School Board Meeting - January 24, 2024

001[Music] the date is January 24th 2024 the time is approximately 608 and I would like to call the Frederick County school board meeting to order uh we have an agenda before us do I have a motion for approval I'll make a motion for approval second all right um any discussion all those in favor say I I Madam Vice chair thank you Mr chair I move the the County School Board of Frederick County of Virginia in our closed session meeting for the following to review and discuss appointments information only dismissals resignations substitutes slors and volunteers pursuant to Virginia code section 22- 3711 Alpha .1 and to review and discuss individual student matters that would involve specific students and particular information contained in their Scholastic records including requests for release from compulsory attendance for religious reasons pursuant

002to Virginia code section 22- 3711 a.2 to discuss or consider the acquisition of real property for a public purpose such as property being located in the opin magisterial district outside the limits of the city of Winchester where discussion in an open meeting would adversely affect the bargaining position or negotiating strategy of the public body pursuant to Virginia code section 2- 22- 3711 a is an alpha paragraph second all right okay we have a motion to go into close section do we have a second second second the motion has been uh made and properly seconded any discussion all in favor signify by saying I I motion passes we are now in close session and we will reconvene around 7 [Music] p.m. Mr chair I move that we return from closed session second we have a motion

003to return from closed session and it has been properly seconded any discussion all those in favor signify by saying I I opposed motion passes I move that to the best of each board member's knowledge only public business matters lawfully Exempted from open meeting requ requirements under the Virginia Freedom of Information Act were discussed in the closed session and only such public business matters were identified in the motion by which the closed session was convened were heard discussed or considered by the school board we have a motion to certify closed the closed session do we have a second second and roll call it's been properly seconded uh any discussion madam cler Mr funis hi Mr Atkins hi Mr Bell I miss Martin I miss kleene hi Mr Stan I Mr chair we have a uh actually

004we have no motions coming out of closed session M Mr chair sir we actually have um two and they're down at the bottom ah thank you thank you yep and Mr chair we do have motions coming out of closed session T need stay one the Motions coming out of closed session are as follows I move to approve the Personnel actions as recommended by the superintendent and I move to approve the release of student a from compulsory attendance for religious reasons point of order um can we divide those up there two motions two separate okay um so first motion I move to approve the personel actions as recommended by the superintendent second okay we have a motion to approve the personal actions as recommended by the superintendent that has been properly seconded any discussion all those

005in favor signify by saying I I I any opposed motion passes and Mr chairman I move to approve this release of student a from compulsory attendance for religious reasons second we have the motion to approve the release of student a from compulsory attendance for religious reasons that has been properly seconded any discussion all those in favor signify by saying I I I opposed motion passes okay it is um oh we need a motion to reconvene okay the motion all right the next where we at then we have open this back up correct no we're already open you can go to a minute of Silence now okay I'm sorry apologize folks still learning all right let's uh bow our heads for a second and just have a minute of silence please all right thank you now

006please if you would stand for the Pledge of Allegiance Pledge aliance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liy and justice for all next is the consent agenda do I have a motion to approve the consent agenda as presented or with specific items removed for discussion Mr chairman like to make a motion to approve this uh consent agenda as presented I have a motion to approve the agenda as presented do I have a second second the motion has been made and properly second seconded any discussion all those in favor signify by saying I I opposed motion passes Mr chair I would like to take a few moments to read the two proclamations Madam Vice chair and the resolution if

007I may please do so we have two proclamations and one resolution that I would like to share this evening with you all first Proclamation is School principles Appreciation Week for January 14th through the 20th whereas School principles were cooperatively to direct develop and inspire all members of the school staff and student body and to communicate effectively with parents to engage them in the learning process and whereas principles serve as educational leaders managing the policies regulations and procedures necessary to ensure a safe and effective learning environment for all students in Virginia's public and private schools and whereas principles and teachers are entrusted with the opportunity and responsibility of guiding directing nurturing mentoring and imparting knowledge to our children while they are at school and whereas principes work collaboratively with teachers staff students parents and the community

008at large to proactively prepare students to be self-reliant and productive citizens and whereas Virginia school principals Appreciation Week is an opportunity to recognize the hard work of Virginia School principles and to recognize the importance of school leaders in ensuring that every child has access to a quality education now therefore be it proclaimed that the Frederick County School Board hereby declares the week of January 14th through 20th 2024 as Virginia School principal's appreciation dated this 24th day of January 2024 do we have any principles in the audience this evening and if so please stand thank [Applause] you I have a second Proclamation it's National School counseling week for February 5th through the 9th of 2024 whereas school counselors work together with students families and School staff to help students reach their full potential and whereas school

009counselors are committed to helping students explore their abilities strengths interests and talents as these traits relate to Career awareness and development and whereas school counselors help parents focus on ways to further the educational personal and social growth of their children and whereas school counselors seek to identify and utilize Community Resources that can enhance and complement comprehensive School counseling programs and help students become successful engaged citizens and whereas comprehensive developmental School counseling programs are considered an integral part of the educational process that enables all students to achieve success in school now therefore be it proclaimed that the Frederick County School Board hereby declares the week of February 5th through 9th 2024 as National School counseling week dated this 24th day of January 2024 and I have seen a few counselors in the audience this evening can

010you please stand and be [Applause] recognized thank you just one more this is a resolution whereas the Frederick County School Board wishes to recognize and express its appreciation for the dedicated service of the outgoing Schoolboard members whereas these four members have served the County School Board of Frederick County Virginia while demonstrating unwavering commitment and dedication to the betterment of our School Division whereas their tireless efforts have contributed to the growth and success of our educational institutions now therefore be it resolved that the County School Board of Frederick County Virginia expresses its deepest gratitude to the outgoing members for their hard work dedication and service to the county and the School Division be it further resolved that the Frederick County School Board wishes is the outgoing school board members continued success in all their future endeavors

011be it further resolved that the Frederick County school board and the superintendent of schools joined the community in expressing their sincere gratitude to the outgoing board members for their willingness to serve on the school board for their dedication to the betterment of our School Division and for the other special gifts each brought to the board with their service dated this 24th day of January 2024 and Dr Hummer I'd like to turn it over to you thank you madam Vice chair I would like to call up Mr Lake Mr Monk and Mr comto we have a small little gift for you certificate once the board signs we also have a little picture here of this building back in the day so hang that on your mantle and I went but thank you for your service I

012was to [Applause] say right we are now at the point of our meeting where we will celebrate our staff and student awards and recognitions Dr Hummer please thank you so much Mr chair um so first up today we have um some folks from Bright Futures that are going to provide you all with some information we always like to do this right after the holiday season if you're not familiar with Bright Futures you are going to hear all about them this evening so Miss do doer if you can come on up please and we have a little presentation for you all thank you Mr chair right a little test all right we got it okay cool um hello everyone my name is Alise Stein doer it is so fabulous to be here and to see so

013many familiar uh friends here in the audience and so many partners we have through Frederick County especially our counselors so I really do appreciate appreciate seeing them here too we are we work very closely with them but uh to give you a broad brush stroke in the very condensed version of Bright Futures because I could talk to you all night and share stories all evening about um the things we do as a community here to try to help our students uh I like to say that I am the coordinator of Bright Futures a chaos coordinator as the mug that um one of our partners gave me this year during holiday assistance but um I am a part of student support and we run the student support emergency Warehouse so when things are looking really really

014tough for a student and they need a physical item we are the ones that keep that we find the things Source the items and get them out to the kids when they need them most our goal is to uncover the barriers to the kids success so what is keeping them from being successful in school what is that item is it a physical item is it something we could solve so when we're looking at what a barrier to success could be I can give you a couple examples from the last week one of them would be a student waiting at the school bus he does not have a coat on he does not have shoes on at this point basically toes are poking out there's no socks it's basically like you're wearing flip-flops at this point

015how is that kid supposed to participate in gym that is a physical item providing shoes coat all of a sudden this kid is now able to participate in gym you're able to see a grade point average increase participation attendance all these things tied together by a pair of shoes another one would be um one of the 1500 kids that are in our food pack program which is a backpack program for some of you who may not know about it with the um food that goes in their backpack over the weekend for those kids who may not be a part of this program yet some of them will eat their last meal for free usually on Friday and then they will not eat again until Monday morning so I can't imagine doing that myself I am

016very food motivated but I also can't imagine doing that all weekend and then coming in on Monday and trying to absorb Shakespeare or maybe algebra on my best days I might have trouble with that but I can't imagine not eating for 2 days and then being expected to do that and not have some sort of behavioral issue on top of that you can see that sometimes it just takes a few physical items to change the tra trajectory of a student's life and their experience in school another saying I like to see to tell people about is before a teacher can try and teach and reach a student these basic needs have to be met I cannot imagine learning absorbing trying to even set a goal and Achieve that goal when I have had not no

017food in my stomach for 2 days and these are all things that as a community were able to come together to solve but how did we solve this problem 10 years ago would we have had a solution we're talking staff members taking on the championship of a student feeding the kids out of their own pocket which still happens we see it throughout the entire school system people that are still taking care of and doing the best they can to save a child but this is not sustainable this is why we need a solution that's broader that can help more kids and duplicate fewer Services we try to find a solution to these problems within 24 hours to reach out to these families via the counselors reach out to these students find what that what that

018problem is what they're lacking what they need and get that to them as fast as possible so that we can get back out of crisis mode and into learning and being in school and being present it takes a lot of volunteers Time treasure and talent to get there but we see the results and we see that in our student faces and we see that in the relief of our staff's faces that this is not one more kid they're sending home hungry and I can see faces here in the audience here today that have been with us in the last week calling me and telling me about kids who are eating out of the trash because there is no food at home and these are things that we can change and that we can give a

