001school meeting I want to welcome everybody that's here tonight and uh thank you for coming out to uh this board meeting I want to especially recognize my nephew who's a a 12th grader and he's sitting on the front row so I welcome Josiah he's something you have to do to graduate so I it's good to have you here buddy I'm so proud of you and I I'm GL I was glad to pick you up and have a little time in the car talking T night so um tonight first thing on our agenda is to approve the agenda and do I hear a a motion to approve tonight's agenda I move we approve the agenda as presented thank you Mr Lord do I have a second second thank you uh Mrs Hurst uh any questions or
002comments hearing none all those in favor say yes yes all oppose no all right motion passes 5 z uh at this moment we will have a moment of silence and those who would like to join me for that you can do that amen if you would like to stand with me for the Pledge of Allegiance we can do the same States thank you one of the things I failed to mention tonight when we was talking about approving the agenda was one of the things you may have noticed is that we've placed the public comment section at the end of our meetings and the reason why we did that was because um we found out especially at our last meeting it just how the meeting went extremely long and these meetings uh not only to hear
003from the public but we have business we need to get done here on the board and we ask for informational items to be brought forth and we have a lot of people that are here tonight from uh central office and we welcome you as well here tonight many a few of you guys are going to present tonight so we wanted to make sure we um get uh the our meeting um agenda accomplished and then also here at the end to the public for those who like to stay so that's the reason why we changed that uh tonight we start off with the board highlights and I will start tonight with Miss lur thank you Mr Cross um it's been a little bit since we've been together uh and i' I've been really super busy uh
004I was able to to visit three of the no I went to all four middle schools um while since we've we've seen each other it's almost egg science fair time so I'm talking to lots of kids about doing egg science fair and then I was also able um as I believe at least Miss Hurst was also able to go um to the breakout sessions for the Civics classes at Mont videoo and that was fascinating I had a great time doing that um and then I was also able to attend the there was a Statewide FFA conference that was put on by Broadway High School and I was able to attend that a couple weekends ago and then this past weekend I uh spent with FFA members at um Virginia Tech at the hippology that's not
005hippos that's not judging hippos that's judging horses um at Virginia Tech and had a lot of fun with those students and then this morning I attended the um shenoa Val Valley Regional uh special ed committee meeting and was able to learn a whole lot about special ed and I'd like to thank chairman cross for assigning me on that committee because I'm really finding it very rewarding and um it's it's an awesome committee to be on so thank you for that and th those are my quick brief highlights thank you thank you Mrs lore Mrs Hurst thank you um I W to miss um Laura already mentioned one of the visits that she made which is one that I thoroughly enjoy and we were invited out to um a to observe a civics lesson in Mr
006ship's class out at monov middle school and that included a collaboration between um him and our itrt staff and I just want to highlight the work that our itrt um teachers do uh the the work that went into that breakout session can take hours those kinds of lessons take hours to put together and they they make the job of a teacher easier in a lot of ways but they also um help teachers bring content and um engagement into the classroom if you're not familiar with what a breakout session is Imagine an escape room if you've ever been to an escape room um with with a series of um Clues and codes that you have to decipher and um I admittedly am not very good at those things so I was really relieved when um we
007didn't assign there were a number of adults in the room kind ofs observing and I was relieved um when we weren't assigned you know an adult to help a group because I would have not been super helpful um in deciphering the clues but the kids did a great job um you could tell they were engaged and in the content and I just want to highlight that you know we have a lot of collaborations across the county and that's one of them that's really great um the other thing that I want to highlight is um I've been touring our schools slowly but surely and um I'm always FAS ated uh by the history of each of the buildings that we go into so you know when I saw PLS Elementary School I don't know how many
008of you are familiar with that building but a couple of weeks ago that was my first time out there and it is a really unique building with unique history and same thing for modav videoo middle school and so I was really um impressed in how they're using the space out there and um the just the history of the building so I'm always impressed with each building's character because there's certainly different characters in each building so thanks you Mrs cave um I have two highlights for tonight one uh is um Miss Holloway at Elton middle school I had the opportunity to um ride a bus with her she is uh she's multi-talented and so many of our administrators in this division do so many jobs and it's really um it's just it's exciting to see that
009we have people that will jump out of their um realm of comfort if you will um to do something that's needed and we certainly need bus drivers but we um we took the bus that had to go up through um thare road which is in Elton around through um red brush 340 and back home and it was so fun uh just to tell Miss Holloway about oh this is my friend's house my friend's grandma's house and we ride our bikes from here to there on this road and just to watch her navigate way back up you know in those mountains is just you know it was really cool and um she is um an asset to El to middle school and and I'm sorry if I took that highlight from you and no you go
010ahead I I'll leave the other person to you um so she gets double double accolades tonight um and then I wanted to highlight my tour at Masson Technical Center a couple weeks ago go um Kevin Hutton um tore me around for about 2 hours and really I think it probably could have taken three but we were sort of rushed that day I had another appointment but uh what we teach our kids there just amazing I'm so proud to work for a division that offers those kinds of opportunities to our students um because we certainly need doctors and lawyers in this world but we also need Tradesmen electricians and plumbers and all of those things that they teach um I remember um when I was in school and wanting to go to MTC and learn how
011to do hair and there were I have a few friends that that did that and they have successful businesses these days and uh I think it's really awesome and so it was fun to see uh those girls in there working and you know learning makeup and hair and things like that and the dental assistant program looked really cool and just knowing that we provide those opportunities even to hook these these students up with a job when they get out of school it's so important and so um it was exciting to see all of the many many programs that are there and um Mr Hutton just doing a fabulous job there and all the staff so um it was exciting to see um what our County does for the Next Generation really so those are my
012highlights that's cool thank you Mrs Kate Mrs burgling so since our last meeting I had um a couple events planned that I was going to go to some reading events and a school walkthrough which I had to cancel and I joked that I was going to say my highlight was that my kids were sick for the last three weeks but my highlight is because my kids go to Rockingham County schools and the I I kept sending emails to the office staff you know my kid will be there tomorrow and then she was sick again um so I just want to shout out the teachers the office staff the nurse uh the nurses at all the schools specifically at my kids school I know I called her several times um and our custodians because I know
013kids are getting sick right now like crazy and uh my kid has missed several days so it seemed like every time we were better and back in school she was sick again so um a huge shout out I know what a pain I was to my daughter's school so I know that the the staff all around are probably feeling that with lots of kids that are sick so I hope everybody's getting better um and hopefully we're over this just tornado of sickness I feel like that's been going through the schools um one thing I did want to shout out was an email from Mr Alexander from Elton Middle School um he clearly is very very passionate and proud of his um wrestlers and so uh while I was not able to attend or go to
014anything the past couple weeks um he did shout out how well our middle schools did um Pence Elton and J Frank all placed as well as um our high schools as well in the top three spots so we had ta um Broadway and I believe two of our high schools yeah placed in the top five ta and Broadway so shout out to them uh from Mr Alexander who's obviously very proud of his uh his kids so those are my highlights awesome hopefully I'll be able to do my my visits and more things now that everybody's better so I'm sure you will Dr chifflet thank you chairman cross um just following a lot on the some of this Athletics and wrestling this Friday and Saturday is the state wrestling meet in Salem Virginia all four of
015our high schools will be sending athletes to compete in total we have 18 wrestlers who have qualified to compete at the state level uh also on Saturday is the state swim meet in Richmond and we have 13 swimmers uh participating at the at the at the state level for swimming uh representing East Rock Spotswood and ta and then two weeks from today is the state indoor track meet and we have 35 athletes from all four high schools who have qualified to participate in the state track meet and I want to congratulate all these athletes and wish the best of uh wish them the best of luck um also uh this month is Schoolboard appreciation month and I want to just brief say thank you to each of our school board members for their commitment to
016rcps and the tireless hours that they invest serving our community um further this week is School Board clerk appreciation and I want to thank Caitlyn for her hard work and her Superior organization skills I'm not sure I've encountered anyone quite as organized as kand and uh she's trying to help me although it is a challenge for her I know but she's she's trying to make me better at that aspect of my job so um and also to Brenda who is our Deputy Clerk and finally I am looking forward to the upcoming musicals I think later this evening Mrs Becky Ford will be presenting on our um slate of musicals for this spring and uh Katie and I already have our tickets to go see The Adams Family on Friday night so we're looking forward to
017that thank you Dr shifflet and I I just again just want to publicly say your beard looks really good and I just keep on letting that thing grow out I think it looks good on you I'm do we I do want to say thank you Dr shle to you as well for all that you do um and the countless hours that you're putting in and um thank you just I'm just couldn't be uh any more proud glad or I don't know what you want to say but just uh just to have you here as our superintendent rockim County so thank you for all that you do um my board I highlight tonight tonight is I also went out and visited Elon middle school and I just really appreciate our administrators and our our staff and
018faculty that come out and uh Drive buses for our parents and for our children to be able to get home I mean there's uh so many U people uh bus drivers are doing double routes and and there's a lot of people that just don't realize how much uh even our director of transportation and our supervisor of transportation both of them are going out and I'm driving buses to pick up kids and ultimately that blesses our parents who are have jobs and have to go to work and so I just want to say thank you so much for uh all of our staff that are pitching in to do things that you may not see on a daily basis or recognize uh but I did go out and had an opportunity to uh ride the bus
019with uh Dr uh Holloway at Elon middle school and I our when I got back I wish I kind of would have rode the bus with Luke roadcap he he also drives a bus and Luke's an amazing Civics teacher out at Elon middle school and uh he was an assistant principal and I asked to go back uh to the classroom because he really missed being with the kids in the classroom and I get that but he was an excellent administrator as well but he drove all the way if you know anything about the Eastern side of the County uh you have Sandy Bottom and beldor holler uh on the Eastern Far Eastern as you're getting ready to go across the blue Rich mountains and he drove the bus all the way back up in the
020Bor holler and with his point where he turns around there was a car that was parked and the driver wasn't in it so he had to back his bus all the way out of Bor holler and to a point to where he could turn around and that is very impressive and I wish I would have been able to witness uh Luke and what you did but I really do appreciate uh everyone that's driving the bus and helping us out during this time and this a little plug for our bus drivers we are hiring so if you'd like to to uh drive a bus uh maybe the DNR can put that in the paper we are looking for free maybe just highlight board member cross tonight that we're looking for bus drivers I my other two
021highlights is I wanted to recognize two students tonight cam Pacho and Kan shifflet uh C Pacho is uh a Spotswood High School varsity which um we u w districts but chance if you guys didn't hear Spotswood basketball did win districts again this year and uh they're playing tonight playing Harrisburg High School so hopefully they do they do well you know they won right okay so all right but uh Mr PCO he uh a few weeks ago he scored over a thousand points and that's very difficult and what a great honor that is for Mr Mr Pacho to do that so I just wanted to publicly congratulate him not only that but he's a great young man my son uh who's an eighth grader at mon videoo uh told me when we went and watched one
022of the basketball games there this year he said dad he said that that kid right there he said he was very nice uh and very kind kid he said I came over to workouts and he always helped me out and just was very kind to me so I sent him an often I sent him an email and said thank you uh congratulations and thank you for being so kind to my son and then Kane shifflet at East Rockingham High School Kane I I taught as a I was his coach in little Le and to see Kane grow up and to be a thousand Point scorer at at East Rock uh East Rock has a lot of talent had a lot of talent uh on that team but when you know when you have one of
023the uh greatest athletes in basketball to come through you kind of get lost in the midst of of all that but there's some great athletes at East Rock and I'm Kane I'm real proud of you as well just a young man that you are and hopefully you'll get to see this tonight and uh congratulations on that so that will conclude our school board highlights tonight and we will go into our action items and the first on our action items tonight is to approve the minutes and can we approve the minutes for the January 22nd and January 30th do I hear a i a motion to approve those minutes I move we approve the minutes from January 22nd and the minutes from January 30th as presented thank you Mrs Lord do I have a second second
024thank you Mrs cave any questions or comments hearing none all those in favor say yes yes all the oppos no passes 5 uh next on our list tonight is bills and mileage and I believe Dr shifflet you have a recommendation on that chairman cross and members of the board I recommend that you pay bills that's all right that's all right y'all hav y'all a little slow okay no problem everybody had a chance to look at that tonight and see anything that have any questions comments on hearing none do I have a motion to approve the bills of mileage as presented you go ahead I move we follow the superintendent's recommendation and pay the bills thank you Mrs Lord do I have a second thank you Mrs burglin uh any questions or comments concerning the bills
