001uh Rockham County Schoolboard January 22nd 2024 uh to order uh we just welcome everybody out here tonight thank you Mrs Hollow I I was told last time I didn't I was too far away from this so here I thank you Mrs Holloway for um the meal before and just uh having your staff there with us we appreciate you guys uh spending some time with us and um Mr dolam Meer and uh Deputy Alvarez thank you for joining us and we thank you for all the work that you do uh for our for our children and our staff here in Rockingham County so thank you guys uh very much I'm the first thing on our agenda tonight is to approve the agenda uh do I hear a motion to approve the agenda somewh I move to
002approve the January 22nd 2024 agenda as presented thank you Miss Hurst do I have a second second any questions or comments hearing none all those in favor say yes yes yes all those who oppose no motion passes 5 I next on our agenda tonight is a moment of silence so for those who would like to join me in a moment of silence uh you can at this point than you for being thank you very much uh for those that can stand uh and uh will stand tonight will you join with me in the Pledge of Allegiance I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you for uh everyone that stood up
003and was able to say the Pledge with us tonight thank you for again for being here at the school board meeting um the first thing on our list tonight as a school board is to I is to do school recognitions for our Britney lamb Kelly cogsdale character counts uh student of the month and our volunteer of the month uh before we do that though I'd like to um recognize what the Virginia code uh says uh for um the character counts because I read over it and I thought it was really uh good so I wanted to to read this tonight uh Virginia code 22.1-cu required uh in section A it says each School Board shall estab establish within its existing programs or as as a separate program a character education program in its schools which
004may occur during the regular school year during the summer in a Youth Development Academy offered by the school division or both the components of each program shall be developed in cooperation with the students their parents and the community at large the basic character traits taught may include one trustworthiness including honesty Integrity reliability and loyalty to respect including the precepts of the golden rule tolerance and courtesy three responsibility including hard work economic self-reliance res accountability diligence perseverance and self-control for fairness and including Justice consequences of bad behavior principles of non-discrimination and freedom from Prejudice and five caring including kindness empathy compassion consideration generosity and charity and six on the character counts is citizenship including patriotism the Pledge of Allegiance respect for the American flag concern for the common good respect for authority and the law and
005community mindness so I thought that was very interesting when I read through that to see where our Virginia legislators had come up with this idea that that all School boards would implement this inside of our public schools and I wanted to read that tonight uh so at this point I would ask Miss Holloway if uh she is here I believe you're going to have some recognitions for [Music] us chairman cross members of the board Dr shifflet welcome to ELA Middle School we are excited to be hosting the first school board meeting held in 2024 we are proud to be here tonight hosting the Schoolboard meeting at EMS with many of our proud EMS Elks in here with us to celebrate this accomplishment for our students in volunteer tonight our administrator team will recognize two students
006and one volunteer that stands out among our school Community First I would ask Miss Michelle Campbell assistant principal to come first we would like to recognize Cohen kushman Cen your family is welcome to join you if they would like no okay Cohen is an amazing student his dedication to Excellence is evident in his approach to challenges rather than shying away from academic difficulties he confronts them headon viewing each obstacle as an opportunity for growth despite his talents he remains humble and never boast about his achievements Cohen is also a very kind and thoughtful individual who is always willing to lend a helping hand Cohen's teachers appreciate his kind thoughtful demeanor and the dedication he gives daily to his studies he is a deep thinker someone who works hard every day while being a kind and
007caring human being Cohen is the student teachers can always count on to enter the class with a smile on his face and a positive attitude regardless of what else is going on Cohen is a great model student here at EMS [Applause] thank you you're welcome thank you so much Cen I I I love this school and it's something that I'm going to share but you're very lucky to be here here and we're lucky to have you and thank you for exemplary performance and setting an example for your peers cuz I know at this age in life it's super hard so thank you for doing that and um I know your friends thank you as well [Applause] y we have our next recipient we would like to recognize Michaela po I'd like to introduce you to
008Michaela Po conratulations and here are some of the words that her teachers had to say about her Michaela is an excellent student she can always be counted on to make the right choice she helps everyone that asks and is always having a positive attitude she upholds the highest standards as a student she's honest polite and engaged enged in the classroom she always remembers to involve others in activities and help in any way she consistently displays a positive attitude in the classroom approaching challenges with determination and willingness to understand Michaela's kindness is not just a trait it's a Cornerstone that contributes to creating a harmonious and uplifting Community within the academic setting we truly appreciate her connections that she makes with her peers and staff at EMS Michaela is truly an outstanding student and individual thank
009you Michaela here we are have myself together this time so here's your certificate beautiful and certificate for clients and little pen thank you for being such a good student you really stand out to your friends and um keep doing that keep being bold and kind and um people will love you and you'll experience lots of success in life thank you congratulations lastly tonight I would like to introduce and recognize our volunteer Tina sutors Tina if you would please come forward Tina apparent and dedicated PTO officer stands out among all at Ela middle school for her dedication and commitment to our school Community her quiet personality is no reflection of the work and support she provides our school she has been been an EMS parent for four years now beginning with the redistricting of the South
010River students when her son was in fifth grade she immediately started supporting our parent and teacher events and the activities we sponsor and continues to do so today as a PTO officer she is willing to participate in field trips and classroom activities to support the teachers and students Tina has remained a volunteer and is the only remaining officer that transitioned from our PTA to our PTO she continues to be a strong advocate for our students although Tina's son is now in high school we have her daughter in sixth grade so we get to enjoy three more years of the sutor family we are fortunate to have her and the volunteer work that she provides to our school Community thank you Tina and your certificate and your certificate for clients and I just have to say
011I I saw my first PTO in action I haven't got to see the middle schools yet but it's I'm just learning how important the PTO is and how much you all do um for free you know because you have the heart to do it right not because you get paid and so I without parents I don't know how our schools would work so thank you so much for that appreciate it at this time we would ask that Elton Elementary come forward can dools good evening chairman cross good evening aboard and good evening Dr sh um we would just like to introduce the people that we have for our character counts so our first person is K faithin Troutman oh the first one is I'm sorry that's okay that was was was on M I'm sorry
012we'll go with faithful and tri are you here are you can you come for her faith and Troutman was chosen by her teacher Mrs Williams and miss Rell because she always chooses to do the right thing she's curious helpful to others always kind and respectful to everyone she interacts with hi Caitlyn had to go on vacation with her and so she's not here but her sister is coming in her behalf Brendan Elwood lamb was chosen by his teacher Mrs arganbright because he is an exceptional student who has great work ethic and is always willing to help others he is always respectful to everyone he meets Brendan are you here okay and we'll do an our volunteer Mrs Miss Cindy murky is chosen by many of her of the teachers and staff because she goes well
013beyond and above what is asked of a volunteer Miss murky is always willing to help in whatever way is needed with the biggest smile on her face she helps with making copies for teachers helping in the cafeteria or even helping to just put out class projects and supporting in the classrooms es is so blessed to be able to have Miss murky volunteer in our school Mrs murky would you please [Applause] come your certificate and your client certificate and I didn't realized your name was on our list tonight so thank you I we have a treasure in this lady wow thank you [Applause] you one more school to hear from chair cross members of the board Dr shifflet um I would like to recognize three individuals from mville elementary school this evening so first of all
014if I could have Laura join me you are on the ball always Laura Al Fury a fifth grade student at mville elementary schools the daughter of Rosario and Kelly Aleria mville and she is a very worthy recipient of this award Laura is a reliable and trustworthy friend to all she demonstrates great responsibility and fairness that is inspiring she is always willing to help others and is very compassionate and caring to her peers Laura presents a strong work ethic and a positive attit attitude in everything she does she is a great role model and a leader both in and outside of the classroom we're proud to honor Laura with this award congratulations here's your certificate your client certificate and your pen and I just want to say wow those were some really big words that they
015said about you that means you have big personality big plans big things to do in life so yes you do thank you it's [Applause] good our second stud student to be recognized this evening is Blake mccrady Blake come on [Applause] up Blake is also a fifth grade student at Mees he is the son of Benjamin and Natalie mccrady of mville and choosing Blake for this award the following description was provided by teachers Blake is a friend to all through his words and actions he is respectful to his peers and teachers he is a leader both in our classroom and our school he is kind to others and shows compassion toward others he is the first to check on a classmate and is always willing to lend a helping hand Blake demonstrates trustworthiness and is a
016responsible student he has a positive attitude towards school and is eager to learn his hard work ethic caring personality and funny sense of humor are just a few of the great things about Blake congratulations Blake and there is your certificate your CLI certificate and your little pen and I heard him say that you're a great leader that likes to help others and that is going to be a personality trait that's going to help you everywhere you go in life so I'm proud of you congratulations ation you're welcome so grown up our volunteer of the year is Miss Jackie Geral Jackie here she is Jackie is an active volunteer at mville elementary school she regularly Volunteers in multiple classrooms and other capacities around the school one teacher shared that her energetic and compassionate and create creative
017personality makes a positive impact on the students in the class she also adds her own special touches to projects when working with students she is known to do whatever she can to assist in classrooms Miss Gerald's engages with students and staff connecting with them in positive ways a teacher describing her work in a second grade classroom said that uh her willingness to give extra attention to one particular student is really helping that student to be successful she is so kind-hearted and caring and will go out of her way to make sure all students not just her child feels valued and loved mes is thankful for your work with students your kindness and compassion and your care are noted and greatly appreciated congratulations thank you for all that your work that and same goes for what
018I saw with the other one it's so important for parents to be in the schools and so thank you for doing that thank you for your craftiness you know that's I don't always have that gift so when I know others have it I'm like man that's awesome so thank you thank you it's [Applause] appreciate congratulations to our students and our volunteers uh and recognize some of our students from the ball field and know we got some future ball players in here as well so I'm happy about that Miss McCrae I also want to say that you're doing a great job connecting with your community we'll call you pronounce murky the right way yeah and so I was very impressed by that tonight and so you will find out we have murky in America and that's
019right and so I'm very I it's it's pretty cool to see that you're you're connecting with your community so miss murky it was good to see you as well if she's still here but we have such a great Community here um here on the East End of the county this is I've been a long-standing joke with the sheriff's off office but we always uh tell people the sheriff's office that this is God's country this is where he lives on the East End of of the county so uh but it's a great a great school great community and it's good to be here today uh with you all so uh at this moment we are getting ready to go into public comment and for those who would like to leave there are some uh parents or
020those that are here that came for award sometimes they'd like to to slip out this time we're going to take a a short three minute break and then we will join back in at public comment so right now we're going to go into a three-minute break okay miss you so good Hol you were so good seriously you're hired so good hired you can do them all all of them every last one that works for me you it was perfect it was gracious back listen to it yeah oh yeah yeah you don't care yeah hey oh my gosh yes yes yes yes yes yes I've never been asked for my autograph before okay awesome are you guys at Broadway ta okay I I go to both yep I'm everything so thank you guys for coming thinkest
021just ask but I mean okay should we test them well not now but at some point I mean I think there's what do you have to get on it well I me know like 70% [Music] maybe I we do it do right I don't she thanks for coming ladies so you go put them down making faces at you you're not looking he right there cuz they're both do speci board I originally said I was like huh yeah true true it'll filter out a few but it's not going to get them all and the ru is I all right all right we will [Music] continue better power that thing on we will continue now with our our public meeting and before we get started at uh public comments I do want to just go over a
022few rules that we have uh with public comments uh each speaker will be recognized in the order listed on the signup sheet unless you have spoken in the past 30 days and your name will go to the bottom um and be limited to a three minute total so we'll have a three minute total when you get down to your last 30 seconds you'll hear a little beep beep beep uh from over here Mr Gillette and then at the end uh of it you'll hear another beep that will let let you know that your three minutes is up uh speakers should have uh their comments reflect our character counts pillars that we just went over and we recognized today uh all comments shall be directed to the school board as a whole not as an individuals
023and uh the public comment period will be limited to 30 minutes total per meeting so uh tonight our first speaker that's on the list is Joel waly good evening my name is Joel Walkley my address is on't file with clerk I'm the parent of three children in ringham County Public Schools and I'm concerned about the newly enacted book Banning policy my 18 received one of these listed books as a Christmas gift this past year that prompted me to read heartstopper volume one by Alice Osman I found it to be a affirming and honest story with positive messages about dealing with bullies friendships fitting in and love sure there were plenty of well-placed curse words similar to the dialogue you'd hear at any Gathering of teens in our community but perhaps this made the graphic novel
024more authentic I am concerned that the real reason the book was included on the band list is primarily because the main characters are gay my biggest concern regarding the new cancel first policy is that it empowers fearful people to remove minority representation from our culture and advances the message that lgbtq folks should not exist or be seen how does that enhance the safety and dignity of all our students we already have existing effective policies for reviewing Library materials I ask that the board revert the new Council first book Banning policy so that Minority representations still have a place in our schools next on our list is Sandy [Applause] mwaller miss m swaller good evening board members and neighbors I want to thank the school board members for keeping their campaign promises I want to remind
025them that those present here tonight and these present here tonight that these members were voted in by a large majority of the county voters so while many of those voters may not be able to make these board meetings they still expect the board members that they voted for to keep their campaign promises and to represent the values that they got elected for one of the campaign promises was to take pornographic books out of our school libraries Common Sense tells us if you cannot read or show these books in a public setting they should not be in our school library we are not asking for these books to be taken out of print but to be taken out of our schools thank you for your hard work and what you all have to put up with
026God bless thank you Mr Zach Nicholson good evening board members Dr shifflet I thank you for the opportunity to speak tonight I'm here to speak about the book issue as well but first I want to thank this board for at least examining this issue it has taken two years this March an election and a new board before this was even an action item or even discussed so what's all the fuss about what are we talking about here books were pulled because there is no policy that governs book selection right is there need for such a policy I can tell you after thoroughly researching this for the last two years of what's in our libraries middle schools and high schools that answer is a clear yes I have done more than my due diligence as a
