001e e e all right we're going to we're going to from our recess I move to return to open meeting Ive to certify to the best of each mled that one only matters law Exempted from the open meeting requirements under the Virginia Freedom of Information Act were discussed in the closed meeting to cic appes and two only such matters as were identified in the motion by the Mee wased were heard discussed or considered by the board thank you I have a second Miss burin Miss C Miss Hurst yes Miss lore yes cross right welcome tonight meeting hadu earlier broke din session public session I want to thank all the parents and students tonight that taking time to come out do our Awards tonight all of this tonight at this time have a moment of silence
002right at this time we'll do the plance e first thing first thing on the agenda tonight Kelly good evening chairman cross sorry good evening chairman cross Schoolboard members and superintendent Dr shifflet welcome to East Rockingham High School uh thank you for joining us for dinner that was U much appreciated uh I know you have a long agenda we're going to jump into some character count students uh first I like to call down is Alexander Crystle you come on down the leadership team at East Rockingham High School chose senior Alexander Crystal as a deserving student for the Britney lamb Kelly cogsdale character counts award Miss Rebecca Roberts describes Alex as an awesome student who is always humble and kind he notice his willingness to push his limits even if it means placing himself in situations that
003are sometimes uncomfortable for him Miss allster describes Alex as a quiet and amazing student in short Alex is not one to Crave the spotlight but he is one to treat all students and adults erhs with respect no matter what stressors may be weighing on him at the time congratulations Alex now i' like to call down Aaliyah McNair got our team the leadership team at East Rockingham High School chose senior Ayah be as a dis serving student for the Britney lamb Kelly Coale character csil award Miss mathi describes Aaliyah as a student and athlete who demonstrates outstanding character no matter where she is or who who is watching she is someone who is respected by her peers and she effectively encourages other to change for the better Coach Keys add she's not only respected by her
004peers but also by all the teachers staff and administrators at erhs East Rock is a better place thanks to the consistently positive daily presence of Ayah McNair the leadership team at East Rockingham High School would like to present the volunteer of the Year award to miss Terry Jones Miss Jones please come forward she has served the last 12 years as an active member of the rhs booster club her efforts throughout the years are much appreciated by student students athletes and staff rock is a better place thanks to Miss Jones always present joy and positivity when interacting with her one can not help but smile due to her everpresent smile thank you again miss Terry Jones right on Q right next on this tonight is going be River Elementary School principal Miss Blair Harper good evening
005chairman cross of the board and Dr shifflet and everyone gathered this evening um we'd like to recognize two of our fifth grade students this evening um with the honor of the Britney lamb Kelly cogsdale character CS Awards um these were nominated by our fourth and fifth grade teams and then voted on by the riverb staff and is truly representative of the wonderful um young citizens that we have here in our building so we're going to get started with Mr Bryce Williams BR if you come forward all right while he's walking down I'm going to share a few things Bryce is always doing the right thing he's a great role model for his peers he is respectful and well-mannered individual he is a gentle and kindhearted person as a student he always puts forth his best
006and remains respectful and trustworthy while setting a good example Bry is a caring and sweet young man he always speaks to you in the hall and around the school even when he is with other students he's just an allaround great kid with a big heart conr rul thank you Miss Smith now if I could have cassid join us and here are some words that Naya's teachers have to say about her I taught Naya and saw her Great allaround Character the whole year I had her she works hard she's responsible and she's respectful she actively sets a good example leading with her quiet calm demeanor Naya is such a sweet girl and always tries her best to be a good Riverbend citizen she is an exemplary student who is kind to all thank you Naya we
007can personally speak to that they get out of the car with a big smile and warm welcome each morning when they get out and always have a friendly thing to say and genuinely say back I'm good how are you um and we appreciate their friendly nature and Leadership that they bring to River at this time we'd like to recognize our Riverbend volunteers of the year um and I believe that is represented today by our East Rock volleyball team if you all don't mind standing as well as MERS the East Rock Baseball team and if there are any other student athletes in the building today if you would see be recognized very good thank you so last year we partnered with East rockium High School to promote the importance of School attendance playing on the common
008workout and exercise Mantra never miss a Monday nearly every Monday morning of the school year students from a sports team or club would join us over at Riverbend to greet and cheer on our students at the Bus Loop and Car drop offline as students arrived dressed in their uniforms or Club gear and with one student being brave enough to dress as our mascot Carl the cat Cardinal they created such a positive fun and enthusiastic welcome to the week our Cardinals look up to these evil and we appreciate the time they gave to support us we made significant Improvement in the area of chronic absenteeism last year and this partnership definitely played a big part thank you to the members of the football cheer volleyball boys and girls basketball softball track cross country baseball girl soccer
009boys and girls tennis teams as the FB FFA and sources of strength clubs for your time also thank you to the East Rock Administration and athletic department including mly Smith along with Riverbend teacher Misty shifflet and eastrock parent um who helped to coordinate this effort thank you all for being excellent role models for our Cardinals thank you Miss Harper I also want to say thank you all the East Rock students that go over to River B and greet the students in the morning times I've seen a lot that happen a lot on social media and this is really a positive thing you guys are doing and bringing a lot of good cheer and positivity to our students next door so thank you guys so much for being great leaders than for all next on our
010list tonight is principal of South River Elementary School Mr Kenny Boyers or I should say the Kenny good evening excuse me thank you chair cross um members of the Rockingham County School Board Dr ship hey we're here rocking our South River Rangers brand new gear for the year uh where we honor the 30 years one thing that we're not taking for granted uh is that uh South River open stores 30 years ago in 1994 and we wanted that reflected and so they used to be the rangers they used to be the Rapids now they're the Rangers so we've been riding the Rapids for 30 years as the South River Rangers and all of our students got a shirt and staff and so that's uh that's great for our school spirit we have some young students
011we're going to recognize this evening and Miss beagle is going to do the honors for the students and then I'll recognize the volunteer but uh thank you for providing us with this platform where we can uh showcas exceptional character and role modeling among our uh fifth grade students good evening the first student we want to recognize is Logan Roberts Mrs sailor Logan's fifth grade teacher has the following to say of Logan Logan is the type of young man who instantly makes a wonderful first impression on anyone he meets when Logan's name is mentioned POS Praises always follow Logan demonstrates remarkable examples of the pillars of character daily he has a love for helping others goes out of his way to make his classroom a better place and is a natural born leader friends gravitate towards
012the person Logan is as he spreads his light wherever he goes and encourages others to do the same just this year Logan has been recognized by his peers during a special morning meeting segment where he was chosen as a strong representative for trustor he is led by example as class CEO also known as role model of the week and he was specifically chosen to be a morning helper for a first grade first grader needing some extra care and support Logan continues to be a young man of integrity always looking for ways to make himself and others around him better and is so deserving of this honorable recognition congratulations Logan our second student we'd like to recognize this evening is Kennedy Tate Miss anel Kennedy's fifth grade teacher has the following to share about Kennedy today
013we proudly celebrate Kennedy as the recipient of the character counsil award Kennedy is a true reflection of all of the characters of Count's pillars she consistently goes above and beyond to support others showing genuine care and kindness to everyone around her Kennedy is a person you can always rely on to do what's right and her sense of fairness and cooperation enriches our classroom Community he truly embodies the values this award stands for and it's an honor to recognize her this evening congratulations Kennedy thank you Miss beagle at this time I would like to ask Mrs Jan Swanson from The Grotto Community to come forward I've known Jan for two years but many of you have known her for a lot longer than that and so I'm going to read a testimony written by Miss Courtney
014Jud our prek teacher okay okay to cry all right about 13 years ago my former principal Mark keer came to me and said I have a friend uh who had extra love to give and you have lots of prek kids who need to be loved on could she volunteer for you and since then miss Jan has been a part of our prek family she comes every week and works with individuals and small groups she lends a hand on field trips and special event days like field day and a day she donates clothing when needed books classroom items always brings the unconditional love that Grandma's give Jan has taken home items that needed cutting out and during Co when she couldn't come into the building she sent items in for the kids to use staff and
015students alike are so happy each day that Jan is at South River and I am humbled by her service and grateful for all the love that she shares with all of us thank you bless W this is such a great opportunity part of our meetings to recognize our children character counts and also all our volunteers and volunteer inside the school so can we give them one more round of applause tonight before we end next on our agenda tonight is the inspire Awards the Inspire award was created for rcps St cers to recognize a teacher or staff member who has impacted their life inspired their learning or made a distinct impression on their child nominations are accepted from students parents student teachers classroom volunteers and community members tonight our first on our list is Miss Katie
016Bon I'm sorry I cannot pronounce this bondon is a parent presenting to Holly Bas I'm sorry I apologize this is way out of my um I have a privilege to present this award not just as a parent but also as um hello I substit PE you a lot so I get to see teachers as teachers but I also get to see them as my son's teach and Miss bise is the best teacher out there she has the best classroom discipline as a substitute teacher you've got to you know you pick up on that where she lovingly teaches kids and encourage them to do their best and be their best selves she pours her heart into the kids she goes above and beyond to make sure the kids are learning and are having problem she does
017so much extra to make sure kids understand the concept and they can apply it in their daily lives Miss jari was there a few weeks ago where they were doing experiments from the roof I really appreciate that as a parent um thank you Miss B you are the best teacher next on our list tonight is kosha M mcalli parent presenting to Michelle schaer kindergarten feacher at M I to take a moment to recognize M schaer for her dedication and support in making my son's transition from fre to kindergarten a smooth and joyful experience Miss Sheffer goes above and beyond for her students and she always greets every everyone with a smile she treats all of her students equally and she makes learning fun for her students my son loves going to school and having her
018as his teacher thank you Miss Sheffer for all that you do for my son and your students next tonight Mariah maer parent presenting to Elizabeth medow school nurse at Al Elementary hello good evening um so it's my pleasure to present this award nurs um Conor wanted to be here today but he came home with a migraine so pleas SI sorry um so nurse is absolutely amazing my son Conor has a rare genetic skin disease hosis where he doesn't sweat he had made sure the temperature of the classrooms have been cold enough for him and where they were when they were too hot she moved the classroom to another room the one time Connor overheated nurse Liz did not hesitate to take take care of Connor she covered him in ice packs and everything could to
019cool them off when all else failed she called the rescue squad that day she called and text several times to check on Conor and made sure that he had everything he needed nurse nurse goodness is more than just a nurse at Elon Elementary she's like a second mother to all the students she deeply cares for all the students no matter what is going on her kind and nurturing attitude shows through everything she does she cares for all the students as if they were her own children thank you for everything you have done and continue to do give one more round Applause to these teachers and nurses we're going to take a f minute recess break for all those parents or kids that would like to leave at this time and then we're going to go
