. I think that we need to do more to make sure that our students are career ready. And so we will look into that, but we do track all of our seniors in turn, but it is self-reported by scholars and their families, but we do know where they are headed. And we usually track them for about a year, but we'll build in systems to track them even further. Thank you. Ms. Ricard. Thank you, Madam Chair. I have a few questions. One, I thought I read with the new cut scores that seniors

058this year will be exempted. Is that? So it gives us like a year to prepare. Mr. Kamers. So the Virginia Board of Education has shared that they will take up their implementation at the next school board meeting. So they approve the cut scores, but when they'll go into effect and how they'll go into effect, they'll decide next. Yes, on the table is that the current cohort would not be impacted. Though there is, as I understand it, some state law which prohibits changes to any existing high school cohort before they've made their way through high school, which would impact everyone down to freshmen. So I think folks are working. Thank you. Another question. I appreciate the graduation vault letters, I think, as... former assistant principal, it was really helpful to know when talking with my students

059what they needed for graduation. And so I really appreciate that. I appreciate that we're starting in spring of freshman year because I actually feel that the time to really troubleshoot these students is really then to really the end of their sophomore year because by that point they've kind of taken all they've at least done the first run of their SOLs. So I guess I'm wondering, yes, we're focusing on our seniors, but how are we using those vault letters in conversations with our sophomores and juniors as well? Dr. Bill, I'll let you talk about it more intimate, but when we actually have our technical assistance meetings, we look at all of the cohorts. In the past, it used to be we would say, let's report on the seniors. How many seniors do you have graduating? How

060many are on track? But what we realized was that that was not super helpful. And so what we do is, so we do start with our seniors and 11th graders, but now we also focus on 10th and 11th graders. And just even having conversation around, in terms of our alternative assessments, like... can they start to take them in 10th grade and 9th grade? And of course, we also want to keep the bar very high. And the state also has things in place to ensure, like a kid has to take SOL once or twice before. And so, but we're very cognizant about now focusing in on early so families know, like, yep, you have a 9th grader. This is what they need to accomplish in order to graduate. They may have a credit from, they took

061geometry in middle school, right? And so. they need four credits in order to graduate, and this is when they can actually take it. So I think that that piece has helped us, but also our counselors are now very, very clear about what each student needs. When you're writing stuff handwritten in a spiral notebook sometimes, things get lost in translation. So we automated it, and not to say there aren't mistakes there, but I think that that has helped the process greatly. Great question. So to be a little bit more laser-like, we've created cohort nights. You know, we have the back to school and open house nights, but throughout the year, the counselors and the schools have created those cohort nights, not just for the graduating class, but all the way down to the freshmen. And then

062every school has created what we call a passport to graduation. So every student. as not just a spiral notebook. You don't just write it down. So we have in this card or passport, which is 21st century. It's getting into the real world. It's real world relevant where we check if you finish English 9, if you finish English 10, if you finish VA U.S. history. Every student has that card, and then during those cohort nights, then we share it with the parents so they can see all the way, like you said, from spring semester all the way through. Wonderful. Thank you. Can I ask one more follow-up question? Do we feel like our alternative programs, do they... Do we need to increase them? Is the capacity right? Do they need more? I'm a firm believer that,

063yes, I want all our students in comprehensive high schools, but their lives are all different. I'm going to let Courtney Ward take that one. Good evening again. We actually did such a great job with graduating students in Alt-Ed that we have plenty of space. So it was really great to have our first kickoff graduation task force meeting with the schools, let them know, you know, this is the number of seats in Secondary Success, in Congonis, in Thrive, for example. We did a fair seat allotment based on school enrollment. And so Hugh and I got more seats in the Alt-Ed programs than, for example, TJ. This is our second year doing that. And it's worked really well. We do recognize that we want to increase the number of graduates in all of our Alt Ed programs,

064but we do also recognize that it's a very vulnerable population that needs something a little different. And it will look different in their pathway to getting their diploma. And in terms of support, we actually, even with the scale down of the budget, we actually make things work in terms of CLEP testing. And so I applaud Dr. Ward for being very smart about how we use our funding. Thank you, Mr.. Percival Thank You madam chair. I will be quick. I have a data question on slide six and while that slide is coming up I Very much applaud the intentionality of everything that we're doing graduation. I am Hyper focused on the year 2017 for some reason 2016 as this slide points out Do we have any idea we may not have an answer to this, but

065I really am thinking out loud what happened 2016 and 2017. And it's not just graduation. We had NAEP scores, reading, math, everything started this downward trend. And this is not an indictment of RPS by any means. It's the entire Commonwealth from the data that I've seen. And the reason I ask this question is, do we have a finger on the pulse of whatever this extinction-level event was so that we can sort of plot a course around that if it should happen, something similar should happen again? If an academic meteor strikes the Chesapeake Bay again. So I don't want to speak because this was before our time, but we have heard some speculations as to why. But again, I don't want to confirm because I wasn't here. No speculation whatsoever. Okay. I think that we are

066stronger once we understand the opportunities of our past. We may not, none of us were a part of that process when it happened. I think it's important to explore at the very least. We've learned a lot from, for example, COVID. But then sometimes, like, to add on to Mr. Percival's question, I wonder, are we ready for the next big hit? You know, so I think we can always learn from the things that have taken place prior to now. Thank you, Mr. Cameron. So just that being said, I just caution us to, instead of saying we don't know, just be open to explore. And I'll go back and look through some of the historical pieces. And as I said, when I became a part of the team, there were some things shared. But again, I can't

067conclusively say what it was. I think that's fair. We certainly don't want to put you in the spot. But hopefully that motivates us to take a closer look. I had a couple of thoughts. Well, I just had one, actually. I appreciate everything that this presentation indicates. We're turning in the right direction. We're doing some great things. So thank you to everyone who has been a part of this amazing work. I think any type of trend upward is success. And to see the numbers that we have here over an 18-year period, it speaks that we're doing something right, right, as a division. I want to ask a question as a release. I remember when I was first kind of knocking doors a couple years ago, and I remember I met this young lady. We began to

068talk. She told me she was a part of RPS, but she dropped out. And I said, well, wait a minute. Let's talk about it. So we began to talk. She began to tell me her story. And I wanted to get resources to her right then and there, and I couldn't. So my question to you is, what about, I know that we have access, we have teams that are calling, we have people that are addressing it, but what about people outside of that scope, the community, that perhaps would like to give them information or insight right then and there, whether it be a QR code or just more information to point them in the right direction to just help? drive that change from a community perspective. Do we have something like that in place and where

069is it accessible? So we do. And part of it is the first piece, the Dropout Recovery Blitz, we did a training with everyone on the actual resources and the best fit. So when you call someone, it was, hey, we think that secondary success is for you or Penn Foster. And so the good news is. If their kids, say for example, there's a student that may have dropped out in 2021. Even though that may not impact our graduation rate, we connected some of them with Penn Foster and they were able to actually get high school diplomas. And we also referenced them to some of our other partners that can support them. But we do have that. We will share it. And I believe it's already on the post-secondary website that Courtney has. And it has a

070QR code. It's very user-friendly. And so it is on that website. And we'll share it again more broadly. I think that would be amazing. And if there is some that you could even... print out just for those perhaps in the community that want to drive change from their level to just if there's a neighbor or a friend that they can just hand them that QR code to say, hey, you know, just check this out. Perhaps it helps, perhaps it doesn't, but it's another way to drive change in what we're trying to accomplish with our scholars. I think we got even more clear with our GED options for our scholars as well. Great. Ms. Burke? Thank you, Madam Chair. I'm told I have five seconds. 2017, I was appointed to the board. 26, 27, we had

071an interim superintendent. And so we were not stable. That was perfect. That was a drop the mic moment. I mean, because instability does drive a certain level of... you know, decline in a lot of areas. So that will be a huge reason why that is. So thank you. That's why it's important for us to have tenured people around us to get that information. So thank you. Thank you. Yes, I have the next presentation as well. Wonderful. Let's move right along to 2.02. So good evening Madam Chair, Vice Chair, School Board Members, Superintendent Cameron. So now we want to give you an update on our SOL results. Superintendent Cameron has kind of already given us some insight into some of the data and the basic messages is that we are on the rise in every area.

