001test one two okay that was a short two minutes I would like to call this uh meeting of the Rockingham County Public School Board uh to order uh first item on the agenda is to approve the agenda do I have a motion to approve the agenda okay I have a a motion do I is that a second a second awesome um is there any discussion hearing none we'll vote all those in favor of approving the agenda as presented I I all those opposed same sign motion carries next thing on the agenda is the Pledge of Allegiance will you please remove your head covering uh stand and join me in the Pledge of Allegiance I pledge allegiance United States of Amer naice thank you we'll now have a moment of silence thank you um before we
002move into public comments from the public uh I just want to make sure do we have any housekeeping things we need to to go over uh is our fire chief okay and okay we have chair and there are chairs up here if you'd like to sit um but we do have a packed house and keeping in mind that we have a packed house let's all be respectful towards each other and I'd like to remind everyone that there's a three minute limit on the um public comments tonight and there will be a timer and I'll tap at 30 seconds if that'll help you okay anything else we're good oh except I need to tell you why I'm not Dan Dan um Breeden our our usual chair our chairman is not here tonight because he is celebrating
003his anniversary with his wife and they are out of town so we'd like to congratulate him on his anniversary and uh I have to apologize that you guys are stuck with me tonight okay so our first speaker is Dr Emily Yen hello my name is Dr Emily Yen I am from the University of Virginia in Charlottesville Virginia I'm here tonight to speak against board members cross's proposal that would require all Rockingham County Public School Employees to report students name changes to parents Andor Guardians and receive their consent to use students preferred names uh this there is quite a bit of empirical evidence to suggest that this the implementation of this policy would have a deleterious impact on students's wellbeing as well as their academic performance in a 2ou in a 2018 National study conducted by
004the University of Connecticut researchers found 67% of lgbtq students had family members use Nega make negative comments about lgbtq people they also found that 70% of lgbtq students reported feeling hopeless or worth in the past week 74% reported not always feeling safe at school implementing this policy would put vulnerable students at risk in a 2022 study that was that looked at 34,000 youth um they found that 40% of lgbtq Youth considered suicide in the past year that is absolutely unacceptable and we should not make policies that would put that would further jeopardize the well-being in the lives of students students deserve better teachers deserve better the this policy along with the school policing policy that uh Mr Cross will be introducing tonight um jeopardizes the well-being of students as well as putting um the uh
005putting risking the working conditions and degrading the working conditions of teachers and other staff at the school attrition is a huge issue across the country as well as in Rockingham County we've had a number of teachers quit due to lack of respect on the job the these policies will further degrade morale and jeopardize the well-being of Staff if you do you want your kids to have a substitute teacher next year do you want them to not have a full-time teacher if the answer is no then do not implement this policy vote against this policy LGBT uh T lgbtq kids lives matter as well as the lives of all students and the well-being of all students and staff and therefore I urge you to vote against this policy do not force us thank you thank you
006our next speaker will be Liz whistle whiston Dean my name is Liz Wiston Dean and I've been working in public education for nearly 30 years I'm also a parent even though this is a public school system the following scripture may be instructive Matthew 7:1 15-20 Jesus does not speak here about sexual orientation or gender identity what he talks about is wolves in sheep's clothing and then he defines trees by their fruit a good tree Bears good fruit a bad tree Bears Bad fruit this is an excellent test for good policy any proposed policy must be measured by its potential results we don't have to imagine these potential results the data is out there and readily available the fruit of this policy at its least dangerous is a waste of teacher and administrator time remember when
007we worried about hats no hats in school was just a cultural standard had no bearing on education teachers and admin have better and more important things to do than policing hats they also have better and more important things to do than out students to parents who may or may not be supportive of their students identities if schools are safe places students can use their names with caring adults at school and then with their parents in their own time as their confidence grows this is developmentally appropriate another fruit is increased bullying teachers modeling disrespect for students indicated names and pronouns give students license to do the same gay and trans kids have enough trouble from unkind peers they do not need teachers modeling how to be disrespectful increased treny data indicates that when people are affirmed
008by institutions they are more likely to remain connected to those institutions the opposite is also true we need students to be in school for them to learn and grow and prepare for their Futures increase self harm in suicidal ideation the already high rates of suicidal ideation among gender non-conforming kids increase exponentially when homes and schools are not affirming one caring affirming adult can make all the difference to the literal survival of a trans kid forbidding basic respect for our students is irresponsible and dangerous schools are designed for our kids safety and growth and thriving and learning this proposed policy is not educational and it goes against the mission of Rockingham County Public Schools implementing it despite the dangers would be irresponsible and put vulnerable students at risk thank you our next speaker will be Ivor
009Asen it's not super clear good evening my name is Ivor Asen my pronouns are he and I'm a transgender man from bobway high school and I'm here once again speak speaking opposition to the parental notification policy which could out closeted transgender kids to their parents I'm sure that yall may or may not have heard about the rising number of violent acts targeting lgbtq plus people just a day or two ago 31 members of a known white supremacist group The Patriot front were arrested near a pride event taking place in Idaho they were caught in a uul with riot gear and weapons with plans to ride downtown where the pride event was taking place just this past Saturday a drag queen holding drag queen Story Hour a program where drag queen reads stories to kids was
010hate cried in the middle of it by suspected proud boys members these men yielded anti-lgbt sores at her and even recorded what they were doing these are part of the many reasons as to why we're fighting to keep lgbtq plus people in our community safe I myself when even starting to feel unsafe we already feel extremely uncomfortable as it is so why propose a policy that could worsen this feeling everyone here claiming to be concerned are you concerned about her safety or her mentality you know this policy would be extremely harmful to the overall wellbeing of these kids we didn't have to Rally up 100 people just to prove a point we know ourselves and we know our worth we know how much our presence threatens you our words are worth more than 100 people
011and I can see how desperate you are to get rid of us we are not a part of some new woke generation we are part of a community that has been here fighting for centuries closeted transgender kids may not come out to large groups of people for many reasons sometimes student possible violence that they may face not only at home but maybe even in your own schools there is no denying that this happens and there is no reason to say that it just doesn't happen when it is a very real part of the experience for some people these kids know what is best for them especially especially when it comes down to who they are if you're willing to fire a teacher for keeping a trans kid safe by not telling their family then I
012can assure you that you do not care for the well-being of these kids I am not here out of fear rather I am frustrated and I'm exhausted not only is this policy just wrong but it violates title n Title 9 in the US Department of Education States protections against discrimination based on one's sexual orientation or gender identity not only are you speaking against us and denying our experiences we are also actively trying to propose a discriminatory policy that will put transgender Kids In Harm's Way it is obvious that you aren't listening to us nor is there any consideration for open-mindedness or education to each your own but you cannot let it put kids in danger like this this is not a left versus right battle that is far from what it is this is us
013trying to keep Kids Safe protecting a trans kid by not telling the parents is not hiding anything it's protecting someone and saving a life thank you our next speaker will be Cal rhods C Cal like RK rkin right okay my name is Callum and I use heem pronouns I'm here to speak an opposition of the policy to out transgender kids to their parents I'm exhausted from having to continuously fight for my rights and not be hurt you do not care what the trans students are saying to you you don't realize how much calling trans kids their correct names means to them I'll give an example even with parent permission and permission from my principal at Broadway High School at graduation last Saturday I was dead named by the announcer on purpose the email my parents
014received from the principal to apologize for this was still daming and misgendering me I cried on the stage not because I was graduating but because your schools truly never have supported us and they never will my graduation was ruined because one lazy transphobic teacher nothing can or will be done about this because no one actually cares I did not tell my parents about me being trans until a couple weeks ago but I was out of school for two years before I don't regret it one bit and I know the teachers who do support me don't regret that either you need to be listening to the trans youth we should not have to be the subject of your political games actually take into account what we are saying and feeling the trans Community is being targeted
015by this policy and none of us want this it's not about parental rights beond isn't it just about limiting the rights of transgender kids so they actually Force themselves out of who they are I don't feel safe here and I don't feel safe in your school as a transgender student keep talking about how you want all students to feel safe but realize that we will never feel safe if this policy passes I am so happy to be out of your schools I no longer have to deal with trans teachers purposefully misgendering me or the students yelling slurs at me in the Halls feels great to be out but then I realize I just have to deal with transphobic adults trying to pass policies such as this to endanger the trans Community my identity is not
016a weapon or something to be sexualizing on Facebook I'm a person just like everyone else so treat me and my community as such we are not going anywhere and trust me I will keep fighting for those who cannot fight I felt hopeless when I didn't have anyone advocating for me when I was younger so I will never stop fighting for my community also happy pride month our next speaker our next speaker will be Amir snip hi greetings I'm Amara I use she her pronouns and I'm also here to oppose this policy I know from experience that parents finding out that their child goes by a different name name in an alternate way than the child thems telling the parent just makes everything so much worse trans students deserve the privacy and the protection of their
017chosen names to remain confidential from their families as a transgender woman I have experienced the uncomfortness and risk of being in an unsupported home there are it is the school board's job to protect their students and that should apply to every student having a negative opinion on trans rights is one thing but trying to take away their safety is a completely separate category every person in the US has the right to express themselves and shouldn't be put at risk for doing so when a student comes out to their family the next steps are never certain but a million possibilities that could happen to them a study by The Williams Institute states that up to 1.6 million miners experience homelessness every year 40% of which are in the LGBT community the same study states that 43%
018of them were forced or or kicked out another 32% would face physical emotional or sexual abuse in the home that is only for the students that chose to came out if this policy passes many more miners will be kicked out assaulted or abused and possibly even killed this is not a matter of opinion but a matter of life and death for all trans students I have never been more certain of anything in my life than I have been with my identity and I will support and defend everyone within the community I will not stop fighting this policy until the idea of it has simply been erased even then I will not stop fighting against the policies and the people that are transphobic thank you our next speaker our next speaker is Ashley Saunders my name
019is Ashley Saunders and I'm a mom of two in the Broadway school system and I'm pretty much feel like everyone in this room knows that tonight there is going to be a lot of discussion about parents rights but what we are forgetting is that students also have rights and students have a right to privacy especially when information will put them in danger at home and we need to believe students when they say if my parents know I am trans or queer my home is not safe a student in Rockingham County Public Schools spent their senior year living with my best friend because home home was not safe for them because they are queer there are parents who are actively telling their children if you are trans you may pack your bags and leave I am
020told these stories in confidence and I know teachers and counselors are too so before you make assumptions about what keeps a student safe I suggest you reach out to school counselors and ask them about the experience in Rockingham County Public Schools a parent has a right to choose how they parent their child they have a right to create a safe environment to come out in to create a home where your child trusts you with their big and their little stuff it is your right to choose if your home is a soft place or a continuation of a hard world with no room to breathe that is a parent's right creating fake fear and outrage against trans and queer students will not make our school safer or add to any value to our community but what