020boards e e e all right thank you and next on arenda tonight is to go into board member highlights and tonight I'm going to start with board member I will apologize to everyone these are brand new mics so we're having a struggle I think if you just slightly move your head you all cannot hear anything right yeah yeah okay I'll try not to move um so for my highlights um on 911 we did a stair climb and the students from MTC law enforcement and fire rescue came out to do that with us we also had um some members from the Sheriff's Office two members from the Sheriff's Office SWAT team um we had Rockingham County fire rescue showed up um and brought two engines which was really cool and they did um the firefighters did
021the climb in their full gear but before they got there sorry so awkward not turnning my head um before they got there we had four of our students from MTC who ended up doing it in their full fire gear which really really impressed me and as I was thinking about it you know none of these kids were alive when 911 happened and I was amazed by how dedicated they were they were committed to wearing their full gear the other students were committed to just completing it I will admit I did not complete it it was it was hard and uh the students just blew me out of the water they were amazing so um I'm just so appreciative for and Jamie Police Department showed up as well we did it at bridgeforth so that was
022really cool just out of support um so I'm appreciative for all of our Public Safety Partners who came out and did that with our students I think that's such a important and good role model to have for them um but it was really cool that how dedicated our students were to being a part of that um my other highlight um last week we did a maybe yeah last week we did a viewing of um an interview with Suzanne yunin um with the author of The anxious generation and M you hosted it and it was it was a really cool event um got some really good data got to talk to some parents and staff about uh some findings from that book and so um that was just it it made me reflect on myself as
023a parent and I'm I'm grateful my kids are still young so I can try to stop doing some of those bad habits that I have um but it was it was really nice to be able to talk to talk to everybody kind of get their feedback on that and to know that so many people have read the book and really are taken that into consideration so um I appreciate Dr shifflet for facilitating all of that conversation I thought that was really awesome but that's all thank you thank you Miss bur Miss cave well she stole my true highlight so but I will say um that Bo Dickinson our social studies director he gave a little speech to our students before we started this St Clon and um I get really emotional about that kind of
024stuff and one thing that he said that really stuck with me was it's okay to get emotional when we talk about these things and I was standing there hot mess because I'm like don't make me cry when I'm getting ready to exercise you know and it's you know because it's what Ashley said none of these kids were born when this happens and you feel like not that much time has passed by there would be students this old that they weren't allowed to experience that and so um this was kind of it was put together really quickly right I mean the fact that we pulled all pull sorry pulled all of that together and that he could speak so passionately passionately to our students before doing something like that was just um it was impressive to
025me and I I appreciated it a lot um and I will say that um Ashley and I think we did a really good job but we got laed by chairman cross I don't even know how many times but in my defense I was having and I'm just getting ready to put put it in a plug for our safety director I was having a full on conversation while we were stair climbing right we were having conversation he had been trying to connect with all the board members prior to you know meeting that we're going to have in the near future and it's so hard to make everybody schedules job and um even while doing something that's so special as commemorating 911 and all the people that gave their lives that day like he was willing to
026walk with me as a board member and discuss our division and I just thought that that um it spoke really highly of him to me and so I just want to assure our community that we have done a really good job in picking a safety director um I have not only High Hopes and high expectations but I believe that he is the man for the job and so I thank you for doing that and all that you've done already um he's just quickly moving into things that I'm like wow I didn't even know you started work yet so anyway so that was awesome and I was there for the um for the fireside chat with Suzanne youngin and Jonathan ha the author of the youngest generation and that was really good and um appreciated that
027they did that and I think that our schools are already experiencing positive effects from um implementing phone free school days and to put in a plug for Rockingham County we actually released our policy a day prior to Governor yunan releasing his directive to do such you know in um instructing the schools in Virginia to do that so uh I think we are on Target and I'm really pleased with the direction and the speed that we're going in R County Miss Hurst um I just want to highlight a Lun that I went to um this past week um to Vale which is the valley Associates for Independent Living um I was not aware of this organization but I am just so thrilled that we have an organization like this they're um an organization that is all
028about promoting self-direction among people with disabilities and then also removing barriers to Independence in the community so um for individuals with disabilities this is an organization that will help advocate for you um get you peer support we off they partner with the schools and do Transition services for students who are leaving Rockingham County Public Schools but need additional support um and all around is just an incredible organization and I was glad to um be invited and take part in that lunch and hear about all the wonderful work that they're doing in our County um and in multiple counties it's really the valley truly the valley lots of counties um the other thing that they highlighted and I want to make sure I get this right they have a um the Harrisonburg Cardinals which is um
029a local and they said ranked 16th in the nation wheelchair basketball team I had no idea that we had the 16th ranked in our in our area and they have a game if you're interested on September 21 um at 6:30 pm. at or Horizon's Edge and the other thing I wanted to highlight which I'm going to let I'm really having trouble with this microphone you practically have to be on it um the other thing and this is just a a a plug for the music department um tomorrow at seven seven I think at brwater College all of our um High School marching bands are having an exhibition it's going to be really awesome and um I believe both harrisberg High School bands are also marching bands will be there so uh starts at 7 o'clock
030and I'm looking forward to attending because I love that sort of thing so encourage you to come out and support our local marching FS I did mess that bail date up it's actually September 26th THS this week this week it's Thursday Horizon's Edge basketball the the Cardinals wheelchair basketball team first community members yeah great things happen in our thank you m Miss thank you um there are great things happening in our community uh and I was I had this awesome full 360 experience this past two weeks that I kind of wanted to share with you all um I was able to uh interview the upcoming uh seventh and eighth grade officer team and help place the officer team for Elton Middle School this year and that was neat to see all the the brand new
031little um uh FFA members with some of them didn't even have their official dress yet they were very nervous to speak in front of three people um and they were just they were just beginning their journey and it was so NE to see that and then contrast it with today I was able to um my farm actually hosted um a a a group well it was the a committee the Senate and House a committees for Virginia uh uh secretary lore agriculture secretary lore put that together and had them come out to the farm and we were able to talk to to these um delegates and senators from throughout the common and kind of uh explain what a is and my my middle son who was a former FFA um State officer did a presentation and
032knocked my socks off and I'm mama you know a lot of the the um the delegates came up to me afterward and said he did a really great job and it was because of the training he had through FFA and I remember what he was like as a seventh grader and not being able to barely tie his shoes or tie his tie and and couldn't do it and the training that we do here in r in rcps is amazing and I'm just so in a for all the people who contribute to our children and I am very appreciative to them and it's across the board it's not just FFA and I did I was able to have a conversation with one of the delegates about that um all of our kids need to be involved
033in something because I I've been on the board and I think you guys are starting to see when students come to us for discipline issues when we ask them what do you do in school they usually say nothing I don't do anything I don't enjoy anything at school they all need to be involved in school they all need to find something they're passionate about in school and we as parents and community members really need to Foster that and I was also able to attend these sources of strength training at Broadway High School in these past two weeks where they do just that they work with the community they work with the students to help them and it's different it's all I mean I knew a bunch of the students but there were some that were
034from places that I don't necessarily see and that's the whole point they get kids from all over the school to kind of pull in and they plan schoolwide events and um encourage everyone to be involved in the school and that truly folks is what we need for our students these days and we they all need to be involved and I was just it was it was just such a great 360 moment that I they got that I got to experience this week these past two weeks and I want to share that with you so thank you for allowing me to share that thank you Mr lore Dr shiet so first I would like to say thanks to Sergeant Kevin dolam with the Rockingham County Sheriff's Department as well as other members of the sheriff's department
035for assisting us with a social media threat last Thursday evening as uh Mrs leir and I were trying to host the uh event live stream with uh the first lady we were also dealing with this uh but with their help we were able to determine this was a hoax just a hoax also Timberville PD the next day had a a really strong police presence at Plains Elementary School and also just want to say thank you to our principal who had to deal with that Mr Dr Todd Johnson at Plains Elementary School and M Amy woters at hilard and Mr Dan Sanders at Broadway High School for working through this well into the evening trying to get resolution on on this hoax and as well as Dr alterer and Kay leiro as we were trying to
036communicate with families and just to reiterate uh we take threats such as this seriously and we will address these threats um and we will and not the most severe consequences possible this is not a joke nobody was laughing Thursday evening no one Friday morning thought it was a a big he hul they were upset and we're not we're not going to play games with this stuff so parents here's a word I would say to you if you're giving your son or daughter access to platforms on social media whatever it is Instagram Snapchat doesn't matter and they make a threat to one of our schools and we find out we're going to come down hard on them I want you to know that go on record saying that we're not playing it's not a joke and
037they may say afterwards while I was only kidding it's not a joke and and you'll you'll face severe consequences from I believe from the superintendent of the school board because it uh it consumes way much way too much of our time trying to work through these hoaxes and to verify them as such and we're spending all of our resources for something that's just it shouldn't be happening and and we're not going to deal lightly with those things on a more hearty healthy note I will say that last Monday I was here at East Rockingham uh and got to uh watch the unified basketball games that were hosted um here last week and uh next the next game evening game will be October the 2nd at Spotswood High School and so if you have not attended
038a unified basketball game I encourage you to do so um after the evening is concluded you will thank me that I made this recommendation to you it's very heartwarming uh to to watch the kids and the band was there um Monday night plane and and you know the cheerleaders and it was a really great time so thank you thank you Dr ship I was going to say the same thing mention threat that we had the end of the week and I'm want to thank everyone that was involved with that all the work we put into that as well and and just Echo what you said Dr Sher we do take it very serious and we don't want to see our students come before the board because of making a threat like that I'm I do
039want to thank Mr Swagger M strickler Miss en and Miss Smith for hosting us tonight and thank you guys for the dinner and ation at dinner and just thank you for all that you're doing here at East Rockingham High School to make this such a great place so can we get a hand for them tonight as all that you do thank you so much got a chance to come up couple weeks ago and see you guys and at our lab school so it was cool to see you and all the work that you put into that and what a great program you guys have this year and continue going forward with that so thank you for all that you're doing I'm this that moves us on tonight to our action items and our first on
040the list tonight is our minutes for September 9th 2024 and do I hear a motion for that Ive to minutes as presented Lord to have a second any questions comments hearing none all those in favor say yes yes all right motion passes 5 uh next one on list tonight are is field trips chair cross and board members I have several field trips for your consideration Broadway High School TSA Leadership Academy November the 15th through the 17th 8 students Hartfield Virginia internash High School National FFA convention October 20 to 27 34 students Indianapolis Indiana East Rockingham High School National FFA convention October 22nd to the 26th 14 students Indianapolis Indiana and vhsl all vhsl field trip activities for the 2023 2024 school year which includes overnight trips due to Regional and state contest and I hope
