001Good evening and welcome to our regular meeting for February 9th, 2026. The board uh met about 30 minutes ago um in close session and we are now ready for the open business portion of our meeting. We will begin um with a moment of silence if you all if you all would like to join us. Thank you. At this time, we invite you to stand and join us for the Pledge of Allegiance. The first item we have on our agenda is schoolboard appreciation month. I believe Dr. Shifflet you have. >> Yes. Thank you, Chair Hurst. In recognition of schoolboard appreciation month, I want to take a moment to acknowledge the service of our school board. School board members serve under oath and are entrusted by law with the governance and oversight of public education. They set
002policy, adopt budgets, ensure fiscal transparency, uphold parental rights, and maintain accountability for academic achievement on behalf of students, families, and taxpayers. This work is often unseen and frequently challenging, but it is essential to the success of our schools and the trust of our community. On behalf of the division, thank you to our board members for your leadership, your service, and your continued commitment to public education. So, thank you. >> Thank you, Dr. Shifflet and board members. It appears that there are all kinds of appreciation goodies up here. So, thank you all. We'll now move into uh comments from the public. We have one speaker signed up this evening, Miss Nancy Basset. If you would like to come forward, >> you know the drill. Would you like me to reexplain or >> No, >> you're all
003set. >> I know the drill. Okay. >> So, Dr. Shifflet, Chair Horst, and school board members, it seems like this year is getting off to a bang. I missed the first meeting which I regret due to a VA called meeting and then we had snow. But I just wanted to take a moment and welcome Mrs. Lure back for another round with us and to welcome Mrs. Irons and I'm really looking forward to working with you in a different aspect of education. And I'm if there's anything the education association can do to help you, you just need to let me know. Thank you. Thank you. At this time, we'll close public comments and we'll move into our first action item, which is the consent agenda. Board members, for your review and the consent agenda are the
004minutes from January 28th of 2026, some field trips, the personnel listing, and we do need um one motion for the approval of those three items. I move to accept the consent agenda as presented. >> Thank you, Miss Lur. Do we have a second? >> Second. >> Thank you, Miss Burggoyne. Any questions or comments from board members? Hearing none. All those in favor of passing tonight's consent agenda, please say yes. Yes. All those opposed say no. Motion passes 5. We're a little light on action items tonight. Usually we have a few here. Um but we do not have any further action items this evening which moves us into information items. We have um a couple of things there beginning with a presentation by Becky Ford on our spring musicals. Some of our, you know, most favorite
005time of the year. Yeah. favorite times of the year and I'm really glad to be sharing it with you all. Uh I wanted to first start with musicals that have actually already happened. We had two fall/winter musicals uh that I saw many of you guys at and I wanted to highlight their success. Uh we started with Elf Jr. at Monavido Middle School. Um, and one of my favorite moments was that they had some costume contests every night. So, they asked folks to come up dressed as Santa or dressed as their favorite elf character and it was really great to see that. Um, so that was really a highlight. Uh, we followed with Frozen at Spotswood High School and uh, it was just a beautiful production. The scenery was amazing and my favorite part was when
006the surprise snow happened at the end. Um, I was not prepared for that. So, I I I had soap bubbles in my hair. Um, but the kids just really found it magical. It was really wonderful. And sometimes those happen in the fall just due to scheduling. Um, so that was Monovide's uh scheduling choice. You might see these blue posters around your building or online. So, I encourage you to share them if you see it on our social media. Uh, the digital version does have some links so that our community members can buy tickets. Um, some of these shows do sell out, so I encourage you to look that up, especially for our two shows that are this upcoming weekend. So, starting up, we've got Broadway High School doing The Sound of Music. This begins this
007Thursday. Wait, yes, this Thursday. I thought I lost a week there for a second. Um, this is a classic tale with the Von Trap family, uh, coming together with the community and just really beloved musical numbers. um they've been working so hard uh both this school and the next school to fight against the weather and get everything ready. So I'm really excited to see this. I hope that you all are able to come out. It's just such a classic. At East Rockingham, we've got Susicle the Musical, which is just um colorful and fantastical that the students are really engaging in creativity and engaging the younger audience. So Susicle is a really wonderful one to go to if you have not seen it. Um, it's all about uh personal integrity and learning who you are as
008a person. And so we're encouraging that in all of our students. >> Uh we have a week off and then followed up by Spotswood High School uh who is doing anything goes. This is a comedy set on a cruise ship. Um and so there's lots of mistaken identities and some comedic elements that are helping the kids get into uh some further acting skills. uh than you might normally see at the high school level. Um and they are again using the digital production. So, you're going to get to see what we can do with a projector and doing some backdrops. We then have a middle school performance of Dare to Dream Jr. and I'm really excited. I've actually never seen this production before. Um what it is is a medley of Disney highlights. So, you're going