027parent and Community member I think we have to ask some hard questions here when crafting a new policy one question is are we a school library or a public library there's a huge difference in trying to create a collection for all age groups versus a select few of which 99% are minors another question is who who is responsible for all other types of media we have governing bodies for example for movies we have the motion Pitch Association for TV and radio the FCC for video games we have the ersb there is no governing body for the internet and yet here we are protecting our students from inappropriate content well who who does that the school and software developers so who does it for books Librarians right and make no mistake I'm not attacking their profession
028or their judgment but I do challenge the process knowing what I know back in March of 2020 two in a public meeting it was said that Librarians use resources such as the school librarian journal and the kirkus review among others now look at the books recently removed and compare the reviews there's no Insight that the duff by Cody kinger has 193 curse words or 45 F bombs or oral sex in the slj OR cirkus review there's no content description at all I think our schools can do better when it comes to book selection that is purchased with taxpayer dollars and maybe if we partner with parents we wouldn't have to go to a third party like moms for Liberty to find out what's exactly in these books another question often asked is how big is
029this issue and I met with Dr shifflet back in July on this it was a great meeting productive and we both listened to each other and I thank him for that but I laid all my cards on the table showed him excerpts of what's in these books and his face said it all it was a look of surprise and disgust that tells me two things he was shocked and didn't know that these books were there and discussed it which is a common reaction I get when I show other parents what's in these some of these books there's not many challenges because most people have no idea that this content is even in air so how do we fix it I think schools have a responsibility of the books that they purchased to be age appropriate
030through all the phone calls email waiting no one has answered what's the benefit of 11-year-old reading this stuff if we follow guidelines that other governing bodies use when filtering content for miners then we could set up a policy with common ground there would be no reason to ban any book per se as long as parental involvement was you know if parents were involved and and they signed off on such a book these books can influence kids the same way movies can we all have our favorite on liners from movies and books and whatnot and I applaud this current board effort on the on this issue both as a taxpayer and a father so thank [Applause] you okay thank Youk next on our list tonight is Jacob I would like to start off by saying if
031we ban books in our libraries then other kids are going to find other ways to learn about this stuff that may not be so safe I would like to address that not only to the people in this room but the people at home who don't feel safe who are scared to come here because of what may happen to them and the ones who are viewed in our society as different school should be a place where you feel safe to be yourself where one can be comfortable in their own skin but recent decisions have made that hard for some and to those who are struggling I want you to know that you are not alone and we are here for you every student should have the right to figure out who they are without fear or
032judgment it's not right to ban books or make rules that make some of us feel less accepted we need to stand up for our right to be ourselves and create a safe and welcoming School environment so to all the students who feel unsafe and the students who want a change your voice matters and together everyone can make sure our schools are a place where you can learn where you can become a new person and you can grow comfortably we need to advocate for a school where diversity is celebrated and every student can eventually turn into a productive member of society thank you thank you Mr thank you Mr next on the list is Kelsey Lawrence Kelsey Lawrence I'm here from Warren County to address an issue that strikes at the heart of our freedom to
033choose the fight against book Banning now I was genuinely thrilled to learn that in this County there's an option to opt in or opt out when it comes to library books choice right but my excitement was shortlived when I discovered that despite this seemingly reasonable setup Rockingham School school board made the decision to remove not one or two but 57 books from the shelves well let's correct that to 50 because apparently seven of them aren't even on the shelves Bravo Rockingham Schoolboard you have reached a level of craziness that is genuinely unique in my experience helping various communities fight banss this is the first time I've encountered such a peculiar case tonight you've proven that we need not worry about co-parenting with the government because let's face it there's nothing Cooperative about this decision you're
034taking the entire parenting role when it comes to our children what our children can and cannot read this my friends is an example of gross government overreach you've made a blanket decision for every family in this District but hey who needs individual Choice when you have big brother they know best right interestingly big brother didn't spend six years in school learning about the intricacies of the laws surrounding pornography and what's legal and appropriate for Library shelves but you know who did Librarians we have laws in this country that Define what is considered pornographic so I and I would tread lightly because if you find porn in your library you need to call the police but you better be sure it's porn because you can get a Class one misdemeanor for filing a false report so
035I'd advise to tread lightly because guess what book sellers are suing certain school districts over these bands can you afford that now when I peruse the books of the list of band books my eyes immediately landed on 13 Reasons Why and this book holds a special place in my heart because let me tell you it changed my life life at 14 I had no personal experience with Su suicidality but this book opened my eyes to the struggles people face it fundamentally altered my relationships making me aware that others carry thoughts of ending their own lives I started treating conversations as if they could be our last because sometimes they are as a self-absorbed 14-year-old this book was exactly what I needed and I'll be forever grateful that my friend recommended it and that my library
036had it and it allowed me the freedom to check it out so let's be clear it's it's more than just books you're Banning you're Banning life-changing experiences that allow us to see each other more clearly more clearly shame on you I let's protect our right to choose and embrace the power of literature to [Applause] transform Patrick Fritz good evening Mr lur always good to see you um first as always the same thing that I've been beating for for five years now I'd like to give a big shout out to our Fine Arts students who are about to have their shows go up despite all the snow and delays and rehearsals we're going to have some amazing shows across the county um ironically these shows a lot of them are you know derived from books um
037yeah so uh break a leg y'all I am super excited I think we have a plan to see all of them and I I I can't wait second I'd like to kind of remind everybody about a story um and somebody in particular about the story of the frog and the Scorpion the Frog knew what the Scorpion was the Frog knew that the Scorpion was going to do what the Scorpion did and the Frog tried to take him across the river anyway and his his going along with that didn't save him it didn't save him he still went to the bottom of the river wait a second I'm the rules are to address one particular person or not to address one person but to address a group so no I'm addressing a group sir please be
038careful what name did I mention please be care what name did I mention Matthew what name did I mention please be careful will you stop not please be not your objection please continue please continue second continue now I can be mad I can't be mad at the Scorpion for being the Scorpion the Scorpion is what it is but I can be mad at people that have devoted their lives to the pursuit of knowledge and education that try to join the Scorpion I can be mad at people that have thrown away their integrity as an educator as academics and As Americans it's the path of cowards and I say that as somebody who has compromised my own integrity and I have to look in that mirror every day and you're going to have to realize for
039the rest of your life that you compromised your integrity remember when you flirt with the edge of the law that there's consequences for that you may be able to push some of your dubiously legal policies through but remember that your terms are four years and in those four years you have to be perfect we only have to catch you one time Anita cashet did yeah hi so thank you for the privilege of being able to speak tonight a privilege that I hold deily in a country that values freedom and that values choice choice in books choice in Partners choice in the way we live earlier tonight you spoke of integrity and I also appreciate that while the duties of a school board are difficult it is always important to act of Integrity to answer questions
040and to not hide things if I remind you there is a quote you should be aware of that things that are whispered behind closed doors will be shouted on the rooftops when the time comes so in the nature of that the school board should release exactly how they came about this list of Bann books they should release if it was a school board member that found it if it was who act where it came from where was it copied from and those types of details to be transparent furthermore there is an agenda item that many do not know about tonight I don't think regarding students and their ability to have safe counseling I believe that policy is called jo- a and there's a significant change in that in which it appears that the school board
041is trying to change how licensed counselors report how mandated reporters make their decisions that are best for students and how they build that relationship to know when is the right time to make that report and when is the right time to tell a family member that the student needed counseling that is not something a school board needs to decide that is within the realm of a licensed counselor and I'd like to bring that up for those who don't know that that is on the agenda as far as the band books go as far as all of that you've already heard that we have policies in place for band books we have policies for parents that want to be accountable for their children and be involved in their children's life they can reach out to the
042Librarians as they have always been able to and talk to a librarian about what's acceptable for their student to have or not and an novel idea is that you could talk to your child you could ask them what are you reading what's going on I want to see what you checked out from the library and that is how parents have always done that and made the choice to be accountable we do not need government overreach thank you Miss Lois Paul I want to thank the school board for the uh opportunity to be able to speak uh I am not a parent but I am a taxpayer and my I know my tax monies goes for the school board so I don't want it being used for something that goes against the uh predominantly conservative area
043in Rockingham County and I want want to thank you for having the courage to stand up for the people that put you into Office Rockingham County is overwhelmingly conservative like it or not elections have consequences and it serves the community well to be represented as such rather than being dictated to by those who don't share the values and the views and the morals of the rest of the community and I'm sure that there will be challenges in the future but I am also sure that you will come up to these challenges to to serve them as to the dictates of your heart I thank you for uh for all your service and God bless you Lyn Thorne that's ly by the way good evening um when Tony Morrison begins her beautiful heartbreaking pullit surprise winning
044story beloved she wants us to hear these words I will call them my people people which were not my people and her beloved which was not beloved those words are from Romans 9:25 from a book that you have banned from our public schools here in Rockingham what these words mean is that the the pillars here our character counts pillars caring citizenship that there is a place in this community for each and every student here you have disrupted that you have broken the trust the critical trust that exists between our school staff and our students that has resulted in students asking questions like am I in trouble will I be in trouble with the police will I be kicked out of school any any students here tonight and listening tonight I hope you can know that
045there are many many many people here in Rockingham who do not simply tolerate you we welcome you we embrace you we love you just as you are exactly as you define yourself and you will find us in your community standing up for you now and forever no matter who's in charge and we will be here to push back and make sure that everyone in our community is embraced thank you Jenny Morton I love Rockingham County Public Schools I graduated from Turner Ashby High School in 1989 my three children um all have gone through one is here tonight she's a senior came up to get an autograph of a school board member my first job was at Broadway High School teaching English and photojournalism and I was always um very careful about the books that were
046in my room and on back to school night I would talk to the parents and say be sure you're involved in what your children are reading and I would check with them you know I was I was a professional I want to talk from more of a personal letter because I know you've heard from me through a letter I've written to you um I happen to be president of the Virginia Association of teachers of English um and so I've already written in that light there should be a process for taking books off the shelves and there should be a rationale it shouldn't just be a complaint when I was a teacher at Broadway a parent complained about Romeo and Juliet the old version and um Sarah Scott handled it really well and had the department
047actually vote and I wasn't happy with it but that old version of Romeo and Juliet that movie was taken off off the shelf it's back now I'm sure but there needs to be a process you can't just take books away when my daughter was at um ta 13 reasons why I put it in her hands and it got it flew around the softball team and at the same time Harvard was had a lawsuit going on where students the students at Harvard were suing Harvard and it was a parallel story with 13 Reasons Why and it opened the door for us to talk a lot before my son got on the bus one day I was really busy at this time I was in grad school he said I need a book I'm I'm done I
048need a book I said go to the library and ask for John Green Patrick read widely he's now serving Young Life at Giles County High School books don't hurt people trust has been hurt here teaching Ed psych I just want to end with this two things that I teach is that live models are so important and that that's you you are live models and it's very important that you research and handle these policies carefully thank you Ashley sers hello my name is Ashley Saunders I have sent two adult children um through Rockingham County Public Schools and I have a fourth grader I usually joke that if the Bible were a belt I grew up in the Buckle I have attended church since I was 4 days old and you can count the times that I
049have missed Church on your hands and Toes in my 40 years of life I'm a minister by trade I queer you can take queer stories off the shelf but they will find queer people I had never heard of queer people in my life but I found them in the book that was put in front of my face from the day I was born Joseph and his beautiful coat David and Jonathan Ruth and Naomi Jesus and the Centurion and Phillip and the unic are queer stories in the Bible that I hold so dear in my heart that I have read from cover to cover since I was 12 years old every year I love it passionately and I live as Jesus has shown me to live you can take away queer stories and queer children will
050still exist you can shove trans students into the closet and your school will still have the same amount of trans students but what you will have are more children who do not feel safe loved and seen in their educational system you cannot force these children who are trans and non-binary into a binary because it makes you comfortable because it makes Governor yunan comfortable they will still be there but they will be more unsafe and will not have access to counseling and will not have access to the things that they need to have a safe and quality education which is a right to all people I keep hearing about Valley values well I have been in the valley for 20 years I have trusted two of my children through the school system and I am trusting
051the school system with one more and I will say Valley values is taking care of your neighbor making sure that everyone in your vicinity is safe loved and seen if one of these children took their own lives because of this policy the entirety of this community would mourn and we would bring meals to that family and we would hold them tight and we wouldn't look around and say who's queer who's trans we would say you are my neighbor Valley values are trans rights Valley values are loving our neighbor and taking care of them this is ridiculous Governor yunan will have blood on his hands and if you force these archaic policies you will [Applause] too Pat Hill and you will be our last speaker for tonight good evening I want to thank you first of
052all for the opportunity to speak and I would like to begin by thanking um board members Ashley bergo Holly cave Sarah Davis hor and chairman Matt cross for your vote to remove the vile and pornographic books from the Rockingham County School libraries citing just one of these books alone gender queer if this book's illustrations were actually photographs instead of drawings the Rockingham County Public Schools could be sued and prosecuted for Distributing child pornography over the period of last summer and fall Miss will you stop our time for a second we've everyone in here has has been polite and kind when others speaking had different views and now that one is has a different we're ask I am asking that we be quiet and remain quiet as she speaks and give her that respect thank you
