BoE Meeting on 9/27/2021

001[Music] i'd like to call this meeting the jefferson county board of education to order this is our regular meeting september 27th we do in jefferson county schools require masks in buildings that will be masked on at this time we need masks on at this time makes me feel a lot better yes ma'am please join us [Music] under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all mrs skinner is out of the area and she'll be joining us virtually we have a presentation by dr reedy dr reedy um dr rita will also be joining us virtually and jason has him up hello in the past month uh and a half since uh school started we have continued to see a lot of cases of covid last week they had hoped that the number of cases in the

002state would peak and in some places they have berkeley and jefferson county are still having increased numbers although the last couple days we have seen slightly fewer cases coming in since the beginning of august we've seen about 300 cases of people 17 and under that compares with about earlier in the year we're not having problems as some people pointed out with children being extremely ill fortunately that's a rarity and we hope that will remain the same we are seeing a large community transmission and a lot of people are requiring hospitalization dr clay marsh of wvu describes the current status of west virginia medicine and other hospitals as being at the critical phase being in there pretty overwhelmed other hospitals have similar problems there are disproportionate number of people requiring hospitalization who have not been vaccinated

003which is uh unfortunate um it does show that the vaccine is helpful in protecting against the more severe forms of this and that the cases are not simply very elderly fair number of middle-aged people not always people with prior health conditions who are getting sick and internet in the icu the numbers statewide of people in the hospital in the ico and ventilators significantly greater than at the peak this past winter we expect the numbers of hospitalized people on the ventilator unfortunately people dying will remain for two to three weeks after the peak has subsided just because it takes that long after becoming infected until many people have the worst of their disease i don't think we're in a position to be relaxing our restrictions and we are not seeing um in many cases at all

004in school transmission i'm aware of just a couple of three uh cases where it looks like one student in a classroom may have infected the person next to them usually in a lunch situation where the masks are off um as we had last year outside of the classroom or family or friends or in extramural activities such as sports or other clubs there is transmission sometimes it's with the activity uh often it's with visiting with the friends riding in a car having meals together so we haven't seen anything really in that regard it still goes on it's still very very disheartening when people have to miss school many people fortunately have very mild symptoms or no symptoms at all and they're surprised that they uh yeah i have some questions um let's see um what about

005the possibility of rapid coca-testing in the schools do you think there is uh would that be helpful is there a need for that because i understand that there is a high rate of uninsured children who don't necessarily get the testing uh quick enough and so they may be carriers is that my understanding is that correct so we have been discussing the doing testing in schools and the state does have a mechanism for contracting laboratory companies to do that but the test is only a piece of it the other piece and this is what happens when you go to an urgent care is the evaluation of what that test means whether someone who has it that has symptoms still may be positive if it's a false negative or if it's positive what you want to do

006about it and if it's negative what you know what does that mean so there's a lot of discussion the school nurses and nurses with health department do have these discussions but the providers at the places people are going to get more the more rapid tests that's what's happening um so we're looking at it the um but in addition to doing the test is the advising the scheduling deciding which people should come in to get scheduled it's a as so many other things it's you know who are the staff they're going to be able to do this it's already stretched pretty thin i understand there was uh there's 55 000 available i don't know if that's been used um dr nixon for um to hire someone to do contact racing and is that available did we

007receive that funding so i think dr gibson could speak more about that we're looking at it but that's for an extended period of time and then getting someone on board and getting them developing the system and training them will take time i'm not sure it's going to answer the need right now uh unfortunately most places the um the rna or the pcr test is more specific and accurate um because there's so many tests being needed not just in this area but elsewhere because there's sometimes a shortage of supplies and a delay of a day or two and in some cases three or four days till we get the result not quite as bad as last year but approaching it the rapid tests um the antigen tests are valuable but they do have to be interpreted

008based on the person's situation well i my daughter is 22 and she in five minutes she was trained and she ran the program in berkeley county so i don't know that it's that um intensive i think we did a program here but it was the staff that ran it so it sounds like there's money available but i don't know dr gibson is that um correct did we get that funding did you did we apply for it so the information you sent that yeah so first of all when you talk about what the staff has done previously we've conducted the vaccination clinics we ran eight vaccination clinics with our own staff we have not conducted testing with our own staff we don't have the qualifications or the testing kits we haven't had the qualifications or the

009testing kits to do that so we did apply for the grant funding which was fifty five thousand dollars i had as i sent you that information and we did go to the health department and make a request that we'd be able to hire someone as he noted in terms of a shortage of individuals and testing materials and supplies that's certainly the purview of the health department if there is a way that we could have individuals who are able to be trained more promptly or access to tests more quickly we we applied and we were awarded that grant so i was just i was thinking maybe shepard university they already have an established program of rapid testing you know they use on campus so maybe we could work with them um somehow but i know that

010the other thing i wanted to ask is what happened to the discussion about deep cleaning and social distancing you know why why is the emphasis only on masks if we are trying to do everything we can to keep our staff and you know students safe why aren't we doing everything we can are is that are those are they not as effective anymore deep cleaning and social distancing the deep cleaning is not where the focus is that it was in the very very beginning of this uh cleaning frequently touched surface is still beneficial but that does not seem to be the major way of preventing spread social distancing is extremely important masks are a little less important and the lack of social distancing in extracurricular activities probably explains a lot of the spread um so we

011haven't discontinued that there are a lot of gatherings that um you know whether it's attending sports events or other kind of gatherings are certainly areas where a person could get infected more easily because they're around many other people any one of whom could have an infection and be in the highly infectious state and so you increase your risks so it sounds like you're recommending social distancing for the schools is that correct yes um the um the state board of education uh department of education had very extensive guidelines last year on all sorts of different aspects of cohorting and social distancing and that everyone eating in their classroom from the standpoint of decreasing the spread of the virus i think that would be very helpful the realities of implementing and i have to leave that to

012the school but it certainly is important and then also what the activities are people do outside of the school we have talked to parents who think when they isolate a quarantine a child it only has to deal with school and that they can then go play their sports even though they're effective uh it's not while they're infectious or when they've been exposed the other activities outside of school should be affected just as much um i've got a question dr reedy about two questions actually one is about the quarantine guidelines that we've been working with and if those have changed and if not what would be the repercussions i guess for us as we begin to move towards figuring out how to live with you know a new normal which i'm assuming this is probably going

013to be at some point but so we can figure out what what is the risk benefit for us for masks and no masks as far as quarantine classrooms so the risk benefits hard to put numbers on a lot has to do with how much infection is presently uh circulating in the community um when that number goes down the chances that each person you come in any person you come in contact with could be infected goes down um so the risk and benefit decreases the risks of masks are primarily inconvenience and people not wanting to be told though others will say there are physical risks that's not uh the false medical community has found the benefits of people who are infected isolating remains high until this becomes a non-dangerous virus that anybody who gets it um

014is going to have a very mild almost like cold then those who are infected should stay away from others same as we recommend with the flu but this is still far more deadly than the flu the fortunately children are not the ones that are primarily having major health problems from it but they can then increase the spread and others getting infected so it is fortunate relatively benign in their cases but they need to isolate because allowing this disease to spread throughout the community has community consequences hopefully we will get enough immunity either through vaccinations or people who have had the virus that most of us will with future exposure to virus have less and less severe illnesses that becomes more like a cold war or even more like uh the flu that's our hope we're

015trying to tell whether that's what happens um that's some of what people talk about herd immunity is that you have enough immunity in the population that when people get infected they don't get very sick and they're less likely to transmit it um i i'm hoping that in the next couple months that we get there i saw numbers today that between the number of people in jefferson county who are either vaccinated or have had proven infection and therefore have some degree of natural immunity and the rest of the population we still have about 25 or 57 000 people who need who have not been exposed either through vaccination or virus or not nothing the immune system hasn't been activated so we have a long ways to go compared to some other counties with higher vaccinations so

016is it is it still um right now the policy that we're following through the health department that if we have students in the classroom if we took all of our masks off and we had one exposure in the classroom that the entire classroom would then have to be quarantined um that's [Music] since we have mass i don't and most of the schools in the state do i'd have to look at it but i think it's more that people with um without the masters within a certain a certain distance would automatically have to point to but not necessarily everyone in the classroom if you're talking about the very young classes of first second graders where there's not the social distancing then that that's a whole different matter than um older kids who are able to sit

017in their seats here's snapchat it sounds like social distancing is crucial here that you keep mentioning that that that's important and i know are we social distancing in the classes um dr gibson yes ma'am as always to the extent that we have the physical space to do so and while the weather is nice to be able to get the kids outside having subbed in several of our classes yes their deaths are apart we do we are not doing group activities we're not again to the extent that we possibly can when we have kids who are all down here in a reading circle we're drawing little squares and asking them to sit in little squares if you're in k12 that is a lot harder done than said uh at the upper grades the kids are doing

018a better job but as you know most of folks have sent their kids back to school they want their kids in school their kids need to be there and we don't have the physical space in our schools to maintain consistent in every single venue at every single time social distancing the only way to do that would be to have kids attend school in rotations if you had 50 of the kids come one day and you could spread them all out and then 50 of the kids come the next day and do it on rotations yes you could get a good deal of social distancing but right now we're the significant portion of our kids are in school so again to the extent that we have the space possible yes but is that the full three

019feet in every single case all day long no with the parameters that we're taking right now are we seeing any significant i think dr we said you know he didn't necessarily see anything significant that we are getting any kind of crazy spikes but compared this year to last year with the number of students in the classroom i know the delta variants different than what the other one was but i mean there's so many different variables that change every day but what are you seeing as far as on the ground for us in the classroom um number one i'm seeing that we need a lot more teachers and a lot more staff but um i see some people who are killing themselves every day to keep this place open and make it work as far as

020quarantines we have had sports teams quarantined because they're not masking they're in a group and moving around so when they do contact tracing if they can't uh be certain then there's a safety level that they quarantine and we've seen uh class quarantines off of uh lunches kids who take their masks down eat their lunch and they're in an enclosed space and we've seen ones where we have kid come in and they've been exposed and then kids who take their masks off or are playing outside with them at recess so we have seen some class quarantines we have not seen a whole school quarantine um and we haven't obviously had a closure as a school system so to my knowledge there are two school systems in the state who've had to go full closers um and

021those have been a combination of quarantine and a lack of staff and there have been eight total schools as of i think last wednesday's report who shut down from a lack of staff due to quarantine as well but we haven't had that circumstance here i have another question so at what point um do we need to get serious about social distancing in the school are you basing it on a percentage um you know whether we're in the red zone or what are your thoughts and recommendations um before as a preventative measure so that we don't have to close down that's for you dr reedy again there's no easy guideline on that and it requires considerable discussion and what aspects of further social distancing we have had some discussions about getting rid of the more open