009to follow a team who have been hired on as Disney uh creators and they are on the job training. And so, you're going to hear songs from different Disney movies um put together into one. And so, you're going to hear things from Princess and Frog and Coco and KTO and more. We have The Little Mermaid at uh TA and that one is always fun because if you think about the creativity it takes for students to imagine that they're under the sea but on a stage and so you're going to see lots of fun elements that help us to immerse ourselves and picture that we might be swimming or floating instead. Um lots of talent, lots of dancing at JFrank Hillyard. We've got Alice in Wonderland Jr. Uh they have been working hard, lots of set
010creation, um getting everybody in character because this is such a well-known one that everybody really wants to make sure they get their characters right. And finally, at Elton Middle School, we've got the Spongebob musical. Um again, going into the silly, we're engaging with our younger audiences and we're talking about community. Um who we are as people and how we can support each other. And I want to say these are fun. Yes. And they're fun to put on and they're fun to watch. But musical is about more than that. Students who engage in musicals form teams. They form collaborative groups that rely on each person doing their job. And it's not just the ones on stage, but the ones backstage, the people who are selling tickets and the people who are making costumes and the people
011who are doing the backstage lighting. All of these different people have to come together. Um, it provides resilience. It provides students an opportunity to push themselves because it is not easy. It is a high stress situation and we make it look easy and that's what the fun part is. Um but there's a lot of hard work and so these students are engaging all of the five C's every single day. We want to celebrate these students. Um we encourage you to go we encourage you to find the students in your communities who are going to these high levels of excellence both at the middle school and high school levels. Um, I saw we have a couple musical members here in the audience today who I know have been working really hard and so we want to
012encourage them to continue their hard work um in their creative exploits because it can go so very far. Uh, we have a former employee of Rockingham County who's coming back to help us with our professional development in February who is currently performing as part of the cast of six on Broadway. Um, and she was a teacher here in Rockingham County and now she's playing the drum set on stage on Broadway. And so we want our kids to see that they can take these pathways and they can go so far with what they're doing. It's not just for fun, although it is um but it can have long lasting impacts on them. So we want to thank you for your support. We want to thank you um for everything that you do for the arts and
013we look forward to seeing you there. If you have not responded to the ticket thing, make sure you do that. Um we'd love to provide you with some tickets to come. Do you all have any questions for me? just that I'm looking forward to it and Miss Irons, this is like the best perk of being a schoolboard member is to take advantage of it. I'm I'm very excited for it. So, thank you. >> Well, thank you so much. I would echo that. This is a wonderful season. >> Yeah. >> Thank you, Miss Ford. >> Next on our information items, Justin Moyers, chief financial and operations officer. He is coming up to present the revenue for the operating fund for the fiscal year 2026 27 based on the governor's budget dated December 2025. >> It's a
014mouthful. Chair Hurst, members of the board, Dr. Schiff, thank you for having me this evening. Um, as we talked about last time, we went over our um requests for the budget result for all the expenditures for the last uh for the next fiscal year. Tonight I want to go over with you the proposed revenue um and estimates that we have to date. So the first thing I want to draw your attention to are number one, this was done in December. So the state revenue is based off the governor's proposed budget. That number will change in the next month as the legislature meets and um decides where they want resources to go. So this number could go up or down. The next thing I want to point out to your attention are the two items in
015red. The first is the average daily membership, which is how many students that the state um pays for us. This number directly impacts how many kids or how much money we're going to get in the budget. So, as of now, for next year's budget, we're estimating 11,268 students. Um, as we have better numbers this spring, I'll decide whether or not that is a good number or whether or not we need to raise it or lower it. We don't think we're going to hit that mark. um as of today or yeah as of today we were at like 11,147. So we do go up from year to year but we are actually we've lost about 40 students from September of this year. So that's a number I'm keeping very close eye on. The second number that
016you'll see that directly impacts how much money we get from the state is the composite index. That is a number that's generated every two years from the state. It's based on a variety of economic factors. Um, and it basically ranks us with other localities in the state on what our affordability is to pay for public education. Our number in the last two fiscal years has been 43.49% which means the state said that we could cover 43.49% of estimated um expenditures. The next two years it will be 38.51% which means we will be getting more state money um to cover our cost. So now I'll start going through some of the line items. The top is just some miscellaneous income that we receive from a variety of different sources at this point. That number is flat.