053Miss Hill you can start our time back I'll just begin again where I where I left off citing just one of these books alone gender queer if this book's illustrations were actually photographs instead of drawings the Rockingham County Public Schools could be sued and prosecuted for Distributing child pornography over the period of last summer and fall I talked to hundreds of parents and grandparents who want this garbage removed from the Rockingham County Public School libraries and to the lone descending member I would challenge you to spend a few weeks reading the books in question and then get on board with the parents grandparents and your fellow board members support support did she address you she I didn't I didn't mention any excuse me excuse me support wa wait wait a second this is not a
054circus wait a second wait a second will you stop her time thank you thank you for stopping her time Miss heill please do not address anyone in particular even in your speech even if you stare at them I'll just I'll just end by saying please support the removal everyone of the pornography and do the job of a school board member which is to protect all of our students academically physically emotionally and ultimately spiritually thank you I address that to everybody what's that oh yeah okay this will be the end of public comments as is stated in the rules that we're going to stick to a 30 minute uh time frame uh for public comment so there are other times throughout the week we have our emails we also have uh our numbers that you can
055contact so if you didn't get a chance to speak tonight please reach out out to us and we will hear you out um first on our uh list tonight is highlights from board members and I will start with board member uh Miss lore thank you Mr Cross um let me pull up my notes Here I had I hope everybody enjoyed a couple snow days off a couple days off um it I know that was a welcome change for folks we've been missing some snow uh but in between in between that um I was able to go to John's uh J Frank Hillard middle school and visit with them uh and see some classes in action uh and then I was also able to speak to a couple administrators on the phone and and talk with
056them about some of their concerns and then um finally I was able to attend a special ed advisory committee and I thank um Miss ham for inviting me to that and I'm sure you guys are going to get a great report report that's going to be 10 minutes long we literally talked about it for 2 and 1 half hours the other night and it was so helpful for me to sit there in that space when I can focus on it completely um and hear the needs of our of our special ed kids so thank you to miss ham for inviting me to that and um that that was the highlight of my week or my two weeks thank you thank you Mrs lore Mrs HST uh good even uh this the last two weeks have
057been pretty busy for several of us as we've been traveling the county um I find it really important to um I joke about needing to get in the map I need to see the space that we're talking about and I'm really familiar with certain parts of the county um not as familiar with other buildings in our County and so I think uh just in highlight um I'm just so impressed with uh the schools that I visited this week and last week the conversations that I had with principes um I was in folks run PLS Lacy Springs I know I'm going to forget a bunch um but we have I was at jrank um John C Meers ottobine Mountain View I'm sure I'm forgetting one and I don't mean to um but they were all our
058schools are just phenomenal we've got great people employed by Rockingham County Public Schools um our kids are happy I look around our buildings look beautiful and I got to see some of our more recent Renovations in some of our buildings and um all around I'm just very impressed with um what I saw on my tour of getting in the map um which I felt was really important um to helping me understand some of the redistricting that's um that we're going to be addressing tonight um and I also um Miss beroy and I just had a tour at MTC uh today we just had a tour with um the director out there and once again like I'm just so impressed with the programs and the offerings that we have in Rockingham County um at our schools
059and even at MTC so there's are my highlights it's just a really great School Division absolutely and I miss Hurst I really appreciated you taking your time out and visiting all the schools that um that you and a few other of us uh visited so thank you for your time I'm Mrs cave just hold it down here you go it's working um I have a bunch of highlights so I had to write them down but I won't be long my biggest highlight um actually no let me leave it till last um so what Sarah said was we were really busy in the last couple weeks going around to some of the schools and a lot of the redistricting affected the west side of the the county so um what was really great for me is
060that I'm not as familiar over there and so I got to uh see some of the uh schools and uh and meet some of the principles and uh Lacy Springs is just a gem tucked away um on that side of the county and such a quiet little quaint school and um Tammy may is a really quiet awesome principal and thank you um Miss May for the job that you do there and I got to see PLS Elementary which I'd never been to um but my husband has and uh he was so shocked when I got home and I was like I cannot believe the creative structure and shape of that school and he wasn't shocked about it at all um because he'd seen it but I just it was so neat and um you know
061Mr Johnson Miss Garber there just uh really great to to meet and they welcomed us and toured us around and um it was great learning experience for me um I really enjoyed it but um let's see I got to visit with the Elton elementary school PTO on January 11th got to sit in on their meeting and those women are so crafty and so creative and so thoughtful and I was really like you all like I was amazed and I thought that it would be um a group of 30 there or something but it literally was like um you know five or six women like running the place running the PTO like the events and everything and I just I was so amazed at all they do for the teachers and the STA and and like
062I said just their thoughtfulness uh was really awesome and I think I said earlier that I just I really admire people that are creative and crafty and they certainly are um and I even U and this is highlights so I don't want to get too much uh in the weeds but I even got to meet um with some of the administrators and counselors this week that you know we don't necessarily see eye to eye on the book issue but we were able to respectfully sit in the same room together and discuss our differences and you know um and just explain our thoughts to one another and so I really appreciated the ones um this week that did that for me I mean it really was a highlight um but my biggest highlight is being here
063at Elon middle school tonight I mean this is my not just my hometown but this is my school and I was I've been sitting here thinking of all the memories that I I just have to share like I just remember being on this stage and band and um I played the clarinet and I remember the one year that we got the big idea a that it used to it was at one point in time it was really embarrassing if you squeaked on your clarinet but we got rebellious and and decided for one of our big plays that we would all squeak on purpose and think that it was funny and man we got in big trouble and I didn't get in trouble in school so it was really hard for me um but that was
064Miss irin and we just all loved her I mean she was something else and she taught us how to play an instrument and my biggest regret my husband knows is that I didn't I didn't do the drums because that's really what I wanted to to learn but I played the clarinet and I remember drama on this stage and U the different plays I remember the part that I was in and I remember in eighth grade um sitting right back there in the middle watching The Lion King as an eighth grader and being really excited about it and it was just you know it was a good clean movie and I I just we're so far from that and I I'm just happy to be able to think back on those memories and I know the
065school is very different today and I'm I'm not always the one that looks back and says oh you know if we could just go back to the good old days but not everything that we did in the past was necessarily wrong I think what we need to do is reach back and grab and take hold of the things that were good and then the things that we can improve on that we need to do just that so um it's just an honor uh to be here to sit to serve you to serve District 5 and to serve Rockingham County tonight um and to kick it off uh in this particular school it's just I'm really honored and excited so those are my highlights wow all right i' had no idea you were a clarinet player
066DaNell was you here with her causing trouble okay my my wife also came through Elon midds and she was a clarinet correct that's what I thought all right Miss Bergin I don't know if this is on can you hear me yeah okay cool um I just want to touch back on our tour at MTC today we were there we were projected to be there for two and a half hours and I I thought no way this is going to take two and a half hours um and we ended up being there for three hours if you haven't been there or to the students who haven't taken a class out there it's it's really awesome I'm jealous that you guys have that opportunity um we went through every single program every single room and got to
067see some of the equipment and the programs and things and it's just a really awesome place and um Mr Hutton is amazing and obviously very very passionate about it so it got me very passionate about it and so now my wheels are turning on things that we can do at MTC and it's just a really cool place um one other thing for me was this weekend uh J Frank held a bingo fundraiser for one of their field trips and um it was the first time that my daughter has played bingo so it was a lot of fun it was I didn't realize it was going to be so stressful but it was a lot of fun um we did not win but one thing I was really impressed by was you could tell that it
068was very student L and very student run the students obviously planned and were running the whole show there were teachers and parents helping but it was really student l so I was very impressed by that um and it was an awesome event with a a pretty good turnout so I hope they did well we had fun so thank you Mrs Burgin uh Dr shifflet so um two highlights number one I want to um give a shout out to our director of Transportation Chris sour and all of his help over the last sort of week um he did tell me today I'm not sure how to take this that he was tired of talking to me at 5 o'clock in the morning so I'm not sure that's a personal thing or no I'm just kidding but
069uh but we we're speaking pretty frequently at 5:00 in the morning trying to make decisions about um schools and whether or not we could get there with our kids safely so I want to thank him for all his help and hopefully uh for the next few weeks we will not have those conversations and then also wanted to uh one of my highlights is I had an opportunity last week to attend a gymnastics meet uh with all of our schools uh participating and I was really neat to see those kids compete and they can do things that I um could never do ever at any point in my life so uh it was awesome and I was also just encouraged too to see our administrators was there supporting their students as well so that was it
070was pretty cool um it was a good time Harrisonburg High School so it was good yep thank you Dr shifflet and um I just I just want to say tonight um how much I respect you and thank you for the job that you're you're doing when we sat out uh to look for a new superintendent uh not even a year ago and the board came together and believe it or not it wasn't me that asked to pray but it was another board member and we prayed before we started that um process and we ask God to lead the right person into that process and I believe he did just that and so I sat through um a year and a half of very contentious board meetings through covid through books through uh you name it
071we sat through a lot of it and I can't remember a time sitting through that where I'm the superintendent was disrespected as you were tonight so on behalf of this board I want to apologize and I want to say thank you we may not dis we may not agree on everything but when we when we make decisions that aren't against the law and that we're not doing that when we make decisions the superintendent is to carry out those decisions whether like it or whether they don't so I would just ask the community for those who may not agree with us that you you would uh show this man to my right uh some respect especially at these public meetings uh that would mean a lot uh to me and to the majority uh of our
072community that really appreciate you so thank you Dr shifflet um my highlight for tonight is I want to highlight all our custodial staff uh in Rockingham County over the past week uh you guys did an amazing job at all of our schools in shoveling the sidewalks getting the schools prepared to come back for the kids and the staff to come back to school you came in at early hours you stayed you stayed late to make sure that our schools could open up if we could open up and a lot of times you're not recognized enough so all our custodial staff I want to say thank you from the bottom of my heart of everything you done for this school especially over this uh last week uh through all the snow and and the winter weather
073that we've had um at this time I want to take a f minute uh recess and we will adjourn back here in five minutes you're welcome I'm sorry e excuse me I that e GR that's here they sell your to China e good sorry IED out all right we will resume uh our Schoolboard meeting tonight thank you for that fem minute break um the first night that I was I'm here as a school board member I had to do the same thing I had to use the restroom didn't recognize that we'd be going so long so I'm that was a restroom break that we just took so thank you so much for being patient with us and with me all right our first action item tonight on the list is to uh approve the January
0748th 2024 minutes and do I hear a motion to approve those minutes I move we approve the minutes as presented thank you Mrs lur do I hear a second SEC second all right thank thank you Mrs Hurst any questions or comments hearing none all those in favor say yes yes all those who oppose say no motion passes 5 um second thing on our action item tonight is to approve the January 18th uh 2024 minutes and do I hear a motion to approve those minutes so move thank you Miss Hurst do I have a second it thank you miss berglin any questions or comments hearing none all those who are in favor say yes yes yes all those who poose say no all right motion passes 5 I have changed up the yay nay Old English
075when it comes to that so those who are used to hearing that or if you're a student um we I have that privilege as a board to kind of choose how we run this and so I have went to a yes and no uh instead of an Old King James type version I next action item tonight is field trips and I believe that Dr shifflet has a recommendation on that chairman cross and board members I have several field trips for your consideration East Rockingham High School Deca state competition February 29th through March 3rd to for 19 students to Virginia Beach FFA Stockman's livestock judging February the 23rd to the 24th 10 students Virginia Tech blackburg Virginia FFA Leadership Retreat February 2nd to the 3D nine students Highland Retreat Burton Virginia J Frank Hillard Middle School
076two trips FFA BNB hippology contest February 9th to the 10th 14 students Virginia Tech blackburg Virginia and FFA um BNB Stockman's contest February 23rd to the 24th 10 students Virginia Tech Blacksburg Virginia then for Turner Ashby High School FCCLA SEC meeting February the 2nd through the 4th one student wesboro Virginia and then the FCCLA state conference April the 9th through the 15th one student Virginia Beach uh state officers need to be there two days earlier and then the FCCLA state conference April the 11th through the 14th for four to six students to Virginia Beach then spots one high school the FFA Leadership Retreat February 2nd through the 3 five students Highland Retreat Burton Virginia the FFA leadership conference March 22nd to the 24th seven students Syria Virginia and then the DECA state conference February the
07729th through March 3rd for students Virginia Beach Virginia and then lastly Broadway High School FFA uh the B&B hology horse judging contest February the 9th to the 10th nine students in Virg at Virginia Tech blackburg Virginia and I do recommend approval of these field trips thank you Dr shifflet board members hearing the superintendent's recommendation do I hear a motion to follow that I move to follow the superation to approve the field trips as presented thank you Mrs cave do I have a second second thank you Mrs Hurst uh any questions or comments I think I heard tonight that I'm Mrs lore that you're tra you're going to be on one of these field trips actually Mr C actually Mr Cross I'm gon to be on two of these field trips the uh Spotswood one for
078to Berton and the uh J Frank one to uh the first one to Virginia Tech all right so make sure you get back with us and tell us how that went okay um U Schoolboard members uh all those are in favor of the approving the field trip say yes yes all those post say no motion passes 5 uh next on our agenda tonight is Tech textbook adoption committee I'm I believe you also have a recommendation as this I'm sorry go ahead Miss Tate chair cross members of the board Dr shifflet I'm here this evening simply to request your approval on three additions of teachers to the already in place textbook adoption committee we had three teachers who were previously a part of that who cannot serve because of other responsibilities in their families and in
079their schools and also one parent who was previously on the committee who um had some change and some employment and so we have replaced a parent on that committee as well um the textbook adoption committee will begin looking at the curriculums that have been approved by the Virginia Board of Education that are required as I'm sure you know by the Virginia literacy act that we adopt these curriculums and begin implementation next fall so we want to develop not only a selected textbook adoption for GR K5 but also to make sure that we have some time to lay out a three-year plan and what that will look like for integration for teachers thank you Mrs Tate I I recommend approval of the additions uh to the K5 reading textbook adoption committee as presented board members hearing
080the superintendent's recommendation do I hear a motion to follow that recommendation I move we follow the superintendent's recommendation do I have a second thank you Mr lore do I have a second I'll second thank you Mr Berg any questions or comments while we have Miss Tate here board members I have some questions okay sure I was just hoping you could um share how the committee members are selected um the committee members were selected trying to have representation of all grade levels K to five as well as Regional representation when I did the replacement members um I tried to look at the schools where a person could no longer serve and find someone within that school or area to be able to serve in that fashion um administrators that are on the committee also all were
