001[Music] good evening welcome to the regularly scheduled meeting of the jefferson county board of education on tuesday october 12th if you please join us for the pledge i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all and before we start this evening if you wouldn't mind i'd like to just take a moment of silence for a member of our school community that we lost this past week mr james taylor thank you all right next up we have the deputy superintendent for instructional support update good evening everyone good evening okay i'm gonna update you on a couple things giving you a copy of a jva update in front of you and it is just a
002very simple straightforward update with some numbers broken down at the top you'll see our total number of students in jva is 388 and then down below what i've done is broken it out by programmatic level so that you can kind of see what the difference is between what an elementary student schedule middle school student schedule and high school student schedule looks like so you'll you'll see that the elementary jva has a daily synchronous lessons and there's a schedule that they follow that's right below that moving on down to the middle school jva is an asynchronous model they do have live check-ins with safety checks and attendance and tutoring sessions that are available once a week as well as the adjuncts offer office hours as well as you move on down to the high school similar
003to the middle school but as you know high school students have different schedules and different graduation expectations so again asynchronous lessons via canvas except the ap and some honors and those are offered through west virginia learns the electives are delivered asynchronously as well via odysseyware daily hot live homeroom check-ins just as we said with elementary and middle and then the adjuncts you see are part of the high school model as well we have had several students as you know and have heard all along that have wanted to become virtual students because of the pandemic or other reasons so we have a set of students who've been coming in and out of the virtual program and they are on odysseyware and that's what we call a virtual alternative and i won't read through all of those
004but as i said those students are coming in and out quite a bit the jva students on the other hand are enrolled and staying put we don't have a whole lot of movement back and forth with our jva students lastly i wanted to point out at the bottom placement changes so anytime a student requests a change in placement we als we have worked on that process to make sure that we're always going through the sap process for that and we follow that at the school level with in-person instruction we want to do the same with our virtual model so i just wanted to bring that to your attention tonight and give you a little bit of an update as you probably know when jva was first laid out we had hoped to have a lot
005of in-person instruction just with with all of our other uh schools and teaching positions and service positions we're having a difficulty finding so this is a modified version i think it's a an excellent version but as we move ahead we'll tweak it and if we find something that's not working we'll make it better but right now this is the model and i'd like to thank the folks that have worked hard to to make it what it is and we hope it's a real good option for our kids moving ahead so right around 400 students and that's your jva update for this evening next i'd like to just give you some highlights from sustaining excellence and just give you a few updates i know you've heard most of these but one thing that i have seen
006differently this year than any other year is the number of vacancies that we have on a daily basis those include positions that are unfilled we have positions that are unfilled that we don't have teachers for it also includes when a teacher takes off and we are unable to find a sub so we have we have two issues going on there we have vacancies where we're not able to find teachers and then secondarily we have teachers that when they take off are unable to find subs so what this does in this particular year that's worse than any of your i've ever seen is we're asking our teachers in the building to cover during their planning time when we're unable to find people and so for example maybe last year or the year before a teacher might
007be asked you know once a week once a month to cover during planning and i think that's happening just about every day every other day they're being asked to cover during planning they are being paid for that but they're also giving up time so that means that they have no time to plan during the day if they're covering someone else's class which is not easy because you're you're stepping into another person's classroom and trying to do what they would do if they were there so also our fill rates for substitutes are just about 51 percent so that means any time we have a list of vacancies for the day and that what i mean is for teachers who've called off about half of those are being filled that's much higher than in years past and
008there's a lot of reasons for that but certainly our substitute pool is is part of that along with the pandemic so things that you know what so what happens when teachers don't get their planning what what are the things that they typically do during planning time that if they don't have it you know things don't go as well as they could and that's reviewing student performance obviously planning and preparation that's the purpose of a planning period the grade level and content meetings so those meetings are where teachers get together and speak about students and how they can help students and also if you have department meetings they're meeting about their department needs and how they can ultimately help students creating materials student assistance teams which are what we call sat teams that i referenced earlier