017We're not expecting any major changes there. Now, we're going to get into the state revenue. There's lots of different categories the state gives us money. I'll just highlight a couple of them to talk about the large increases. The first is basic aid, which is an over $10 million increase from last year to this year. That change is all because of ADM and the composite index. The other reason for the large increase in state revenue is the state did rebenchmarking. And what rebenchmarking is, it's how they estimate what a teacher or all the positions that they fund cost, salary, and benefits. The state conducted this rebenchmarking in the last fiscal year and have determined those costs have gone up. And so therefore, every position that they pay for us, we've got we've got an increase on
018that. sales tax has gone up some. And then if you go about halfway down the page, at risk funds, that's been an increase over $2 million from last fiscal year to this fiscal year. And the state's really starting to earmark more money in that category. If we go to the next page, um the other one one of the other large increases in is in BPI Virginia preschool initiative and that's money that we spend on our um BPI classes, our our four-year-old preschool classes that we have in our buildings. Then you'll we'll come down to the federal revenue. We estimate that's really going to remain flat in the next fiscal year. The only change as of now that we're going to see is that our title one money is up slightly. So that's an increase of
019$225,000. Then the last piece of our revenue budget is our local share of education. At this point in talks with the county, the only change that we will notice from last year to this year is last year they gave us $500,000 of one-time funds. That was not money that was recurring to come to us. And so I've shown that as a reduction in revenue from them at this point. So in total when you get to the bottom our total revenue projected at this point is 22 22757,052 and that's an increase of $13.6 million from the previous year. Um the next time that I speak with you we will go over more in depth on what that looks like that revenue and then our also then our increase in expenditures and what we can expect. That
020is the largest growth we've had in a long time. But I will also caution you that once we do raises and we have significant health insurance increase that we talked about on the employer side, it goes very quickly. So, um we'll have lots more discussions, but but this has been good news. Um once we hear from the legislature and see what um the next governor wants to do, we'll have a better idea of of making this final. So, I'd be happy to answer any questions. >> Board members, do you have any questions for Justin? Sounds like we're all set. I will say, you know, this is my third time working through a budget and I have a little bit of whiplash, right? Because the first the first two years it felt like we were trying
021to cut cut cut and now we have um a surplus but or it seems like but it's not really. I think that's the important thing is um like you said the insurance um wanting to cover more of the insurance that's coming and and raises is going to eat up a lot of that. So >> and you so you all have definitely areas that you will be able to put money that you want but there's obviously obvious always more needs than there is resources, right? So that'll be big decisions to be able to make in the next couple months. >> I do have a quick question but I don't think it was on your slide and if you don't know it offhand it's okay. I think you you showed this year and next year the Medicaid
022reimbursement was like 585,000. Is that way up? >> It's up from where it was a couple years ago. So we a couple years ago we were probably around 450 500. We are able to bill more than we were in the past. Um the biggest difference is before we could only bill for certain things if they were in an IEP. Now we're able to build if we provide the service even if the IP doesn't call for it which has allowed us to build more for nursing right and and speech and some other areas. Honestly 585 may be a number I'm going to increase before the budget's complete but I don't know those estimates yet until we get some stuff from the state. So that's been really uh beneficial. We have like one thing we did this
023year since we have gotten additional Medicaid money is we hired two additional float nurses to help fill in in all the clinics to provide our nurses with more subs when needed and to also help them with their administrative task so that they could, you know, I've got 60 kids I got to see today. I can focus on this while the float nurse takes care of my my clinic for the day so I can get caught up on paperwork to be honest. Um so we're we're trying to put some of the money back into the programs um to help. But yeah, so that's it's been a good thing for us. >> Okay. Thank you. >> I have a clarifying question. Sure. >> Um, so according to what I'm seeing here, we are at 202 roughly million