081welcome to be a part of the committee as well um we also have a combination of both reading Specialists as well as classroom teachers and how many how many classroom teachers are on here um I'm looking at the committee list it's a pretty long list four nine and are there are there parents on this one just just the one two two okay one was already previously on the committee and she agreed to continue her service okay and then um I got a replacement for that other parent also um nine of the committee members have students who are currently in Rockingham County public schools that are teachers as well and how do you pick the parents for this committee um we took volunteers initially what I sent out was to principles to give me recommendations and
082volunteers um who would be willing to serve on the committee okay thank you certainly other questions no see those volunteers were parents were asked through the principles correct okay all right any other questions school board members Miss C uh so it says K through five reading textbook adoption so it's all grades correct reading okay yes it's required by the Virginia literacy act that was enacted in 2022 2023 with implementation in 2024 2025 and the original committee made the decision to hold because um about a third of the committee had been through voluntarily the letters course of study um at that time and knew that we were going to be training all teachers the next two years and the committee's recommendation was to hold until we felt like we had more information fortunately we did um
083because now we are required by law to select from certain materials and that list was not completed for the Core Curriculum and given to us until December of this year 2023 so we we're moving as fast as we can any other questions okay one more go ahead how many how often will this committee meet um right now we have three um scheduled meetings we'll be hearing from the vendors virtually and then with the possibility of the addition we'll also not only get digital materials but I have requested physical materials as well for the team to look at um we'll be meeting in person to make the decision and the committee will meet either once or twice and of course it's their decision um again we're limited by what we can choose from but it will
084be the committee's decision based on their expertise and experience thank you and will when will you present this to the board I'm hoping that we can present to the board by the end of March but again the committee will determine if we need to have further conversations or hear from someone a second time um but I would like to be able to start getting planning in place in April May and also over the summer okay thank you Mrs Tate absolutely appreciate that any more questions before she leaves all right thank you board members all those in favor of the superintend recommendation say yes yes all those oppose say no motion passes 5 uh next on our action item tonight is the DEQ access easement and I believe Mr Steve Reid is here tonight been waiting
085patiently to come down to the podium and I appreciate that chair cross Dr shifflet members of the board I bring for you uh consideration tonight uh an easement at the uh 1210 North Liberty Street for the DQ to install a groundwater monitoring well the easement includes the construction easement and also an access easement for this well DEQ will drill and maintain the well and they're taking information uh throughout the state on the ground water levels chairman cwon board members I recommend approval of the DEQ access easement at 1210 North Liberty Street as presented by Mr Reid thank you I'm Dr shifflet do I hear a motion follow the superintendent's recommendation I move to follow the superintendent's recommendation to approve the DEQ access access eement at uh 1210 North Liberty Street as presented thank you Mrs
086lur do I have hear a second second thank you Mrs Hurst any questions or comments while we have Mr Reed here I where exactly is 1210 North Liberty that's the bus garage bus garage okay all right so we're doing a well there yeah all right thank you so much all those in favor of of um passing the superintendent's recommendation here say yes yes all those opposed say no motion passes five vote thank you Mr Mr Cross if you can get with Caitlyn uh before Clos meeting and sign the easement and then she can notorized it okay thank you so much I appreciate that be safe heading home next on our agenda tonight is redistricting there may be some here that are are interested in this and so um we hope to answer your questions here
087tonight um this has not been um the easiest um thing to do as a board member uh because uh you want to keep the kids and their families in all their schools and uh knowing how the community is changing uh in our building and our numbers I'm we we were for were forced to have to do redistricting at times and I was just at cubon elementary school where I believe they had 24 or 26 uh uh people register young children register after the Christmas break and so uh that's a lot of kids um so um if anyway Dr shifflet I don't want to get into that but what what what I was going to say I please talk with your board of supervisor members I'm if you're not pleased with all the growth that you
088see especially in the district three area so Dr shiffler go ahead all right thank you chairman cross and board members I just want to highlight some of the revisions to the redistricting plan I'm not going to walk you through the entire presentation again but I wanted to hit a few things um in particular um we had a work session um just kind of highlight the sort of maybe the timeline a little bit um you know how this all started we had a presentation in October uh it was at the 9th and then we had a number of public hearings and then at the uh November 27th meeting it was postponed until January 8th and at that meeting uh the board had a an interest in visiting schools looking at you know uh the transportation implications
089and and grandfathering clauses and and and really I thought that was a very productive meeting uh on the 18th uh and as well some of the board members have mentioned some of your visits to the schools to to visit classroom spaces and and those types of um the impacts and so um based on that sort of information uh we we made some tweaks and basically we're where we're making some changes is with um Lacy some students who were going to be leaving Lacy spring to go to lynville Edom so originally we had talked about 27 students we've now redrawn some lines I'll show you where they are and that's now four we had also talked about taking some students from John Wayan to aine which was 28 now we've just for now put pause push
090paws on that particular area and we talked about this although geographically that made sense we were also worried about the enrollment at aine so um if oops if we go back um and look again so take the the the two the two schools that were really of interest of us lynville Edom so the the original projection was to put 213 students which would only leave nine available seats of capacity so now we'll have 22 and then autobind uh originally we were 296 uh with the hold on the John whan students that leads it at 268 so we have capacity of 40 so we should have some growth there um and then I'll just highlight very quickly these two spots so scenario 2 Lacy Springs and linvo Edom we redrew the line with Summers Lane uh
091part of Summers Lane Cory Lane um and Ada their way so they're coming um out of that so you can see the red line there that we drew so um the um upper part there in that rectangle Lacy Spring Elementary School those students will remain and then the lynville Edom elementary schools would be the other part there and then uh as I mentioned earlier um the pause for the F uh students and the um John whan so we had a again sort of a geographic area that was going to go from John wh to ottobine Elementary and we paused that uh for the 2425 school year uh and we'll just have to you know continue to watch one um what is the capacity of aine and how does it grow right because one of our
092goals was to try to get a sustainable two teachers at every grade level and some of our smaller elementary schools like folks Ron like lynville Edom like OT so we'll see just kind of keep an eye on that and also watch the growth and the sort of the Bridgewater community and what becomes of that and maybe we have to revisit this down the road right but for next year we'll pause that um so those places so next steps um if this you know again is is approved tonight we will send letters home to All Families um in the coming you know coming days uh that will be impacted by redistricting so they'll know okay they get a letter from this you know the superintendent's office office saying you're in that area that's been redistricted um
093so families who we've already sent a letter previously so this shouldn't be a surprise we sent letters after the October 9th presentation uh we'll also send out an email the Google form so families who would be impacted by the grandfathering so they can determine we need to know right which students plan to stay and which ones are going to go for you know for uh Staffing purposes and then also potential Child Care request and I can already tell you principes have been making plans to welcome their new students um that's you know they've just been kind of anxious to find to kind of get this finalized so that they can start you know reaching out and making steps so with all that being said chairman cross and Schoolboard members I recommend approval of the revised
094redistricting plan as presented to be implemented in the 2024 2025 school year with the option for Rising 5th 8th 10th 11th and 12th 12th graders to remain at their current schools if their families provide transportation thank you Dr shipet my board members hearing the superintendent's recommendation do I hear a motion to follow that I move to follow the superintendent's recommendation to approve the revised redistricting plan as presented to be implemented for the 2024 25 school year with the option for Rising 5th 8th 10th 11th and 12th graders to remain at their current schools if their family provides Transportation thank you Mrs Hurst do I hear a second second thank you Mrs burlo I'm questions and comments on that we may have some so I'll start with Mrs lore um thank you uh I I know
095that we have had conversations about it but I wanted um to to have a a quick conversation publicly about needs at the schools I know as we move students into Lacy our El needs will go up we'll probably need another admin assistant intern can you tell us your thoughts on that and plans for that so once we um get pretty very accurate numbers we can make some determinations about Staffing uh we will have to pay attention to uh El services and also um potentially uh some administrative support at Lacy spring elementary school because they're getting a pretty significant amount of students so that's all part of the process over the next few weeks getting this information out to families getting them to respond and then us making some determinations uh the same will hold true
096you know from students who are going let's say from mon video to jrank Hillard are from Spotswood to Broadway and um I can tell you that those four principles Broadway Hillyard Spotswood and manav video I think are meeting tomorrow at 10:00 to begin these conversations so we we'll just have to monitor it and see what the number numbers look like uh in terms of how many students go how many how many fifth graders decide to stay how many eighth graders decide to stay we have to get that information as well as 10th 11th and 12th so we'll have to get some information but we'll have you know again monitor that like we do every year we take a look every year during the budget cycle of where we need additional staff you know enrollment has
097increased at a certain grade level do we do we need a teacher or if sped numbers have increased or E numbers so that'll be part of the conversations good question and then is there a magical number where we we add interns or uh special uh full-time uh assistant PR we used to call them assistant principles now what do we call them or is that no we justed call them Vice principles now we call them assistant principal I've learned the Ling lingo and then forgot that I learned the lingo so traditionally at the elementary level we've looked to around 400 students as a sort of a benchmark um sometimes it fluctuates up and down a little bit so we'll we'll see what those numbers are and then if schools are over 300 but again less than
098400 then we look at potentially add an administrative intern to help out and they can do that for a two-year commitment great thank you very much I think that's all the questions I have thank you Mrs lore Mrs Hurst um I just want to share that um a lot of us have spent a lot of time visiting schools trying to understand how um the redistricting is going to impact these schools I want to thank the principles for giving us the the tour and spending time with us um in Rockingham County our schools are truly Community Schools and that is a beautiful thing um but it it causes a lot of Heartache when we start talking about redistricting um in you know I talked to a neighbor who told me hey in Northern Virginia where he
099grew up he would just get an you know they would just get an email that said hey you're being redistricted and that was it the next year you were just at another school and um they just didn't think too much of it and in a lot of ways that's just really sad because it tells me they don't have Community built within their schools and so here in Rockingham County one of the Beautiful Things is that our communities our families our parents our businesses they are invested deeply in the community schools that we have and that does create a Little Bit Of Heartache when you have to say goodbye to one school and go to another and what I have heard over and over you know you hear from um Cub Run oh we don't you
100know parents they don't want to leave Cub Run and go to Lacy but the Lacy parents they don't want to leave Lacy Springs and go to lynville Edom and the lynville Edom parents are like it's great over here you know and so what I what I really am saying is like no matter where your kids are going to go in Rockingham County they're going to be okay they're going to be more than okay uh the principal that I've talked to are Beyond excited um to have new students coming into their buildings there's a lot of potential um an opportunity that comes with changes like that and I I think it's could be a really exciting time for for our kids so I know I know these are some of these decisions that school boards um
101these can be challenging decisions for school boards when you talk about redistricting um but I think in in this case you really if you have to change schools you're changing schools for another awesome school so thank you Mrs Hurst I'm thank you for those comments and Mrs cave I'll go with you next I would just Echo um what Mrs Hurst said about you your kids are going to be okay wherever they go um this mama's heart when I think about kids having to move schools man I'm just like oh my you know this wasn't an issue when we were in school like there was no such thing as redistricting and I couldn't have imagined being anywhere but you know elk to Middle being an elk and elk and um but I think kids are more
102resilient than what we give them credit for and I think sometimes it's harder for us as adults than it is um for them as children and I would just encourage uh parents of the children that are being moved um specifically when I spoke with Miss hammy May at Lacy Springs um she said she was talking about how some of the children that were going to be coming back from cabon had previously went to Lacy Springs or you know the people that lived in those areas and her words really were come home she was like come home we want you to come home she's so very excited to get those kids and I don't know who over here is you know um in that area but hopefully there will be people watching um because I do
103really believe that they're going to be okay um in my in my little box of a mind when I thought that Elton Elementary was just the best school ever um we just have excellent schools all over this this County I mean they're just the atmospheres are great and um and I'm proud to serve in a county where we have such great schools so um I do really think they'll be okay and also um one of the things that really brought about us looking into this um more than just saying okay because this was something that was just sort of left by the previous board and I think after the election it weighed very heavily upon us through November and December because we thought oh no they're going to delay this thing and we're going to
104have to pick it up and you know but it has been such a blessing to get educated on the matter before we made the decision um one of the things that came up when Sarah or I'm sorry miss her we were looking at the map of aine we really wanted to make sure she's like I'm not sure that you know that could be a classroom was that counted and so we even looked at things like did the person that did the counting of the classrooms really know that they were classrooms and that was one of the things that prompted us to go to the schools to make sure that what we were counting was as accurate as as it possibly could be um but so we've invested a lot of time and work into it
105it wasn't some that's why I didn't happen at the first meeting or in some special meeting prior to now is because we wanted to make sure that we were doing the best and the right thing so the only thing um I think it was mentioned I just wanted to ask you um with regards to high school students are there trips planned for the high school students to get like in Spotswood to get to visit Broadway because I mean mean you know I was a Trailblazer in nth grade and I couldn't imagine being moved to Broadway but I think getting no thanks we don't get offended up here right a night and now my kids are I'm with you but but it's part of the community thing that Miss Hurst was talking about um it's Community
106Pride and um and I love it but there is there anything you could tell us about that because I think that would be great they could do that as I mentioned earlier the the U two Middle School principls and High School principles are meeting I think tomorrow to begin talking about what this will look like but planning trips for visits to take you know the students from Spotswood to Broadway and from monov videoo to Hillyard and from you know Cub Run to Lacy and I think you know I talked to Miss March this morning I think Dr May is planning a visit to Cub Run so they're having conversations about uh making sure the these students and families feel welcome and uh again you've all you know you've all kind of stated this all of