009those are teams that get together to talk about possible placement changes possibly additional testing or intervention for students social emotional support and also evaluation and feedback that principals would typically give teachers happens during those planning times so obviously the teachers aren't the only ones that help us run the school the the service employees are vital and i'd like to start off with secretaries i don't know if any of you have ever substituted for a secretary but it's very difficult because you know they pretty much run the school as we all know they have an expertise and technical skills with weaves with how to greet people how to interact with people on the phone point of service which is something you may or may not know about where students come through the line and they're ensuring
010that students have a meal and that they also that their number is keyed in for the federal government guidelines so those secretaries have very unique skills and it's difficult for someone to jump in and substitute for them in addition to the secretaries our aides are much like our teachers they need time to plan they need time to get to know their kids to read ieps and all those things and they're they've been doing the same thing they've been covering classes as well our bus drivers our cooks our custodians but that goes without saying we all know how vital they are to the success of a school and when we're not able to find substitutes for them things suffer and we have several schools right now who are way way down on custodians and over time
011that takes a toll so with all that said the time that we are designating for those half day i'm sorry three hour early releases will help in all of these areas to help make sure that our teachers are better prepared that our buildings are cleaner that our secretaries are able to catch up on things that they need to catch up on so we appreciate the board's support with that half day gives three hours of per week and what we expect our teachers to do during that time is to use it for the planning the preparation performance reviews and material preparation why the schedule that we picked well if it's a full day then students aren't able to have breakfast and lunch a half day allows students to have meals it also provides a consistency schedule
012rather than sporadic closures and then obviously the rationale behind the six weeks is that we do believe that circumstances may change and we can readjust and when if and when they do so just wanted to give a little bit of an update on that and certainly if you have any questions about anything yes mate um how is attendance handled in in the online program in the virtual program how is attendance handled and especially like with asynchronous right so there's someone who checks in each morning it's a attendance check and also a safety check and attendance is taken every morning and how's the safety check done they need to see the student because that's how they do the safety check and sometimes not just seeing a student is enough if you see a student and you
013can tell that they're under stress or uh you know something's going on then there can be additional measures put in place through somo are we ever going to see that attendance policy like back to talk about it i'm sure it will come back i don't know at this point when but yes ma'am one more question so if the middle high school teachers maybe are are teaching extra classes at the same time so they're teaching extra students are they getting extra pay so if they're an adjunct is that what you're asking no if they're teaching their regular class and then they have to take a second class of students do does that situation happen during this one teacher protecting two groups um that idea came up i don't know if it happened in the past but
014this year no i don't know that that's happening at all i think all districts have experimented with teachers trying to teach students who may be home on quarantine or or for other reasons and also trying to teach their class and it's very very difficult so so is there a stipend for that i don't think that's happening in our district and i don't believe that there was or is a stipend for that i may be wrong but i don't believe so okay thank you you're welcome thank you uh mr manx i just have a couple of comments really quickly um with the virtual i just want to thank your department and the somo department for all the follow-up that you're doing with the kids i mean i had a parent who gets a call from mr
015white on a weekly basis checking in on his daughter and it's just it's above and beyond and thank you very much for staying on top of that as far as um the teacher shortage that's a national problem i mean i heard an ad out of state the other day you know everybody's looking for substitutes for everything so it's it's not a jefferson county problem it's a it's a national problem so thank you for um administration thinking outside the box to try to put a band-aid on this you know gushing bleed that we have at the moment but trying to fix it and um as far as covering classes it's not just the teachers burning out i mean when they do cover a class i understand they do get paid for that planning period that they're
016missing and then it goes you know they fill up paper by hand it goes to the office the office deals with it then it comes to finance finance deals with it so that person can get paid so i mean it's it it's trickling down it's not just the person in the classroom suffering it's the entire system suffering so we do recognize that and also thank you to the administration for um finding partnerships for child care to help parents deal with these next six fridays so thank you for that welcome thank you all right approval of minutes is there a motion to approve the minutes from the regular board meeting held september 27th and the special board meeting held october 5th 2021. thank you ms ogden is there a second sure thank you mr osborne any
017discussion all in favor of the minutes from september 27th and october 5th say aye opposed thank you all right citizens comments just a reminder that every um speaker is limited to three minutes no negative or derogatory comments using a name or position by which the person can be identified no threatening or propane or vulgar abuse of the speaker will be required to see says or her comments and just please be kind first up is karen buck followed by tracy cox if you give me just a moment miss buff to set my timer all right whenever you're ready ma'am i'm karen butt citizens comment purely my own opinion meant for entertainment purposes only the united states attorney general is merrick garland one of his powers is to tell the fbi who to investigate his daughter and