024dollars on our revenue. And we flip the page and we go to our requests and we're at 28 million. >> Yes. >> On the request. So we do still have some cutting to do >> from the request. Absolutely. Yes. >> Don't get too comfortable, Miss Hurst. We've still we there will be you we still get to have the fun of cutting, right? >> Yeah, >> indeed. There because there's a lot in this binder and not enough to cover. >> There's always great things that we can't find. >> It's all great things. We just can't >> can't do it all. >> I just want to make sure we're clear. We're talking about um not adding some things, right? So, we're not actually That's true. >> cutting current positions or current >> programs. There were a number
025of requests that we received from principles and division leaders saying we would like to hire you know these types of employees for whatever categories of work or you know to purchase you know more buses or whatever. So that the the discussion then among the board is like what do we say no to right so but so I don't want people to get alarmed and think we're going to cut programs. >> Thank you for clarifying. I just want to make sure that's clear that we're not cutting programs >> and we haven't really cut programs in the past. >> Right. >> Correct. >> I mean like >> and we we are >> we're good >> we are working hard too. So this is recurring money from the state. Right. So this isn't one time money >> but
026because we have had such a windfall we really want to be good stewards about what this year looks like and also what next year looks like. And so we we don't want to get all this money in one year and then next year be broke because well we've already spent it on recurring items. So we're going to be very diligent on that and have a lot of conversations with you all on what we can do that might be recurring and maybe some stuff that's one time knowing that this money will be freed up again next year. >> I just want to make it clear that we're not like flush with cash and we can do everything that >> it is. It is better have that opportunity. >> Yeah. It it does add up quickly. >>
027Flush, right? Thank you. >> Yep. You're welcome. Is that it? >> I think that's it. Awesome. Thank you, Mr. Moyers. >> Our next information item is brought by Carrie Gray, who's our supervisor of career and technical education. She is going to provide an overview of CTE in Brackenham County, including some program updates. Thank you for being here. Thank you for the opportunity to members. Um, February is career and technical education month. So, I hope that you have the opportunity um when you're invited this month to celebrate with some of our programs. I think each week is taken by a different CT organization to celebrate and there's lots of events going on February early February June is very busy for teachers. I have trained on this. All right, looks like I can figure it out. Um,
028and so we have over 50 CTE teachers. Um, and we have really amazing teachers in RCPS and they are dedicated to providing opportunities and high quality learning and engagement for their students. Um, we have over 4,000 students and that's a little misleading because when I say students, it's not necessarily individual students in our CT program. That one student may be taking multiple courses and and for state reporting purposes, we count those as multiple students. So, um, some of those students are duplicated, but our enrollment is over 4,000 students in CTE and Rockham County. um and they have a variety of career interests and um our progression of courses leads them to have employable skills upon graduating if they're entering the workforce. And we have diverse programs. We have programs in all of our development high
029schools at MTC and at Rockingham Academy. And with the addition of our military science program, working county will offer all available CTE programs um in the Commonwealth of Virginia. So that is really exciting to me that we are offering all of the opportunities available to our students um to learn skills and enter careers. Our CTSOs, which is career and technical student organizations, are very very active. Um, they're intracurricular, meaning that if students are enrolled in any of our CTE programs, that student is also able to participate in the CTSO or the club aspect um of that CTE program. There's lots of leadership, um, career skill development, um, life skills. Our teachers do an amazing job at getting students involved. Um, but it is a core part of our CT offerings that students be able to
030have these opportunities and they travel locally, they travel statewide, and they travel nationally nationwide um nationally to compete and to be involved in leadership development opportunities. Um, and our so there I mentioned there are a lot of opportunities for our teachers to get students involved and for our students to be involved. And so just as we're intentional and instructional decisions that we make in our classroom, I ask teachers to be intentional about the opportunities and the involvement that they're offering to our students. Um, and we have a program goal and a guidance statement that I've asked teachers to kind of be their driving force. Um and our program aligns with our division goal that students are employed and listed are enrolled in further education upon graduation. Um and then our guidance statement is that we're