041there are many of those and I do recommend approval of these field trips and all the hsl field trip activities for the 20 uh 2024 2025 school year thank you Dr shiff board members hearing the superintendent's recommendation do I hear a motion to follow that I move to follow the superintendent's recommendation to approve the field trips as presented and all vhsl field trip activities for the 20242 school year which includes overnight trips due to Regional and state contests Miss Hurst have a second M ber any questions comments hearing none all those in favor say yes yes all oppos no all right motion passes 5 next on our list tonight is budget amendment for 2024 and Mr Justin Moyers have that good evening chair cross board Dr shfp I want to bring a budget amendment to
042you this evening that's for our food service fund uh this money allocates additional money for food purchase throughout the year FY 24 we served an additional 102,50 breakfasts than the year before and an additional 82,2 2016 additional lunch meals uh that we did in the prior year this will allocate additional money to WRA up that questions how much of this because I I thought that cafeteria was a p right yes can you explain that a little bit so the cafeteria fund is self sustaining none of this money comes from our operating fund this all comes from federal revenue um a little bit of state and then the rest from kids paying for lunches at schools that are not c um what this amendment will do over the difference comes from the citeria fund Reserve which
043carries his own fund Reserve built up the last year from Co we're just going to take some of that down that for this year do you have an idea how many C 14 that means that we're covering 14 School Federal government's covering that money Federal does and there's a complicated formula on what you get for child we will be revie this year to make sure that the C schools are breaking even as it's a newer program and it kind of started when Co did we were getting a lot of federal money and now self questions Jer crawson board members I recommend approval of the budget amendment in the uh fiscal year 2024 as presented think do I have motion board members I move to approve the budget amendment um in fiscal year 2024 as presented
044thank you Miss L I'll second that any questions or comments none all those in favor say yes yes thank you than next tonight is policy revisions and Miss Becky have this good evening chairman crosslet and members of the board uh in June I brought these policies to you and we put some of them on hold um and I'm bringing them back to you tonight so these are policies that have been out for quite some time I'm happy to answer any questions that you might have about them um all of these maybe I'm out I don't know I have questions okay all of these I just want to double check all of these are policy recommendations or changes based on um what the Virginia School Board Association recommended to us in June is that correct yes
045and oh go ahead no you go and then um I was just GNA double check that most from when we reviewed them in June what I noticed was most of the changes were just some changes in language wasn't necessarily A change in policy so much as just rewarding things right I I think that's the case on almost all of them um I don't remember us really talking about any of them except one and I want to acknowledge that because you had asked me about the school safety one and if you want me to pull that one to look at now that we have a safety officer I think we had discussed on the safety drills you were concerned you wanted maybe some more meat in that one as far as how often we were doing
046off-site drills um I could work I could work with Caleb now if you wanted me to go back and look at that one again um but that was was really the only one I think we discussed that night which one are you talking about um ebcb safety drills U we had talked through why the language had changed for the number of fire drills and I think um Miss horse had asked some questions about well how often do we do off-site drills and um she was hoping that maybe some things might go in policy and not just in practice so I I will I will admit that I didn't pull back uh pull that one back out when we just decided to set on these for a little bit I didn't go back that one again
047but I can if you would like for me to um my question is I just want to make sure we're not out of compliance because we review every policy like they've got to go through some review or update every five years we're not out of e yeah I was going to say ebcb looks like we're okay because it was last revi revised in 2021 that we'd be okay to hold that but I'm also okay to Circle back around if our safety coordinator um determines we need to make an adjustment so I'm okay to vote on this one tonight okay um and then we'll wait and from our safety coordinator what's what's the other one want to can we um on E and this is probably more and I emailed it to you earlier so I
048hope this is not taking by surprised but the what's being added by the VBA is building evacuation plan includes Provisions that seek to maximize the opportunity for students with Mobility impairments to evacuate the school building alongside their non-mobility impaired peers is that something we're already doing in our schools okay so this is just language okay um other one other one job I'm okay with voting on tonight I would like for this a conversation among the board in the future because there's a few things that don't know that I'm I don't know that I'm okay with I don't know that as a board we'd be okay with it um and I probably need some guidance too information from Dr shiplet but there's a line in this it says no off still there but it says no
049questionnaire or survey requesting that students provide sexual information shall be administered to any student in kindergarten through grade six I just wonder why cut off for the vsba at 6 and is that acceptable for rcps for us to be like okay everything everybody seventh grade and above it's okay for us to ask sexual questions I think that needs to be a conversation among our board um so I'm okay to go ahead and vote on it for tonight but I would really like to see this up for information in the future and then the last one BG BBD this was a policy that we voted on back in March um it may have been a vsba policy prior we took a line out of it that talked about um not verbatim but the the superintendent facilitating
050visits between school board members and the schools and we took that line out and made it an rcps policy and I think we've been doing really good communicating with school administrators when we want to visit and even letting Dr shifflet know um and I think that's working out well if not you know Dr shifflet but um I I don't want to see I don't want to move to a VBA policy on BBD and this was a a policy that we unanimously voted on so it was all five board members so I would be willing to vote on all of the policy revisions tonight um except for this one and and and I mean what are your thoughts as a board the superintendent's going to come with a recommendation to approve these revisions I'm prepared to
051make an amendment to that motion now Miss H did you say you wanted to hold back as well tonight um no I'm okay to go forward with it and then when we meet with um our school safety coordinator okay um we can bring that back up if we decide we need to okay all right so the only one we we would be holding off on tonight well not voting on tonight would be the BG GB it's G I did want to note um I read the part that you were talking about earlier it does say in C when you were you were talking about the surveys one j o it does say under C that if we're going to be asking any of that information about sexual stuff that we you all are going to
052require 30 days um 30 days in writing so you do have parent communication there I just want to make clear that it wasn't just that we weren't going to we were just going to say that if you were older you had the right to ask anything but it does say that you would give notice to families yeah I saw that and conversation earlier with I think it was Miss H and I talking about it was that not all parents respond to those and yeah maybe they should um but those things get lost in communication a lot of times and I just think just conversation worth having I think yeah than you I've heard in the past parents talking about there being an opt in for that said opt out they being an opt in like
053if you wanted your child to take the survey then you can opt them in I think it's just conversation the that we can have earning that because this has been a topic of conversation throughout the past couple years maybe you all can speak to um if these surveys that we're talking about are federal requirements or state requirements or just State asks the reason why is um because I know that some of the data I've got a tenth grader this year so last year there was a survey that you know we got notified as parents was great um you could decide whether you wanted to you could review the questions wanted to opt out but it was my understanding that the state uses that data to either make recommendations for services to fund local Services I'm
054not sure I forget what it was but maybe you all could speak to the requirements and funding so for some of those grants they use the data to as you said to apply for grant funding or to even if if they're if they're seeing a particular Trend and maybe you know pattern of behavior maybe then they're talking about we need some legislation or what needs to be curtailed so they're using it and then in most cases we as a School Division our schools get that information to digest and you know to review to see if there's practices that we need to be mindful of regarding some of these situations but I that they are parent permission for those and probably at the middle school I've had conversation previous board members who said pretty interesting questions
055that are being asked I think it's been just said can be further conversations for the school board just just to be clear miss this is you brought these back in June correct I did I brought these for information so they've been out there sort of circulating for a little while and tonight we were bringing in them for Action because we we never said that we were going to retract them we just didn't choose to vote on them and bring them back for Action immediately like we normally do we usually do that after two weeks and we just decided to hold on them and these have not been changed or edited since they were an information item on June 10th is that correct they're the exact same I mean these were policy revisions that came out
056from the vsba either in February or in May and so these are the exact same ones that we brought to you okay I just wanted to make sure that in the couple months they haven't changed at all so to make sure the had opportunity to look at them yes and also to add to that ber is that these are the same vsba policies that Harrison book City and other VBA members have also approved and adopted one since June as well so we're not trying to hide anything from the public we haven't tried to change any wording in any of the policies we're not doing anything sneaky behind the scenes we just voting on it tonight so I had one question about the the charter school policy that is that is required that we have a
057tter school policy is that correct BR that yes I tried to do some research on it I'm G to look at Dr oifer and see if he would like to say anything about it I tried to do some reading on it and there are legal references there so okay when it's my understanding and the other people in the build the room can correct me when there's a legal reference it usually means that something has come out from the state from the general assembly that says you have to have a regulation you have to polic we have to have a policy I think ours was rcps like we just had our own policy but then vsba came out with one and honestly we um have been trying to move more towards VBA policies because they're legally
058vetted we know they're in line with what the state regulations are so it's my understanding that yes we need to have a policy that in regard to Charter Schools I can't speak specifically to what the differen is between what are like I just don't know deeply the differences between what we had and what we're going to you can but you can say that this is VBA policies that they created from the legisl last legislators when they met upon on the laws correct that's right yeah so this in the policy that we had which was an rcps policy was based it was 90% or more was vsba so there were a few adjustments that have been made by our attorney at the time um for that but it was the vast majority of it was the
059same as this particular policy um as she mentioned we had made a move to adopt the majority of our policies as VBA in that it's they've been vetted they're much more efficient to update whenever they come to you they have the provisions that we know are based in legal background so um yeah this policy is actually not that much different it looks if you look at it it has all stripped through and then it's all new right but if you go back and look at it that's just because there were enough changes that it made sense just to make it fully a VBA policy so it's not something totally different again as she mentioned this is the same policy that probably 120 other school divisions are using for Charter Schools thank you Mr bur for
060bringing that up because there is misinformation that's out there on the internet saying that you know that we're partnering with Charter Schools and we trying to pull money away from public education that's just not the truth in these policies policies are been out there since June we're approving them tonight they have been set forth by the BBA and many other school divisions that are part of the vsba have already adopted these policies within their School Division any other questions comments by board members Dr shifflet chair Carlson board members I recommend approval of the proposed policy revisions as presented I I could do it if we just want the one excluded right I move to follow the superintendent's recommendation to approve the proposed policy revisions excluding policy BG gbd second any questions to comments hearing none