072But what I really want to focus on tonight also given the time is really our response. And so we'll have Cassandra Beale, we'll also have Dr. Vale. We'll also have Dr. Blackwell talk about the changes that we're making to ensure that we continue to see increases, even with the changes in cut scores, because we've given it a lot of thought and put a lot of effort into training teachers and will continue to train teachers. And so with that, our agenda for today, we will briefly go over our results, but we really want to talk about our academic response. And so the celebrations, as Superintendent Cameron shared, is that we are up. and reading math, science and history. So you saw those gains that we had in those specific areas. And then the next slide, which

073really shows just in terms of multilingual learners, in terms of reading proficiency, that we outperform the state as well as our as our neighboring divisions. And so that is a huge, huge plus. And John is going to share one more data point that I think is very interesting. And when he showed me the scatterplot, I was really excited. John. Jefferson, so our second data spotlight here is RPS closes the reading proficiency gap for economically disadvantaged population. The scatter plot below, all those dots represent divisions. The bigger the dot, the bigger the division. The biggest dot there is Fairfax County, one of the biggest divisions in the country. The orange dot is RPS. The y-axis is the difference in pass rate. So essentially, it's the COVID gap. If a dot is right on zero, that means

074that they closed the COVID gap. If it's below zero, that means they still have some work to do to exceed pre-pandemic levels. And then if it's above zero, that means that division is exceeding pre-pandemic levels. The reason why I wanted to, and then lastly, excuse me, lastly is the x-axis, which represents the percent of economically disadvantaged students per division. The reason why I wanted to display this data in a scatterplot is because when you look at it this way, you can see Richmond Public Schools, that orange dot there, is one of the highest. dot there compared to other similar size divisions. And not only did we close the COVID gap, but we are exceeding those pre-pandemic levels, which I believe is very exciting. Next spotlight here is we were looking at some students and we

075were wondering what did their proficiency levels look like if they were enrolled for two or more years. And what you can see here across the board is proficiency increases. Double-digit gains for 4, 5, and 8th grade in math, and then in reading, 4th, 7th, and 8th all see big gains. So again, when students are in RPS, proficiency increases. All right, so for the next section, I'm going to highlight some of the... the data points that we see here. And so for our reading reporting group, the one data point I want to highlight is our economically disadvantaged population, that 5% increase and a 10% increase over two years. And that's attributed to that closing the pre-COVID gap there. And by test level here, I want to highlight two grades here is grade six. This was an

076area that we're hyper-focused on ensuring the transition from fifth to sixth increases. We've talked about this in previous years, board meetings. And then lastly, the reading EOC, 7% increase as well, which we're really proud of. For math reporting groups, I want to highlight our economically disadvantaged group here with a 4% increase. And then next, by test level, we can see elementary with some big gains in grades 3 and 4. And then lastly, algebra 2 for high school, we see some big gains. And this is critical because we see more students enrolling in algebra 1 in middle school. So this is a key measure in high school, and it's a good thing to see that improve. For science, we're continuing our success from last year. Last year, we had a huge 11% increase in proficiency, and

077we continued those gains by a 2% increase here. And you can see that biology and earth science carried the way with a 15% and 5% increase. And then for history, I do want to note that our end sizes for history, you will see it decrease because at the high school level, we're implementing history PBAs. And so that's why you see that decrease and also a change in proficiency. And then lastly, the one subject area we did see a decrease was in writing, and this was in high school. And one of the probably the biggest factor in that is we switched from 11th to 10th grade. So not to say we predicted a little bit of a decrease, but what we are predicting is a big increase this year because those students are in our schools

078and we have more opportunity to remediate, retest, and for those students to pass. So we do see that proficiency rate there going to be increasing this year. And then next year, just by school results, highlighting some schools with double-digit gains. We have Fairfield and Patrick Henry at the elementary level with some double-digit gains. Fairfield increased reading proficiency by 22%, which is massive, 54% proficiency. Love to see that. For middle school, we have Henderson. I'm going to be saying Henderson a lot here in the subject areas, 19% increase. And then for high school, we have Armstrong, Huguenot, Richmond Virtual, and then lastly, Richmond High. And I do want to pause right here and connect the dots to graduation. This is huge for our graduation rates next year. This EOC is one of the... key contributors to

079increasing our graduation rates. This was a huge barrier to our students and with these increases, these were 11th graders last year, so now they're 12th graders. So we're really looking forward to our results this year. And then back to math here and back to our SOL results. We see Cardinal with double digit gains, Lois Harrison, Miles Jones, Patrick Henry, Westover. Carver Fisher, excuse me, JL Francis, and then lastly, Swansboro for elementary. For middle, we have Henderson, again, 18% increase. And then lastly, for high school, we have Richmond Success Academy and Richmond Virtual Academy, both with double-digit gains. And then really quickly for science, Barack Obama, Fairfield, double-digit gains in proficiency for science, plus for one, JB Fisher. And then going into Henderson with 39% gain again, a huge increase in proficiency for science. And then

080lastly, for high school, we see Richmond Community, Richmond High School for the Arts. And then I will conclude and skip over history just because some of the PBA data makes it a little less comparable and then go to academic response. Good evening. My name is Cassandra Bell and I have the great pleasure of serving as our Director of Curriculum and Instruction. And I will jump right into our academic response. So you just had an opportunity to hear a lot about our data. And while we're incredibly proud of our students, we know that there's still much work to do. And so in reading, We saw increases, as you can see there, and we can attribute that to an increase in direct school support from our division instructional specialists, but not them alone, them working alongside our

081school-based staff with our coaches and interventionists. We also saw a deeper focus on foundational skills in reading as well that attributed to our growth. In terms of math, we saw increases. And alignment to new standards, really focusing on direct support from our specialists and our coaches, and also looking at a little bit of a dip as it pertained to sixth grade math. Our middle school course sequence and acceleration continues to be a challenge, but we are going to address that aggressively this academic school year. We saw increases in science across each level and we kind of stayed constant at our elementary level and we attribute that to our increased support from our division instructional specialist as well as a focus on our four by four schedule at the high school level. And then finally, history.

082We can attribute that increase that we saw across the board with semester and year-long incorporation of our standards-aligned cumulative review to support daily instruction. All right, so that was our data. Now we want to talk about our response. So this year, we're really focused on secondary instruction and reading in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction. And so we really want to make sure that we're enhancing our teacher support, aligning that with our interventions and making sure that we are data informed in our instructional decisions. We are spending a lot more time focusing on intervention with the new implementation of VALS at the middle school level in alignment with the Virginia Literacy Act. And just ensuring that tier one instruction is our main focus, but then aligning tier two and tier three remediation and intervention to

083ensure that there's that through line for students. So every single adult that students touch, understand the student's plan, understand what students need, so we can be even more intentional about the supports that we're providing. And of course, we're focusing on our data-driven instruction to inform any adjustments that we are making to support our students. And then at the high school level, we did make that shift to ensure that there was more balance in our SOLs. Our students were taking the reading and the writing SOL in 11th grade, and we wanted to balance that out for students. And so we moved our writing exam to the 10th grade and kept our reading SOL at the 11th grade. We've had a little time to get our teachers acclimated to that shift and we know that they're going

084to be much better prepared with the support that we are going to provide them and also through our PLCs and additional professional development. In terms of mathematics, we're going to ensure that we are really focusing on our shift to high quality instruction and ensuring that the instruction is at the proper level of rigor. So last year we had new standards in math that we were prepared for, but we also had new standards in English. And so really adjusting to both of those things simultaneously. This year our teachers have had some time to really get acclimated to the standards and so we can make that shift to really focus deeply on teaching at the proper performance level so that we're teaching at the proficient and advanced levels and we are increasing our rigor to align with

085our Virginia Standards of Learning. And then at the secondary level in alignment with our three E's we are focused very intentionally on our honors coursework and our AP programming as well to ensure that all of our students have an opportunity to engage in those upper level courses. That coupled with providing professional development to our teachers throughout the course of the school year. So in terms of science, we know that Our teachers are working incredibly hard, right? But they can't do it alone. And so we also understand that we have to provide, you know, a lot of support from the district. And so we have been able to hire a division science coach at both the elementary and secondary levels, and they are already making a tremendous impact. We're able to spread out our instructional specialists

086more equitably across our district because we now have two people to support elementary science and two people to support secondary science. So we're incredibly. grateful for that. We've also intensified our collaboration with Dr. Blackwell's team, as well as Dr. Volley's team, to ensure that the Department of Curriculum and Instruction also is aligned with the work that's happening in Exceptional Ed and in our Multilingual Learner Success Department, because what's good for our multilingual learners and our Exceptional Ed learners is good for all of our learners. And we're also ensuring that we are providing just-in-time professional development, not just in case, to ensure that we're not blanketing supports to students, but we're providing them very intentional and specific support in the areas in which they need it. And finally, in history, we are focused on embedding our

087claim evidence reasoning into practice and expanding our inquiry design model resources and introducing our PBAs really at all levels. We want to make sure that by the time students get to high school, that they're very comfortable with performance-based assessments. So they actually start with PBAs in third grade in both science and history. They have it again in middle school and then again in high school. in high school, we've expanded our PBAs. We started last year with Virginia studies as well, excuse me, Virginia US history and world history one, and we are including world history two and those PBAs this year as well. Additionally, we have been able to provide additional professional learning throughout the year. So not just the few days that we have in our calendar for division-wide. professional learning, we've also been able

088to partner with our principal directors to provide through year professional development for teachers within the school instructional day so that we don't have to add to the additional time after school, but we're able to provide that professional development in line with our pacing and aligned with our new standards of learning. We have new 2023 standards of learning in history this year. We are excited about engaging in those new standards and getting that under our belts as well. And I will pass it on to my colleague. All righty. So I did already mention our work with the adoption of our instructional framework for seven steps to a language-rich... interactive classrooms. So we started this work last year. So that with the addition of 55 new LEAP teachers to meet the new standards of quality in the