019relief to the staff members who are seeing this and to the students who are in crisis who are in survival mode one program I want to Spotlight I want to Spotlight today is our holiday assistance program so we have got a little chart here to tell you over time how this program has grown in the about 10 years now since our launch since our launch um but for the last year we did have 1500 kids on our this so far this year we've had 1500 kids in our food pack program of those kiddos we have had 1,50 um who were in a our holiday assistance program now you have to think so if these you have 1500 kids that may not have food over the weekend how many of them are opening something in December

020if they don't if they're not being fed how what are the chances that they're getting anything as a and this is just something that breaks my heart um it's something that it's a very basic thing that offers a lot of Pride and camaraderie with students and can really separate students from each other last year we were able to help make an impact and make some changes for these 1250 students which is a very large jump over the last year the 995 believe me we were busy and uh but also it is a very very rewarding program so that is 1,50 students from 445 families from 260 sponsors which is amazing which is huge it's a huge amount of community generosity that comes to together to make this possible so that these children have some new

021clothing some a new toy a new treat of some kind some books something that they can look forward to they can be proud of and that when they come back in January they can be just like everyone else they can have an experience just like everyone else and have the pride to you know have that new shirt on to not be you know the one kid who didn't get anything so I want to tell you a couple Qui quick little Snippets um but I'm going to wait one second I'm going to the next one I want to show you some phases we also have our shop with a cop program now we select some kiddos out of that holiday assistance pool and those kids who are in that program they are recommended by their counselors

022who are in the trenches they are in there they see the kids every day they know which ones are are going to very likely have nothing to come back with in January and they see these kiddos and they know they know which ones could really benefit from a positive experience with law enforcement and because of the the incredible generosity of the law enforcement Foundation Walmart freder County Sheriff's Office Winchester City Sheriff's Office and so many others we're able to put together this amazing program that brings our students pairs them with a law enforcement personnel and they are able to go on this basically a shopping spree um and it is the most incredibly heartwarming thing ever and I would invite you all from the school board to please feel free to join us it will

023make your make your day but when I look at these kiddos faces I I want to tell you a few little Snippets about some of these things that they said on that day so you know what is you know what what is really happening here in their lives but one of those kiddos um I remember she said I don't know how to shop for myself can uh is there anything you need officer can I buy your dog some treats she had never been shopping for herself to buy anything for herself she said another one another little boy who's up there um I remember him saying uh I have no toys at home I've never owned any toys I would love to be able to bring some toys home especially in Ninja Turtle it was incredibly

024heartwarming to see the conveyor belt loaded up with Ninja Turtles at the end of this and and nothing else um but that was that was wonderful I'm like this is like this is what being a kid is like um there was uh another kiddo that I remember hearing him say um it was actually he said I am not allowed to buy anything but clothes today that's all I'm allowed to buy and it's been drilled into him from a parent I'm only allowed to bring clothes and getting him to understand that you can we we have the clothes covered this is for you for the first time this year we took care of everything else we didn't have to they didn't have to worry about you know taking care of their own socks and underwear that's

025all back at the warehouse Bud we got you it's wrapped you'll have something but you get yourself your Ninja Turtles you get yourself anything else you want um it it was incredible um there was one other kiddo that um when you think of I have a 5-year-old when you think of what was on her Christmas list this was not even close um it was actually the it was one of the it was the sheriff of Winchester City um and he was walking with this kiddo and this he said trying to pull out of him anything he get out of him what what do you want for Christmas what do what what do you want for and this kiddo says all I want is a warm blanket that's all he said and uh it was heartbreaking

026because I'm like my 5-year-old that is not even close to anything she wants she's got higher she's got Higher Goals than that but it's humbling to know that some of these kiddos that this is all they want for Christmas is a warm blanket and stop they had not even considered anything else so when you think about that and you frame what these children are going through how many of them are actually being able to be children um and offering an opportunity to out of survival mode and into thriving and thinking about being successful in school successful as a child even just having experiences children should have it is just so key to be able to be to offer these sort of experiences to let these kids grow so okay for some of them this this

027really does offer an experience at a normal life and but for others it's just as simple as not having access to food um food and basic needs are not met year round it doesn't end in December um so I want to tell you a smidge a little bit about our summer feeding program so when the school lunch ends which so many of these kiddos and so many of these students who are reliant on our food pack when that ends at the end of the school year what happens well we are very aware that hunger still exists um and it's often times it's there it's students who are stuck up in very remote regions which is why we have our summer food program our summer food distribution where we drive around in a bus 15 to

02820 or so sites at least a week and those are all pinpointed and selected by the highest needs by the highest um the highest level of of requests for food the highest uh desert area so we track the like where there's no walkability to a grocery store a general store anything a Dollar Tree you name it they can't get it they're stuck there's kids who are have no access to travel people who are who are homebound so we look for that information we work with our counselors and we work with anyone in the school system to help find those sites we pinpoint those sites and we plan our entire summer around being out there and getting the food to the kids we get our food from all all for free which is which is the

029best part um and usually it's going to be about 2,000 I would say again food boxes that are available to any student um any student who is hungry when kids walk up to us at the bus and they are hungry no shoes on their feet you get a box you get a box you get a box everybody gets a box um and we just try to do everything we can to further support these kiddos we also um have been inviting out the food bank with us which has been incredible we're able to give out more fresh produce than ever uh fresh herbs we've also given out uh fresh plants thanks to the um Master Gardeners here I see a few folks here from Master Gardeners woot woot um we love giving out these fresh all

030the fresh produce because by later in the summer we have reports of people saying their Gardens are overflowing they have more Tomatoes than they know what to do with I mean they've got jalapenos they've got herbs they're spicing up all these other things that we're able to work with them and it's becoming you know it's an incredibly incredibly powerful thing to be able to you know teach the people to fish if you're familiar with that saying but um it is one of my favorite things to do because you're literally out there with the families and feeding people finding more Sol and anyone can sign up for that program um online or out on the spot right out there at the bus on a clipboard and we can do data entry later not important but feeding

031the kids is what it's all about so the flyer you see up here the supporting Bright Futures flyer is something everyone can keep in mind um if you would like a dollar round up that dollar at the Martin register I would encourage you because it means so much to us and um it's good through March so if anyone is interested in potentially supporting Bright Futures every dollar makes such an impact for us when you consider that if I do need to buy food and all of our food I buy through donations for 15 cents I can buy a box of mac and cheese so please consider that round up of 15 cents if nothing else I know I go there far far too often I go through way too much milk but I've been rounding

032up and I know that I expect a gigantic check this week uh or this at the end of this U not this week this uh period and hopefully more support than ever so we can keep on doing more growing more supporting more kids in any way we can so at this point I would love to see if you have any questions comments um checks um anything else you would like to do to support Bright Futures I'm all years but uh that's all I got folks but thank you very much for your support because I mean it's because of our leadership that we have such an amazing program I mean we have some very complicated problems but we also have really Creative Solutions and what we have here is super unique um and a super small

033shop solution so I applaud you all for your support and thank you so so much to everyone who is a part of this because it takes an absolute Village from counselors teachers administrators to us running around like crazy chickens to all the different sites to to make it happen so I do thank you and if you do have questions I'm all yours I'd love to work with you yeah what you got um on the shop with the cop how much per child are they given well that totally depends so I get granted all the I don't I don't like to spend money on anything so all my money is grant money and it's how big the grant is so this last year I had um it was about $200 per per child which is pretty

034fair and then I also threw additional grant money from the sheriff's off uh the Frederick County Law Enforcement Winchester City law enforcement Foundation we also were able to buy them all new shoes at basically cost from Wilkins so thank you to Wilkins um and all the clothing was sponsored by sponsors I mean so everything else so they were getting quite a quite a bit of nice stuff thank you yeah what else do you got Mr chair um so if why while you're we've got the public forum and everything if community members wanted to get involved with this um and and other organizations out there how do they get in contact with you what can they do who do they reach out to small shop you call me uh so uh if you do if you

035go on to frederck County's um website you can see Bright Futures as one of the options on like the community tab you'll see Bright Futures and you'll see my email and so you shoot me an email and I can tell you a little bit about what we do but um there's so many opportunities for involvement volunteers are key to us I mean we have we pack, 1500 food bags a week for students in the community and so that is all volunteer powered I cannot do that by myself so today we have had two groups in there we have one group packing right now call me we'll find a solution we'll find something that works for you because we constantly need people especially people who want to do laundry because goodness we get a lot of

036clothing donations too and clothing goes out so quickly and it's a huge need so there's always there's something for everybody Mr chairman sorry um hi um I was just wondering if you work with any of the uh high schools and their U volunteer organizations or clubs definitely okay so um we have we we rely so heavily and I love working with students we have a whole Service Learning model where we love to have students learning about the needs in their community and then learn how they can give back so we have several of the high schools different clubs from interact clubs to Deca to um to organization the special ed education groups that come out and help us and volunteer and work with us they're my favorite volunteers um and I mean it's all student

037I love student powered because they're learning at the same time and they're helping us I cannot package 1,500 things unpackage and repackage 1500 things of applesauce a week but uh Linda over at shando and James Wood she does it for us every single week so with the special ed group so we love it we love students and if students want to get involved we have tons more projects all the time would this be open till middle to middle school students as well absolutely yes so when we when you scale it from high school to Middle School they of course are going to have to be supervised and we probably would just need more hands but we are absolutely because we're on we're on the part of the freder county school building so just come out

038on a bus we got something for you love it Mr chairman have you reached out to Veterans groups my goodness I don't know um they can reach out to me I don't know oh okay all right well well but yeah I would love that because especially for our summer food when we do these Outreach things we welcome the community organizations and other nonprofits who want to serve and help people to come out with us and connect people so like for instance the food bank is out there with us helping people sign up for food stamps who may not be aware of their eligibility and things like that so we would always welcome other organizations we have lots of other nonprofits that come out and join us and that if they're interested we are we'd be

