001[Applause] I'd like to call this Monday February 26 uh Rockham County school board meeting to order um thank you for coming out tonight we appreciate everyone that's here for our guest for those who will be um receiving Awards tonight and for our public thank you so much for being involved in our public school system and thank you for being here with us tonight uh the first thing on our agenda tonight is to approve the agenda do I have a motion to approve the agenda I move we approve the agenda as presented thank you Miss lore do I have a second second thank you Miss Hurst uh any questions or comments on that hearing none all those in favor say yes all those opposed no motion uh approves 5 um at this time we will have
002a moment of silence if you'd like to join me in a moment of silence thank you very much at this moment we will if you can arise with us we're going to say the Pledge of Allegiance I pledge aliance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with li and justice for all at this time we will begin our recognition and presentations um of the Britney lamb Kaylee cogsdale character counts uh award and I believe Miss uh Sutter is going to be uh presenting that for us tonight woters sorry did I say suiters apologize good evening chairman cross Dr shifflet members of the board thank you for being here at hilard middle school this evening uh we have three individuals that
003we're going to recognize and Mr Martin is going to help me with the recognition so if I could have Jacob Gilly Leslie Moreno Hernandez and Tara Bell and Scout come up to the podium we'll recognize you at this time okay it looks like maybe our volunteer is not here unless they walk in the next couple of minutes so I'm going to let Mr Martin recognize our students good evening step one up so I introduce you first to Leslie Marino Hernandez when we asked Leslie's teachers to share some things about Leslie they had a lot of wonderful things to say it's hard to capture all their thoughts in just a few sentences I think that the words that they use to describe her say it all they shared the words kind helpful self-motivated creative respectful trustworthy
004hardworking involved and conscientious that's quite a list and of all those words are sorry and of all those words are part of the character she possesses that makes her a great friend an amazing classmate we are lucky to have her as part of our school Community one of her teachers Miss says about her and I quote Leslie is a great student she is always polite and respectful she is also always willing to go above and beyond to help me as a teacher with anything I need as well as help other students she has a strong work ethic and leads by example in helping or in keeping others motivated and on task she has been a pleasure to have in class so thank you Leslie we appreciate you okay thank you and our next recipient is
005Jacob Gilly hi Jacob when we asked Jacob's teachers to share some things about him once again many great comments were made miss rson his science teacher said and I quote Jacob Gil is an outstanding student here at J Frank Hillard middle school he is always kind to others works well with all students and is polite and respectful to everyone around him Jacob also lives up to the motto all your best all the time he puts in 100% effort into all of his schoolwork and we can count him to always be on task and working hard in his class assignments Jacob is a role model to other students both in class and outside of class and we're so lucky to have him to honor and to teach him this year Jacob is an outstanding man of
006our school community and we love having him good job thank you app come we're doing oh sorry we're doing things a little differently and I'll catch on eventually but um I want to congratulate you all on behalf of the school board and thank you all for all of your leadership um and for you two to rise to the top I know is quite um an accomplishment because uh my kids went here and I know this school pretty well and there's some really great kids here and you two are two of the best and I thank you so much for being a um a role model for your peers and just leaders in your school and as a result we have um some pins for you guys so this this award is very close to to
007my heart because I actually knew one of the women it was named after Kelly cogsdale so I have a pen for you guys to wear near your heart so here's one for you and one for you and then we also have certificates oh who did you did you bring people with you tonight do you want to tell us who your people are are you okay talking on the microphone okay hold on do you want to say do you want to say who they are or do you want me to say who they are okay who'd you bring yadir oh my goodness morero Hernandez yeah take it yeah you're I brought yir Marino Hernandez and oh and my dad can you guys stand thank you thank you very much and who did do you want to
008talk do you want okay who who did you bring my mom and dad my sister Grand your mom and dad your sister and your grandparents can you guys please stand up there you are and thank you all for um bringing or be being here tonight and uh sending such wonderful kids to Jay Frank hilard uh we know that character begins at home so thank you all for the the work you've done to build such great characters for our community uh but and we have um certificates for you for your parents for for you guys to hang on your wall because I know you're very very proud of your students as we are and then in your certificate we have a Klein's Dairy Bar uh gift card so something sweet for you guys as well but
009thank you guys let's give them another round of applause can they sit down you guys okay I don't think that our volunteer of the year is is here but I still want to make sure that these individuals or these people are recognized so our volunteer of the year is tabel and her therapy dog Scout and you can see that that Scout is actually smiling in that picture at least it looks that way so um let me read what I got here early in the school year Tara reached out to the school wanting to bring Scout in as a therapy dog to spend time with our students she started coming in on Tuesdays greeting students as they entered School spending time with students who signed up to meet with Scout and working with some of our
010students on skills Scout loves it when our students practice counting money and buy him treats Scout often arrives in a themed outfit of the day you can see he's wearing camo in that picture and our students love him Tara brings him in on her day off and she along with Scout have made such a positive impact on our school this year so we we greatly appreciate um Tara's time and and Scouts time as well thank you Mrs woo boers next on our list tonight is uh principal Alyssa Sims if you'll come come on up hi good evening I am very honored tonight to recognize our Britney lamb Kelly cogsdale character counts students and our volunteer of the year for folks Run Elementary so thank you for inviting us um Schoolboard and Dr shifflet um first
011is Jenna long so Jenna I want you to turn so they can see you okay Jenna is described by her teacher as a responsible student who takes pride in her work she is a student who is Dependable trustworthy and hardworking Jenna is an excellent role model for her peers and a good friend to all she manifests the pillars of character in her actions and her words she sets a good example for her peers and we are proud to have her as a part of our folks Run Elementary School community so give Jenna a round of applause amazing next we have Ryland REI on all right Ryland is described by his teachers as a hard worker dependable and respectful he is overcome hardships with determination and grit Ryland is always kind to classmates and treats them
012with respect he is very proud of his perfect attendance and loves getting his perfect perfect attendance certificates he is a trust TR worthy person that can be counted on to be kind to all of his classmates on a daily he is setting good examples for his peers and we are proud to have him as a part of our folks Run Elementary Community give him a round of applause and again I have pins for you guys and certificates but first did you bring people with you and do you want to talk into the microphone and tell who the people are great I brought my mom my sister and my grandma awesome and can you guys stand up you want to talk micone who you your dad does your dad have a name Marvin oh and Marvin
013re myON myin Rey dad he called you [Laughter] Dad and again thank you so much for raising such wonderful students and you guys will be here next year won't you uh and I know folks run is an amazing school and does great things and and you guys were great leaders there and I'm sure you'll be here next year doing great things as well so thank you let's give them another round of [Applause] applause you can either wait for me or you can head back your choice you wait okay all right our volunteer of the year is Donna Baker and she is not able to be with us this evening but I know she is watching online tonight through the streaming and so Donna is a faithful volunteer at folks run for years her children and
014S several of her grandchildren have all graduated from folks run but Donna continues to volunteer teachers appreciate that she is a regular and reliable volunteer that they can count on each week teachers put work for her in the Donna Baker spot in the library and Donna shows up every Monday at 8:20 a.m. like clockwork to complete the tasks work can range from cutting copying sorting laminating putting things together and taking things apart Donna is willing to help out with anything we need Donna does all the work quietly and efficiently and she never complains about any of the work that she's asked to do even if it's something tedious like cutting out over 150 water droplets the water cycle we appreciate Donna's loyalty to our school and the help that she gives us each and every
015week so she is our volunteer of the year thank you guys next orist is John C Meers and principal Aaron Brer will be presenting good evening it is my great pleasure to introduce you to our John Meers students and first up we have Lilia Ernie Lilia Ernie is recognized by her teacher Jana grle for her outstanding character Lilia is a natural leader who is loyal caring and shows respect to everyone she meets Lilia is responsible and hardworking far beyond her years and we often joke that she could take over and run the class seamlessly without missing a beat Lilia radiates POS positivity in everything she does our class our school and our world are a better place because of Lilia and our second student is Adam Jacobson Adam is recognized by his teacher Jana grle
016for routinely displaying the pillars of character in the classroom around the school and in our community Adam is an all-around incredible young man who cares for others takes responsibility for himself and works hard to make sure that everyone feels heard valued and included Adam is a Difference Maker in all that he does and he has a bright future ahead of [Applause] him again thank you guys so much for being great members of our school Community John's a great school I was actually we saw each other the other day didn't we yeah I remember you um and I actually recognize you uh because I think I know your dad and you brought him with you tonight do you want to talk in the microphone okay great who'd you bring my mom my dad my sister and
017my brother and some of our friends wow can you guys stand up quite the posy it it takes it takes a village to raise a great child though doesn't it uh and did you bring people do you want to talk in the microphone I can do it okay who'd you bring here you brought your mom your dad and your brother and where are they if you guys can stand up there you are I'm GNA give these to you guys real quick class and again we have gift certificates declines and pins and certificates for your parents for their wall and again thank you to the parents for raising such amazing young students and you guys will be here next year too won't you are you excited about that it's a pretty school it's a pretty cool
018school uh and you guys will you'll be a wonderful leaders and be involved in lots of stuff I'm sure right great thank you guys so much and let's give them another round of applause I would also like to recognize our John C Meers volunteer of the year and I'm so glad that we got her here so that we can recognize her in person Lacy Roberts is our volunteer of the year and she embodies the true Spirit of dedication and selflessness while officially serving as a substitute and tutor within our school building during the day Lacy's impact stretches far beyond the confines of the classroom her contributions Shine the brightest outside of the regular school day where she is the driving force behind events such as Teacher Appreciation Week Day of Play and all kinds of