107them are Great Schools right and you know the kids will do great things at at these new schools and they'll make new friends and it's it's really truly I like to look at as an opportunity for them so yeah those things I don't have all the details of those things I'd be happy to bring back and share at a later point you know actually what what has transpired but um I I know our principles are anxious to get started in this work all right that's all thank you Mrs cave Mrs burky I I just had one question that was brought to me by a parent do we have any just ballpark expectations of bus routes changing for students who get on and have a f minute bus ride to school or I'm sorry or I
108have a 20- minute bus ride home now it's projected to be 45 minutes do we I mean obviously I know some some of the students may not end up actually going or you know maybe there's a family um but that was a concern brought to me by a parent hey we've got a 5-minute bus ride right now are we looking at you know it's going to be 30 minutes now so I I'll kind of say two things one not just to say it it depends right but if you're talking about students who are moving from let's say Lacy to lynville it's probably going to be insignificant right because those schools are too pretty close geographically um there could be some longer routes maybe thinking about students depends on where you live maybe who were you
109know originally slated to go to um you know they're at Mountain View now they're going to aine it could be shorter for them right so it really and not to just say it depends but it really does matter on where the student lives and what direction they're going but also the second piece I want to say is um we relied heavily on the transportation department to work on these redistricting lines and uh Chris sour and his Department you know spent hours looking at you know these routes and they do take they do take into consideration what the lengths of these routes would be so I wouldn't say that a student would go from a 10-minute ride now to an hour and a half right but we try to keep all of them I think that
110we'd like to stay under an hour 45 minutes 30 minutes ideal but we also have a bus driver shortage thought I'd mention that while I was here got a couple uh school board members are getting ready to get their uh license and that's what I understand maybe we can get two there maybe we can get more than two um I I just want to say um this has been a um it's been a good process it's been a tough process we've been talking about it for a long time on the board before our new board members came on here we were talking about this but um to be able to go out to and all the schools that we visited and I had the list before us but there was a lot of schools that
111we visited and just met with the principal and looked at the school uh floor uh plan um got tons of emails from concerned uh teachers at caban and on both sides they're you know they're going to miss I'll just say this too about you know the the children are moving out of caban um they're really going to miss those kids that are there it's not like they're like having a big party that they're leaving they they grow um relationships with the with these children so there really going to be tough on them to not see them uh next year and um Mrs Marts and her team that are out there at cubon and the teachers thank you guys for all you do and how you love our children uh at Cub Ron but we were
112able to go to folks Ron we aaban like as we said Lacy spring um and when Miss cave made her comment earlier about um she said Qui not quiet about Mrs May so if you're in audience you're like quiet she's not quiet um she's very excited to to be getting uh her kids that she's going to be receiving there and so uh thank you to Chris S as well for all the time that he put in uh Chris SS and Travis weeks uh they're actually driving school buses for us that's our director of transportation and I'm our supervisor of D of transportation and this is beyond their job title so this isn't something that was in their job title um that said you're going to drive a bus uh they're driving a bus every morning
113and every evening they're sharing a route for um my kidss in District 3 and parents so I just want to publicly say thank you again um your work it it's not unnoticed it goes noticed tonight and throughout the past couple weeks so thank you so much uh for presenting to the board at our special board meeting and um for Caitlyn uh gilgas of of planning all this and getting that out thank you so much for that and thank you for your patience with the new board and and me as we go throughout this process and learning different things as well but but I'm I this has been a a good last couple of weeks of just really digging in and looking at this so with all that said tonight um with this motion that is
114on the floor uh all those are in favor say yes yes all those oppose say no motion passes 5 thank you Dr shifflet that brings us uh out of our action items tonight and into our informational items and the first on the list tonight is food and nutrition and Jennifer Williams uh supervisor will be bringing us a presentation thank you so much for coming tonight just gonna make sure all right um chair cross Dr shifflet members of the board I'm here tonight as requested to present on Local Foods in our Food Service program like you the members of the board I feel strongly about the importance of local food served in our school cafeterias uh so tonight I'd like to share with you what we are doing in our program to serve local food as
115well as an overview uh of our program to see how local fits into our entire program so can you'all hear me okay I'm right here all right so um food and nutrition services at a glance um just to go into a brief overview of our program um so our 119 employees uh serve about 3700 breakfasts and 6,400 uh lunches daily um so a shout out to all of our um hardworking employees across the county um and then um a little bit more about our program so food and nutrition services participates in the national school lunch program and the school breakfast program uh through this Federal program we are able to serve nutritionally balanced lowcost or no cost meals for our students for every meal that is served um FNS so food nutrition services receives cash
116reimbursement and USDA commodity Foods in addition to the number of meals that we serve um our reimbursement rate is based on the number of students who qualify for free reduced or paid meals so we also must meet Federal nutrition standards federal and state procurement guidelines certain education standards and federal and state health and food safety standards so um with the funds that FNS receives for our program where does our food come from um so I like to break it down into three three sections so first is our our USDA Commodities um so as I mentioned a moment ago FNS receives a certain amount of funds based on meals served um to spend on our USDA Commodities so these foods are procured through USDA and the Virginia Department of Agriculture and consumer services so these are
117us domestic products um such as ground beef frozen vegetables um frozen fruit cheese and chicken um second is our DOD fresh produce program um yes that does stand for Department of Defense um so starting this school year uh we participate in the Department of Defense fresh produce program um so instead of um all of our designated USDA funds um going to um our Commodities like Frozen and canned foods um I've diverted funds towards this fresh produce program um and so each week our schools are able to order fresh fruits and vegetables through this program um that are all us grown with local options available uh weekly as well um and then F third is going to be our purchase Foods um so that's going to be um in addition to our USDA and DOD Commodities
118um other Foods um that we purchase so foods and ingredients that are not available um through Commodities all right um so where does local food fit into our program um so I'm going to fit I'm going to talk specifically about um about that and highlight our local purchases um being made um so first off last school year um I pursued purchasing hydroponic bib style lettuce um so uh from Portwood Gardens located in Dayton so rather than um all of our lettuce coming from California in our schools um we now currently Source this fresh delicious and beautiful lettuce um from right here in Rockingham County um and then also um our milk is distributed locally year round um out of Mount Crawford uh seasonally um we purchase fresh apples from show Walt Orchard um in Timberville
119um so that's in the fall and um as they're available through the winter um as far as purchasing other local produce we purchased produce um from Standard Produce located in Charlottesville um and then during the late summer and fall uh we're able to purchase um local produce through standard um which come from the shenoa Valley Produce Auction um also in Dayton um so they've been able to um expand their capacity um to do that for our schools um and then we also are able to receive local produce local to the midd east region um of the country from DOD um and then just another little highlight of seasonal Local Foods um it's a little separate from our program but something um we helped facilitate um this year the Boys and Girls Club at South River
120Elementary they participated um in a fresh G Series um partnership um and that was with Vine and fig educational outreach program in Harrisonburg um so um families in that boys and girls club um can receive uh boxes of locally grown produce um each week um with recipes and that's um from Rockingham County and Augusta County um more about local food in our program um so um in October um we always like to feature um local food producers and Farmers um during this month which is National Farm to school month uh this past October uh we featured nachos on our menu um with the ground beef s sourced from glendor farms um and then bror from Baker pork um in Mount Jackson um the last two previous Farm to school months FNS has featured local pork
121raised and processed uh by the TA Farm to Table class and the MTC a production technology class um and then local produce is also sourc to serve during Farm to school week and month um and then also um throughout the year um some of our elementary schools especially they have adventure and AG days um so I've purchased from vpgc and 5A meets just as an example um for specialty meals um at those schools to to Showcase those local producers so then this brings us to the question so you know what are the barriers to Local Foods in our schools because you know everyone we would love to have have more Local Foods in the schools um first off one barrier um it's going to be funding so um our FNS program it's a self- sustaining
122program um a self-sustaining budget with expenses including staff and benefits covered by federal reimbursements and cafeteria sales um School Meal programs have always operated on extremely tight budgets um so when we receive funding to put towards USDA Commodities um it makes sense for our budget to put funding towards those higher priced items like proteins um especially um during these past couple years with supply chain difficulties and um High inflation as you know if you've go to the grocery store yep um cost again along the same lines as funding um when we purchase local produce for Farm to school month um say from A supplier in the county or Virginia um sometimes this produce it could be three times the amount um of a um similar us Source product um so when we can get a
123product of the same quality that is domestically sourced and is onethird the price um I have to make that decision Guided by our budget at time um another barrier is going to be Transportation um you know you all been traveling to the schools looking at redistricting um we have a very large County 23 schools and um it's a full-time job to to deliver to all 23 of those schools um and so when we purchase you know from a a small Lo local Farm they don't have the capacity always to um to deliver to all of our 23 schools um and then food nutrition Services doesn't have the capacity to to deliver to all the schools um so for example I've picked up turkey myself from vpgc on Raleigh Pike um when we served beef from
124glendor farms um it took a wide range of volunteers um including transportation and maintenance staff um and myself to coordinate Logistics of distribution to all schools um another barrier um Staffing um this is just to say um when a new food item is put on our School menus um there's a lot of background work that goes into it um so um putting on the menu you have to make sure um it meets our procurement requirements um staff might have to be trained on how it's stored um what the food safety is on it um for example when we receive the new hydroponic lettuce you know it's little things like knowing how many cases to order to feed you know your school school for 2 weeks um how many heads of lettuce it's going to take
125to make 50 chef chef salads um so little little things like that that just that just take time and preparation um and then the last um procurement regulations um like I I stated just a moment ago so we must Source our Foods according to certain food quality food safety um standards price and um local producers just can't always compete with our larger providers when it comes to price um so those are just some of the barriers um faced on bringing Local Foods into schools not just with our programs but programs across the country um but that's enough about barriers um because um I'm hoping to continue to expand uh Local Foods in our program and overcome those barriers um so for one um partnership with the dairy Alliance we're having milk dispensers ERS installed at
126John whan Elementary and folks Ron elementary um milk dispensers so students have um cups that are then they fill themselves and can be um washed and reused so to help our our local Dairy um sorry I just dropped completely lost that word there our local Dairy Farmers and Industry um also continuing participation in the dod fresh program um with focus on uh Virginia grown produce um and then also continuing to expand um yearr round local purchases um including proteins and more vegetables um because as someone who grew up in Rockingham County in a a farming family I understand that agriculture is a major part of life for many of our students um so I feel it's what an opportunity to to support those families so so that is my overview of local in our food
127program so thank you yep any questions or comments to have Miss for Miss Williams for Le I just wanted to add as a local farmer um I'm I'm I want to add that a barrier is traceability because I am quite certain there is a lot of Rockingham produced chicken and poultry in our schools that wasn't listed in this because the supply chain and the figuring out and the logistics you we just can't say that came from Jackie's Farm but it probably did so um even when working with the big guys and using uh that leverage of Cheaper products it's still local so thank you thank you for all the work you're doing on this and uh thanks for feeding our kids thank you Miss lur any other Schoolboard members oh we we just want to
128go ahead I thought no I I just want to say that that's this is going to be a priority of of this board and after talking about we just want to do our very best to put um our local taxpayer money back into um the county and the valley and also to have as much uh fresh food for our children as possible so I I was taking notes tonight I want to get your uh presentation saw some of the uh barriers that you talked about tonight and hopefully the board can help with some of those barriers as in transportation and funding and different things like that but uh this is a priority for us uh as a board and going forward so we will be talking to you more privately as well so thank you
129for coming tonight and thank you for the for this okay we're not done with it yet he's just got a few question I thought he was goingon to let you go um what were the two schools that you said were getting the milk dispensers John Wayan John Wayan and folks run and folks Run Okay um this may not be a question that you were prepared for tonight so because it's not really about the local stuff but I mean are are you well staffed do you cover that stuff like the Staffing in the cafeteras okay um I noticed a really nice picture um of the lunch tray with the good the food on it um are we using Styrofoam in a lot of our schools I noticed in a cafeteria was in I saw the other
130day that there was a lot of Styrofoam being used and I was just thinking maybe I'm way off on this but that it's going to be a lot of cups to wash and yeah um so um at those two School specifically they use the dishwasher and so going through covid you know we had our take-home meals and um and then when students were back in in schools um students were eating in their classrooms outside um but we have we have been fortunate um our staffing has improved this year year um you know we still have some shortages and need more substitutes but um so we've been able to have more capacity to use um the dishwashers but it is we are still when Staffing you know we still are struggling with substitutes and when we
131can't find those substitutes usually the dishwasher is one of the first things to go and we do use um disposable trays at times just do you have you don't have to have it tonight but do you have some costs on what we're spending on that on styrofoam trays and the different schools I could get that okay thank you yep I have could you shut that back door Miss Holloway thank you um last year and at the beginning of this year I subbed in our cafeterias um specifically at lynville and the staff there I'm sure this is a case across the board but these ladies know every every single kid's allergy every single kid's um unique preference on foods and I'm just super impressed so um I was it was a lot I mean I mean
132and lynville has a low amount of students they were on it every single kid this person needs this I'm like I can't believe you guys remember all this so I was very impressed and I I'm sure that's the way across the board so okay okay good this question is just a part of me trying to get educated on this so just indulged me um the meat that we get I know we talked about the local now is that ordered the bulk of it where does that come from because it used to come from Cisco or some of our Foods come from Cisco but now it comes from where yeah so right now um we are receiving our groceries from merchants and Co pepper Co pepper yes okay y not Richmond correct okay yeah um and
133was there a reason how many years ago did that happen do you know were you here so um so we have to go out for bid um so we're in a food buying Co-op um with a couple other counties so with Harrisonburg city Augusta um wboro and Stanton so we can have better purchasing power we go out together um and so we put out a bid and this year we had to put out our bid um and Co pepper is who received the bid okay for merchants you said this year yes okay so this hasn't been going I'm asking you because to be honest I've heard a lot of complaints about the switch and it's been from just random people all over and I just you know I just I want them to be getting