061all those in favor say yes yes all oppose say no motion passes 5 thank you Mr Carlson board members upon review by the content Review Committee in accordance with rcps policy I ABB I recommend retaining the art of ration in the rain by Garf Stein as the book does not contain sexually exposit content as that determ as that term is defined in rcps policy iaba I move to remove the art of racing in the rain by Garf Stein as this book does contain sexually explicit content as that term is defined in rsps rcps policy I ABA second any questions or comments can the clerk please reread the moot the motion is to remove the art of racing in the ring that garstein as a book does contain seually explicit content as the term is defined
062in rcps policy iaba clarification that is against the recommendation of the superintendent and the committee question I think the recommendation comes from the committee the information Dr sh my my recommendation is based on the work of the content Review Committee and this the motion is against the content Review Committee correct clarification any questions comment um I do uh the sexually explicit content can be found on pages 15 16 36 53 56 67 94 142 through 145 and 228 and I have found um that these books different print dates and different additions those page numbers will will not line up but I do have those excerts available so desire have them I would release them to the public Miss cave I would you can get the copy um I will and you know what I'm just
063going to comment on this book um this this book has been probably the hardest one for me to recommend removal um because it does have sexually explicit content and it it is black and white um but the question that someone posed to me the other day is would you would you let your children read it and I try to never ever look at things through the lens for the public school system of what would I do for my children um because I realize that I would do a lot of things for my children that you wouldn't do and there's a lot of things that I wouldn't do that you would do and so everybody's different um in that respect but um the question was asked to me would you your children read this book particularly
064your girl when she gets to be high school age and my answer to that actually is yes I would let my child read this book but our policy is not based on my opinion of what I would let my kids do or what I would let your kids do the policy is if it has sexually explicit content it's gone from rcps so that's why I made the motion to remove I I and I tell you all this because I want you to know that I do deeply think about these things I mean it's it's I've said that it's near and dear to my heart um but I try to really analyze um what I do for the school system for my constituents and I always try to act with the children's best interests um so
065I just wanted to put that out there that it's I'm not that person that's always like oh it's it's got sex in it it's bad it's bad bad bad take it out out you know it's not that like I deeply think about these things and you know I would let I would let my children read this book but it doesn't comply with rcps policy that's why it has to go also want to say thank you for the time you spend reading reading every book that comes through the committee and I'm passing that information off to board members as well because you put a lot of time I'm into this thank you personally for doing that any other questions comments all right I roll call on this tonight please Dave Miss Hurst yes Miss lore Miss
066bergo fa cross yes motion passes 41 all right next one list tonight is inform items and I'm Miss Tammy Stone you're here tonight for the challenge program and accelerated Learners and I'm excited to hear from you tonight it'll probably work better if I turn it on um good evening uh chairman cross Dr shifflet Schoolboard me members and community members who are still here um I'm excited to give you an opportunity um to give you an update on our challenge and opportunities that we provide for our Advanced Learners so the first thing is is by the Numbers what we have in Rockingham County Rockingham County has um has 1,400 challenge students who are served by eight and a half Elementary challenge teachers and four secondary challenge teachers I did invite our our challenge teachers to come
067tonight and told them don't feel like you need to come but you're welcome to and I have five of them who wanted to come and hear the presentation because they love and support our students so much if you would ever will you go ahead and call them up and introduce them for us oh absolutely come on up ladies um so and I will highlight some of their names on some of the others actually I'll let them introduce themselves but one of the things that's interesting about talking with all of the ch teachers is they are all so excited about serving their students as much as they can and they are very passionate about it and it's um exciting to hear their enthusiasm so good evening sure good evening my name is Kristen iwan and I
068serve at oon elementary and Mai hi I'm Nikki Gardner I'm at Peak View Elementary and South River Elementary one day I am Christa Miller ien Valley and River I'm Heather cherry and I'm at Mountain View in udine this year this is my 17th year in jail I'm Bobby arag Gast and I serve johners in Lacy spring and this is about my 20th so they're awesome can we give them a hand tonight yes absolutely thank you for coming um so to wanted to give a couple of definitions of key Concepts and ideas because what is the definition of gifted and what is the def definition of advanced Learners um so our program our ChalleNGe Program serves both our gifted and talented students which make up about 2% of the population um and then we also serve
069the advanced Learners which are students that have high intellectual ability um and who are high achieving but they're they might not be in that very top two% but they're in the top say 10% um we also value um differentiation in our division and we try to focus on that not just for our gifted students but for all students we want to make sure it's a differentiated instruction and so we try to support that both the challenge teachers help serve as resources to the classroom teachers um and you know for seeking out advice but they also do pull out instruction as well so what do we do in elementary school three years ago we started screening all second graders to make sure we weren't missing any students who are um gifted but may not come across
070that way in the classroom so we screen every second grader and then they um have a certain score then they go in for full eligibility we also offer it so that uh any parent or teacher in other years can refer their children to be assessed um one of the things we did do this past year at the recommendation of the vooe is that we've moved to having two referral Windows a year and the reason we're doing that is we had gotten to the point that we were getting some referrals at like 8 to 10 a week and one of our challes teachers was spending so much of her time testing students and she wasn't able to push in and do enrichment groups with her students so for us to be able to serve our students
071more we've moved to testing twice a year they can refer during those windows we test and then we can move on it's easier to test 15 or 20 students at a time than it is to test one or two I mean that have to give and they take time our challenge teachers also do pull out instruction for one hour per week minimum um for all third through fifth grade students but they also provide enrichment which I'll talk about and it was really hard they all shared all these amazing pictures with me and I really wish I would have been able to have highlighted um all of them but they do such amazing work in there and they're so creative in what they come up with um but they provide enrichment in elementary math and language
072arts for advanced Learners in first through fifth grade so sometimes even though a kid has not been tested challenge yet although we have had some kids who are um we still provide enrichment for those Advanced first grade Learners and second grade Learners to help support them in the classroom and we even have some students who we offer what's called Beast Academy which is an online individual math program for gifted Learners that we do some with and then our challenge teachers also provide stem projects for all students when time allows for them to be able to do that in our elementary level and for our enrichment um it is centered around like I said math and language arts but there's a couple of things that kind of set it apart first of all it's almost always
073Hands-On and it focuses on problem solving develop a students's ability to work through and solve a problem and having them design things using the engineering design process and using other process to help solve through problems that's kind of our elementary um program that we have these are our eight and a half teachers who serve um our schools we have one halftime teacher who works two days a week and the rest of them are full-time and they all work in two different schools and do a fabulous job um for our Middle School our middle school program we offer challenges of the mind it's as an exploratory rotation in sixth grade and as an elective in m school for seventh and eth grade we did do a parent feedback form um last year and the overwhelmingly the
074elementary program was praised um they were just overwhelmingly positive on everything that we do in elementary and only request they had was they want more that was the the number one is they want more so I would think that's kind of a that they would love even more but based on the Middle School uh feedback we have made some adjustments of things that they would like to see more of one is we have in all four of our middle schools gone to Cluster grouping and reading and math for sixth and seventh grade what cluster grouping is is that means that there would be at least five to six gifted students in a block together that could be partnered together to work on a project or work on classwork in a more differentiated group so that
075the idea is that our gifted students aren't there to just tutor and help the students who are struggling they're instead working together as a gifted group and being able to um develop their talents um so we did that we also have created section classes of those challenges of the Mind sections that only have gifted students in them so that it is reaching um another Talent Development where you're working with just those students who are Advanced um we also have each of our middle schools has at least one or more um pushin sections where they can push in to support po academic contents and work with teachers on how to implement differentiation in the regular classroom for the a couple of things I want to also highlight for Middle School is we have been doing the
076Middle School uh kid wind and solar challenge last year we have gone from where we had one school who did it and then last year we had two schools and this year all four middle schools are going to be doing the headwind and solar challenge um if you remember our two schools that participated last year both won their Regional competitions and went on States and uh one of our state winners went on to Nationals and placed first place nationally so they are doing very well um we also have Middle School 8th grade stem program for advanced Learners in some of our schools and we have we always send two middle school students this is always would love to send more but it lost you know money we send two middle school students through an application
077project to the summer Regional Governor school that's held in Harrisonburg here for a middle school Governor School opportunity so we have four Middle School uh challenge teachers one for each attendance area um they are pretty much 80% in the middle school and 20% in the high school their role in the high school is basically to support summer residential Governor School application Massa and Regional Governor School application and ADV buys students as needed with questions we do have some plans based on the parent feedback and things for Middle School this year one of the things is is we've started doing differentiation training in our middle schools we did one of the training sessions and the teacher said They wish there was more than 38 parents know there's we have almost 450 parents of middle school but
078only 38 parents returned their survey um so we would like to actually we think middle school kids are old enough that they should be able to give us their feedback on what they would like to see similar to what experiences do you want how do you feel in the regular classroom what can we do to support you more um so we're going to be we're working on that survey it's going to go out to the principles you guys would like to see it in advance you're welcome to as well um but then we're going to send it to the students and I will go out and administer to it to it to them during their advisory time so that I can hit all of the gifted students and get their feedback on in Middle School
079yes um well we have, 1400 total I know there's about 400 and some 400 I'm afraid I'm giving you the wrong exact number but approximately 400 yeah we are going to also we had a planning day we have we are gifted second teachers got together and we were working on some different protocols we visited the mass nut Regional Governor's School um and we planned out some things based on the parent survey that we would we do think we want to try the first thing is is since all four of our middle schools are going to be doing the kid wind and solar Challenge on February 21st and you guys we would love to have you attend we are going to be meeting at the central office and also right beside the central office is the
080jmu's uh kid wind and sustainability building and on Acorn Drive about half a mile from the central office is a solar farm and we are going to be having hold Hing our hosting our own District solar Challenge and the one of the reasons we want to do that is we have so many teams who want to present which is awesome but we can only send three teams onto the regional competition and we want them to have as many people to present for and as many opportunities for to solar Professionals in to come in and and see those um and it really is inspiring um I know Miss Laura helped at hilard last year with ours and um I remember she highlighted it how much she enjoyed it so I would highly encourage you to please