019holiday festivities Lacy is also known for her collaboration with teachers to bring special events around the curriculum into their day most recently she planned a themed review day complete with Planet cookies to help a fourth grade class prepare for their Solar System test what sets Lacy apart is not just her impressive volunteer work but her humble demeanor and genuine kindness she operates behind the scenes the scenes aiming to make a difference without seeking attention for herself Lacy Roberts enriches our school community in immeasurable ways Lacy thank you for all you do for our school uh we I I know how hard it is I know how much you work and how much you throw your heart into it uh so thank you very much for all of that and for you oh did you bring
020people with you and do you want the microphone you want um I brought my husband Zach Roberts my kids should be doing homework so yeah should be doing homework but thank you for for letting us have her because I know uh yeah I've got some at home doing stuff right now for me and uh that missing that homework time too uh that's that's big so thank you so much for being here and thank you for all you do for our students we also have a gift certificate for you for Klein's Dairy Bar as well as a certificate for your wall and we also have that for Scout and the other two volunteers so we'll make that gets to them but thank you so much and let's give all of our folks another round of applause
021thank you guys next one on list tonight is our Inspire Awards and first is Kelsey berglin that we'll be presenting thank you make more you're fine good evening my name is Kelsey berguin and this is my daughter Abigail bergoin and we are presenting to miss Hunter messic when I asked my daughter Abigail how she would describe her teacher Miss messic a smile immediately came across her face as she replied caring and kind when you walk into Hunter mesic's first grade classroom you can feel a sense of belonging and Community the moment you arrive on the days I've been invited to her classroom I'm in awe as I watch her interactions with her students her classroom is full of smiles laughter and the busy hum of her children getting excited about learning she's Innovative and flexible
022in her approaches to meet individual needs I've observed her give up her planning period to go to a music class with her students because a child was having a hard day and needed her presence as an educator I have a deep level of respect for how she has built relationships with her students to help them feel positive about their time in her classroom I'm forever grateful for the kindness and encouragement she's shown my daughter this year not only does Miss messic Inspire my daughter Abigail to do her best every day she inspires me as an [Applause] educator thank you Miss messic for all that you do for our schools next on the list presented tonight will be Megan C and she will be presenting to miss Rebecca Harris math teacher at Bradway High School oh
023you're I didn't get any preparation for this so I'm sorry um so we are nominating Miss Becky Harris um my daughter's basketball coach Rebecca Harris is a true inspiration at Broadway High School excelling not only as a math teacher and high school coach but also as a dedicated me mentor and volunteer for Youth Sports her ability to connect with older students as a respected teacher and Coach while simultaneously giving her time and expertise to younger children showcases her tireless dedication to fostering growth and developing at every stage of students lives through her actions Becky demonstrates a commitment not only to academic and athletic success but also instilling core values and shaping well-rounded individuals her willingness to invest in younger Generations outside of the classroom and sports field underscores her profound impact and influence as an
024educator and Community leader she was my coach and now she's my daughter's coach and I just think it's so cool and she's been giving so much of her time away from her family for kidss of all ages so she just really inspires me to give out to the community as [Applause] well thank you Miss Harris next on our list uh presented tonight is student Ryan ploger and he will be presenting to his teacher tonight tonight maybe not here okay is Mr is it f fuk is Joe Fuko in the house tonight to receive I don't see you great we will thank you guys for uh nominating your teachers and coaches and things like it's such a joy to be able to to see the good things that's happening inside of our schools and uh another
025great opportunity for parents to be able to reach out and and nominate your child's teacher or uh coach that we saw tonight and so um thank you so much for um doing that uh next on our agenda tonight is I'm going to be board member comments is that what say no school board appreciation Mom sorry Dr shiet so February is School Board appreciation month and so to each of our Schoolboard members I want to personally thank you for your dedication and commitment to the betterment of Rockingham County Public Schools also I want to thank you for your unwavering passion to serve our community and advocate for public education you have demonstrated courage to enact policies that you believe are in the best interest of students and families as well during our budget process you have
026been mindful of all rcps employees especially our teachers being a school board member is a thankless job and I wanted to take a moment during this month to personally say thank you and I also have a certificate for each of you thank you so [Applause] much thank you sir thank you br I appreciate it Miss Laura says she would proudly put that on her wall she's gonna frame it so thank you Dr shiff I do appreciate it and thank you so much for the um to all the board members for the amount of time we're talking uh tonight before we came in to one of the board members and just talking about how much time uh that it takes to be a Schoolboard member and how much time that we put into this and uh
027it is a lot of time you know we've um put in a lot of work especially this time of year when it comes to budgeting and we've been meeting on budgets we've been meeting on policy we've we've just been doing a lot and we're just as a as a board just working together for a month now and so I really appreciate all so much that all the time that you put into it not only that the time we put into this but the time that other board members go out to schools and visit schools and uh talk to principals and teachers and uh go to musicals I know that a bunch of us have been to quite a few of the musicals um that's that has been shown right now and Broadway High School's musical
028was uh just tremendous so I'm we're very proud of what went on at Broadway High School and um uncle fesus was my favorite I don't know about y'all's but I it was I had a great time that night but it takes a lot and Dr shiff is going to be presenting those awards at the end of it it it's a going joke with us but um we just appreciate everything that um that our schools are doing especially with the musicals right now but thank you board members for the amount of time that you're putting in uh for not only this month but in the months to come all right now we are ready for highlights from board members and I'll start with Mrs lore thank you I think mortia was my favorite but they were
029all fantastic were and uh there were Fant they're fantastic students at every single one of our schools and that's one of my highlights I got to go to musicals uh I was able to make Sweeney Todd uh The Adams Family and oh gosh 42nd Street uh how could I forget 42nd Street I won't sing it because you guys don't want me to um but um and you'll find that and where you can see that we're getting ready for musical here at jrank I believe in two weeks and you'll find as you come to the the musicals at the middle school school and then you can watch these students grow some of the the uh students at eastrock are so amazingly talented and I've watched them grow from uh I believe it was Shrek the Musical
030uh into what what we're what we had this year and then I'm looking forward already for several performances of several schools next all the schools really I like every every musical I leave thinking I can hardly wait to see that student next year uh so it's it's really a fun time it's really an amazing um thing to watch them grow uh so and I want to say thank you to all of our our people that work so hard on our musical uh because it really is it's amazing um there's also we also had FFA week last week and I was able to come here I was actually here at this school three days in a row last week for um an FFA Workshop a teacher breakfast and I got to say hi to most of
031the teachers and fix them some uh sausage and bacon and eggs along with the FFA members so that was a whole lot of fun and I know a lot of the the chapters did that as well I was just able to make it here to help cook um and then they also had uh Hawks hangout night here last week where you could go around and see different things going on in the different rooms they had like reading with goats that was one of the rooms and they had in here they were promoting the musical um and just they had a pizza they had a pizza oven they had several like beyor belts that made pizzas and cooked them with a heat lamp um and uh they used coating to figure out how to to make
032the the little cart go through it was so cool that was in the science room um and then of course I do need to apologize we're lamming like crazy at my house right now and the MTC Lambs are are doing great and have we're having some of them too but um I actually have a lamb under a heat lamp right now so that has got me a a little afraid today so I'm sorry if I'm a little scattered and if if I seem a little distracted tonight but lots of amazing things going on in Rockingham County Public Schools and lots of things going on in Rockingham County thank you thank you Mrs lore Miss Hurst thank you um I just want to reiterate what Miss Laur said about our musicals it's we're right in the
033thick of things and um I've had the pleasure of seeing all three of our high schools that have performed so far and I have loved every single one of those musicals for very different reasons um but what is amazing um is to see the kids in the musical just take on these roles um and these responsibilities that they have and it's it's um I understand that at TA we we learn tap dancing um which is when you find out that only two of our students um had ever had formal tap um in their um in their his you know as a child they had tap lessons only two of them and then you find out that you know so many of them uh learned tap just for this routine and so I know um an
034incredible amount of work goes on um to get these Productions and they really you know are so amazing and incredible and um I'm just so proud of all of our students um from the set design to light sound um all I mean everything it's just amazing it's just amazing to see our students really flourish in that area so that's um one highlight that I have and then the other highlight um that I have is it's spring Sports season and um there's lots of activity in our buildings and it's really great to see all of the extracurricular things that we offer for our students um whether it's Sports FFA um all all kind kinds of programming and those are the things that make our kid you know our kids love school love coming to school for
035all of these extra extracurricular activities that we offer and um I love that we do that so yeah yeah exactly right last week was FFA week and I one of the things that we saw was uh drive your tractor to school day and saw a lot of pictures out on Facebook with that which was really cool to see uh how many kids we have that still drive tractors and drove them to school which was neat so thank you for all that helped out as that with that as well miss cave you're next I thought you were doing yours so but I'm ready I'm ready I can do mine if you want to um no that's fine uh I too went to um some of the musicals and uh the one at East Rockingham uh Sweeney