134the best food yeah and I want to be you know good with our money and um you know Thrifty and all that but um I want them to have good food as well so I just wondered what that was behind switching from Cisco when so many people said that the food was better yeah um it was we went through the the procurement process yeah um they you know they met our pricing requirements um and then yeah they met the the pricing requirements okay thank you yep that's an annual contract or was it a threeyear contract so it's a threee yeah we have the um and we did that this past fall yes so three years from now we'll do it again in the fall so yeah okay thank you yep yes sir do do you
135get feedback from um from the um your workers at the school on the quality standards of the food and what they think as well how are you able to get that feedback from them yeah yeah um yeah I do and I mean it's it just it depends on the brand that the Distributors is able to get at the time um most of the brands didn't change when we went to merch mer um but because of um you know the way that the food supply chain is right now um things do change in the middle of the year but I'd be happy to go into it there's a lot that goes into the procurement requirements and the bid specifications we follow and absolutely y well we'll be talking with you so thank you tonight for coming
136and sharing this and thank you guys for all you're doing yep thank you thank you so much our next on the list Dr aler aler sorry our student conduct followup uh chairman cross members of the board Dr shifflet um I am here as a follow-up to the presentation that I had done at uh the last board meeting about student conduct um at that meeting there were a number of questions and requests for some follow-up information which I'll be sharing with you all this evening one of of the things that you had asked for was the data that had been provided for a number of the infractions for years uh prior to 20178 so what we've done is prepared for each of the slides that you had seen at the last um meeting we've now added
137the three years uh prior so 14 15 15 16 uh 16117 so I'll go through those um you can see the the uh table is the same table we just added additional data on there I'm going to go through them um I'm not going to spend a lot of time talking about them I I will answer questions if you have but I know you're familiar with the information since you saw it last time but you can now see the trend data that goes further back so um for this one is the cell phone violations and you can see the the trend data from those um first three years of of the graph on the left um here uh tobacco and nicotine products again seeing how that has changed and as we discussed at the last
138meeting really while some of the numbers have changed but also the devices the types of things are quite different right so move from really dip tobacco and cigarettes to vaping is really the the switch there the numbers have increased as well classroom disruptions you can see here as well disrespect and Defiance and you you can see here there has been sort of a a trend moving up over the course of that period of time physical altercations again I had discussed this at the last meeting about sort of minor altercations uh that really would weren't resulting in kind of a major issue or an injury or typically even a suspension maybe a pushing or a slapping or something along those lines and then on the bottom more major infractions those are what we would describe really
139as a fight right whenever it was much more serious I've seene language and gestures and then policy violations and you can see here again um for the uh drugs and alcohols the Top Line the the orange line and then weapons on the on the bottom and and again I had highlighted the last meeting about that significant jump in in uh for drugs and alcohol to this past year and that really was a direct correlation to the use of vape and THC being able to be a part of that incidents resulting in out of school suspension again you can see that is fairly consistent over the over the years and then discipline hearings again this is you have a hearing officer in the earlier years of this there would have been actually a discipline committee a
140member threers committee that would have her discipline cases and that was changed over to a couple of hearing officers I'm not sure what year maybe 1819 somewhere around there where that was changed and then the bottom you can see where that uh Schoolboard um hearings for possible expulsion U one of the other pieces that was requested information was about the number of incidents of Base um among in the the middle and high schools and you'll see here but I do want to just highlight so it's fairly consistent up until 2021 there was only um base or sometimes it was called bip at the time actually it's a similar type of program in the middle schools and then Broadway High School also had it they actually staffed that through they had a duty periods for teachers
141that went and rotated through through that in 2021 we added a base instructor or base person supervisor in each of the high schools so when you see that number jump that's not necessarily due to additional instances where we would assign kids to that let's say in the that looks like a significant jump but we have three more programs okay just to provide some context for that one of the other things it was asked was um about policies sort of a a review of the discipline policies that we have and in particular are which ones of our policies have a specific consequence for an infraction and so here's a listing of the policies that relate to specific discipline incidents in our schools so JFC is sort of the mother of all of these policies it's the
142the student conduct overseas or over uh all of the the misconduct that happens in schools and then you have some more specific types of policies that relate to more kind of typically more uh challenging or serious infractions so student conducts on buses uh gang activity alcohol and drugs tobacco products nicotine vapor products dress code so um here are a couple of the ones that actually do have some specific consequences that go along with them so drugs and alcohol this was a policy that was changed by the board in November of 2022 you can see that the first offense was 10 days of Base VIP and then there's also um as we discussed last time 90 days of poor School standing there's also substance abuse education that students can go through or need to go through
143if they want to get out of poor School standing the second offense is 10 days of out out of school suspension and referral to the hearing officer and the third offense is 10 days of OSS out of school suspension and referral to the school board for possible expulsion as it relates to tobacco products and nicotine vapor products the first offense is three days of Base the second offense is five days of base and then a third offense is 10 days of Base OSS or referral um to hearing officers so we have multiple instances of that for dress code um warning change of clothes and parent notification for the first offense for the second offense a day of Base change of clothes parent notification and then for the third offense three days of Base OSS potentially
144that's at the discretion of the principal and then a change of close and parent notification and then weapons and schools there's a policy it's actually in Virginia code um that if there a student has a firearm at school then it's an automatic hearing before the school board for possible expulsion and then uh this is another uh standard that we used it's actually not in policy anywhere but it's a consistent practice that we have across our schools and that is that if there is a fight and this would be what I had described earlier as a major physical altercation that there would be anywhere between three and five days and could potentially be more than that if it's even more serious but standard is three to five days of out of school suspension for that type
145of behavior I'm happy to answer any questions you have where where would disrespect um like cussing teachers fall in line with that what would be our that's a great question so I discussed this at the last meeting but I'll just reiterate it too so the Defiance and disrespect I mean there were I think that was the one that had the most offenses of any right um of the infractions and so that spans such a wide range of what that the behavior may be again it could be a it really in some ways is the in the eyes of the beholder right so just as an examples right you could have a a teacher who's having a conversation with the student and the te the student rolls their eyes right and the teacher finds that to
146be disrespectful and would write that up so that would be one thing right then you could have another as you described where A student uses profanity or says something really you know nasty to a teacher the consequences for those two things would be obviously significantly different so what happens and which is really a flaw in the system when you have people right we're working with individuals so depending on the circumstance of that individual kid that individual uh situation what they said what it could be again anywhere from a warning to a multiple day suspension depending if if this kid had done this multiple times it could end up with a five or 10 day suspension and sent to the the hearing officer so it really does depend right that's a it's a it's hard to
147categorize exactly what would happen in that situation so at right now it just depends on the circumstances if if a teacher is I'm not just saying if a student just cusses in front of the teacher but if a if a student cusses the teacher and it's it's it just kind of varies of what might happen to the child it or to the student it does it it varies I would expect that that would result in some sort of serious consequence including an out of school suspension but again that's there's nothing that's in policy that says this is what's going to happen okay okay thank you that that's important to me sood board members on the cell uh cell phone violations I feel feel when I talk to teachers one of the biggest problems in the
148classrooms are cell phones and so when I look at these numbers from 2014 2015 at 623 cell phone violations but we've gone down to 3.99 10 years later um that number seems odd to me when we have um really a much bigger problem with cell phones than we had 10 years ago so do you think these numbers are what has there's no way it's went down so is it just that they're not reporting them as much we tolerate [Music] more you know what I'm saying there's no way the number has went down from 623 I mean we were we weren't addicted to phones and stuff like that in 2014 I mean not to the point that we are now and so um and I'm not saying anybody did a bad job or anything I'm just
149saying I wonder if we tolerate more that's why the violations aren't being reported or or what is it do we have a problem with cell phones in the classroom so I have an answer to your question about why is decreased is that the the interpretation of the policy has changed over that period of time in fact I believe the the actual policy even changed to allow kids to have access to phones during the day and during non-instructional time so it used to be that students were not able um cell phones were not to be seen or heard during the day throughout the entire day that at middle and high school and then there was a change in which students could then have their at the high school level could have their cell phones during non-instructional
150time so they could have them out during lunch they could have them out before school they could have them in the hallway between classes so when that became something that was permitted right then you no longer have have that happening as much right okay okay so that that's why the decrease now there was a change um that was made in the last year potenti I guess it was the beginning of last year where we said that at that point we weren't allowing it in the during instructional time at all so even at teachers were allowed to give permission for kids to have it we said that we're not going to allow that to happen um so that is a change that was made I still would tell you that it is being enforced inconsistently in
151classrooms okay um and on the discipline hearings am I reading this right is this only five went before the school board is this for the whole County that's correct for the whole year correct okay MH M Burk anything as far as the cell phone um policy goes this is something that I talked about a lot when I was campaigning things that I had seen personally in the schools that cell phones were everywhere and as we're talking about it I see lots of Staff going yeah yeah yeah um I noticed cell phones were a really big distraction and a really big problem and while I completely agree that the kids should have them for safety reasons um more students than not had airpods in and phones in their hands and I think it I think we
152we need to support our our teachers better and our staff better that that shouldn't be the norm that that's just you know how how it is at school um I saw kids playing Call of Duty I think against each other and that would have never happened when I was in high school so um obviously Technology's come a long way but I I definitely think like I want to support you you guys better and you know cell phones definitely are a huge distraction from learning in in a in a sense disrespectful to your teachers so absolutely absolutely I think that's something we need to look at for sure oh that is on our list to look at as cell phone policy so thank you for bringing that up again miss Hurst Miss uh do you have
153anything to add I don't miss L thank you Dr ORD for coming tonight and presenting this and I'm sure uh we'll be um in touch uh with you as well and the staff at central office I do want tonight to to direct the Dr shifflet to uh create a student conduct committee and bring us a list of who may be on that committee uh for the board's approval at our 1 February uh meeting be glad to all right thank you next on our list tonight is uh special education advisory committee and Miss Amber ham uh is here here with us to uh present along with Mr um longor sorry I don't know your first name Jason Jason thanks for coming tonight thank you for being patient as Jason's handing them out um chair across members
154of school board Dr sheffet thank you for allowing the special education advisory committee um called cak um to come and present the annual report um this is something we try to do each year um to give you the voices of our community this presentation this year is called the voices of our community because our students matter seac is actually a requirement from the Virginia Department of Education um to advise the school board on what's going well and improvements that need to be made in the booklet we only have a limited amount of time today and so we created a annual report um to hand to you so you guys could look at it at another time time in more detail in the white you're going to see what is cesac the purpose of cesak the
155cesak leadership and membership cesak dates that you are more than welcome to attend the number of special education students in Rockingham County Public Schools the number of special education students Rockingham County has based on the levels which is the elementary and secondary level the number of students based on the primary disability and then also to let you know that we are currently going through a state audit um which hasn't been done in many many years um the annual report um has several different sections um the first one that you're going to see is going to be in the kind of orange pinkish um it's information on the special education advisory committee the second one um in I guess it would be the blue color is actually what we gave when the superintendent we were looking
156for a new superintendent um cak was invited to talk to to their firm on what cesac thought um we needed and some of our unmet needs and so that is a report that was given to them then we have the 2004 special education um satisfactory survey and the 2004 U special education caregivers satisfaction survey some of the things I want to point out with the information from the special education advisory committee we meet several times a year and so these are voices of parents Educators and Community um members and agen IES I'm going to highlight just a couple you guys can read the rest you know the first of all Rockham County schools has exceptional Educators um they are hands down the case managers they love the our children um they serve our students and
157so that is the top you know resource um in our school is actually um the the staff members um we are doing things um Rockham county is doing things like the spire and the I Spire program which is a reading program for special needs students we're utilizing the unique Learning System um that actually helps the lower curriculums actually come up to the age appropriate level um for students um we're conducting man training improving accessibilities in schools and ramps in our schools virtual training the unified basketball um the young life um comperm prom transition nights um Rockingham County is is partnering with JMU to increase um are actually staff um that want to be teachers and so that's a cohort um to increase that so there's lots of different things going on um you know I
158want to welcome Jason um who is the current past chair of CAC um to share his experience with ringham County Public Schools thank you Amber U good to see everyone um so um it's great to see that when I first started this I was actually the first parent that has ever uh presented to the board um and the board was made up of completely different folks back then it's been a long ride I'm actually uh represent District Five now for the state I was asked to go up and be with the Virginia Department of Education for the state seak um I told Amber when we talked about this she's doing a great job I didn't see this report this was a dream that we had when we first started this um perspective I have from
159going up to the state now is that we've g a very long way and we have a very long way to go but so to everybody else I told her you know when we talked about presenting the board I was like just end on a positive note I was like you know it's always going to be it's very hard you know talk about different things and unmet needs and the balancing of money and who does what and where goes why and what's more important so end on a positive note so I told her I'll end on a positive note so I can tell you that many years ago uh when my son was diagnosed with autism uh we started off with Dr B at you know good old John whan and um didn't know what