081join us on the 21st if available to hear that and see that we'll have a whole day for those students um it's going to be mainly all day they're going to have instant challenges that they'll do they'll have a knowledge quiz similar to the we're g to modulate the regional experience and the state experience so that every one of those students who have spent poured so much energy and heart into these projects has a chance to to shine and also see each other's projects um then we also are going to have our first potential sixth grade field trip for all of our sixth grade gifted students um our sixth grade students in US history are learning about um the colonial era through right before the civil war starts and so we have decided as a
082group of challenge secondary groups that we are going to take our students to montar and monachello and have them compare the architectural designs and some of the things that went into planning them as well as some of the science things along the way because mtpar has one of the um oldest what they call it's called a virgin Forest because it's an untouched forest in Virginia so they'll learn a little bit about the science there they'll learn about architecture learn about the people you know Madison versus Jefferson and those things and their project will be to compare those two and come up with what are the architectural differences and similarities and why are they the same or or different so this would be an experience linked to the what they're learning in the classroom but definitely
083enriching and we're basing that because parents said one of the things they would like is to have more field experiences for their gifted student so we're going to be offering that as well now we're going to move on to high school so our Middle School challenge teachers are 80% middle school and 20% high school and where they work with the high school is they we send three to six students to the summer residential Governor's School for example last year we sent a student to the Fine Arts Governor school for uh theater we sent a student to the agriculture Governor school which was at Virginia Tech Virginia Tech and then we sent one to the hum Governor School we've sent one to every single summer residential Governor school before but we can only send a maximum
084of usually six students is what our a lot usually is and based on applications last year we sent three we also send 32 students who are selected for the Masset and Regional Governor's School in high school one of the reasons we don't spend as much time in high school is it's almost like choose your own challenge um there are many opportun unities in high school for students to choose their own path in any subject area um we have dual enrollment and advanced placement courses in all subjects um I don't even know that I even listed the CTE courses that we have dual enrollment credits for but I know that we have them um and so there's numerous opportunities for students to choose their own Chanel we also have students who um amazingly have out on
085all the classes that they want so we have students every year who are our gifted students who apply to me and do a college level science research and inquiries we had two students they actually presented to you last year one was from Turner both were Turner Ash last year this year both students are from East Rockingham um and they both won at the science fair um and they were competing against many um Governor school they were competing the mass Regional Governor school they were competing against ones that are up in the further up in the valley up near Front Royal and they were also competing against the ones down in Stanton Augusta and they were they're very competitive um so those are our high school programs that's an update on what we're doing in gifted
086education and for our Advanced Learners and I just let me know if you have any questions I just want to jump out there and ask you feel like we're properly staffed oh I would love to have more Staffing talk to me about it I mean that's why we have you here we okay so I mean I mean I'm seeing here 1,400 challenged students and we have less than nine Elementary challenged teachers and four secondary challenged teachers right um I I def I would love to see us have um our at least our Middle School gifted teachers be full-time just serving our gifted students um they do serve some regular students as well um now because their classes aren't completely full so they go in and push in as needed or they they will fill them
087with some other spots I would love to see us build that program up and I think by making some edits based on what the students are looking for I would love to see that happen um I would love to see us have the stem program in eighth grade in all four of our middle schools not just in two of our middle schools um that would be um great I would love stem in all four MH right now it's just in two and where it's at it's it's amazing to see um if uh some of you if you went to hillyard's uh last year they made the pizza oven nights and um they also have it in eth grade at mon videoo um and they have an they have all advanced students in both um I
088would love to see our elementaries you know we have so for example at Cub Run because we have to split the teachers between two and at Peak View um they serving 75 to 100 kids sometimes and that's a lot of students to serve I mean if you really think about it gifted education is not that different than special education in the needs our the students are different and they need more support so if you would be willing to um we could put a proposal together for what we would like to see I know these ladies would love that right abolutely I mean we wanted this is one of the reasons why we have you come because hear from you where the need is at evaluate that especially when it comes down project right exactly and
089that is from the parents that's the one thing the parents said was that they love everything they're doing in elementary but they would love more and in secondary they want more and so we're trying to do more but it's very hard to do that with if you think about it our secondary they're serving almost 700 kids over four teachers so and not even able to De develop 100% of their time to that so that would be something that would be very helpful part of our comp plan too we talk definitely okay I would just like to ask if you don't mind one of the teachers said you've been in the challenge for 22 years 20 years would you like to add anything to that I'm sorry to put you on SP if you don't want
090to you don't have to either let me pass the mic I don't like to be but Cherry is a wonderful speaker and we've all voted for her to speak for us if needed so okay thank you I'm sorry I would like to say that I did get to go a few months ago to Mrs Cherry's classroom so impressive loved every part of it so well thank you um I think all of us feel very passionately about the service that we provide for our students um and that this is what our kids deserve and what they need um we are trying very hard to service them in math and reading so that they're able to have um some of these enriching opportunities that take the skills and the um the content that they're learning in the
091classroom and stretch it even further so that they can really work on um Hands-On projects that are related to real world application um and I think all of us would probably agree that if we could have more time with our kids that would be amazing because when you have child after child who you know sees you in the hallway in the morning or in the afternoon when they're walking out and ask you know oh do we have challenge tomorrow or do we have enrichment tomorrow and so many of our kids that's the Highlight for them you know that and I've even we've all heard kids say the reason I come to school some days is because of enrichment or because of challenge um so we all feel very passionately about servicing our kids and of
092course we want to advocate for more time and more service for all of them because they deserve it I have a question um as far as your resources that you have obviously I've seen Mrs Cherry's room and it's super impressive she has all kinds of cool toys and you know just fun stuff for the kids that does everybody have that same similar setup that's that's what I was thinking I know she's got the 3D printers and all the cool stuff I think there's a huge difference from school to school um what type of equipment they have and things like like that and I will say this is my daughter's first year in Challenge and that's the one thing that she constantly talks about I've got an idea I don't either building a robot I think
093and and I've got an idea for this part of my robot or I've got an idea for this and I don't have no idea um I haven't even met her challenge teacher she's new so to lynville but um she's all week talking about I Friday has got to get here because I've got this thing that I need to to do um and it's really really cool to see how excited she's excited about everything in school but specifically always thinking about what she's going to do in challenge but if we don't have the same resources you know that's definitely something we at Miss St would you work together with Dr shipper maybe put together a Time session with you guys to hear from you before we go into budget SE AB from absolutely we would we
094would love that and um I think you could arrange a time do you want to meet with middle separate from elementary or do you want to meet with them all together maybe leave it up to you to choose what we should do but I'll definitely I I don't think you'll find anyone more passionate about um that and it's such a pleasure I mean I volunteered to work with them um and um and I love working with them so thank you very much Mone any board members you have any questions mstone our challenge teachers thank you so much for showing up tonight and thank you for taking the time to speak to us as well we appreciate your time Dr alterer you're coming next and we're going to talk about accreditation and so report so thank
095you for bringing this report to the board as well tonight I know it was getting a little late but we're excited to hear from you are you I'm just kidding yeah I'm like after this we are I'm like uh yeah come after the challenge ready for the buzz M said this is her Jam I if you if you need to get up and take a restroom break please get up and take it but we're excited to hear from you chairman cross members of the board Dr shifflet um so I am going to be doing a presentation tonight around um accreditation and um so assessments um before I get started I will say that the accreditation information I'm sharing with you is preliminary so we haven't actually gotten the official uh accreditation report although we do
096expect it to be the same as what we have now but I I just want be sure that's clear and if there's any media here too I want them to know that this is not official this is preliminary okay um so the title of the presentation is going for the green and I want to provide some context uh to that um so the beginning of the year Dr shifflet had outlined three priorities for the school division one of them was going to be visibility um again this was for division and for school leaders just being visible being present uh in schools and and around um a second priority was around high expectations for student behavior um building cultures in schools that are high in uh support and uh structure uh and accountability related to student
097uh Behavior um and also academic achievement and that's where this title about going for the green and I think the reason why we use that title will become self-evident as we uh work through the presentation so as far as accreditation the first part of the presentation will be um only on accreditation then we'll talk about where that comes from which is typically around tests and um chronic absenteeism and some of those types of things so the accreditation reports um will have um a variety of groups that are going to be evaluated um or parts of academic achievement that are evaluated so um for there's English and math and science which is for all students so how they perform for all students and then there are um achievement groups or Gap groups and you can see
098listed uh in your packet what those groups are right so um Asian black economical disadvantaged English Learners Hispanic multiple races students with disabilities and white so those individual groups are broken down and are evaluated for how they're performing um and then we have chronic absenteeism which is students who Miss more than 10% of their uh the school days um they are considered chronically absent so we evaluate that and then for high schools there's a ratings on graduation and um dropout rate so those are the groups um the next slides um provides uh what the levels are so um green is good okay that's where we go for the green Green's good bad red is bad right so we want to be green as much as possible there in the the go for the green that
099uh Dr shifflet had mentioned so um I'm going to provide some context for this although there's quite a bit of numbers and there's also some Nuance that is uh sometimes even confusing for us when it comes to whether School RS are in green yellow or red okay but generally speaking if you are in the green um that means that the students an average pass rate was um over 75% 75 or higher in English and then over 70% in uh Math and Science okay if you are in the yellow that means that the average pass rate on so tests Etc would have been um Five Points within five points of that so 70 to 75 in English 65 and 70% in science and math all right there's also chronic absenteeism at level one that means you're
100under 15% of chronic absenteeism and then for yellow that would be between 15 and 25% okay and then level three is greater than 5% below um the the uh that Benchmark which 75 again so it would be below 70 for for English or reading and below 65 for science and math and then or over SE over 25% chronic absenteeism so all that to say that's all true and then in on top of that if if it's not can't be confusing enough there are ways to get to level one if you reduce your failure rate by at least 10% so let's say that you had a 60% pass rate right one year and then you reduced that by 10% which is six uh points if you scored or had an average of 66 or 67% you