039happy to entertain that I love that more the marrier questions I just like to say I totally enjoyed your presentation thank you quite enjoyable and I love your exuberance for the whole thing you should see me in the morning when I'm fully [Laughter] caffeinated thank you thank you very much and I mean I could bend your ear all day and I could i' would love to give any of you a tour feel free to give me a call I'd love to walk you through and you can see what a warehouse full of clothing shoes 10,000 food items a week that we have to find source and repackage I mean it's something it's pretty crazy but love to have you out there and you can see it in action cool thank you very much all right

040you thank you all appreciate it thank you so much thank you thank you again very much um all right we're going to continue with our recognitions and awards and one of the best parts of our our school board meetings I would say um so good evening and Welcome to our Awards of Excellence program before we proceed I would like to ask that everyone stay here through the entire program out of respect for each individual who is being recognized once we have completed all of the presentations you will have an opportunity to leave and enjoy the rest of your evening in addition when you come forward for your certificate or to be acknowledged as a school please take a moment to pause with Mr sturdivan our chair and myself for a photograph then move to your

041right remain at the front and we'll take a photo of the entire group if there is a group photo that is necessary so I'm now going to ask the chair Mr Sturdivant and I to come down and we'll get started with listing off the names thank you in October Elise Stein doer Mary Moore and Tyler Thompson received the tiger award the tiger award is presented at the annual community commitment for chains conference and embodies someone who never gives up never says no and keeps going until they find an answer Tigger is the a perfect example of how the community should view the children of our community and their families congratulations tonight to and this will not be a surprise Elise Stein [Applause] Doer Mary [Applause] Moore and Tyler [Applause] Thompson the government Finance Officers Association

042of the United States and Canada gfoa presented a distinguished budget presentation award to Frederick County Public Schools Virginia for its annual budget for the fiscal year beginning July 1 2023 in order to receive this award a governmental unit must publish a budget document that meets program criteria as a policy document as a financial plan and as an operations guide and as a Communications device the gfoa award is the highest form of recognition in a governmental budgeting this is the first year the division has submitted their budget document to gfoa and received this high honor the division has also received the association of school business officials International asbo meritorious budget award for the past 11 years this is the highest honor in school finance and recognizes Frederick County Public Schools for its excellence in school budget

043presentation and setting a high high standard for transparent budget development congratulations tonight to and I'm going to call up several names in our finance department we'll start off with Patty [Applause] Camry Kristen Anderson Tiffany [Applause] Chapman Sheila [Applause] heishman Jennifer [Applause] lanam candy [Applause] Mitchell Lisa [Applause] Reed chrisy [Applause] Sebert and Anna [Applause] Stevens congratulations very [Applause] impressive the Apple award is given to a teacher who a achieve something which significantly contributes to their school Community uses creative or Innovative instructional techniques and or goes above and beyond for the student we have two recipients for the Apple award this evening first off Jennifer sheets was nominated by a parent they shared that Robert E AER Middle School CTE teacher M sheets is teaching students how how to prepare for life in the real world through

044CTE and FBLA opportunities she's intentional in the activities that students are learning having them create business plans learning balance sheets and understanding how organizations work the student outcomes she creates are helping our students learn skills to be successful in the workplace when they are ready for jobs the parent says my child has learned how to read a basic balance sheet and create a marketing plan through a podcast I'm sorry through a product she designed thanks to a Project based learning activity in Miss Sheet's class there are these are life skills and Real World skills that matter and Miss sheets is leading the charge in her class in our County congratulation Miss Jennifer sheets Heather Walther of Middletown Elementary School was nominated by a parent they shared that Miss Walther was amazing the parent says she

045was the perfect fit for my son with ADHD she took the time to learn about him and what worked best for him she worked with him on ways to make better choices she was very patient calm and compassionate last year was the best year he had academically so far he still talks about Miss Walther and how he wishes she could be in his his teacher again I know he really enjoyed her and she made a big difference in his life congratulations Miss Heather [Applause] Walther the inspiration award is given to a staff member who did something inspirational for the students staff parents or Community as a whole tonight we have one inspiration award recipient with us Victoria dander is a school counselor from Middletown Elementary School Miss dander was nominated by a parent they shared

046that she has been an amazing school counselor the parents said when my son was in kindergarten and just diagnosed with ADHD he was having a lot of behavior problems that were new I didn't know what else to try with him so I reached out to miss dander for some help she worked with him for several sessions and really helped improve his behavior she did activities with him that helped him learn about his feelings and how to treat others I also had to reach out to her last year when a family member passed away and my son was having a really hard time and wouldn't open up very much she didn't hesitate at all to work with him at school and then provide outside resources for us he loved getting to see Miss dander and spending

047time with her she has been so helpful congratulations Miss Victoria [Applause] dander [Applause] congratulations to all those who received Awards um thank you all for being patient and if any of you would like to depart now uh we appreciate your patience and thank you for coming and we'll just give you a couple moments if uh anyone wants to depart before we [Music] continue so proud of [Music] you okay uh we're at the point of our agenda for Citizens comments the ferter County School Board is pleased to receive public comments at each monthly meeting in order to allow the board sufficient time for its for its other business the total time allotted for public comment will generally be limited to 20 minutes individuals speaking to the board will be allotted 3 minutes and those individuals representing

048groups or organizations will be allotted five minutes with one representative per group upon recognition by the chair the speaker should clearly State their name residing district and the subject of their comments All comments are to be addressed to the chair the board will receive comment comments but will not respond to questions or engage in a dialogue this is an opportunity to be heard the board will refer any issues or concerns to staff or appropriate committees the board is committed to showing appropriate respect and courtesy to all citizens and speakers are expected to show that same respect and courtesy to the board members of the audience are not permitted to interrupt the speaker or meeting by asking questions or making comments school board meetings are tape recorded for the purpose of clarification and development of official

049minutes and tonight we have one speaker and that would be Wendy shout please step forward [Music] hello Wendy Shrout Back Creek District um welcome to the new board members um so there was a trendy campaign slogan last fall education not indoctrination so how about we break that down a little the definition of indoctrination is a teach is to teach a narrow or one-sided view of something and ignore or exclude information that doesn't agree with that view it is the imposition of a particular set of beliefs rather than encouragement to question and think independently Banning books and the teaching of selective history are clear tenants of indoctrination and on the other hand public education should be representative of all of that public a place where every student has the freedom to learn in a welcoming and

050Equitable environment those best able to navigate this complicated world are those introduced to a wide variety of subjects Concepts and viewpoints this results in the skills most valued by employers and society as a whole critical thinking communication collaboration and the ability to appreciate ideas from multiple perspectives public schools are the very Foundation of self-governance a system that prepares students for the responsibilities of a life in a healthy democracy it is the strongest commitment to the promise of an equal society and a Level Playing Field so we look forward to your support for well-rounded and objective policies that help all students prepare for a successful future education not indoctrination indeed thank you uh do we have anyone else uh who didn't sign up that would like to speak if none I'm sorry go ahead sir again

051state your name and magisterial District please oh I'm Victor Canfield I'm from The Stonewall District um along with the lines of what she just mentioned uh and nothing for anything except to say this that as far as sex education goes it should be basic as to the bi uh biology of it and that's it in school it should not be taught as to what is right or wrong in school about sex education nor should it be pushed in any way that belongs with the parents in their house and how they see fit for each child that they have and that they know better than any of us to teach them thank you thank you Mr Canfield is there anyone else that would like to speak yes ma'am okay my name is Tamara Canfield from The

052Stonewall district and um I am okay to change topics right yes ma'am okay um so I just really wanted to express concern um there's a lot of science out there and um about the effects of WiFi on our children our growing children's brains how it affects the water in their brains how it affects um actually even going Beyond just the school environment but it is affecting um you know the activity of of sperm it starts killing that off so that when they end up impregnating somebody it's actually affecting the biology of the child changing our brains um our brains formation which can uh and this is something that has to have more research um but could very possibly be the cause of so much autism which they they say is going to be one and

053two children by 2050 so or so if it's not just vaccines maybe it is our electr magnetic atmosphere that is killing our children's brains killing our energy levels um affecting our teachers so I would like um Frederick County Schools to do some real serious looking into the whole EMF thing and how it's affecting our children when even our our um like our enemy Russia bands Wi-Fi and Electro like cell phones in the classrooms and in the schools maybe we should start looking at um being more serious about our developing children's brains for their future good thank you thank you very much are is anyone else uh questing to speak Jonathan wi height not sure what district um as someone with autism I want more of us okay thank you so much anyone else all right

054then um that will conclude our citizen comments uh next up is reports uh by the superintendent Dr Hummer all right thank you Mr chair uh before I come down and present the budget to you I do have a couple items I do want to share um first is is congratulations to all of our staff who received recognitions today and this evening there are a lot of wonderful things happening every day here in Frederick County and I'm so proud of all of our recipients I also want to thank Elise for all of her hard work for supporting all of our students and families as you heard that are in need and I like when she said it goes beyond December this is this is a 12-month out of the year obligation and we uh we're very

055proud of that program and how we support all of our families and students in Frederick County and in Winchester as well that they have a contribution to that program um thank you to you school board for for recognizing our principles we have a great group of princip principles here in Frederick County and they directly directly impact the performance of all of our students this is the least we could do to recognize their tireless efforts and we greatly appreciate their leadership and dedication to our community because honestly without them we wouldn't have any accomplishments to celebrate so thank you um I also want to thank you for recognizing our school counselors they do so much every day for our student body also our community and in some instances our staff based on their expertise as well