160to do uh there was no program and I got involved in the cak because I found it by accident actually I was looking for something else and I called and said hey I dialed the number they said to get involved and uh Scott hand answered the phone and I'm like Scott aren't you the what what is this what do you do um and then I got involved that way um through the years I can tell you now that our son Ben who started off John whan is graduating from ta with honors and is actually uh going to Bridgewater College something we never thought would have happened ever we didn't know if he was ever going to even speak um so that's uh thanks to Rockingham County schools and the programs and and everything that's been
161involved in all the great teachers along the way uh and all the great board members that when I was up here welcomed me brought me into different things and now Amber that's that's what amber does now uh to the parents I would tell you um get involved uh be involved um the best advocate for your child is yourself and I will tell you that I had many parents I know it's hard I know it's hard to do these things I worked in downtown Washington DC and I still made it here I would leave and take half a day off to be here for my child and it's going to take a lot of work I know that the schools work very hard but no one will work harder than you um and that's what I
162want to say is I just want to thank everybody um I can't wait to have a graduation I told Dr B years ago when Ben graduates high school you are coming with me you have one of my tickets to his graduation and we're looking forward to doing that so that's kind of how I wanted to end it so thank you so and we just want to share you know some of the successes um you know that is happening and that is because of the partnership between the parents you know advocating their time and also the exceptional staff members that we have um some of the things you know I just want to highlight um as far as unmet needs and improvements you know one thing is you know it's hard to be an educator but
163federal law says says that we have to educate students to the maximum extent appropriate children with disabilities um are educated with children who are not disabled and special classes separate schooling or other removal of children with disabilities from the regular educational um environment occurs only when the nature of severity of the disability of a child is such that education in regular classrooms with the use of supplemental aids and services cannot be achieved satisfactory and so so this is the challenge you know that a lot of educational have you know as far as you know one of the things that they say is limited funds um needed for therapeutic and um educational supplies and so you know you have about $117,000 for supplies for elementary schools you have about 30 for secondary schools which is your
164middle school and high school a lot of those funds they they're funding um Aspire programs you know and reading programs which doesn't leave very Mone very much money for um supplies um you know if you know right now I believe teachers are getting about $150 you know per classroom when when you go into the schools and you see those little chairs those little teeny rocking chairs there's there's are $250 and so they came and buy a a chair you know for a child to use to to increase the the movement um some of the other things is the lack of Staffing um that is things that you're going to see you know throughout the report you're going to see it you know when the Zach has talked about it with the committee you're going to
165see it in the Educator's report you're going to see in the parents report um it's it's the lack of Staffing um and it's the lack of um supplies some highlights you know for the special education advisory satisfaction survey um does your school provide adequate and equal Services 46% agree that means 45% over 50% sometimes or disagree are you well supported doing your job working with special needs students 42% are well supported while the others sometimes are not supported and so you're going to see this this is the voices of Educators this is the voices of you know parents when you look at things are you considering not not considering a job not working with special needs students or planed on leaving the profession of teaching 24.8% say yes so these are alarming you know when
166we look at things and we don't provide the supplies and we don't provide the Staffing that's necessary to support our students you know we're we're seeing this decrease in Staffing um and the hardships does inclusion as implemented meet the needs of all students 65.9% say no so these are things just as you can see you can see the graphs you can see the different things as far as child care satisfactor and survey does your school provide adequate and equable services and support your child 54 54.3% agree that means 46 sometimes or disagree are they comfortable asking questions this is a positive 80% of your parents feel supported that they can actually discuss progress of their child that actually has in that that is more an increase if you look at some of the the state
167things for Rockingham County you know um that actually has increased which is a benefit that means teachers are actually meeting with with parents um have you had a special needs child for whom Services were not considered due to the lack of Staff resources equipment 25% say yes is your child's playground equipment equable and accessible for special needs students especially considering wheelchairs elopment risk 28% say no so these are things that you will see you know throughout this report but the main thing that you're going to look at I can keep on going with just different things but you can read that and I'm more than welcome to you know have coffee with you guys or discuss this further but as a conclusion Rockham County Public Schools have wonderful students and exceptional staff and hands down
168this annual report is presented to you guys to hope to bring a better awareness of services to special needs students on our school in our schools and hopes to improve Services some things to keep in mind our numbers of students are increasing the severity of the disabilities are also growing in demand for more staff in the 2022 December 1 report rcps was serving 1,240 students in 2023 we were serving 1,416 students in one year our numbers have grown to include an additional 176 students this is actually a significant increase the state is actually projecting a 16% increase in special needs so I'm asking the board to reconsider and to fund what is going to be given to you completely but also to actually look at above and beyond the budget that's going to be submitted
169to you the needs because I feel that this is actually based on the data that we have we still need more Staffing we still need more supplies and if not those those students are not receiving adequate or equable services and also you are putting strain on our staff this is also not only special education staff but our general education staff because if they are having to to you know compromise because of the Staffing um and the lack of Staffing for special need students than everybody all students are compromised so I am asking the board to reconsider to increasing the set the budget and the resources for supplies um for the 2014 or 2024 2025 survey to serve our students with adequate and equable services and again you know I I want to make sure that
170we're not pointing fingers to the Educators that you know that they're not you know things are not being done because they don't it's I don't think it's their fault I mean they love our students they want to provide the best a lot of educators are leaving because they're not getting the support needed they're not getting the staff they're overwhelmed you know they continue you know that the reports and everything is just overwhelming and then you have to still sit back and you have to serve the students during the day and so there's just not a lot of things so you know I would ask that you increase their budgets to support this the Educators and not to point fingers at them because really it's really the lack of resources that we're giving them to educate
171our students do you guys have any questions I have one good thank you for putting together this report this is awesome it's got a ton of information in here um I'm a little bit curious about the um special education Educators satisfaction survey um when this is a 2024 can you tell me when um you gave this survey sure um so I did it um I want to say I did it last week it was a very quick survey so it's current it it's current um you know I did last week um this is like really really not like the 2023 24 school year this is current this Cent this was uh last week okay um the survey deadline ended um on um Thursday okay um did you survey full-time staff part-time staff my understanding is
172that it went out to all staff everybody correct and um including assistant that is my understanding yes so this is kind of like the whole gamut correct okay it's good information thank you you're welcome how much participation did you have from this do you know we had about 130 Educators okay um and about 35 parents um surveys in general you only get a snapshot um and I more than willing to open it up um to survey longer um if Educators you know want to have more time to do this um you know that that I'm more than welcome to do that um but that that's that's about how much even on state surveys that's about how much we get in parent response right I would love for this to be done the same questions sent
173out I don't know six months a year or whatever um just to see if those numbers change if they increase but um I thank you for doing doing this if you are not passionate about special education and you talked to amram for 5 minutes you will be passionate so um thank you guys for doing this you're welcome any other question board members just like i' just like to add again thank you for doing this and um I feel like that number I think it was about 35 educators are considering leaving Rockingham County Public Schools um as special ed teachers and that's very concerning um um and I will also note that again tonight I was pulling up and looked at our our personnel and we again have special ed uh folks on our list that
174are going to be leaving us and that happens every single um report I feel like we're I I feel like I'm constantly saying oh there's not somebody else in special ed there's somebody else in special ed so uh and and the answer traditionally has been it's really hard to be a special ed teacher and they burn out out really easily so we as a board do need to find something some way to support them better um and also just uh thank you to everyone who is a special ed uh provider and thank you to everyone who's working with our students and thank you to miss ham for bringing this up to our attention and I just want to clarify you had mentioned the 30 some you know Educators that's 30 some Educators at 130 response
175so that number is you need to look at more of the percentage you know versus the number thank you so much thank you so much well it sounds also like we need more and we're going to have less so 35 is significant we we're having problems finding three so and we have a need for I don't know we have a need for a lot correct so so but thank you thank you thank you so much next on our agenda tonight is budget planning for the 2024 4 2025 uh scho school year and Justin Moyers you're looking good here tonight thanks for waiting good evening I'm excited to talk budget with you all this evening let's do it that's right so chair cross members of the board and Dr shifflet this evening I will present to
176you a listing of all budget requests for the 2425 school year uh each of you has a notebook that I've set at your table tonight um this will have all the information the summary and the detail of all the budget requests tonight we'll just go over the summary and then you'll have the detail to look back at another point in time yeah I think Mr crosses might be in front of Dr shifflet do you all have them okay and um so we'll go over the summary this evening and then you'll have the detail to refer back to later as we go through the summary please remember this is all requests so we have not paired this down to match up with our Revenue these are all requests that we're going to get tonight that that
177I'm going to show you this evening um in the next couple of months we'll go over the projected Revenue um to compare it to our total expenditures so the first tab I'll have you turn to this eveny is the expenditures Tab and the beginning of the Sheet's going to look like this what's what's up on the screen so first for transportation they've asked for an increase of $549,000 uh most of this consists of an increase in fuel prices that we expect for next year as a comparison to last year uh additionally an increase in supplies especially when we're fixing buses the cost of those um of the parts has gone up and then just the cost of buses in general and they're asking for a few additional buses than they have um for in past
178years uh maintenance has asked for an increase of and um then also just the cost of dor projects has also increased as as you would well know uh the instructional uh department they have asked for an increase of $644,500 this includes El textbooks additional software a regional program which is uh who we partner with for special education and also uh CTE programs academic support they've asked for an increase of 185 , 945 most of that increase is in technology um for the division MTC has actually asked for a decrease and the reason for this is because the percentage of our kids compared to the city of Harrisonburg has actually gone down so last year our say our percentage was 82% of kids at MTC were Rockingham County residents or Rockingham County students next year will
179be 80% so although their budget's going up what we would have to contribute will slight go slightly down next year next year uh Administration the budget stayed flat the next section the first thing you'll see is a salary increase so in the governor's proposed budget he proposed a 1% bonus in lie of a 1% bonus we could also provide a 1% raise we have put in here the cost of providing a 1% raise to employees and also the 2% raise that was received in January I have to I need the difference um for next year to pay for that for a full year year the other increase that you'll see um in this section is health insurance at this point we've estimated a 5% increase we are self-insured so that number we're still not positive
180yet that that's going to be the case but I'm trying to be conservative at 5% if you go to the next section so sr3 the TSS Grant the ventilation cslf frf and the ID 611 art funds those were all those were all Co Federal money that money is all ending and so we will no longer be requesting funds to be spent there next year the last section you'll see our division proposals and Personnel requests um in your binder you'll have a list of every single one of these Personnel requests but this is salary benefits for each one of those that was made by all schools as well as all departments and then the division proposals if you flip in your binder towards the back there is a proposal section and it is the last section
181in your bind second to last we did something a little different this year usually it's division y proposals this year we have division y proposals as well as the school board proposals when we met with you all um individually over the last few months so the school board proposals that are in this budget for next year are two resource officers at elementary schools uh after talking with the sheriff and their staffing needs that they have currently he felt too was um what they possibly could get next year in the budget a safety maner position uh for many buses at middle schools uh an increase in s teacher salaries that's something that you all have have expressed to us that you have a desire to increase teacher salaries I don't have an amount in there yet
182because we haven't disc discussed specifics but it is something that is included in um Schoolboard proposals the other items are an increase in supplemental pay scales up to 25 years of experience which includes our coaches that's something that you all have talked about with us uh lights at the Spotswood High School baseball field and an athletic director superviser then we have division y proposals that have come from the superintendent's office these include an increase an improvement of the mechanics scale an increase in hourly sub rates that are currently at $13 an hour to $14 an hour and this is just to make sure that we stay in line with minimum wage uh four resource school resource officers at the middle schools so our four resource officers at the middle schools have been Grant funded that
183grant funding ends this June so we will need to pick that up in the local budget starting next year and then also an increase in the mileage reimbursement rate that we pay employees when they're driving um their personal vehicles the next thing I want to draw your attention to is the total so in total you'll see that we have almost $185 million of requests last year our total budget was7 4 million so that's a $1 million roughly $1 million increase um the other thing I would like to mention to you all is so these are all the requests that we've had what we'll do next is we'll look over the governor's budget at the next meeting to discuss what funding looks like from the St State and to be honest the funding from the state
184does not look very promising so we are funded from the state by What's called the composite index which is the locality's ability to pay so in the past two years let's say it cost $100 to run the School Division the state has said locally we could pay $36 of that starting next year they say we can now pay $43 of that which doesn't seem like a large change but when you're talking about Millions we are losing about $4.5 million dollar from the state next budget year based on the governor's budget now the House and Senate versions We have told will be better but I don't don't expect them to be good enough to to to meet that so we already have $11 million requests which is typically we we always have more requests and we
185can fund however we're starting from below zero just to get back to Baseline for next year so I just want to keep that in the back of your mind as we're working on our budget in the next couple months and we will'll work together and we'll we'll get it going but I just want to give you heads up so I'm happy to answer any questions that you all may have and Justin thanks for bringing this to the board's uh attention tonight and I know that we're going to be working um two by twos and this are just going through the budget as well and seeing what's in there what's coming off and how we can um help those who have requested um what they need in in this year's budget so thank you for the
186update and you said also we we're losing 4.5 million from brisban this year yes and and that doesn't count there's some things we have to add next year that we that we don't have this year so that numbers it gets higher but yes we're losing four and a half million funding from the state that's correct okay board members and you you have a lot to digest so we'll have a lot more discussions yeah be happy to answer anything you'll have so thank you for presenting tonight and we will be in touch sounds good next on the information I have tonight miss abery will be presenting the 2024 2025 school calendar draft good evening chair Cross School members and Dr shifflet thank you for giving me a few minutes of your time tonight to share the