101would be considered level on because you reduced your failure percentage okay same thing with um chronic absenteeism if you reduce it by more than 10% you're so if you were at 25% absenteeism chronic absenteeism and you reduce that by 3% you would be in level one so you just have to reduce it by that amount okay so anyway that's just a little bit of a a breakdown of how we get the levels that we do okay so now there's going to be some good news and there's going to be some areas of growth that I'm going to talk about okay so the first thing um you're going to look at in your the next slide is an accreditation report that is based on the 2022 23 school year so not this past year but the
102year before that okay so two years ago if you will okay so from the Assessments in 2023 and in this list you can see there's quite a bit of red and quite a bit of yellow okay again we don't like red and yellow we like green right so we were not thrilled by that by the amount of red and yellow that was was listed there um there were um 14 um areas where we were in level three and there were 30 uh areas where we were uh in level two moving to this year so based on the 2024 assessment we have significantly more green right so we would have reduced the number of level three um indicators by 10 so we went from 14 to four and the level two indicators dropped by 11 from
10330 to 19 okay so this is good right so we're moving in the right direction we are uh getting more green on that on that board so when we talk about going for the green this is one of the areas we're talking about right we're trying to get this this board if you will okay we want that to be all green um in the near future so that that's the direction we're heading so that's one way in which we measure this idea about green but it's not the only way um that we do it okay which I'll talk about in a second now one of the things I want you to look at if you will if you look back at this the 2023 the last column over there you see tons and tons of
104uh red and mostly yellow over there a handful green that was chronic absenteeism all right so that was really tough for us we had really really poor numbers we were not alone that was across the state as far as lots of kids that were chronically absent we Dove headlong into that our schools committed themselves to that um Marcy Williams committed herself as the attendance uh truy person for our division to really tackle this but really our schools along with Marcy but our schools really took the lead in that and really embraced this and as a result of that you will see we went from all that yellow and red to no yellow and red in chronic abente ISM and I give a lot of credit again to our schools and I think it is also
105a testament to the fact that when we identify something as a priority it gets done right so there's a list here in your packet of the percentages from 2020 2223 of chronic absenteeism and 2023 24 and then in the last column you can see the difference and every school improved right in some cases significantly as a division we cut it almost in half right we by nine points but by 80% or something like that how how close sorry to interrupted here but how close are we to before Co preco um we still have a ways to go I I don't know the exact uh what the amount we had from chronic absenteeism it was under 10% and we are now at 12 12% um so it would still be we still have a little ways
106to go I I can't tell you I know the exact number but this is significant Improvement right so I'm I'm very pleased with that we're all pleased with that progress that we we've made okay so the accreditation uh this will be the last slide of the accreditation piece and then I'll talk about about um some so information and data so as far as accreditation all of our schools are accredited okay so they're all listed here we do have two schools that are accredited with conditions okay and this was specifically related to science in at uh both those schools at Ela middle school and in Lacy Spring Elementary School I will say that science is a Bugaboo because as I said earlier the calculations of these things can be complicated um they are further Complicated by
107in the fact that in math and in Reading you can get some um credit for growth for if a kid um their third grade year they perform at a certain level in reading and then their fourth grade year they they jump up significantly even if they don't pass in some cases they will get credit for that so that improves the the scores um and the Pass rates in science that's not a possibility because they only take science one time in elementary and one time in middle school so there is no year to year progression so it's a heavier lift for them to to reach that in um in science so that would be one of the reasons why that's uh become an issue if you go back and look I'm not going to take all
108the slides back to there but we had a number of schools quite a few that had science as the issue in U 2023 um and that number is reducing but we did still two of our schools remain um needing to have uh accredited with condition I because of that okay any questions about accreditation and I'm just going to show a few slides related toos and general okay so here's another way in which we look at this going for the green okay so this slide shows the year-over-year changes across the division in scores from one year to the next so you can again if uh I don't didn't put the key here but I'll explain it to you so essentially if you have over three percentage points of improvement from one year to the next that
109is a dark green if you have between zero and three uh points of improvement that's light green 0 to three points of um regression or por performance that's yellow and if you have below 3% or so four or more lower than the year before that's red okay so that gives you a sense if you look at that you can see the majority of those then if it's white that means it was just the same okay it was the same from one year to the next so if you look at this um you can see that we made and this makes sense right for the accreditation report we went got more green our scores went up generally speaking not 100% but generally speaking they went up so we saw Improvement as it relates to year-over-year scores
110okay so that's good that's again going for the green that we're trying to do the last piece where we talk about green is how we compare Rockingham County compares to the state average okay this is key for us we take a look at it we say how do we in Rockingham County compare to our neighbors and other folks across the state and that's where this slide comes in this the second to last slide and this is a slide that again I said that there's areas for improvement this shows you where the areas for improvement are right so you can see generally speaking at the high school level are we are performing higher than the state average okay the Middle School level is a little mixed at the elementary school level we are performing below the
111the state average I do believe that there are some reasons for that okay um these are not excuses but they are reasons right and one of them is that we have put a tremendous amount of effort and energy into literacy just teaching kids how to read and spending less time trying to drill them into the SOS and saying this is how we're going to just get you ready to pass this so we want you to learn how to read we believe that that is going to pay dividends down the road as kids can read they will perform better Etc at the same time those scores and those percentages below the state average are not things that we feel comfortable with right so that's an area that we need to see improve and we've talked about
112that with our administrators as well okay so how are we going to go by doing that I'm going to share here not an exhaustive list of things that we're doing um but these are some of the types of things that we are putting uh together to um address this um area and try to again go for the green so each of our schools they have a school plan uh that they develop every year and they have to to uh carry out in their schools um that is something that they share with us as administrators um any school uh that has an area that is either level two or level three that will be one of their focus areas right so they are focusing on that very deliberately we are working on intentional alignment of Knowledge
113and Skills with SOS again this was something that we were had sort of moved away from particular the elementary if not moved away from just put on the back burner as we were just really focusing on uh this phonics instruction and in literacy with letters um this is something we're going to have to just bring back um particular the upper grades right so upper grades meaning third fourth and fifth that's where the so tests are administered right so kindergarten first and second they're they're not taking so tests but Upper Grade elementaries are continue focus on literacy with the emphasis on reading comprehension so um we're not doing away with um our focus on literacy but we are incorporating elements um and really direct instruction related to comprehension um more periodic assess assessments and Analysis using
114Mastery connect so Mastery connect is a some software where students can basically take so like tests and then we can review their results on that what did they do well on what did they do poorly on to help diagnose where they uh need some additional support we have uh unlimited after school tutoring uh this was part of the Allin plan uh through the yunan administration a couple of years ago this is the second year of um this Allin uh essentially we have told them that they have there's no restrictions we used to give them a budget and say this is how much you can spend on after school tutoring we've taken that away and uh whatever they spend Justin Warriors has to pay for right so um and we have the funds that that came
115to us through the through yunan uh yun's Administration you seen an increase in tutoring oring that or not absolutely like I don't know Justin threefold maybe from from two years ago to last year um they it comes out of my budget and it exhausted my budget and more right so Justin told me that he would cover me and he had to cover me yeah so they yes it went up I think three times more probably than it did the year before that yeah um and lastly um monthly meetings to monitor progress towards school goals so I meet monthly with each administrator um each principal and um the one of the topics of our meetings are these are individual meetings and one of our topics is to review um how things are going what they're doing
116what their plan is what kind of progress are they seeing what sort of data do they have to support um the the elements of their and the goals that they have set out in their plan so um again we are uh working this toward this uh green you know going for the green if you will and um we have a plan for that and it has has been um set by Dr schifflet as a priority for the School Division and it's something that we speak with them about regularly so happy to answer questions you have Dr Al alifer I see that here on the slide before the last one goes from third to eth grade but there's nothing on high school is there a reason why there's anything with high school as well on there
117oh the the the end of course that's high school is that what you mean the one that has down to the bottom English reading scores yeah the ones out at the bottom okay and and actually I'm I appreciate you bringing that up because I I did me mean to make a a note about that so in the high school it is they actually give significantly more so tests than this these are the tests that most uh students in the state of Virginia take okay so depending on your school division you may give World Geography to some kids or you may do world history as the the test that they take so for instance if you look at our world history scores they look horrible because we had like 20 kids take it who were the
118ones who failed World Geography right where another School Division they may do world history as the course that they want all of their freshmen or sophomores to take we do that in world geography and um this year for the first time we did that using a um a local performance assessment and our scores on that were in the 90s right so they were very very good right um but you'll see here English reading every um School Division in the state has kids have to take that that English reading test algebra one then they also need to take either Algebra 1 or geometry so when they get into high school if they took Algebra 1 in high in middle school then they will take the geometry test in in high school if they did not take
119Algebra 1 in middle school then they will take algebra but the majority of our kids take the algebra test as their test can you dig a little deeper into that what you just said about GE geography in the high school level not not having to take the S Sol's correct yeah so so they do not need to take a multiple choice so test it's a performance assessment that essentially it's actually they do it three times during the during the school year and they have to essentially do a kind of a written or a um a they're performing something right they're actually writing something out and doing a project and that then gets submitted to be scored as opposed to just doing multiple choice tests so that was this past year was the first year we
120did that and our performance on that was was very good students who did not passed that who did not get a a passing score on their performance assessment were required to take the so test but but that was only a small percentage of our students maybe 15 to 20% needed to take the so test who gave the scores or they turn them into their teachers so they are collect so the teacher does not score their own students but it is our staff and rcps that will score the the performance assessment and there's a rubric that is followed by that but they're not the teacher doesn't get to I mean the fox doesn't get to yeah who is guard the hen housee yeah the other other social studies teachers so other social studies teachers would rate