089state of Virginia, we've really doubled down on our intentionality and our instructional priorities to ensure that all of our multilingual learners in RPS have access to rigorous and grade level instruction. And so the way that we are ensuring that all of our students have that access is that we've developed a set of instructional priorities that we want to see all of our LEAP teachers engage in every single day in every single content area. So that includes... having access or multilingual learners having access to an approved high quality instructional materials, integrating content and language objectives. Of course, this would be through an effective LEAP model such as co-teaching and also aligned to language and content objectives. And then finally, we want to see language-rich interactive classrooms. And what that really looks like is engaging in academic

090language, in reading, writing, speaking, and listening. And what we want to see is evidence of structured conversations and evidence of reading and writing in every single classroom, every content area, every day. Mr. Camus? Oh, sorry. Good evening. Good evening. Okay, good evening everyone. I am Dr. Rossi-Valley and I'm the director with the Office of Exceptional Education and I'm here to give the academic response for exceptional education. One of the things we are definitely honing in on is strengthening our specially designed instruction. Now that's not a new term, but we have been talking about it over the past year and really focusing on what that looks like and ensuring our teachers understand how to provide specially designed instruction to our students with disabilities in addition to focusing on the effective use of accommodations. When SDI is

091consistently implemented, we know that our students with disabilities can have improved outcomes for their academic areas as well as their functional areas. So our priorities for this year, and just moving forward in particular, is making sure that we're aligning SDI directly to our IEP goals and making sure that our exceptional education teachers are embedding the SDI into lesson planning. We have worked really closely with our instructional compliance coordinators, with our school administrators, with our special education teachers, just to understand how to create a lesson plan that includes specially designed instruction, and not just what they're doing alongside of the teacher, but what is specific for our students with disabilities in their eyes. IEP goals. The other thing that we are honing in on is our professional learning. And I know Dr. Blackwell, as well as

092Ms. Bell, has also communicated the increase of professional learning. But we are really working on embedding SDI across all division-wide, across all school-level professional development opportunities. We are working alongside of our instructional compliance coordinators to provide monthly training to their teachers on SDI. I can say just at the beginning of this year, we've been able to provide SDI PL for principals, the Orange School Leader Academy, we've been able to do it during Summer Learning Institute. Our new teacher academy as well, we've been able to provide some training in professional development for our new teachers, our provisionally licensed teachers, but also our long-term selves because they are providing that SDI instruction to our students as well. The last couple of ones is in addition to making sure we're implementing the SDI, we're going to do some

093quality checks to make sure we're doing observations so that we can identify those teachers that require some additional coaching and modeling. So based on the data from our observations and our SDI walkthroughs that we're doing within our team but across the schools as well, we're going to then determine what teachers require some additional coaching support. And last but not least, just making sure we're collaborating with our curriculum instruction partners as well as our lead partners, even connecting with Dr. Blackwell about the seven steps and what that looks like for our students with disabilities and how our teachers can get a hold of that information as well. So collaborating with our instructional specialists as it relates to science in particular and doing walkthroughs alongside of curriculum instruction so that we can just improve our practices across

094the board. And before I open it up for questions, we also have our elementary PDs here to answer any questions. And again, just want to thank them for their hard work as well and getting the elementary scores that we see. So I'm happy to take any questions folks have. Mr. Cameras, before we begin to questions, he has a statement. Thank you, Madam Chair. I just wanted to boil this down. In a way that everybody can remember, this is really important. So over the last two years, we've seen gains. In every subject, I'm going to focus on reading and math and science and history, the four core. Reading plus six, math plus five, science plus 13, history plus seven. And here's how you're going to remember this. Y'all ready? My rising heart sings. I want you

095all to repeat after me. My rising heart sings. What does M stand for? Math. Rising. Reading. Heart. History. Sings. Science. You're with me. Now, the only numbers you have to remember are 5, 6, 7, and 13. You got it? 5, 6, 7, 13. My rising heart sings. Math is up. Reading is up. I had to remember it. History is up. And sing. Science is up. Y'all got it. Beautiful. So now when somebody asks you, how is RPS doing? You say, my rising heart sings. We're a five in math, six in reading, seven in history, and 13 in science. Y'all got that? All right. We have. Work here is done. Yeah. So Ms. Rizzi. And then. Mr. Farouk, Ms. Burke. Thank you, Madam Chair. This is all great. Super excited about our progress. There is one

096area of concern that has been kind of a perennial situation, and I'd like to know more about it. Like, if you look at our overall rates, our white students are at 89. Our black students are at 43. Our Latino students are at 30. I have witnessed in some of the schools I represent that those numbers hold steady when those students are in the same building. For example, in one of my schools, the gap between black and white students is about 35 points in the same building. And so I'd like to know what's behind that. I mean, certainly we have things that are outside of school that may impact this, but what are we doing? Sometimes I notice that, and I'm going to be honest, our teaching staff is less representative of our students, and I

097don't know if that has anything to do with it, and I don't want to say that it does, but maybe there's some cultural responsiveness that we need to look at and make sure is happening. But I would be remiss if I didn't mention that I see this as a very stark fact. And I'd like to see those gaps change. Lesson. Thank you for pointing that out. I do know the two things that we have intentionally done over the past three years. I think it was even before I came, we changed our curriculum, right? And the curriculums are culturally responsive and those pieces are... built into those curriculum. But again, every summer, Cassandra and her team actually look at the curriculum to make adjustments to it to ensure that it is equitable. And then the other

098piece, you know, in Dreams for RPS, we kind of took the parameters off around who's in honors and who's in those particular courses because there were some barriers in the past. And so we are trying to ensure that every scholar has access and that they have similar experiences across classrooms. And again, I think the other piece that I'm excited about this year, is the level of PD and professional learning that we're having. Last year, we had a day and a half, but we didn't have those because of snow days, et cetera. But we have one coming October 13th. We have our division-wide professional learning. And we know that professional learning can be a key lever specifically for all teachers, but specifically when we have new teachers, they really do need that support and collaboration. And

099so we also have some quarterly training that we have for teachers as well in their content areas. Yeah, I just, you know, I want to reiterate that the data says that representation matters. And so I just want to put that out there. Curriculum is one thing, but like actually understanding the culture of your students is another. And I'm going to ask in new business tomorrow for data for these schools that are of particular concern. where the school is essentially integrated, but our scores are looking really disparate. I want to look at longitudinal numbers over years and look and see, I really would like to look at that more deeply, and also numbers of faculty, and I just need to see that. I would like to see it. Also, I want to see discipline numbers for

100those schools. I want to see if there are certain students who are getting disciplined more than others. I just want to look at this because it is something I'm noticing. 30 seconds. Yeah, we're happy to pull that for you and also create some responses as well. Mr. Camers. Thank you, Mr. Rizzi, for raising, obviously, a very important question. And there's a lot to dig in there. I do want to note. Again, over the same time period over the last two years, in reading science and history, our black students, their growth has been twice that of our white students. Of course, the overall levels are still vastly different, but as we look in terms of growth, we are seeing twice as much growth. And so obviously we need to continue that and accelerate that, but it

101is an indication that... these lines are coming together, not widening apart. Still a ton of work to do, but I did want to just share that. Thank you. Mr. Farouk. Thank you, Madam Chair. I just have a brief statement, and that is that, and we have a lot of our staff here in this room. Everyone who is involved in the raising and educating of children knows that it's a collective effort, that it takes a village. And so every time we, on the school board and in leadership, to have conversations about the budget, we're often asked, well, we need to know where the money goes. And I hope people here and everyone who's watching will see where the money's going. And so the credit goes to our parents, to our students, to our staff, the ones

102who are here and the ones who are not here, because it was months, years of work. The credit goes to... The current school board, the previous school board, current council, previous council, who did provide increases in funding to RPS multiple years in a row, which we invested in our children. And you saw in the updates today, the investments and where they went, increases staff, increasing materials and support. You saw updates and how our staff are spending more time following up with students, more time identifying barriers, more time identifying the needed supports. All of that stuff takes time and money. The results are clear. When you invest in the kids, when you invest in the schools, we can and we are making huge improvements. And it takes time and people show up every day pouring themselves

103into our kids. And so I've said this before, and I know this is true for all of my colleagues. I will never, ever be shamed or apologize for demanding more money for our kids because I know when we pour it into our staff and into our students that they're making things happen. So congratulations again to you and your team and to our entire RPS family, because every single teacher, every single custodian, every single bus driver that takes their kids to all the activities that they love and enjoy, it is a collective effort. And we are really grateful for all their hard work. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Burke. And then Mr. Hedgepack. Thank you, Madam Chair. And thank you so very much for that extensive detailed report. A lot of great information. I appreciate what

104Ms. Rizzi stated. I was thinking back when Dr. Ms. Isabel spoke. She stated that the plan that was presented tonight before us was good for all learners, for all of our children. Because when she stated that, at that time, I too thought, as Ms. Rizzi, why are our black students trailing behind? Even though they have increased, it's still not enough. So my question is, I know at one time we had title funds or whatever to help the Hispanic students, correct? That's why we put extra programs in place. Yes, ma'am. But that money's gone now, right? No, we still get Title II funds. Okay. So are there any funds available? whatever money from wherever, is there any money available to provide opportunities, additional opportunities for our students that are behind? For instance, we have ninth graders