021it will do is put students and families in Cross crisis mode in an already cruel and unforgiving world if a student harms themselves or takes their own life like students in Texas have been doing because of archaic witch hunts for Trans youth there the heartache fear pain will Ripple through every student and member of this community and the blood is on the adults hands we have to protect kids listen to them trust them when they say coming out to my family is not safe and a School's number one job is to keep students safe May no parent in this room fear waking their child up because they are self Haring it is devastating and the nightmares do not go away to the CR trans and queer students of the valley I celebrate you and I
022love you and this fight is not over and I will continue until I can no longer thank you our our next speaker is Marvin weer hello my name is Marvin Weaver I live in Rockingham County and I have grandchildren in the Rockingham County Schools um I CED a privilege to address you as school board members tonight it's a privilege and uh we appreciate it um I see the school board as Gatekeepers all of you you're a member of that when that gate is opened or closed um to whatever wants to come in and be taught in our schools you're the last line of defense uh having said that I have a few grave concerns about what is being pushed uh especially these days like a freight train coming down a track and I'll I'll address
023them now CRT critical race Theory I read up on that and in my opinion it promotes racism divisiveness and hatred it does not um Foster Good Will toward our fellow man transgenderism and other sexual sin that I call Sin it'll bring utter confusion polluting the mind soul and heart of our children parental rights and responsibilities and along with that goes parental notification this is not negotiable to us parents it is not negotiable children belong to their parents and as long as they are law-abiding that's they should be they should not be infringed upon we will never give that up it is given to us by God it is Unthinkable that our government would attempt to undermine this yet here we are I would leave you with something that's not my opinion it's actually a quote
024from somebody that said it about 2000 years ago none other than our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and I'll read it so I don't mess it up Luke it's in Luke 17 ver 1 and 2 if you want to look it up later I quote temptation to sin are sure to come but woe to the one through whom they come it would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck and were cast into the sea then that he should cause one of these little ones to sin unquote we have been warned thank you our next speaker is Holly cave my name is Holly cave I have four schoolage children I'm husband and I live in District 5 and I'm probably going to sound um like a record layer a broken one
025and I'm probably not going to say anything tonight that you haven't heard before um but what I am going to do is continue to be a voice um for what has been referred to in the past as um silent majority but that is definitely changing and it really seems only fitting that um tonight that I speak for my district which is District number five since my board member is not here and so tonight I'm voicing support for the proposed policy um from Matt cross um we have told you over and over and over again that we want to know parents want to know they have a right to know if their child is going by any other name or identity other than what was given to them at Birth we want to know and we
026have a right we've told you over and over again that we don't want children of the opposite sex in the same bathrooms together we did not want masks on our children we don't want critical race theory in our schools we don't want Marxism taught we don't want socialism taught we don't want it taught in history and social studies we we don't want it disguised through social emotional learning and we don't want gender identity talked about in English classes we don't want you turning our children into activists who don't even know the cause that they support we don't want drugs we don't want tobacco we don't want vaping and it is running wild in our high schools especially in District 5 I'm sure in all of them and we want school resource officers in all of
027our schools and it's not it's not negotiable and I wanted to add you know when we give numbers or when people give numbers on you know statistics about um the LGBT um community and their suicide rate and things like that you know data is a lot like science you know it's always changing most most of the time it's skewed and it's never absolute there's actually only one thing that's absolute and it's not science it's not data and um you know it almost feels like you feel like that we are stuck with you and so you continue to do whatever you want and you don't really listen when we get up here and speak but in reality we're not stuck with you you are actually stuck with us we've seen too much to leave now and
028I want to leave you um with a song that was um written by Steven Curtis Chapman in 1994 but it's still so valid and relevant today and it said burn the ships we're here to stay there's no way we could go back now that we've come this far by faith burn the ships we've passed the point of no return our life is here so let the ships burn and burn we're not going away thank you our next speaker will be Dan Garber good evening uh my name is Dan Garber I am a pastor of a local church and as was mentioned earlier parents I mean children deserve better teachers deserve better but I'm here tonight to say that parents deserve better I don't know how you or anyone like you could assume that you would
029not inform parents of such a major decision it is our right as parents it's a god-given right we bring our kids to your school and your job is to educate them not indoctrinate them it is your job job to raise them up in Reading Writing and arithmetic and all this other stuff it's going to sort itself out but as a parent I'm saying to you and a grandparent parents deserve better now my name is Daniel some people have called me Dany and some have called me Dan there was no question that I was a man and that I was um uh using my God my parent and god-given name but if I show up at school and my name is uh Cynthia and all of a sudden I want to be Bob parents should know
030that and for you to assume that they shouldn't is a grave mistake on your part do your job educate these children and leave the parenting to parents no one no one is perfect we all know that very well but what we do know is we're the ones that feed them we're the ones that had changed their diapers we're the ones that have raised them and we deserve to know so parents deserve better thank [Applause] you our next speaker will be Dr Shannon tyranny did I say that right I don't sorry for bringing the bag I have to leave right after um so first off as a parent in District 5 um with a 10-year-old who just finished fourth grade I want to commend you on the school system we're talking about a lot of negative
031things tonight but in reality we have really excellent schools really dedicated teachers we want to keep it that way I want to keep my 10-year-old um so excited about school that he says wow this year really went by fast and today I feel like I should be doing math so if anyone wants to give a math problems that'd be great um so as a physician I just want to lend my voice um to the importance of gender affirming care um tonight we're talking about gender affirming care for uh trans and queer kids but in reality it's something that exists um all through the Spectrum I'm a breast cancer surgeon when my patients get reconstruction that's gender affirming care and although I guess some people doubt uh the validity of uh the scientific method um which
032makes it even funnier that we're talking about that with related to a school I mean it's kind of hard to uh completely dismiss an entire subject um within the school system um but the uh the very rigorous peer reviewed Studies have shown that gender affirming care saves lives um it prevents suicides it prevents violence against children um and that's what we're trying to do we're trying to keep Kids Safe um there is nothing restricting parental rights by respecting a child's concern that they may be at risk um if a parent is doing the right job of parenting that child's not gonna feel uncomfortable sharing that information so if the concern is that your child's not coming to you it's not the school to blame that's it how do you know your son is a son
033I'm just curious our next speaker will be um Jack Dixon I don't know but you know what I love the good evening Schoolboard members and Dr cyel uh my name is Jack Dixon I'm a lifelong resident of the fifth district I'm a graduate of the Virginia Military Institute and most recently obtained my masters in public administration uh with a focus on uh Public Safety from norch University I was a professional fireman for 5 years before becoming a business owner and stay-at-home dad I would like to speak to the board tonight about the threat of emotional non- datadriven decisions and the long-term ramifications of such School violence is a terrible tragedy that affects not only communities they occur in but Ripple Nationwide these events make us question our level of preparedness locally and fan the Flames
034of political discourse on the national level in the aftermath of these events the call for more security officers Mental Health Resources gun control the fight against gun control and many other topics are brought to the Forefront this this board has no impact on National policy and instead should be focused on the implementation of best policies and procedures that keep our children safe for a board to do this effectively empirical data is often the Bedrock which guides the implementation of policy I am not against the concept of school resource officers but the addition of officers without a countywide review of policies procedures and standard operating guidelines is an emotional response not g Guided by data studies and data show us that over the past 20 years there are only two recorded instances of SRO in engaging
035and killing an active shooter within a school furthermore that of the 225 school shootings since 1999 40 of those had an SRO present if nearly 40% of the time a shooting occurred with an SRO present and this happened in both Parkland and Uvaldi instead of throwing more money at the problem money that is coming from a county that traditionally does not like when its tax rates go up what we need to do from this what we do know from this data is that the immediate response by local agencies show a lackluster Tactical and a breakdown of the national Incident Management System and incident command system at Parkland High School shooting it took almost 3 hours for a unified command to be established between the four operational jurisdictions that were going on within that Community um
036because of a failure to properly trios patients the closest hospitals were sworn with non-life-threatening injuries causing more critical patients located further in the school to divert to further hospitals away impeding their level of care bleeding control devices were not stored on ambulances and in the school at the level that was required for the amount of casualties so stop the bleed kits turn aits hematic Gau stuff like that what I ask this board to consider when evaluating the need of hiring training retaining and ensuring of additional SRO is what other methods practices and means could instead be employed to secure our schools instead of the obvious easy knee-jerk answer and a pad on the back for a good job we should consider a thoughtful analysis of our system and what parts do we already have in
037place and additional fiscal responsible Solutions are available thank thank you Mr Dixon our next speaker will be Zoe mongold hello my name is Zoe mongold I graduated from Broadway High School two years ago last school board meeting I stood up here on behalf of everyone in our schools that has experienced sexual assault I felt that all of you were only hearing what you wanted to hear that the safety of our children isn't as important as long as they're getting an education none of my speech at the last meeting was about social media at all I never mentioned what happened at Broadway they were all real accounts of sexual assault that have happened within the school since we cannot rely on you to solve these issues yourself I decided to give you some solutions today every
03892 seconds a person in the United States is sexually assaulted every 9 minutes that person is a child there are actions that we can be taking to teach students on early on such as no means no getting consent for things like hugs and safe and unsafe secrets we can teach these subjects to young kids by reading them books doing activities such as creating creating a safety Network practicing saying no and helping the children recognize the physical signs of not feeling safe teaching teenagers about sexual assault is much easier when students reach the appropriate age to begin taking sex education classes they should be taught immediately how to ask for consent and why it is important to get it what healthy relationships look like and explain sexual agency and subjectivity sex education solely based around abstinence
039does not delay sexual initiation or reduce sexual risk behavior in fact these programs violate adolescent human rights withhold medically accurate information and reinforce gender stereotypes a culture of sexual violence starts by failing to address the small things such as cat calls sexist jokes and demeaning language tolerating this Behavior opens the door for more abusive behavior when a student discloses harassment within the walls of your school you should be listening validating them and not minimizing blaming or shaming the victim if you fail to address that these are problems within the schools I will have to be in touch with someone of higher authority thank you our next speaker will be Cammy Galloway yeah I'm Cammy Galloway and I have um grandchildren that are becoming of age to attend Rockingham County Public Schools um that's not my
040choice whether they do attend or not that's their parents choice and I affirm their parents in their decisions um but I think it's important for you to consider as a board what those decisions might be as parents have to face what is going on in the school system so I just want to affirm that I agree that all people are important they matter uh they should be respected and I I want to also agree that we don't need to be indoctrinating kids with things that they don't that will be confusing for them that may lead them into thinking processes that are going to cause them to think hopeless thoughts that are going to cause them to feel um unsafe I don't think we should be doing any of that um I think it would be