025of mileage hearing none all those in favor say yes yes I'll oppose no motion passes 5 uh next on our list tonight for action item is Phil trips and do you can you see that Dr shifflet it's okay I can get on my phone Poss field trips for your approval I have them I forget what they are but I did read them he hasn't CH Cher Carson board members I have several field trips for your consideration Wilbur s Pence Middle School the FCCLA State leadership conference April 11th through 14th 17 students to Virginia Beach Mont videoo Middle School FCCLA state conference April 11 through the 14th six students to Virginia Beach massaut and Technical Center a production February the 23rd to the 24th three students Virg Virginia Tech uh East Rockingham High School um tech
026ed March 18th through the 20th 10 students to Smith Island Virginia and then Broadway High School tech ed March 18th to the 20th 12 students to Smith Island and I do recommend approval of these field trips thank you Dr shiffler hearing the superintendent recommendation do I hear a motion to approve field trips I move to follow the superintendent's recommendation to approve the field trips as presented thank you Mrs Hurst do I have a second thank you Mrs Bergin any questions or comments on field trips hearing none all those in favor say yes yes I'll oppose no motion passes 5 uh next on our action items tonight is the school safety and coordinator position and Dr Chi I think that you also have this can you pull that up you want me talk for a second
027I do appreciate I do appreciate this uh position um this is a position that one of the biggest reasons why I got into wanting to be a school board member was to make sure this position as uh would get into our division because uh in 2010 I don't know I believe everyone that's old enough to remember but in 2010 we had the massacre in New Town Conneticut and um Governor Bob McDonald was the governor of Virginia at the time and one of the things he did is he put together a school safety task force and on that task force uh they listed on there one of the top priorities that every division in the state of Virginia and the Commonwealth should do would be to add a school safety manager towards every division now some
028divisions throughout the state they went ahead and hired a full-time um professional that uh had um uh Public Safety uh law enforcement backgrounds and they uh were directors over those positions in many uh divisions just like Rockham County uh we put that important position on top of someone else's shoulders within the division and they've done a great job and this I was want uh them to know it was our transportation officers that that do that position at the moment I but it's another added position on top of their shoulders of what they have to do a jobwise and so being a school resource officer for almost a decade within our division I saw how important it was to have that school safety manager position uh to keep our schools uh uh our division accountable and
029also to uh do better at safety within our schools and so this import this position is very important and I believe it's going to add an extra layer huge extra layer protection to our schools because you understand that the school resource officers um they can't tell our employees what they do unless they break the law they're not there to tell them hey you should do this or do that they're there to make sure the students and the staff are safe throughout the day uh and they do a great job of doing that but a safety manager can do a lot of different uh safety things within our division that need to get done and we can do a better job at safety within our division so I'm excited about uh bringing this position to the
030county and uh do you got that pulled up now yes sir chair chair carw and board members a draft job description for a potential School Safety and Security coordinator position was presented at the January 22nd meeting as information for review and consideration it is now being presented for Action to be included in the 2425 fiscal year budget I do recommend approval of the School Safety and Security cordinator position thank you Dr shifflet I'm do I hear a motion um to um for this position I move to follow the superintendent's recommendation to approve the school safety and security coordinator job description as presented thank you Mrs cave do I have a second second thank you Mrs Hurst any questions or comments I know maybe you have any comments you may want to add okay I just
031wanted to um encourage you in uh well and really to thank you for pushing for this position um even I think it was back in March of last year I visited with the government Club at Spotswood High School and they're just an extravagant group of students very wise and um we actually talked about a position of school safety um and security coordinator because they even at their age saw um I guess limitations of school resource officers and in what they do and having this position is going to create accountability um amongst our school staff that we can make sure that schools are truly safe and they pointed out some things that you know the resource officer wouldn't necessarily tend to but a security coordinator would and so it was interesting to me to see students
032um see the need and so thank you for pushing for this and um and I'm happy to be a part of the board to to see it come to fruition because I know you've been talking about it for a while so than thank you thank you Mrs K this is a very uh important position uh for me and I want to thank you guys as a board for also seeing the need uh for this position within the county and I also want to thank Dr shiffler as well because one of the things that he said when he first came on that was safety was number one on one of his priority list for the division and he's done that and so far within the division his first 100 days one of the cool things that
033he did was I I forget the name name of the app you have to help me out on that but stop it stop it app that that he put out there and just have you used the stop it app yet yet okay it's out there you can use it but if you see something say something type thing and um what I've heard so far is that that app has done a great job and helping out uh with all kinds of things within our schools so uh thank you for taking us serious and doing all this Jo any other board comments all right do I hear a motion to approve on the superintendent's recommendation all right do thank you for reminding me that and we had a second and now sign the vote all those who
034are in favor of it say yes yes all that against it say no motion passes 5 all right uh next on our list tonight is student conduct discipline committee Dr Sher yes at the previous two meetings assistant superintendent Dr alifer presented on student conduct uh in rcps at the request of the school board a committee is being formed to review our current student conduct and discipline policies this committee will report back to the school board with recommendations for changes to our current policies I recommend approval of the student conduct committee as presented thank you uh Dr Sher for doing this and I'm really looking forward to uh this uh going forward uh for our division I hearing the superintendent's recommendation do I hear a motion I move to follow the superintendent's recommendation thank you Mrs
035Burg do I have a second second thank you Mrs cave any questions or comments hearing none all those in favor say yes yes all against no motion passes 5 um next on our list tonight is policy revisions and Dr shiff says that your name is on that as well we have a number of revisions many of the revisions that you see that are on um there tonight are policies that we needed to uh tweak and to look at when we passed yeah I know you can go on the website and look at that if you'd like to um but all the policy revisions that we do have that many of them that you'll see there tonight are ones that I'm when passing Governor Yan's policy in full we need to go back and check our
036policies to make sure it didn't contradict one another so that's what you'll see there uh on the agenda tonight as well uh chair Carlson board members the following policies were submitted for review and consideration at the January 22nd 2024 meeting I recommend approval of the proposed policy revisions as presented that's policy ad JF HB JB BD DH and j- a thank you uh Dr chiplet I'm hearing his recommendation do I hear a motion to approve that recommendation I move to follow the superintendent's recommendation to approve the proposed policy revisions as presented thank you Mrs Hurst do I have a second second second thank you Mrs cave any questions or comments on this I do want to I do want to mention uh two of them one was the public um um comment period that we've
037done and we've looked into is it was really important for us to be able to to make room for residents and those who were uh residents of Rockingham County uh in our policy and to recognize that because um what others are looking and saying outside of our division uh they need to to go toward their Public Schools it's important for us to hear from our community and so that was important for us to to go ahead and pass it in there and the the other one was joa and in that policy there there was some wording in there that kind of um made us feel a little a little bit uncomfortable when it came to parental rights and so we wanted to make sure that that policy reflected that the parents are in complete um
038knowledge of what's happening with their children and there was a little bit of questioning in there and so we wanted to be very clear on that policy and so I think we did a great job of winning this for parents and making sure that they're going to know exactly what's going on with their children there's no gray area we don't like the gray area when it comes to parental rights and so that's one of the reasons why we we chose that I'm hearing um the second any other questions that we have tonight on these policies all right hearing none all those in favor say yes yes all those favor all those against say no did you say yes Mr L I didn't hear you okay all right that that passes 5 sorry wasn't being anything
039I just wanted they didn't hear you sorry um next on our list tonight is is a real estate text book adoption s it's not on the don't see we don't see the do onsite come on up you're it's not it's come on up come on up you're fine you're fine chair cross Schoolboard Dr shifflet thank you for the opportunity to bring um to you the real estate textbook adoption committee those names should be in board docs for you to review and if you have any questions I'm happy to answer them chair Carlson board members I recommend approval of the proposed real estate textbook adoption committee as presented by Carrie gray supervisor of CTE thank you Dr shiet hearing the superintendent's recommendation do I hear a motion to approve that recommendation I move we follow the
040superintendent's recommendation for the approval of the real estate textbook adoption committee as presented by Carrie gray thank you Mrs lur do I have a second thank you Mrs berlo any questions or comments Mrs C go ahead I was just wondering if you could share a little bit about um the real estate course where it's where it's at who can take the class courses what it sets you up for is this at MTC no it the C excuse me the course is currently being offered um at East Rockham High School this year but student in the division in any of the four high schools could register to take the course that's the school that had enough demand for the course um to be offered it's been very successful um it's currently being taught by a um
041licensed realtor and so he had the expertise and knowledge to pull together materials um and so there was enough interest in other schools that were looking to adopt a textbook to have more resources for teachers that don't have that training students are then um the course is intended for them to then be able to take the licens your exam once they turn 18 can't take that until they're 18 but it's meant to prepare them for that so they could be licensed as a real estate agent okay afterwards okay cool very cool that is cool how long is the course is it it's a year long a year 36 weeks one credit yes okay elective yes okay it's it's taught in our marketing department gotta thank you and they they'll still have to go to Richmond
042and take a test right yes yeah we don't offer the exam because we can't offer it to all of the students um so they would have to take the exam on their own time it's a tough exam yeah it's uneasy our hope is this helps better prepare them and gives them the time and energy to devote to that study absolutely been been popular been a good opportunity it's a great idea it's great any other questions or comments from Miss gray I'm just curious cuz I think this was something I would have loved to have done in high school do you when you have all these students going and testing do you do we provide transportation for them and get them together as a group or they just have to go individually no the test would
043be on their own individually because you may have um an 11th grader that's 16 or 17 years old taking it and so they would need to wait until they turned 18 could you let just put this in the back of your mind but if you come across any kids that are having a tough time getting down to Rich to take that test to let the board know I will just it would just be good to know absolutely right any other questions or comments pretty thank you for doing this we're excited about it hearing none all those in favor say yes yes all against no this motion passes 0 thank you so much Mrs GRE next on our action item tonight is Bid recommendations for the HVAC controls at South River Elementary and uh L was
044it Lacy lindville chair Char Dr shifflet members of the board uh this evening I bring to you the bid for hbac control replacement at South River Elementary in Linville Edom Elementary uh we had two firms respond we sent it to about seven different firms um our recommendation is to award the contract to the low bidder riddleberger Brothers in the amount of$ 61,2 63 chairman cwon board members I recommend awarding the contract for the replacement of the HVAC controls at South River Elementary School and lynville Edom Elementary School to the low bidder riddleberger Brothers as presented by Steve Reed director of Maintenance thank you Dr shifflet Schoolboard members hearing Dr shifflet's recommendation to hear a motion to approve that recommendation I move to approve the recommendation by the superintendent sorry I don't have a computer thank
045you Mrs bergo do I have do I have a second yeah second thank you Mrs Hurst any questions or comments Mr Reed while we have him standing here with us tonight go ahead Miss cave how many um bids did did you get for this how many bids did you get for this you got to e you said to and um you're probably not allowed to say publicly who the other company was the other company was Southern air out of ly Southern air okay all right do we ever use them or do we always use B uh we have our general service contract with riddleberger okay uh we bid that out every 5 years okay U we have had Southern air uh do a few projects for us some rooftop Replacements uh we've had uh Moors
046electrical mechanical a few years ago did about a million dollars worth of Chiller replacements for us okay um so riddleberger is a company that we use regularly however they are not exclusively the company that we use okay thank you I'm sorry to put you on the spot Mr Reed but I know you're also great at explaining this might be a good time to walk us through the process of how this and um how this process works and how you bid it out and who you kind of who you send it to if you would please yeah so typically if we have a project that's going to be uh over $60,000 we projected being over $660,000 per board policy we do a sealed bid okay in mechanical uh bids we have a list of of contractors
047in the office I've listed a couple of them uh Blau Brothers here in Harrisonburg is another one that we send to uh I don't know the others off the top of my head but there's a list of seven or eight that we send to every time we also put it on uh the school the school website uh as advertised and uh we'll send those bids out uh receive the sealed bids and again a sealed bid is we bring them get them in these envelopes and at time specified we'll open them up and read them aloud uh so that there's no uh chance for anybody saying well I can do that a little less uh and then we'll we U evaluate it if it's a company we haven't used before of course we'll check the references