036Todd I was just so floored by the ability of high school students to memorize the amount of lines Minds that they memorize I left there just really floored and with so many questions and uh and maybe I should get with Miss Ford and ask her you know like how how long did it take to make all of those prop props like did they paint them themselves and did they start at the beginning of the year and has this been the only thing they're working on and and how do you even practice it's such a long it's so much if you've never been to one of the musicals you just you don't know and you're and you're missing out and um they're just so full of talent at the high school level that I was just
037amazed and and I guess you forget as you get older the you know ability of the mind when you're younger to memorize like that but I just you know I don't know that that's normal like I think our students are just excellent I think they are above average in Rockingham County and so um my heart was just you know I was just glad to see that we are educating th those kinds of students and the yeah the drive your tractor to school day that just that made me smile um this week I just you know I don't have to tell anybody in Rockingham County that um if you don't have farms and you don't have Farmers like we don't have food and so it was just a joy to me to see that we are
038raising kids that will go into that you know that will be um headstrong into Agriculture and that we're you know that we're that we have that type of culture around here and so I just thought it was really neat and and uh one thing that was said about one of our students tonight receiving Awards was that she was um self-motivated and hardworking and um of one of our volunteers it was said that she was selfless and those are all the things um required for success and so um you know we see that in in a lot of a lot of our students um all the way from the ones that participate in the musicals to the ones that drive their tractors to school so I'm just very proud to be um working here serving in
039Rockham County very very proud of our students it's so hard every week to pick highlights um but they were just two of my my favorites from the past two weeks thank you Mrs cave Mrs burgling I hate going last on this can you hear me okay yeah so of course the musicals right um I got to see The Adams Family I took my daughter and she loved it uh I even emailed uh several people to school my daughter was on the next morning when we were getting ready for school she's like Alexa play um I'm crazier than you and she was driving me driving me crazy um so all of those songs have just been on repeat in our house um one thing that if you go to the musicals and you go to the
040last one right they recognize all the seniors and all the staff and everything and that was really kind of emotional for me because I could see just they poured their heart and soul into this musical and just how much it meant to them and it's just a little family that they create um and that I don't recommend going to the last one if you're like me because it really it really got me I was like oh these poor kids um because they they've just created this little family um but it was awesome it was really cool and then 42nd straight again like the dancing I danced all since I was three years old through through college and I was so impressed I didn't know that most of the students hadn't danced before so to see
041um how skilled they were I was very very impressed again the music was awesome the singing was awesome I feel like I don't really have many skills or talents now after seeing these kids for two weekends straight um one of my board highlights is um and I've said this before my daughter goes to lynville Edom elementary school but I have had the um privilege of helping with some fundraisers for one of our students who is battling cancer right now so I just wanted to throw it out there um that they do have a bake sale and a yard sale coming up um March 9th at 9:00 a.m. um to support the family so um that has been something that has near and dear to my heart and I've seen this little tiny School uh of
042L come together as a community and I think it's a really good representation of Rockingham County as a whole so um anyway just wanted to throw that out there thank you thank you Mrs berlo thank you for uh mentioning that our our hearts our our hearts and our thoughts and our prayers go out for that student and their family so I'm thank you for mentioning that that fundraiser tonight uh Dr shifflet so first I want to say ditto on everything about the musicals and then um I also want to recognize two students uh who were state champions in wrestling uh Drake Garrison from Broadway High School and Owen Hartman from Spotswood High School so that's quite an accomplishment uh to be a state champion so I I had the opportunity to be there on Friday
043to watch some of the preliminary rounds and uh it was quite an event I really enjoyed it and would encourage you to take it in next year if you have an opportunity and then also I want to give a shout shout out to Dr Amy payer and her staff uh this past Saturday they worked uh in collaboration with other school divisions to host a job fair and we interviewed over I think 86 candidates and uh hired five we hired five teachers on Saturday so uh we're starting to uh be in the process of uh recruiting heavily and hiring teachers for next school year so I was well organized and uh Dr Payne and her staff did an excellent job with that so I just want to say kudos to you for that work and I
044give you a hand too so thank you I I'll I'll go last but um everyone has said a lot tonight highlighted a lot that's going on in Rockham County Public Schools but I do want to mention turn Ashby girls they head down to Abington I believe tomorrow and um to be in the uh State um uh State basketball game and we're just wish them all the best of luck this is the first time in a while that the TA girls have been so and we're all rooting for you I think we have the boys playing in the States from Spotswood and I'm not for sure nor nor playing north side and um but all those playing the state games um we we're we're rooting for you and um we're looking forward for you bringing home
045the state titles and that brings us to our action items tonight and and I will entertain a motion uh to um for our to approve the minutes for the February 12th and February 13 minutes want to move forward I move we approve the Amendments from uh February 12th 2024 and February 13th 2024 as presented thank you Mrs lore do I have a second second thank you Mrs cave any questions or comments hearing none all those in favor say yes yes all oppose no motion passes 5 um next one on the list is field trip and I believe that we have a recommendation from the superintendent uh yes chairman carw and board members I have several field trips for your consideration Spotswood High School uh theater Shakespeare speaking competition April 13th through the 16th one student
046New York City FFA a class May 7th through 9th uh 20 students Port Isabel Virginia and JMU Trio senior Retreat March 1st through the 3 six students lay Virginia from Mass nut and Technical Center skills USA state leadership conference April the 19th to the 21st 45 students Virginia Beach Virginia and I do recommend approval of these field trips thank you Dr shifflet board members hearing the superintendent's recommendation do I have a motion to follow that recommendation I move to follow the superintendent's recommendation to approve the field trips as presented thank you Mrs bur going to hear a second second thank you Miss Hurst I any questions or comments I do have one question Dr shiff on on this is some of these do we does the county uh able to give them any um help
047them out with any funds on any of the filters like staying hotels or anything like that do we do anything like that so for some of the uh field trips for their for their competitions like if they get a national recognition or state recognition we we will help them with those and then uh in many of the other cases students like I don't know particular but this FFA ad class they'll do fundraising to offset the cost and expenses of those trips so we don't necessarily pick up the entire tab but we we try to help in in some ways with the um the students who have sort of earned the privilege to go to the next level okay all right just a question we were having the conversation about today um board members hear in
048the second there and any more questions or comments hearing none all those in favor say yes yes all those oppos no motion passes [Music] I'm next on the list tonight is requests from Steve Reid welcome back Mr Reid Sher cars Dr shiffley members of the board I'm here this evening uh because the renewal contract for mechanical maintenance expires at the end of June of this year we are asking for approval to use competitive negotiations via a request for proposal in lie of competitive bidding by using the RFP we can further assure the contractor has the appropriate level of resources to service our division these resources include but are not limited to trained HVAC and control technicians that live within 50 mies of our division adequate training to handle and dispatch in a timely manner uh
049response to trouble calls adequate staff and training to be able to for perform preventive maintenance on or HVAC equipment in accordance with manufacturer specifications and adequate warehousing of needed repairs the evaluation categories will be qualifications and capability 20 points uh product to division and parts availability 20 points service capabilities and capacity 20 Five Points and price 35 points I'm also asking for the approval of the selection committee which would be myself Mark kazinski maintenance facilitator Carol Miller administrative assistance and in maintenance rad Dany principal of Spotswood High School Amy woters principal of J Frank hilard middle school and Drew Miller principal of Mountain View Elementary School chairman Carls and board members I recommend approval of the use of competitive negotiations with the RFP for the renewable contract for mechanical maintenance and approval of the RFP
050selection committee as presented by Steve Reid director of Maintenance thank you Dr chifflet I hearing the superintendent's recommendation do I hear a motion so moved thank you Miss Hurst second second thank you Miss lure any questions or comments from Mr Reed why he's here hearing none um all those in favor say yes yes all oppose no motion passes five vot thank you Mr re for coming out all right next on our list is the school calendar good evening chairman cross Dr shifflet and members of the school board great to see you all this evening at the January 22nd school board meeting it proposed draft school calendar for the upcoming 2024 2025 school year was shared with Schoolboard members as an informational item the draft calendar had 176 instructional days and 21 designated teacher work days
051parent conferences and professional development the school board requested that committee consider moving spring break to align with the Easter holiday and moving one of the February inservice days to the MonDay following the Super Bowl additionally as requested a calendar was shared at the February 12th school board meeting indicating an after Labor Day School start after additional feedback from families and staff and much discussion by the committee the following revisions were made February 17th and 18th align with the November 4th and 5th days where we split the parent teacher conference days with the county Le in service days March 10th is now a school day June 4th is now the last day of school and is a 1:00 early dismissal the two teacher work days at the end of the school year are June 5th and
0526th and the calendar remains with 176 instructional days and 21 designated teacher work work days parent conferences and professional development my request of the school board is to approve the revised 2024 2025 proposed school calendar thank you Miss abery and thank you for all the work you put into this as well I've heard a lot of good things uh about this year's uh school calendar and a lot of good feedback so thanks for all you're do chairman Carlson board members I recommend approval of the revised 2024 2025 school calendar as presented thank you Dr chiff school board members hearing the superintendent recommendation to hear a motion to follow that I move we approve the school calendar as presented thank you Miss lore do I have a second a second thank you miss buror any questions