018her husband started the panorama education company they produce critical race theory materials for schools nationwide the teachers unions recently sent merrick garland a letter urging him to crack down on uppity parents speaking out at school board meetings nationwide so then what did merrick garland do he labeled all parents as domestic terrorists for speaking out at school board meetings now here's a news flash it's not against the law to speak out at a school board meeting and it's not a domestic terrorism issue to speak out at a board of education meeting the fbi has no standing or jurisdiction in this room unless somebody makes a terrorist threat we will continue to oppose and expose your actions every single time we will continue to exercise our constitutional rights and there's not a damn thing you can do
019about it now let's talk about the teacher shortage yeah it's a national problem but money is not the problem so what is the problem maybe it's critical race theory black math genius unscientific masking of our children school vaccine competitions and on and on and on and now we have half day fridays for kids so that administration officials overpaid people in this building can have fridays off we're going to give parents 10 every friday to compensate for their uh having to get child care you could have left it alone because that ten dollars was a giant slap in the face insulting yes intentional maybe now next may the tenth is the election that's where we get to clean out our own backyard there will be early voting so take your sick time or your vacation time
020accordingly new candidates we're going are going to be introduced soon to replace this monstrous board and put our kids first these people that were this board of education here is extremely organized uh politically i've seen it but their message is all about money suppression control removing parents rights and removing parents voices they will not win thank you next up is tracy cox followed by barbara fuller hello i'm coaching fox and i'll pull this down if that's okay i'm here to talk about the math mandates so the last meeting parents weren't listened to or heard prior to you all making your vote you listened to dr reedy my question is has dr reedy ever done any research on masking and what it does the collected of bacteria the parents who are not sending their kids to
021school with mask and having the school give mass to their children some of the kids are being told that they have to flip their mask when they sneeze and get germs in the mask some kids have flipped it twice and then they're told to flip it again or they get punished for not doing the mask properly or wearing a mask when they have to pull it down because they can't breathe or they don't want to breathe in their own snot and all the germs and food that they had all day so they'll get to eat breakfast and then have those germs accumulate in their mask so with only listening to the one doctor and there was another doctor dr chris spies i remember speaking he spoke well sorry yeah someone speaking properly about his care
022and how he learned about things as it relates to covet it's unfair to our kids it's unfair to my son my son attend school here we're new to the county we're new to the district and we thought to come here and have people who care about us run our school boards now we're learning that the people who are running the boards don't care about our kids at all they're selling our kids out for money recover money it's sad to know that my child safety welfare health and everything else has been sold out for kovic money that's disgusting to know and i'm hurt by it because one mom came in and she talked about her daughter having hearing impairment well deaf and hard of hearing and how it would help her growth and development how kids
023learning to watch facial expressions and things like that would help her her child it went unheard and that that shouldn't happen so yeah i do agree in may that we need to vote people out who are not showing that they care about our kids that's what we're here for god bless our kids god bless these teachers we're supposed to care for those people this is what we're here for this is what your job exists for you can't sit in here and make decisions without speaking to the parents we care about our kids more than anybody else we know what's right for our kids the mass should be up to us we should decide if we want to send our kids to school with a mask on all day my son runs around for the most
024part yeah he doesn't wear it outside when he's playing with other kids but he has to wear it in school he sneezed in his mask and was told to flip it inside out then he's told to flip it again what about the snot that he has to he asked you that the last time he was here so each and every time we come here and we listen to these parents ask you plead to you beg you to listen and you're not listening that shows me that you don't care i don't want anybody on the school board who doesn't care about my kids you don't belong here so you should just leave if you don't want to be here you don't care about the kids just leave move on they are not to be sold kids
025shouldn't be sold out for money they should be taught how to care for themselves wearing a mask has it proven to work i can't say that it has kids are still getting sick but they're not the ones who are dying we listen to all of the statistics on who's dying so i would say teach the children the right thing how to care for themselves not to hide away followed by carl mackey good evening i'm thankful for my three minutes um i attend lots of meetings every single month and i keep on hearing the same things i was a little disturbed when i attended the board of health meeting virtually the other day and i see that they are getting twenty thousand dollars in excess levy fees as a gift from the board of education my