022lunch it's kind of different with each age group and each school but that would be one place mostly within the classroom we're not seeing a spread um the good thing there is that those are set cohorts of people um that it's not a hundred different people you're exposed to every day but you're your class and i'm pleasantly surprised that we've not had the number of uh in-class transmission that we thought we might i think the largest we've had in any one classroom is four different people which is pretty good out of the thousands of students that you have the um each day it's a challenge but whether if there was a big transmission you know whether you close the school for a week like you do on a fleet most people i think are taking

023their major seriously keeping their kids home if they're not feeling well those those are the basic common sense things that i do think are making a difference do you think that it's the masks are a contributing factor a significantly contributing factor to preventing um i think so the um if you i can think of two in school transmissions and they both occurred um with someone they sat next to their lunch and um you know whether that's where they got it you don't know but that's the highest time of exposure and if the masks are off people are talking talking loud uh they're within three to four feet of each other so that that's not a big surprise how much more strict you get on all of these things is difficult on anybody that individually wants

024to be more strict i think that's that's great for example people who have been vaccinated do not need to quarantine if they've been exposed but those who choose to quarantine because they realize that compared to a few months ago we know that they could get infected and they couldn't infect someone else and that has happened it's less likely that those people certainly couldn't quarantine they could be more strict than the diagnosis requires but we can't mandate that i can't mandate stricter quarantine than these stages authorizing so are you suggesting that there be social distancing at lunchtime in the cafeteria to the extent feasible um and so in in the younger grades where they have assigned seating is very helpful because when one person is infected you know exactly who they sat next to my understanding

025is that in the older grades it's a little harder to keep them in assigned seats and it's not the same social distancing or cohorts that we would like i would need to leave that to the professionals in the school system about what's possible with all the different demands the pressures but that would be ideal um so is that is that reasonable or realistic dr gibson to um social distance at lunch when the masks are off yes um it is only reasonable if we do one of two things either we change the lung schedules to extend over a a schedule far beyond what we do now part of the issue is that in terms of making the lunches and then keeping them hot and spreading them over if we have such small groups in the lunchroom

026at a time lunch will start at you know ten o'clock in the morning and it'll run until two o'clock in the afternoon already at like our larger schools like at jefferson high school she's divided it up into four separate lunch sections in an attempt to keep the group smaller the biggest issues that we have number one their space we do have some classes who were rotating out and they have lunch in their room one day a week and then they rotate back into the lunch room in an attempt to keep the numbers down we also have like at some of our elementary schools we have clear dividers on the lunch table so that um it would help if everybody was facing the same way our tables aren't set up that way because they're the fold

027downs with the you know round seats so those we've purchased dividers and put those in there but um to the extent that he's stating like in some schools we're able to put kids every other seat that is a rarity i will say that we're just not built for doing that so the only other choice is to rotate them in and out of classes and then you've got them in a classroom and that's when we'd be getting full class quarantines as well do you have a cut off like a plan of okay when we get like a certain percentage of um kids out of school or exposure then we're gonna move into this next phase of more social distancing well we we're at the maximum amount of social distancing that we have right now based on

028the space and schedule that we have i mean at lunch like during in the cafeteria i think the real question though is we've had school since we started to now yes and so we have some really good data to look at of what's actually happening in our school system and if we can't if we can honestly say and it sounds like i heard dr rudy say that what we're doing even with the distancing we have now is working we're not getting any mass crazy outbreaks we're not having any issues yes we have to watch it yes if it happens that's usually where it is but it's not anything that's over the top number one and number two we've seen this spike that we kind of keep hovering at doesn't seem to be increasing so it

029does look like we're kind of coming over the edge of it so i don't know that more restraints at this point would be necessary it sounds like we can look to okay we're holding steady we're trying to get to a place where we figure out again which we talked about before dr reedy what is the level of risk that the health department is willing to take to avoid the quarantines right for us it's about the quarantines it's about keeping kids in the schools and keeping kids in the classroom so that we can educate them so when will we get to the place where we have the quarantine issues we'll lack so that we can have school as we want to have school and just move forward as a community what are we looking for what's

030our level of risk what's our number what are we looking for as a county that's the question excuse me if i could just finish my question because dr gibson hadn't finished when he interrupted so i'm just wondering do we have a plan of any certain at some point or you just play it by ear you just wait and see how it goes or is there a time when you say okay we're going to have to do more we're going to do the rotating of um going to school and staying home or we're going to do more social distancing in the cafeteria more rotation of you know using the cafeteria is there is there any kind of um a strategy or are you just kind of waiting to see uh there are a couple of that

031is a couple of ways to answer that number one in terms of whether or not we have a strategy if we get larger numbers we have one for a 48 to virtual 48 plus which is where we have a way of rotating classes onto virtual on a schedule for those um for those students we have a couple of options that we've spoken about none of which we want to enact and those are strategies of having kids come in and be on virtual on rotating schedules much like we did when we originally opened schools because that lowers the numbers in our school significantly we do not want to do that it is an absolute logistical nightmare and it's incredibly difficult for kids for children um at this point if we had such significant numbers that we

032met the outbreak criteria for a school at this point we would send uh the students full virtual until we passed the quarantine period and then bring them all back in we haven't not us nor anywhere else in the state seen rolling outbreaks where they have a whole school has an outbreak shuts down comes back rolls shuts down comes back so that hasn't happened yet if it does we certainly would recommend to the board a hybrid schedule to prevent that okay so it's based on the outbreak criteria that's i'm just trying to give information to the public because i know people are wondering so what's going to happen you know in a week if there's an outbreak so thank you that's a great question on our website is also the um criteria from the west virginia

033department of education for how they define an outbreak their um masking recommendations and what their [Music] wvd e and wv dhh are joint recommendations are for schools so we have that posted up and that might help people as well thank you you're welcome okay mr dolphin i think you've got a question yeah are we giving um the same opportunity for students to not have to quarantine if they have a proven uh exposure uh proven covid diagnosis just as well as being vaccinated so if someone has had a pulpit infection within the preceding three months they're considered extremely unlikely to get infected or to transmit to someone else but that would you know we need to be able to see that which we can see he's been affected and that's one of the things i tell

034you know parents who uh are so you know upset because their kid can't go to school though they feel fine is that having had a proven infection they kind of get out of get out of jail free card for three months people who have been vaccinated there's not a time limit on that right now but those people with good immunity do not have to quarantine right now whether the immunity with vaccines or how long that's going to last this is still uncharted territory but i think that we will still even in months to come will still give substantial protection as far as less likely that the person gets infected and there's some evidence that if they are infected they're less likely to transmit it if that's and then my last question was just that level

035of risk do have we have we defined that as far as what we are going to how are we going to move forward as a community when are we going to get to that with the same way we do with the flu and everything else what is the level of risk that we are able to then not have to quarantine not have to do those types of things so that's not been decided uh i think using the color map when we're back down in the uh the under 10 or the the green or the um the yellow that really looks good compared to where we are right now that we in berkeley and many counties have been in the red the whole time school has been in session so at that point um you know

036then the mass requirement would most likely go away the purpose of all these is to decrease transmission if we're not seeing transmission uh we can relax and the increased social distancing in the schools if we see increased in school transmission then we need to do more fortunately we're not seeing that right now what could happen at one school may require actions in that school but not for other schools that it's just different so you may get a an outbreak or player of cases one place but not somewhere else and that's not unusual throughout the state the nation will be much better but we have to watch and see because we don't know for sure winter is coming and people will be more indoors whether that's going to lead to more transmission we do not know

037yet i'm sorry vaccinations are still available for you know 12 and up people who haven't gotten them and maybe at the end of october they'll be available for the younger um that's not been authorized i'm sorry this is the discussion between the board and him okay so we can't ask any questions rebecca uh mrs skinner do you have any questions no i'm good thank you okay is this the appropriate place in our agenda to address okay is there a motion uh either for masking or not masking in our schools from now till october 25th our next meeting in october we are having a meeting are we yes ma'am doesn't feel like it yeah well it is a meeting and we have a motion on the floor could you repeat that kathy because i couldn't hear

038you kathy can you repeat that motion please i said i'm making a motion to extend the math mandate until the second board meeting october 25th is there a second i i i couldn't understand what she was saying mrs skinner made a motion to extend the mass wearing to october 25th second discussion second all in favor say aye hi hi hi oppose no motion carries till october 25th okay report from deputy superintendent joyce white shame on you yeah excuse me there is order or we will stop this meeting right now oh is that right yes ma'am welcome to nazi germany okay deputy superintendent joyce white please thank you sir uh miss white is uh not with us this afternoon so i'm going to give her a presentation uh first and foremost an update on bond projects

039uh the cw shipley bids for the awning at that school for uh students protection from out of the weather will be in on october the 8th once the board awards a vendor will schedule that project it will of course the work will be completed when staff and students are not present over the holidays likely the fall projects include the planning of our two new schools hopefully many of you saw where we had students together in committees at ransom elementary and shepherdstown elementary it was actually a wonderful experience to sit down and hear them with the architects and the interior designers talk about what they wanted to see in their new schools and how excited they were about it so uh we will be posting up on our website the timeline uh for the two new

040schools um right now sba has a series of different phases uh one the first one of course is the uh planning phase submission and that is pending receipt of the survey we anticipate submission on october the 8th the schematic phase submission and that's where we give them the floor plan exterior elevation schematic plan site that will be submitted on november the 5th design development submission technology plan outline specs hvac systems detailed floor plans building sections um march the 4th now between that november 5th and march the 4th we will have a series of meetings with the public where we'll show them different designs taking into account the teacher committees that we had from both schools the public comment that we've had already and the student committees and feedback from sba there will be drawings schematic

041design site showings and that feedback process will continue our may 27th is when we actually submit the construction drawings drawing specifications and then we actually start bidding out to contractors um after that the projects can be advertised for bids on or around june 20th 2022 now this is the sba schedule and the sb is the one that conducts those advertised bids um construction we anticipate beginning mid-august next year with construction completion uh spring or summer of 2024. so we know a lot of folks are anxious to see those go up um we do anticipate based on the bid that we put before the sba that both sites will have um a camera system while they go up where people can see the buildings actually rise and monitor the the building of them for transparency for

042the public in terms of technology all of our chromebook one-to-one devices are out to the students um the one-to-one device committee provided bags for laptops in grades three through eight and some some students in other grade levels depends upon a variety of factors but um students in grades k through t k through two don't actually take the devices home they use them at school but given their level of um just responsibility and cognitive development and you know they come home sometimes and can't remember where they took their socks off during the day much less where their laptop is so um the upper grades the grades that we're the three through eight that we're giving the bags to when we worked with the company and they gave us data on breakage rates those are the grade