048if it is a company that we have used before and had uh good results with uh we'll we'll bring that directly to the board at that point if it's a company we used before and had some not so good results with we will talk to them about that um we cannot eliminate them just for those not so good results uh they have to be debarred by the state for us to be able to eliminate them but then we'll talk to them and we'll express our concerns uh we'll set some parameters and then we'll bring that for approval thank Mr re yeah thank you and in this case I believe it was a about a $7,000 difference yes any other questions comments here hear none all those in favor say yes yes all oppos and no
049motion passes 5 Mr Reed we also have you here for one more action item tonight and that is the keyless entry system installation yes and and as Mark kazinski comes up to to be with me here I want to start out by thanking uh the members of the evaluation committee if you may recall u a few meetings ago it may have been even last year the the board approved uh bidding this out is a request for proposal rather than a sealed bid so the request for proposal enables us to evaluate the proposals that are given to us not just on the price but on other Set uh parameters such as ability to perform the work the product that they're presenting and those types of things when we ask for that permission we also ask for
050permission for the evaluation committee and again I want to thank that group uh that that included Matt Rickard which was coordinator of Network Services Emily Holloway principal at Elton Middle School Kevin and Chad dolme supervisors the school resource officers we started out with uh Kevin and then Kevin went on leave so Chad stepped in so both of those uh officers were part of this Justin Moyers Chief Financial Officer Doug alifer assistant superintendent Mark Linsky maintenance facilitator and myself step one up Mark if you want to come on up here mark good to see you man the the request for proposal was properly advertised and specified we sent the uh the RFP to eight offers we we received three submittals the committee reviewed all the proposals and then all three vendors uh visited seven schools for
051a site visit uh Elton Elementary Riverbend mville Elton middle mon videoo Middle East Rockingham and spotwood high schools the three vendors then updated their and resubmitted their proposals and the committee reviewed and rated all three vendors you can see the ratings uh below from each evaluator as you can see uh the evaluations ranged from 542 points to 619 points uh the cost for the systems that were presented range from $1,476 1821 to 1 Mill 47,9 159 our recommendation is to award the keyless entry system installation to the highest rated off offerer which was Hulk security from Harrisonburg Virginia with points chairman Carlson board members I recommend awarding the contract for the keyless entry system installation to the highest rated offerer Hulk security as presented by Steve Reid director of maintenance thank you Dr shiid uh
052board members hear in the superintendent's recommendation do I hear a motion to follow that recommendation so moved thank you Mrs Hurst do I have a second thank you Mrs berglin any question or comments I'm sure we may have a few here tonight go ahead Miss hou questions um there you go I'm G gonna learn this technology yet um how many so the proposal you visited only a certain number of schools but this proposal and this amount for the bid that's to cover all of the schools and that is for all of our schools it does not include MTC not MTC they're separate okay um and how do you I'm assuming is it every door in every building it is there's about 215 total within the division uh and here's where I'm going to pull out
053some notes we did have an evaluation say 214 215 I had a a deer that wanted to commit suicide on my way here this evening and I had to hit my brakes and papers went flying so here we go show the the determining uh factors for the keyless entry at the elementary and middle schools were the main entry to the building which was one at the outside door and then one on the inside secure vesle doors the delivery access for the loading dock to the kitchen entry near the employee parking areas which could be multiple entry used for student pickup drop off for the parents entry use for the student pickup for bus dropping off and picking up access to playground areas and ex exterior student teacher Pathways from door to door some of the
054schools um hilard Middle School uh from the new Wing they routinely go out the back and then into a qu door that's behind the gym so they travel that routinely so those doors would have this in it also these same determining factors were a factor in high schools also uh Mark also met with all of the High School principles and athletic directors and talked about the high usage doors at those schools that they would use for athletics uh at those buildings and they were included so that's how they were determined it was about like I say it wasn't about it was 215 originally we started when we first started talking about that we were about 140 so we added about 50% more doors after we uh got into it a little bit further so you're
055saying that 215 is the number of doors that will get the keyless in that's correct okay gotcha I do have some questions um so which doors are not getting it so I'm the door not included on the right right like are we talking like the the closet where the custodial things are kept like you may have that you may have a door that is uh let's see I just you know our our Hospital uses things like this John Myers okay the door that exits out of what was the Breezeway to the east that's not getting one that's not a door that's used typically by the teachers to go in and out uh but the two in the back they are the three in the front they are yeah okay and is there any plan to
056do all the doors no no okay no just the reason I'm asking you know like our Hospital uses keyless entry for secure areas all of our government buildings um so that was my concern obviously I'm super big on public safety and school safety I would love to see every door maybe not you know the well with with with the plans with this is that it will eliminate the need for your teachers and staff to carry exterior keys right they will have access through the the key the swipe uh your Administration and maybe your custodial staff will still have master keys this is just the first step okay once once we get this done we will be evaluating exterior doors at the schools to see which doors need to be Reed which schools need exterior doors
057red uh if we have a school that we feel we have good exterior door key control and we know where they're at then we may not Rey that exterior of that building but if we have one that is questionable then then we will rekey the exterior doors to that building so some exterior doors will still remain with a key all doors will still be able to be opened by key so key and keyless entry yes okay yes all doors will still be able to be opened by the key that's why reing is part of this process when um when I was running for Schoolboard a teacher had mentioned to me me because this is something that I care very deeply about um and I've I've subbed I've seen how long it takes to get into
058a classroom and that seconds matter um especially for our Sheriff's Office who's responding to emergencies so um one thing that was brought to my attention was the quality of the door and I know I think at Wilbur Pence they've got some old wood doors where it doesn't matter if there's a a lock so just something to keep in mind that while we're putting these great you know keyless entries on here if I can kick the door down myself right um and I'm not a very strong woman but if I could kick it down there's kind of no reason to have a keyless entry there so as you as you know all four of our middle schools were converted high schools all four of our middle schools have the situation that you have described um just
059to be clear these are all external these are all exterior doors yes so none of the none of the classrooms are going to none of the class at the and for the 25 doors we're looking at over a million dollars to do the keyless entry for those 25 that gives you a little scale do you happen to have the number of doors that we did not cover not off top of my head no okay no I would say and I look through the through the book again this morning and doors that are not into a mechanical room doors that are not into a janre closet the Dexter doors that are not into say U I don't know an a shop a tech ed shop there's probably one or two doors that are not that at
060each school that is not getting the keyless entry um and again uh it depends on the layout of the school and what doors are used U by the faculty and staff routinely right um I I was just thinking specifically and I'm sorry to prolong this but mville Elementary like was one Mar bring me the map there's a door where that goes into the gym and then there's like a door up the sidewalk there and so they're very close but in a panic maybe they came out the gym door but students panicked and they went to run for the other door like are both of those doors covered the doors that were identified at mville the main entry the interior vesu no I'm sorry I've got the wrong got the wrong school here but it is
061the main entry in in the vestle okay the door at the Bus Loop okay okay the door at the back the small parking lot the other door on the other side that faces the church the door that goes into the kitchen the door that goes into the back hallway off of that parking lot the door that is in the front hallway beside the gym not the gym door but the door into the hallway beside the gym and then the door and the corridor that's between the two wings that come out the classroom wing and the the multi-purpose if you can picture that in your mind if not okay I can show you a picture thank you y we're excited about this and appreciate you guys taking the time to do this it it became a
062lot of questions on our on how to actually approach it and it took took us a while to answer all of those questions to get to the point even on what type of systems we were going to use the three systems were were similar but different right in what was proposed by the three vendors and will this be finished by the start of next school year or that is the intent of the bid okay and obviously the the interior doors for the classrooms that is something that we would like to look at are going to talk about in the future I'm going to talk about it certainly um but I guess something cost-wise we couldn't do right now right th those are fairly large ticket items and I I don't have the numbers off the
063top of my head we had priced I think Hillyard at one point Elon middle at one point on replacing those doors it becomes a situation where just replacing the door does not give you anything you've got to replace the door and the frame right uh and and those frames if they're very large and they got transom above them and a lot of those transoms actually go above what the drop ceiling is they now so it's quite a uh detailed project and it is an expensive project if we get to that point okay definitely something to look into as we're looking at safety manager position and seeing the safety of our schools going forward uh any other questions comments the money for this project is allocated in this current budget thank you Justin wonderful okay great
064thank you and while we got you up here I appreciate you all being coaches here in rcps and I I really do really appreciate the time you put in and all the help you guys give our students here in Broadway so thank you guys and I'm I hate that you beat us last year but congratulations that you did it but I any other questions or comments okay I don't want to beat a dead horse I'm sorry you're fine you're fine but I also don't want to forget about MTC I I mean I know that that's that's a different animal but I do um really care about that school and I hate that they're not included I know that that's a city county thing and funding and all that is a whole another question but I
065I would love to see that out there as well because that's a huge campus so absolutely just want to throw that out there because I don't want to leave them out nope MTC is is very unique it's more of a campus School uh so yeah there it would be a lot of doors that would need to be addressed there okay yeah all right hearing the superintendent's recommendation all those in favor say yes yes all oppose no motion passes 5 thank you guys so much for bringing this tonight and all the information we are going to take a five minute uh recess uh for before we get into our informational items so uh we'll be back in five minutes shout out to you he guess what hey guys how are yall absolutely glad y came up
066where are you really are you hey what's up big how you man nice to meet you all to what you hey that's good callely what's on are you man I'll be watching my son played but he gradu last year okay playing has some good hit we all right you doing next not sure that's fine don't stay Mom Dad bab right be like yall remember one another in a little than you guys oh just a couple [Music] that's EX what I like all right thank you for that break as we get ready to go into our informational uh items tonight we're I'm really excited to hear from uh quite a few of the speakers tonight that are going to be bringing the board information so thank you for uh taking the time to come out and
067I have told your boss that after you're done speaking it's okay if you go home whether he's relay that message to you I don't know but miss AB it's like great I but we want to honor your time as well so U Miss abery and Dr Carell Clark which all come on up and talk to us about eel good evening chairman craw Schoolboard members Dr shifflet thank you for providing this opportunity for Dr car CL Clark and I to present to you all this evening um some information about our e our English language Learners uh program um in our school Division and so thank you for having us tonight and also I want to thank some of our e teachers that came out tonight as well um in support of um what they do they
068truly love uh what they do and love our students so before we get started with the presentation that we have for you that has a lot of data in it um before you Dr caral Clark um put together a proposal you should have this in front of you I believe and this is a lot more detailed information than what's on our presentation so um when you have a moment you can you can take a look and and go through that information information as well um but that's for um for you to look at at another time um so we do have a brief uh slideshow for you um the first slide um for us to look at is a division five-year enrollment data and this is as of last week so um I put last
069week's date on it because this literally changes on a daily basis every day we have new students uh moving into Rockingham County because they know how awesome we are so they're always coming into our um School Division um so this is the last five years that you can see our total number of students in Rockham County Schools our number of e students served and our eel served percentage as well so we've gone from 8% from 5 years ago to 133% of our eel served percentage um right now we're at about 1,500 uh elel served students in the school division when you add in our monitored students we're at about 1,900 that's about an additional 400 students that we monitor as well but they're not part of the served um population Dr car Clark can talk
070about what that means here in just a moment the next slide is data from our fall verification report so this is a report that goes into the state in October of every year and um these are the six schools where we see the most uh eel population and the most growth in our eel population so you'll see the RS is receiving services and then again underneath that is the monitored El students as well um we'll just point out a couple of them you can see there with Cub Run when we started uh what six seven years ago 2016 that's when Dr car Clark came into this position um in central office so we had 95 students receiving Services then um a few years ago we go to 170 and now we're at 243 so you