053or comments hearing none all those in favor say yes yes all oppose no motion passes by vote thank you so much again for all the work you put into this that leads us in tonight to our informational items and first on our list tonight to present is um Mrs Carrie Gray good evening board February is CTE month and we take time during February not only to celebrate our wonderful CTE teachers and students and all of their accomplishments but also to promote our CTE programs and raise awareness for what they do um to prepare our students for the workplace and college and Beyond in our high schools and middle schools Rim County Public Schools offers Agri culture business family and consumer Sciences marketing and Technology education and our trade industrial programs are at MTC students can
054also be involved in the Career and Technical student organizations FFA FBLA FCCLA Deca and TSA um all of those organizations with the exception of TSA because they're different and celebrate in October have celebrated um a week for their student organizations during CTE months so so I appreciate so many teachers and students being here tonight it's a very busy time of year for them so being here just shows their commitment and their belief and what they're doing um if you've not had an opportunity to see CTE in action in our middle and high schools I hope you have that opportunity soon um they're doing really amazing things um and we're going to celebrate some of those things this evening our students have prepared a brief overview of each of those program areas I'm going to the
055podium over to great long who is not only representing Turner Ashby sccla but she is also an sccla State vice president for public relations thank you Miss gray so good evening Mr Cross Dr shifflet and the rest of the school board members so tonight as Miss gray I'm presented before you we have different representatives from each of the ctsos that were we offer here in Rockingham County so first up we're going to go in alphabetical order we have Deca so is is there any members of deca who would like to stand and if you were a past member when you were in Deca in high school please stand as well yay so our presenter on Deca is Serena lap and she is from Broadway High School good evening my name it on sorry good evening
056my name is Serena lap and this year I am serving as Broadway High School's Deca president Deca stands for distribution education clubs of America and is a student education Organization for high schoolers it is a prodigious opportunity to gain leadership and problem solving skills each year we travel to two conferences our state leadership conference and our national conference at States students will compete in either a written or roleplay event and and um 1 through 7th place will go to n Internationals Deca is such an important part of my life I have five siblings three of which are former Deca um members and two went to ICDC previously sorry I'm a little nervous um they were just a part of this supportive community that helped them grow and gain all these invaluable skills during my first
057year as a freshman in high school I was um through Deca I became a more confident though it doesn't seem like it right now a more confident and a more skilled person going on to both Nationals and States I am beyond grateful to be a part of this ctso and um it just has done so much for me but we keep on getting into the issue of funding for States students will pay out of pocket $200 well about $200 which is still a lot for most people and then ICDC can cost up to $2,000 which is unmanageable for many families I among many other families cannot afford to put out this type of money my adviser Miss chromer tries her best to solve this issue but it has still proved to be in a problem
058and with our International Conference being in California this year it is going to resurface I hope you can see even though I'm nervous that I'm very passionate about Deca and I just thank you so much that you gave me this opportunity to share thank you and you did a you did a great job don't don't worry about being nervous it's you did a great job did amazing thank you for coming our next ctso that is going to be presenting is fbl so is there any former fbl members or other students in the county please stand I saw a hand over there all right all right and our FBLA presenter is Gabriella Garlock who is also from Broadway High School good evening my name is Gabriela Garlock and I'm currently serving as chapter president for the
059Broadway fbaa chapter my advisor is Mr Seth Stratford FBLA stands for future Business Leaders of America fbl inspires and prepares students to become community-minded Business Leaders in a global Society through relevant career preparation and Leadership experiences FBLA offers members the opportunity to attend leadership development conferences at a state and National level and compete in different types of competitions such as test events role plays and written papers fbaa is a co-curricular organization offered with business and marketing classes FBLA has taught me valuable leadership skills such as communication time management team building and collaboration as well as further my understanding of the importance of community relationships without fbaa and the experience I've been fortunate enough to have throughout my membership I would not nearly be the leader I am today in and out out side of the
060organization we have a state leadership conference or SLC held annually during April located in Reston and a national leadership conference that takes place every year in June this past year it was held in Atlanta Georgia and this year it will be held in Orlando Florida I have had the opportunity to attend and compete at the national level this past year and could not be more grateful for the opportunity I feel lucky to be able to participate in fpla and truly believe that I'm all the better for it thank you and thank you for all your support support thank you and then the next ctso that we will be talking about is FCCLA which I'm here to talk about tonight but formerly FCCLA was known as FHA or future Homemakers of America so do we have
061any former FF or FCCLA or FHA members in the audience tonight yay so hello as Miss gray mentioned my name is Grayson long and this year I am serving not only as um an officer at tahs but I'm also serving as the Virginia FCCLA vice president of public relations FCCLA stands for family career and Community leaders of America and is a student-led organization found in both middle and high schools across our nation it is a co-curricular organization with the family and consumer Sciences education classes and is an incredible leadership opportunity in fact our tagline is actually the ultimate leadership experience so personally FCCLA um to me has meant an opportunity for me to grow my public speaking skills uh I was very humbled and kind of took me back to my younger years watching all
062the students getting character counts Awards tonight because I in sixth grade too used to be that shy little girl up at the mic afraid to even announce who was with me um to represent me getting an award so to be up here tonight speaking in front of you guys I really have to to FCCLA and I'm also a member of FFA too even though I'm not speaking about that ctso tonight so a lot of the places I've been able to travel people that I've met and Leadership opportunities I've had is because of these ctsos being in our County Schools so as well as the other ctsos uh FCCLA has two main conferences each year our state leadership and recognition conference is held in April and our national leadership conference is held in July so students
063compete in events called star events which stands for students taking action with recognition and those are in the spring at our state conference and then if they Place either first or second they get to move on to National level so I have attended State conferences every year since I was in sixth grade and then due to covid I have missed some Nationals but as well as the other ctsos um we have Nationals that stretch from this side of the us all the way to the uh opposite um edge of our country so this year we actually have our Nationals in Seattle Washington so all the way up in the corner of the United States I will travel hopefully um so I would just like to thank you guys again and reiterate for allowing us this
064time to speak about our ctsos and I will introduce the next person so next we have FFA so is there any former members or current members of FFA in the audience I know there's some out [Applause] there and tonight we are going to be having Katie Payne who is also from Broadway High School speaking about FFA good evening everyone my name is Katie Payne the Broadway FFA chapter president and also serving as your Rockingham County FFA Federation reporter so I'm going to talk to you all about the positive impact that FFA has on students in our County an FFA makes a positive impact in the lives of students by developing their potential for Premier leadership personal growth and Career Success I know for me personally the first thing I'll touch on is Premier leadership I
065remember being a sixth grader here at J Frank hilard and starting on my leadership journey and in sixth grade I got the opportunity to join FFA and I never thought it would take me the places that it's brought me to today so the premier leadership side of FFA we have competitions that are called ldes which stands for leadership development events and I remember as a sixth grader begging Mr Welsh to let me compete in a competition called extemporaneous public speaking and for those of you who don't know what that is extemporaneous public speaking to me personally holds a special place in my heart and in that competition you are given 30 minutes with a topic off the fly that you don't really know what it's going to be and you have materials that you've prepared
066ahead of time and then you're given 30 minutes to write a 4 to six minute speech that you then present to a panel of judges and then you're questioned on your topic so with this competition it really helped me to develop in more speaking skills and become a stronger public speaker and be able to speak about anything at any time so with this competition I competed this past year at the area competition where I later competed at the state competition at Virginia Tech in this past summer and had the opportunity to represent the state of Virginia at the National FFA convention in Indianapolis Indiana so it was an awesome opportunity and that has been by far one of the best ldes that I have competed in personally however there's other competitions as well there's competitions
067called parliamentary procedures and then conduct of chapter meeting where I also competed nationally in where the students are judged based on their ability to run a meeting and discuss topics as a team so with these ldes they also help you grow as a leader so which brings me into personal growth so I know starting as that sixth grade kid in FFA who didn't really know what they were getting into at the beginning I have really grown as a person through the opportunities that FFA has presented me so FFA really helps kids to grow in with officer positions and different services that we provide to our community so as a sixth grader I did not hold an office but since seventh grade I have had the opportunity to be a chapter officer at jrank and at
068Broadway as well and other FFA members across the country or across the county well the country as well because we're a National FFA organization but in our County lots of students have the opportunity to serve as an officer in their schools chapter and I have seen so many different people grow and Blossom as a person just through this opportunity alone and then also we provide a lot of community service throughout our communities as well so that's how we allow for our students to grow and all of this leads you to your Career Success which FFA helps you to grow in your career success by giving students opportunities to compete in cdes and for you all who may not know what a CDE is it's a career development event so I picked out two cdes that
069are my favorite to touch on so there is the poultry competition where basically you judge chickens and turkeys and as boring as that may sound it's actually very interesting so what you do you judge live chickens you judge the carcasses of chickens and turkeys as well and you go through all of this compet competition process and then you can compete at the Federation level and then go on to the state competition and I back in 2022 had the opportunity to compete at the state level and my team represented Virginia at the national level as well so that has been one of my favorite competitions as well because it's so diverse compared to different things and there's things for every student in FFA there's things for the kids who want to do more Farm related things