105who are not reading on the ninth grade level. So we really need to catch them earlier. And I know that we're working towards that. But at some point, the gap does continue. And I do believe also, as Ms. Rizzi stated, And I know this is what the global concern is teacher shortage across all over the United States and then some. But at the end of the day, diversity should be increased. Maybe we can work on, not maybe, I wish we would work on collectively continuing just as the programs we already have. But the numbers are small in terms of training persons who are paraprofessionals to be certified as teachers. Our numbers are still small. But at some point at the end of the day, and there's data in place to support that, that children do

106model what they see and hear every day. And it also goes back to the economic piece. Because oftentimes with children that come from challenging neighborhoods, when they go home, it's different for many, not all, of our teachers and our faculty and staff members. So I'm old school. Ruby Payne was my best friend. Okay, Dr. Ruby Payne, that's how I was trained. So the framework for understanding the challenges is different from school to school, place to place. So as you talked about our professional development and something else, thank you, something else you stated, acceleration, but you got to have that hands-on what happens in this neighborhood. So I appreciate the information that was given. I appreciate the statement about this is good for all learners. However, the data doesn't show that. Yes, ma'am, and thank you

107for that. So we do use our Title I funds and also our School Improvement Grant and early literacy funds to support intervention, summer school, and the team that you don't see represented here tonight is School Improvement, and you're familiar with it as a principal. They actually work in tandem with Curriculum and Instruction that does the Tier 1, and they also do the Tier 2 and Tier 3 work, but they work hand-in-hand with us to help schools determine how to spend funds and find the right evidence-based interventions. But we will be more keenly aware of how we use those funds to make an impact with all stakeholder and all subgroups. Thank you, Mr. Hitchcock. Thank you, Madam Chair. I wanted to echo what Mr. Farouk said earlier. I thought that was very well stated, so I

108appreciate that. The other thing I wanted to add on to Ms. Rizzi's comment was that especially that disparity becomes even more apparent between our subgroups when it comes to the advance rate in math and in reading. And so that worries me that, you know, of course with these new cut scores and, of course, as we've talked about, new standards, right, all of these challenges that we have that, you know, we're seeing our white subgroup continue to increase in advance rate at higher rates quicker than our others. And so I think that that's just another added piece of the study that would be important to learn about. So thank you. Thank you for that. Thank you. I echo my colleagues concerns and I would like to see the data to support why we are where we

109are as it relates to the gap between our white students and our black students. I also have a question about our students with disability. If you look over the presentation, I think it's maybe out of all, then there's only one where there's an increase. And though the decrease is a small number, it does show a trend for our students with disabilities. So I wanted to get a better understanding of what plan and course of action you have in place to address that. And then I have one other question after that. Dr. Fowler, you want to? So absolutely we have seen a decrease in some of the areas for our students with disabilities and one of the major things that we are really honing in on as I mentioned earlier is what that specially designed instruction

110looks like and to ensure that not just our exceptional education teachers are receiving the training but also our general education teachers are because we know our students with disabilities are gen ed students first right so we want to make sure that they receive that ongoing training so we're building out modules specifically for specially designed instruction for our general education teachers. to address that so they understand what that looks like and how to provide the scaffolds of the differentiation, differentiated instruction to our students with disabilities. So a lot of it is going to be connected to the professional development that's being provided. As mentioned before, we have greater opportunity to provide that. In addition to what I shared earlier, we are able to do division-wide. We have the upcoming one as well and some of our

111school-based sessions in addition to that. I appreciate your transparency with that regard. My other question is page 17, where Fairfield Port Elementary, I mean, 22% is top notch, right? How can we put that in a jar and duplicate that to all of our other schools? I just, you know, want to shout them out. But also, you know, these are opportunities where if we see there are schools that are doing something very well. What are the plans to duplicate those efforts? What are they doing? I just, I would like to know more. It's thorough literacy. I yield to superintendent cameras to share the best practices. Well, first and foremost, they have the incomparable Angela Wright as their principal. And if you've ever met Principal Wright, you know that she is a force of nature, a bundle

112of joy, and a fierce advocate for her kids. And so you feel that every single day when you walk into. Fairfield Court Elementary. It's one of my favorite places to go visit. They have been laser focused on our literacy work and they're of course one of our 200 day schools so they've been able to use that extra time I think very strategically. You know another one where we've seen big gains in the K2 front which is not reflected here in the SOL data is Cardinal which also has that extra time as well. They've been similarly extremely focused. So I really do think it comes down to great leaders, great teachers, a culture that is really about high expectations for all kids, and then just staying deeply committed to the science-based work and not deviating from

113it. And sprinkle in maybe 20 extra days and a little bit of extra enthusiasm, and we're beginning to see some pretty incredible results. Thank you. So what I'm hearing you say is that professional development is something that really is a key indicator of how successful some schools can be, right? And so, you know, as those opportunities come up for us to think about ways to invest, I would, you know, like to just call that out to my colleagues. when there are times for us to perhaps vote on things as it relates to professional development, that's something that we really should consider because it does directly affect the outcomes of our students. Thank you. Ms. Burke and then Ms. Rizzi, you had more time than you had last time. Okay. Real fast, drop the mic. My

114question, Superintendent Cameras, thinking overall with... The support that Fairfield had last year, we don't have that support this year. So what's the plan in place? The literacy person was, which was promoted and whomever else just before school opened. So my question is to get those scores to continue and then some, because as a team. Yes, the good news is their former literacy coach is helping lots of schools do what Fairfield did. And we are aggressively recruiting to find someone to fill that spot. I will say of any school in RPS, I feel very confident in Fairfield's ability to attract a great coach. In no small part due to the culture that they've created there, which is, as you well know, just work. such a positive, loving, and focused culture. And so we are committed. I

115have personally committed to Principal Wright to help her find a great person to come in behind Ms. Sneed, who is absolutely fabulous. Ms. Rizzi. Thank you, Madam Chair. One thing really quick. I know I have 24 seconds. I'm going to talk fast. So I'd like to have data. I don't know if that's something Ms. Parsch can get me, but I'd like to look at discipline, days missed, including students with disabilities in our subgroups. We have everything in the dashboard. It'll be easy for us to pull. Okay, I'd like to see it. Thank you. Okay, moving right along. Mr. Kamers. Very last thing. I would be remiss if I did not recognize principal directors who do so much of this work. I see Dr. Quarles in the back there. Lucy Michelle Jones as well. Principal Director

116Waller, who's been dealing with some family matters. And oh, she's outside. Oh, how about that? And of course, Dr. Bell as well. Poor folks who work tirelessly to support our principals and make all of this great work come alive. Thank you to you all. Dr. Wiggins is taking much needed time away, so certainly we can recognize her as well. And everybody who's here today, thank you. Thank you. Moving right along to board business, we'll start at 3.02. Receive an update on certification of Teamsters Local 529 for coordinators and managers. Thank you, Madam Chair. I am thrilled to bring forward for the board's approval the certification of Teamsters Local 592 as the exclusive representative for coordinators and managers. It's the last employee group to be certified with an exclusive representative. The Teamsters Local 592 ran unopposed

117and received 26 votes in favor of becoming the exclusive representative. And so now it falls to the board to formally approve them. With that, I welcome the board's approval. I need a motion. Ms. Burke? I move that we move forward as listed with team, can you hear me okay? Okay, I'm sorry. I move forward, I move that we receive the Teamsters Local 592 as listed in the statement. I need to change a word there. I need to change a word. What did I need to do? Okay, it's a better word rather than say, so let's see. If you just read that line at the bottom there. Okay, thank you. I think it's better here. And at the end, just add the words for managers and coordinators. Yes, okay. I move that we certify Teamsters Local

118592 as the exclusive representative for collective bargaining for coordinators and managers. I get a second second. It's been moved by Mrs. Burke seconded by Mr. Hedge path any questions before we move into our vote Thank you. Mr. Percival. Yes, mr. Card Yes, mr. Farouk. Yes. Mr. Hedge path. Yes. It's Rizzy. Yes. Dr. Harris Muhammad. Miss Burke. Yes. Mr. Jafari. Yes. Mr. Hernandez. Yes motion passes. Thank you Next up, we have 3.03, receive an update on Clark Springs. Good evening, board members, superintendent. Given the heft of the rest of the agenda, we are happy to do a quick overview consistent with what you all recommended last month and then open it up to questions. Feel free if you'd like us to take a different approach. But the quick version consistent with last month was given the

119roughly $4 million anticipated cost of fully redoing the HVAC system. And that not being in our budget, the recommendation rather than entirely mothballing the school and risk creating additional costs because of. fully mothballing the counter recommendation instead was to approve the limited use of Clark Spring for two purposes one by the wellness team and Mrs. Parks is happy to answer any questions about that and two by open high school that would be consistent with how open high school used the facility before Fox was temporarily located in the facility and so that's what's outlined in the presentation It talks about those two very limited uses, the recognition that the HVAC system is very old, and so at all times those two teams would need to plan for contingencies in case the HVAC system does fully fail.