031creating pathways for student success high with high quality teaching and learning and that our courses equip students with the knowledge and skills to succeed in their next step. So, as we're making decisions about new courses, what um CTE program we're going to take students to, we're spending those valuable resources. Is it helping us toward our program goal? And is it leading us towards um our guided statement? Every year we get an annual um on progress report from the state. Um it's sort of like the so performance reports that you get in your core content classes. Um and we're performing really well on most of those standards. And we're 96% of our completers being students that have taken courses that are identified um as kind of leveling skills up like they take the intro course and
032then they take the level two course. Um, so students that have completed that sequence, 96% of them are earning an industry credential, meaning that they have a credential that shows that they're ready to enter the workforce in that area. Um, and so that's showing that we're aligned with industry needs and that our students are performing on a high academic level. Um, although we're performing well without vision, we're going nowhere. Um so we have identified focus areas um for this school year and one of those is to continue to align our programs with local industry and community needs. All of our CTE program areas are leading with um their um meeting with industry and with local parents to determine if we're teaching the courses that are needed. um are red we developing the skills that that
033employers want to see in the workplace in our classroom. And so during that February 17 professional development day, they will be meeting um with those local partners. We want to continue to offer pathway to high wage high careers. So students want to enter the workforce upon graduation, they are prepared to enter this high wage high careers. And then something we've been working really hard on is aligning the four-year path. So when students start in their CTE program, they're walking into an introductory course where they can learn about different careers in that area and then have a skill progression throughout all four years um of whichever more specific area they've chosen. Um the one thing that we're not performing well for several years on our annual um program report is our non-traditional enrollment. Um for example,
034what the state does is it looks at careers and what um gender is typically represented the most in that career. And an easy example is welding because overwhelmingly men are represented more than women in in the welding career. And so they're they're looking at our competitors that are females that are going into our ad courses or NT saying you're not graduating enough females in this area. And so that's a lot of marketing um on our part just to make sure that non-traditional students can see themselves in any career that they might want to go into. So we continue in um in our high schools and also with MTC to try to market those programs and and allow students to see themselves in any career that they might be interested in. And then there's um um
035strengthen computer science pathways and current technical education. There's a demand there and that's an area where we see that we can continue to add more courses and have improvement. Workbased learning is a really important part of CTE. It's changed a lot over the past year and the new implementation manual just came out before winter break. So, we're kind of behind um schedule and rolling workbased learning out this year, but Jud did a really good job of being ready to go as soon as we got that implementation manual on how we would be able to enroll students. I did highlight some changes to that program on that slide um that I'm happy to ask any or answer any questions about the types of work learning experiences that we have available for students have changed and that's
036because of um what's changed at the state level and just some of our successes throughout the years as students that are involved in workace um learning and gone on to make careers in these areas and a lot of our um teachers that come back to teach in Rockingham County were involved in our teachers for tomorrow program and that is part of our work. So the students that created a book in child development um some of our future. >> All right and we appreciate all of your support all of your help. I feel like anytime um I ask for your I have it from from the school board and um that is what really helps our students and teachers and programs. Do you have any questions? >> Absolutely. >> I'm just curious to go back to