041much better if we are clear to acknowledge that they're created just fine the way God made them and he does good work and he has gifts inside of them for them to bless the world with as they are created and we all have grown up and those of us who have grown up have probably faced things that made them feel like they didn't like things about themselves at various times in their life that's kind of a normal process but as we grow up in a community that acknowledges we're okay to be who God created is to be then we should be able to speak respectfully we shouldn't be um forcing other people to speak to us certain ways either and we shouldn't be keeping anything from parents about children that that may cause them to
042feel like self Haring may cause them to feel suicidal we should be respecting those parents as parents that need to come along their child and help them think thoughts that are going to help them be healthy adults we don't need to be letting children act like cats in school we don't need to be um encouraging children to be anything but uh adults and mature people that can get their work done and be productive in society we're spending way too much time talking about sex and way little time doing the things that we need to do in our schools to prepare people to be um adults that can function that can that can give um quality work to their employers that can lead businesses that can uh help this um world be more productive so I
043just would like you to consider helping the children have a healthy mindset and helping our um counselors to also be able to counsel them to have mindsets that are help them Thrive and help them think healthy thoughts so thank you we have we have moved on to the second page we have four more speakers and Marlin Carr will be our next speaker c a r r i I'd like to take time to thank each one of you all for each for what you all do for our school system T Che on each one of our board members here um I brought a suggestion to uh the board member of our area last week and I wanted to bring to you all's attention The public's attention I think resource officers are great but I think it
044would also be helpful if we had like a safety personnel like some colleges have in our area and I'm a bus driver my name is mar car I'm bus driver I drive for Mountain View Elementary School excuse me as bus drivers lots of times we see situations we refer to the principal to the counselors and it can be addressed before it becomes a disaster and I think an approach like that of working with the students can sometimes resolve problems um as a prior military is a being combat situations we need Law Officers and resource officers there in situation but I think if we worked with this with a safety personnel in every school it would be something would be very beneficial to our to our schools one thing I brought up to our board member
045also as school bus drivers we pick your children our students up at 7 to 8:00 every morning we drop them off at school at 8:00 it would be something we have a very shortage of bus drivers right now if a safety personnel could be a part of their contract could be added on to some of the bus drivers would volunteer for that that have the qualifications it would also create a little better position for bus drivers and and and and deescalate the problem of shortage of bus drivers we have in our community right now but uh those are just some suggestions one uh other thing I would like to see is is that in prior military experience if there was a situation in Rockingham County Sheriff Department Virginia State Police were reporting to that situation
046it would be nice to have green zones blue zones in a school type of thing so when the radio call goes out those officers already know in their mind where they're going basically and it kind of saves time the last disasters we've seen has been a slow response to take care of the problem and I that's just a safety thing I think from prior experience it would be nice to have in place and I thank you for your time thank you for all you all do we appreciate it thank you our next speaker is is it Shannon tiany which I think she just spoke is there is there Shannon tyy okay hey that's one less last call for Shannon okay Mark Flanders it's different handwriting so it's very confusing I wanted to uh just put
047a little perspective on tonight's conversation when we talk about parental rights we have to sign a form so that our kid can take an aspirin we have to sign a form so that our kid we have to give permission so our kid can board a bus to take a field trip across the street okay we have to um we had this discussion about masks and it turns out the court said parents have the right to choose right and the law says that a child no matter what a parent does can't consent to sex they don't have that ability right they can't sign contracts there are things that they can't do that parents must consent for their children or in some cases can't consent nobody can consent for a child right so I just wanted to
048put that in perspective that if we need to consent for our own children to take an aspirin we certainly should be involved in the decision if they're going to change their gender second gender ideology is just that it is an ideology it is a belief some people believe that girls can become boys I do not okay we can all have different beliefs I don't ask you to affirm mine I don't need to affirm yours you can believe what you want to believe and whether or not I affirm it doesn't make it unsafe for you just like I am not unsafe because you don't believe the same things that I believe okay so that is that's my third point is that a home where the parents don't believe that a boy can become a girl or
049a girl can become a boy is not automatically an unsafe home now I don't doubt that some of these kids face very difficult situations that they are bullied that that may even happen at home and that they may suffer even physical abuse but that's not at my home and that's not at every home and and we need to be careful about throwing around the word unsafe okay unsafe means unsafe it doesn't mean my parents don't affirm what some teacher or someone on the internet told me I should be able to believe about gender ideology that is not unsafe it's just a difference in belief so I just wanted to put that in perspective that this we're going down this road of basically saying parents if you don't believe the way the school thinks you should
050believe your kid is automatically unsafe and we'll we'll parent them how we see fit and that is not okay and we will not let it happen our final speaker from the public will be Bill long hello um yeah I'm Bill long um from Rockingham County and uh going to bring up a couple points real briefly um uh some some statements have been made uh regarding um the non-disclosure of uh choices that students are are making in in schools and saying that they're not that the schools are not hiding anything well that's a patent falsehood I mean if you're not disclosing things that's that that's just a lie number to um the term science has been invoked here I have a masters in biology I can tell you affirmatively that science says that XX chromosomes that's
051a female XY is a male and it doesn't matter what organs you cut off or what hormones you take you're not going to change your basic uh your basic biology um anyway another point I'd like to make is y'all are aware that people are listen listening online to these proceedings and stuff I mean I just am kind of surprised sometimes that that Mr Matt cross uh some of his his comments and stuff are are ignored and and U and just you know not respected and I just think that that's wrong just because he's the minority doesn't mean his opinion is not worthy and this this is a little bit of a different one I'm I'm meeting with the governor Friday U some a few other people but um I'm going to bring up this idea
052yeah in Israel there's no gun violence all the teachers are armed and I know that's not pable that that won't go over here but I don't see why you we can we got all this money for marble floors at blue stone school and you know why we can't give the teachers a Taser Taser doesn't kill anybody at least a pepper ball gun you know render these uh guys unconscious long enough to grab the gun from them anyway that's all I got to say okay thank you to all of our speakers tonight just for a point of reference you might notice if you look at your agenda that the polic is not on the agenda tonight that is because we are still waiting for legal to review it and come back and give us their recommendations
053so you will not see that on the agenda tonight so and it's super hot in here so if anybody would like to uh go ahead and leave now let's go ahead and give you two minutes to to clear out if you'd like maybe not two minutes maybe like 30 seconds some seats in front for those of you near the door if you'd like to come find a seat or if you just want to move up and we will be getting back in 15 seconds 10 five that might have been quick 4 3 2 1 okay welcome back uh we're going to go move on to board member highlights and we're going to start with uh let's start with Mr Cross thank you uh Miss lore I I just want to highlight the public tonight because
054the DNR probably won't get this right in tomorrow morning's uh DNR but there was a high majority over 150 probably 200 people here tonight in support of my policy and a handful that was not and that's reflection on the community of Rockingham County and that's who I represent here on this board and that's what I'm hearing from parents and grandparents that came here many of you are still seated here tonight you are not a inconvenience to me to listen to your opinions to hear from you you're not an inconvenience me these meetings can go till midnight I don't care because I'm here for you I'm here to listen to what you have to say and I'm listening to that and so I want to than thank you the silent majority who came out tonight to
055voice your opinions I mean some of you guys that said what you said are unbelievable because what I'm hearing from other people uh of of position is that this is a national narrative and it's not a it's not a narrative that that is here in Rockingham County that you really don't care about these issues and these aren't issues that really are very important but they are very important as a board members you can see tonight our community cares a lot about these this top topic and I hope you listen to them and I I hope that we can at least acknowledge that parents have a god-given right to know every decision that that their child faces at school if Billy wants to become Sally I do not care about that that's great if Billy wants
056to become Sally and Mom and Dad are okay that Billy becomes Sally that's fine but parents should know that Billy is now going to be called Sally when they come to Public Schools and so I'm not transphobic homophobic racist all the things I've been called since I I ran for public office that's not who I am I was never that until I took this position or even ran for this position but because I stand for morals and and and and stand for what's right according to a Biblical um principle that we've lived by In This Nation since this nation began I'm a I'm a I'm a horrible person I'm a I'm a mean bigot person that's just not who I am I believe that parents have a fundamental god-given right to know everything that happens
057to their child when they come to school and that's what we heard tonight that's what we heard from the parents tonight and grandparents tonight some of the things you guys said I love the um Mr Marvin Weaver you said this is not negotiable I'm I'm glad you said that it's not negotiable to me uh Mr Dan Garber said leave the parenting to parents what a great quote that he said tonight these are all quotes that I'm sure won't make the DNR tomorrow but these are all things that care to you and the community and things I'm listening to so I want to highlight you the community of Rockingham County that came out tonight and I want to say thank you because this was something that was spoken to me that said this is not a
058a this is all about a national narrative and I can tell tonight this is not a national narrative this is something that you care about this is something that that you care U very highly about so thank you for coming out tonight thank you for sharing your opinions I don't think that you're dangerous because you share a different opinion than me and those who come forward that share a different opinion of me like Mr Flanders said tonight we can have a difference of opinion and still walk away and be friends and one of the things I can say I wanted to highlight tonight is just exactly that and that's Mr Jimmy Miller counselor at East Rockingham High School I was a I was a school resource officer out there for a couple years and me
059and Mr Miller couldn't think couldn't agree much on anything out there we couldn't agree on abortion we couldn't agree on many topics that we talk about tonight we couldn't agree on a lot of things but you know what Mr me me and Mr Miller Miller are some of the best friends we can talk about issues we can have heated conversations but we can leave the table and knowing that you know what Mr Miller is a good man I like him you know down the Earth he's a great guy and I I hope that he can say that about me that he can say you know what I don't I don't believe a lot of what Matt has to say but you know what down deep he's a decent man and we don't have to be
060enemies and we don't have to call each other names and we don't have to uh label each other as white supremists and and racist homophobic transphobic people we can just say we have a difference of opinion and we can agree to disagree and we can walk away from the table and we can be decent human beings and that's what I saw here tonight I didn't see people in the community here like calling one another uh transphobic names and slurs thank you for being respectful tonight that didn't even crossed my mind tonight we didn't need uh deputies here at this meeting tonight but why because majority of those are here are law-abiding citizens and I appreciate that that's been my experience living in Rockingham County so thank thank you tonight for coming out thank you for
061speaking tonight thank you for standing up for your children and for your grandchildren and thank you for taking part in their education God bless you and I appreciate you coming out tonight thank thank you Mr Cross Mr folk Dr mcquilkin thank you Miss Laur at the beginning of uh Springtime I should say at the end of April through June this has been an extraordinarily busy time in our school division we've had uh FFA Banquets and we've had recognition ceremonies and we have had a lot of H activities but it's all been good it's all recognizing our students and our faculty and and we're really glad to be able to participate so from the last board meeting to this Ford meeting uh we had the recognition of the retiring central office administrators and we've had some