121the Andrade the performances score the performances of other students not those in their class and it's Anonymous they don't know the names or anything else it's all confidential any other questions um we're in the process of working on the comprehensive plan academics are of great importance here what kinds of things does the division need from us to help out with this that's an excellent question right I mean so the thing that is going to have the biggest impact is having highly qualified teachers right so class sizes are going to matter right so we right now our class sizes um look pretty good in the El in the Middle School excuse me area the what we've done teaming at middle school I think they are well positioned the and again we you need to have reasonable
122class sizes at the at the Early Elementary level what we see is that we do have class sizes at the um Elementary in third fourth and fifth grade that would be in the low to mid 20s in many cases and that is a lot of kids when you're trying to get this type of um individualized attention for those for those kids so um we will likely need some additional tutoring money next year because we're not going to have the same unlimited um funding for that um from the governor's plan so that would be another area area that we could uh would focus on um but yeah that's what I would that would be the area that I think just a lower class size for for that lower class sizes versus more literacy assistance as in
123like right now our practice is literacy assistance in K and one expand that to Two Three or um hire more teachers really it it's it's a tough question right to answer because you could get I could line up our princi principl and ask them and I would probably get 15 different answers from our elementary principles too right so do you focus on that on the early the literacy in the early grades so they can read when they get to Middle to the third fourth and fifth grade and they're way better prepared to be able to pass that test or do you provide that Intervention when they get into third and fourth grade right I think that again I I personally think that we probably need to be able to focus at that third fourth and
124fifth grade I think that we have a pretty good handle down at the younger Elementary levels the issues that we have down there sometimes are just you need the supervision you have a kid who's kind of off the rails or whatever and we have strong starts and some other things but that can be a r challenge as well sorry would we be able to get the test scores from World Geography the last year that we did it the traditional so tests sure and was it 23 24 that was the first year we did 23 24 assessment 23 24 would have been the first year we did the performance base right so the year 22 23 results yeah we had those results from that year and the year before sure yep could you add to that
125one like 2019 maybe 1920 well 1920 we wouldn't have 1819 would be though so um the 1819 you mean for World Geography or for yeah for what we're doing at the hospital yep okay and then miss cave you would ask for from 2022 23 the comparison of the how I mean if it's something simple number maybe just for it's a lot of work just do it's not it's not it won't be it won't be hard have Cheryl Eep can help me yeah that's that's okay other questions thank you for last one send this out to all hard to see sure yeah yeah I'll send it to you people over 40 are you over 40 m Burg can you send it to miss SK thank you thank you tonight for sure all right that includes our
126information tonight and this into public comments speakers I'm in the first one is Justin mccan just to you aware that after we got three minutes to speak at 30 seconds you'll hear a thank you good morning hi good evening y'all hear me okay all right so my name is Justin mccan this is my wife Maggie and our neighbors Kim and Carol cell who we have students in first and second grade at John Willen Elementary School uh we're here tonight to express some concerns about ongoing bus safety that's been unresolved since August 20th of this year this issue arose when the school bus route changed for the first time in many years causing our children to walk around a blind curve cross the street twice and navigate an that's completely out of view from our homes
127the route lacks a sidewalk or any safe walking path um falling short of the standards set by the national highway traffic safety administration while we understand that as parents we must accompany our young children to the bus stop this requirement does not eliminate the serious safety risks involved we've communicated extensively with the transportation office as well as the superintendent's office um who've acknowledged the concerns but have not taken any action to address them outside of walking and driving the route one of the compromises propos was that our children walk double the distance to an intersection nine houses away uh where we have a clear line of sight from our home while this would have been an acceptable compromise um was immediately dismissed upon discovering that two registered child sex offenders reside at that interception this
128leaves us back to square one with our children forced to navigate the dangers of a blind curve where close calls have already happened as Vehicles Park on both sides of the streets for forcing us to walk into the road uh when passing it despite uh repeated discussions with Transportation it's been suggested that our concerns are merely out of convenience um yet it's overlooking the fact that our children are exposed to significant risk including vehicle speeding Crossing lanes and rolling through stop signs uh that issue was uh witnessed firsthand by the superintendent office um when a town of Bridgewater maintenance vehicle rolled through a stop sign we understand uh the superintendent's office wanting to support the transportation's decision um but it was acked an email from the superintendent's office uh stating I quote as your children
129grow older and they can walk to the bus stop alone we will have to make some adjustments because you would not be able to see them get onto the bus from your home this highlights one of the very concerns that we're raising we're not asking for the bus route to revert to its previous route um we are just asking that there's a minor adjustment to the current route to make an additional Loop that would safely pick up our children closer to home avoiding both the blind curve and intersection near the child sex offender residence this adjustment this adjustment was proposed to uh both transportation and the superintendent's office and ultimately deny this would only add one minute and 3 seconds of driving time at 25 miles an hour we must ask is this brief addition
130of time and minimal minimal increase in fuel cost not worth the safety of our children we regularly observe buses idling for extended periods when unnecessary suggesting that efficiency alone should not outweigh the imperative to protect our children respectively urge the school board to assist us in ensuring the safety of our children thank you thank you Mr thank you for coming tonight and speaking to usate next one on the list is Sandra parks can you hear me oh now you can hear me good um yes my name is Sandra Parks I'm a retired School librarian with over 30 years of experience in working with children and literature I would remind you I'm also a n national board certified teacher so my qualifications in speaking on this topic are sound um this is B Book Week where
131we celebrate not the Banning of books but the rights of free people to read freely and the protections that our democracy provides or should provide against censorship for over 20 years with my high school and middle school students I would teach a lesson for band for band Book Week that celebrated the reconsideration process and how that protected their first amendment rights kids understood that not every book was right for them but all kids agreed that they deserved the right to choose we talked about how books are evaluated not by passages or phrases taken out of context but by the book as a whole it's not accurate for Rockingham County though as this board has allowed a select few voices to decide what all children can read based on those passages out of context the effects
132of a policy that was adapted last May after immediately Banning over 50 books that some Anonymous person supposedly complained about is now apparent while the policy created at a Content Review Committee this board first limited their ability to make thoughtful recommendations with an exceptionally narrow definition of sexual explicit which the Virginia code explicitly says should not be applied to library books that definition actually refers to what state employees shouldn't view on state computers and has nothing to do with reading or literature tonight's discussion just proved how the narrow definition works against the best interests of the kids by Banning the art of racing in the rain and then after that Review Committee spent out count countless hours reading and discussing these books those recommendations were summarily dismissed for six books with just recitations of page
133numbers no discussion of the book as a whole theme purpose literary quality just page numbers now the DNR reporter commented that no one from the public spoke for the book but that's not true the Review Committee spoke for the books but their work has been ignored the board has members of the board have discouraged other comment by not answering emails by refusing meetings by moving public comment to after any action items and by not posting documents ahead of the meetings in a timely fashion and besides disregarding the work of professional Educators and community members the board's not following what's known about reading in children it's well established that the way to get better at reading is to read um and it's well known that people young people will read more when they can choose their
134books and can access books relevant to their world sometimes their world contains tough things Rockingham County's extensive notification systems for parents about what their children's reads this board assumes extensive power over what every child reads and our kids deserve much better than the censorship that you all are providing next one on the list is Sandy stump [Music] hi U my name is Sandy stump and I'm here as aan FKS Elementary um I am an employee of JMU the president of research Economic Development inovation and um I'm also a veteran so with that um part of what I'd like to say in regards to being with the school the other day and the threat I appreciate the emails that I received from the superintendent also greatly re uh appreciated one that I got from uh Caleb
135Bailey um also law enforcement everything that was done to take care of it with that being said there's a couple things that I'd like to address with this one I would like to see some recognition for the student that shared the information I I want them to be proud of the fact that they came forward um and that they shared it not only with their parent but then it was shared from there um I understand that this was in what you said the words a hoax and this is not going to be dealt with but my question is is is there going to be criminal charges in this because I certainly feel like there should be um whatever their intent was uh it didn't to me it doesn't does not matter the fact is is
136that it scared thousands of people um one of the other things that bothered me when I looked at it was um folks Ron did not have any extra protection the next day and if there was a second person involved my military mind is sitting here thinking okay um I'm going to know I know these schools are protected I'm going to hit the others and I see the schools being the most vulnerable the most vulnerable in the morning and the afternoon because that's when the doors are open the buses are arriving the kids are arriving there's parents um so you know I feel good during the day that the school uh they lock the doors that they do Buzz everyone in but I think there's got to be a bigger picture when we're looking at the
137security of this um I mentioned JMU for a reason and that's because we have a valley Scholars Program I don't know if you're aware of it but um they work with an eighth grader through their uh High School graduation and they will actually pay for their four-year education we just had our first set of children that just graduated from that um one other thing you know we have a constant problem ongoing with uh bullying and fighting um in Augusta County they do a a thing it's called chins it's about children in need of services and these kids are brought before the court and I think if we did more of that with these children even starting that element age just sitting in that courtroom with in front of a judge with the parents having to
138do it it's going to put the parents on the spot but it also puts the child and I don't know I know I get nervous going to court so I think that um it would be a good way to start deflecting and start and ending some of this bullying and fighting that's going on thank you m d we do in Rockin County have a Chan yep we do we' Dr shiplet there any extra information that you can share about a lot of times we can't share a whole lot of detail because as that you possibly involved I have shared with Doctor ship launch information that we can share to be transparent to public and to parents I want to do that anything else that you can share so I will share that um in conversations
139with the sheriff's department I believe there will be charges pressed but that's outside of our realm School Board doesn't do that um and cannot share the students name or some of those things as well because of some protections but I I will go back to my comment from earlier it was a hoax and U there wasn't any intent or anything that the student was planning or calculating it was purely a hoax you know prank very terrible prank terrible hoax but there wasn't any reason to believe there was going to be any threat to any of our schools uh in Rockingham County Public Schools and um yeah but I hear but you bring you know you bring up some good comments about you know places and times when we're we're vulnerable and uh that's one of
140the reasons is the board worked to hire a director of School Safety and Security Mr Caleb Bailey uh to help us uh find ways where we can be better to protect our students thank you thank you m d all right this leads us into our final stage here Schoolboard comments and I'll lead off with Miss Jackie bore I just I just want to thank everyone for hanging with us and coming out tonight uh do we have any students here tonight are you guys students over there J are you JMU students yay well I'm glad you you've joined us for this I believe actually and thank you guys for coming I believe actually have we we've eliminated our requirement for um high school students to come to our meetings have we not Dr shifflet that is