043levels that we targeted for the bags so um we are also continuing to work uh with the computer systems for our learning management system and canvas we have a training for all staff on october 11th on our staff development day on canvas and wevus for our staff from service personnel to professionals to administrators so continuing to move forward with that project as well so thank you sir i had a question for miss white i don't okay i will do my best if i don't know the answer i'll take it down and take it to her man um so i'm just wondering how much money would be the difference if we were to build a pool i mean i see that there's some extra money in the budget i know that we spend a lot at

044um shepard to use the pool and our students get a lot less practice because they have to share the pool with several counties and then you have the kids that live on the mountain it's at least a 45 minute drive to get to practice so they miss out so you know it would make sense at some point to build a pool for our students um it can is there has there been any kind of study to look at you know how much because i know we um there's the concessions and there's the entrance fee to the pool so you know i i know that a pool is expensive but you know it's just do we have those numbers of you know how much we might save versus how much it cost uh we haven't done

045a comparison of the cost of both installing and operating a pool versus what we expend at shepherd i can bring the board the contract that we sign with shepard both for our swim teams to practice and we run a special program for students with disabilities for their safety to learn how to swim we did have some discussions with jefferson parks and rec because they had been approached by a donor with the possibility of putting a pool in at sam michael and so we had spoken with them about if that happens you know could we could we possibly work with our students what would be the time sharing of that uh that donor didn't materialize that didn't actually show up but so we haven't pursued that but we can get some we can speak with the

046architects and get a rough estimate of what that kind of facility would cost both to build and to maintain if that's something the board is interested in knowing well i our students now have to go to frederick and to use the facilities there they join teams in frederick so that they can get extra practice and like i said the kids that live up on the mountain it's 45 minutes one way and if practice if they don't have practice until five or six o'clock because they're sharing the pool with berkeley county or another county you know they have to rely on somebody that can take them to practice and then somebody that can pick them up so they miss out on the opportunities so at some point soon i think there should be a pull at

047least you know for the students one pull well again we can certainly get numbers on uh construction costs and on maintenance and we can bring those for the comparison for what we expend at shepherd university and the board can take a look at that i appreciate it thank you you're welcome next is approval of the minutes uh we're talking about the regular board meeting september 13 2021 and the special board meeting held september 14 2021 is there a motion to approve those minutes so moved second discussion all those in favor say aye oppose no motion carries okay next is citizens comments and just to remind speakers that all speakers are limited to three minutes speakers are prohibited from making negative or derogatory comments using a name or position by which the individual can be identified

048comments may not be threatening profane vulgar or abusive where the speaker will be required to cease their comments speakers who deviate from the information provided on the speaker's forum will be called out of order by the chair and required to cease the comments public comment is not a question and answer period it provides individuals with the opportunity to express their comments regarding any subject matter all comments shall be directed only to the jefferson county board of education no person may address or question board members or jefferson county school staff individually the board will not respond to comments made during the public comment session all speakers are requested to provide contact information below should it be necessary to seek clarifying information correct the factual error or provide specific feedback to a public comment virtually we have

049elizabeth kerwin and after that we have dale nesbitt i am here this is elizabeth i just wanted to thank the board thank you thank you thank you i know this has been tough i want to thank you for having um made the decision to require mass up until this time and um i appreciate you for keeping my son and his classmates safe i am a parent of jefferson county students here and i appreciate that you kept him safe and that you're going to continue to do that through the end of october i urge you to continue to follow cdc guidance on mastering requirements to keep our children safe and i appreciate all that you've done i know this has been hard thank you very much and my husband joins me in saying thank you so

050you can move on to the next person thank you thank you thank you thank you okay dale nesbitt is up and christine snyder afterward i think dale was her husband was her husband okay christine snyder's up and mia humphries on that christine can you hear us i can we can't see you but we can hear you okay that's fine by me um i appreciate the chance to speak to you virtually and i also wanted to thank you for the masked mandate um it's allowed me to send my third grader to school um feeling like she will be safe during the day um i'm hopeful that vaccinations will be available to kids her age uh soon and that will be um you know more peace of mind but in the meantime i'm so grateful for the

051mass mandate um i would urge you to uh at your next meeting vote to put the mass mandate in place for the whole school year and if we get over the pandemic and mass aren't needed you could always change that later um but not to have these arguments month after month when the science is clear that right now we do need masks um dakota death rate is more than four times as high in the least vaccinated state um in the least vaccinated state and west virginia has the lowest vaccination rate in the country so um our coca death rate is high and more than 500 children were hospitalized with cova just on september 10th that's according to the us department of health and human services and many of those kids do not have pre-existing conditions

052so children are at risk and according to the cdc at least 529 children have died from cove at 19. so um humphreys is up diane blust is on deck so okay we could not find ms humphreys dianablus hi um yeah thank you for having us tonight um and uh thank you for allowing us to make public comment my name is dianne flust this is my father ken brewst we are red friends of jefferson county we don't have any kids in school in jefferson county but i wanted to thank you very very very much for your decision tonight your decision at the last meeting to require math dr reedy talked about community consequences and community spread uh earlier and my dad is a world war ii vet um he's been he spent two years of his

053young life ensuring the freedoms that we all have and that we all talk about today it worked for people like daddy and for my uncle who flew missions over occupied france during world war ii we might very well be speaking german today so i would urge everybody in the county but particularly people who have a decision-making role to think about people like my father think about that community spread keep him safe we are doing everything to keep him safe we rarely go out um we go to doctors appointments that's about it we don't spend any money in jefferson county because it's not safe to shop here or go to restaurants here for us right now so i would like you to continue to keep that mass mandate in place if daddy has to go to

054the hospital there may not be room for him i may have to drive him to loudoun county without an ambulance he's done everything in his life to keep himself healthy he walked half an hour a day to work for 15 years half an hour a day back uh doesn't drink he's not fat but he has kidney disease he's 95 years old he has kidney disease and he has congestive heart failure so please try to protect the people in jefferson county and i could not be happier that you put the mass mandate in place thank you so much thank you kathy you're talented we have dr catherine figa and on deck is catherine joshua just wanted to thank the board for your continued efforts to keep our kids safe and you've done an amazing job it's

055super hard we apologize as a community for making it so hard for you but you've done a great job you've minimized 417 i've only had of my two kids only one's been out on warranty for not too too long and thankfulness was negative so you all have done a great job and we we gratefully thank you and fingers crossed we will skate through all this together and i hope that we come out a more resilient and stronger community as a result and uh also uh thanks to dr reedy um as well for all your service to our community that's all i really appreciate y'all and please thank you for having the mass candidate in place it's definitely an important part of keeping our kids in school so um looking forward to getting those vaccines so

056take care that's it okay catherine joswick and jeff santa crossy his own deck catherine joswick no jeff santa crossy and on deck we have susan womeldorf jeff can you hear us yes i can hear you i didn't hear you say my name uh thank you again i i won't give you my full speech after you've already made the decision to uh implement the math mandate and send it through october we really appreciate this decision my wife and i are supportive of math mandate and the fact that our county is observing the science and uh and observing the data that supports you know the effectiveness of math uh and how they're helping our kids stay in schools which is beneficial to their their growth as children and other education um both of our kids were virtual

057learners this last year and we're we're so delighted that they're back in school back with their friends learning in person so we want to keep it that way thank you for your for the math mandate uh continue to observe the data the trends hopefully this this peak of covet cases in jefferson county starts the flat cell due through some changes and wait for the vaccinations for our kids kids under 12 hopefully soon we'll have that opportunity so thank you again and thank you for your service thank you jeff uh susan walmandorf is up and then in person on deck we have dan fitzgerald okay susan can you hear us can you hear me now yes we can thank you you may hear some screaming in the background of a future jefferson county public student as

058well as the one who is a current student i do want to also write an additional thing from behalf of my family and my patients i'm a family practice physician in the area um helping out some in urgent care and we're just seeing a lot of kids who are sick luckily not a lot on ventilators i also want to echo maybe extending the mass mandate um maybe up until christmas i think uh this is the name of time we have to remember that not every kid will be able to be vaccinated immediately and from a very grateful weight um and being able to protect kids who can't vaccinate immediately would be would be great um in giving us all some time we are praying for the vaccine we thank you for the credit tracker uh

059i think he and dr reedy and everyone getting reflect for doing your best to do the right thing but i don't have to tell you about all the studies showing masks work and i think they do not work or they are optional they don't work when both parties aren't vaccinated i'm sorry they don't work as well when both parties are not masked so thank you very much and of course everyone that they can stay safe thank you susan oh last comment sorry very last comment someone mentioned uh co2 rising in masks i get loud among people five to ten times a day the only people that i see raised co2 on carbon dioxide on uh are patients with other problems um so i don't think that that and i've also read several studies showing that

060that's not happening due to the mass um there's a lot of misinformation out there we need to go to our physicians and our scientists who did it for a living um again thank you dan fitzgerald and on deck is karen buck right here good evening my name is dan fitzgerald some of you might know me as sherry fitzgerald's husband before i begin i'd like to tell you a little bit about myself i was a police officer for 29 years in montgomery county maryland 20 of those years i was a detective during my time as an officer i worked many cases with federal and local jurisdictions throughout the metropolitan region i investigated a broad range of criminal activity throughout my career and was successful in my mission because i understood people's motivations during my last assignment

061with montgomery county i worked in the vice unit a major part of my responsibilities was investigating criminal organizations involved in prostitution and human trafficking another responsibility of the office was public corruption although completely different crimes in both types of investigations people use their authority to manipulate and intimidate others to get what they want is in this vein that i'm here this evening it appears that a member of this board has personal vendetta against my wife and is using their position to undermine an attacker be careful in all right tolerance of this type of activity brings disrepute upon this body and in the long run might cause the board because of this i watched your last meeting and saw a member of the board seem to be concerned about public being informed of the board's expenditures

062i think that's a good idea why not create an easily accessible site to allow the public to view to cause the feeling which teachers frivolous complaints which drag the system through litigation even though grievances are public record why should a citizen have to search for on the internet for names when a teacher attempts to avoid corrective action plans takes paid leave this is a cost overrun for the school not only is the school system paying for the disgruntled teacher but has to pay for a substitute teacher at the cost of the legal fees to represent the school system as well as lost time for any witnesses that have had to attend hearings which may entail getting a substitute for them the county also has to pay mileage meals possibly hotel for those testifying and i

063assume an orbiter in some cases the grievances are taking the court and drag on for months if not years depending on how far the teacher wants to push the case this could be in the six figure range if several teachers are doing this the the cost would add up ex a lot also at the last meeting a board member raised a discussion about the repercussions for students missing school for five years what's the repercussions for a teacher missing months in these times the board has a lot on their plate and they shouldn't be using the press or social media finish up please to mount a smear and slander campaign against an employee statement joanne curran is on deck speaking of money if the school doesn't follow the cdc state schools opening protocols they have to