037the example you gave about >> I don't know that our micro >> I think mine stopped >> they're stopped mine is not is her microphone. >> Okay. Well, anyway, you can hear me. So, >> but yours is not on >> red light. >> There you go. >> Red means go. >> I don't know why. >> Yes. Red means go. >> Okay. Anyway, welding is mostly men and state identifies that we aren't holding. Is there is there a ding for that the state level? Is it just like an ideal that we want to try to get more? Are we are we is there like a penalty for not enrolling in that I just have to so not like financially or yeah just just on the report and I don't even think that report is publicized I
038think share with instructional staff is appropriate but we just have to a plan I'll bring to you probably in about a month our Perkins plan um and a piece of that will spec specifically be tied to how we um plan to raise nontraditional employment >> um maybe explain the audit process just super quick in a nutshell >> the audit like because I think that's the piece we're missing here that that's where you're getting ded in your audit right >> if if we had an so are you talking about like Perkins political needs assessment. >> I'm talking about like you said we got ded because we didn't have enough um females and we it comes out in the audit process. Correct. >> Um it comes out in our state reporting as we're reporting our who our
039competitors are. Um and we also part of that is reporting gender demographic information. >> So it's an annual report. Yeah, >> there's some semianual and there's some reports. That's why I was asking what federal funds come lots of different. So, it is something it's something that a lot of school divisions struggle with and I don't use that as an excuse. It's something we continue to work on. Um, but I don't know that we're not >> I don't know that we're not doing Yeah. are well that's good >> I have to continue to try to make sure >> yeah to everyone Yeah, >> enjoy your final. >> I'm sorry. >> It just looks like smoke. It's not smoke, right? Is it just us? Our final information item tonight are the school board norms which are new
040to this school board. Uh we met with legal counsel making sure um they were as they should be and then um we now are presenting these as a draft to the school board. This is just for public information, but really it summarizes the school board's operating norms and reflects um best practices for governance. Um and really it's just like an agreement of how we as board members are going to operate as a board. And so um here is your here's your draft for your review. Uh does anybody have any questions or comments? I would like to see um us background check this members go through a background check for board members once they're board members. Do you have any followup thoughts about that? I think you brought that up. >> I don't remember it coming
041up. children, >> but we don't background checks that >> Sorry. Go ahead. >> But we don't like parents that come in to volunteer or things like that. We don't background check them. I'm not a background check obviously. I mean, >> well, yeah, >> for for us, but I'm just saying like not everyone that comes into the school has a background check. >> I guess I would think they would election process. I don't think that's true. >> I I think we require our employees and we are employees of the county and it's an easy thing to do to reassure the public that we are who we say we are. And um I think we all reassurance. Um probably double check things. I will say that um my experience has been there's definitely some gray area with
042being a schoolboard member and like teachers have been like, "Oh, you're on the school board. I can leave you with kids." And then when I got my background check because I've had to have one to be the school bus driver. Um that's when I realized, oh wait, yeah, that makes sense now. So either we need to say we're going to get our background checks and we're going to do things to be left in supervisory position with children or we need to make it very clear that we're not to be left alone in the school building because like when you do have parent volunteers you typically don't leave them alone with children. Uh but I don't know that teachers understand that that oh we're we're we're employees we're we're schoolboard members. We have but we haven't
043done our background checks. I just don't think that's something that clicks. So either or we need to be clear one way or the other. >> Totally fine with that. I'm a former classroom teacher. I've been background check so that parents don't have a badge. that allow us to walk around school and be authority and I think I'll I'll make a phone call. >> All right, board members, that brings us to committee reports, which I do think has a committee report. >> I do, and I want to thank Chris Grant for for writing my committee report for me. Um uh so we had a uh we I'm on the Shannidoa Valley regional regional special ed program committee. Um and let me explain a little bit what that is first. The Shannidoa Valley regional special ed program