120But it would be used for open high school consistent with how they've used it in the past, particularly in the multipurpose gymnasium theater room. And then the wellness team would use it for a community-focused resource that Mrs. Parks can answer questions about or share more if she wants to. Thank you, Patrick. One of the things that we wanted to do was to make sure that we could provide a broader range of support to our families without being a hindrance to our school teams. And so to give you an example, we had a family to reach out to us that needed support. The parent doesn't get paid until next week. Their water bill is $550, and they wanted to know if there was any way we could help them with it. They didn't ask for money

121for the water, but if there was any way we could help them to wash clothes. And so this would be a particular space where that family would be able to come and do that. They can do it in the privacy of the school. No one else has to know, and we can be a resource for them. Additionally, we had a family who needed some food. We gave them all of the resources to the local pantries, but they don't get off work until after 5 o'clock. And so we could be a resource for that family to come to our food pantry, pick up what they need, and then they can... go home and be able to provide some support to their families. And so we really want to serve the entire division without being a barrier

122to schools. We want to be an asset to the division. And we're happy to take any questions. Thank you, Mr. Hetchipan. Ms. Rizzi. Thank you, Mr. Harrell. Thank you, Ms. Parks, for the presentation. Ms. Parks, how can people donate to the pantry if they would like? So at this moment, we're not taking any donations. We're super happy that we received a grant for setup. And after we have our initial setup, then we will open for donations. But we want to actually get the space clean, set up, and then assess what we need. We're so happy that we were given the Communities in School grant, but it's only for $265,000. So certainly that's not going to meet the entirety of our needs for the year, but more to come. Thank you, Ms. Rizzi. thank you madam

123chair so yeah i mean this all sounds great um and hopefully that can continue in some capacity the wellness center i do know that schools some schools individual schools have laundry facilities and are still offering that for families um So yeah, you know, ultimately my dream is that this will become a comprehensive open high school. Maybe someone could like lobby our legislature to like talk about perhaps our need for that. But yeah, I appreciate your update. Thank you. Thank you so much. Really excited to hear about the wellness facility and I think it makes a ton of sense to... allow open to use the facilities as they did prior to what was taking place. No, I'm talking about Clark Springs. Okay, there's not a vote required. Okay, I just wanted to make sure we did

124our part. All right, make sure we're covered. Wonderful. All right, moving right along to 3.04, receive an update on Armstrong High School renaming. Good evening once again board members superintendent cameras upon your recommendation the last time that I was before you was concerning a direct renaming of Armstrong high school you asked us to Conduct some surveys get feedback from community members alumni students and staff so here you see The survey that was created in collaboration with our family and community engagement and our communications team where we were able to address a lot of some of the concerns that the board had asked for us to address. Thank you, board, for your time and patience in reviewing where we align in the right way. And when you all review that after we got your. Stamp of

125approval then it went out to the to the community at large here you see the results the submission window was September the 10th through the 25th You see that we had 376 online submissions The majority came from the students and staff, 55%. You see the breakdown of students and staff response for name change at Armstrong High School. 70% of those students wanted to remain the same. The alumni community member breakdown, Armstrong Kennedy had the most members that participated, 84% of them. And, of course, they wanted to change Armstrong Kennedy. The parent response, we didn't have a lot of parent response. However, out of the ones, the nine of the ten, oddly enough, they wanted to keep it, the mascot and the current school name, as you see there, the school colors. Armstrong Kennedy said Armstrong

126Kennedy. and then Armstrong High School, those four parents. But both of them wanted to stay with the Armstrong mascot and the current school colors of orange and blue. Only one of the parents spoke to the mascot returning to Jaguar in the colors of blue and gold. We also wanted to add in the piece about legacy, addressing the legacy of the Kennedy, the Kennedy Building, which... which was erected when Armstrong High School moved in in 2004, where you see that the alumni community members, 66% of them agreed that we needed to keep the legacy intact. And the students and staff also, there was a high percentage that wanted to give honor to Kennedy's legacy. With that being said... As the result and the final recommendation to the school board is that the administration recommends that Armstrong

127High School, based on our surveys, mainly from students and staff, retain its current name. We honor the legacy of Kennedy High School by placing a plaque as well as a display case at Armstrong High School that would be at the front entrance honoring the Kennedy High School, the alumni, and everything that they did to make sure that the East End was recognized at that time. Any questions from the board? No questions? Mr. Jafari? I'm looking at the data. some of the numbers of people who have actually come in, the alumni and the community. The recommendation itself appears driven more by the students and the staff that are currently in the building than so by the community and the alumni. And so I'm just kind of interested on how we went that way with the recommendation

128when even the community. The alumni community were like 136 and 84%. That seems to be going out the direction of what the data says. We would have loved if we could have received more input from the Armstrong alumni. However, when we were at the last meeting, the superintendent, if I'm not mistaken, asked if we wanted to see what the students had to say. Because they are the current ones that are. that are living this legacy right now. Not, we're not discarding the former alumni of Armstrong or Armstrong Kennedy, but right now in the Armstrong building, correct me if I'm wrong, you all said you wanted to hear what our kids had to say, because they are there right now. Well, and undoubtedly, certainly we wanted to hear what the youngsters that are there right now

129and the staff think. Yes. But we have to look at this longitudinally. We have to look at, we're talking three to maybe four years they're going to be there. They're in there and they're out of there. And what we're talking about when we're talking about the alumni and the community, we're talking about established, these are in all likelihood the parents of the kids that are in there right now. And so I certainly not, I'm not dismissive of what the current students and the faculty think, but what I've seen and what I've heard and what I've heard come in here really speaks measures, giant measures to the actually renaming the school. I remember one instance where Ms. Diane Walker came in and she indicated that she was not on board with it when she came in,

130but even her, upon listening to it. She changed her mind. And so again, I just want to make sure that we look at the whole proportion of it. And not just, again, not being dismissive, but not three to four years. Three to four years, in my estimation, should not outweigh, should not be given more weight or more credence than what the community and the alumni think. And not just alumni from one school, but both schools. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, Ms. Burke. I hope that didn't count against my minutes. Thank you so very much for this report. Thank you for adjusting the survey. I appreciate the responses that we have. It would have been great always to have more. We talk about that often. Maybe we need the students to put together this, whatever

131this part to make sure that we reach masses. Because it's also true that not all of the students at Armstrong voted as well. Yes, I did ask that the students would be included. And the reason for that was in listening to people from Kennedy, it was disheartening when the vote took place on a Monday when they walked into school on Tuesday. You know the story, Dr. Bell. Trophies and plaques were thrown in the trash cans. And it was as if they never existed. And then the name changed. This is a challenging, challenging situation. I'm concerned with the process. I am pleased students were asked, but if we were only going to pay attention to what the students stated, why do we ask the community and the parents? Because I think that's what Mrs. Jafari is,

132or either I'm rephrasing what you're stating, but when I read through this, I said, okay, looking at percentages, we're not going to combine the two together. So if that's the case, why did we even ask the community and the parents to begin with, or the alumni? Because right now, from what I'm understanding and reading this, we're only basing this on the students here. And tell you something else, I'm going to be sincere about this, be very transparent. My thoughts regarding this from the very beginning, whatever the constituency so desired, the majority of the constituency decided was fine with me. And I'm going through something similar in my hometown, just 30 miles from here. where my elementary school, I won't call the name, but it's all over the paper and then some, parts of it will

133be demolished and it hit home because when we stop calling the name, the history's gone. The history's gone. So I understand the heart of what Armstrong wants. I got a lot of phone calls today. A lot of people say we didn't know the meeting was going to take place today. What survey? I never saw the survey. So at the end of the day, I understand that on both parts, it's the historic piece. It's what was done during that period. But even if we were to combine Armstrong, Kennedy, at the end of the day, it won't be. Kennedy by itself or Armstrong by itself, it will be more of the period of Armstrong Kennedy. So I hope we're not voting tonight on this. It didn't say board action, but we're scheduled to vote tomorrow. What I

134look forward to seeing is when? Time. I'm going to find out. Okay. Thank you for what you did, but I'm concerned. So we still have another month before we vote. Yep. Ms. Burke, I'll take ownership for the fact that I actually had them create a survey for the alumni as well, just because, as you stated, they came and they expressed their concerns, and so we wanted to get that data. But in all transparency, we did reach out to both community groups. Like there were points of contacts, people who came, we reached out to them to try to get them to get their constituents to actually take the survey. And so we did within a limited amount of time because we had to do the presentation in October. So in order to get the data and

135be able to present it in a timely manner, you know, we had two weeks. And so we did the best that we could with this time frame. And again, we made every effort to reach out to the alumni associations to get their feedback as well. Thank you all for the work that you've done thus far. I appreciate the recommendations. I don't really have a skin in the game. I haven't had the pleasure of being a part of this particular legacy, but I do believe that it's important that we honor the legacy regardless of the decision that we make. And so I do appreciate... you all recommending that there be a plaque and installing a display case to honor that legacy because I think more than anything That's extremely important. So that's just those are my

136thoughts, but I appreciate the work that you all done thus far Mr. Fari Thank You madam chair if I could just that perhaps we have not looked at. We all know the attacks that educationists face. We know what we're looking at. We have a state administration which has tried to put in textbooks that Native Americans were immigrants. And so we're dealing with gaslighting. We're dealing with some very false information that's being put to our youngsters and basically being directed to our school books. I reserve that. Thank you. Thank you. All right, moving right along to 3.05, receive for first three collective bargaining resolution update. Please let the record reflect that Dr. Harris-Muhammad has arrived. Thank you, Madam Chair. This evening we are bringing forward for the board's consideration a set of modifications to the underlying