062wonderful graduations we started out with mass nuton Technical Center followed by East Rockingham High School Spotswood High School ta and for those of you who are wondering at 9:58 the rain stopped and at 10:00 everybody processed out and ta had its graduation on the on the lawn in the grass as usual and so um it was it's just been a wonderful joyous time this spring and we thank everybody for coming out to join us thank you and then I'll go and then you can cover all the stuff that I forget uh so one of my super big highlights was that I was invited to go fishing with the e8th grade class uh uh FFA classes a classes at uh Hillyard middle school and if you've talked to me at all this year you know that
063I've been really concerned about especially our eighth graders uh covid really made me concerned that they missed a lot of formative education and the inperson stuff so I've I've been kind of keeping my eye and talking and and trying to figure out what we as a board could do to support our eighth graders and I am so happy to tell you all tonight that the eighth graders were were amazing on the fishing trip they their behavior was great the way they interacted with each other was great and then the fact even that we could take some kids that had never been fishing never been in a kayak and and you know only one or two accidentally fell in but we we got them all out it was all good we had life fests um but
064it was an amazing experience and I'm so proud of the way our eighth graders have have bounced back and I'm I'm really looking forward to continuing to watch them grow in the future uh and then we also got to see the culmination of growth with the MTC um graduation and I was able to speak on the radio to talk about um the benefits of MTC and there was one thing I did not get to mention so I'm going to mention it to you guys tonight and that is MTC has something for everyone if you are a college track student there's let say your college track you want to become a nurse there's nursing programs you're college track and you want to become a vet there's vet programs if you're um an adult and need some
065education there's or you need your GED MTC has that and one program that we haven't talked about as much recently is the um help me get it right the Builder mainten building maintenance program and that is for our special ed students and there was one very special young man who graduated from that that I was just super proud to see that student I still wonder what his his path is going to be and I'm anxious to watch watch that his growth but without the Builder program or building maintenance program I don't think that he would be as um successful uh if if he didn't have it so I'm super proud that we offer programs that make all of our students successful and that's just it was great to watch MTC celebrate their students so that
066was my B those are my two big highlights now Dr Shel of course at this time of the year graduations are always a highlight um I had a chance to attend all of them from MTC eastra and then Spotswood uh ta and Broadway and um they really the students um you can you can see the excitement on the faces of the students who are the first in their family to walk across that stage it's unbelievable to see when students feel that sense of accomplishment because no one in their family had previously made it across that stage and that's always one of the highlights for me because you can really tell that the students that this is the accomplishment that's unique to them and um you know beyond that at TA as uh Dr mookin said
067you know the rain stopped just in time and I'm not sure that the principles at TA will want me to say this but one of the highlights for me a TA graduation um are always the beach balls so the students bring out the beach balls and it actually shows a lot um about our students and how they want to celebrate in their special way without actually being disrespectful so over the years we've heard a lot of comments you know why do they allow the beach balls at TA and for the vast majority of students um the way it plays out is they you know they sneak in the beach ball they blow them up and then uh in between speakers you know the beach balls start going but as soon as a speaker starts or
068as soon as some um you know part of the process begins those beach balls are gone so they're not using them to interrupt what happens during the ceremony it does happen on occasion but the vast majority of kids those speech BS it was really um three four years ago when there were probably 20 and they were going back and forth and you could just see it as soon as that speaker went up to the microphone boom the kids all took the beach balls back down and celebrated the way they they should and and I always find that amazing in our students that they're perfectly willing to push the envelope a little bit but they also know respect and they know their Community because there are many in the community you know who then want to
069celebrate appropriately and and we see it in other areas too you know recently and we had some um cases where students uh wanted to make their voice known on a number of issues so for example one of the public speakers earlier you know talking about um concerns about sexual assault in general and and uh where it can happen in schools and again our students when they want to make the voice known they also know how to go about it so what they would do is they would meet with the principal and say hey we want to do this we want to make our voice known how can we do it without being disruptive to the school day and so there it's either during a lunch period or it's during a period um of advisory where
070students can get additional help but those students that wanted to walk out and use their first amendment rights on a number of topics they did so and they did so without disrupting the school day and so that always makes me incredibly proud of the students that they know their rights um but they also know their community and and that they can handle graduation and many of the other topics that way you know to make it known how they feel about something but to do it in a respectful way and I think again um that's how we want to operate and that's how we want to operate as a community that like Mr Cross said earlier when there is disagreement and that's just the nature of it that it is respectful and so um our students
071really show the way in so many ways on that as well thank you a thank thank you Dr Shel um we will move into the action items portion of our agenda the first item on the agenda is the May minutes and who knew they were so exciting um do I have a motion to accept them may minutes I move that we approve the minutes of the meeting of May 23rd as presented thank you Dr mcin do I have a second second thank you Mr Cross any discussion hearing none all those in favor I oppos same sign motion carries uh the minutes for the June 4th Retreat do I have a motion to accept the June 4th minutes a motion to accept thank you Mr Cross I have a second second thank you Mr Fulk any
072discussion hearing none all those in favor say I I I opposed motion carries next we have the bills and mileage uh they are included in your packet I recommend approval of the bills and mileage as presented do I have a motion thank you Dr mcelin do I have a second I have a second for Mr caros second but oh that's not working there it is I would just I just have a few for Miss I guess Miss MK hold on before before discussion we it's second okay second second okay Mr FK thank you okay now is there any discussion thank you thank you for teaching always learning I come to an FFA practice so they will teach you miss Mass I just have a few things you can get back with me on this and
073that was um looking through the the uh bills and stuff um today uh there was a prophecy curtain we put in I guess at Lacy's uh um Elementary for 650 and um we trapped a skunk uh at lynville Edom it looks like and we had to pay 620 for that skunk so I'd like to find out a little bit more about that um and um we paid a speech pathologist uh in April $816 32 I'd just like to have a little bit background on that and then I don't know if Mr shakle can answer this one tonight but we paid csb early intervention 39370 87 do you know what that this yeah so early I mention counselors are um what used to be crisis counselors before the Great Recession and so when we brought those
074counselors back the terminology for them is early intervention counselors and they actually are not rcps employees they are employees of the community services board and one of the main reasons is that you know it creates that community of care if an early intervention counselor feels the need that there needs to be assistance for the family through what CSP um is connected to then that can be handled that way and so we reimburse uh the CSP for the services of the early intervention counselor so they're not in our they're not our employees they are employed by CSP and we reimburse for that so they're as needed or are they they are in our schools and so yeah I mean they are paid based on the number of months that they work for us so they're you
075know they work other times at the CSP but yeah we pay uh for the services they provide in our schools but there are stations now during the regular school um time they are stationed in our schools at the middle and high schools and then they have a certain um time that they work but again sometimes for example if we a break you know doing spring break they're not in the school they may do other work so we reimburse on a um in just periodic Inc so this like something we pay on a monthly basis I just didn't see I don't know if we pay it on a monthly basis I think it I think we do um and so it's but that yeah that's paid directly back to CSP and so not for one early
076intervention counselor I understand the question and by the way you know um you had asked questions previously and we talked about putting bills online yep and so we're working with um County um staff to make sure that you know because oftentimes there's simply a build that that comes and uh you know when we talked about the lster for example that's right um it was simply uh what MTC culinary arts had purchased and so it the explanations could be uh written you know knowing that these are going to be posted and that there may be questions that explanations are written you know culinary arts purchase MPC rather than simply saying Lobster and so when staff have the the actual receipt or a bill that it's not just you know picking two or three things but kind
077of writing it in a way that's also um for the public to understand so because otherwise you raise so many questions simply because you have no way of knowing what that really is and so your question and the request to post these certainly has led to these conversations you know as we talk to accounts payable at the county absolutely transparency to the public would be great this in this to be able to just have it up they have questions they can call but I'm but we don't we don't want to have to answer 600 questions got a question about a skunk you know why I call 600 for a skunk but we we can we can look into that find out but um no I just think the transparency to the public could be a
078to see this is is just good sure just good so thank you yep okay is there any further discussion any further questions you could okay all those in favor please say I I oppos same sign motion carries unanimously um field trips Dr Sho we have a number of field trips for your approval um FFA State Convention at June 27 through 30 2022 from Elton Middle School um maximum of 10 students to virgin virgia Tech and blackburg Broadway High School FFA Leadership Camp July 12th through the 15th eight students to Graves Mountain Lodge in Syria Virginia FFA officer Retreat August 3rd through the 4th 20 students uh to Highland retreat in Burton both of those are Broadway high school and then Spotswood High School one act um to the international thespian Festival so we've heard presentations
079about that before at a major accomplishment for the wak troop June 19 through 25 30 students to Bloomington Indiana and I recommend approval of those field trips great we have a recommendation do I hear a motion I'm move that we follow the superintendent's recommendation regarding field trips thank you Mr ful do we have a second second did we did we end up uh paying for that bus for the spotwood youa so the way we handle it uh just like every other um field trip where students qualify for national competition so we have that um you know with skills USA for example you know they went to California um a couple of years ago National FFA convention for the students to qualify and so we put a $100 travel stien in place for the students to
080qualify and so yes that check went to good school right now is it what was that but the price of diesel was never good before is it yeah but thank you thank you for doing that thank yeah we did we added that I believe a year or two ago as these requests kept coming in and you know for National competitions um again most organizations FFA does fundraising year round um obviously for skulls USA there's a lot of U money coming to MTC as well but as a division we wanted to at least help the students a little bit with a travel statement and again that in the future we can talk about that um but it was a a an easy way to say those students that qualify for a national competition should have at
081least a little bit of financial support for whether that's for a plane ticket um you know obviously it doesn't cover all of it or not even um a major portion of it if you're flying out to California so all right thank you thank you is there any further discussion hearing none we'll vote all those in favor please say I I oppose same sign motion carries unanimously um next on the agenda is the budget amendment Dr Wait Cheryl Mast members of the board and Dr sh for your approval this evening is a budget amendment this budget amendment is for our Capital fund um when we built the budget last March we were not anticipating any Capital funds to any expenses to come out of there so there was nothing budgeted in the capital project however we
082have started to receive some bills from the architect related to Broadway High School and that addition so in order to be able to pay those bills we needed to have the funds appropriated we have the funds it's just that they've never been appropriated and so this budget amendment will do that once your approval this will be forwarded to the Board of Supervisors they too will have to pass it to appropriate the funds and again to clarify this isn't that we are asking the Board of Supervisors to provide additional funds absolutely there already funds that are avilable for this it's just in order to spend funds in the state of Virginia you have to have them appropriated and we did not have any funds appropriated because when the budget was set there was we did not