064give back the 762 million dollars to joe biden so this is never about your health this is about money plain and simple and excellent job on the fear-mongering tonight guys at the september 13th board meeting i reported the following situations in jefferson county and said it would get worse critical race theory black math genius the cruel masking of our children the school vaccine competitions possible vaccine clinics in our schools counseling department failures teachers and bus drivers quitting questionable school budget entries and pedophile teachers well it has gotten worse since september the 13th we've got google chromebooks with a camera feature you parents know about that camera feature right school personnel responding to a freedom of information request by saying what the hell is this guy's problem releasing employee social security numbers to a private individual

065taxpayers having to buy identity theft protection and a board of education employee publicly complaining about parents speaking out telling parents to face some hard truths this is the arrogance we're dealing with let's discuss freedom of information act it's called a foia f-o-i-a anyone can request a foia information under foia they have five days to respond the uh uh just a note the response is not supposed to be what the hell is this guy's problem a favorite trick of this board is to respond by sending hundreds of documents totally unrelated to what you're asking you're asking for this they give you this they give you this they give you hundreds of documents and you have to sift through it to piece together and look for your answer it's called a document dump this time their document

066dump trick backfired and they released social security numbers of 1200 employees and now we the taxpayers have to foot the bill for identity theft protection for years you do realize that identity theft protection is not 100 secure you get that right this is a self-inflicted train wreck here you people are out of control and here's a hard truth this board has the ability to turn all this mess around right now enough of the back room deals the incompetence and the arrogance put our children first parent pull your kids out by october the 4th just say no to this mess and vote next may the 10th thank you [Applause] joanne current and on deck is brittany crook well there are so many issues in our world it's hard to pick one tonight but the best place

067for regular folks to start is by improving their own family small world and that means the board of education 82 of our local taxes go to education as the saying goes follow the money for that amount our students should be at the top rather than the bottom of the list where does all the money go you can find out it's all public if you dig school is not what it used to be they're teaching things you wouldn't believe even on our own jefferson county let me explain you've probably heard the term being woke it's a term used by democrats or socialists as they openly call themselves they think they all woke up to seeing how much better life in america would be if the government ran everything because we've seen all through history how great

068life is under the rule of a leader with no constitution to follow instead of being free like we are in this terrible country it's no wonder that masses of americans are trying to escape and make their way to better countries we better hurry up and finish building that wall before too many people escape from here surely our world history classes have taught how great all the other socialist communist civilizations have been and how they flourish even to this day they really are almost heaven not here in miserable west virginia freedom is so horrible did you ever have the vocabulary word irony in school but this is partially our fault for sitting idly by while the damn socialists invaded our teachers colleges and then our schools shame on us and we americans must now wake ourselves

069up sos save our students who are being taught things like critical race theory which in its simplest form teaches races to races to distrust each other and keep to their own kind or the whole gender confusion being pushed on children when they really just want to be kids or the poor or the pornography fourth graders in nearby counties are eating i do know there are books in our schools that children are not allowed to take home wonder why parents if you don't think it's happening ask your own children ask your neighbors some parents said that the first week of school in their school was about feelings answering questions how it would feel to be bully or made fun of or embarrassed have you ever made anyone else feel bad or sad kids have lost so

070much academics at their virtual school and this is what the school thinks is the priority really tonight though i can't put the 20th anniversary of 9 11 out of my mind what were our children taught about this just a few weeks ago not much apparently since they were busy talking about their feelings i watched plenty of news about that horrible day in the 20 years following one reporter asked college students whose only resource for learning about 9 11 was in school most said they had very little coverage of it even fewer knew the players who attacked where why and what the great first responders did they mostly spit out cutesy woke words like how we should just understand each other and not judge do they even know why we take our shoes off at airports

071or only bring three ounces of liquids or go through scanners i bet not poor prep for real adulthood disturbing on all levels i have mistakenly assumed we were safe from this nonsense in west virginia but i was wrong asleep and assuming and you know what happens when you assume and then i woke up brittany crook and dr chris is on deck it's crocker crocker i'm sorry that's all right [Applause] hi my name is brittany crocker um i wanted to address the board i guess now since the mass mandate has been put in place i want to know if you guys are going to follow west virginia state policy title series 106-025-a on standards for basic and specialized health care that went into effect on july 1st 2021 article 310 states health assessment process by which

072the certified school rn obtained students health data the assessment is comprehensive systematic and continuous to allow the certified school rn to make a nursing diagnosis and plan for interventions with the student family school staff and licensed prescriber article 311 health care plan written documents developed by the certified school rn which included a nursing diagnosis is individualized to the student's health needs and consists of special goals and interventions deliading and the school nurse's actions delegating procedures and students role in self-care article 328 stock medication medication purchased by the school system under the authorization a licensed prescriber with medical standing protocols and procedures for administrations to student staff and other persons as allowed by code and policies such as opioid antagonists and epimethrin are the schools providing masks during the school time and are they constantly being

073swapped out for dirty ones article 5-1 for students needing specialized health care procedures the certified school rn shall access the students review the student review the license prescribed orders assure implementation of needed health and safety procedures this assessment shall be completed before initial school attendance following any attendance during which the health condition may have changed necessitating reevaluation do we have enough nurses to access each student for mass because they are specialized healthcare procedures all students receiving special health care procedures during the school day and school-related events shall require a health care plan do we have health care plans for all the students because of the mass mandate arctic 7-5 the certified square end must develop monitor chain systems with appropriate time frames to ensure safety and effective monitoring of the assignment and delegation of all

074basic end or specialized health care procedures do we have a plan on how to monitor the students for their safety article 8 2 an individual record with a table will be made for each student needing a specialized health care procedure it will include the date and time of the procedure was the date the time the procedure was performed any notes or events and or interactions in the person's signature performing supervising the procedure i would like to note if you look at osha.gov they say the definition of a face mask is in the surgical medical procedure dental or isolation mess also if you check out portal.ct.gov they give some examples of specialized health care procedures such as asthma allergies oxygen therapy and pulse oximeter whatever all of which can be amplified by wear and mask my

075questions to the board of ed what plan do you have in place to accommodate these policies stated above for the specialized health care procedures for all the kids [Applause] dr chris it says here that he may be in person or maybe on zoom jason can you look for him on zoom please jennifer cross is on that dr speech can you hear us sorry can you guys hear me yes yes all right all right here we are good all right so far come there in person i'm currently uh working so um for those i don't know about this piece i'm a practicing position here in the panhandle i've been for the past nine years uh last time i dressed the aboard last month uh just collection of my kids attended after some kind of public schools

076they've done so their entire academic careers um and the views that [Music] because apparently not popular uh first time for every eligible adult to receive the vaccine is the single best mitigation tool for stopping the spread of severe illness uh with code 19. um following my comments after last month's meeting i received many other comments from fellow community members questioning my integrity my intelligence my parenting my ability to practice safe medicine i received threatening phone calls to my place of business promising legal action against my medical license plus phone calls for potential patients who were abusing my care well i understand that school mandates um are very sensitive subject i think we always remember that in the end we're all fellow community members concerned parents and even though our opinions may differ we should have

077the right to express them without theater or retribution however i will never play the victim and i'll never cease advocating for what i believe is best for my children no matter what the consequences are um following the institution this will match men on august 20th most coded metrics continue to worsen in our county and only in recent days appeared until we perhaps reached the peak of both county and statewide so after five weeks of masculinity enforcement they appear to have accomplished nothing cases and hospitalizations of vulnerable populations particularly older unvaccinated individuals continue to rise over that period despite the mitigation effort all we truly accomplished was perhaps making ourselves a little bit better by forcing masking of our least vulnerable population best involving cobia 19 is the only single metric that any of us truly

078care about since the beginning of the pandemic deaths among those aged less than 16 years of age and western remains at zero deaths among those ages less than 30 years of age 13 deaths among us over age 1446 in our state nationwide according to the most recent cdc provisional accounts there have been 464 covet-involved deaths among children aged 17 under keep in mind that this demographic represents over 73 million americans in that same time period the cities can report 856 deaths from non-covenant that same age nearly twice the number of deaths compared to copay 19. when compared to the estimated 1 1280 child deaths during the swine flu pandemic of 2009-2010 a pediatric kobe 19 illness is five times less deadly than the swine flu yet during the swine flu there were no moves for

079distance learning whole class quarantines or mass mandates and all classes are still being quarantined um for one positive test despite the mass mandate children are continuing to miss in-person instruction the exact opposite state of goal of board of education superintendent when the initial mass main day was implemented based on your vote tonight the board of education continues to deny signs and title and fear teaching our children that their friends are sick that the airline is possible with the very adults they are supposed to be acting in their best interests that act out of political expediency the purpose together thank you for your time [Applause] good evening my name is jennifer krauss i'm the mother of five children three in jefferson county public schools currently to the parent who suggested that those of us who don't

080want to send our children to school wearing masks should go ahead and feel okay to keep them at home thank you but no thank you dr reedy wanted time to look at the covet data from august 23rd first day of school to september 27th today the total deaths in west virginia of people with covet is 361 statewide jefferson county deaths 12. the age breakdowns on those jefferson county deaths ages zero to fifty zero ages fifty one to seventy four seventy one and up eight if masks work why aren't they working dr reedy did not speak on behalf of the county health department he does not speak on behalf of the county health department the health department made that fact crystal clear shortly after the school board meeting the health department states that the masking decision

081should be left to the parents why are you still pretending that he speaks for our health department when he does not why are you forcing this on our children i'm sorry i'm incensed i'm furious why are you so insistent on keeping parents out of the schools i think i know why why are you sending home entire classes of children denying them their right to an education when they're not sick if anyone is still worried about the virus go get your vaccine you can get it anywhere it is time no it is past time to get off this endless highway of mandates and controls where is the exit grant to normal please normal means no forced masking kids are sick and tired of this nonsense they want to see their friends smiling faces they want to

082laugh and play and learn how can they learn when they can't hear their teachers voices their truths are losing their muscles like this normal means let parents back into schools end your ridiculous mandate tonight excuse me i thought we had the chance to say something before you voted i thought you were listening to us silly me excuse me excuse me i'm talking right and to those parents who want to mask themselves and their children you have that right send your child to school with the mask but do not think for one minute that you have any business telling me what is best for my children forcing children to wear face diapers is unsanitary and it's dehumanizing yes it is to you parents i feel for you if you're that concerned to send your child back

083to school where most of the people are breathing fresh air please feel free to keep your child at home because i'm not speaking for everybody i'm speaking for my daughter in her class today my child goes to blue ridge elementary and she does not have a teacher she has not had a teacher since the beginning of the school year they knew before the school started that she was not going to have her teacher all year we were told by the last minute uh two teachers that had to come to meet the teacher night last minute because they had nothing to do with the class that they were not oh we assure you we're going to get somebody this is thursday night before school starts she still does not have a teacher she had a sub