137collective bargaining resolution, which authorizes collective bargaining in Richmond Public Schools. I do want to be clear about a couple of things. First and foremost, we all remain 100% committed to collective bargaining in Richmond Public Schools and continue to be proud that RPS was the first school division in the Commonwealth to adopt collective bargaining. Number two, because we believe in collective bargaining, we also want to make sure that it is sustainable over the long term. both for our staff and from a financial perspective. That is why we have proposed some common sense modifications to the underlying resolution that streamline practices and that provide greater clarity, both for our employees and for the board. Number three, I want to note. that we have always and will always fiercely defend our employees' right to free speech and free

138expression as protected in the United States Constitution. We have time and time again gone to bat for that right and nothing, nothing that is proposed this evening would in any way restrict that right or our commitment to it. And fourth, I want to say thank you to everyone who was here this evening, those who are in the room, those who are in the overflow rooms, and those who are watching. We deeply appreciate, and I personally appreciate everybody's feedback, critiques, and pushes because of that feedback and our engagement with our union partners, the Richmond Education Association, Teamsters, and LIUNA. we have proposed a revised set of recommendations that are uploaded to board docs this evening and are available for the public to review. I truly do believe that together we are better and it is because

139of that feedback that we have received that I think we have come to a very strong place that both meets the needs of the school system long-term and that of our employees. And finally, I just want to say thank you to all of our employees for the incredible work that you do every day. I know these changes are difficult for some folks to absorb, but please know that they are intended not in any way as a critique on collective bargaining, but rather as an effort for us collectively to be able to sustain collective bargaining. over the long term, which is what we all aspire to achieve. I also want to thank the school board for your partnership, for your collaboration, and for your deep thinking on this very difficult subject. I look forward to a

140robust discussion. With that, I'm happy to take any questions. Questions, colleagues, feedback? Ms. Burke? Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you, Superintendent Cameras. Many thanks to you, Superintendent Cameras and the administration for putting this in place in terms of how we are going to be in support of faculty and staff, as well as to be fair. I am my position, which I think is no secret. I would like to have the opportunity to have a mediator or someone that's neutral to come in and guide this process. And the reason being is, at the end of the day, it shouldn't be the faculty and staff's fault what's going on. It shouldn't be the administration's. It shouldn't be the school board. I'm suggesting a neutral party. I think at the end of the day, we can get

141through this process in a fair manner. I'm an educator. I don't know anybody on the board that has extensive background knowledge. regarding being in a position to negotiate. What is true collaboration? What is true negotiation? So moving forward, I appreciate what's done, but my suggestion is that we hire a third party that's neutral and that will be fair on both parts. I think at the end of the day, it would give us more time to spend on student achievement. Number two, they will be experts. You know, if you need a tooth pulled, you're not going to a teacher, you're going to a dentist. So that's also my thinking regarding, this is new to us. And there are other areas that are going through something similar in the state of Virginia, because this is new. And

142we were the first. I was a chair when this was brought about. I think it was just the three of us, right? The three of us and Mr. Superintendent as well, Superintendent Camers also. So there was a lot of anxiety, a lot of talking time, a lot of listening time. And right now, we're in a different place. Whenever you go back to change what's in place, it's hard. So at the end of the day, in terms of the time and the cost, my suggestion is that we bring in someone who is an expert. neutral party to be the mediator to bring together both sides in terms of having a mutual relationship. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Burke. Mr. Jafari. Thank you, Madam Chair. As I look at the CBA, certainly my head's off. This is

143RPS's baby, if you will. They brought this into existence, and so I don't see that it would... It would be under attack. And we're not here to attack it. We're here to refine the CBA. With regards to bringing in the third party, I would say that we would, first of all, go into it in good faith and try to communicate. Let the process determine whether we've gotten to an impasse that requires us to yet again hire somebody else to come in and yet again do something that perhaps we can do if we sit down at the table. in good faith and communicate with our union brethren. I don't really see any problem there. And if we get to the point where there's an impasse, of course, we can bring it back just like we always

144do. We can bring it back and we can go into session or whatever we need to do. But right now, my suggestion would be to just go in in good faith and try to come to a fair conclusion. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you. Dr. Harris-Mohamed. Mr. Hedgepath. Thank you. Good evening, everyone. I apologize that I was tardy this evening. So I have already shared with my school board colleagues that I will be voting no on this because I feel very strongly that when I have members of the union, of the organization that I have been a part of all of my career, tell me that. They have not had enough time to unpack the information that has been presented. And it is a lot of information. I've also shared with some of my dearest

145friends that are members of the Richmond Education Association that there are sections, there are several sections in the current format that I do agree with, that I can support. But when I hear colleagues of mine that I work with across the aisle in different cities and different counties in the Commonwealth call me and say that they do not trust the process. And two, it was a lot of information and they didn't have time. And then three, what I also heard was it wasn't in good faith. And so this is what the three things that I'm sharing is in no way saying that I do not appreciate the work that the administration has done. I think Mr. Camerson, Ms. Chain, and those who they brought aboard have done a great job in trying to draw a

146line down the middle, if you will. Always and forever, part of my heart will always belong to the VEA slash REA. There are some things that are part of the process that I didn't agree with. However, I shared that with my dear colleague. And at the end of the day, I still stand ten toes down in the fact that if you all don't feel comfortable, the people that I have known for a very long time, not all of you, but many of you, and you do not feel comfortable that this process is supporting you, then Houston, I have a problem with that. And so I will be voting no on this. And the no does not mean that the work that the superintendent has done in the administration, those who work with him, is not

147valued because it is valued. They went back. They came back to us. They went back. They came back to us. But something is missing. And my thing is this. My pastor said this. When you have a heavy lift, you're going to have to be humble and ask for some support. And I'm not trying to get preachy. I'm just saying. That was a word for me. When you have a heavy lift, you don't need to rush the instrument. Thank you, Dr. Harris-Mohamed. Mr. Hitchcock? Thank you, Madam Chair. I am not opposed to Ms. Burke's suggestion of a neutral party. What I am opposed to and what I am pretty bothered by is the timeline that we've been essentially required to make a decision on this and or requested to make a decision on this. I know

148that at the beginning of when we were presented with this, one of the things that we requested was that our collective bargaining unit partners would be included. and I'm regretful that that was later than I'll speak for myself that I believed it should have been. I think that this is a test of our collaboration. This is a test of of the trust that we need to be building with our partners. And I think it's paramount to our success to be collaborative with our bargaining units. And to Dr. Harris-Mohamed's point, we all requested changes at various points and we cobbled together something that we hoped would work for everyone, and I'm still not confident that that is actually what's going to be working for the best interest of the community. at the end of the day,

149our kiddos, which I know that as a teacher, one of the single most important factors for student success is the educator in the classroom with them. And I know that that's speaking to the teacher, but I do think that I see our other partners, our bus drivers, our custodians, or all educators of our kiddos in various ways. And so... What I would love to see is that the current document that is what was used last time to be used again this time. And I would like to, in tandem, the process of revision to work along with that for our subsequent engagement in bargaining. I think there's a lot of lessons to be learned when we're in the process. at that very moment. So I think that revisions to the next time can happen while we're

150holding to our current agreement, which our partners didn't have enough time to review those changes. So those are my thoughts at the moment. Thank you. Ms. Rizzi? Thank you, Madam Chair. You know, I... I think that certainly I can agree with my colleagues. I think, though, that negotiation is a give and take and that both sides are going to have to give. And, you know, the argument that the time was not enough, I can hear. But to hear people say we plan to gut the agreement for people to compare us to Trumpism, for people to say we are promoting systemic racism is a stretch. What we are seeking to do is sit down and have a negotiation, which means both sides are going to have to give and take. Another thing I didn't see in

151this discussion was the word child or children. And, you know, I know... that if there is ever going to be any kind of change in this country, it is going to have to happen through workers' rights and a movement that focuses on workers' rights. But in this situation, we're a public institution with a very limited budget. There are some people who are without this room who probably need to be contributing more to that budget. And I'd like for you to also give them that same energy that you're giving us right now with this very little budget we're working with. I just, you know, I think that, you know, we had a colleague who frequently said, let's assume good intent. And I think that there is not a person behind this, what do you call this

152thing? This dais. who doesn't care about teachers and who didn't approach this with some measure of good intent. Were mistakes made? Perhaps. But to go on and all out, I don't even know what that was, and portray us as though we are intentionally trying to restrict you or hurt you, it just seemed a little bit disingenuous, especially because I never saw the word child in any of the communications. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Ricard. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, Ms. Rizzi, for your comments. I think I just want to make a few points. One, I know for those who probably didn't know, there was a lot of back and forth over these last two weeks. I know all of us have spoken with REA and other union members in our individual districts. I know

153we've sat down and heard. I know I have looked over the collective bargaining agreement. I've looked over other states' collective bargaining agreements and really thought about it. And I do feel that wherever we land, we are going to have to compromise. And I think that is important. It's also important for us to model civility and compromise because I know that's what I ask of my own children every day. We don't get everything we want. The world is not fair. Although my three children want everything equally, I tell them they cannot get that. So I just want to recognize the work that has already been done by the administration and by my board members for hearing. The dollars are few. We know that. And I think as fiscal agents of this school district, we need to