071can see um how drastic the changes have been in Cub Run um also you can look uh at mono videoo we've gone from 42 students receiving services to 43 to 101 just in a few years we'll repense from 30 to 43 to 93 as well as our monitored students so you can see that we've experienced um much rapid growth um in our e population because of the growth that we've experienced um we certainly have increased our E staffing uh so you can see in the last four years we had about 24 teachers in our e uh Staffing and then this school year we're up to 42 so we haven't quite doubled our El Staffing but we have increased with a with many El teachers um to our school division you'll see the tutor hours per
072week as we increased our teachers we've certainly decreased the tutor hours that we've uh that we needed and as well as our um e assistants so um at this time I'm going to turn it over to Dr caral Clark and she's going to share about future Trends and priorities that we're looking in our for our EO population thank you Miss aathy so in putting this together I looked at the past the number of students we had in the past the teachers where we are now and what the future might look like in order to come up with a um a proposal that took everything into consideration I spoke to the Planning Commission as to what their plans were for uh the future construction and according to their master plan covers Valley has a total of
073400 uh houses that they're planning on doing Pleasant Valley is 337 pack Church Road 723 and that is going to affect us a great deal and that's not something that we talking about in 10 years from now but it's fairly fairly soon um based on prediction equation using regression by the end of 20124 we're looking at an increase of 232 students from September till last week we had already seen an increase of about 150 y students just in that short amount of time by the end of 2024 we're looking at an increase an additional increase of 360 by the end of 2026 it's an additional 550 so when you put it all together we're talking about an increase of 1,142 just in the matter of about two three years um adding that to our current
074numbers we're looking at about 2642 adding the monitor students we're looking at close to 3,000 students in just a matter of about 3 years that is double where we are right now um we're we're increasing at a very very rapid rate again taking all of this into consideration talking to parents students and teachers um I kind of put something together that addressed all the different needs and uh I came up with three priorities I didn't want to be greedy so I just put two for next year and then one for the following year so one of the first priorities would be for Lea some positions and they would would be bilingual the languages that they would be bilingual in was determined by the percentage of students that we have in rnan County our top languages
075of course other than English are Spanish by about 85% then you have Russian and Ukrainian and Arabic so with that I would like to request four Le on positions two that would be Spanish speaking one Arabic or Russian and then one uh I'm sorry one Russian or Ukrainian and then one Arabic they would be working with uh all of our all of our parents regardless of what language they speak or how long they've been here it's every single Rockingham County parent that needs help they would be there to help them and I'll talk a little bit more about some of their duties the other priority would be to uh to have seven teachers for the elementary newcomer program two for the Broadway area two for the T Turner Ashby area and then three for the
076spotwood and the East Rock area because they would be combined okay and then as you can see from this um page this gives you a little bit of a picture as to what the other school divisions have in relationship to Lea Sons we are the only School Division that does not currently have a Lea son and we are the second biggest School Division around um the first one is Harrison workg and we're number two with as of last week I have no doubt that it has increased by now uh we had 1, 151 students okay and again if you add the monitor students in there we have around 1,00 students and the reason why I keep saying monitored is because we still have to um we're still responsible for those monit monitor students for four
077years after they exit the program and there's a lot of things that the teachers are still responsible for doing with the student students in order to make sure that they are successful in school pardon me around 400 so the next slide has the liasan duties and again I want I just want to emphasize again that the leason would be working with every single Rockingham County parent that would need extra support they would help with things such as uh applying for a free introduced lunch for the schools that do not have all students uh receive that that can be a little hard for some people so they would be there to help them um they would provide um help with uh Community Resources if somebody needs them they would also provide additional support with uh with
078uh the access test which is what the E students have to take every year they have to take the access test so they could help with all that with registration um and any really any extra that the parents need or the teachers would need also we have a fairly High % of du identified students that are sped and eel so they would be crucial with that also okay another thing that they would help with would be working with a work-based learning facilit facilitators to try and find provide work based learning experience for our students that want to go that route okay okay the next priority would be the newcomer program for the elementary level we actually have um several schools that do not have a full-time or a really a te teacher at all in
079there so when it comes to the newcomer program all those schools that you do not have anybody do not have a teacher or just have a tutor they would go to the newcomer program if a uh the school only has one part-time or one full-time teacher then again we would transer for the uh the newcomer students there which would be we level one and two which means that they haven't been in United States very long and then for the schools uh that have multiple teachers it would be up to the discretion of the school to decide if they want to keep the newcomers in their school and provide the services there or if they would want them to go to the newcomer program the suggestion would be grades three to five that they would be
080the ones that would go to the newcomer program the length of time that they would spend on the newcomer program program would really depend on their academic background it could be anywhere from 3 months 6 months it really would vary depending on the student okay and priority number three this actually is very needed even now uh this would be a newcomer program for the middle and the high school students we currently have students that are coming to us that are 17 years old old 18 years old 19 years old with very little or no AC no uh academic background so to place them in algebra one as their first class as their first class in a school setting it's a little dating so the the plan would be that the Le would actually help with
081that at the time of registration the lean would evaluate the student and decide which track they would go on if they have the academic background that they would need to be successful in school and graduate with a diploma on time then they would just be in the newcomer program just enough time to get them your basic math reading skills computer skills if it's a student that it does not have the academic background and would likely age out before they would be able to get a diploma then they would go on a different track where they would get them the basic Reading Writing math computer skills and get them ready either for a GED or Workforce an alternative to a GED would be to work with a Mexican consulant who I've been in touch with they
082are actually willing to provide all the materials needed uh for every any Spanish peing students regardless of what Latin American count they are from work with them and get them a diploma from Mexico again regardless of where they're from as long as they speak Spanish they would provide the the uh resources we would provide the uh teachers end location so those are the priorities that I wanted to present to you um I feel that those are very important in order for us to be able to provide the tools that our students need in order to be academically successful and then I already so then we have one final one this is from our graduating class from ta saying thank you for everything you do you this is the American dream to be able to find
083success and be able to do whatever it is you want to do when you graduate from high school thank you so much thank you thank you do you have any questions for us got a lot okay you all teachers that are here with us tonight thank you from the bottom of our hearts for what you do for our students we have a wonderful group of people I know and Y yall pour out your hearts these kids and I thank you so much for what you do and um we're hoping to help get more uh get you more help uh but thank you from the bottom of our hearts for what you do for E all students I'm sorry me get emotional there but it does tear me up because I know um personally the struggles
084that a lot of our kids go through and um for them just to make it through the school year sometimes is difficult I do have a question tonight when he talked about um for the students that show up that are older that it's going to be tough for them to get their GED but they're having to come to school because it's the law that they be here um what was something U what what kind of SE can we provide have you thought about anything like CTE programs or any um Workforce things we could do at MTC or anything like that for these students to provide them a trade or something valuable to them so when they they're if they're only with us two years or three years and the GED may not be an option
085where they can even get their GED or qualify for the GED and um is there anything that you've thought about that we could do with CTE that could help out these students well on the number three priority number three addresses that if we could work with the acre warfor Mr J and Mr Baylor and trying to get them a you know a work um experience there and also for the ones that are not able to get a GED because it's really hard to get your GED even if English is your one and only language so if they have if they are Spanish speaking then we do have that option of possibly getting them a diploma from Mexico again it doesn't they don't have to be Mexican as long as they speak English then my hope
086would be that maybe other countries have something similar that we can work with so that we can provide similar uh opportunities for other for people from other countries and can you explain what would be the benefit of them getting receiving a diploma from Mexico living here in America but what kind of benefit would that give them they can still go to college okay they would still be able to go to blish or another college with that okay okay so that that gives them more options okay because there's a lot of people who do want to continue on afterwards and this way it gives them that opportunity okay board members I want to take up all the time thank you for putting this together um some of my questions are like I I might already know
087the answer to but I just am asking you to share um so um what qual what would classify a student as a newcomer um not just you're new to the United States but there has to be a language component or language barrier correct so it would be a WEA level one it's somebody that did just recently come to United States within a year so we're assessing them with the waa correct correct when a student first gets here they get uh screened and then every February March they have to take a test which is called the waa test the access test and that determines what level they are and that level those levels are one through five one through six four one through four and those determine the level of services um that a student might
088get what does a newcomer day look like if we start an elementary program a newcomer Elementary program what does that look like for the child what does it currently look like what would it look like so it would be like half a day working on your basic skills getting them literate getting them the foundations for Reading Writing and math and then for the other half rest of the day they would go into the regular classrooms uh they would still have your your um music and things like that okay so it's half intensive and then the rest of it they will be with their peers do we have something like that right now for middle and high sort of sort of sort of sort of okay sort of but you're saying we we really ought to
089step it up yes we really do in order to be able to Pro and really to be able to address what what the needs are right now we kind of we're do I think we have done a great improvements in the last few years but our numbers have increased so much just in a couple of years that it's more like a Band-Aid um for students so I've taught before and i' I had a newcomer student came straight spoke zero English um in fourth grade and um that was really challenging for him it was quite a challenge and so I'm pleased that we're going to have something like this or be thinking about offering something like this my question um also is when we talk about a newcomer program we're going to bus some kids to
090certain key locations is the proposal it seems like it would be kind of a revolving door kind of program is that kind right like it would be you come in you get some basic skills then you pop back out to your home school right and meanwhile with the turnover and all of the growth that we're seeing the county you're envisioning you know you're here three six months maybe a year depending on the needs of the students and then you pop back out and you're in the regular education setting with English language Services correct and this would also help the teachers because a newcomer takes a lot of more time than a level three level four so this would allow the teachers in the schools to be able to concentr more on the upper levels MH
091okay thank you that that would provide them a half day there intensive um school I guess imagine I'm imagine like maybe a central location where they would come to is that correct they would be there all day all day all day yes until until we see that they've improved and they can go out to the their home school correct and for the elementary level it usually does not they're they're like little sponges it doesn't take them very long to be able to acquire those skills I love that idea thank you I would just like to add in January I went to your e Workshop that you guys had and that was really really awesome to hear from the teachers and see what was going on learn about the programs a little bit more and to
092hear from you guys what your concerns were um and I think there's a lot like this is this is Big Picture stuff right here but there's a lot of small picture things that I think we can work with you and I was so impressed by all of you guys so that was that was really cool and I I do you know I'm concerned now and I see there's a lot of opportunities for super newcomers right you're there there's newcomers and then there's kids who like she was saying are 17 who come here with no skills and need those skills here and and have to learn a whole new way of life so I think that we have a a really big job here to help these kids so thank you guys um I so for
093the middle and high school they would be based at MTC we haven't I left that open okay because it says this program would be a full day program based at MTC and that that a suggestion but it's just it was an example of where it's someplace that would be neutral okay um I think the main thing would be in a location that is uh that is not designated for um for discipline reasons or anything like that right but and in the elementary schools a new Cromer program would be at the elementary schools it would be at one of the elementary schools yes okay and so I noticed too that it said you know for those um students specifically the middle and high school that are in the newcomer program the goal really is to teach