084it's been horrible that it's complete anarchy i'm not even gonna i can't even the children are getting hurt the children are not learning my child comes home every day i say how's your day it was chaotic it was a mess have a good day at school today honey how am i gonna do that it's a crazy mess i couldn't finish my lunch today mom because the kids were so bad we were late to lunch she doesn't have a teacher they did remove the teacher that was not handling things we do not have a teacher my child's test scores came home the other day from last year she's behind she was virtual last year we've had five weeks of school and she has not learned anything she's gonna fall farther behind i have already talked to

085the principal about moving her but that doesn't help all the other children in that class i wrote an email last friday to some members of the board i have not received a response my understanding is hearsay my understanding is that there is a full-time teacher being paid for this position they have no intention of bringing her back she was not so great apparently but they're keeping her on the books which is denying my child a full-time teacher no one is going to come in there for full-time pay without him for full-time work without full-time tech it's not fair to that teacher to ask her to do that so now my child is just in limbo with no teacher behind from virtual and no response from the board hi i'm danielle byrne i am a parent

086of a student that goes to blue ridge elementary the same fourth grade class that dana was just speaking of but my child was hurt he was hurt by another student because this class doesn't have a teacher there is no constant there is no structure there is no nothing to this class you know what the student was told that hurt my child with a pair of scissors cut him because she was turned around like this cutting at his desk had no you know no reason to be doing so um that's not okay to me as a parent that's not okay that is not whatsoever one bit okay i came here to the board and i was told to speak with someone that i don't really feel like has much say um something needs to be done

087i am removing my child from that class because that that's not it's not a good place in there the kid's safety is at risk um like i said there's no structure the principal herself doesn't even have control of the situation there's something has to be done though for these other kids my child will be moved but that's not to say what's going on for the rest of those kids these kids are behind because of virtual or in school being put on quarantine what have you they're behind the teachers my kid comes home and tells me i've only learned three things this year three things and we've been in school this is the sixth week of school now that's not okay and if i can see it with my child i know darn well that all

088of those other children are experienced experiencing the same thing now i like as dana had said i know it's to do with the teacher that is being on the roster that she is the teacher but that is not fair to these kids these kids deserve an education do they deserve to get further behind no they don't um this is jefferson county schools and they need to do something you need to do something do better for our kids the math they don't work but either way here nor there we need to be better for our kids we are two parents out of that classroom that come here tonight i can only imagine what the other kids are going through but he is my son was one child out of i know for a fact six to

089seven students that have been hurt in there that's not okay and substitutes are when we when we get a different substitute the work that they're doing they're just checking the work they're not making sure that it's correct i know for a fact that some of the work that was actually written incorrectly but it was checked so i guess we're just getting participation grades in fourth grade no that's not okay we need to find a teacher and we need to find one asap for these kids thank you judy hambert and hartfield fuller is on back i want to thank you for the opportunity to speak tonight with the teacher shortage increasing i want to share some items that might attract new teachers besides high salaries teachers like all employees like to work in a non-hostile work

090environment teachers need a safe place to share their concerns without the fear of retaliation for reporting misdeeds of fellow staff members teachers want the right to not be touched by the fellow staff members is excuse me teachers want the right not to be touched by fellow staff members i'm sorry especially the supervisors teachers want the right to be not to be verbally shamed and or intimidated by the staff especially supervisors teachers want to see the records of how school funding is spent to keep the staff from tampering with evidence of misdeeds by keeping access to the evidence from others who want to protect their friends or from from their consequences for their actions these should there should be financial records kept to the staff for treating false evidence especially false evaluations teachers want to find

091the following qualifications appreciated in this staff members honesty integrity cooperation to work as a team to educate the students teachers want to follow teachers teachers want fellows teachers who are capable to teach the subject matter that the students need to learn hiring qualified teachers as permanent staff ensures salary and benefits and consistency of staff the main goal as teachers is to teach students to be problem solvers not to seek to be friends with a big with a bully to resolve problems you have two people working in this school district who practice racketeering hiring this compels a teacher to stay or to leave the school district laura sutton and amy lawrence these two people you cannot use names they've used a lot of things against me [Applause] barb fuller hi my name is barbara fuller and

092we keep on hearing that we desperately need teachers subs and bus drivers how can we fulfill these positions when these people don't want to work here they do not feel like they are respected it's sad support personnel in particular think that they are treated as second-class citizens even those who do apply are finding out that they're being turned away from jefferson and berkeley counties because well maybe it's because the human resources from both counties have been communicating amongst themselves blacklisting qualified teachers just one of the things that i've heard this past week as my ears are bleeding every single day many associated with our schools resent the fact that this board continues to create high paying administrative positions and giving raises instead of taking care of our teachers and our service personnel because our teachers

093and our service personnel are really what keep this county going not our board office yeah thank you why do we have outside counsel when one is provided by the county i don't know that hundred and sixty thousand dollar salary could be put towards classrooms go figure it could go towards supplies for our children how about we get rid of a lawyer hired by you guys and fill it with someone who won't disrespect public citizens because we all know what is this guy's problem thanks [Applause] okay next we go into the consent agenda is there a motion to approve the consent agenda i was supposed to speak i didn't get my name called i signed up last week okay what's your name samantha archer i had signed up last week i emailed in um because miss

094skinner sent me a link well and i told you i did have your name that you had called but i messaged you back and told you i would be here and i would like but you did i was here she was here i was here the whole time i've been back here the whole time no one said anything to me let her have her you may go ahead and speak thank you my name is samantha i'm here simply well you guys already made your decision that you are going to keep the mass mandates in place fine fine and dandy but here's the thing you need to know these masks are germ playhouse for these kids they collect bacteria all the things y'all are saying it protects us from is droplets droplets that get caught in

095these massive these kids are putting on their face 24 7 putting the spit that's coming off their mouths right back up on their face it's disgusting i've seen kids literally sneeze in these masks and have to wear them all day long it is horrible to put them through that you all want to talk about protect them from coven well these masks are making them their immune systems weaker it's making it harder for them to breathe my kids come home with migraines 24 7. i know children that come home with nosebleeds all the time from wearing them all damn day all day excuse me it's ridiculous okay okay not to mention when you're wearing this who are you behind the map the kids can't see they don't get their individuality they don't get to be the

096person that they want to grow up to be they have to be a person with a mask on it's ridiculous not to mention how are kindergartners supposed to learn your teachers are talking like this you can't hear them you can't see their mouth they can't learn their abcs they can't pull it down to say hey guys this is how you properly say a letter it's ridiculous their test scores are dropping because of these masks if they work so well last year when you had them in place all year inside outside lunchtime everything they were eating in their classrooms why was coveted still going around why was it getting worse these masks are not doing anything for our children and you made the wrong decision and honestly when you have kids that are sitting there literally

097straight-a students crying they don't want to go back to school that's a problem yeah my kids were straight a students all very life the whole entire elementary year they have been straight students they're amazing smart brilliant children my daughter is suffering in her grades because in the test scores i got back from last year she was in person for half the year that is the lowest they have ever been she's barely passed and it's because she couldn't focus she was having migraine selection right and when i bring this up to the board and say i would like to get a medical exemption i'm told it won't matter anyways because y'all won't accept it that's not right to me you guys are not doctors you are not nurses you don't take care of these kids when

098they're sick we do we as parents do and all you're doing is hurting them more it breaks my heart that we have people like you guys behind the desk not caring what us parents have to say when we're the ones paying for y'all [Music] yes hi i'm tracy cox i was here i did not sign up with you i said an email well actually and i spoke to someone to speak so again if i would be given a couple seconds my son attends jefferson county schools he also i did call to ask if he could speak as well but it's the same situation if parents would allow their will want their children to wear masks they should be able to be given that option the school board again we listened to dr reedy and he

099gave his science and then there was another doctor who gave science if we're trusting the science and going by what parents want for their kids let the kid let the parents decide what their children should do because those are the people who again like that mom said we have to take care of them we have to take care of them when they do get sick the bacteria that grows in these bands from food spit and everything else saliva not washing them how many parents are properly caring for the mass how many teachers are telling the kids to renew after lunch power so when you decide before the parents get to speak that's just rude and it's it is uncaring and it's very hurtful to me i definitely would love to take my kid out of

100school i work full-time and i wanted him to be in the school system here so now it's very hard for me to decide to keep him here because you guys don't have his best interest at heart i don't want my child my any of my kids to be taught or uh managed by a board who doesn't care about him it should be up to the parents that's what the board that's what the health board said let the parents decide let the parents decide let the parents decide if you want your children to wear a mask send them with a mask if you want your child to be vaccinated let them get vaccinated i don't want my kid to get jabbed i don't and i can tell you why i have friends who were sick from

101getting vaccinated we've had covet we did and we do believe in natural immunity we do believe that if we do catch it if it's going to happen it's going to happen we do believe that people who want to keep their families home and keep them hidden and scared and be raised that way that's what they decide to do with their children but having us breathe this in all day spitting in this thing it's not good for you all right and i i feel for you all you're sitting there you're halfway sleep then you have people here thank you and it's it it's it's it's hurtful and again so to me i am hurt as a parent that you didn't listen to us prior to voting and a unanimous decision to say i before we even

102had a chance to to speak that is not considerate of what what we pay for we pay to have our voices heard yes there are parents who want their kids a mask put your kids in bask send them in seven masks if you want i don't want my child in not one mask because he doesn't like it and he can tell you for himself what it feels like his name is jackson cox i was gonna say but what if you sneeze in the mask and there's snot and you're sick you're still going trying to get yourself sick even longer and what's the point of wearing he's eight an eight-year-old knows this he does he's smart trust me people i i love my childhood death i'm never gonna do anything to hurt him trust me and

103if i believe that him wearing a mask would save his life i would make him wear it every day but it's not he's still going to catch covet even the vaccine my girlfriend she had coconut against her better judgment she got the vaccine and as she was sicker than what she was when she had copies she wrote her children's her children notes don't get let anybody force you to get this vaccine because it's not going to save your life take care of yourself teach these kids so exercise eat properly do what you have to do to take care of yourself this mask is not going to save your life the vaccine ain't gonna save your life [Applause] okay we're moving to the consent agenda is there a motion to approve the consent agenda second agenda

104discussion oh yeah i have some questions um 18 position creation position change you can somebody explain that can you explain that the number 18 yeah okay um before i address that i did want to let you know that on line 17 there is a deletion that individual has rescinded the transfer from the current position to a new position so there's a deletion number 18 i'm going to combine 18 and 19 as well as 23 because those are all three of the same ideas and concepts so due to increase of demands and department needs we have a number of service categorized employees that are conducting more and more professional level duties it's a position changed because it's not an additional position to the central office it's changing the um secretary rule to a human resources assistant