070like poltry and then there's things for the cdes for the kids who may want to be outside more like forestry which I will have the opportunity to represent my school at the state competition this upcoming April so in forestry you go out into the woods you're in the woods all day long and you are based on the competition you judge trees you have to identify them you judge equipment and then you also have to be able to identify Wood Products so as much as that is there's so many different cdes that give kids opportunity to expand their Horizons in order to see what they may want to go into later in their careers so FFA has three main things we touch on and these three things have all impacted me personally so much and for
071me I am so grateful to have the opportunity to be an FFA member and to conclude my senior year as our president and then have all of these opportunities to come up as well and I thank you all for the support that you've shown our FFA not only for my chapter but for the County's chapters as well you all have been great supporters to our entire County's FFA and we thank you all for that thank you Katie next we will hear from skillsusa so is there any former skillsusa members in the audience or current ones and our presenter on skills USA is from MTC and his name is James rius hi everyone my name is James Rios and I am your 2023 2024 Virginia skills USA vice president I to M Technical Center and my
072adviser here is Mr Lee Smith um I wanted to tell you a little bit about my experience uh with skills USA I was not very good with public speaking if you were to ask me a year ago if I could do this now I would definitely tell you no uh but I'm up here doing it now because of skills USA um SCH USA has really helped me with my uh leadership in the workforce which is uh thing when it comes to diesel technology because I'm trying to go into the diesel field um I'd like to tell you also about our national conference that's uh down in Atlanta Georgia that overall is a great experience for us and everyone down there uh I also thank the board for approving the field trip down to Virginia Beach
073for for skills USA uh but I just thank you guys for your support and I hope you guys continue to do it thank you absolutely thank you James and our final ctso that is going to be spoken about tonight which has a lot of people here as I can see is TSA so please St in if you were a current member of TSA or were back in your high school years so tonight to speak about TSA we have stie Morris and she is from East Rockingham High School hello my name is stie Morris and I am a junior and I serve as East Rockingham High School's TSA president TSA stands for technology Student Association and is a student run Organization for middle and high school students TSA is a competition-based club with more than 300,000
074members all over the nation offering more than 70 different competitions for the participants to choose from these competitions range from architecture to flight to photography music Transportation modeling fashion design CAD design video production and much more in 2021 my adviser Mr s approached me and asked if I wanted to be the president of our school's TSA program as it hasn't been active in six or seven years resurrecting the program was slow but we slowly got more and more members involved and we were able to attend the regional and state competitions last year hopefully this year we can also attend National level conference being in TSA has helped me gain skills as a leader but also helped me take more ability for my own time management as it takes careful planning and scheduling to be able
075to balance competition work school work and other extra extracurricular activities TSA has also made me a better team player and has helped me be more flexible and has taught me how to adapt to change more readily through TSA I have made some wonderful friends and have had so much fun being able not to see only myself but also my fellow chapter members succeed and Achieve great things being able to be a part of this amazing program has has provided me with many wonderful and value opportunities and experiences in TSA we have Regional State and National level competitions this year the state conference will be held in at the Hampton Convention Center in May and the national level conference uh will be held in Orlando Florida in June our regional competition has just taken place this
076past weekend thank you so in addition to talking to all of you all tonight and the school board members about what all of our ctsos have to offer we also wanted to touch on the issue of funding so thank you for allowing all these CTE program areas to come here and share again it is very evident that we have um a lot of passionate students about our respective organizations because they have impacted us so greatly and have allowed us the opportunity to gain skills that we truly will use throughout the rest of our lives so as you can imagine many of the students have already touched on this but the expense to attend these events are quite expensive so besides teaching classes our ctso advisors mine is Miss Janie lamb from Turner Ashby High School
077are also often dedicating a 100 or more additional hours outside of the classroom to help us fund raise for many students they would not be able to attend such a trip without all of this fundraising help in 2020 the school board decided to help support our students who competed at the national level by awarding $100 per student to pay for trip transportation we want you to know how much we appreciate this while our trips tend to cost close to $2,000 per person every bit of funds received truly does help as representatives of our ctsos we are also here tonight to advocate for additional support from Rockingham County Public Schools we know budgets everywhere are very tight and unfortunately even the budgets of our own families have tightened over the past year or so due to
078inflation in our economy so I love the phrase that I have um heard my advisor often say to others I never want the issue of money to be the reason why a student doesn't attend an FCCLA trip would the school board please consider Avenues where they could provide some additional financial support to our student leaders so that they could have the opportunity to attend these ultimate leadership experiences participating in the various conferences takes time and effort from our students but also requires significant funding especially if they are to travel to national conferences held in States all across the country and specifically for TSA even though our TSA works on bringing in funds by n by organizing various fundraiser events unfortunately a large cost of these trips continue to prevent most many of my peers from
079participating dis despite the significant interest we ask that the school board consider aiding our programs to promote greater and more Equitable participation in our student organizations thank you for your [Applause] time thank you guys for uh presenting tonight and um for all the for everyone that spoke here tonight you guys did a great uh job and it can be uh a little nerve-wracking sometime to speak in uh during the public like this uh so you did a great job uh miss long I've heard a lot about you and uh your reputation has definitely went uh before you and I you're going to do great things and so nice to meet you tonight maybe uh we can get a chance to to talk with uh you and the other students uh as uh me and Miss
080Hurst uh the vice chair maybe come out and uh just find out what some of the these needs are for funding and get a better understanding so um maybe we can plan that in the next few weeks before we approve the budget for uh this coming year so thank you there we go how about that thank you again um and that's a tough act to follow I really should have considered flipping that but that's all right um thank you for the opportunity again School Board chair cross and Dr shiet to speak to you this evening um and to bring a proposal before you for an agricultural land lab um for you to consider this proposal is a compilation of the hard work of our rcps agricultural production advisory committee they recognize the need for such
081a facility based on our curriculum um our students needs and and the development of our programs around the county and they um pinpointed characteristics that would ensure that the facility meets the needs of our Diversified agricultural community and all of our students and so this is really their work that I'm presenting to you this evening so why agriculture why now and why Rockingham County some of you may have seen um a sort of viral post of the uh 2022 a sensus statistics that was circulating around social media the last couple weeks I asked the author if he minded if I shared some of those statistics and his analysis of those because why repeat what someone else already did so well right um so according to that 2022 aens this data rakam County generated almost 22%
082of the state's entire agricultural revenue and over half 55.8 n% to be specific of the entire state of Virginia's Farm net cash income Ram County's Farms Produce a total of almost $1.2 billion in revenue and paid $6.5 million in property taxes however um just as we see the pattern nationally Rakim County continues to lose farms and lose farm land our Farming Farming population continues to increase in age and that makes our residents even further removed from aggriculture because they just don't have the personal experience maybe they didn't grow up on a farm their grandparents don't have a farm they just don't know where their food comes from and what it's like to be on a farm so in order to continue to be a national Powerhouse and agricultural production we do have to ensure that
083our future Generations value agriculture understand the career opportunities available in the agriculture industry because if they've never experienced agriculture they don't know what careers might be available to them know where their food comes from and the significant impact economic impact that agriculture provides to Rockingham County there is no better place than here in Rockingham County and there is no better time than now to be discussing this proposal so the um advisory committee identified three goals that as we consider an agricultural land lab would guide the Mission Vision and guide us to find um an adequate piece of property to meet the needs of our students and those goals are to create a permanent facility for Hands-On agricultural experiences in Ram County Public Schools where every student prek through 12 could experience agriculture also to provide
084a permanent home for MTC egg production facility that's currently um partnering with farms in the county that system is working fine for now it's working really well we appreciate our partner Farms but as I'll talk about a little bit later in the presentation there um there's there's no way to really no agriculture unless you're immersed in the with the same livestock and the same facility daily and then um we would like to identify and acquire a centralized location um to host these educational programs to increase agricultural L literacy and for all students to have meaningful agricultural experiences in roam County we do have agriculture programs in all four middle and high schools in Rockham County our teachers do an outstanding job of providing Hands-On opportunities for all of our students many of our elementary schools
085already offer agricultural experiences field trips um days programming lessons for our students but there are some parts of the agriculture curriculum that due to scale a shared facility would really be beneficial to all of our students prek K through 12 um for example teaching soils in high school it's just not feasible to dig a soil pit at all for high schools for students to really have the experience they should have when they're studying soils um or chemistry students could also study um some chemistry using those soil pits as well um in our a production program there's Great Value this is what I was talking about before and knowing how livestock acts on a day-to-day basis so you can assess health and know when they're acting differently and you might need to um have some interventions