083anticipate this bill coming in before June 30 thank you Dr Shel do you have a recommendation I do recommend approval um of the budget amendment to um appropriate additional funds for architectural services in the amount of $150,000 for the fiscal year 22 budget as presented by Miss Mast thank you do I have a motion I move to follow the superintendent's recommendation to approve budget amendment that will appropriate additional funds for architectural services in the amount of $150,000 for a fiscal year 22 budget thank you Mr Fulk do I have a second I don't I don't have a I don't have a second but I okay hold on then charl thank you Dr mcelin okay now is there any discussion thank you the the only thing I will say and is nothing with you miss mass
084is just with the board but I I am not going to vote for this tonight but simply because until we start talking about Safety and Security and a safety manager and appropriating funds for those things I am not going to approve any other amendments financially until we talk about that on the table and so far we haven't talked about that so I'm my vote tonight's nothing about you but it's just a a conviction for me that we need to address our safety issue within the schools and so until we do that I I don't plan on voting for a fiscal budget for anything or anything amendment to our budget until we address the safety issues so thank you any further I call the question oh oh I have a question uh when will we be
085able to see some of the results of the architectures uh The Architects will will we get that Mr Reed are yeah if you could let us know when those are available if if 60% is something that I who like you know build barns can understand oh okay yeah if you could share with us when that's available that would be terrific sure I also want to clarify just to Mr Cross so when we talk about uh Broadway High School expansion and um architectural services you know we're talking about Capital Improvement funds and those are onetime funds so even if um you know the board decided to implement new positions for new positions you need ongoing funding and so these are not funds that um instead of this project would be spent on um ongoing expenses like
086Personnel so these are truly onetime funds uh when you you know build a school again because that money is spent once and then it's gone yeah and so just just to clarify different type of funds no understand I understand it completely I just what I what my concern is is just that address something so important as in our safety the kids and our staff until we do that there's really nothing else I care about spending on okay there was a call question um all those in favor I I all oppos same sign n okay the motion passes 31 is that right thank one I don't do Sports I'm sorry um uh next thing on the agenda Uh Kevin Perkins to talk about the Virginia Public School Authority education technology notes and I'm not even going
087to try to read the Roman news uh thanks Vice chair La members of the board uh Dr Shel before you is a resolution regarding annual reimbursement from the Virginia Public School Authority educational technology series uh note series 23 uh this resolution allows for the spending of $648,000 for uh Rockingham County schools and $26,000 for MTC beginning July 1 2022 U These funds will be reimbursed in June 2023 following a bond sale uh this initiative is designed to ensure necessary hardware and infrastructure is in place and maintained to support Virginia's online testing initiative um and I'm asking for your consideration and approval of this resolution thank you Mr Perkins Dr shy I recommend approval um of the um to adopt the Virginia Public School Authority educational technology note series 23 resolution as presented by Mr Perkins
088great thank you do we have a motion to accept the proposal I move that we accept the proposal as presented by Mr Perkins thank you Dr mcin do I have a second second thank you Mr folk uh is there any discussion this same thing for me I mean it's until we address public safety issue with Sr R and the safety manager I don't want to partake in that okay okay is there any further discussion caring none we will vote all those in favor say I I I oppose same sign nay the motion carries 31 thank you thank you Mr Perkins next we will have Steve Reed discuss um the bid at Turner SB High School Heating and Cooling Dr sh Miss L members of the board uh we have a bid that we put out
089for the chilled water and hot water pump replacement at Turner Ashby High School uh These funds are part of the cslf state U HVAC funds matching funds and this is part of the match uh we had we sent the bid to six firms uh we had one firm attend a mandatory pre-bid conference and that firm did submit a sealed bid recommendation is to award the contract to riddleberger Brothers in the amount of $276,500 and we' begin discuss about more sro's on would be n thank you um is there any further discussion hearing none we'll vote all those in favor I I I all those opposed same sign n motion carries three Z and then uh Mr Reed I believe you are going to talk about the refuse three yeah 31 did I say you said
090three though it's it's okay you 30 hey uh Caitlyn you got the right number right cool thanks all right the next bid that I'm going to talk about is refuge service for all Rockingham County Schools um we bid this on a on a term that is for one year with a our option to renew up to an additional four and it's time to rebid it this year uh we sent the bid at three firms we had one firm respond with a seal bid I will note that we did have have multiple firms asked questions and we did have a denda that was sent out on the on the on the bid to all firms answering those questions so uh even though there was only one bid that or one firm that bid uh at the
091time that the bid was they submitted their bid they did not know that they would be the only bid uh confirm submitting a bid because we did have questions from other firms that we did answer and send out an addendum uh our recommendation is to award to contract to waste management of Virginia in the amount of $4,140 56 annually that is the company that we are using presently thank you is the bid price similar to it it is higher uh we were at about 105,000 this year so uh yeah it is higher and I recommend to award the contract to waste management of Virginia as presented by Mr Reed thank you Dr Shel do I have a motion I move that we uh we approve the bid as presented by Mr Reed thank you Dr
092mcin second thank you thank you Mr folk um is there any discussion on the issue this one would hire at least two sro's at $114,000 14556 so until we talk about hiring more SRO and as safety manager my vote's going to be no does this include um the removal of the recyclables as well okay no this is that a different that that is different and it is uh under $110,000 a year on the recycling I think it's like $2,000 as the budget item for it but I just wondered if that was no no this is this is just the so Waste Management hauling of the trash from the schools very good yeah thank you any further questions hearing none oh wait I assume that you're you're pleased with their work yeah I mean um in
093the past we've had we've had some firms that were not reliable uh was supposed to be there on Monday Wednesday Friday would go Monday Thursday Friday and that would be very difficult on the schools uh waste management is very responsive uh if we have issues the way our contract is actually written is if we have extra trash there to wait there while we load the dumpster as long as we have somebody there to reload it and then they pick it up again and dump it and that's part of the contract it's not an additional fee at that point Thank you any further questions okay uh all those in favor say I I all those opposed same sign nay motion carries 31 next item on the agenda uh we'll ask Jennifer Williams to come come up
094and talk about the co-op food and beverage for the school year hi yes I'm here tonight to seek approval on action action items I and J on tonight's agenda which cover the bids for food and beverage Serv Service as well as bids for fresh produce milk and ice cream for school year 2223 for Rockingham County Public Schools food and nutrition services uh regarding our main food bid for um rcps on behalf of the Blue Ridge Group Co-op um which is comprised of Augusta County Harrisonburg city Stanton City and wesboro City nutrition programs I'm recommending an extension of the current Blu Ridge Co-op food bid for the 2223 school year with Cisco of Virginia the current bid includes a provision allowing this bid renewal Cisco of Virginia has provided rollover pricing that reflects a 10% increase
095on average reflective of the current food inflation rate on the East Coast uh considering the current economic climate the Food Service supervisors and directors from the respective School divisions are in unanimous agreement that Cisco Virginia be awarded this brg Co-op renewal bid for the projected annual estimated combined total of $7 million um with 1,700,000 uh being from Rockingham uh regarding the Blue Ridge Co-op bid for beverages for school year 2223 a bid for the provision of juice and bottled waters was properly specified and advertised this year a bid package was sent to three firms and two responded after a proper opening of the sealed bids the co-op unanimously recommends that Pepsi Cola of Central Virginia um be awarded the bid in the projected amount of $146,700 um and that concludes action item I know if
096I should move on to the next one or I think we okay I do recommend um accepting the co-op food and beverage bids for the 2223 school year as presented by Miss Williams thank you do I have a motion so moved thank you Mr F do I have a second second thank you Dr mcquilkin uh any discussion I got a question does does um White Wave locally do they also do school milk and things like that I'm S I believe they produce it and manufacture it but then they sell it to Cisco who then sells it to us they don't sell direct okay that was question I had thank you yeah I the same thing until we address on school safety I won't be approve in anything any further discussion hearing none we'll vote all
097those in favor say I I I oppose same sign n motion carries 31 okay now we'll move on to produce milk and ice cream yes um so now um action item J I'll review uh fresh fresh produce milk and ice cream bids for school year 222 3 um which are specific to Rockingham County Public Schools not through our food buying Co-op uh so regarding our fresh produce bid I am recommending to renew the current produce agreement with Standard Produce for the 2223 school year with anticipated purchases to be $210,300 um our current agreement with Standard Produce does allow for an extension of one more year um so food nutrition services we've been pleased with the service and quality of Standard Produce over this past year um and I do not think we would find a
098better supplier meeting our current needs and pricing parameters at this time uh regarding our milk bid for next year I am recommending to renew our current contract with pet Dairy out of Mount Crawford for the 2223 school year with anticipated purchases to be $36,000 uh our current agreement um also allows this option to renew um regarding our ice cream bid for next school year I'm recommending to also renew our current contract with gar ice cream company um with projected purchases to be $20,000 and that um concludes action item J thank you for your time thank you thank you m Williams um I will um recommend to accept the produce milk and ice cream bids for the 2223 school year as presented by Miss Williams and thank you for all your work on that yes thank
099you for all your work do I have a motion so moved thank you Mr f a second second thank you Dr mcelin is there any discussion again thank you for coming out and thank you for putting this together I really appreciate it and thank you for making sure the kids have ice cream because it's really important um I remember being an SRO at Mountain I I'm not Mountain Valley but I'm um off Ericson 33 it's Mountain uh Mountain View sorry so Mountain View um they didn't have ice cream out there at the time so one day I cause a big stink out there but uh thank you for making sure the kids have ice cream it's really important also I won't be approving anything until we address school safety and hire another at least two
100more SRO and talked about a a school safety manager so I won't be voting on this well I will be voting voting that okay any further discussion hearing none all those in favor I I I all those opposed nay motion carries three 31 thank you okay that concludes our fun and exciting action items for the night um we will now move on to our information items and uh we have a presentation by Larry schifflet for um structured literacy good evening chair lore members of the board and Dr Sho and guest uh we'd like to spend some time this evening uh sharing with you um the details of our structured literacy program in Rockingham County Public Schools um in my 25 years in Rockingham County this may be one of the largest instructional initiatives that we've
101undertaken and so we wanted to highlight uh some of the uh components of this so um I gotta figure out the clicker that's the first thing I have to do it's over yay that was great I'm not pushing the button oh keev oh okay no wonder I'm struggling I was like so um sorry about that folks so uh as you may be aware the Virginia assembly uh passed the Virginia literacy act um Governor yunan signed it and I I don't want to go into all the details of that legislation other than to say we will be able to check the boxes for what the legislation requires so in that way Rockingham County can say we're doing things right but what I want to share with you this evening is that prior to this legislation being
102enacted we were already on this journey thereby we were doing the right thing which is distinctly different and so we're happy about this initiative and the work that we're doing because we recognized we had some gaps in our reading and we wanted to be very intentional about how we went about that uh and and we looked at the science of reading to help shape uh our path forward um Kev I I want to uh you want me to click here thank you um and so I have um a couple of folks with me this evening that are going to talk about the details of of the of the program uh but before I do that I I do want to say some thank yous to some people and when this started when we began this
103in in August Oscar and I met with all the elementary teachers at Turner Ashby High School and we acknowledged that this was going to be hard it was going to be difficult any other adjective you'd like to add to that because change is can be challenging right but if it doesn't challenge you it doesn't change you and so we acknowledged that and we said it's going to be hard but it's going to be worth it and we were willing to to put in that effort and part of the success of the program has been uh our our letters team um Ann Bragg is with me this evening Abitha Carter Alex Johnson could not be with us this evening because a f of a family emergency but they have worked tirelessly to make this happen as