044met today with a number of our uh of other participating school divisions. Participants were Dr. Shifflet, Justin Moyers, Chris Branch, and myself. We were supporting or we support surrounding school divisions and advocate for RCPS special education programs. SVP is a way for school divisions to pull their resources together for unique special education programs. We share ideas and partner for services that can be easier to secure as a group rather than they are rather than individually. Services discussed include hearing, vision, occupational therapy, physical therapy, speech, and behavior support. RCPS receives support from SVRP in many of these areas. It's a it's a it's a reminder that collaborating with other school divisions helps us support success success for all students. And today we just kind of talked about budgets and we actually had to table some stuff
045and come up with another meeting um in the next couple of weeks to kind of finalize what we're going to request for the u the committee itself's budget. So that's where we are. So thank you for letting me report on that. Any questions on on Thank you. And thank you thank you for the for for being there. Uh it's a whole lot of if if the board member isn't there to vote, then we we don't have a vote. And one one division definitely had a problem today because they didn't have a a board member there. But that doesn't mean that I know anything. So I was constantly going, "Hey, does this affect us?" So thanks to our teams that supported me through that. So okay, now I'm now done. >> Good work. >> All right,
046that brings us into superintendent comments for this evening. So, um, first of all, I'd like to say for those people who like to keep score, so to speak, this is the first all female school board in the history of Rocky County Public Schools. Sometime was talking earlier about folks in welding. So, like to welding, there's also the man for I thought that was interesting. MS and I spent some time the other day. I wasn't sure that that was true like I wanted to know that for myself we went back and look at the history of the various school board configurations and so I can say certainly that is so congratulations to so also want to say congratulations to Miss Angela she is a >> miss I should just go with that >> I used to
047go to church with Very good. >> She was the winner of our employee birth attendance for the month of January and Miss O as I will call her is a alternative education teacher turn high school and I'll be substituting for her here in the coming weeks. So just wanted to say congratulations to her. Also, I want to say huge thanks to our transportation department, maintenance department, custodians, and all of our school administrators for the snow removal that we received in the weekend of January 24th and 25th. Um, it's um I I did help a little bit in that process as well. And I can say my so many years on Earth, I've never moved anything like that before. I was quite interested. We found the best solution there was to just break it in chunks
048and just pick up chunks of ice and toss it to the side. And I can tell you that I am looking forward to the heat rate that's going to be tomorrow with projected temperatures of 55 degrees. And that's going to feel really really nice out after all these cold days. Lastly, I would like to ask board members next Wednesday, we are going to, I believe, have a work session to review our comprehensive plan and talk about some budget based on the comprehensive plan and just requesting that if you have some time between now and then to to look at the comprehensive plan. So, we're ready to dive in at the meeting. Thank you. >> Thank you, Dr. Shifflet. That moves us into other business which our school board highlights questions and comments and we'll begin
049this evening. Um I'm not even sure where to begin because we've missed some time but it's it's an honor to be back with you all again. I am very much looking forward to musical season. Uh I've already got my tickets secured and I suggest everyone get their tickets for musical. Uh it's it's a great time and it's a really great opportunity for our for Rockingham County to showcase our students. So um absolutely try to attend um as many as you can. You won't regret it. Uh in fact, I found myself at Mont Video several weeks ago and they So they're not doing they already did Elf, right? Elf. Um, so they're not doing another musical, but they do have a theater arts class and that class performed um a a cute little play uh that
050I was able to see and the way the way they were managing that was pretty cool. Um, and it was just like a nice little nice little for musical season. And also happy CTSO or career technical education month. I'm looking forward to So, lots of great opportunities with that. So, thank you. >> Thank you, Miss Laur. I'm just excited to be in musical season again. I can't believe it's that time of year again. And it feels like January was just a blur. I didn't really even realize we were in February. And not only are we in February, it's the nth. I'm like, if I don't wear my red for Valentine's today, I'm gonna be late. So, anyways, um it's just it's upon us. So, I'm excited to see all the different musicals again this year