105and then one for an attendance assistance due to the level of performance responsibilities that they are taking care of there's also no extension to the contract days they still remain um 261 days for 23 the secretary 3 to the secretary 3 accountant 3 that again the position already exists we are just needing to change the position title and the level of position pupil services is also more or less special education and they have a 20 plus million dollar budget that that department is responsible for overseeing and with one secretary in that department accounting duties are absolutely essential for that position and in order to perform that level of secretarial positions the accounting designation has to be added to it so that it's not out of classic classification so with classification it also affects 18 and

10619 as well because if we are unable to reclass them through this process we would have to go through the um the reclassification process and bring it back to you for legal reasons um so therefore um the positions already are in existence we're just asking to change them to reflect the level of responsibilities and oversight that these positions are responsible for is it is it accurate to say that the people in at least two of these are already doing the work and that's correct they're just going to get paid for it now that's correct yeah they're out of class promotions for service personnel correct yep and it's part of the career service letter that we pitched as well and got the feedback from the staff that it's something that they support um so they are

107operating out of classification right now so once we reclass them into these roles then the position would then um that they currently hold would be eliminated and we wouldn't backfill those so then i don't understand that i i just feel like um we recreated that or dr gibson created that position back in the spring for director and um why do you need now a coordinator and also i i just feel like personally i don't know anything about the virtual i've asked to see the virtual to get an idea how many students are you know being served virtually um yeah so those are some of my questions yeah and just to answer the first part and then dave's going to come in and talk to the specific questions about the program um we do have the

108the director position and um that position oversees cte virtual learning option pathways there's there's um several alternative programs that this position oversees with the bringing on of the virtual program which is in a completely separate entity it was always our understanding and need and part of the discussions earlier that there would be somebody who would need to have more of a focused oversight on that specific jva program however wanted to see how everything went with the jpe program to see if that was going to be needed or not and due to the volume of enrollment it is necessary to add some additional supports in order to help with the success of it just a little bit of background um so jv jva currently has 400 students and 43 teachers um there are only 400 students

109is that what you said 400 students so it's about the size of a large elementary school yes so um two of those positions that were originally in the budget for jva one of them was actually called principal and one was called and one is a counselor neither of those positions have been filled the reason for the principal vacancy at this point is that we wanted to see what was needed we wanted to give it time for the school year to start to see what was needed and so this person uh this position is going to not just work with jva but all virtual learning and there's what's going on is that there's a lot of students coming in and out not of jva which is full but of virtual learning so parents uh are opting

110to go virtual and then some parents are coming back from virtual into the school building and it's a it's a definitely a lot to to manage um they're also our somo department has been working a lot with those requests because many of those are medical requests to be either virtual or go back to the school this particular person is also going to be a point person for if we do go completely virtual to make sure that things are working the way they should be i can tell you that right now as students quarantine there's a need to make sure that devices and instruction continues to move forward and so that person can help bridge the gap between the schools and the central office and as well as well as being a link between jva and

111the technology department so there's a variety i mean there's a variety of virtual students there are there's jva there's students that are on odysseyware those are families that really did not want to uh send their children to school do covid and so we've been working with them in their own odysseyware there are homebound students there are home school students so there's a lot of students that are taking advantage of virtual instruction so after considering all that we we wanted to bring to you a virtual learning coordinator so you're you haven't filled the principal and counselor does that mean in lieu of in lieu of the principal position we're asking for a virtual learning coordinator um but but this it just seems like the person that was in that previous position the whole idea was well

112we're gonna just add this and now name it director so the whole idea was to give more pay was because there was more responsibility now you're coming back after just a couple minutes and saying okay well now there's less you know less responsibilities so why is it why is this director i don't understand that those positions were already included in the jba budget when the program was developed it's not anything that's above and beyond what was already wasn't okay so the principal position that was in the budget what we wanted to do was look at what was needed in the program not just jba but virtual learning so after we took a look at a comprehensive look we feel like it needs to be a virtual coordinator and not a principal i understand that um

113is it possible to get a presentation about actually what this virtual school is all about because i i have tried to look myself and um i'm waiting for a response from dr gibson as to whether i can look at one of these not while kids are there or look at anybody's names but to get an idea are these live classes that are being taught or are they virtual because they're you know often there's positions that we're approving for these um adjunct virtual teachers but then i'm told they teach at night so i know the kids aren't there so is this asynchronous and you have 43 teachers it is a mix of synchronous and asynchronous learning primarily at the elementary level at synchronous primarily at the secondary level i personally feel that um without knowing more

114about this virtual and how it works and given the fact that we keep adding more positions we're not adding positions this one is already i understand um but i just it's for me personally i'm uncomfortable with that um and why is it that we haven't really had a any information about the virtual about the virtual program like how it works and about jva yeah yeah i thought you had a presentation but we could certainly put another one i don't i don't have an idea of how how it works really i mean you're telling me now that it's a mixture of asynchronous and synchronous when i come back and do my presentation i'll be glad to just focus on jva i would like to make the motion to pull position 24 until we get more information

115about that position there's a notion on the table right now oh you need to divide it up or down and then you can make a motion unless someone would like to make an amendment to their motion i can hear what you say would you like to amend your motion to pull the position off for the virtual coordinator or leave your motion on the floor as it is no i think we'll leave it like it is okay we need to vote on the motion as it is at this time and the motion is to um take the concealer other questions besides yeah yeah um so that's for the um the finance i miss maroon is here i just thought well since you're here maybe you could answer this because i i keep kind of asking about

116this and it's not clear about maybe you can explain better so that the public understands um this other column why can't the public know more about specific expenses like what certain expenses are is it for textbooks or is it for you know whatever bread you're talking about the vendor and description awesome okay i'll do my best um so you're talking about when we post up the purchase orders and the checks that are written and the data that is extracted from the financial system to put on the public agenda yes so that the public can see to have an idea because there's a name and my skinner said they could google that and even though i've googled i still don't know what some of the expenses are and i understand i've been here 16 years and

117i know the numbers and can translate that what i will say is tonight i also have you know a newspaper publication and two years ago the state department did require that all of our expenditures down to every detailed level is posted so tonight part of the packet is in the newspaper on an annual basis any expenditure that is greater than 250. is listed by that vendor but you are correct in saying that if you see walmart and it doesn't say supplies you may not be able to that might not be a good example but to connect those two dots what is difficult is that those descriptions are on there but we have 150 million dollar budget and we have so many people that have input into that budget those descriptions would vary um they may

118create um you know inconsistencies and a lot of questions but it is completely transparent data and if you can't get that information it's always you're always able to ask that question and get an answer and if you don't you should um and i know it's a little less this is for the public i mean i i i just feel like it would make sense if the public could see what some of this means like you know if you could give me an example i mean i understand because there are descriptions on there and the invoices typically do give some indication of it well i mean i asked you for some um i did respond to you this time oh yeah i'm just using that as an example yeah you responded quickly and i don't remember

119which ones they are because i've gotten 500 emails today about the masks um superior industry correct and i only know because i've been here for a long time but i do know what superior industries is and i do know that we send our mops um as the most efficient way for using public funds we do send our mops to the laundered and cleaned and then returned to the schools oh i know what it is because you told me i'm just saying that i agree i mean the city of ransom so people see that what on earth do we pay in the city of rancho i um i don't know the solution i do know that the state auditor did mandate that all of those expenditures are now also posted on the public website um regularly

120or just once a year once a year annually because i understand tonight i'm going to present unaudited financial statements that will then become audited financial statements and we don't want to post them before an auditor has vetted verified and make sure that we're legally expending those funds in an appropriate way what's the point of presenting unaudited um so that you know that the uh what the on this is my representation of ethically and budget to actuals and how the financials going down to a deep diving level of detail are presented and then we have an expert who then comes in looks at that data looks at the internal controls that we have in place and basically give us a grade on those and also in that period that's their opportunity if there would be a

121mistake or an error or something that it didn't meet a threshold um or gatsby which is governmental withstanding uh accounting standards boards if i didn't meet that then the auditor would consult with me um they would get i don't need to get off track yeah well they would give you an opinion they would come back to you and say uh we've reviewed your audited financial statements we are either going to give you a clean bill of health or we're going to give you a qualified opinion or a man a management comment which would then be your opportunity to come back to to me and say i don't like how we're doing the finances and we need to change the things that the auditors recommend it i'll i'll ask you about that when it comes to

122i'm sorry and i mean i will strategize with you and me as far as transparency i grew up here went to blue ridge went to harpers ferry graduated from jefferson invested in this county as much as anybody else and i want it to be transparent because i want our community to understand that i do take seriously and ethically the expenditures that are in the system too i'm not suggesting that you don't i'm just trying to see why it's so difficult to get that and yeah maybe just explain what the codes are is that possible easier there's a chart of accounts i can very easily give you that give you even a presentation one-on-one with you and i i know not by the vendor but when you tell me the account code for example superior industries

123i know 126 is a maintenance department and i know a 6-1 object code is supplies for maintenance and i i normally look at that number and know it but i've done it for a long time it's not easy i transitions from outside of the school system it's it is complicated um but it it is really transparent it may have to cross map those data systems we are a little behind in technology and making sure that all of our systems talk to each other um but we are doing the best that we can in that that area so is it possible to list those codes for the public absolutely 61 is supply maintenance that would help a lot actually we could put that at the front of everything that we post prior to the purchase orders

124and prior to the checks just like a cheat sheet um and that would at least help them understand one more step before they have to ask the question i think it's a good suggestion i don't know if you need a motion for that gary any other questions any questions okay the motion on the table in a second is to approve the consent agenda as presented with the deletion of number 17. all in favor say aye opposed no no motion carries there is no unfinished business new business uh fiscal year 2021 unaudited financial statement presentation gonna take me just a second to get moving on [Music] we need a rescue pardon me we need a restroom break can we take it oh yeah absolutely that'll be a great this is a great time for it and

125just so everyone knows i did practice before i came and with the zoom and the uh video it is actually my challenge here but um as we're waiting i wanted to let everyone know that if they're interested here's a copy of the financial statements the uh powerpoint presentation it doesn't have the current logo on it yeah it's coming um in addition um i've also this is published in our newspaper on an annual basis i've also made a copy of pieces of financial statements and every expenditure for the end thank you oh sure we haven't gone anywhere uh there you go [Applause] here good evening board members public tonight i am here to give a presentation on our unauthorized financial statements and which is the second favorite time of the year the budget is my first