056as what they do on a day-to-day we're very grateful for our counselors and all they do I also want to thank again our four board members who recently came off the board and their dedication to our school Division and Community which I know a lot of you are finding out very quickly on the amount of work that this does take um this will hopefully be a new tradition that we will do moving forward honoring and recognizing the commitment and hard work to be a school board member so thank you all very much for doing that lastly as you know we we had a crazy winter last week and I want to thank our transportation Department our facilities our custodians our bus drivers and all our other staff that were working into early hours in the

057morning as well as early at late into the evening um we would not have been able to open schools this past Monday without that we had staff in here on the weekends we were working on Sunday and I just want to thank all of them for their hard work because it is very very comforting to know that they take their responsibility so seriously because they could tell us no they don't have to come in over the weekend so so we appreciate them doing that um and I just want to give a big thank you for them for keeping our staff and our students safe so with that Mr chair I'm now going to step down to the podium and provide you my needs-based budget which I know everyone's been waiting for so I'm going head

058on down give me a second while this raises for me little slow all right there we go well good evening Mr chair School Board Community I'm very excited to present to you the fy2 proposed budget but I do want to pause for a second I don't know for for you for those that don't realize this but it's officially been a year for me um and just a year ago if you remember first week on the job I presented fy2 24's budget to you uh and now we're we're here in fy2 so time does fly by fast uh and I am very excited to present the needs-based budget to you um I am going to get through this presentation in full if there is any overarching general questions I encourage you to answer those um or

059ask those and I will answer them accordingly uh and then I also share with you the additional opportunities that we are going to have we're going to be spending many meetings together to talk through this budget before it goes across the street for approval so with that being said this budget process is very thorough it is yes a superintendent needs-based budget but it is not just the needs that I think we need it is based on the needs with conversations with our principles with our staff with our central office and with some of you in regards to the direction we need to go in to make a promise for progress and to continue to do what's best for all of our students in meeting the needs of all 14,000 plus students that are here in

060Frederick County as I mentioned there is going to be additional meetings that we are going to have but this budget process starts over the summer this has been a 9month process so once the budget is officially approved hopefully in April we take a couple days off right Mrs Camry and then we're right back at it in June and July talking about FY 26 so there's a lot of work that goes into this and we are going to be spending a lot of time together to talk through this so for example tomorrow uh here's a little Public Service Announcement we do have a finance committee meeting where we are going to break the budget down for you we're going to have many conversations we also have a public Hearing in two weeks on February 6th and

061we are also tentatively looking at having a meeting with the Board of Supervisors to have a joint work session to go through this and and get feedback from them as well and as we've talked about and spoke about I think that's a really good move for us in the right direction we had the meeting in November to continue them in these conversations and answer any questions that they might have and then we will have continuous meetings and conversations even after February 20th where you all will then decide what that budget needs to be and you will either change adjust or approve it as is and we will continue to have conversations about that process now for most of you you were part of the meeting that we had back in October where we've established what's

062called budget priorities and these budget priorities have not shifted drastically we added a couple components to these budget priorities but a couple highlights to these first overarching they're going to focus on instructional initiatives compensation packages for our staff and then taking a look at our current assets and I'm going to break each of those down for each one of my proposals so you'll see exactly why we're making those recommendations the other aspect of these budget priorities and something we spoke about and we will continue continue to speak about is we need to do a better job of looking ahead and there are going to be some different bu budget proposals where I'm going to say this is going to be the start of a five-year process to get to an endgame in regards to addressing

063our compensation packages addressing the staff that we need in our buildings as well as taking a look at other aspects of our Budget moving forward and I will make mention of those throughout this budget presentation because that's very important for you to know and to realize and then to answer any questions that you might have the other aspect that we factor into this budget again this is not done in isolation is we work through our strategic plan which was approved by our school board 5 years well four years ago now this strategic plan is fy2 so we are going to be in the process excuse me of readjusting or starting fresh with a new strategic plan at the end of next year but for right now this is our strategic plan where we focus on

064Student Success culture strategic Partnerships and high quality staff and we want to make sure that we continue to focus on them so that we can continue to achieve our goals and move our School Division forward in the direction that we want it to go in and again focusing on the needs of our students that is going to be number one throughout this entire presentation so with that being said I do want to take some time to talk about all of the wonderful things that we do here in Frederick County as well as all of the great things that our students are doing because they are at the heart of what we need to do every day the you do the work that I do and the work that all of our 2500 staff do it

065is our students so let's take a look at that first we have 21 School sites and over 14,000 students and of those 14,000 students we have a wide range of needs and we have to factor in those needs when we take a look at Staffing when we take a look at resources and when we take a look at meeting the needs of each of those students that is a lot of students to keep track of and that is why just earlier we were congratulating our principles for all their hard work because a lot of that falls on their shoulders we also have a lot of specific programs for our students CTE we have advanced placement classes we also have Partnerships with local universities take a look at the number of miles that our buses travel

066in a year that's not 10e span five year that's in a year that is a lot of miles that our bus drivers drive our amazing students to and from school field trips everything else that they do so there's a lot of miles that they travel take a look at the lunches that they serve and the breakfasts that they serve you all didn't know we were a food service did you we're we're bigger than most restaurants in the area right like that is that is huge and that is a lot of work and it's a lot that you all should be very proud of because you all help with that to make sure that we are driving our students safely and feeding our students safely as well we also have a lot of of items and

067and things that we've done differently as we continue to move forward and meet the needs of our students again that promise for Progress so for example we started the school year off with a transition day where we started with our Rising kindergarteners our Rising 6th or Rising 9th because that transition time is so important for our students again we want to make sure we're not just doing things for the sake of doing them we want to do things because it's in the best interest interest of our students so that we can continue to move the needle to do what's best for all of our kids we're also starting new programs such as a student advisory committee of hearing from our students getting more information for them so they can drive these needs again this was

068not done in isolation and then we're also doing a lot more to recognize our staff as well as all of the great things that our students are doing on a regular basis but we have a lot of work to do I want to make sure that we focus on the great things that we're doing and I don't ever want to lose that that optic of all those great things but I also want to make sure that we are very well aware that we have some some work to do and there are some areas of our School Division that we need to focus on so that we can continue to improve now each of these indicators such as s so scores chronic absenteeism and student Behavior those are all just one component of the whole child

069there are other aspects of things that our students do that we measure but these are going to be the main ones that we continue to focus on and they're the main ones that I know they're at the Forefront of each of your minds as well so we want to make sure that we are showing how we are making progress through each of these these items so first is so scores and again this is one indicator to determine if a student is making progress or not as we've done in instructional committee meetings and we will continue to do that there are certain aspects of student performance where they've gained or they've gotten better and there's other aspects where they've not gotten better so keep in mind these scores are overall overall history math reading and science

070so this was in 2020 2021 this was 2122 and again want to be full disclosure here if you take a look at these scores and you go from 2122 to 22 23 we are not getting better and this is why we have to focus on what we're providing our teachers the resources we're providing them we need to make sure that we're keeping good teachers attracting good teachers and really dive down into why is this happening now again it's not across the board this is total scores there are some aspects where we are increasing there are some levels that we are decreasing but overall as a county for total scores we are going down so this is something that we will have to address and we'll have to make sure that we are investing in that

071so that we can continue to improve here's something that um you know we're proud of this because we're first however I don't I'm not happy with this we're 15% in regards to Chronic absenteeism compared to our school divisions within a 30 milei radius we are first but it is important for our students to be in school now Co did not do us any favors in regards to students being home uh and we want to make sure that we continue to encourage our parents to send their kids to school unless there is a specific reason which there always there always is but sometimes there isn't so we want to make sure that we're working with our families there's a lot of efforts with all-in Virginia dollars that we are focusing on our student support teams as

072well as our principles to make sure that we're thinking outside of the box and creatively of getting our kids to school so that we can continue to help them learn and thus increasing our scores because students are not learning when they're at home they're not so we want to make sure that we're focused on that and moving forward another aspect there's a lot of things that that keep me up at night and I think a lot of you know that um but one of the things that that is on that list of keeping me up at night is definitely the behaviors and discipline in schools this is something we definitely need to focus on this is something that we are working through our code of conduct and our administrators and how we can do better

073with this I think there's a there's a lot of variables to this uh I think the variables are we need to make sure that we're enforcing our code of conduct however I I would go on a limb and say that I think that some of the overcrowding in our classrooms and our schools is definitely impacting this not the ultimate variable but I guarantee you that it is impacting that um also taking a look at our our staff making sure they have the right resources and supports to work with our students and making sure that we have licensed teachers now we love our provisional licensed teachers we love our long-term Subs they do a great job of filling that void until we can find a teacher but they're not a licensed teacher so we want to

074make sure that we have the right staff in front of our students in our buildings on a longer period scale so that we are able to work through these behaviors and address each of these needs so as you can see at elementary at middle and at high we are increasing in some of these referrals now again if you look specifically at each School some are going up some are going down this is overall and these aren't new numbers this is what I presented to you back in October and we actually had a an instructional committee meeting where we talked through this so there is is going to be more to come on this we are revamping our code of conduct which will be presented to you all in a very short period and then we're

075also going to be providing More Level Training for our principles but I would also argue that we can't always think about reactive we have to think proactively what are we doing proactively to provide behavioral positive behavioral supports for our students as well as working with our administrators to make sure that we have consistent programs across the board CU some principles are doing that some principles aren't but we need to make sure that we are doing that more consistently and providing the resources to do that so I just want to make sure I provided you some information regards to the great things that are happening as well as some of the things that we want to focus on moving forward so next let's jump into my budget proposal to you all to take into consideration we