086MTC hosts an outstanding agriculture production program but in order to be prepared to work in production agriculture students need to be immersed in what it means to be in production agriculture every single day elementary students can see math and science come to life as they determine crop yields um crop yield rates from test plots a central facility where all rcps students can experience agriculture through Hands-On experiences would be an asset to our students and communities so what would the programming look like this is just a really brief overview um of of a brainstorming session from the committee so our vision is that um maybe K through 12 students in that group would have at least one experience in their CA between kindergarten or prek and second grade um with some Hands-On sensory experience to get
087them familiar with agriculture know where their food comes from um grades three through five students could study hydroponic seed production basic animal nutrition they may take a field trip in let's say fourth grade to experience something thing in the land lab that would apply to their science curriculum these experiences my vision is they would be developed with Elementary School teachers to make sure that they're aligned with curriculum they're not replacing anything they're already doing in their EG days at their schools or their field trip it would be a supplement to that curriculum grades six through eight we have Middle School agriculture our farm to table classes have been really successful in lots of our middle schools so students could visit the land lab um to learn about livestock and poultry hand in food processing and
088safety and then in our high schools and our MTC a production program students could experience livestock breeding management soils analysis forestry um and they could have individualized agroscience spere projects students that may not have access to animals or access to facilities where they want to conduct those types of experiments could use the facilities in the land lb to do that excuse me so looking at basic facilities and infrastructure um all of this is really driven by the ultimately the the type of property that might be acquired for this need but these are some basic needs that the committee identify that would be important for the facility accessibility is a huge one so all students can access the facility should have brought some water up here with me that's all right well I'll stumble we'll be
089good you might need it um so again the facilities it really depends on what type of thank you Dr shifflet pity on [Laughter] me all right um so land is a non-renewable resource there is what they is a lot of the facility needs would be driven by the piece of property that would be required the topography the road Frontage are there any raring zones Forester acreage what we would be able to do would be driven by the property um but we're hoping for a plot that's at least 35 to 45 Acres there are land labs in 19 public high schools in Virginia and the acreage and those land Labs ranges anywhere from 15 to 60 Acres um depending on the locality so coming to the funding part um the biggest impact the biggest ask um
090of the school board would be for a position that's a farm manage Farm manager program coordinator um and this person would run the day-to-day operations of the farm also coordinate the educational opportunities prek through 12 um ensure that if a teacher wants to have a lesson at the land lab things were set up so it would be sort of a dual role there um and then the the actual acquisition of the property W you know next steps would be to ask um the the school board if this is a priority and something that you see as something that's beneficial to our curriculum and programming and then work with the Board of Supervisors to identify funding um but there are land conservation rant sources and also sorts of opportunities available on that track and so I'll
091be back at the next school board meeting to ask for your support um to move forward with this proposal and talking to to partners with the Board of Supervisors next steps um to see if we can make this dream a reality for our students great do you have questions yeah school board members have any questions good Mrs Gray we look forward to you returning our next meeting and uh letting us know some a little bit more information but we're excited to to look at this thanks I'll bring my own water next time you're fine you're fine thank you Mrs Gray uh next on our information item tonight is going to be budget and planning and Mr Moyers if you're a student here or would like to leave at this time it's fine as well go
092ahead Mr M Dr shifflet members of the board want to thank you for having me this evening chair cross uh just want to give a couple updates about the budget process this evening nothing in depth to go into um this evening as you all know we've met in the last week in our two by tws to go over a lot of the budget information and start planning um over the next two weeks we will finish meeting and Dr Schiffer will present to you all on March 11th his proposal budget and which will also then go to the Board of Supervisors on March 13th um the next thing I did want to talk to you about this evening is the House and Senate have brought their versions of the budget um out in the last week
093and I want to give you updates on what their versions would look like for Rockingham County Schools if they were to be passed so the house version was a little more favorable to us than the governors it provided an additional $1.8 million uh to to our budget for next year most of that would be in a 3% salary increase instead of the 1% that the governor had proposed if they did pass that we would still need an additional 600,000 to fund that 3% race um the other area that provided more money was in elll um support they were going to give us about an additional $400,000 in EL support the Senate version would provide Rockingham County with an initial 3 .3 million in Revenue after a 3% salary increase um the biggest reason for that
094is they are proposing to remove the support cap which is how many positions the uh the budget currently funds from the state they also would give us an increase for uh at risk children and also elll support as well um no one knows which budget will get passed more than likely to be a compromise between the three because the house is the kind of the between the governors and the Senate that's what we're expecting for at this point um so I would be happy to answer any questions that you may have board members any questions for Mr Moyers I appreciate the time okay do you have no clue it's when Richmond decides that they want to they want to compromise last year we did know till September typically we'll know hopefully by the end of
095March early April the odds of us knowing before we have to pass our budget are probably not going to happen which is why we air on the conservative side because we can't budget for something we don't end up getting um so we'll we'll cross that bridge but yeah we we'll we think it's going to be probably somewhere in the middle any other questions comments thank you Mr moers for all the time you put into this and for meeting with us and I'm sure we'll meet a few more times before this is uh approved but thanks for all the time and effort that you put into it and all the questions we've had for you as well digging into different information so we'll be in touch in the next week with updates thank you so much
096thank you thank you all right next on the list tonight for information is Miss Hurst and she has update for our library materials committee update thank you um I do want to give an update on our progress towards the library materials policy um we've met with our Librarians on February 13th um then on February 21st I believe we um our subcommittee met with legal counsel we had hoped to have a draft ready as an information item for tonight um but we're just not ready we're not there yet um and so we expect we now expect to have a draft um for our March 11th Schoolboard meeting and that week um after we release the draft we'll send out um a survey where community members can provide feedback we'll probably have a time limit on that
097of about a week so that we can take some time to then um go through the comments and make adjustments as necessary and then we hope to have a final draft back here at the very last meeting um in March which I believe is the 25th so that's an update for now we're working as quickly as we can um again we had we were shooting for tonight for a draft and we're just we're just not there yet and um we'd like to take our time with it and make sure we're doing a good job with it so that's our update all right thank you Miss Hurst um before we go into public comments tonight um I'm going to take a three minute uh break so we'll take a three- minute break and we'll come back
098for public comments e all right all right thank you so much appreciate the opportunity to take a bathroom break and um and also get some of the students that were here that wanted to uh get home understand as a parent uh having kids out on the road uh too late it's not uh too cool so U I do want to explain before we go into our public comments tonight the reason why we have decided the reason why I've decided and talked with the board about changing This was um it's important for us as a school board to get our the our business done uh throughout the Schoolboard meeting uh and that's why we changed it from the beginning to the end and a lot of times the public comment section could be pretty heated pretty
099passionate and it it is easier for us to be able to get through our working meeting that we have hear everything that we need to hear then get into public comments um so uh that that's why we have changed that and another reason that we've also decided to go to a 30 minutes uh it's always been in our rules for 30 minutes uh but we've uh just started uh sticking to that 30 minutes is because we also have employees from the school that are out here tonight and many of you thank you so much for uh showing up uh and thank you for being here and some of them get up especially our transportation department they get up pretty early especially if we're having snow or inclement weather's coming in they get up early and
100so I I kind of see them sometimes over there like oh my gosh so but we want to just we want to be good stewards of our time that's up here and after the board meeting and a lot of times we are hearing student matters and so we also want to get to our student mans where we have parents that are waiting for us uh to hear uh things that need to be go on after the meeting so uh that's the reason that being said tonight uh we'll get into public comments and and our first person on the list tonight is Miss Ashley Saunders Miss Ashley Saunders go light on uh my name is Ashley Saunders I'm from Broadway and this is in regards to trans students self-harming um and I have been given permission
101from my son so I can once again share our story before my son came out as trans a lot of things were happening at once his father and I had affirmed him when he came out as gay but we noticed our son wasn't eating sleeping or engaging like he once had he had terrible panic attacks and was self Haring we did all the things that parents do we got him a therapist and psychiatrist we asked questions and kept our door open and we loved our son the best we could my son didn't sleep and I was so scared that he would text me in a moment of desperation that neither did I I was terrified to wake him up if he slept through his alarm and in my husband's strength he would go into my
102son's room and check on him knowing that if I found my son dead I would never recover but if I being honest neither would he I didn't know at the time that my son was transitioning socially that teachers had made negative comments about trans people that he had lost friends and that he was being told no at every turn when advocating for his rights he wasn't ready to come out at home because if it was that hard at school what if home was no longer safe he did have supportive teachers and friends but it was still hard to figure out who would truly accept him he knew there were some in our extended family who never would and that is a great price to pay and for 2 years I was losing my son before
103my eyes once he came out and we affirmed him we started advocating for him as well and things got better but not every child gets a safe home if they come out but they deserve a safe school to be themselves because they can no longer hide it 24/7 they deserve access to mental health professionals at schools to help them on the Journey so they can be ready to talk to their family safely because every student deserves safe adults but with these model policies it forces safe adults to no longer feel safe it has been 5 years my son turned 21 he is thriving in his own way and he is thriving but he is away from this community but I still have nightmares and I wake up sobbing because it still feels very real and