104well as Kim Tate our supervisor of English Lang language arts and Amy painter and also our reading Specialists I I give kudos to them because many of them became reading Specialists to work with small groups of children to help intervene with some reading struggles and we asked them this this year to work with the adults in your your building and adults can be more challenging at times than children and they did a terrific job and also our principles and uh so again I I want I'm going to turn the programs over to Ann and Tabitha and let let them explain what we did this year and we have a video to show you of some testimonials and then at the end we'll have an opportunity for some questions if you have any so an good
105evening um I wanted to briefly highlight some of the things that we did last year as well as this year and as you can see up at the top we had for 2021 school year we had one Elementary School that we pilot piloted the um letters program with and that included 27 teachers in K through three we also had an additional 30 teachers within the division that also participated this past year we implemented an all 15 schools that included 389 teachers K through 5 that included sped e and reading specialist we also had our prek teachers doing the Early Childhood um training and we also had um our admin were taking the administrated version or they took letters volume one which was what the teachers did the teachers that took volume one last year took
106volume two this year which was 5 through eight so continuing on that um letters is usually known as the why and then Orton Gillingham is known as the how so we actually are piloting this coming year um 24 teachers are going to be OG trained um as well to further their learning that they've done through letters something else that we've done for teachers this year um we've incorporate an instructional planning time where they're meeting with reading Specialists they're meeting with um their grade level team to collaborate about reading they're using data to drive reading instruction um the literacy team has provided lessons for um the phonics instruction that letters um promotes and then we've also worked with the science and social studies coordinator to embed literacy within different content areas um we're going to continue
107that work over the summer so next year there'll be even more um integrated lessons and we couldn't um ask the teachers to do all of this without support and resources so um teachers were given um a huge box at the beginning of the year of letters resources they got decodable readers magnetic tiles um how many do we sort ,000 tiles um7 um whiteboards markers erasers anything that they needed to do this reading instruction um that the way that letters was talking about it so we gave them all of that we also provided them um with some Independent Learning time at school so they could do this study uh letters is pretty timec consuming it's eight units um four units each unit has eight sessions um online videos there's a test at the end of each
108one each unit has a test so it's not an easy undertaking and we provided not we Larry provided um the time you guys provide somebody provided them time it was great um provided them time to work on that throughout the school day a lot of Divisions have implemented letters but not supported their teachers in this way um something else that's unique to us we also um gave anyone who successfully completed letters um a stien for doing um that hard work and sorry we're not done so um we have more plans for our literacy journey in Rockingham County um we got together with um a steering committee so there's um the literacy team we have reading Specialists principles teachers all came together to really talk about where we want literacy to go within the county and
109we have a three-year road map can you click on that for us please yep so it starts with this year and then goes to next year and the following year and you can see um that we're you know taking literacy pretty seriously and planning out how to best support teachers um in instruction coaching resources training you can see the um tabs across the bottom something unique um that you'll see if you scroll down is we're actually going to Pilot this at a middle school um to see in sixth grade if some of the stuff um in letters volume two can be incorporated into English at the middle school level to support those students um so we don't have to go through all this it's quite lengthy but I just wanted everyone to see um the
110hard work that the steering committee put in making that and then something we did if you click on the other one please um something we did for next year this is just a quick overview um of what letters or litsy will look like um for the next school year so you can see um the implementation what teachers will be doing the support teachers will be receiving we hired two new um literacy coaches so there'll be four of us next year to um support our teachers and reading Specialists and then I think that's it for that thank you all right so just a little bit about oops no okay um so just a little bit about kind of the science of reading and what our teachers have been doing this year um the simple view of
111reading is the science of reading so in order to be a skilled reader so that purple box reading comprehension if we want students to have reading comprehension they have to have the other two pieces so they have to have word recognition they have to be able to figure out the word on the page and read it they also have to have language comprehension if you're reading them a story out loud if you're building background knowledge they have to have that as well so what we can turn this into is a math problem I know that sounds crazy because it's reading but it's a math problem so you can see that first example if we have word recognition but the student doesn't have language comprehension they're not going to be a skilled reader with reading comprehension
112same thing in the middle if they don't have word recognition but they have great oral comprehension they have great language skills they still aren't going to be a successful reader what we have to have is both of those things and if we have that we're going to get a skilled reader so this year um letters volume one has really focused on the word recognition piece um next year when we hit volume two we're going to do more of the language comprehension piece um and it may look simple here but it's not as simple as it seems so like tabith said it has the two um domains the word recognition and the language comprehension so that the letters volume one was on word recognition which was that bological awareness decoding and sight recognition and so now
113as we proceed to um letters volume two it will go a little bit deeper with that language comprehension and which is background knowledge vocabulary language structure verbal reasoning and literacy knowledge and we know we need to have both of those domains in order to be a skilled reader and which one so looking at the data from year one implementation this is based on the pals which is the phonological awareness screener that we do three times a year with our kids um this is kindergarten and you can see for spring 2022 we're at 15% so it has come down um over the years from Spring 2021 um and this is after two years of um interrupted instruction um it's come down with the kindergarteners which I think is great and then the next one actually shows
114it for K through three so if you're looking at that again um based on the instruction uh interrupted instruction for the past few years um we went from 35% to 29% and if you're looking at second and third grade those are our two worried groups of kids those are the kids that have been impacted the most with reading um so you know the 25 35 to 29% were very pleased with so um the last thing we want to share with you all um we could sit up here and talk about letters all day because we love it um but um we want to share what the teachers have been saying about it and you're actually going to see some teachers and even a student um on the video in just a moment but uh when
115we started this journey like um Dr shifflet said it was um hard and we had a lot of people that were really we don't want to do this we don't want to change it's it's why are we doing this um and as we've gone through the school year um the success stories just keep coming in so people are now starting to be like oh now I understand we're really helping kids read so some of the things we heard uh my students are making so much progress I understand so much more about teaching reading my students are writing and spelling better than ever I can't wait to learn more in volume two um in fact volume two opened today and already 11 teachers have signed in and started working on volume two which is pretty impressive
116on the first day of summer break um I can't believe my students have gotten this far this year um in their reading so what we're going to share next is a video um it includes a principal a reading specialist um an e teacher a sped teacher and a classroom teacher teacher as well as a student um demonstrating some reading skills so I hope you guys um [Music] enjoy hi I'm Kate Campbell I teach first grade at Peak View Elementary um in the very beginning I was very skeptical of what they were asking us to do I wasn't sure where to start what to do how to do it it was very different from what I've done for the last 15 16 years um I went and visited another first grade classroom in the county and
117saw how she was implementing it in her classroom what she was doing how successful the students were um when we were there I saw how her students were working so far beyond what my kids were able to do and so I really I kind of bought into um what they were asking of us at that point and started to really focus on how to build my whole group lessons and and really changed my instruction um and did completely different than what I've always done before in the past it took a lot of work but the success that I have seen from the beginning of the Year till now has been huge I had a student that started the year out knowing one letter sound and only five letters I kid you not um at the
118end of the year he UNP Pals obviously scored a zero at the beginning by the end of the year I think his score was a 35ish 36 um he's reading Blends um short all short Val Blends diagraphs he's even working on um vce pattern it's been amazing the success that I have seen all across the board with all of my students hi I am Aura Ramos and I am a special education teacher at Pleasant Valley Elementary School and I work with grades K to 5 and this year I'm with the letters program I was really excited to um get into this program because a lot of my students have deficits in the area of reading um and I this year in particular I saw the most growth with my kindergarten students that I work with
119um in particular I have one student who has a cognitive disability um and he came to my program in the fall and he knew most of the letters and sounds he just wasn't sure what to do with them so we began with ABC boot camp and just to refresh his memory and then we started doing the phon graphine boxes um for sounds where we started tapping out the sounds and then um manipulating the sounds with cubes and at first this was really difficult for him and he was really um it was slow-going process But as time went he got much quicker and more fluent and he started understanding that concept and is now able to fluently read most CVC short vowel words words um without even tapping them anymore had a cab the C no
120yes can the C Cab go no no no dad W was was mad dad will go get [Music] hello my name is Renee rhods and I'm a title one reading teacher at folks Run Elementary and I have worked here as a letters facilitator for this year um our teachers met yesterday at our monthly faculty meeting and I just asked them to jot down some areas that they have seen growth within themselves and students as well as how letters has impacted their um how letters has impacted their teaching so I'm going to share some of the things that they have that they wrote down the one thing that everybody said was that they have seen tremendous growth with their students um whenever they did their assessments here at the end of the year we did a
121letter survey and a past um assessment which kind of measured students phonological awareness and their phonic skills and we saw every child made a huge amount of progress and so that was really encouraging teachers are seeing kids work hard in their classroom as they tap out words um to sound them out for both reading and for spelling we saw major growth on the spelling portion of our Pals assessment that we've done for years and years with kids we had kids whole classes that um had 100% of their students Meet The Benchmark for the spelling on pal so that was very encouraging um um the other thing that teachers have noticed is that just the Improvement in students confidence in their reading and writing and that was something that a lot of teachers pointed out and
122were happy to kind of take note of and that's been super encouraging hi I'm Christine Acres I teach kindergarten at lynville Edom this is my fifth year teaching kindergarten in my 19th year teaching fulltime um I have to say after the letters training that I had last year I Incorporated some of the training last year but this year P hog we went into it with everything we had and the results are astounding um what I'm teaching my kids to do what they're able to do um the first grade teachers next year are going to be overwhelmed at how far they more um of my 14 kids 12 can read read and two they know all their letters and all their letter sounds they're just not quite they're they're tapping out the words but they're not
123actually reading the decodables yet the others they ask me for harder stuff um when we did the pals the last Pals um two of my groups after I gave them the spelling test of the five words said when do we do the hard words because it wasn't hard to them they already knew how to do that they were ready for words that had diagraphs and blends because that's where we are and this is the first year I've ever been that far ever I mean this is Kinder garden and and what they can do will blow you away hi hi I'm Leslie kuch chug principal at mville elementary school letters has been an incredible learning experience not only for our students but also for us as adult Learners um we've been able to learn together all