076have three separate funds we did dive into this last week during our budget work session so I'm not going to spend too much time about explaining each of these funds I'm going to talk a little bit about them because we talked about it last week but again if you have any questions please let me know but three funds we're going to talk about this evening operating Debt Service fund and our capital projects so if you recall when I came on board one of the very many promises that I made to you was we would be good fiscal stewards of our dollar we would make sure that we were being efficient with how we were spending our money and we would take a look at every angle of our current budget so that we were spending

077that efficiently so that we were returning that investment in the right aspects of our School Division so I challenge my staff and I greatly appreciate our finance department and our other departments to do do a deeper dive into each of our line item budgets to see where can we find some savings so we can utilize dollars somewhere else and we found $485,000 that we can reallocate and other aspects of our budget and this is huge because there have been some outline items that were were untouched and we want to make sure that we are reallocating that and not just leave that and carry that over so we want to make sure that we're doing a deeper dive with with our budget being better fiscally responsible with our money so that we can continue again to

078get and meet the needs of our students so this is one aspect that I wanted to share with you because this was a really big deal now as we dive into the operating budget I want to make sure that we don't forget we are a system of people not of things we have 2500 hardworking staff members with hearts bigger than this state in regards to what they do for our students we want to make sure that we keep them we want to make sure that we attract more good people and we want to make sure that we provide them the resources they need and I'm not just talking about your superintendent I'm talking about our counselors our bus drivers our instructional assistants our principes our teachers all of them all of our staff matter to

079us and we want to make sure that we are keeping that in mind when we work through this budget because that is a big portion of this operating budget our people is what make Frederick County a great place to be so here's a quick snapshot I'm going to break this down but here is a quick snapshot of the initial budget proposal in regards to pay increases across the board so for teachers we're looking at an average of 6.6% we're looking at classified staff 6.6% I'm going to break that down for you here in a second as I mentioned other professionals which I'll break down who they are in a second is 5% and then administrators and supervisors 3.2 now you might be asking yourself where'd you get the 3 3.2 from well the 3.2 is

080the cola and you know we love our acronyms but Cola we do not own that is from the Social Security Administration office and that is the cost of living adjustment essentially what that is saying is due to where the economy is due to inflation what does that pay increase need to be for somebody to make a honest living and right now that number is established at 3.2 so we don't make that number up that's a number that was given to us so that is where we started across the board so we started at teachers at 3.2 and then if you notice there there's the step average and then the scale average so we increase the step on that scale as well as a pay increase on that scale so that's where we got combining those

081two numbers to get the 3.2 then we have our administrator supervisors and then our professionals and our professionals are going to be our therapists our psychologists our csas that is where we have those other professionals next is we wanted to make sure that we really focused on our classified staff now one promise that I made to you all last week and I continued to make is we do not want to get into the habit of comparing staff against each other they all do a great job for us they all work hard we don't want to say one works harder than the other we don't want to do that because they all do a great job for their craft and what they were hired to do however with our classified staff we are falling behind not

082only comparing to other school divisions but to retail and if we are not able to compete with retail we are going to lose some really great people bus drivers instructional AIDS custodians nutritional staff so we want to make sure that we're able to keep up with not only other divisions but with other retail organizations or stores that are here right here in Frederick County so we want to make sure that we are honoring that and as you saw the average rate for the increase for classified staff is 6.6 and that is why you see that additional 3.4 there another issue that we've discussed in for the uh remaining board we've discussed this in previous budget meetings and then for the new board you heard this last week is we have a problem with our pay

083scales in regards to the clustering of certain years so for example we have 5 to 10 so if you're a five-year teacher you're getting paid the same as a nine-year teacher so we want to make sure that we are un clustering that and we're fixing that so in order to do that here's the first of a couple couple of we're going to look at doing a 3 to fiveyear phase because in order to fix that whole pay scale it's a little over $14 million we're not going to be able to do that in one budget cycle so we want to try to do that gradually as we move up to that 50 year if we can do it sooner great if we get a huge influx of dollars from the state or there's additional Revenue

084we can talk about that from the county um but for right now that is our recommendation as we slowly move forward to that so we can break up that cluster and again be more competitive so with that there's an addition pay increase um for for our teachers and for other staff then we also want to stay competitive in regards to our first year teachers and as you know this is something we talk about spoke about last year and this is something that we'll have to continue to keep an eye on as we look at neighboring School divisions so we are recommending we start at $552,000 for our new teachers so that we can attract those new teachers coming out of college and that is the dollar amount if we started that off for this upcoming

085year next up is we want to honor our veteran teachers we also want to honor our teachers that have been here for 8 nine 10 years and have something to look forward to besides showing up to a classroom of students and that is very rewarding but we also have to make sure that our staff are compensated so that they can make a living so one of the things that we want to do this is another phased in is we would like to get to honoring our teachers that have 15 or more years experience but as you can imagine as we get lower into those years we have more staff so that dollar figure is going to continue to rise I would like to suggest we start at 25 years next year we go to 20

086and next the following year we get to 15 because another piece of of data that we Pro provided to you all is that 15 years or more is where staff are leaving and going to loud and in Fairfax because that is where there's a significant pay bump so we want to keep our teachers here provide them with some recognition for staying in Frederick County and compensating them for that as well we've also identified some hardto fill positions and that is again we don't want to compete people against each other this is across the board for all of our hardto fill positions from special ed to General Ed to support staff so we're going to start with a $2,000 um essentially a sign on bonus for these hard-to-fill positions that is going to be a starting

087point for us and if we want to increase that in future budgets we can do that as well one of the pieces of information that we we heard from our principles was twofold the first fold is we are having a hard time finding substitutes now finding the contracted Subs is definitely helping but there still is an issue so two pieces to this the first piece is we want to increase that daily rate for our substitutes so they can actually again earn money when they come in and do this and secondly one of the things that you don't see up here but we will'll be able to take care of this through our current fiscal dollars is how we compensate teachers and instructional AIDS from actually subbing in classes which we have that if we don't

088have a substitute a class just doesn't go uncovered we need to have somebody in that classroom so teachers are giving up their planning now is that something we like no but unfortunately it's where we are and it's happening more frequently than I think than I think most people realize so that is something that we are also working through as well um we're also focusing on our bus drivers which we have a a bus driver shortage um I've talked to our bus drivers all the time I get their feedback and input we have Mr Shepard who's leading them and doing a fantastic job but I want to make sure that we are doing some things for them so that we can attract more bus drivers keep them so hopefully the increase in the 6.6 will attract

089them we're working on this and then there's some other things that we are taking a look at well in regards to how they're getting compensated for field trips and their daily rate so there's some other things that we're taking a look there as well and that is feedback that we received from those bus drivers to share that we are listening to these requests so then we are taking those into consideration next up is part of the governor's proposed banian budget and that's every two years um and and right now that has been sent to the general assembly for consideration keep in mind that hasn't been passed yet that is just his budget proposal hopefully right Miss Camry will be done in April hopefully it be nice um but right now there is a 1% bonus

090in the first year of the banum the second part of the banum is a 2% pay increase so this is something that we want to again keep in here this would be a good gesture for our staff to give them a 1% maybe check near the holidays we're kind of working through those pieces and again we want your feedback on this as well but that's essentially what we were thinking through so that's a 1% bonus for all staff and that's money that we would be getting from the the state and then that's the local dollars that we would need to front for that that cost so next up is our staffing standards and I presented this we had many conversations throughout the course of the year but it was finally proposed uh and approved in

091December and we've had some conversations about this and to keep in mind the Staffing standards was done for for a bunch of reasons but for two main reasons one to make sure that we're meeting the needs of our students at each of our schools and number two to make sure that we're being more fiscally responsible with our positions making sure that we are removing the subjectivity of adding positions and being more objective again being better stewards of our dollar and getting the positions we need in front of our students it is going to take time this is going to be a phase in approach and as I mentioned to you all I want to focus on this year getting students in front of excuse me getting staff in front of our students we would like

092students from college but now getting staff in in front of our students so that is the the phase that we're going to be focusing on for this year the column that I want you to focus on and hopefully you're seeing this theme is that middle column so what we did is after this was approved in December we met with each and every principal and thank you to Dr Angelo and his team for doing that that was a lot of work and I really appreciate him taking that on and when he met with each and every principal we drew out the the Staffing standards we took a look at the current student students they had we took a look at the needs of the students and we were able to identify in that middle column staff

093that we need but we need them in other locations in the county and that's huge because we can just continue to say because if you look at that first column it started with over 40 position requests but we wanted to come forward with a honest budget to say we looked at our current positions and we were able to move some positions around to get to a total of 25 FTE positions requests now we have this broken down where each of these positions are of course but this is just an overall picture of our positions and as we continue to move forward of being again fiscally responsible with how we're allocating positions in our school division the next up is after conversations with Mr Thompson who by the way is doing a fantastic job up at

094Dow J um the first thing is is we're trying to change the the Mantra of Dow J um for those that have been in this County for many years D J has been known as where the bad kids go well first off there's no such thing as a bad kid and secondly that's not the intention of Dow J Dow J is a place that we have opportunities for students from both both ends of the spectrum from CTE to students that have a situation or a circumstance that they are not able to obtain their credits and we want to help them graduate we had roughly over 60 students that didn't graduate last year that keeps me up at night and I made a promise to you that that needs to be zero we need to get

095all of our students graduated every year and of those 60 students there's a large portion of them that have some obligations during the day be it they need to work to feed their family be it they're raising their own family whatever that circumstance is they are not able to get to school during the day so we are proposing to start a night school which we have a number of students that would be very interested in this so that we can help them attain their credits so that they can graduate and they can be good contributors of society because there is a significant pay difference from somebody that has a diploma high school diploma and somebody that does not and we want to make sure that we are providing that opportunity for them and this was