104and raw and I would not wish this on another single human being and yet here we are enforcing a policy that does just that when it comes to policy of outing students self harm and suicide are not a bug but a feature because it is the collateral in the fight for total control but trans and non-binary students deserve the freedom and care it takes for them to become trans and non-binary adults and as always trans rights are human rights and every student stent deserves a safe education thank you Miss Saunders next on the list tonight is Olivia Frasier what's that okay I'm sorry on the list it just says Olivia Frasier did someone sign you up and you uh on okay hello um I'm here today to I'm I don't like to speak in public
105and I'm only doing it because um I need to address some concerns regarding book Banning the well-being of LGBT students and the role of our school board the notion that banning books is the notion of banning books is anti- ethical to the principle of education and intellectual Freedom Educators and administrators have a duty to Foster critical thinking and open-mindedness not to limit access to diverse perspectives and ideas Banning books not only stifles academic growth but also sends a dangerous message that certain voices and experiences are Unworthy of acknowledgement instead let us Embrace literature as a tool for empathy and understanding even when it challenges our beliefs furthermore I implore the board to prioritize the safety and well-being of all students including those who identify as LGBT our stud our schools must be inclusive environments where
106every student feels valued and supported it is incumbent upon us to create policies and provide resources that promote acceptance and respect for diversity in all of its forms discrimination and harassment have no place in our schools and we must take proactive measures to ensure that every student can learn and Thrive without fear of prejudice or harm finally I urge the Rockingham County Public School Board to reflect on the proper role of a school board while you have a responsibility to set policy and oversee administrative functions you must also recognize the limits of your Authority the primary focus should always be on advancing the educational Miss mission of our district and serving the best interest of our students engaging in ideological battles and imposing personal agendas only serves to distract from our core responsibilities and undermine
107public trust in your leadership in conclusion I ask you to reaffirm your commitment to academic freedom inclusivity and the principles of good governance by upholding those values you can ensure that the Rockingham County Public Schools remain places of learning and Enlightenment for generations to come thank [Applause] you thank you Miss Frasier hmani for speaking uh next on our list is Dale Arnold Mr Dale Arnold thank you uh members of the board Dr shifflet thanks for letting me speak today I'm Dale Arnold I'm a member here of the community I have two children in Rockingham public schools and I just wanted to um start off on want I wanted to commend you I haven't been here in a month or over a month and I wanted to commend the board on dialing back the uh attempt
108at trying to instill religious ideology on on the public here by resending your policy of opening the the the meetings the school board meetings with a prayer and by just re re-injecting a moment of silence thank you um so that everybody can participate in that and however they wish to participate so thank you thank you for that I'd like to implore you to use a similar amount of wisdom in resending the book Bannings that the previous um member of the public just spoke to um we had a previous policy where individual parents could use their own judgment and resending books for their own students if they felt that a if a book was in violation of their own personal uh code of ethics or principles and that wasn't used to my to my knowledge that
109wasn't used very often which shows that most people were okay with most of the books that were present in our libraries and I would like you you as the board to consider that that when you're when you're making decisions on how to implement these book Bannings let us decide what is better for our best for our individual children and let us make those decisions and please use the same wisdom that even though you may have strong convictions personal convictions your convictions don't necessarily reflect everybody's in the communities and let us make our decisions for our children just like we would let we would let you make those decisions for yours thank [Applause] you thank you Mr Arnold uh next on the list tonight is Amy funk it's green good evening chairman cross and Dr shifflet
110school board members my name is Amy Funk and I'm here from Broadway and I'm here to speak on the land lab proposal support for one I'm a parent of two students who graduated from the MTC program one in 2020 um he is now a junior at virgin Tech and when he gets out he is going to pursue a career in logistics and Hopper balum hauling which is Crane and moving agricultural products up in down the east coast and secondly my son my other son he graduated in 2023 from the program but will be a 2024 graduate from BR High School this year he has just recently accepted a position as an apprenticeship with well drilling company to work on agricultural Wells across the Rockham County Shand County and gusta County secondly um I am one
111of the owners of Brocks get Bor goats who is a host farm for the goat La stock while this has been a very enriching experience for our family very helpful of all the students coming in and fun as well it's not ideal in the long run the necessity of the lab and a farm manager to be more Hands-On more you know you've got to have an individual there to see the lab stock to observe the changes and to have opportunities there for children from K through 12 to come in and to experience the agricultural life is really really important so with that in mind I am inviting each of you you can come out and visit our farm anytime the MTC kids are out there to check it out visit with us and our family
112and um asking you to support the land L project thank you thank you Mrs funk all next on the list tonight is Patrick Fritz good evening Jackie always good to see you here in Broadway um in addition to career and technal Education Month public school week it's also Black History Month and even if the board won't say it I'll stand here and affirm black lives still matter this week all over the news we've heard about a student in Oklahoma called Benedict there are nine binary student to Spirit and due to the rhetoric of their extreme right-wing Schoolboard superintendent and Community this child was beaten about the head and shoulders and died your rhetoric killed a child last month you had a public Public Health official up here that told you it's not a matter of
113if it's a matter of when and yet despite that you still continue these policies you still push this through until one of our children are dead and why why is that pertinent to me because 40 feet from right here my son my son was kicked down the stairs he was kicked about his head and shoulders for three minutes three minutes my son was beaten right here in this hallway for the exact same reason and you sit here and you look at me and you think I'm the bad person no that is you the statistics may not move you but until you know the fear of knocking on your child's door and not knowing if they're going to answer then don't you dare stand up here here and talk about not being moved by suicide statistics
114these are children that you are killing children that you are supposed to be responsible for children here in Broadway have already died no no you hush it is my turn to talk stop stop it is my turn to talk have have his time stop when no no no we're not wait hold on hold on well hold on hold on just calm down for a second don't you dare call me just calm down for a second don't you dare call me just calm down calm down your time is going to about to be up I am getting ready to cancel your time you're not displaying the the rules or character counts up here I'm asking you character killing children I'm asking you to calm down children Mr Fritz Mr Fritz I'm asking you to calm down
115take a deep breath calm down don't you don't you de to let's not argue it's not back and forth I'm just asking you to calm down okay we're getting ready to stop your time no sir we're getting ready to stop your time how much time see have left irony is a literary device that highlights the difference between what is and how it appears the irony of wearing an American flag while stomping on the First Amendment my God that is Rich oh that is rich it does take a village to raise great kids and my Village and I have raised three amazing ones and I'm raising another one as a speak thank you Mr Fritz time's up thank [Applause] you thank you Mr Fritz next on the list is Dave Scott good evening my name is
116Dave Scott I retired from rcps after 17 years teaching English at Spotswood High School over the course of my career I taught over 2,000 students and spent the entirety of my career working to build trust with students and encourage their love of reading often through helping them find books that reflected their voices and their identities of my many achievements m in education including being named the 2018 2019 Spotswood High School teacher of the year the most important achievements are when I saw the love of reading and learning light up a student's face as they discovered themselves their family and their friends in a story in almost every situation reading provided the keys to opening the doors of understanding and acceptance in those kids and for me that was the magic of Education thus the actions
117of this school board disrespect every educator like me who ever stood in front of a class or library and tried to encourage a love of learning through reading your actions are anti-education squelching voices in engagement in service of a political agenda whose goal appears to be to sew chaos in public schools in order to divert public money to private schools the rest of this is theater to Plate the people duped into voting for you through this anti- educational scheme that list of books it didn't come from well-meaning parents within our community it came from a discredited group that is proudly anti- inclusion anti-t tolerance anti- empathy and yet bizarrely still somehow Brands themselves as a Christian organization the most guling aspect of the removal of books that none of you read and the pressure to
118have teachers work as classroom snitches and name names is exactly the kind of bullying that we worked fervently to eradicate with anti- bullying programs throughout the K through 12 experience protecting the voices of oppressed marginalized students was a Cornerstone in the foundation of Education in rcps now to the great shame of our educational Community we find that the school board itself has become the bullies using all the force and privilege of their offices to further marginalize and oppress those same students shame on the school board for spitting in my face and the face of every educator who works in a classroom to gain the trust and nourish the empathy of all students even the ones that don't look like us or talk like us or pray like us shame on you for your bullying tactics
119and setting and enacting policy in your interactions with teachers and Librarians and in your social media engagement with the public this school board is anti-ed and ational to its core in the New Testament Matthew tells us by their actions you shall know them we see your actions and we know you and we will resist you every inch of the way and in the end we will defeat you thank [Applause] you is paty dove paty Dove I have always believed there's two sides I'm sorry your mic's not on I've always believed there is two sides to a story eight years ago I would be thinking like the majority of the school board you're saying you want to protect the mental health of for our kids question have any of you walked with someone with mental health