124year during this school day having meaningful intentional conversations about data about what our students need in order to fill the gaps in their reading instruction and how to use what we're learning about the science of reading through letters to meet those needs of our students one of the most powerful things this year is just seeing that regardless of who is working with a student we are all on the same page so if a student is in their classroom for literacy instruction for a whole group and then they go to work with a special education teacher or a reading Specialist or an El teacher all of us are using the same language and the same strategies to teach those students and so it makes it less confusing for the student and allows them to make um
125significant progress additionally our instructional planning meetings have brought all of us together um just to learn together be problem solvers together and really have meaningful conversations about our students because we have that gift of time in the afternoons where we can um have that hour just to be together and really make it focused on what our students need and how to best meet those needs this year for the first time ever um that I can ever remember our kindergarten students are not identified on Pals we don't have a single student who is going into first grade identified and that is huge it just tells me that letters has really laid the foundation for our students in kindergarten to move on to first grade ready to be readers um every single day you can see our
126kids tapping out sounds you can see them blending words you can see them thinking about that as they are reading as they're writing independently and and just recently I was in the hallway as a kindergarten student was assessing and I was standing there listening and he actually read a two syllable word with ease um without even really thinking about it and when he got it right he was jumping up and down and he was so excited and the teacher was just beaming with pride and we were both standing there in shock that he actually read that word so we're just so proud of our students and seeing all the progress that they've made um letters has made a huge difference and I'm excited to see how it supports all of our students in the future
127hello my name is Rachel Lucas and I'm one of the El teachers here at peakview elementary school I work with English language Learners when I first heard about the letters um implementation here with Rockingham County I was very excited lots of our English language students um take approximately 5 to seven years to catch up with their peers in terms of academics that's based on Research and so I was all for anything that would help them bridge the gap however I was a little bit worried because time is constantly of the essence and I was worried about how much time it would take well now that we're at the end of the year I'm very happy to report that I find it to be an incredibly worthy um program and I especially appreciate how there's a
128strong empan emphasis excuse me on phenology hearing the sounds and words this is especially important for our eel students because as we know many different languages have different sounds when one of my students who speaks farsy tries to teach me a word in their language I don't always hear the sounds similarly especially for our Spanish speaking population we only half of the Sounds in English are in the sounds that they have in their language so having a systematic approach to teaching has been very important um I'm not only pulling from the resources of letters but I also know that other teachers in the their class room or their reading Specialists are using similar terminology and similar activities so I have seen some of my students who started the years not even recognizing all of their
129letters in the alphabet reading and they're joyful they have wonderful Smiles on their faces so I have really appreciated being a part of letters and I'm excited for what I will learn next year thank [Music] you so thank you for allowing us to share about our reading initiative and also thank you for your support uh to implement this um early on when we started talking about Innovation and our five-year road map we said literacy was foundational and I think we're getting uh with this program we'll get to the place where our kids will be exceptional readers and writers so thank you and do you have any questions for Ann or Tabitha board members do you have any questions I don't have any questions really uh I've been paying attention to how it's been going and
130I've been hearing feedback from teachers and everything you're saying is being reflected uh by what I hear from the teachers they love it and they're so very enthused with what the children are learning this is this is really using the science of how brain works to good effect thank you so much with with that being said I would wanted to go on the other side of that I'm not disagreeing but I've I've heard a lot from teachers on people in the school that don't like it and they would disagree with a lot that was said tonight so what I would ask is if the board would provide a way where we could anonymously allow them for Teacher feedback within the K through five to ask them how do you feel about letters being implemented how
131how has it went in your classroom and things like that to really get a good feedback from the professionals from the ones that are working in the school every single day what I heard today is a lot of good stuff I'm not saying that but I have heard the other side too that that from from teachers that's been involved for a long time um that that they don't like they don't care much for it and I don't I'm not a professional I'm not a teacher uh working in there um but I have heard that they they they don't like it so if we could it'd be great to get some feedback from all the teachers that they could be able to feel like they could report um anonymously and to be able to give feedback
132on how they really feel like it's what's going on inside the classroom and I would just like to hear from the teachers on that and so if there's an overwhelming majority that's saying man letters is really it's the best thing since you know whatever you want to put out there um but if that's the case and cool let's go with it but if we have a lot of teachers that are saying man we're just not seeing the results I don't it's not the way I thought it would be then I think we should at least value them in listening to them uh in this as well so that would be my recommendation for the superintendent is that you would uh provide a way to allow all the teachers through K through 5 to be able
133to report unanimously unanimously but nously but to say hey this is how I feel about it this is this is a good program or we don't we're not seeing the results that um that I thought I would see in it so I'd like some true feedback on that from teachers and not just department heads from central office but I'd like to hear from the from the ground troops inside the school of what they really feel yeah I'll say that um um teachers actually provide feedback on a number of things um multiple times a year through teacher advisory where they can actually anonymously um let us know of any concerns they have and I think the last two teacher advisory meetings there was probably in the minutes I don't know 30 40 45 um concerns um
134that are addressed anything from you know which keys they have access to to substitute uh shortages to everything and I can tell you that um there were I believe two concerns related to letters but they had mostly to do with the amount of time that teachers spent and so um again unlike other school divisions um we did make some time available during the school day but there's certainly an expectation for the evening that's also one of the reasons why there was a $500 stipend um beyond that it's simply again with the Virginia literacy act uh this is how reading is going to be taught um it's simply a legal requirement too but uh certainly froms in particular letters is pretty much the implementation of the science of reading so uh that's how it works and
135this is what um letters is actually the program that's um endorsed by the Virginia Department of Education as well so yes so what the way we were doing it not the way the Virginia is going to do it anymore or it's not the proper way to do it is that the way we used to teach reading five years ago well before letters yes that's correct so Virginia's moved past that so can can we at least get actual reports from the teachers that they could feel like they could I mean that's all I want to hear is Fe because I have heard the negative side of this and and tonight I heard a lot of good things and that's really good but I have heard um the grumblings out there that they're not happy so i'
136just like to hear from teachers that are actually working with the kids every single day absolutely they feel and I again that's why I said you know that in the forms where teachers do have Anonymous um ability to report concerns um we haven't really seen it that way so but certainly we can gather additional feedback for you that'd be um yeah that'd be awesome because I'm sure some of them are listening tonight and uh if we could provide a way for them to be able to address it and and feel comfortable uh about addressing it and just get some feedback from them because I'd like to hear from the teachers on this along with the teachers uh and I feel very strongly having been a teacher myself I think the the important thing is what
137is happening with the students and we want to know I I hear that the students have made great progress as we've heard and I and I I think that we would like to verify that that's the case all over because that is the ultimate in my book that the students are learning to read better than they had learned previously yeah and I'll just make a comment um on on to both of you uh if I can uh first of Dr Mook and we are going to be monitoring student data but understand this was year one of implementation and when we started the the program in August we basically said to teachers we're going to think about this as a marathon and you can go at your own pace all that we ask is that you
138move no active resistors right just move and so we've had teachers who've been sprinters Runners out in front and we are seeing from those teachers exceptional results in in some of their data right but we can't disaggregate that to the entire School Division right because we also in some schools had some teachers moving a little bit slower right and and Mr Cross to your your comment I would say uh first I would acknowledge for all teachers it's been hard right so I want to separate out the difficulty the time commitment uh watching the videos reading the text uh from the program itself so trying to figure out you know what's what the first gal on our presentation tonight miss Campbell at uh PQ Elementary School had you talked to her in October she probably would
139have told you she was quitting right because it was it was a bit of a challenge right uh and now she's on the video as a testimonial to the program and where we are um and also just FY just just so you also know it's not just me and Ann and Tabitha and Alex Kim making these decisions our stiring committee who helps guide our conversations has teachers at on that committee and we also sat down with all 15 elementary principles and talked about the road map and where we're going so there's more people giving feedback and we can certainly collect more information I will also add um that for years there's always been a little bit of this struggle what what's been known as the reading Wars between folks who want this whole language approach
140and those who really want this just skill-based approach and we're trying to follow the science of reading to to get more of these skills the the pH the phonological awareness the phonics brought into it uh without maybe throwing out the other things that are good with reading programs as well um so we can definitely solicit more feedback but also I just want you to make be aware that uh outside of Rockingham County Public Schools there there is sort of this thing called the reading Wars that people kind of find themselves in one camp or the other uh but we are seeing good results uh early on with our students and we keep pressing forward and I think um we're going to be at a place where where we need to be thank you any further
141questions thank you guys for all your work on this thank you okay my computer went to sleep next on the agenda we have Marcy Williams with policy revisions members of the board and Dr Dr Shel good evening I'm here today or this evening to present to you 41 policies that were Revisited this spring by vsba of those 41 policies 36 of them are policies where we had already adopted the vsba policy and they were just merely updates slight word changes uh in the in the uh policy itself I distributed all of these policies to directors who reviewed them and then today what we're ask asking this evening is for your review and then consideration for action of these policies in the July meeting again 36 were slight word changes three you'll see were policies where
142we had Rockingham County policies and now we're moving to adopt the Virginia Schoolboard policy in place of what we had similar wording again um but uh just moving toward that adoption there and then two of the policies were new policies for vsba uh and of which we are also uh asking for your review and then consideration of action in July if you have any questions on the policy this evening I can certainly try to answer those or I can um move those toward a director of that area that might be able to better give you more information can can you tell me um I'm sorry I did my homework before I came to my meeting meeting tonight um can you tell me on policy or look up here on uh policy um section J let's
143see um jfcbs CB it's sportsmanship ethics and integrity um can you find out for me why um because why we took out so we took out the part in here it says good sportsmanship is expected of all attendees at the school uh sponsored events failure to comply with the above may result in removal from the school premises by the principal designate or law enforcement officer so can you find out why we took that out of there the we didn't take it out it was just never part of the Virginia Schoolboard policy so when we wrote the policy ahead of what the Virginia school board uh we added that statement the discussion that I heard around that and that wasn't a policy that falls under my Direction but the discussion I heard is that we don't
144need that in policy to take action if someone is misbehaving in an event um that we don't need that in order to take the action to ask that individual to leave so that was the reason that I was hearing um we didn't necessarily remove it it was just now we're going with what Virginia uh School Board is recommending so when we when we read at the um when we hear at all the sporting events when they say you know the school has the the right the right to remove anyone that doesn't you know fall under the U sportsmanship policy is that not going to be read anymore because it's not in the policy I that's all um what they read at the um at the sporting events also is is the vhsl um policy right