094them to be literate in their primary language and it says as well as survival English yes what what's the goal for elementary what's our end goal for them I don't want to teach them survival English like at the elementary level the newcomer program I was my family and I we were the first e students in Rockham County so I still remember she survival English you need to be able to feel like you can survive in every day to be able to learn so survival English on Elementary level is simple things like where's the bathroom right may I go you know I'm hungry can I things like that and then you add you keep adding to it um research shows that a child if they're litered in the primary language especially Spanish and English because they're
095so similar they can actually become literate in English a lot faster okay so that's why I said that become literate in the primary language because ultimately that will help them become literate even faster in English right I just wanted to make sure that for elementary like our goal is not to just teach them just to survive and get by knowing a little bit of English but for the goal to be to teach them English we are still largely still an English speaking country even though I know you know I know we have tons of Spanish speaking people but I just I want them to have the best they they were no the goal is to make to give them the tools they need to be successful but our e teachers they are phenomenal they do
096everything but one of the first things they do do when they somebody U we have a newcomer is to give them the vocal words that they need so that they not sitting in the classroom worried about how am I going to ask to go to the bathroom how I need to drink of water so those kinds of things they need to learn also and then we keep adding to it it's a process and you never stop learning yeah okay thank you any other questions comments Mrs Alisia C Clark it's just it's such a privilege to have you over our eel and I'm it's it's I believe it's a a great position for you being there and thank you so much tonight coming and presenting as well as I Mrs abery uh coming and giving us
097this information so we could think about what our next steps will be so thank you guys so much thank you taking the time to listen to us absolutely thank you next on our agenda tonight is drug prevention and education rcps and Mr rice I think has presentation for us welcome hello chair cross school board members Dr shifflet my name is Sheldon rice I'm the coordinator of health and physical education for Rockham County Schools thank you for the opportunity to come and talk about our division's drug prevention and education program I appreciate your interest in this topic and I'm happy to share what we're doing as the saying goes an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure it is our goal to educate students on the dangers of drugs and substance abuse in a
098developmentally appropriate way there are 48 health so standards that touch on substance use and abuse in grades 6 through 10 I will not read through them all however I would like to try to summarize the themes of those standards if you would like to take a look at the health standards they and the curriculum framework are linked at the bottom of the slide the standards include the importance of choosing a drug-free lifestyle facts about various types of alcohol tobacco products cigarettes spit tobacco vaping Etc drugs prescription opioids fentanyl barbituates cannabis hallucinogens uh methamphetamines cocaine Etc short andar short and long-term health effects of the afford me substance physical mental and social laws and consequences of using various substances signs and symptoms and causes of addiction and the impacts it can have uh prevention measures refusal
099skills which are also taught in Family Life Education um these are ways to say no to any type of risky Behavior influence of peer pressure ways to get out of uncomfortable situations media influences Etc and finally where to look for help and support for addiction what does the prevention program look like in the middle schools refusal skills and understanding what addiction is are the foundation a main focus is nicotine and tobacco products cigarettes spit tobacco vaping Etc this is often how substance of use and use starts health effects of alcohol other drugs for example prescription narcotics including opioids fentanyl are covered a highlight at the middle school is the partnership we have with Sentara RMH they have a grant through the Virginia foundation for healthy youth to take tobacco and Drug prevention programs to Local
100Schools Mr Ron copel is a respiratory therapist at RMH and visits each Middle School uh usually seventh graders then some booster lessons in the eth grade he currently uses the project towards no tobacco program or project uh TNT it focuses on tobacco products but he has added vaping instruction as well as information about fentanyl within the recent EP uh because of the recent epidemic that has emerged I just found out however um that the grant got renewed for another 3 years and he was looking to upgrade his curriculum um so next year he will be using the you and me together vaperee curriculum and that is from Stanford medicine research lab their tobacco toolkit um there are six 50-minute lessons focusing on Tobacco prevention especially vaping cannabis opioids and Fentanyl what happens in the high
101schools in n9th grade all the substances are covered and their long and short-term health effects students dive deeper into the dangers of addiction and the various substances usually including some kind of anti-drug advocacy project in 10th Grade there is a driver's education module that covers impaired driving including alcohol illegal drugs vaping THC and prescription drugs it goes into detail about how each substance affects the brain and the driving task the curriculum also covers laws as they relate to the various substances consequences if cult and the importance of a designated driver as we've seen increased vaping at younger ages we are looking to add lessons on vaping nicotine and tobacco products in the elementary schools we are looking at the elementary school lessons for the you and me together Vape fee curriculum from Stanford medicine research
102lab tobacco toolkit may sound familiar that's um what Mr cop will be doing in the middle school this would just be the elementary component of that it is an evidence-based curriculum designed for elementary school students it has two lessons the First on addiction nicotine and vaping the second touches on marketing of tobacco products environmental effects of ecigarettes and Stress Management it is our hope to implement these lessons the spring if possible um or next year if we need to so how do teachers stay current on various Health topics health is a very Dynamic subject new research and Trends pop up constantly we do have health textbooks that are still used sparingly but we also have several other resources to help teachers stay upto-date on content the healthmart Virginia website is the health curriculum our teachers
103use to teach all the health top all the health topics it has lessons and instructional resources developed by Virginia health teachers for Virginia health teachers that cover our State s so's the health curriculum framework is a document that has been created by the Virginia Department of Education it connects the SOS to essential understandings and Essential Knowledge and Skills this document also includes links to various government Health agencies that have updated statistics factual informations teachers can use in their lessons kids health for teens or Teen Health is an education website that has instructional resources on a variety of Health topics including substance use and abuse they have lesson ideas as well as worksheets for students a lot of the Health Smart lessons would include um some of those from the website um teachers will also use
104other recent online articles and websites that are pertinent to their lessons these next few resources are more recent um resources that we use last Spring Virginia attorney general Jason Miis started his one pil and kill campaign to combat the opioid epidemic affec in Virginia part of that initiative was to give Educators tools they could use to inform their students about the dangers of Fentanyl and other opioids when this information was sent out we shared it with our teachers so they could begin to implement these materials into what they're already teaching teaching although I believe they came out May 9th so it's a little late in the year um Virginia rules is an educational program designed to help educ uh excuse me instructors parents and students understand the laws that apply to Virginia teens in their
105everyday lives it has lessons on opioids and other substances this is also the curriculum that our school resource officers use um if they go in to teach lessons and a lot of times there's some collaboration with schools to do so um everi is an online learning platform that has several courses or modules for students to use in the uh in the realm of Health the courses are vaping know the truth alcohol edu and prescription drug safety these are modules that are about five or six lessons students can go through self-paced or it can be teacher-led as well another way we try to keep our teachers current is through professional development to increase their knowledge and help them be more comfortable with the content as it happens tomorrow at Turner asby High School our secondary teachers
106will hear from the rush drug task force where teachers will hear about uh what the task force does current drug Trends basic drug identification and other resources for teachers and finally we know it's not just up to a student's teacher to educate them on the dangers of substance use parents also play a large role in their child's decision to be drug- free in November Governor Glenn yuin signed executive order 28 to increase opioid use and abuse awareness specifically fentol part of the order was for the Department of Education to create a document with pre and educational materials for students parents and Educators we have linked this document on the Rockham County Public Schools web page uh on the information for parents Guardians and students page under student supports we are encouraging teachers to reach out
107to parents and make them aware of these resources so they can educate themselves and have a conversation with their child what questions do you have thank you Mr rice first of all for coming tonight presenting us to the board and and giving us an idea of what's being taught to our kids and so I really appreciate you taking the time out and presenting this to us tonight board members do you have any questions for Mr rice IE um when we talk about um sharing some of this at the elementary level who do you envision or who is going to be doing these two lessons yeah that's a good question um I kind of stuck to the physical education side so this would probably be something we would ask our PE teachers to incorporate into their
108um curriculum at some point unless there was another option U to do that but that's kind of where we're looking right now I I would say that's probably a good idea um just knowing that time time it's really hard to carve out time for things like that when we talk about um digital safety drug safety all of these things are all very important things um but we have limited hours in the day so um that might be a good fit it was just curious thank you you saying that tomorrow you guys going to be hearing from the rush task force yes sir that's awesome Yep thank you for reaching out to them and getting them involved and letting I'm sure they'll let you guys know what they're seeing locally as well in our in our
109community and I think that's important for our teach to you know know what's going on with our students so they can educate them of what's going on absolutely you other board members Miss okay um do you other like outside of just teaching curriculum or lessons things like that are you the guy that we would talk to like do you have special speakers come in do you have you ever thought outside of just people that have been through the experiences I just think it's hard for kids to learn just off paper sometimes especially when we talk about topics that are this you know big so um a lot of there's some bits of the curriculum that would have some videos and testimonials is that kind of what you mean with yeah like live people come in
110though we could we'd have to I can look into that for sure it would be working with some Community there's plenty of Community Health folks that that would that we could get in contact with currently um I don't know that there's a whole lot we do have SRO come in um a couple of them will do some of those Virginia rules courses with them um but not necessarily from The Experience side okay would you be willing to work with Schoolboard suggestions for speakers absolutely okay thank you you're welcome to come by and happy to chat um anytime thank you in regards to executive order 28 um can we get an announcement like through our um PR people to parents because you only do PE classes and 11th and 12th graders don't have PE so if
111we could do something to get those kids those students as well that would be awesome thank you and thank you for the presentation thank you it's a great idea would this be something we would Loop in our school safety coordinator position in I think it's a great yeah I think it'd be a great opportunity when that position comes them into this as well and use that resource from within us would great idea any other questions from Mr rice thanks for being out here late tonight and presented to us we really appreciate it thank you next uh Mr Moyers on budget and planning no calendar calendar sorry come on up here miss sathy should have said no I'm next it's okay I thought maybe you've already seen enough of me tonight no no you won't see
112just kid chairman cross members of the board Dr shifflet thank you for allowing me to come back to the podium um tonight and giving me this opportunity to talk to you about the updated version of the proposed 2024 2025 school calendar and you have a copy of this in your items to view so following the January 22nd school board meeting when I initially presented the proposed draft for the 2425 school calendar I sent this out to all families and staff members receiving 256 additional comments on top of the 1500 responses from the December survey um that we sent out to all families and staff the calendar committee met a couple of weeks ago to review the most recent comments and have made the following changes to the initial proposed calendar as suggested by some of
113the feedback February 18th is no longer professional development teacher workday we made February 17th and 18th to align with a November date of fourth and 5ifth where we split one day is parent teacher conference the other day is a county Le in service day um for secondary and Elementary and then they swap so November there's two dates there for November um uh 4th and 5th that look like that and then February 17th and 18th so we read that um a few times at some of our comments recently and thought wow that was a really good idea wish we would have thought of that so we did make those changes March 10th is now a school day that was a Vision in service day so we removed that day it just the calendar looked a little
114choppy between February and then March uh at the end with with spring break coming up so we did remove that day um because we made March 10th a school day the last day of school now is Wednesday June the 4th and we made that a one o00 dismissal so there's not a lot of favor out there for one o00 dismissals but there sure was for the last day of school so um so we did make that a one o00 dismissible on the last day of school and by um making Wednesday the last day of school now the two teacher work days are on Thursday and Friday at the end of that week instead of Friday and Saturday which I think would be a welcome change for that this still this this still gives 197 designated
115days for teachers to work with 176 instructional days so that did not change at all um from the initial calendar that I presented 3 weeks ago this also Keeps Us aligned with Harrison B city which is very important as we share students in our MTC program and for our families and students who may live in one Division and work in another maybe their their students are in a different division so um we've worked very closely with Harrisonburg city to try to make sure our calendars are aligned as much as possible we did choose not to move Spring Break um to for more forward and in April to coincide with the Easter holiday as many felt it was too late uh in the spring as March typically as a pretty High discipline month um so people