120issues caused by the bullying in schools I have with two grandkids eight years ago our nightmare started in this very school I don't think books are causing the negative effects on Mental Health words and actions coming from kids are causing part of the issues adults have failed kids by teaching them to be more Toler not teaching them to be more tolerant of those who are slower weaker or simply different why can't we teach kids to celebrate the difference in cultures help those who are had can't handicap or born different accepting people without putting labels on them I will be honest I had to get out of my comfort zone my granddaughter and her friends have taught me to listen and learn what I've learned if you don't fit in the normal box you're a target
121for Bully these kids have shown me they accept each other for who they are you realize they're just kids trying to figure out life isn't it better to support support someone no matter if we understand if you listen you can learn a lot kids are that are bullied already have a lot more issues to deal with people making them feel less because they were born different is causing major issues they're not feeling safe they're self Haring they're contemplating suicide their brain is going from flight to fight families are just trying to keep their kids alive but what about the kids that don't have a support system the board's decision in January just made the things worse for these kids the book example the board is using I agree should not be in a school library
122the example I will use is The Invisible Boy was this a mistake removing the book If so it shows to me that you got the cart before the horse okay we needed a library policy instead of blindsiding librarians and teachers wouldn't it been more sense to have their endpoint you ask your questions you find out what they've been doing make a policy with knowledgeable people then look at the books to see if they really need to be removed because you look from the outside it looks like a one side power play or do you see The Invisible Boy is a problem because it's about a kid that doesn't fit in my granddaughter is that invisible kid being different she spent a lot of elementary school time playing by herself we taught her everyone is different
123just to be kind and respectful sixth grade she wasn't invisible anymore she became a Target kids think it's okay to call her dumb freak weird crippled barking at her hitting her and telling her to go kill herself she keeps saying I should not be treated this way and she's right it's called major physical and mental damage to her question would you want your kids to be treated this way you said it's about the 11,000 kids that you need to think about aren't the kids that are different in that total policies need to be fair to all students thank you thank you Miss Dove uh next on the list tonight is Grayson long so hello school board members I was up here speaking earlier about our ctsos in our County but I'm also heavily involved aside
124from FCCLA in FFA and and serve alongside Katie Payne who is here earlier as one of the Federation vice presidents for FFA so one of the very unique aspects of the Agricultural production class at MTC is that we offer three years of our program unlike most the others which are just a two-year um course so I've been involved in the MTC agricultural production class all three years and seen it in many different formats so initially we started out sharing a farm with the phillipses who live in Broadway and that was where we housed all of our livestock all of our equipment and we would go there for our classes and then this year graciously due to some difficulties we started splitting our flock of sheep to Jackie lore's farm and our goats are at Amy
125funk's farm and so with both of these different formats I've seen many strengths and weaknesses of our program uh our adviser Eric Stockdale works very hard to ensure that our students have many opportunities but having our own Farm was a lot of stress on him to have to feed the livestock take care of them and also the farm was located out here on the Broadway side of our County making it very hard for our students at MTC from East Rockingham high school or Turner Ashby High School to travel all that way to the farm so with the new proposal I hope you really take into consideration having that farm helper is crucial to make sure that there is someone to take care of the livestock and it's not all put on the way to the
126shoulders of our teacher um as he does need to work on our lesson plans and things of that nature and also I hope you take into consideration that this facility will not only be used for our class it'll also be a large benefit to the entire County um my family has started doing ucation days where we take livestock to the local schools to give children a hands-on experience with Agriculture and having this location with these animals we can highly socialize them and then be able to transport them to these schools to hold these ucation or Farm to school days and make sure that um all of our students are well versed in agriculture so I really hope you look through those plans for this new facility and take it into consideration thank you thank you
127Mrs long uh next on the list tonight is Kim s sandom that I get that right sandom thank you good evening the light's green it's good evening my name is Kim sandom and I'm with Alliance for the shannona valley we're a conservation organization that has been working in uh the valley for about 25 years our organization is new but I've been here for about 25 years as I looked at your agenda and saw that you were going to be considering the uh the land lab the agricultural land lab I thought it would be worth your while to know of us as a resource and also to know about some of the resources on the ground in the area of Rockingham County so you have a map that I passed out ahead of time um it
128is not all of the resources in Rockingham County but that is the growth area that Rockingham is looking at so the UDA or the Urban Development Area is the growth area I wanted you to see how close some conservation easements Civil War battlefields a forestal dist districts Etc are to that growth area I know that you will be considering location for this lab in the future you may also be considering location for schools I don't know but as you do that I hope that you will also take into consideration other resources in the community that are valuable um I offer our uh organization as a partner to work with you to let you know about some of these things there are many other organizations as well but I thought it would be be worth your
129time to be aware of this and the uh example that I want to leave with you a visual image is um not many folks know that the JMU Fields athletic fields at the intersection of Port Republic and nef are actually on a Civil War battlefield Turner Ashby Monument is at the top of that Hill the troops were moving down Port Republic Road both of them had the idea to sneak around in a flanking move through the woods in the hill next to the road and they met in the woods on the hill and had a battle there it's a real shame that that resource is now obliterated and on top of that the monument is more accessible and less like it's ever looked before and therefore subject to vandalism so you have a a map
130with some resources in front of you there are others in the community worth considering as you do your work and I would love to be able to talk with you further as you consider sites for this land lab or any other facility that you will be taking care of in your duties thank you and I'd like to leave you my card absolutely thank you I was going to ask you for [Applause] that we do have time for our last speaker tonight and that's Nath Nathan uh muselman thank hello and uh thank you uh I'm the father of a second grader at Mountain View first I do want to express my respect for how much you put into this job I it's clear that we don't all agree on how to care for children but I
131do believe that you do care for children uh parents and our schools um if I had heard last month that the board wanted to close gaps on policies and procedures regarding School library books I would have said right on I love policies and procedures I was taken a bit off guard when uh the 57 books were removed um and I wanted to learn more uh since then I've been reading through the 57 books um and I do understand better why some parents don't want their children reading some of these books but as I've gone forward I've gotten more and more confused as to why they were removed the way they were and I can share some of the sentiments that that have been shared already uh I watched the recording of the work session with
132the school librarians I was impressed by the LI the librarian's heartfelt commitment to the safety of students and by their intentional openness to the concerns of parents I was impressed by the institutional capacity Librarians already have to honor parents wishes regarding what their children can check out as well as by the technological resources parents already have to know what their children do check out I was impressed by how few book challenges there are and how amiably they are generally resolved and I was encouraged to hear their professional understanding of the nuances of determining what is appropriate for their school libraries it honestly left me wondering whether all four of you would have voted to remove the books if you had if you had done that that work session first as far as I can tell
133you removed the books first because you believe they were very dangerous um I really would like to understand you better on that point sincerely um some of the talk about pornography and uh serial killers and active Shooters I it's just um it's way off base and I don't think that that kind of language serves you well well or communicates to to the to the public very well what I learned from the library work sessions was that they already have policies in place that are a good basis for moving forward that adjusting the current classroom book challenge policy to cover library books is not a difficult task that a bottomup approach that trusts our Librarians to make contextual decisions is a more fair and reasonable way than a top down approach that the best way to
134empower parents is to broaden and promote the resources and tools schools already have in place to ensure transparency and accountability for parents who are concerned about library books I mean is it right that only a handful of parents have enrolled and the current systemwide email alert system with which they can get notifications of what books their children are checking out uh parental rights is is is great but um there's parental responsibility and engagement as well I don't much like talking at people like this I'd really like conversation and I hope we have some of that in the future thank you thank you Mr muscleman uh for coming again tonight and sorry for the last month uh not being able to give you your time back but once you give it up you just can't I
135get it back so thank you and last on our agenda tonight is Schoolboard comments and uh Miss burgl and I'm going to start with you tonight on the end I don't really have any comments I apologize I'm not feeling very well so I all right I don't have anything all right Miss Miss cave you have anything Miss Hurst Miss lore I'm just wondering uh do we still have any students I know one because she spoke twice uh but do we have any other students still with us tonight you can just raise your hand and say hi uh well thanks to to the student who stayed and thanks to all the students who did come out earlier uh and then also just a reminder if you haven't caught a High School Musical yet you have one
136more chance with Anastasia at spot High School this weekend and then we start middle school and middle school musicals and that starts right here the following weekend uh look forward to see I look forward to seeing the musicals and I look forward to seeing some of you all there too thank you thank you Miss lore uh Dr shifflet good sir you're good all right Schoolboard members we do have reason to go into uh close session tonight and 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 pursuing to the provisions of Virginia code section 2.2 d371 A1 Personnel specific public officers appointees or employees for the purpose of considering such individuals assignment appointment promotion performance demotion salaries disciplining or resignation
137and A2 one or more particular students specifically related to discipline that would involve disclosure of information contained in a Scholastic record concerning a student thank you Miss Hurst do I have a second second thank you Miss lore any questions or comments about Clos session hearing none all those in favor say yes yes all oppos no motion passes 5 we are now in close session thank you for coming tonight