126favorite time and since i've never had more than one person in the audience i give a little bit more of an overview than what i normally do currently in fiscal year 22 we have seven funds and most of our funds have designations we have special revenue funding that is our title programs and our special education programs and any federally funded programs that reside there this year we added our esurf or what some people refer to as the coveter cares funding that is now in fund 71 and has a special designation we have fund 51 which accommodates construction typically local but this year we have a grant to grants from the sba one to update ta lowry's hvac system and the other uh to help support the two new school builds that we will have we

127also have fund 31 which is a bond and bond construction money which the public generously approved 47 million to help with the facilities in our school system all of those funds are self-balancing funds and when i say self-balancing what i mean is that revenue equals the project expenditures that we are are using um and with that said tonight's presentation um the audit and the audit paperwork does have those funds in it but the focus is on our general operating fund which is primarily where we fund our school systems general operating expenses or most of our teachers salaries our supplies and anything else that we have in the school system um with that i am going to review revenue and then expenditures and then talk a little bit about what we have when we finish up

128the end of the year and close it out and what we are projecting to have as a carryover and then how we expect expect to use that carryover carrying forward to fiscal year 22. revenue i'm going to just give you some highlights i'm not really going to read it to you but basically our revenue projections came in at 1.5 million over what was expected and 1.44 to the total actual budget um our taxes came in at 594 000 in total net collect collections to the um school system um that is about 200 000 higher than what we have seen over the past two years typically we collect about 300 000 greater than what we expect the one thing i want to highlight to on the board is the property taxes and how this presentation splits

129out current year and all other collections i want to make sure that you understand that in a school system some people do pay their taxes on time and some people pay them late and when we budget we budget that everybody will pay their taxes in the current year and sometimes that falls short when you see the negative 335 000 i mean some people didn't pay their taxes by the deadline or when we closed out our fiscal year however all other collections includes people who pay them at a later date so sometimes if you have to make choices your property taxes might not be the first thing you pay so instead of paying into the current year that it's due you might pay it next year what that does for us is it allows us to

130collect those back taxes and hopefully break even on what the collections are and surprisingly even in a pandemic most of our our community are still paying their taxes at some level investment earnings are up slightly primarily not from interest rates because they are down however we did have a 47 million dollar bond construction that was it's done on a premium those funds were deposited at state treasurer's office in may after we closed on that bond therefore providing some additional interest to our school system and drawing on those funds um the one thing i do want to mention is just as a note on the revenue from state sources our school aid formula is how we receive a good portion of our funding it's a 10-step formula to determine how we receive that funding and also

131this year we have i think four retirement systems our tdc which is our retirement two system a total defined contribution system had a uh full reconciliation and it was returned to the school system 900 so that is factored into that additional 1.5 million and what they did is in our school system when you work you have to um at the time that the plan was implemented you had to have five years invested in the school system before you would mature and we would have that contribution if you separate from employment prior to that time frame we still as the employer had contributed that match you're allowed to take your funds that you contributed but periodically they'll do it what they call a clean suite and evaluate any of the funds that the county contributed and

132return those funds to us and so we will not have retirements associated with them other than that at the bottom is fund transfers the school system which when i came i was not as familiar with fund fund accounting we have transfers and we have designations that we can do transfers in are from any door board designated funds is a mechanism from taking the funds from fund 51 which is when we board designate those funds and we'll see them at the end of the presentation they're set aside the board designates them enough no one in the system including dr gibson is allowed to undesignate them without coming back to the board and asking to have them undesignated or having some formal action on that um indirect costs are um when we receive federal funds there is

133a cost associated indirectly with managing those funds and we are allowed from those federal programs to transfer those funds into our general operating funds and meet teacher salaries or school supplies for use of those funds there's no restrictions on them enter fund transfers which you can see is 2.6 million house bill 206 freed up a lot of money for our school system for flexibility prior to hospital 206 two years ago a lot of our funds were designated in fund 61 and they were restricted house bill 206 said we're no longer going to tell you that you have to replace the bus every 12 years we're going to unrestrict those funds we're going to allow you to keep them in your general operating fund and we are going to trust that the process you put in

134place will keep our children safe without being dictated that information from the state level salaries and benefits i'm not going to go a lot into this other than to tell you total salaries and benefits finished with a positive 5.2 million dollars so two things that i will say is um with a pandemic and this is our first all of us our first experience in it um this but or this financial statement is projecting a year where we had not operated at 100 and what i mean by that is that we did not have bus trips so our bus operators did not get extra pay we did not do substituting or need substituting as much because for the past two years we this is 22 is the first year that we're back in school and operating

135at a fully even though it's a different school system 100 in addition our cares funding allowed us to transfer those positions that did our virtual instruction over to fund 71 freeing up the general fund salary and benefits for a positive variance expenditures i'm going to run down them i'm not going to highlight too many things but what i am going to tell you almost every explanation when you dive down into why did we have such a significant variance of unused funds will translate back to covet in some way shape or form which it's not easy but it's true um not being in the building 25 of the time meant that our electorate's bill was a hundred thousand dollars less than what it was in 2019 and we know that the electric uh cost has gone

136up and so that wouldn't make sense however when you're not using it and your uh you know your custodians are turning out the lights and helping you to save those funds it translates into additional funds not being used for this fiscal year contracted services is usually a high dollar cost and out of state instruction is also a high dollar cost and both of those when you're only operating at what i'm considering 75 um for a fiscal year it translates into additional funds that were not expended in comparison to the budget that we set at the beginning of the school year now the audit packet the unaudited financial statements i think i gave you the newspaper publication is 74 pages long with notes in within three months it will be um audited and posted up on

137our website every year since i have been there on our website is every expenditure and every presentation and every audited financial statement that the school system has had at the end you can see that when you look at just revenue and expenditures 9 million of unused expenses and a million and a half of additional revenue unexpected or projected most important thing is how does our fund balance end for our general operating fund balance we have 15.5 million when we close our books and we look at our revenue and we look at our expenditures for fiscal year 21 when we end that fund balance we'll have 15.5 million dollars of what we call carryover from that carryover we have certain obligations that we have to set aside uh prepaid items um we've already committed to pre-paying

138some postage and we can't take that back there are certain other items that we prepay in advance of extending them so we pre-paid the postage and then we draw it down over a period of time for designated projects 377 are fund 11 designated projects and the majority of that is 250 000 because a decline in enrollment we no longer receive senate bill 408 funds which is funding that we have received for growth in our growth for our county from our students and therefore we transferred those funds in there to assist with some construction projects that we've been handling over the years once those two things are assigned and i'm going to jump to the bottom of this slide and say encumbrances or purchases at the year end that possibly we had supplies on back order

139or commitments that had not been fully invoiced and therefore we carry those pos over and we pay them in the next fiscal year and those are commitments that we can't break but we need to subtract from what our carryover balance in addition like last year we've done an assignment for half of those funds for what we felt was our highest needs this year one being jva which is a million dollars we are expending a lot of our fund 71 e surf cares covets monies to operate our virtual program from from completely data standpoint um i think what we've done is we are pivoting um and transitioning our education system to meet the needs of some of our students and some of our community members who are pleased with this type of an operation but basically

140it's a new business it's a new business and i know you keep hearing we want more money we want more money but you can't start a new business and you can't be cutting edge and you can't attract students who learn in a different variety of ways without putting forth that money doesn't mean that we shouldn't look at it at periods and evaluate what is working what is not working are our students being successful or our parents happy for uh i mean 400 students is i don't know 10 of our student base so we need to make sure that those community members are happy and we need to make sure if they feel safe by not coming into a physical building that we can meet the needs of every student that's in our county and every

141parent who needs us our digital one-to-one initiative we will be adding an additional two million dollars to fund making sure every student every staff member can access if they need access if they need internet that they have a device that if the device gets broken that we can replace it that they can get all the needs that our instructional team would like them to have buildings and fields mr osborne i know you're going to be very happy about this dr gibson asked that we could set aside some additional monies to do that so what we've set aside are asking to assign from this budget is an additional 1 million for hvac systems that would be like a capital budget and preparing for you know times when we don't this is the first opportunity that you

142have the ability to set up these funds and have recurring costs have a funding source without begging peter to pay paul it will also fund an additional 750 000 to our athletic fields 750 000 to set aside to repair our leaky roofs and 000 to make sure that we have safe vehicles and buses for our children and for our staff on that they don't have no heat in the vehicles that they're driving to service our buildings when they are in them um on other than that uh as you can see when we come down to our unassigned fund balance we will still have seven and a half million in our general operating fund and that's a good thing and also it is it's good to be able to prepare for the changes that we're making

143in our system um last sound i have is what i'm calling additional revenue designations and i think bd for me is for designated and we started this many years ago and the board was very prudent in doing this that reserve we started to reserve for uh construction overruns is four million dollars when we have had hard times and when budget has been difficult that is where we have gone i call it our rainy day money to make sure that our current operating revenues can meet our current operating expenses in times that are typed for designated and excel probably one of our proudest achievements and i don't know how many of our community members actually know that we bought a hundred and ten thousand dollar transportation building we rented that building half of that building we

144gave our bus drivers and our transportation department as state of the art facility to work in a safe facility which they had not had in the past and they deserved um rented it for three years at least the other half of it for three years turned around and sold it for three million dollars so basically accounting um got an entire transportation department and netted almost zero for the cost of it besides the renovation to make it completely safe referendum funds is uh and i will make one note on this and this is something we've talked about for the last couple years table referendum funds is passed and for the west virginia lottery and we do receive funds from the racetrack to assist with capital expenditures in our school system currently we transfer 1.6 million from

145fund 51 to fund 11 to assist us with those capital expenditures as you can see the projected balance at year end is 1.1 million and over the next three years we need to take the 1.6 million that we're transferring and get it down to about a million because with the additional casinos going in those those revenues have declined um just to finish up we do have almost eight million dollars on in impact fees it does not reside in our school system on our books however it is at the jefferson camp uh county commission impact the office and they report to us on a monthly basis how much we have in that account there are some criteria for using those funds i feel like we've done a great job in matching it up with other construction

146project projects to support the growth that we've had and i was very disheartened that they cut those fees to a dollar for our school system that being said 408 money i've given you the trend i probably i think we've received probably five or six million from that funding source and you can see i've denoted that on the past two years we have funded that because our maintenance department relies on that for special projects in our school systems and we funded that locally funding sources um hvac projects was something that dr gibson had as a pr as a priority and miss white and the leadership team we funded an additional with carryover from last year we started these funds we added a million dollars into our hvac projects a 250 into our roofs 250 into buses

147and vehicles and our remaining balance is 1.9 in the digital one to one our initial funding was 2.5 million and our cares funding allowed us to supplement those funds and let them remain on this local level so at the end of the day um and i'm very proud of it and i hope you guys are too at the end of the day our hvac projects going forward in fiscal year 20 will have a 2 million dollar balance for when we have unforeseen needs with hvacs that we can fix them and make sure that our students and our staff have the appropriate environment to work in our roofing projects will start or we'll have one million dollars after the assignment of this funds from fiscal year 21. buses and vehicles will have 1 million and our