116were were pretty excited let let's just keep it at the 31st and that first week in April a lot of the comments were hey Spring break's in April we're excited for that even though it was the first week um also running um spring break around the Easter holiday that's uh about a week and a half or two weeks right before AP testing AP testing is the first two weeks in May those dates do not change the AP college board make those dates th those do not change at all um as well so and getting ready for S so tests they felt like spring break was just a little too late at that point in time so of the 256 responses we received many felt um that the we start school too early and just as
117many felt we start school too late and we have a lot stating they still want to start school after Labor Day and and Before Memorial Day um which would be a tall ask um it was requested by a Schoolboard member to consider a calendar starting after Labor Day so in your packet you will see where there is a draft calendar that has been developed to show you what it would look like if we started after Labor Day so keeping the same 197 designated days 176 instructional days 21 work days two weeks off at winter break which is very popular one week off for spring break which is also very popular the first day of school would be September 3rd and the last day of school would be June 17th again that would be an early
118dismissal day the two teacher work dayss would be June 18th and 20th which sounds kind of odd however June 19th is a Federal holiday the testing can be moved back we can choose what Windows of testings that that we would like to um give our test to our students so we can move that window back to May 12th to June 16th that is indicated in the bottom left corner of that calendar however again the AP testing is set by the college board and their dates don't change so we would be missing about two two and a half weeks of getting ready for an AP test um that our students wouldn't have so in conclusion we're currently scheduled to submit the final draft proposed school calendar for the 2024 2025 school year to the school board
119for approval at our next meeting which is February the 26th I respect respectfully request if there are any changes to our current proposal please let me know sometime this week or in the next 10 days we can make the appropriate adjustments and that the proposed calendar will be ready for voting at our next meeting so do you have any questions for me at this point any question board members I just want to point out um with the ending in June 16th 18th that kind of time frame that also hits usually 4 and FFA rotate back and forth and one will be that week and then the other will their state conventions are those weeks okay so it would probably hit one of those okay I just want to say that I was the school board
120member that requested after Labor Day I only one it told to the public because so many wanted to I mean gosh and we haven't probably done that for decades um I like it but I realize what it does to the rest of the schedule and so you know I don't know if people care about that it ends two weeks later into June I don't know but you know I got elected to do and ask what my constituents say so I appreciate you putting that together I mean I know it's work thank you for doing that absolutely I'm I'm all about starting after Labor Day so you got another vote just keep on coming around get one more of us so any other questions comments thank you Miss again since we're what happened to Super Bowl
121nobody lik having today off just saying I didn't have today off yeah I was thankful my kid was at home because I had an early morning meeting so and there were problems in the lamon barn just say it but um we did kind of discuss that and we what happened with that so the next week um there there were quite a few comments about President's Day is next week President's Day Super Bowl a Federal holiday so we've kept that February date on the President's Day I apologize thank you Miss Laur for I didn't add that in there was one of the things that was brought up and just remember this time next year you get President's Day instead of Super Bowl yeah that's right thank you for for reminding me of that thank you thank
122you so much all right so now Mr Moyers is your turn all right thank you first of all I need to talk to every schedules these things they keep putting me last I'm always late on the agenda and you have all these great things that people need money for and then I get to tell you we have no money which I don't enjoy so uh good afternoon or evening uh chair cross Dr schifflet members of the board tonight I'm going to present to you the governor's proposed budget from December 20th and how that affects Rockingham County going forward there will be a sentent house version that will come out in the next couple weeks that will have some changes that will go over at that time but this is what the state has proposed um
123to date so first you will see our local revenues the miscellaneous things they pretty much stay the same just with a couple minor ch changes the next section will be the state revenue section what I want to point out is here at the top you'll see it has our projected enrollment numbers are ADM so this year the projected enrollment numbers from the state was 11,123 which was very ambitious by the state and we're not going to reach that which uh directly affects our funding for the current year so next year they have reduced that back down to 11,071 we're at like 11,040 currently so I do feel good that we'll reach that the second piece you'll see that directly affects our state numbers are the composite index and this is what is known as the
124locality's ability to pay so last year say it took $100 to run um the school's budget they said that the locality could afford $36.79 of that next year they say that we can afford 43.494365 U the govern's budget for the next year and what you'll see is just a lot of ins and outs a lot of this happens quite frequently but the total is the part that really um matters so if we go to the second page and you see the subtotal of the state budget it's a decrease of $8.4 million now that's a little misleading because that does include $3.9 million of the Allin per pupil funding that we received this year and that was one time money that we knew we weren't getting again on the third page you will see our federal
125revenues that we estimate for the next year and for the most part we expect those to remain relatively stable we do think title one's going to go down slightly and then at the bottom you'll see the last four items cares S 3 the ventilation Grant the TSS Grant and then idea 611 art funds that was all Co money that we've received over the past three years so we knew that was going away and we budgeted that accordingly that was all used for one time items we knew we weren't going to roll into another budget then you will see the local share of Education uh at this point this just shows a flat contribution from the county from last year of 73 uh 7 73,8 66,500 we've had started having conversations with them we know that
126this number will go up um we're just not sure of the amount as of yet so in total you will see that our Revenue next year will be $168,500 197 compared to $178 m64 800 or $ 64,8 a decrease of 9.5 million now we can back out the one-time funding of the Esser money and also the Allin one plan Virginia so you have a net decrease of 4.6 million that we're that we're receiving from the state that we need to make up just to get us back to last year on top of that the um there are some things in next year's budget that we have to do so that weren't budgeted for this year but we know next year regardless of what we decide that we have to add so we're looking about a
127shortfall of just things just to get us to last year and things I know we have to do of about a $8 million shortfall over the next uh couple weeks we'll be meeting with you all for your two by tws we're hoping to schedule those at the end of next week I'm on vacation starting Wednesday so as soon as I get back um Caitlyn and and Dr Shi will be scheduling those with you all and then when we meet next time we'll have an updated version of the state's budget and also what we think we can do expenditure wise to start getting to U March 11th where Dr schifflet will present his um proposed budget for the 2024 2025 year so I would be happy to answer whatever questions that you have from last year
128yes it it all gets lost to the numbers but just just if I took everyone's budget that was this year and said I'm going to give you that again and add the things that we have to add like health insurance increases um the raise the 2% raise that we did that the state doesn't fund quite all of that um let see what else uh we have we have some additional teachers that we're going to need for the redistributing um process we need 8 million just to do that so all the requests that we have received that would be funding zero of those things you mentioned the 2% raise that's the 2% raise that we already gave correct so this that 8 million would include the 1% raise that we proposed with the budget that we
129gave you last time with the expenditures and what was our what's our current local share percentage wise like the state saying that we can afford oh so was 36 it's going up to 433 what's our actual the state saying 43% is what the the county could kick in should be kicking in but on that's just on position they give way more than that it's way higher than that do you know it used to be like 47 I couldn't tell you the exact amount right off but what I can tell you is we're in the top 20 couple in the state of how much they fund compared to other other localities so we're very well funded from the county yeah so it's it's more than yeah so if you if you look at the total budget
130of 168 million there's 74 million of that so they're roughly almost not quite half yeah yeah so to reach this we're going closer to half probably yeah yeah if to reach this we'll have to be over half really yes wow okay and our and I really do appre appreciate our local government Board of Supervisors uh helping us out so much and putting um so much money towards uh our public schools here in Ram County so um we've been in contact with a couple of board members uh so far and we'll continue to have conversation between School Board member superintendent Warriors here and also our Board of Supervisors uh going forward on our budget so any other questions Mr moers I did try try to get you move you up a little bit on the on
131the that's all right and to be hon so Dr shiff and I we've been working on this for weeks I mean we do have ways to cut down that eight that I mean we're exploring other options of what we can do internally to move some money around as well um just not prepared to present those this evening right thank you guys and this is this is things the public that doesn't see that Schoolboard members are doing behind the scenes as well that you guys are working on almost daily with other Personnel at central office so thank you guys for the work that you're putting in behind the scenes to get us ready for next year next year's budget so this is a big line item for the school board so thank you so much thank
132you yep all right that will conclude no it won't sorry I still got musical still have music Sorry Mrs Ford come on up I am not trying to bypass you I really want to hear from you tonight T so thank you for coming tonight and waiting oh my pleasure my pleasure uh good evening Dr chifflet and board members thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak to you all about our musicals tonight I'm really excited for it uh musical theater as an extracurricular opportunity provides so many wonderful things for our students um they get to enrich their education with reading comprehension dialogue and interpersonal skills physical activity group collaboration emotional maturity and so much more it helps them to build their confidence by challenging them to take risks and explore their creativity musical theater
133can also build critical interpersonal skills with students using real life experiences for them with teamwork challenges problem solving and Leadership opportunities musical theater provides context for historical timelines and so we're going to talk tonight about government and geography in our musicals just this season kids are getting to explore 19th century London early 20th century Russia Paris new New York they're talking about the Great Depression and they're even talking about Las Vegas in the 80s so some fun stuff in there too that might not be in our history curriculum um but we we have so many wonderful things so we want to talk to you about what those are as we look at the lineup the first month of our musical season is our high schools so this weekend we've got Broadway High School and eastrock
134doing uh The Adams Family and Sweeney Todd school version the week after that we've got ta doing 42nd street and the week after that we've got Spotswood doing Anastasia as we move into March we get more of our middle schools so you're going to see those happening one per weekend uh doing Rock of Ages Frozen Jr The Little Mermaid Jr and Annie Jr and you'll see down there on the bottom we also have some elementaries that do musicals uh which are really really wonderful they tend to do the kids versions I didn't want to advertise them too much because when I went to uh the one at Peak View last year it was less than standing room and so if you belong to those schools please go and see their musicals um and if not
135we'll try and advertise them some way the one official one is 101 dalmati um but many of the elementaries do either a student Le or student created Musical and so there's really wonderful things there so as we go through the musicals I thought I would tell you just a little bit about each one just in case you are unfamiliar with them The Adams Family is a story of love and family they're a little bit weird um so you're gonna see some kooky things on there but it's a funloving comedy uh that's appropriate for the entire family you can get tickets through that bit.ly um and these are linked on the Schoolboard board docs so that the public can access them and I also sent them out to I think all news last week um Sweeney
136Todd the school version is um a tale about 19th century London and a man who was wrongfully convicted um through a government official is seeking Vengeance and there's some interesting things in there right but when it comes down to it it's a story of humanity um I wasn't super familiar with it so I'll be honest I went to um New York and I saw the real thing because I couldn't resist an opportunity to go to New York and see a musical um I convinced myself it was research and while I was prepared for some scary stuff and I I don't do scary movies it really wasn't about that and so what you're going to see with the school version is they've toned it down to a PG-13 rating so it is recommended for audiences 13
137up um but they really take an artistic method of doing it so that it's not bloody it's not gory um it's none of that and it's really talking about Humanity um the population community how we see people in our community and how we work together with them and so while it is a spookier adulter teenage story um it still has some wonderful life lessons in there 42nd Street we go back to uh the early 1900s in New York we talk about all these uh Infamous student this is a classic um and you're going to hear a lot of songs that you might have heard in other ways that you might recognize um like we're in the money lullabi of Broadway 42nd Street of course um and so it's just really good they actually brought in
138a um dancer from New York City to come and Coach the kids um and so we're really excited to see that production Anastasia goes back to the Twilight of the Roman Empire not Roman Russian Empire excuse me um and again is a story of love um and family as we go into the middle schools we've got Rock of Ages uh this is not the movie so if you're familiar with the movie this is a kidsf friendly version um they have toned a lot of the things down so it's appropriate for all ages uh my son is working in the uh crew for it and I have been blessed to hear so many 80s Tunes coming out of the Alexa it's been fantastic my house is rocking um so so that one's going to be really