145so there's a distinction between our board policy uh state law and but also vhsl so our um sporting events are governed by vhsl okay and certainly that's part of their code of conduct as well thank you thank you yeah thank you anything else thank you very much thank you and I'd like to ask the board the rest of the board um if you have any further questions we can call you because this will come up for vote on in our July meeting correct so direct to me and then I'll push them out to the correct directors thank thank you Mrs Williams thank you okay board members you will also find your financial review for May and your attendance report um for your review in your packet we will now move on to um Schoolboard questions
146uh Mr Cross we're going to start with you all right glad to be um I one of the things we we haven't talked about is in not on the agenda tonight which um concerns me is that we're not talking about school safety and we're not talking about school security and it's it's the number one thing on parents uh Minds right now of what we're doing how we're looking into things and and how we can improve uh our safety with our children and it's the number one reasons why I even wanted to be on this board and I for almost a decade I served as a school resource officer and every day I'd go to the schools and make sure they had a safe learning environment for the students and the teachers that was my number
147one job and being in the schools and I worked in 16 out of the 23 schools uh in Rockingham County and I was concerned every time we have a national school shooting like we we saw in Texas the community gets riled up for a good two to three months and then after that it just all kind of just dies down and nothing never changes and I can remember after Parkland shooting in 20 2 or 2018 I think it was I was so upset about that shooting and and what took place in the SRO that was a coward that didn't go to the gunshots when he heard the gunshots and I I disagree with some of the statistics that's been in data that's been spoken of that school resource officers haven't stopped uh Mass casualties because
148that's a lot I've looked that data up for years and I can prove that through the data that they have stopped school shootings and they have stopped it's it's hard to tell how many lives that school resource officers have saved throughout the years and so I'm what I'm disappointed is and I think what we need to talk about and I believe the the gentleman tonight uh Mr I think it was Jack Dixon I think he's left but he was he's correct you know we don't just need to look in the school resource officers because as I said before they are they are needed and and after this last school shooting I I agree wholeheartedly they need to be in every single School throughout the nation they are just as important as a teacher inside of
149a school and I know a lot of people in education don't like that they don't want to see guns in schools and I disagree with that I believe that I don't care if they show up with an assault rifle or not I like my chances with a person with a handgun than I do without someone there without a handgun and so they're a vital part of school safety I've said it for years we haven't had a child die in a school fire since 1952 I think the the data proves and the reason being is because we looked at school fires and how why so many children were dying in school fires and we said huh we buil schools out of uh out of out of wood and if you go look at the old school
150houses they're built out of wood I mean when they catch on fire back in the days they'd go up like a matchbox and so what do we build them out of these days we go out to uh South Main Street in Harrisonburg and see a school being built right now it's all metal it's all mortar it's brick it's you can't catch the school on fire if you tried to we have codes and in there that you can't hang anything on the wall unless they're fire retardant nothing can go on the walls unless they have a fire retardant material on them and so we've learned how to stop deaths with fires in our school s in our Public Schools but we've but how many children have died since 1998 I think the cabine was in '97
15198 how many kids have died in our schools Nationwide when school shootings it's a lot and we're we're ignoring the issue we're we're thinking that oh it's going to be okay it's never going to answer here and something in the law enforcement community that we've always said it's not if it's going to happen it's when it's going to happen and are we going to be prepared and we saw just this year in this community what took place on Bridgewater uh campus and so it can happen here and it there there it scares me to think that we're not doing anything and there's a lot of things that we can be doing and I and I requested at the beginning of the year at least our middle schools would have a SRO in four of our
152middle schools because we have we have six sro's for 23 schools six 206 for 23 schools one SRO takes care of five schools and so that SRO is located at the high school and takes care of all the feeder schools into that High School school and is required at least once a week to go visit those other schools and besides that they have training they have court they have other things that they have to do because they are they are full-time law enforcement officers and so I I just requested four we've we've hired 40 approximately 40 mental health behavioral counselors inside the schools in the past 5 years we've added one SRO and the only reason why we added that SRO is because the admin administrator requested that they have that SRO and that SRO
153was out at ra and so it's clear that the board doesn't see sro's as part of safety a a reason to be able to to protect the kids at school it's obviously that this board hasn't recognized them and and doesn't think that they're part of the equation because we don't see the value in them and I'm telling you they are very much valued and um I know it's going to take a um it's it's a hard it's going to take a lot of work to find um those SRO working with the sheriff department and working with them and trying to find the right people to go in those schools that want those jobs but it's a challenge I'm worth uh it's worth uh fighting and worth trying to to solve but they need to be
154in the schools and the Mr Dixon was correct it's it don't they're just part of the puzzle in this whole issue and the other thing is is having a a a safety manager hired within the school system to keep the school accountable to making sure the school's safe and that has to happen I'm telling you I I when this happened with Parkland and uh we had a politician come out and visit the schools out at John Wayan there's a picture of me on TV3 3 news and I'm not happy because these school shootings and every time they they two or three months they go back and nothing would change well in this case something did change we got more mental health behavioral accounts in the schools but it just took last year to get one
155SRO added the other the biggest piece that needs to be added to this is the school safety manager position because I have sat on so many school safety audits I I I can't even shake a stick at how many I've sat on and those are suggestions to the principal I know you've heard this and you you're waiting for me just to move on but I'm telling you tonight that this position is is needed for for the safety and the security of her kids and this isn't me grandstanding and and politicizing this this is me someone that's worked in the school for almost a decade telling you that's never worked in the school in that position what we need and I wish you'd listen to me and I wish you'd say you know what Matt let's
156do this let's at least put two in there for the rest for we can do that for next school year but at least let's cover let's do something instead of showing the public we're not doing nothing and getting that safety manager is so vital because it will hold the schools accountable to making sure that the kids are safe and the faculty are safe at our schools and I can tell you number one in this in this instance down in in Texas where the teacher left the door open you know God bless you pray for her because for the rest of her life she's going to have to deal with that but I can tell you that is a problem in all of our schools for teachers blocking doors and leaving doors unlocked that is a
157problem in all our schools I can go back to an email on May 6th at my son's school where I emailed that concern to my my school my son's principal saying listen there's no reason to have secure vestibules in our schools that we paid hundreds of thousands of dollars after New Town Massacre there's no reason having those if they can walk through a door that's blocked and so this school safety manager will had teeth the principles making and teachers making sure and holding them accountable of making sure our kids are safe and the the staff are safe within our schools because there's a big problem within our nation right now with mental health and we've got to do all we can do right now to keep our kids safe so I'm I'm saddened tonight that
158this wasn't on the agenda I'm sadden that we're not talking about it I'm sadden that that we're not doing anything about I'm sadden that we're not allocating funds and saying hey let's at least hire two to four SRO for next school year let's look into what it's going to take to to hire a school a safety manager professional safety manager to hold the schools accountable find out what's going on I'm sadden that we're not doing that it needs to happen you really need to think about it and I'm sorry to come across as I am tonight but I I am I'm I'm just I'm fed up I'm fed up with with with school boards not doing anything to keep the kids safe and sro's are part of that puzzle in keeping the kids safe and
159we need to at least get and I've said before there's one Sr there's one middle school and it's in my district it's in District 3 that doesn't have a town president pres at that middle school all the other middle schools have a town presence and and police officers do a pretty good job in stopping by there doesn't stop the fact that we should have a SRO inside the school but mon videoo doesn't have one doesn't have a town presence and I who knows how long it will take if something was to happen there how long the response time it's going to take to get a deputy there at that school like I said the one at the high school may not be there that day may be off work that day we don't have no
160one covering when they're off work maybe at court that day maybe at training that day and so I'm just asking that we would take this serious and say you know what we can we can go to the the Board of Supervisors and ask for more money if that's the need but let's do it now and that's let's not wait and until another school year starts but let's do it now and let's get a few more sro's in there so thank you for your time tonight thank you for your consideration in this and I'm not going to stop talking about this until something is finally done and if it takes me 2 years to to make it happen it's going to take it but I you know it's going to be on everyone else's hands up
161here if we don't do anything about it and so please consider please think it through I I appreciate that thank Youk thank you Mr Cross Mr folk Dr mcelin um okay so I have a question uh we did talk about sro's and safety officers at our Retreat and we came I asked if we could have a road map and um uh chairman Breeden came up with a road map and I have forgotten what it was so or all the details do can anybody share that with it wasn't a road map it was it was a review to look at our safety audits is what we finally came to a conclusion we also talked about um the reviewing if we need where we need and uh having a conversation with the the sheriff about SRS well
162we've had that conversation um but we've not in in our action plan leaving out of that closed session what I remember is is that we said that we would look into the safety audits but nothing was looking into hiring at least two or four SRO for next school year so the board um asked at The Retreat uh whether um a comprehensive review of our safety plans could begin with reviewing previous safety audits since Mr Cross had expressed um his concerns about um safety audit um findings not being followed and so uh those will be reviewed likely in July in closed session um so that because obviously safety audits aren't for public consumption um but also I've asked Sheriff Hutcherson to uh come to a board meeting and again speak about the process uh that it
163would take to you know if um currently we talked about this too at The Retreat right so for the last um SRO position we had open uh there's limited number of applicants and so um if you add SRO what does the process look like and how long does that take because if you don't have any local candidates um in the sheriff's department because again people become sheriff's deputies for a number of reasons and it's not necessarily that they want to spend that um in the school building but uh there may be local local candidates um and if not then you know there's a different search process and so um if the date Works uh with Sheriff heson then he will be here at the July board meeting to talk about that topic so what it
164would take to add sro's in terms of training what the timeline would be and um then you know board can ask questions of that as well so but that's um what the request was for review of safety Audits and to take a more comprehensive look at that school safety piece and and again to also investigate what it would take uh in terms of potentially adding SRO there wasn't a number that the board agreed on or or discussed um you know you had Mr Cross had said um you know it would be good to start with two but again that's a conversation um I think that we certainly would want the sheriff's input on and you should have that opportunity at the July board meeting great thank you um I think that's all my questions Dr
165Shel did you have anything else you want to add I'll pass okay so we have reason to interos meeting do I have a do I have a motion do you want me to do the motion do we have a motion okay I'll do the motion I move that the board enter a closed meeting to discuss and consider the following pursuant to the provisions of Virginia code section 2.2 3711 A1 Personnel specific public officers appointees or employees for the purpose of considering such individual's assignment appointment promotion performance salary or resignation and A2 one or more particular students specifically related to requests regarding compulsory School attendance based on religious beliefs that would involve disclosure of information contained in a Scholastic record concerning a student we have a motion do we have a second thank you Mr folk
166uh is there any discussion hearing none all those in favor please say I I I all those opposed same sign 40 we are in close session thank you all and have a safe trip home