141correct they're not required to come to a meeting they're more than welcome to come we we love to have them but we have asked our US Government teachers to um find a a meeting that U that's been recorded that they can show to their class and then have conversations in their class uh because it also helps if you have a class of let's say 20 couple US Government students and you want to talk about a particular meeting it makes more sense for all students to see that meeting and the way it previously was way it previously operated students would pick and choose so if you wanted to talk about the meeting tonight maybe half your students were here and the other half were not so this way they can say here's a meeting we're g
142take a look at it in class and then we'll have conversations and some dialogue about the meeting I think that's great thank you guys for making that change and that's a great way to use the technology that we're having that we have today um another question I've been presented with was in regard in relation to that or similar to that we've eliminated the uh community service um requirement for high school students can you expand on that please yes and we are replacing that with adulting 101 I believe that's the the language adulting 101 and we're making that mandatory so if students miss that particular day of adulting 101 then they'll have to make that up but that's an opportunity uh where students are learning some adult skills and trying to prepare them for the real
143world and maybe at some point we can have a presentation about what all the actual skills that they're learning on that particular day so and this was a partnership I believe was it with Rockingham County was it with the sheriff's department or yes in DSS so it was sort of they came to us and said hey we have this idea and we uh tried it last spring and I think it was pretty well received and that's across the board in rcking County Public Schools yes thank you first nothing here than yes Miss Kate don't know that I did have questions but I do now um the adulting 101 replac community service what were they doing for community service where did they go for that I think anywhere they wanted to to go and volunteer and
144and do some could have been a neighbor knowing the yard or yeah could have been any number of things who who leads the adulting one that led by the teacher is it done out of the classroom done out of the class well they do it in the school but so we do a whole presentation on it at some point but essentially they went to each of the four high schools and um it was coordinated to bring in community people that there was a person there about fire safety the sheriff's department um did a presentation on um legal updates on what you need to know as an adult right what happens whenever you get pulled over what happens when you um something happens in the legal world right so those types of things um there was
145a a rental agency like a a realtor that came and talked about renting like if you're going to rent what types of things do you need to be doing with that how to change a tire was one of the things right I mean so there was a variety of things that kids could sign up for um so they got to choose from a list of these things and they went to the ones that were most interesting there were a c to them there were a couple that were required um that we um expected all of them to attend so um that was the first year and then we'll we're going to do it again it's just for seniors um yeah it's not that was my next question just for seniors I think community service is
146good community service is hard to enforce right and it's also it's difficult if you don't drive right and your parents maybe don't have the ability to get you where you need to go um is it just one time though like one assignment like there was uh I don't remember how many hours it was I thought it was 10 hours maybe or something I I don't recall the percent 15 okay yeah um so I I we do find we found that the last year it was both adulting they did both and we felt like the adulting piece was better time SP yeah I I mean I think it's great what you just I just hate to lose as I think it builds character but absolutely I love the adulting one i1 I think that's a great
147idea we can do a presentation on that it's in more detail thank you um is there a Dr shifflet a public meeting on the El Elementary School Renovations that's coming up soon feel like it's October so Steve will be coming forth at some point to get some bids put that out to bid that will be the first phase of that process so I don't know okay because it's being the PTO it's being advertised as a public event is that okay is that okay and I just know because there are several people interested in the Elon Elementary I mean we've gotten emails and of course I see people in public and so I just I wanted to make sure that we weren't going to be like descending upon a meeting that we weren't welcoming when do
148you anticipate um sending that out for for bids okay then I just wanted to thank you Dr shifflet for your comments made during board highlights regarding um the threats uh last or the threat last week um and one thing that you mentioned was that you know so um much of time and resources were spent and um I would also just add to that to say um it just it greatly disrupts the learning environment for the day I mean obviously it upsets parents but it just I mean the whole County was like feeling the effects of it and parents were scared and you know and students obviously but um and understandably but anyways I just wanted to thank you for what you said regarding the hard stance that this school board will take with those types
149of things um I think what you said you said very well and so I thank you for representing the board um in that matter I think that's all I have for the night thank you Miss C Miss burine thank you Miss burline Dr shifflet oh yes thank you chair Cross I'd like to address U the concern that was brought up at our last uh meeting during public public comments and maybe even address some information that's circulated on social media in regards to our reading curriculum ckla so our school board followed its policy to adopt a science of reading curriculum this past spring and that is part of the Virginia literacy act we are required to have a science of reading curriculum and ccla was one of the five approved by the Department of Education and
150that is the one that we selected we appointed a committee the committee reviewed all five and this is the one that they felt was the best from what we had to choose from so as we um the board adopted that curriculum we ordered began ordering the materials and as the materials began arriving there was just you know lots of little readers uh this is a K5 program and teachers begin reviewing all of the materials not just a you know a small sample or selection and I began receiving some concerns from teachers and I reached out and I talked to uh some school board members and they were getting some similar concerns and most of the most of the concerns not all but most of them sort of evolved around the units or the chapters that
151are dealt with teaching world religions and um world religion is not a standard for our elementary students it is for our world geography students in high school but not at the elementary school so I uh had indiv individual conversations with I think most of the board members uh maybe not all and as as they were having some concerns from teachers and I was receiving concerns from teachers about you know I'm feeling uncomfortable teaching this so I reached out to the um State superintendent of Public Instruction for uh Virginia Dr Lisa Coons and I had a conversation with her and said Virginia literacy act requires us to use a science of reading curriculum if we you know feel uncomfortable or we don't feel like some portions are appropriate and we remove them are we going to
152be out of compliance with the VA and she said absolutely not she had informed me that other school divisions that she had worked with had done some similar things so I had talked with our supervisor of of English Mrs Tate and also Don abery our assistant superintendent about making changes to our pacing guide right and removing any of the chapters that dealt with world religions all religions not just some but we're not going to put teachers in a situation where they feel uncomfortable uh teaching uh you know some religions but it wasn't just we're going to teach everything but you know we're going to keep Christianity no it's all religions we're going to pull that out now we understand that there are some portions of the curriculum that mention you know the church or perhaps
153mention a religious group and we're okay with that right we just did not want the chapters or the sections that specifically taught the tenants of how a religion um you know was formed or about their Founders because again that's a personal matter that's for families to work with their students at home and when they become uh ninth graders we'll teach you know we'll teach that in World Geography classes and so that information was sent out in August and with that information we said to our teachers you know this is a work in progress in terms of the pacing guide please do not you know chisel this in stone it may change I met with Elementary principles a couple weeks ago go at their monthly meeting I said to them if teachers are concerned about a
154particular part of a curriculum or something let's you know bring it to my attention we can work with the reading te the reading team and make changes that would be necessary uh and again some of the concerns we had really wasn't just all about the world religions there were some other things too that we we thought maybe would not be appropriate for for younger students so that was the sort of the thought process behind that uh so I wanted to bring Clarity to that um and again we're still using the curriculum uh we're still following uh the pacing guide and our scope and sequence but we've had made some adjustments when we've discovered some things you know our teachers when our teachers have discovered things that make them uncomfortable or they they're not sure that
155they you know think we should approach that um but we are trying to stay with this curriculum with as much Fidelity as possible because the Virginia literacy act does require us to do that so I just wanted to kind of um sort of address the question that came up um and you know how we have tried to work to hear our concerns of our teachers right all of this came from our teachers so I understand the board members none of them have this curriculum at home that they're reading through right this is teachers who read something when I was working at Peak PE a few weeks had teachers come to me personally and said hey I don't I'm not sure about this I feel a little uncomfortable with this so we had to have conversations
156around it trying to navigate that and U actually Dr sent me a host of resources uh that are OE open education resources they're free uh that we could use to sort of if we removed anything there were actually School divisions who created uh units that could be used to replace those so I feel like we're on a good U good footing with ccla as I've been around visiting schools um I've asked teachers right I said what's been your biggest challenge and most of them will say the new reading curriculum right so I say well tell me more and they'll say well it's it's it's um high expectations for students it's very rigorous and uh it's challenging get that timec consuming but as I've also continued my visits the schools I hear teachers say I'm getting
157more comfortable with it and I'm starting to understand it a little bit more a little better and trying to use it I feel better about it but it was it was a big it was a big change for for our teachers and kudos to them for embracing that but you know as I think maybe Dr alterer mentioned earlier we can teach our students to read all students not some students but all students to read that will be a huge impact for rocking County public school thank you Dr shley for addressing that because I'm as you all know everything you read online is not true and so there are a lot of things that people out there online and saying that the board was involved in removing curriculum that had to do everything except Christianity inside
158the curriculum and I'm although I'm a pastor and I love Jesus Christ and these are foundational very foundational molding years of every child in our school and teaching religion inside them could be um we have we have different kids with all kinds of different religions um inside of our public schools and that's not the place for them to learn those foundational molding things of faith and religion that's done at home from the parents and I think this board this whole board agrees on that so um we've had some conversations about that and I just I'm glad that you brought it up tonight I'm glad that you uh addressed that and um don't always believe everything you read online because as we all know it's not always true I'm that's the end of our um our
159meeting tonight we do have reason to go into close session do I hear a motion to go into close session I move that the board enter a closed meeting to discuss and consider the following pursuant to the provisions of Virginia code section 2.2 D 3711 A1 Personnel specific public officers appointees or employees including the division superintendent for the purpose of considering such individuals assignment appointment promotion performance demotion salaries disciplining or resignation and A2 one or more particular students specifically related to requests regarding compulsory student attendance based on religious beliefs or the inability to benefit from education at the school that would involve disclosure of information contained in a Scholastic record concerning a student thank you Mr first I'll second that any questions comments hearing none all those in favor say yes yes all opposed say
160no motion passes 5 we are now in close session thank you thank you for coming out and be careful heading home tonight