051and I'm sure they will not think that's all I have for tonight. Thank you, Miss Cave, Missy. I don't know that this thing is even working, but um I do have a couple things. I did want to say thank you to Dr. shiplet for going ahead and cancelling Monday and Tuesday ahead of time. Um I have seen nothing but good positive feedback about that and had just people just really appreciative of that. Obviously we did not expect to have the whole week off but >> you mean during the snow? >> During the snowstorm. Yes. >> Not now. During >> however my children didn't have enough of a snow week, so they got flu a and had to extra days off. So, um, we had perfect attendance up until that and so, um, that was a
052real bummer. But anyway, um, I do I do want to address our our very first official meeting here, um, school board appreciation. I appreciate everyone up here. I was here and I became violently ill and every single uh, one of these ladies up here, um, thank goodness Dr. definitely didn't come into the women's room, but everyone in here was in the bathroom trying to help me. And Amy Painter and Donna Abernathy, those poor ladies, I just they were very helpful and were like my standard moms for that. So, um we've we've been through it recently. The January has not been a good month for us. Um, but we are over the sickness and and moving forward. But I do appreciate everyone up here who really checked in on me and offered to bring me things
053and all the all the fun stuff. But um, the other thing I wanted to um, just publicly bring up was um, we for so long in budget season we kind of neglect um, Mr. Sour's department in transportation. And so, uh, we had talked about this at a work session recently, but kind of a state of transportation and just how old are our buses, how, um, how many buses are being run every day. I just kind of want a really good overview of, you know, we've got a bus that's from, you know, that's 20 years old. I mean, I'm looking at my own vehicle about to turn over 100,000 miles going, what what is the state of our buses and how many times are they being run? um just you know the an overview of transportation
054would be awesome. That way we can make better decisions when we're looking at funding and I know how much buses cost and that's that's something we've neglected for a long time. So that's just something that's a priority for me. Something that affects most of our kids is riding the bus whether it's to a field trip or to and from school every day. Um I heard lots of lots of student complaints but anyway I'm looking forward to that. Mr. hours. Thank you. >> He's excited. Yeah, he's excited. >> Do you know what our oldest bus How old our oldest bus is? >> 1994. >> Okay. >> Wow. >> And it's still operating every day. >> Spare bus. We have a few of those that are spare buses at a couple schools. >> Okay. For those of
055you that couldn't hear that number, 1994, >> one of our oldest. Um, and just so you know, we'll we'll add that to one of our upcoming agendas. Um, State of the Union, State of Transportation. >> The State of Transportation, we'll call it. >> All right. Thank you, Miss Bo. Miss Iron, you're up. Um, I echo the comments of everybody else. We're excited about musicals. As a former Rocket M county choir director who put on musicals, I 100% understand how much work goes into it, how collaborative it is. um the value of it for not only the students but for the community. And so I'm I'm looking forward to getting as many as I possibly can. Unfortunately, won't be able to do all of them. So hopefully as a team we can all show up and
056make sure we cover our bases there. Um I'm I just wanted to update everybody. I've been just taking tour after tour after tour of schools and um meeting with different people from all levels just trying to get um a baseline understanding of of where we are from my own um perspective. And so um I'm really enjoying being in schools. The energy is fantastic. I think schools are some of the best most positive places to be in the world. And so if you're ever having a bad day, go go check out an elementary school or high school and see all the kids learning. It's fantastic. Um so I'm just really enjoying the so far and thank thankful for all the invitations of people um inviting me in to see today. I got to participate uh on
057a zoom call with at TA um where they were we were discussing a Supreme Court ruling with um someone an expert online and so it's really interesting is about free speech and what that means for students and um timely conversation and it's really cool to see the students asking engaging conversations and questions. So, um yeah, I'm happy to be here. >> Thank you board members. Um I don't have anything further for tonight. I do want to say thank you all for coming out for tonight's meeting. Thank you to those of you who are attending in person out. Um if there is nothing further at this time, this meeting is Thank you all for coming.