096definitely we believe some lwh hanging fruit to provide some some opportunities for our students this is one of many ideas that Mr Thompson has which I'm very proud of him but this is a good start in the right direction so we can catch these students to help them graduate next up again when I first started safety is number one for me and it's always going to be number one for me um so much so that we were able to find a supervisor of Safety and Security and Mr Tim conin is doing an outstanding job of getting out into schools talking with administrators talking with Mr Goodwin and myself to determine where do we have areas of weakness in regards to making sure our students and our staff are safe and our community for that matter

097so we are starting at a $100,000 budget so we can take a look at in Intruder locks on interior doors and focusing on cameras as well as some other things um as we've mentioned to you all there's going to be grant opportunities there's going to be other revenues that we can take a look at this is a starting point we are going to focus on the high priorities and then we are going to get into all the other items that we need to take a look at there's going to be other items that we will be presenting to you to take into consideration but this is going to be a good Focus for us and a good starting point moving forward because we really have to focus on that safety as you know next up

098is we have have a in our operating budget we have funds for our transportation department and in that rotation of budget there are six new buses every year we all agree that that is not enough because as you can see you saw the miles that our buses travel every year and you can see a lot of buses there that are out of service or need we need spare parts so we determined a 13 bus cycle every year so we will be in good shape for our buses moving forward and buses break down and we want to make sure that we avoid that so we want to add two additional buses to those six so that will get us to eight every year and we want to get to that 13 and again another phased in

099approach as we get closer to that 13 but right now we will hopefully this will get us to the eight buses every year and thank you to the Board of Supervisors for letting us spend those overage of dollars back in December uh and we were able to buy some additional buses there as well so thank you to the Board of Supervisors for allowing us to do that so next up which I know there are a lot of questions about which I am thankful and grateful for we presented a snippet of this proposal last week and we know we've received a lot of questions which I thank you all please continue to send our questions in and I think it was very timely that uh Mrs Stein dner would came in and provided some information some

100because some questions came up last week about summer meals and such so that was really good that she came in to do that so I want to provide a deeper dive into the C which is the community eligibility provision so again not an acronym we created but an acronym you need to be familiar with So currently let's talk about currently currently there are three ways that a a student can eat the first way is they can buy their lunch second way is they can have a what's called free and reduced lunch there's an application they fill out and it's either free or at a reduced costs or if they're at one of nine schools C they eat for free regardless if they're number one or number two now I want to make sure that we're

101very clear on this as we continue to have these conversations and regardless of how this pans out is if a student is in need of eating he will eat he or she will eat and I want to make sure that make that very very clear so if there's a student that forgot their lunch a student that didn't fill out the application or whatever the reason is if a student needs a lunch we do not prevent them from getting one a breakfast or a lunch I want to make that very clear secondly if this doesn't move forward this doesn't mean that we don't want to feed students this is just something for us to catch those students and there's a bunch of different examples as to why a student might not be eating breakfast or lunch

102as again elely mentioned to us and and we it really doesn't matter what those reasons are because we don't want to dive into those family reasons but those reasons exist um and as Mrs Stein doer presented and in research that we've conducted and done if you're not eating you're not learning it is a basic need of life and we want to make sure that we address that so as a County right now we are at 43% free and reduced lunch across the board 43% there's another aspect of this called an ISP another acronym right right we love our acronyms which is the individual student percentage which is the best way to describe it it's another layer of the free and reduced percentage it's a it's a specific circumstance such as someone who's homeless or another

103circumstance and that percentage as a county is 37% so we were able to find that percentage that is important to know because before October the percent for us to qualify a school as C was 40% if you take a look after October now that percentage has decreased to 25% so we technically qualify for 20 of our 21 schools there's one school that is less than that 25% but per the state and the federal government we can actually Factor them into another school if we do move forward with this so that they would qualify for free free lunch and breakfast across the board the next aspect to this is we have a nutrition fund and that fund is funded by two means currently it's funded by the reimbursements that we get from C and it's also

104funded by the students at the other 12 sites that are paying for their breakfast and their lunch you might be thinking well why do we have a nutrition fund well that nutrition fund is how they operate how they pay their staff how they feed their students how they buy materials so that fund needs to be at a certain dollar amount so they're able to operate accordingly and efficiently if we continue to increase the number of schools that are C we would have to essentially add dollars to that fund because the reimbursement dollars that we receive is not going to match the dollars that is needed in that fund now we have a projection of what that's going to look like but that's all we have at this point the other piece that I want to

105mention to this is and this can go anywhere but this is just full disclosure for you all is there are two bills right now that are General Assembly that is taking a look at this and we hope that they actually get passed because hopefully that means more dollars that we can receive so that we can feed more students so that we can catch those students that might not be eating or might fill not the application or whatever the reason is as I mentioned to you earlier so the $ 22.2 million again is to add dollars to that fund the nutrition fund so that we can keep operating accordingly this does not feed students over the summer as we talked about with questions as you saw saw there is a modality for us to do that

106it is not technically our responsibility to do that but we have a modality to do that so this is just to feed students during the day when they come into school for breakfast and for lunch okay so definitely some more information I know there's probably going to be more questions which we encourage and we want to make sure that we get all the facts straight so that we make sure that you are well informed if this is something you want to move forward with the last thing that I want to mention because I want to make sure again we're full disclosure with this proposal that in the near future say if we stick with the nine schools in the near future we potentially will have to add dollars to that nutritional fund again to make

107up that balance because the reimbursement does not fund that fund where it needs to be so we can operate efficiently and I want to make sure that we're very clear on that because I don't want if this doesn't pass and then in two years say well hey we need these dollars for these nine schools I want to make sure that you have that information so that we can talk through it and we're full disclosure with those details and that's a projection it might happen it might not we might get additional dollars from the federal reimbursement so just to throw that out there I want to make sure that we have all the facts whenever we're making a decision here okay so with that being said for the operating dollars as you can see the current

108proposal that the governor has proposed not approved yet is receiving an additional $10 million we are decreasing in federal but don't panic because those federal dollars is what we received through Esser and covid so that naturally is going to happen with a cliff we also are receiving $35,000 less there and you might be asking what's fees other charges um and there's a multitude of of items that can be in there for example we rent our facilities out to folks so if we get revenue from that or if we have an insurance claim and we get some additional dollars as you can see it's not a large sum of money but it's a pot of money that we have so with that being said we are requesting at this what I am requesting again not you

109all just yet is a little under $8 million um over our cost to continue um and then for total revenue of $10 million so the next fund I want to talk about a little bit is our debt service fund and we currently have two projects that we're working through right now we have the jameswood high and then we have the Indian Hollow which is very close to being completed hopefully we we can do another ribbon cutting for that um so if you can see from fy2 24 to fy2 see how it increases so we need to make up the difference there so that that is a debt that we need to request um from the the county because we don't hold the debt but we have to pay off our debt so 2.35 million is

110a dollar figure that we have to request from downtown the last item that I want to discuss with you all is our C projects C look at me with my acronyms capap Capital asset plan um and these Capital asset plan or asset projects are our current items and we mentioned this to you all last week in regards to all of our current assets and items that we have and we keep track of those and last year we did not receive the dollars that we requested however again thanks to the Board of Supervisors we were able to spend some of those those laps dollars those overage of dollars we received in December from the state we were able to take care of some of these projects which have been removed from this list but as you

111can see and I want to make sure that we're very clear on this that $19 million is because we are not taking care of the projects that have been on this list for many years and as you can see we put the years over there to the right of how long they've been on this list some of them have been on here since 2023 so that is why that dollar figure is where it is but I want to make sure that we're very clear that each of these funds are separate we have the capital asset plan we have the operating and then we have The Debt Service fund those are three separate funds and three separate essentially requests so lastly in closing uh we as I mentioned to you all we have a bunch of

112meetings coming up I do want to draw your attention to that February 13th meeting that is I'm recommending is doing a whole board work session so that we can talk through the budget before you all talk on February 20th to approve this budget before it goes across the street for approval as I mentioned to you all we're working on a joint work session we're also working on a time that I will be presenting to the Board of Supervisors as well which will be after you all approve it because at that point it will be your budget and we will be we're working on those dates and times currently lastly and this is a public service announcement for those listening at home and for those in the audience is we have three budget Town Halls that

113I'll be presenting this budget but the majority of it is going to be getting feedback and input from the constituents who participate staff for you all if you are interested but I look forward to this time so that I can gain more insight and input from all of the the aspects of our School Division and make sure that we have a lot of feedback and input when we're moving forward with this so that's going to be those three meetings there and I just want to give you again a big thank you um I appreciate all your work that you're doing uh and looking forward to all the questions that you have um and I will open up if there's any general or over arching questions that you would like to ask Mr chair Dr Hummer

114when you were talking about the th the 43% of the county qualifies for free and reduced lunch countywide you mentioned 37% and I did not take copious notes to know what that 37% thank you for clarifying so the 43 is free and reduced the 37 is the ISP percentage and that is what determines C we're over that 25 because 37 as a county and I have that broken down at each school as well which I can share with you all if you are interested that would be great I'm more than happy to do that Mr chair uh Dr Hummer I wanted to say thank you for PRI prioritizing the S sols uh the absenteeism and the uh discipline issues that we have um and I do think that a lot of what the budget's going

115for um will help uh hopefully remedy some of those problems and and get us back on track and and push us above and beyond um I also want to talk about uh Dow J FCPS 101 we had that meeting over there was phenomenal um I wish more community members could have shown up to that um but I understand you know everybody's got lives and stuff but it it is uh just like you said you know it's more than just where the bad kids go um and like you I hate using that term but I mean we have you know Mr Ben Thompson back there is is doing a lot of great work over there with CTE programs getting kids interested in life skills and putting people out there for the workforce um I know last