139fun we get into the Disney shows next with Pence Middle School doing Frozen Jr um it has some new songs so it's not just the ones that you'll know from the movie but there's also some Originals that were original to the musical The Little Mermaid Junior is a classic as we go to monov videoo Middle School um and so we're really excited to see how they bring the magic of under the sea to a stage and so you're going to see a lot of scenery as kids are playing with lights and colors and finally at Elton Middle School We've Got Annie Jr and that's going to close out our our Middle School season as the kids get to sing hard knock life and and go to all the fun of that classic musical um musicals
140are so many things to our students they started working way back uh they had auditions they've had daily rehearsals after school as we approach the performances they have Tech week where they are there every day after school sometimes until very very late and they're putting on this show uh with their love and their sweat and their tears and so we just really hope that you get to go and see these shows um I'm really excited for it and that's our musical lineup for this year are there any questions members have any questions I'm just super excited thank you so much for arranging for for tickets for us and um I'm looking forward to every single show you were going through and I'm like oh that that school has an excellent program oh that school has
141an excellent program guys this this is the best part of being a Schoolboard member is going to the shows so I highly highly recommend it and I highly recommend it to everyone catch a show it's awesome the things our students can do it's great so thank you thank you so much anybody else are we too late to get tickets for this weekend no ma'am just reach out to me by email I'll figure out okay thank you have you ever seen the Johnny Depp version of Sweeney Todd I have not I don't do scary movies so I I try and stay away but I was really excited about going and seeing it just scar well he's one of my favorite actors but yeah I'll look that one up uh the only question I have is how
142do you and how how do you get this information out to the public when it's I think you said East rockhead recommendation for theirs is 13 years and up uh for that because back um uh was it before Christmas break or after I was before Christmas break I think it was went to spots with saw Mean Girls I don't watch Disney don't know anything about mean girls but I took my 8-year-old daughter and that was not a good experience we had to leave early for that so um she was not it was not for the so what do you do for the public to let them know that hey this this may have sexual inuendos it may have bad language it may have uh some things that are not good for younger kids I appreciate
143you asking that so we try and be really transparent on the marketing and I think that's something that we can always be improving on so as you notice on all of our posters and flyers we try to make sure that we put the difference between a full version so anything that doesn't have a junior or a kids or a school version after it you're seeing the version that's on Broadway with no cuts the kids that are playing in the pit Orchestra are playing the instrument parts that you would actually see in New York if it has anything other than there have been adaptations kids and juniors especially have been made for the Middle School audiences school version for Sweeney Todd for example um has been made for high school audiences in particular so we try
144to be very careful with that especially with uh East Rock's production we've made sure and the staff and administration there have been very clear to put on all of their um uh shoot adver advertisements thank you uh rated for kids 13 plus and we encourage anybody to to always look um and ask questions and we're happy to to help with that if you have suggestions I would I would like my suggestion would be not do plays that are 13 and up because I think you miss out on so so many more kids that want to come into the community want to come and can bring their kids and see those things so that would be my only suggestion is that they consider not doing plays that or either have sexual inuendos in there or and
145that aren't for you know 13 and up age range uh because I think you you'd have a lot of a lot more people coming to these plays in the community excited uh to see him so that'd be my only recommendation for that so and I guess my last one would be Dr shiplet and and maybe this is years but what's the difference um you know if an athlete goes uh in uh on the basketball court and he cusses on the floor he's he's um subject to a technical foul uh or some type of penalty within the sporting we don't allow cussing but at our plays we do allow uh them to use uh profanity so what's how do we mix that with our our student conduct policies and things like that just a question I've
146been pondering I mean it's it's a good question uh Mr Cross I'm to be honest I can't say I have an answer for you right now um I do know um that in talking to M Ford about some of the Productions they they have some they do some editing but yet they have some restrict as well as as as how far they can add it and what cuts they can make um but it's it's a good question you know to bring up to say at what point do we say this is permissible or this is not permissible yeah I just I think it's I definitely think it's just something that we need to look at as a School Division again I brought my eight-year-old daughter uh to see the play and although U the kids
147did a fabulous job in the play um thank God that she was eight and she didn't didn't get a couple of the of the sexual inuendos that were in the play and so I was dishearted by that because she was excited to to go with Daddy to see a play and I was excited to go to the play and see it so we had to leave early before even intermission and I took her and got some ice cream but we had a good time so it's just important for right now for us to be able to advertise to the community you know if this is a 13-year-old and up then we need to really make sure the community knows that so we don't have other dads bringing their daughters uh to plays like that so
148thank you for all you do I look forward to coming to all the plays uh and seeing them so thank you for all that you do for our students thank you so much okay I think uh in your packet school board members you have tonight um you have in your packet your financial review for the January 2024 school budget so for that's for you to look over and to U ponder over that and as we've been doing with the school budget request over the last couple of um well over the last month we've been doing that so uh any other questions on that all right well that will lead us out of our informational items tonight so thank you for those who presented we appreciate that I don't know whether your boss said you could
149leave or not but I it's okay with me but it's it's his call um we will be going into our public comment at this time and let me get my list ready and at this time before we get ready to go into a public comments if you are a student and you've come and you need your form signed and you need to get home you can do that at this time before we go into public comments um because I'm a dad too and I don't like my kids to be out too late uh at night so we'll take a minute if you're a student here need your form signed you want to go we can do that see any okay all right is there one come on it's important as a dad to be able
150to I think it's n o'clock so if you need to go you can go if You' like to stay you can stay all right first on our list tonight for public comment looks like this is a student uh El I'm sorry elv o r did that pronounce your name correctly it's pronounced ior ior okay thank you you can have three minutes I'm sorry my name is Ivor I'm a senior at rcps I'm appalled at the lack of compassion and consideration for the students while beinging in safety as of late since a passing of a most undignified policy I've witnessed firsthand the effects on students physical and mental health I can reiterate and reate everything until I'm physically unable but it often seems that I'm speaking to a brick wall one of ignorance and pride as
151as I stand here this evening I recount moments of hypocrisy and irony this policy will cause a decline in academic performance as well as student involvement in activities to hear the wrong name is enough to throw a student off for hours and even days it could be argued that it's an individual choice but that claim cannot be more false this is an emotional mental piece and it goes so much deeper than what is presented on the surface speaking from the experience of those around me this mod policy is doing the opposite of what has been claimed to do it has increased likelihood of a student experiencing harassment or bullying in a school environment or abuse at home school climate is already growing to be hostile toward queer students through carvings on bathroom stalls to hate
152hateful words spewed at them no student should have to feel fearful of their safety in school so evaluate the example being set to students are they being taught to treat peers with kindness or respect despite their differences or are they being taught to single out and hurt those who are different from them all it takes as being a good person and to treat people respect treat them the way you'd want to be treated rather than making it one-sided do not expect respect if you are unwilling to give it it's not a matter of the inability to it's a matter of being unwilling and when I see carving saying down with the ERS as I'm sure you can guess what that last SW was I think of how my peers look at queer people such as
153myself and others that I know they see us and that is the first thing to come to mind for us to disappear or to be taken down in their words and that also goes for some of adults in our community as well everything is moving backwards into a dark and dangerous time so do not dare to tell me that it doesn't happen when it is unfolding in front of us I am a son a brother a friend a partner a musician among many other things everyone in this room has a place in someone's life if not a place in the world itself we all have our faults and accomplishments so why should anyone be treated like less for the M fact that they don't fit into your diluted IDE ideas of what the world should
154be that shouldn't have to be put on students especially when things are already difficult as it is so how would this policy affect or better a students education how will it benefit them as teenagers growing into young adults how will this prever preserve a sense of dignity within a student when they are being forced to go back into the closet in shame or perhaps even forced out when they are simply not ready I'm not here to change your beliefs but I'm here as a voice for not only myself but for so many other students who are being put down by this policy and those choosing to implement it I thank you for your time this evening thank you a appreciate it thank you abber next on the list is Kirsten Bey hi Miss beachy at
15530 seconds they'll be a little be that gives you idea that you get 30 seconds left for all right you have three minutes go ahead thank you I'm here to talk about books and I've already written to you all about the importance of representation that children and teens can see themselves in our library books and tonight I want to tell a story so recently my daughter Irene was really excited about the Mars habitat she was designing at Mountain View Elementary and I remembered a book I read a few years ago called The Martian about a man stranded on Mars finding ways to survive by using science and we agreed it would be our next read so I grabbed it off the shelf opened it to the first page the first line had the f bomb
156in it and did I mention my daughter is nine so I looked at Irene I looked at the book I talked it over with her and we decided she could handle it for a month or so we learned about science courage survival Mars and we learned about cuss words we didn't read the words aloud because her sister's still at a stage when she might repeat something in an inappropriate space but she could read over my shoulder and I said I will explain anything you have questions about so here are some of the things we learned about cuss words we learned that the words that used to shock people the most were profan these words that referred to Sacred things like damn growing up I wasn't allowed to use the word gosh it was too close
157to taking the lord's name in vain and now I think taking the lord's name in vain is maybe a little more like using God for your own purposes like the guy who told my friend you have to marry me God told me we learned about the vulgarities that um you can get into trouble for in certain context the ones that refer to bodily functions why are those bad she wondered well I wasn't sure I said it was cultural but our bodies are good what happens in the bathroom is okay and that sex is an important part of life mom are there any words that really bother you I thought about it as a white lady I'm never going to say the NW I don't have the right if someone uses the words gay or as
158negatives they'll hear about me they'll hear from me I am offended by words that are used to denigrate groups of people but it doesn't want me to take books off the shelves that have those words if we're reading a classic like Huckleberry fin in school I think teachers can talk about the word lay some ground rules I think Librarians can find additions that give some context I think it's our job as a community especially as parents teachers and Librarians to contextualize that material for students when we lock up books we are abdicating that responsibility to their friends or to television or the internet thank you thank you Miss beachy next on the list is Rex Fritz okay you have 30 seconds and I'm at stop I'm sorry we you stop it at 30 seconds you'll
159hear a beep and then it'll let you know that you're almost done you got three minutes go good evening School Board it's nice to finally be given a chance to speak I originally wanted to talk today because my concerns with the policies you all past regarding both my transgender peers and the books in our libraries however I'm sure by now you've heard several arguments against policies so instead I would like to vent my frustrations as a student so I'm a teenager I think I can speak for most of us when I say nothing happens at school without words spreading immediately if there was really pornography in our libraries do you really think that the news wouldn't have spread like wildfire before the policies have been ped um if you're going to ban our books because
160they have gay people in them at least say it directly it's a little childish to uh to um sorry hold on let me what I WR little childish not owning up to your own actions you know I don't want to hear excuses saying that you're doing it to protect the kids because if it were really about if it were really about protecting us then why haven't you asked us what we think about it as students um I would like to think that our opinions as the students you're allegedly supposed to protect uh matter just a little bit more than the parents uh or just gr adults who either don't have kids in public school setting or at all um I'd also like to uh to speak on behalf of all the queer students who can
161be here with us today uh because we know why the school board has passed these policies um you're not actually cons uh concerned with preserving parents rights about what's taught in the classroom and you're definitely not concerned about protecting kids from whatever you think is being taught in class you want to erase every gay and transgender person person from our schools but I'll let you on a little secret you can um you can pass on you can pass as many policies as you want but you'll never be you'll never be able to erase me my friends or any queer student from Rockingham County Schools we will continue to exist in this area because we are strong and we we will take immense pleasure in knowing that our presence alone is enough to infuriate you enough
162to pass all these policies Banning us from existence and calling us pornographic I think I made my point so I would just like to ask for you guys to find the timeout corner so you can think about what you did oh PS it's probably not the best idea to point out security issues um regarding our schools while a man who has been arrested for trespassing is sitting in the audience right now thank you thank you Rex britz next one on the list is Michael stimple thank you chair cross and board members and Dr shifflet um let Justice roll down like Waters and righteousness like a mighty stream those ancient words resonate strongly with me they were uttered by the ancient Prophet Amos who was exiled from his community for his unpopular prophecies and warnings Dr