187first draft of the calendar proposal for the 2024 2025 school year you should have the calendar there and your information items to um to view first I uh just want to spend a couple of moments I think I went oops I'm going the wrong way here let me go back sorry okay um first I just wanted to share the process of how we came up with our uh proposed calendar we established a committee we had 12 members and those members are teachers representing um all three levels of elementary middle and high we had two parents on the committee Innovation te me team members building administrators that represented again all three levels and a county office um administrator supervisor in our office it's important to note that we did make a a concerted effort to make
188sure that all tenants areas of the school division were represented on this committee also in this process we started in November by establishing the committee in December a survey went out to all families and staff you may have seen that survey come to you um the survey was not based off of a calendar proposal at that point in time basically it was just based off of our current school year calendar the committee reviewed um 1,500 and almost 50 responses was a lot to take in and a lot to look at um but was very informative and receiving a feedback from our family members we also collaborated with the Harrisonburg city schools as that's important with our MTC students for alignment with them also we have many families that may live in the city's uh we
189may have uh parents who will work in Rockham County but have students in Harrisonburg city or vice versa so that's important for alignment there I believe right now there's two days out of the entire calendar that don't line up but otherwise it's it's really really really close we're really pleased with the work we've done with that uh of course we're here presenting tonight uh to the school board for your first draft we'll solicit additional feedback from families and staff and again we'll come back to you all again at the next meeting for um for review here's a list of survey questions that uh went out to all of our staff and families as you're looking through the survey questions I'll share with you from the respondents 63% of the respondents for parent or Guardians 22%
190were staff members and 15% identified themselves as both the parent and guardian and a staff member in the school system also the length of school year was one of the questions 57% uh said it was just right that they like the length of the school year 37% of the respondents said it was too long 4% said it was too short that they'd like to have more days in our instructional time so um some of the comments that received in the feedback um that we did receive as to how we uh developed our calendar is that there were too many work days in August so right now we have seven days in our current calendar so we went back to six for that for uh the proposed calendar for next year we saw a lot of
191start after Labor Day and finished before Memorial Day that'd be really tough to get in our instructional hours if we did that um also two weeks off at winter break um quite a few respondents about we have a very diverse community so we need to be looking at other holidays um in our calendar we also saw some Mondays after the Super Bowl and the day after Halloween were some of our respondents so I kind of understand that as well and the whole week of Thanksgiving I will say that we um really looked at trying to give the whole the whole week of Thanksgiving off and looking at attendance rates for that Monday and Tuesday of Thanksgiving but it was really difficult again to get in those instructional hours if we tried to um to do
192all of those things that were listed like we would be in school maybe 100 days right so something has to give somewhere um but it was really great feedback that receive that we received from our staff in our community just a few details for you as you look at the calendar August 7th and 8th are days for our ear early career teachers to meet with our instructional coaches and those our early career teachers are those with zero years experience to make sure they have the support support needed coming in to be successful U coming in straight out of college or obtaining their degree August 9th would be a new teacher orientation for all new teachers to Rockingham County August 20th would be the first day of school again um we've got six days of teacher
193work days instead of seven like we've had the last couple of years uh June 5th would be the last day of school this gives us 197 designated uh days out of a 200 day teacher contract so so those three additional days that are not contracted in the calendar are considered for time that we know teachers put in at home with grading and lesson planning and those types of things so there's 197 designated days out of the 200 day contract of the 197 days there's 176 instructional days there's 21 work days in service or professional development days and those are broken down to nine teacher work days we know teacher work days that are very important for us to staff to have that time to work during that particular school day eight school le or division
194Le inservice days and four professional development days professional development days as teacher work days are very important professional development um with certain areas do require professional development from the state um like our VPI um the preschool initiative requires 15 hours of professional development each year uh the literacy act will have to continue professional development with with our letters program that's been very successful we're in our third year of that we are required to do mant training um for new folks as well as recertification and then we have to to administer and give a lot of CPR and first aid um and services to our specialed folks our assistants uh bus drivers our bsas our level two Paras and also uh Dr Bentley and her amazing special ed staff just completed our special ed audit we
195are looking forward to our uh results from the state on that but just as uh any profession there's always room for growth so we're anticipating needing some time for that as well also there's two parent teacher uh conference days and there's 21 no school days which includes holidays and two weeks off for winter break and one week at Spring break so I know two weeks off at winter break was probably the biggest uh thing of feedback that we really got from folks because of the way December 25th and January first fall they're on a Wednesday and we figured attendance for our students and our staff probably would not be very good if we came back on a Thursday and Friday uh of January for the second and third so um what we did the next
196part there's three Flex teacher workdays right now we have two two Flex teacher work days in the calendar and we have had for a number of years but because we went from seven days at the beginning in August of teacher work days or inservice days we've cut that back to six so we have given them that extra teacher uh Flex day for them to work so they can spend those three days working anytime between August 1st and the 9th and we saw a lot of feedback about um having a teacher work day for them to come in to get ready for students after the winter break so that's going to be a flex day for them to come in on that Friday the 3 if they just want to come in and maybe they need
197a break just to get into the building too for after a couple weeks and for them just to get prepared for students on that coming Monday this is just a copy of the calendar and if um also with this presentation we'll share with you you can click on that link and you have access to the calendar as well and next steps again here tonight presenting to the school board uh the 23rd to the 29th will solicit feedback of this calendar with families and staff so we'll be sending that out tomorrow um on the 30th we'll I'll share the feedback with the committee February 1st our committee will reconvene to review the feedback and consider changes and then on the 12th I'd like to bring back um another draft to the school board for possible approval
198consideration so do you have any questions at this point in time yes so is that the next Schoolboard meeting yes okay we might need a little bit more time than the 12 if you want to go to the next one we can do that too yeah we may absolutely we may push it back to we want to we definitely want to hear back from our teachers um on what they're saying as well I know you did a survey we but I would like it to open up to them if they would like to come speak uh send us emails U give input on this as well um so on the plc's that we gave as uh work days this this year how many were on the calendar for the this past year do you do
199you recall that for this current year there were five days okay okay uh next school year we have four days listed and they're the ones colored in green on your calendar and they are listed as a school le or division Le professional development day and teacher work day so those days are split so it wouldn't be a full day of professional development it would be a half and half day for those four days I'm any discussion on that before I have one more question I do uh one thing that was brought to our attention was that they loved having that day after winter break to have to themselves um and a teacher did request if we could consider that when they return from spring break as well having a day if we could move that
200so they could get back into the schools without students and then have them return um I know that would give the students an extra day for spring break there but I think it would be helpful for the teachers they also had asked about um half days I know when I was in school we used to have a ton of half days I don't think we really have many half days nowadays um but that was something that a teacher had suggested if we wanted to bring those back but I know that brings a lot of other challenges so um one of one of the comments I got last year on it was was our spring break time and we we're offering that and uh for parents who don't have the the income to be able to
201travel to Florida or to the keys or somewhere else being at home in the colder part of the year and we're I think we're starting ours on the 31st of March right and that first week of April um so I have a little bit of concern with that being there on that personal week if we wanted to change that lower for the weatherwise for for families I'm is that possible in doing that I mean I know it possible but what kind of challenges do you face us moving the week of spring break if there's no snow if there's no snow January February and March get really long right would be my that's my one thought on that I hear what you're saying and that was part of the committee's conversation initially we had Spring Break
202um wrapped down like the 21st to the or 14th to the 18th we initially had it down that far and the committee was like that's a long Hall um with a break in there um and that also the 31st I believe but it's I don't have that written down in front of me but the 31st I believe is also a um a holiday um for uh some of our population in our school division but I don't have that in front of me as well this also coincides with Harrisonburg spring break and when we initially were collaborating with them I talked about having a spring break the week of the 14th and um and of course Harrisonburg wants to make sure that their spring break was whenever ours is and this just happened to be where
203they had their spring break and our committee felt um that this would be more amable to again the long hul there between January and February and March you mentioned um Halloween and Super Bowl which I'm like oh yeah that's a good idea but then I looked at the calendar and if we were to do and there's there's a day there on the 25th of October that we could just easily slide down the calendar but then that gives us a five day weekend so is that kind of why we're pushing back against that a little bit because we'd have ooco we'd have November 1st second third which are Friday or Saturday and Sunday and then fourth and fifth which are Monday and election day right so we don't really want to do that the 25th we
204try to make sure that we have a teacher work day at the end of each grading term and that's what the 25th is so the end of the grading term for October is the 24th yeah so that's a teacher work day there that makes sense and then so let's talk about the Super Bowl real quick I looked it up and can you guys believe that next year's Super Bowl is on is like 2025 type in that hurt um but um that is on the 9th of February so could we take that 18th and Scoot it up to the 10th of February is that something we'd want to look at doing or something we can certainly consider can you look at that and see if that's better for everybody absolutely since since they specifically mentioned Halloween
205which yeah that's not going to work but Super Bowl maybe it does work yeah yeah that's true but that's all I had oh well let me do mention just to to be completely above board the Rockingham County Fair is the 11th through the 16th so we're starting we are starting Tuesday I'd like to start Thursday but we've had that conversation and it's so weird not having this conversation with you Dr shifflet but thank you so much Miss ABY for being here absolutely um but yeah so we start after the rocking County Fair so that's always good to know thank you for presenting I know we're going late tonight but this is a lot of information that we want to dissect and look at and I'm thank you for taking the time to do all all
206the uh prep work on this as well and all that you've done Miss abery I really appreciate it so thank you maybe not the first first one but maybe the second one at least the second one we can get all right thank you so much thank you policy revisions chairman cross and uh Schoolboard members there are um several policies uh for your review and consideration that will bring back to the February 12th uh 2024 meeting for for approval uh just highlight those uh um policies uh jfb priv privacy dignity and respect for students and parents uh ad educational philosophy JB educational um Eco educational opportunities bdh public participation at Schoolboard meetings and joa access to students and Student Records uh some of these policies um as we approved uh as you guys approved the model
207policies at your last meeting uh we had conversations about making sure other parts of our policies were aligned with the model policies and that's what most of these address now BD bdh is about uh public participation in Schoolboard meeting meeting so I'm just bringing these to you again for information for you to review and to uh consider and then we'll bring them back at the February 12th meeting for um action thank you Dr shifflet any questions or comments on that board members all right and we'll go into our last one School Safety and Security coordinator and I believe you have that Dr shifflet uh yes I I have provided for you a draft job description um for uh a potential School Safety and Security coordinator uh again for you to review look at and then
208um maybe possibly bring it back at our next meeting for approval uh and we wanted to uh think about moving forward to getting this position secured this year um I know uh it was mentioned during the budget presentation as part of uh next year's addition from the division proposal and I think even from the school board is to have this safety safety uh manager coordinator um so this is again thank Dr Amy payer for uh working on this from the HR department to put this together for us and again call me text me email me whatever we can talk about this as far as you know things you'd like to see us add tweak or change awesome this I'm uh this is one thing I'm real excited about I'm and really is a dream come
209true as I sat there as a resource officer in in my office and I'm thought about ways to improve school safety and seeing the report from Governor Bob McDonald in 2010 after the Andy Hook shooting in Newtown Connecticut uh that he pul put together a school safety task force and on that task force um one of the things they listed high up on that was a school safety uh coordinator um and some school divisions throughout the state they hired um someone with a law enforcement background uh to take over those very important positions inside the school uh other divisions like ours uh put the responsibility on our Transportation uh director and supervisor so uh although they have done a great job in what they've been handed uh we do want to take that off of
210their plate and allow them to deal directly with transportation and have someone in the safeguards uh for our children and for um and for our staff so this is just a Extra Protection and layer of protection I that's okay was that ACDC I but took me back back to the days I so I'm excited about this one and I and so thank you for bringing this to the board tonight I I do want to recognize there's probably no more students that are left in here as a lookout most of you look older than high school students if you are a high school student um thank you for coming tonight um we we uh will sign your sheets uh here at the end of the meeting but we do have reason to go into close session
211tonight and I will entertain a motion by the board to go into close session I move that the board enter a closed meeting to discuss and consider the following pursuant to the provisions of the Virginia code section 2.2-fold individuals assignment appointment promotion performance demotion salaries disciplining or resignation A2 one or more particular students specifically related to discipline that would involve disclosure of information contained in Scholastic record concerning a student and A8 consultation with legal counsil employed or retained by the school board specifically regarding legal matters including policy considerations requiring the provision of legal advice by such Council thank you Miss Hurst do I hear a second second thank you Mrs lore do uh any comments or questions just for the room in case you saw me lean over and look yeah we have a lot
212to do yet tonight so let's wrap this up and y'all have a safe trip home and pray for us yeah we're we're uh skipping I'm apologize I skipped over whether it was on purpose or by mistake but we uh school board comments so I think we've commented throughout the night Chromebook says that it's going to shut down in four hours so we got to roll this on all thank you Mrs Holloway for having us here tonight thank you to our uh deputies and SRO that were here uh tonight as well and thank you to the public for coming out and thank you to our school Personnel for staying out late and uh you can come in late tomorrow I'm Dr shiffa said that was okay um all those in favor going into close session say
213yes yes all the oppos no motion passes 5 thank you for