116year on our instruction committee led by Mrs White um we had students come in and talk about the different programs that they're involved in with you know uh different learning abilities and and you know kind of tailoring that so they can get those um credits so that they can graduate and get them back on on point um so fantastic job out there Mr Ben Thompson I I really appreciate what you're doing um once again principal recognition um but um when I go down here to the C program yes sir um I'm looking at um Can instead of kind of jumping and putting everybody in and I I know it'd be a big shock um for tax dollars and budgets and I know we were're trying to prioritize a lot of things here and we do

117have other programs like Bright Futures that do help out um is this something that can be phased in or do we have to jump from zero to 100 absolutely and that's a great question Mr Atkins so also to be full disclosure we do not have to participate in the C program not recommending that but as the will of the board we don't have to we have to fill out a waiver for it but we don't have to participate so we could phase this in absolutely we can do that and what we could do is we could take a look at our schools that have the highest percentage and we can do do a little bit more math with working with nutrition and our finance department to see if there is a more palatable number as

118we can work towards that that the $2 million do or whatever that is so absolutely um and we are going to break that down for you further in in a finance committee meeting coming up but thank you for that qu it's a great question and that's something we can definitely look into more yeah and you know my thoughts around that are you know we do have other programs that do help out and not everybody out there just like I talked about in the last meeting is going to require that free introduced lunch and I'm glad that we're not turning students away and I think that we should be able to feed those students um I just don't want like my concerns at the finance committee meeting food sitting on the shelves going to waste or

119anything like that um and I know we we our our nutrition staff is fantastic at at monitoring that kind of stuff but yes sir it it's a new program coming in to a lot of these schools and it would take some adjustment um as far as the C reimbursement what I know you only have a projection of of that what is that uh what are we getting back on that like if we spend a dollar how much are we getting back on that so do I know we were looking at getting those numbers together I don't know if do we have those tonight Patty to share I I don't have them tonight but they are in the Friday packet we put the numbers in there because that question was asked of M Mrs CL I

120think asked that so it is in the Friday packet that's going out to you all but I don't have it right here in so we'll get that to you and please Mr a these are great questions continue to ask these questions if we're not able to answer them now at our committee meeting we will get those responses to you so please keep those questions coming and we can get that to you I I appreciate that and um lastly um you h on those Town Halls um for all those out there watching at home people in the audience um these Town Halls come out ask questions you can come out ask questions to the superintendent um I know some of us board members get in the audience we're kind of just there as audience members but

121please come up and ask us questions about kind of our thoughts on some of the stuff on the budgets and and you know give us your ideas and what's important important to you as a community and and the education for your children because you know we're the the representatives up here we need to hear from you um so it it does take a community to uh to help Foster these children so please reach out to us at any time reach out to the superintendent he's he's very open and transparent and uh that would be all I've got so thank you Mr um the two bills that you mentioned that's are that's in the the general assembly do you have any further information on those I do and if you look in the weekly last week

122and we'll put it in this week as well we are going to keep up with all of the bills that are in the general assembly do you off the top of your head know those numbers already pulled them so one of them is a Senate bill it's 283 283 um as of right now it has been reported from education and health committee and it's been re referred to finance and Appropriations the other bill is HB 686 6 that one um has been reported from the education committee and has been re-referred to the committee on Appropriations there you go and we will keep up with that as we get updates on those bills in the weekly so that you guys have that information great question because that could lower the 2.2 million we're hopeful yes would

123be nice just for C clarification so so it was Senate Bill 283 and House Bill 686 correct 686 let me just double check 283 yes thank you so much thank you thank you Mr Bell and just one more question please Mr yes as we're new here we're learning all about this yes sir now this C program and And to clarify nothing has been cast in stone yet correct everything that I presented to you this evening is my needs-based budget to you based on all of the information I presented it is now in your court we will walk through this in finance committee meetings through other conversations and then you all will approve your budget on February 20th which could be an adjust adjustment to this it could be plus it could be minus it could

124be other things uh and then we'll talk through that and then once that's approved that's what goes across the street great question and and I understand the cost of it and some people have have have questioned the cost of this program and I understand but the the impact on the taxpayer how do you see that as a whole on the county is that I don't think that that's going to be well generally speaking uh our budget is funded through and I can pull back up this slide here give me a second just to show you here okay so our budget is funded through four different main Avenues now of course we get Grant dollars and all these other things but that that's not significant these are the significant revenues so we get State we get

125Federal we get local and then we get other fees as I mentioned okay so if you take a look at the total budget you look at the total number of taxpayers and then you divide that by how much we get from federal and how much we get from state and local that's what that total dollar amount for for the citizen would be um which won't be significant but yes it will be an additional dollar figure that the citizen potentially could get added on this is also something that we will have conversations about with the County Administrator in downtown is taking a look at the revenues that are currently there and if there's other ways to fund what we are requesting or if there needs to be a conversation at their level cuz we don't deter

126this in regards to what tax rate needs to be in order to fund not only us but the other entities that are in Frederick County so the exact dollar amount Mr stur I think that's a great question I really don't know how we would calculate that but again we would calculate that by breaking it down by percentage because the other percentage is we're not the largest entity in Frederick County either there's other entities that access those those taxpayer dollars and we want again that's why I highlighted this in this presentation we want to be good stewards of that dollar we want to make make sure that we're looking at our line items we're looking at our positions these are not wish this is not a wish list this is based on feedback from our principles

127from our teachers looking at our data getting our students what they need and really focusing on that return on investment in why the taxpayer needs to provide the dollars in order for to get what we need what does that return on investment mean for the citizen and what does that return on investment need for our students and their future and those are the questions I love because I want us to be able to address those so that we can talk through those together because we're going to get those questions and I want to be able to respectfully work through those questions so that we can talk through them and one more final question please please um and if we were to approve this C program as I understand it and correct me if I'm wrong

128should we approve this then for the average homeowner who has children in the school they are going to be saving a significant amount on meals are they not so I'm actually really glad you brought that up so right now at our nine schools average not not total at each of the schools average cuz at the out the nine c schools every student in that school can access the C free breakfast and lunch we're at about 60% of that population is accessing so when we say the C program for feed all students breakfast and lunch that's not all 14,000 students now can all 14,000 students access that sure they can but is it going to be every student accessing that no because like you said we do have some families that are going to be able

129to afford it and we're also going to have some families that NE don't necessarily qualify for the free and reduced lunch but as you're insinuating they might not have the the means to actually provide breakfast and lunch on a regular basis and this would definitely help with that aspect so across the board it would help yes thank you sir Mr chair um one thing I would also like to see and I've done my own research on C programs and how they could potentially reduce the cost of administrative fees of uh the lunch line uh service line if you will Personnel I would really really be curious to see some projections on how if we did if we were to approve this and we were to have free lunch for and breakfast for everyone how would

130that reduce the administrative costs and the logistical cost if there's a dollar amount that we can apply to that because that is something that would be a reduction um and and and would I think would be a uh kind of a pro very much of a pro um and go into the calculus of the one for one reimbursement got gotcha no I think that'll be good for to take a look at again to be good stewards of our dollar Mrs Klein and absolutely we can take a look at that great thank you of course Mr chair uh to get off the C topic um I wanted to go ahead and uh uh talk about some of the uh the proposed raises for our teachers our staff sure and and so forth um I know that

131not giving anything away from close session but I know when we do lose teachers and we we track that data um we do lose uh staff members teachers and everything else to what you said local retail local restaurants local other local businesses and I do think this is going to be something that not only makes us competitive um outside the county with the the other counties within a 30 mile radius but it it's also going to make us competitive within the county keeping uh keeping those teachers um so I'm all about that I I really appreciate um you know our finance department kind of looking at that our finance committee's looking at that and you know work that the previous board has already laid out uh for this budget um so I mean if there's

132something we you know we can do as far as I I know you've already talked about the sign on bonuses for the um the hard to fill positions I know you know ESL is one of the big ones um some of the other uh uh special needs assistants and teachers and and it's just it's really hard to get those those staff members so if we can scalp them from other counties you know so be it nice y you know so um so thank you guys uh for doing all that work putting in that leg work um I appreciate everything you're doing thank you thank you Mr Atkins questions no but I would like to make a plea as it were um to the citizens in the county to take advantage of all of this going

133on right now the openness and the wanting to understand and know their concerns and please get in touch with any of us not just a complain but a concern you know and and also come to the town meetings meet your neighbors and meet Dr Hummer and other administratives that show up and talk about what you want to see happen in our schools thank you anything Forman um thank you Dr Hummer for this presentation I know that we're going to be seeing a lot more from you in the coming weeks as you know being a part of the finance committee um I can't really think of very much more basic needs that our school has in feeding our children transportating our children uh transporting transporting our children um um and better compensation packages I think that

134everybody wants to be compensated fairly for the work that we do and we can see from the last presentation on the work session that Virginia is falling behind so we have we have work to do and you know I've said we are a county of halves I think we have the ability to do this I'm looking forward to all the ins and outs um very pleased with your hard work and the turnaround in a year I don't I think it's visible to the community and the relationships that you've built you know not just with the Board of Supervisors but um with the school communities and the children I've seen children inter interact with you and you're always open and you're finding ways to get to our community and get down to the heart um so

135thank you for all the work that you've done I know that uh and also to our finance department and our other administrators and this is no easy task thank you Mrs White thank you Mr St um next on our agenda is unfinished business is there any unfinished business no Mr chair sir got oh oh well that's next next is new business is there any new business uh we've got the uh committee report from the building and grounds committee Mr chairman all right all right uh the building and grounds committee met at the Frederick County Public Schools administration building on January 18th 2024 the meeting was called to order at 4:30 p.m. and a copy of the minutes has been provided to each board member during the meeting uh Mr Davis discussed the capital projects list