163Martin Luther King Jr uttered these words in his famous I have a Dream speech in August of 1963 when calling for full civil rights of black and brown folks they can be found in the Old Testament of the Christian Bible Reverend GT kesie in his 1954 pamphlet entitled a Christian view of segregation cites multiple passages from the Christian Bible to justify racial segregation fast forward to today and you have those who want to begin public meetings with a public Christian prayer also being those who want to single out and segregate trans kids like their segregation is forefathers they use the Christian Bible to justify their bigotry the same governor who led a Christian prayer at his inauguration oversaw the creation of model policies that were intended to specifically Target trans kids how can a great
164man like Martin Luther King jior use the Bible to justify The Liberation of all people and others use that same book to justify their bigotry I find it interesting that many who claim to believe in the whole Bible don't actually believe in the whole Bible for example I have never received a holy kiss mandated by Paul's first letter to the Corinthians from anyone in this room claiming to be a Christian Speaker of the House Mike Johnson when asked if he believes what he believes about the world said well go pick up a Bible off your shelf and read it that's my world view this terrifies me does that mean he celebrates Psalm 1379 that says happy is the one who seizes your infants and dashes them against the Rocks I sure hope not but that
165is the problem with pulling random passages out of cont context which is exactly what is happening here with the temporary band books the irony is if the same criteria of violence and sexual content is applied to the Bible which is in 13 of rcs's libraries it would have been included in the band list anyone who actually reads the Bible know that it is chalk full of violent and sexual content it is a reflection of the human experiment experience so of course it does it has episode of genocide incest rape gang rape genocide and a dowy of four 204 skins from dead soldiers just to name a few so if our school board is serious about banning books with sexual and violent content the Bible should be included on that list so I'm my question is
166this will you be consistent applying your criteria for Banning books is this what you want I also like to remind the board that it likes to mention that it speaks for the majority of parents that racial segregation was the practice here in our CPS at one time and was supported by the majority of the population in this County rcps did not integrate at schools until 12 years after Brown versus Board of Education the Supreme Court decision that led to the integration of public schools in Virginia instead of banning books and singling out trans kids I Call On The poort Board to let Justice Ru down like Waters and righteousness like an Ever flowing stream thank you Michael stle next on our list tonight is Marvin Weaver good evening Schoolboard members Dr shifflet uh let me
167just say first it's just been an honor uh it's been really good to watch you guys do your work uh I'm just reminded that's what you're really here for so it was refreshing um what I came tonight to say was I want to express my gratitude to all of you for staying stay true to what you said you would do during your 2023 campaigns in the last four years something happened in Rockingham County we the citizens woke up we watched in disbelief as the policies of gender dysphoria prown confusion the rental rights being undermined among other things were being promoted so on November 7th We the People went to the polls and we voted for change you are that change please don't forget that you've only been on the job for a little over a
168month and already you're being blasted and disparaged for by a loud vocal minority we knew it would be this way and I think you did too if you didn't you know now so what is this egregious sin some think you are guilty of well it's your support for traditional Godly and moral values that have served this country and our communities well for over 200 years now we have some people who have mounted an allout assault on these values I'd like to quote some statistics from a website called statista.com in 2022 two among those who call themselves transgender 80% considered just considered committing suicide I was shocked by these statistics 40% attempted suicide this is an alarming and disturbing statistic and the people pushing this want us to accept and codify this I think not I
169wish we weren't so divided but we are we're either going to stand up and preserve the moral Integrity that this country was founded on sorry which was based on judeo-christian values or choose to pull up anchor and drift according to the whims and desires of those who think they can change nature itself and have a positive outcome this in my opinion would be a definition of insanity in closing I would like to say that according to the election outcome a great majority of us stand with you I think we have a great school thank you Mr Weaver next on the list is Kate low did I get your name correct I'm sorry good evening I'm here member of Rockingham County um I'm a mother of three within the school district I'm a native of this
170area and a graduate of Turner Ashby High School um professionally I'm aan family nurse practitioner um and I work at JMU with 18 to 22 year olds and I also teach at Georgetown and have been adju faculty at UNCC Chapel Hill and a lot of my career has been looking at what it means to have a healthy community and what it means to be um to address the public health of different areas and what I'm here to say tell you to talk about tonight um is the fact that I've been to multiple Schoolboard meetings and I have listen time and time again to the lgbtq community say that they feel targeted and whether or not you believe with what they say or what they do they believe they feel targeted and what our research in
171the medical field shows is that this community is the one of the highest risk youth that we serve and to counter the the comments that were just made the suicide rate in the studies of over 122 medical analysis so it's a medical anal metanalysis which is a um a comp a um contemplation of multiple different studies study after study after study has shown that the suicide rate of this community is 20 is approaching 25% so one in four LGBT community members will attempt suicide that is based on medical research we know that is true and then when we look at what drives this it's not the fact that they belong to this community it's the fact that this community that it's the fact that they feel that they are stigmatized and not accepted what we
172know about human beings is that they need to be loved and they need to be accepted and what they are telling you is that your policies are targeting them and what this means from a public health standpoint is that in the course of your time on this school board and all five of you represent the voice of every child in the school community that there it's not a it's not when it's not if we will see a suicide of an lgbq student it's win and when that happens I ask if you can look yourself in the mirror if you can look at their parents their teachers and their friends and say you did everything you could to protect them in their school community thank you Miss kit Lo next on the list tonight is Tracy
173Zen Tracy Zen okay we'll move on next on the list is Victoria Putin Victoria are you here next on the list is Nathan muselman weird name uh muscle muscle sorry sorry sorry sorry uh I just got to ask first are there other people on the list after me yes because I've been real touched and excited really by what's been said already and I'm much more interested in hear more that than more me I would say um I sent you guys a letter last week after the last board meeting and I appreciate the responses I I did get on that I'd appreciate more responses from the rest of you I like to hear what you had to say um but yeah I think that I will turn this over to others um thank you thank you
174and our final speaker for tonight is Lois Paul is Lois Paul here my name is Lois Paul and I'm a uh resident of Rockingham County and I just wanted to thank y'all school board for uh for all the job that you've done uh you've taken on a uh a considerable task to undo what has been done to the people of Rockingham and when they voted they voted you in um the school board is a gatekeeper for um for the AC activities policies and the content to the schools Solomon said walk with the wise and become wise the company of fools suffers harm and a uh a 20th century analogy to that would be garbage in garbage out so that's in essence what we're doing in the schools you are The Gatekeepers to keep the garbage
175out of our schools uh if you were going to be have a u a comparison I would compare it to if you had a u an old worn silver tray it had possibilities but needed to be cleaned up well you're not going to th you could take that out you're not going to throw mud on it you're going to you're going to get the proper things that you that you can use to clean it up the same thing with our kids you don't throw mud in our lives you don't throw things put things on there that would that would uh be a detriment to the uh uh to that utensil you want to bring it back to its full potential and in order to do that you need the proper proper uh cleaning tools you
176need proper water so so same same with our our children you don't need to keep be to be throwing rocks in their way and to make life harder for them you need to keep them on the straight and narrow way and I thank you for uh for the legislation that you've been putting forward thank you thank you Mrs Lois Paul and that will conclude our public comments for tonight so I'm next next meeting you can sign up I'm I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry you're yeah thank you um that will conclude our meeting for tonight and Schoolboard members we do have reason to go into close session uh do I hear a motion to go into Clos session are we just going to skip over uh I'm sorry I'm sorry question and comments we're not
177going to skip over it thank you for calling me out I appreciate that well I was just like oh wait wait H yeah I know I was like wait I know I'm missing something so questions and comments from our school board members and we'll start with you miss Laura sorry uh just the usual uh do we still have students here I know a couple of you guys are students I just want to say thank you guys for coming and thanks for for uh hanging with us till the end especially if your uncle has to drive you home but thank you thank you to all that came tonight that that was the only question I have thank you Mrs lore so much uh Mrs Hurst anything nothing for you Mrs cave do you have anything yeah
178um I'm never going to get up here and preach but um there was comments made during public comment um that open that opened it up and so I'm just going to finish it up I actually love the scripture that one of the speakers and when he talked about let Justice roll on like a r and righteousness like a never failing stream there's another part in Amos that very same chapter that says there are those who turn Justice into bitterness and cast righteousness to the ground and at Elton Middle School in January of 2022 I talked about righteousness so I'm very excited actually that it was brought up tonight because and I'm going to say what I said then is that righteousness is not religion okay it's not Bible thumping it's simply doing and thinking and
179being and saying what is right and so one of the points of my campaign is that I was going to do right by the parents now I am all about the teachers I can't wait to get into student conduct we need to take care of them they need backup okay I love the students I care about what they think about I don't like the fact that they feel like they have to get up here and identify themselves as as queer students because I think that the word queer means strange and I don't think they're strange so my heart goes out to them that they even feel like they have to identify that way I wouldn't know them in public as any different than a normal human being when people get up here and they quote
180suicide rates it doesn't move me 25% 47% I think 1% is too much for any group of people so I don't get moved by that stuff because one person one student gone you're right it would matter so I just wanted to say in public comment that I'm just here for the next four years to do what's right by the parents with regard specifically to these books and keeping our students safe within the schools I'm just here to do what's right and I actually wanted to thank that speaker tonight for bringing that up and bringing that out in me that's all thank you thank you Mrs cave Mrs burglin you good I follow her it's really good uh Dr shifflet you're good um I I can't follow that as well because it was well said I'm
181so I won't I'm um no I'm not ready um but I do I do appr appreciate board member cave saying that tonight uh because that's simply what we want to do we want to do what is right and I've stated that time and time again that that's what we're here to do is to Simply do what's right and I believe with all my heart that passing Governor Yan's policy was the right thing to do it was a right thing to do for all students not just a few students it was a right thing to do for all parents not just a few parents so I think what we did in passing his policy was the right thing to do and I think we also did what was right and looking at the safeguards when it
182comes to our public libraries our Public School librar sorry because there is a difference of expectation when it comes to public school libraries and public libraries so thank you for pointing that out tonight and I so much appreciate working with this board this has been a honor that's been um a highlight of my days we put in a lot of work we could get paid a lot of money to do this job I mean I mean we're just rolling in money to do this job so excited every month when I get that paycheck to do this I'm grateful to be elected by the people to do this job I'm so grateful that the that the county trusted me my constituents trusted me to do this job the same way they came out and they trusted
183every single one of you to do what was right and this has been an honor serving with you guys and I look forward for the rest of my time on this board serving with you and it takes a backbone like never before to sit up here and to do what is right it takes a backbone and I think America is tired of politicians they want people to go in and do what they said they were going to do I love the quotes of people that say when they say they're going to do something trust them yes trust me when I give my word I'm going to do it I think that that my word is the most important thing that have in my life and not my money not anything I've ever done not my
184accomplishments not my titles not anything else is more important than my word and when I give my word I'm going to do it I'm going to fulfill it so thank you Miss K for saying what you said tonight and I appreciate uh I think the meeting went very well tonight thank you for the central office staff that came out tonight and presented uh to us um and for the information that you shared and thank you for the public tonight for coming out and sharing uh your thoughts as well well so now we do have a a reason to go into close session and I am ready to hear that motion if you have one ready Mr lore I move that the board in our closed meeting for the purpose to discuss or consider the following
185pursuant to the provisions of Virginia code section 2.2-fold salaries disciplining or resignation A2 one or more particular students specifically related to discipline and requests regarding compulsory School attendance based on the inability to benefit from education at the school that would involve disclosure of information contained in a Scholastic record concerning a student and A3 the acquisition of specific real property for public school purposes the discussion of such real property in an open meeting would adversely affect the bargaining position or negotiating strategy of the school board thank you Miss lore for that motion do I hear a second second thank you Miss Hurst any questions comments hearing none all those in favor say yes yes all those oppos no motion passes 5 we are now in close session thank you so much for coming out tonight