026question is those are for learning why are they not being going why are they not going to our children and then i look at the financials and i see that we're also doing the same thing to parks and recs do these people not have their own budgets one of the things that i learned yesterday which was a little disheartening was two elected officials reported that the board of education requested police sheriff support or presence why because we the people who are attending speaking up their concerns were threatening in any way who are you afraid of we have the grandma on the that the mother of five the mother of four the nurse or the doctor what are you afraid of the actions of the board prove that they are unfit to serve our community if
027parents scare you well then it's time to resign do better thank you next up is carl mackey followed by jennifer krause good evening board members um i'm not as prepared as i usually am for speaking to school boards i'm a teacher and i had to partner with my planning time today i'm not a teacher in jefferson county i teach over in loudoun i've been teaching for 23 years i was concerned about the sub shortage we have it is a national issue we have a shortage over in loudoun we have unfilled vacancies in my building every day however what concerns me is that we seem to be addressing the teachers or the substitute shortage with a taking away instructional time i have a dollar a day lower is except to lose about 18 hours of instructional
028time over the next six fridays and i'm very concerned that we've arrived at that conclusion a little bit too quickly i think what we should do before we decide to take away six more fridays of instructional time or 18 more hours is take a look at how we can incentivize the current pool of subs we have to start working more days over loud and they have about 1600 approved subs the problem that we have over there is that those approved subs are working somewhere in the neighborhood about 2.8 days per week if they could just get more of them to step up and start working four or five days a week then our sub shortage will be solved without us really having to add any bodies because adding bodies is a very tall order to
029do at this point in the game what i would suggest you probably have the same issue here you probably have about three to four hundred approved substitutes that are probably giving you two to three days per week of their time and what we should try to do is incentivize them to step up and work more days per week and i would suggest before we take away more instructional time we adopt something similar to like a staggered tier system where if somebody works for us two days a week they fill a vacancy in a classroom two days a week we're paying them 115 a day if they come in and work day three and day four in a given week we'll pay them 135 dollars for day three and four if they come in all five
030days of the week for that fifth day we'll pay them 155 dollars we make it so that the current pool of subs we have are now incentivized to step up and work more days per week and that's probably something we can do your business and financial people can probably give you the cost that out for you and see if it's financially doable but that's going to be something that we control we control what we pay people we don't really control that the pandemic's going to die down we don't control the economy we don't control warranty rates but we control how much we're incentivizing the current people we have on the payroll to work more often and i think that staggered tier system would do that so before we decide to take away 18 more hours
031of instructional time we try to look at ways to incentivize our subs this stuff i can work more frequently i i the job you have is hard i understand that and i hope that we're able to solve this before we impact kids anymore thank you next up is jennifer krause good evening my name is jennifer krauss i am the mother of five children three of whom are currently enrolled in jefferson county schools tonight i'd like to talk about the very disturbing news that i hope everyone here has heard about united states attorney general jared merrick garland has instructed the fbi to label upset parents who voiced their concerns at school board meetings domestic terrorists and to investigate those parents accordingly concerned citizens speaking to their elected officials is not domestic terrorism it is democracy the
032same democracy that got each and every one of you elected it is your job to listen to our concerns whatever the issue and whatever the concern we have the right as free citizens to voice those concerns without the fear of retaliation i call on this board tonight to draft and send a letter to federal and local law enforcement as well as to the national school board association stating your firm objection to this totalitarian idea that you disagree wholeheartedly with the united states government attempting to intimidate parents into giving up our first amendment right to free speech tell them that you respect the views of the parents grandparents and concerned citizens that you represent and their right to express their concerns because you are a school board that believes in transparency i anxiously await the publication
033of this sent letter i believe this is the one issue we can all agree on don't you thank you all right next we have the consent agenda are there any changes um actually i have um an introduction uh someone who some of you may be familiar with joining us this evening with my recommendation is mr sam carpenter if you could stand up mr carpenter is actually i'm recommending him to join us as the interim assistant principal at charlestown middle school you he may seem familiar to you uh he grew up here in jefferson currently lives in harpers ferry with his family um and i was actually a heck of a baseball player from what i understand um uh and um after a 16-year career in loudoun he is coming here where he was the dean