154make sure that we're spending them wisely. And I know that is one of the reasons why this discussion began, is that we want to make sure that we have the money to support our teachers, to support our families, to support our students so that they can continue to succeed. Thank you, mr. Percival Thank You madam chair Just following up on miss Rizzi and mr. Carr's comments. I I want to recognize the unions Obligation to fight on behalf of their membership without question and getting back to the The free speech and the infringement thereof, I'm looking out into the crowd, and maybe YouTube isn't picking this up, but all of the signs and everybody expressing themselves, and we're all getting along, and nobody is getting their speech restricted. But as my colleagues had said, once this

155got out and once we got feedback from the union, you know, speaking for myself, and I'm... I'm pretty sure everyone up here immediately started talking to teachers, started talking to REA. And we sat down and we listened. I have pages of notes in here. And all of my notes, all the feedback that I got, I presented to the administration. And I see all of that feedback in this document. So while I understand the union's obligation to represent their membership, to echo Ms. Rizzi, We don't, we as a board, the administration, don't have quite the same aggressive public campaign. And I think sometimes the story is skewed a little bit in the media because I don't see, I don't see the same restrictions in this document that match the rhetoric. And I think once we put

156down the pitchforks of rhetoric and really examine what's in here. What we're seeing, and I apologize to those who I've talked to already, it's a one-size-fits-all sweater. It is not designed to flatter anybody, but it is designed to keep us all warm. And that's what this document does. I think this document speaks to what we needed to do, and any feedback that has been expressed, I feel, is now represented in this document. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you. I would like to first share that it's extremely important to me that everyone have a seat at the table. My colleagues will tell you that one of the biggest things that sometimes I think may drive them a little bit crazy is that one of the things that I have as a leader is the ability to

157just hear and ensure that everyone is heard. When this was first brought to us from the administration, the number one request from the full board was we have to allow for the unions to have a seat at the table. I want to be clear that this is not a negotiation. We do as a board have the right to simply weigh in, but to us it was extremely important. that we did not take that approach, that we allowed time and space for us to hear from our constituents, hear from our teachers. I know I've been on countless calls, Webexes, emails, to hear the heart of the people. And we value the sentiments of our teachers. We value the sentiments of the unions. And so as my colleague shared, a lot of the changes that you see

158are from that feedback. Now, this is hard, right? This is, nobody really wants to be the one to make these changes, but we do have a responsibility. You've seen us over the past few months if you've looked at the news. We're advocating with legislation. We're advocating on city hall steps. We're advocating with the mayor. We're advocating with the delegation. We're advocating with senators. We're making plans to partner and collaborate to try and draw more funds. We're pulling from a well that is almost empty. And we know that it's going to be lean next year. And so as a board, we also have a fiduciary responsibility to ensure that we safeguard the bucket that we're all pulling out of. That does not mean that we're trying to restrict. It does not mean we're trying to minimize.

159What it does mean is that we have to streamline. And so I say that to say that I wish that we had more time. It's unfortunate some of the things that have been shared that were quite hurtful to be quite frank of what some have said. But I will tell you that I stand by all of my colleagues and that we have been advocating for you since this was brought to us. It's not going to be perfect, but it's where we are. And I look forward to more discussion as we move forward. Thank you. That said, we'll move right along to... 3.06 received for first read. Policy Committee recommendation. Dr. Harris-Mohamed. Thank you. Mr. Stanley, can you make that a little bigger? I'm not. Is it possible to make that bigger from there? Just for

160me so I can see. I don't have. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. So colleagues, before you, good evening again is the report from the policy committee. We had a very lengthy meeting at our last policy committee meeting. Thank you to members from the cabinet and the central office team as well as, excuse me, building level participation. Thank you so much. It was a much longer evening than we're used to. but I think the time was well served in the robust conversation. I did not receive any comments, maybe my colleagues did, about the policies that we have presented for you. I do want to bring to the forefront, though, particularly the ask of our participation at our school board meetings, public participation at our meetings. 1-6.7 has some new cadence information. Also, 1-6.5,

161the voting method. We talked about this ad nauseum, and we also discuss the appropriateness of applying Robert Rules of Order. So I want to stop here and say this, though. As a governance team, We have not adopted the type of governance model that we're going to use. So had we done that in January or February, 1-6.5 could have been addressed then. Because a part of that discussion when you adopt the governance model is you adopt what type of parliamentary procedures are you going to use to apply to your governance team. So we're here now. And I'm hoping that we can move forward because clearly there was some concern about the voting method and how that was addressed. If you're present, but you don't vote or you count it, different things like that. And Robert rules

162to order the 13th edition explains that in great detail. Okay. And those were really the two hot topics. Not that the other policies are not attractive. They are. But those were, for some reason, the most attractive out of the ones that are presented to you this evening. There is no action to be taken on the policy recommendations this evening. I believe that is tomorrow. And if you have any questions between now and tomorrow, be more than happy to reach out to me and I will try to take some time to answer any of your questions or any of the policy committee members. My colleague from the ninth, my colleague from the third, my colleague from the fourth. Thank you. And my colleague at the podium. Good evening, Chairwoman Fernandez-Pixson. Superdank Harris. Board members, I just

163wanted to clarify, these will be a second read for action next month in November. That's why you're standing there. Thank you so much. We do have time, but I do want to bring to consideration public participation at meetings simply because It really depends on the nature or the tone of what might be happening in the news at that time. But we do find ourselves in a very interesting situation if we don't adopt something sooner rather than later. We've addressed this for multiple months now, and I really want the community to have a clear view of what to expect moving forward. That being said, I would respectfully ask for my colleagues to consider us codifying something during tomorrow's vote that would take into effect next month so that we have a clear path forward. That would

164be my only one that I would request that you guys consider perhaps voting for tomorrow. Dr. Harris-Muhammad. I just want to make sure. that I heard correctly, you would like to expedite this particular policy for a vote tomorrow. Okay. That would take effect next month. Correct. Sure. And within that policy, the public participation at meeting policy, I just want to make sure that we are clear that within that there was an ask for public comment at committee meetings. That part we need to flesh out. I would like for that piece not to be included right now because we need to have a full board discussion with feedback from the administration because I don't know how that's going to look right now. And I'm not saying that it can't be done. But what I'm saying is.

165What I don't want is for our committee meetings to turn into many school board meetings. And that has a pathway to happen if we allow public comment on any level. We just have to be ready for that. And I just want us, I am respectfully asking if we can take that piece out and just like we've done in the past, when things change, we add a sentence or paragraph back in for revisions. That's what I'm asking. Because I really think the administration needs to have some discussion about how that could look. And I'm just concerned about... them having to, depending on when our committee meetings are, and I know my time is running out, but if you think about the calendar that we have, and when we have committee meetings, when we have board meetings,

166and when they have to have reports due. I just want us to think about that. Did you share which line item that is? Isn't that in this one? No, ma'am. It is a separate policy about school board committees. The committee provisions are not. Okay, thank you. I do agree with your sentiments in terms of fleshing that out, though, because I have my own thoughts regarding that. But again, just for your consideration, obviously. I agree that we could vote on this tomorrow. But everything I said, just keep it in your soul. Can I just get a pulse check for everyone else? This is definitely no pressure. We have more than 24 hours to consider. Mr. Hedgeman. Madam Chair, I'm not opposed to us voting on it tomorrow, but may I just read a couple aspects of

167it out loud so then that way the community might also hear it? Absolutely. So one of the things that we decided to add based off of, and this was, again, brought to us from the board to make some changes. One item was that the board can extend the time by another 15 minutes by a simple majority vote. if we if we need that extra time the other big change is that uh we may have to limit uh time for uh community members to two minutes and then those that are representing organizations to three uh if the um you know the the amount of speakers that are registered to speak uh you know uh goes over the limit of our of our allotted time The other thing is that we'll adopt a cadence that I believe

168is similar to that of city council where we'll allow for speakers to speak in two consecutive meetings. And in the third meeting, they will not be allowed to speak. They'll have to wait that meeting to then the next one, and they can have two meetings in a row again at that point. My understanding is, though, that if there aren't registered and preregistered speakers and we haven't exhausted our speaking time, that those same people could probably speak on that third one. I don't know. Is that part of it? Can you answer that, Dr. Ismail? Okay. It's not a part of it. Okay. Well, then that was that. We juggled with that, if we remember, but we pretty much said, right, we let that go because my colleague, my eloquent colleague from the knife said that what

169will be the purpose of addressing the concern if we then say, okay, well, we have 42 minutes left. Anybody who wants to talk, come up. And then I said, if we start at one time, we're going to have to continue with it. Thank you for that. Ms. Ricard had her hand raised. And I don't know if Mr. DeFarge was just waving at me or did he have a comment? I meant my colleague from the 8th. Excuse me. I'm so sorry. My colleague from the 8th eloquently stated. But Ms. Ricard. Yeah. Madam Chair, thank you. I appreciate. I know this has been in limbo for a few months, but I do feel public participation is very important to us and to our constituents. And I would advocate for still going through the normal process of a