136highlights including the transportation HVAC the milbrook high school roof and the fire alarm projects at apple pie Ridge school and DOW J Howard Center Mr Goodwin gave an update on the uh completion of the retaining wall at Frederick County Middle School he explained that the Integrity of the wall was examined and confirmed the drainage uh pipe was snake to eliminate possible future concerns and no issues were found Mr Lee discussed the easement across Frederick County Middle School property that was requested by Shanda Valley Electric Company uh to provide power to the public safety radio tower that is being constructed there Mr Goodwin shared that the Frederick water easement topic was postponed due to an unforeseen unavailability of a representative from the company he also discussed the property that is for sale adjacent to shando High

137School which is zoned as rural ra uh rur rural area ra sorry tough word for me um Mr Kenny reviewed the conclusion of the renovations at Indian Hollow Elementary School and he and uh the hope to do additional work on the inside for mechanical areas he also shared that the renovation at jameswood high school is continuing on the core areas with an expected completion and turnover date of June 15 2024 for the core areas and uh July 31st 2024 for The Concourse and gym area Mr Goodwin shared that the restroom redesign Concepts at jameswood high school with uh staff working with rrmm Architects for a potential redesign of group restrooms near the existing cafeteria these restrooms are proposed to be designated as men's or women's and each staff will have uh each stall will have

138concrete masonry unit CMU walls uh and occupancy sensors with lights uh Mr Kenny discussed the omnitrax lease agreement he shared that omnitrax has agreed to the terms and concept that it will be a 10-year lease and that it will be on a month-to-month basis until the new lease is executed additional details regarding the committee meeting are included in the minutes provided to uh board members do board members have any questions about what was covered at the building and grounds committee meeting held on January 18 2024 all right well we have two action items coming out of this meeting uh the first action item is recommend to the full board approve recommend the full board approve shando Valley Electric easement on the fcms property Frederick County M school property so moved second any discussion all those

139in favor signify by saying I I I any opposed motion carries second action item is recommend to the full board approve the omnitrax lease renewal agreement so moved second any discussion all those in favor uh signify by saying I I those opposed motion carries any other new business yes sir um the next item on the list is the Varsity Tutors contract award I'm going to share a little bit of information about this and then hand it over to my steam colleague Mrs Camry um this is associated with the all-in funding that we received from vdoe um so this is what we want to make sure we are able to get tutoring in front of our students so we typically would bring this through the finance committee but due to the short notice we wanted to

140this needs to be approved right away so we can start working through this so we wanted to bring it to the full board for approval it is over the 200,000 allowance that I can spend so miss car if you can share a little bit more about that I think I might have hit it all but you hit a good deal of it so thank you for that so you make it easy for me so yes this this is uh a contract award we're seeking your approval we have used Varsity tutor since 2020 at which time it was less than the threshold to bring forward but we used estra funds for that uh now we're bringing it Forward because it's $373,900 cents for the first year and is over the threshold for Dr Hummer to sign

141and it is federal dollars of all-in uh Virginia funds that are paying for this uh last week we talked about the 13 different funds that we oversee this is in the special grants fund so with that we're just looking for you to approve us to move forward with this Mr chairman I'd like to make a motion to approve the contract for Varsity Tutors second any discussion all those opposed signify by saying I I I any did I say opposed you did I'm sorry all those approval signify by saying I I I any opposed motion carries thank you Mr chair got two other items two of them are these last two are policy uh adjustments the first is a bylaw and by our policy we have to read through this twice so this is the first

142reading and then the next meeting will be the second reading for approval um if you haven't taken a look at this there is two major adjustments with this bylaw the first is the order of our meetings we wanted to make sure we got the right order and we also wanted to add something called an ments at the end of the meeting I think it's good for us to add in when our next meeting is that hasn't been in our meetings before but I think it's really good for us to do that to say hey our next meeting is on such and such date our committee meetings on such and such date I think it's good again to get the message out there so that we can continue to engage with our community um the other

143piece if you saw at the bottom of this and there were some requests um from you all about this but just to provide an overview of Robert's Rule of Order now this particular policy doesn't have to cover every single aspect of Robert's Rule of Order for is which is what we utilize to conduct our meetings so if there is something that is not located there it's not that we have to add it it's just if it's not there we refer to Robert's Rule of Order so Mrs Jordan and myself will help guide the board through any sort of complicated matters that might come up but I think this is good for you all to reference it's not something that we've had in the past so this is something new so please make sure you take

144time to read through it bring any questions that you have forward let me know and then it will come to a second um meeting for next next meeting so no action Mr chair for this one but if there's any questions we're more than happy to answer them questions from the board okay thank you Mr chair moving forward to the next one this one is not a bylaw so we will need a motion and an action on this one um this is to adjust the public records 603p to address Foya um and in this particular policy it was interesting because it actually listed specific people's names and these specific people no longer work for Frederick County so so we want to make sure that we adjust that it is a policy so you have to approve

145that so what adjustment we made that's the significant one is we just remove the name and we put the title of the person so I know my staff told me they're going to give me 25 years so we don't have to worry about them leaving anytime soon but after the 25 year mark you know hopefully that when they move we we'll be able to not have another policy change um for us and then there was other just some Aesthetics that we changed in spelling out FCPS and such so we need a motion for this one and I'm up for uh answer any questions you might have Mr chairman Mr miles like could make a motion to approve policy 603p uh as presented second and motion has been properly seconded all those any discussion all those

146approving signify by saying I I any opposed motion carries any further new business no Mr chair okay uh at this time we have board member comments are there any comments from the board Mr chair um so I want to go ahead and uh say thank you publicly to uh Bright Futures for all that they do um serving the community um our school Community um feeding those kids making sure that they have um a great Christmas great holiday um also our principles counselors um pass board members who received Awards tonight um you know all those people put in a lot of work from different aspects you know I've talked about uh Mr Thompson back there and some of the other principles that are out here but are the principles at all of our schools you know

147I'm sure a lot of them can't be here tonight because they're pulling extra Duty um then you've got uh our counselors who are dealing with everything all day it's getting thrown at them left and right they they don't get it like the teachers do to plan out their day as well um they're dealing with chaos 24/7 um I also want to say thank you to our Transportation uh Department um you know they're doing what they can to go out on these uh County back roads to ensure the safety of our kids coming in and out of the schools I know over in my community over in shaune District we were pretty plowed we're pretty populated but some of these back roads out there is pretty dangerous so thank you uh to Dr Hummer and his

148staff uh for going ahead and making those tough decisions um and I know uh uh Mr Goen has a a YouTube video out there talking about how we close the schools so if you guys can go check that out that would be great I'm always promoting the YouTube channel like share and subscribe um and I want to say thank you to Dr Hummer uh it's been a year like you said um and we've seen a lot of change um and it's all everything I've seen has been for the positive you know look at how the boards come together look at um you know the community community relations that that you've put forward I I really appreciate apprciate all you've done I've gotten a lot of great feedback um from my time on the previous board

149and my time here on this board it's it's been a a breath of fresh air and I think uh the community really respects and uh appreciates all the transparency that you've given um other than that I think I'm good on comments anyone else have any comments Mr chairman yes sir um I'd like to obviously congratulate everyone that won an award this evening um I'm sure it's very well deserved uh but there are two me uh two folks that I especially want to say congratulations to publicly um one is Jennifer sheets I had the pleasure of working with her last year at AER middle school and I have seldom met anyone more dedicated than Jennifer sheets is to our students and to the school um the other teacher and this is all personal sorry I'm aing

150my personal griev or personal happiness um the other teacher is Heather Walther um my both of my children had the pleasure of having her as their first grade teacher in uh Middletown Elementary and honestly probably the best person I have ever met in my life um and just welld deserved for both of them I don't know the rest of you but I'm sure it's also welld deserved for you too so thank you very much Mr chairman any further comments I I I don't normally but I'm going to to tonight um two years ago this month I stood there for the first time and uh decided to run for the school board and uh to be quite honest I had no idea what I was getting myself into but I have been on a learning curve

151ever since December and I am going to say publicly Dr Hummer I appreciate everything you have done you have been outstanding in answering my questions no matter how how stupid I thought they were you have done an awesome job in in helping all of us to get on board and I want to thank you personally for that Miss D santis you're like the energ Energizer Bunny for me I I have come in here with some of the dumbest things getting the password wrong forgetting to put a letter in there she has been here every time I've called she is on it it's amazing to me and the rest of the folks here I have been amazed at all the training all the time and effort they have put into it and I I have begun

152to appreciate just how much the people in this school system do um someone nicknamed me the flamethrower when I was out there running my mouth as a candidate and I thought that's it I'm going to be the flamethrower and and I I'm telling you I have an appreciation for everybody that sits up here on this board um I I was fortunate enough to meet with Miss White before we came on and and and several of the other members and and I have gotten such an education so I personally want to thank everybody here tonight for helping us and and I'll stumble and fumble along the way and uh that's just me but uh I do appreciate everything that you've done I thank the members of the community who showed up I want to thank all

153of you and congratulate all of you and uh I just am looking forward to a great four years so thank you very much are there any further comments Mr Mr chair sir before we move forward I want to make sure we fix this when we read the buildings and ground minutes I don't think we approve those minutes and it'll be nice if we can make a motion to approve those and be done that' be great well thank you um Mr chair I'd like to make a uh motion to approve the minutes from the building and grounds committee meeting held on uh January 18th 2024 right motion being uh properly seconded do we have any discussion all those in favor of approving the minutes say signify by saying I I I any opposed motion carries thank

154you Dr hmer for keeping me straight and now if there are no further comments then I uh ask that we sir uh Mr chair can I make a motion to adjourn well you most certainly can M uh any discussion on this all right all those in favor of adjourning signify by saying I I any opposed motion carries thank you all and good night