034in loudon and is coming here to join our administration and i'm very grateful for the folks who want to live and work in jefferson and serve our children here so you want to stand up say hello thanks i'm not much of talking about myself but i am extremely motivated and excited to return to jefferson county i'm excited to have you back welcome i appreciate it look forward to working with all the parents i love the passion all right so on the consent agenda um number 25 is deleted is that correct yes and number two on the superintendent's approval is changed uh that was uh labeled um one to one where it's actually a strong five okay is there a motion to approve the amended consent agenda thank you mr cable is there a second thank
035you mr osborne any question or discussion i have questions yes ma'am what does what is ela adoption stipend um the state requires that school systems complete a review of uh new materials in content areas they have an adoption cycle where um ever so many years you have to adopt a new curriculum a new textbook in an area our ela adoption is coming up and those are the individuals who've been recommended and agreed to serve on that committee and review those materials and make recommendations those materials will also once they complete their review be available to the public and we send out a notice for the public to come and review them as well and then follow in that process we make recommendations to the board thank you and my other question is for positions 108
036109 why does it say position creation position change is it is it a reclassification should it just be called reclassification that is a great question that was a halftime position that was in a single location and it is changing to a full-time position that is itinerant at blue ridge to be able to split that among a couple of classes who need some additional support and the 109 that is an existing position that's a part of our service career ladder where they've undertaken professional duties uh it's the same number of days only they would now be an exempt employee meaning they could not earn overtime to that and like the other positions would require both an associate's degree and certification in um finance so so it looks like it's a way for a service personnel to
037get a pay increase for doing the same work they're already doing is that right uh no ma'am that's um that wouldn't be beneficial to the system or to the person it is a way we have service positions that have undertaken or we've added professional duties uh as their jobs have changed and as we've faced shortages they've taken on professional duties they've also obtained associate's degrees and certifications anytime one of those is recommended as you'll notice online and in your packet that's accompanied by a job description that is a job description that shows the duties that were added to it yeah the reason i'm asking is because i'm wondering if these positions will be back filled so are these new positions or are they moving to a new position and then still have to hire somebody
038to fill their position that is a wonderful question uh no man they they're not they're not positions in addition to those positions are being transformed into those positions no longer exist and they're being transformed into the new ones so then for 104 and 105 the same question will you be hiring people to replace these people who are being transferred no ma'am we will not so maybe it shouldn't say transfer then maybe maybe it should be reclassification i don't know but it just makes it look like they're being transferred to a new position so then you're left thinking well i guess we're we're going to hire two new people for these other positions yes ma'am that's we can certainly work on um making that more clear you are correct we should be clear that those positions
039then won't exist anymore and we're not backfilling them so um we can add uh again sometimes sometimes we try to add too much information and folks are get frustrated because we confuse things and sometimes we try to keep both simple and we don't provide enough but um um we can certainly i take that to heart we'll we'll work on um maybe bring to you at the next board meeting or the following board meeting a a key for hr and the changes in the consent agenda so you can look at it and we can have some agreement on what each one of those keys mean especially as quite frankly our human resources process is getting more and more complex the deeper we get into the staffing shortage so thank you ma'am well i appreciate that um
040service personnel are getting uh recognized for the work that they're doing and it looks like they're getting new job titles and hopefully um compensated for it that's all thank you okay any other questions all in favor of the consent agenda say aye all right thank you um no unfinished business no new business superintendent's comments do you even have any decisions all right and any executive session yes ma'am for legal advising all right is there a motion to go into executive session for legal thank you mr osborne is there a second you mr cable all in favor say aye did you really ask that do you have a question yeah i just wanted an opportunity to say something because i just think that as a school system we should recognize that monday was indigenous people's day
041and we're finishing up hispanic heritage month so i hope that there have been activities in the schools and i just want to encourage the community and the school system to be accepting and appreciative of people from other cultures and backgrounds that's all i just i just don't see a lot of that i'm not in the school so i don't know but hopefully we are practicing encouraging doing things for all of the different cultures and ethnic groups thank you and we we certainly do uh for every month um and we've reviewed that plan with the principles and actually at this point the second board meeting of each month we are planning this month to begin the return of students and student presentations and what they are bringing to the table in terms of their um their
042civility and cultural awareness thank you okay there's a motion on the table all in favor of going into executive session say aye opposed all right thank you very much [Music] you