170first read and then a second read to give our constituents time to read this and just give any feedback and not rush the process. So I just wanted to state that. Just for some transparency's sake, I want to get the right number up. So as it stands, we currently have 26 speakers signed up for tomorrow, which approximates to about an hour based upon... It's 28. It's 65 minutes. So I just, again, until we are a path forward... It just creates this uncertainty from meeting to meeting. So those are my reasons for wanting to bring it up. So again, it's completely fine for us to do it the way we normally have, but that is my reason, because tomorrow we're going to have to make yet another decision on how we move forward, and that just

171makes it very difficult for folks that are traveling in and want to be heard. So I'm just using that as an example. It wouldn't affect tomorrow either way. All right, moving right along. We have coming up 3.07. We have quite a few first reads on contracts over 100,000. Yes, we do, Madam Chair, and I would welcome any questions that you may have either tonight or via email in preparation for a second read and vote in November. Thank you. Thank you. If there are no questions or feedback, we'll move right along to administrative updates. 4.01, receive an update on care and safety. Good evening, everyone. This is Dana Chambers. I believe most of y'all met her during graduation. Dana is the emergency manager. She came on board in March and is doing an outstanding job. So

172she's here to answer any questions you have about this presentation we have this evening. Time of night it is it's a lot of information in here. You don't mind me just hitting a couple things SSAs I wanted to hit on on the first slide Last year y'all added these positions these school support aides and it's been outstanding in our elementary schools. We put the SSAs in have the number in front of me but let's say 15 of the schools it's worked out great principals love it um staff loves it it's a great step into y'all giving me those next csa positions i'm going to start asking for in the near future as well um but it is really really worked great we appreciate it school crisis plans dana is the person really in charge of

173all the school crisis plans if you're familiar with it every school has to have a crisis plan that has all this great information in it Dana has been great about getting with the principals and making sure everything was in there and needs to be in there. She's met with 23 principals one-on-one in person just to get some more feedback, and it's information we're going to use for next year's crisis plans as well and to work towards different projects, cameras, et cetera. Next slide, please. So also, Dana has been very instrumental in our standard response. We used to use lock-in teachers and those kind of terminologies. What we learned, Dana learned going to a training class, that changed a few years ago. She's been able to implement this. The slide you see has all the pictures.

174Every classroom has this sheet in the classroom so everybody knows what's going on. All the administrators have been provided this information as well. And that leads us to our drills. Dana's been hounding principals, making sure our drills are getting done, that have been done. As you're familiar with, it's mandated by codes, and you have to go out and look at 17 different codes to figure out when drills have to get done, because this code says a fire drill once a month. This one says this. So Dana's been great at putting all this together and making sure administrators know what they need to do. So by the first 20 days of school, you have to have two fire drills and two lockdown drills. And I don't have the percentage in front of me, but... About 90%

175of our schools got everything done. And at this point, all the schools have done their initial drills. So I don't believe that's happened in the years I've been here, for sure. Anything else you want to talk about? I've met with the building principals to see if they had any safety, security needs, and concerns regarding their buildings, whether they're dealing with their PA system, their telecenter, any concerns on the grounds, or anything that catches their eye. Pretty much everyone, like Lisa says, love their SSAs, love their CSA staff, and we're just appreciative of them getting the job done. Like I said, those are the points we wanted to touch on. Any questions about anything else? We're more than happy to entertain them. Yes, ma'am. Dr. Harris-Mohamed. Sorry. I would like to take this opportunity to say

176thank you. If you all remember a year ago, I publicly announced that we had individuals. charging the public to park on our premises during city events at a rate of like $20 per car. They will park on the grass. They will charge each car $20. And so as many of you know, we had the historic Second Street Festival this weekend. And I'm going to just take a moment to describe. And my husband was in the car and I was like, there they go again. I'm going to get them. They out there charging people. And I was driving around, driving around. Then I rode up and it was our people. I was like, this warms my heart. And my husband said, you ain't know they was out here. I was like, I forgot. Weren't you the

177one that said that I was? So I just wanted to share. Thank you for that. The team was out there. They were ready. And so that's one of the things that you all need to have a kudos on with many things. And we may laugh and joke about it, but when you have over 300 cars that could possibly be in two lots and on the grass, that's a problem for me. And so Beasley and your team, thank you. The crew was awesome Saturday and Sunday, and I really appreciate it. And I know you're looking at other things, too, around our schools, like the Maymont area for the Jazz Festival. They do the same thing there. And so I just really appreciate that. I really do. Thank you so much. And Lieutenant Corbin's outside, I believe.

178But when it comes to stuff like that, I say, Corbin, take care of it and it's taken care of. And this year, we actually partnered with our community partner, Venture Richmond, to provide parking for them. musicians for two streets so we needed the spaces so we actually did that as well mr. Hedgeman and then it's Rizzi Thank You madam chair thank you so much for the presentation I am curious. I see that for like earthquake and tornado drills, those are on specific dates. And then I see all of the others are by a certain date. So is there a practice or policy as far as how much lead time we give to our faculty for drills just because of the disruption that it might lead to instruction? With our state drills that's mandatory, it has

179to be by that date. Our shakeout drill and our tornado drill, those are, we say they're mandated because we want our students and staff to be able to, accustomed to know what to do when it happens. But those dates are international. Every district throughout the country are doing those drills, but we want to make sure our staff and students know what to do. But the other drills are mandated by the state. Thank you. I guess my question is, are the faculty made aware ahead of time and how far ahead of time? So during the summertime, me and myself, we came up with a Google folder and we issued out all the drills and what they were and what they needed to have it done by. So they knew the dates ahead of time before school

180started. Okay. Thank you. And if you remember, we bought Raptor's alert system and emergency management system. So as our administrator logs into that, they see all these little bubbles and say, hey, by this date, this has to be done. If it's green, great. If it's orange, you got it scheduled. If it's red, hey, let's do something about it. All this information was provided. before school started to make sure everybody had it especially your 200 day schools um everybody's got the documents everybody's got this um dana meeting with each of the principals has really helped do that as well there's other two drills nationally i think the earthquake drills october 16th and we've never really done it um so this year we've tried to stay with the national earthquake drill and the tornado drill to make

181the state march 4th does that so we're trying to stay on board with that this is the first year we've done that thank you miss rizzi Thank you, Madam Chair. I just wanted to say thank you, SRO Chambliss, for all of your work, and welcome to the podium. I don't have a question. I just want to say how much I appreciate all of the efforts for the CASAs, the work that you do. I appreciate it. And I think sometimes overlooked. And so I just want to let you all know that the work that you do is not in vain. I do appreciate seeing you at the podium. And I'm hoping to see more like, you know, her to have the opportunity to be promoted and be a part of the planning process. But the work

182that you do, I know, you know, because of, you know, my husband, he gives me a lot of feedback. And I know that it's not easy. So thank you for everything that you all do. Every meeting that we're at, you're there and you're there until we walk to the car. And that goes without saying that there is a level of commitment. We wish that we could give you all the money in the world, but we do appreciate everything that you do for us. So thank you and thank you for your leadership, you, Mr. Beasley, and of course, Mrs. Parks. Thank you. Thank you. Yes, Ms. Parks. Yes, all of them. Thank you all so much. We salute you for everything that you do, truly. All right. So if there are no concerns or anything that

183needs to be pulled out of other information, other informational items, Ms. Ricard? I'm sorry, just a quick question, only because I'd never seen the name before. What is the Otway Allen Trust? And I'm sure this gets asked every year. Well, no, I will tell you that I sent him a message earlier, like, what is this and why does it say one point blah, blah, blah? So you're not alone. Thank you, Madam Chair. This is a trust that was established sometime in the 1950s. On behalf of RPS, it spins off something on the order of $20,000 or so per year to RPS. The $1.6 million is the remaining principal. We are engaged in a process of trying to identify the original trust documents so that we can ascertain if it would be possible to withdraw the

184principal to support current needs. but every year we provide an update as is mandated. Thank you. Thank you. And with that, we are, I believe Ms. Rizzi has closed. Okay. I move that the school board of the city of Richmond convene and close session to consider the appointment of hearing officers. the assignment, appointment, promotion, performance, demotion, salaries, disciplining, or resignation of teachers, principals, assistant principals, classified employees, or appointees for discussion, consideration, or interview of prospective candidates for employment for teachers, principals, assistant principals, classified employees, or appointees. the personnel actions for today as permitted by virginia code 2.2-3711 a one second i've got more there's more got more that was that was a mouthful but it's gone number two to consult with legal counsel regarding a resolution and legal issues related there too as authorized by

185virginia code 2.2-371-188 and to discuss and consider an investigation report involving the performance and possible discipline of central office employees as authorized by Virginia Code 2.2-371-1A1. Second. It's been moved by Ms. Rizzi and seconded by Mr. Percival. Madam Clerk. Mr. Percival. Yes. Ms. Ricard. Yes. Mr. Farouk? Yes. Mr. Hedgepeth? Yes. Ms. Rizzi? Yes. Dr. Harris-Mohamed? Yes. Ms. Berg? Yes. Mr. Jafari? Ms. Fernandez? Yes. Motion passes. We are now in close. Colleagues, if we could transition to the other room so we can have a very robust discussion.