148digital one-to-one initiative will have 3.9 million on top of that we have some smaller funds that we have funded child nutrition has a two hundred thousand dollar balance by dr gibson's request for equipment repair um so they have a schedule and they're in the same situation as our roofs and our hvacs we now have a capital budget for their highest needs to be met and when something breaks i mix our breaks i mean mixers that our cooks use are about nine to ten thousand dollars and they last a long time but um sometimes they do need to be replaced and unfortunately the state of west virginia does not do a good job in funding those things although i will shout out to our new child nutrition coordinator and in 15 years he's been with us

149maybe 10 months he's brought more funding into this county in 10 months than in the last 15 years and um kudos to him special education we do typically have 25 000 for special needs equipment this year we'll have fifty thousand dollars funded for that and with that um that's uh that's that's the presentation um unless you have questions okay i'll do my best um the impact fees um i i was going to ask if it because it sounded like we weren't impacted by the lack of impact fees or the change because we have a surplus and so but it sounds like you think we are impacted i do think that we are impacted i think impact fees we're the only county in the state of west virginia and we are a high growth county we're

150only one of eight only eight counties in the state of west virginia grow and we are one of them but i thought that and and i might be wrong but my understanding is the reason we can't use the eight million or haven't used it is because we really haven't had growth in the school system until i mean it's been decreasing every year except this year it sounds like it may have gone up is that correct that we have to be it has to have an impact because of increase in students and i would agree with you and i've heard that i've never had a conversation with the impact fee department about it but i would beg to differ with them that we yes we have not had growth um and particularly in the pandemic year

151our growth has been down but the impact to our schools is still there we still have buildings we still have facilities i think that's not the purpose i don't know i i did you know research it and that was my understanding but i might be wrong i did contact the county commission and asked what's the issue and they explained to me and i don't know that the money's there and it's not being used anyway so and they left it at a dollar so that it could easily be if you need it then you have instead of that was my understanding but and that's okay and i don't know everything either but what i will tell you is i'm going to send you an email we just spent we just literally bought three million dollars worth

152of land to buy to build two brand new schools that was two years ago so i um it's not because of a growth in the that's the i it's my understanding there has to be a growth in the population in the schools our pre-k program i mean we have populations that have grown maybe certain ones yes i don't know but yeah and i don't know what their criteria is and and here's what i would say as your interim chief financial officer um and as a board member um there is no way that i would ever agree that we don't need those impact fees for the impact of growth we might need to help them understand where we are growing our special needs population is is is catapulting right and there is no way that you

153can separate regular ed from special ed and they're all our kids so whether we're not growing in one area and growing in another area the cost and the impact is still growing i think we need to have the county commission maybe conversation where they explain and it's we're all in the same because it was my after talking to them it made more sense but i could be wrong yes you know more than i do well i really don't want but what i do know is that we do need those impacts to build the buildings that we need we need to marry and collaborate or braid i guess is what mr banks they say now is breaking those funds to be successful in addition we can't really get sba funds without uh sometimes having a a

154leverage they like to see that you know when we built washington when we did built washington high school and we did the renovation to dr jefferson which is about 46 million dollar project part of the reason that sba funded those projects was because we had those impact fees and we put forth i forget six million dollars so that they could see locally that we were participating in collaborating and bringing the funds to be successful um i don't need to cut your i just have no way so you're not cutting me off the senate bill 408 as far as growth so like i said i know we have new growth this year i'm curious if how much of that growth is from outside of jefferson county i'm not sure because i don't take that data what

155i will say is we've rebounded from our pandemic hit which is a growth but you would have had to rebound for me to consider it actually growth uh more than just i think the estimate is too i'm just i'm wondering are other counties using the online the virtual program because i thought that was the idea that dr gibson presented this idea about that maybe i'm wrong but other counties could make use of it so i'm wondering if that contributed to the growth and just curious about that well if you're asking me i'm going to say this i'm going to say that right now we have an opportunity to start jva and do a business that means taking a risk taking a risk that means put the money there and if you make that program successful

156and you make it available and you teach kids how to be successful in today's world i think they'll come and i think that dr gibson and mr banks and the leadership team have a good vision for it i don't think you're going to see it break even this year i think you need three to five years to determine and i do think you need to continuously reevaluate what the population is that you're trying because you're right right now i could be in germany and choose to attend jefferson virtual academy if it's state of the art and it's teaching us my students what they need to do i don't know where the kids go and i want to be old school and say i always tease my kids and say i think they just went into

157the cloud you know because i don't know where they are i think when i when i look at it and it's just my opinion i think that we are shifting to a modern educational system and we are in the midst of trying to define that and i think our parents just had a pandemic and a lot of us have reevaluated the priorities and maybe you know some of them are homeschooling i don't know if we have maybe dr gibson knows i think she knows more than i do and so another question is i thought we already had the digital 101 taken care of i thought that all the students already had them so now you're asking you're saying this another two million i am and when i look at it from a financial perspective um

158and talked and and determine our needs um that's replacing textbooks i mean you're going to have every year a certain percentage that's going to need to be funded you're going to have different things that are going to be occurring you're going to have staff and students and changes and updates and any type of professional development i've seen on it is we can undesignate it if it's not used but right now i think we need to set it there because we we literally i think are just getting ready to hire the last technician to service us i mean they've got some great ideas you're basically going to drive through drop your laptop off get it updated and move on um that may materialize or may not but you have to fund you know kids break them

159i understand i'm just i'm just asking oh yeah that's because the purpose of it would be that we have to have those funds set aside i i understand more even than your roofs and your hvac because at this point students have to have their devices another question know okay guys we you said you bought a building and sold it and i'm wondering why we're renting the adult ed building then that's a that's a good question and it's been discussed at least on two occasions we do receive the funding to pay for that through the adult ed funds um i think that i've heard somehow i want to speak because sometimes i hear things but and there are other reasons where where we you know go down a different um direction but i've we've we've had

160that conversation we've strategized over it we've collaborated over it and at this point i don't think a decision has been made to move that into a space before we look at maybe the employee space in the central office and other places that are really lacking in what we need to do our current job i think that would be my speculation my last question is it seems like this might be a good time given we have some extra money um you know this audit is just about finances i i don't get the impression that it's a comprehensive well are you spending this money in a good way as far as education and it may be a good time to hire a consultant who would evaluate how we're spending the money and you know futuristic and are

161we making the best use of the funds um because it could save money in the future by investing a small amount and there may be volunteer organizations that are willing to do that um i always think that that i always think looking at things in a deeper dive like that is a good thing so one thing i would just say as a note is that specifically narrow it down to what it is that you want to evaluate it and make sure you get parameters well i mean right now the achievement is pretty low i mean i looked at the scores and yes there's covid but i mean maybe there's something that we could be doing differently because we don't really i mean i don't remember ever talking about achievement since i've been here except for

162the time when i asked for scores you know we were talking last year about first quarter versus second and um so i i just feel like there may be some other set of eyes of people that are qualified and experienced in you know looking at the use of money in the best way um because it's like we're usually in a panic reaction mode and maybe some planning i mean i can't imagine one person dr gibson has to do all this and it's just you know that's a lot so i think it's an absolutely excellent idea and i am always open to being better and achieving more always i don't think that there's a day that goes by that we don't learn something new in education which is one of the things i find attractive about

163it but also the one thing i like is that we truly learn i mean we learn and you that's the way you do learn by those individual audits and be more efficient and um we've had many since i've been here and i'm sure dr gibson has had many where she's been and mr banks has also um once you get that data um looking at that data and deciding taking action is probably the harder piece because but but you're absolutely right we are in a good position that if you want it to look specifically at saving money in certain areas we could do it uh we could probably give you a list of the things that we've covered over the last 15 years i'd love to have a purchasing agent well or just how to spend

164it in the best interest of students um so i mean how does that happen do we have to well that would be working with dr gibson and what i would say what i've always said and i changed a little bit today we can do anything we can't do everything and today i did say it pandemic might not be a bad idea to just breathe and and you know focus on one thing just because we've got so much going on but absolutely i mean any direction that the board and dr gibson and any of my leadership team members i can happily strategize with them how to fund it or where we could possibly trim funding or switch funding i mean that is usually the most of the conversation if we want to do this what do

165we want to curtail in order to do that it's it is usually what we have but um yeah i think they're great how can we make the most use of what money we have as far as focusing on student achievement because in the end i mean that's the goal it was the goal i don't know what the goal is anymore right but it was it should be a focus and um i just feel like i know we're spot responsible the board is responsible for doing something regularly to encourage achievement so i suggest that we you know have a third party independent third party given evaluation and independent i just um i just don't i i just i guess you know a lot of times i say things and then it's vanished you know yeah it's

166a lot of priorities that we have to prioritize however i think it's an excellent suggestion and narrowing that down into an action item i would say that would be a boredom dr gibson decision and i could help and support it in any way shape or form and for me um definitely i want to spend our money the best way i live in the county i pay the taxes and i do monitor it and uh we push that out to our staff but it's always nice to have another pair of eyes to to provide suggestions um to be better and to achieve higher so i mean does it require making a motion and yes it would require yes it was i don't even know it wouldn't be a motion i think it would just be a

167discussion i'm not sure what process you would go through you know you could strategize with the board i would think the board would have to determine where they wanted to focus and do that but it's actually beyond my beltway so um mr um osborne is saying that we need an item on the agenda two okay so um well i'm requesting that the item be put on the agenda and that's the best i can do okay any more questions um i don't think so from the financial report it'll be published in the newspaper and pending um i didn't mention gatsby 84 um it's a new requirement two million dollars at our school level that we are now required to put into our fund it'll become our seventh fund i'll be working on that over the next

168month and sending revised financial statements out it is a lot of work but we need to do it because we have a bond and it may affect our bond rating and we want our interest rate to be the best that it can possibly be so just another mandate from the state i do appreciate that you put the um money in as well for the hvac because i know we have talked about that 1.6 million and we definitely need to to do that where there's an extra extra venom like something else okay is there a possible action on a retention recruitment plan [Applause] for some reason last one okay so um this is the fourth i think presentations that we've done on retention and recruitment uh where we've given you statistical information we surveyed all of

169our staff brought back to you the results of the survey went back and broke up into action committees based on the survey results to bring um an action item plan for the board so one of the things that you'll note on here is that this is a collaborative project first and foremost i want to thank the staff we had hundreds of our staff who answered the survey and who have subsequently served on committees who've provided suggestions our human resources department has worked pretty tirelessly finance instruction all of the principles we have held meetings and gone through all of the action items the faculty senate we have meetings and went through those the union reps have gone through them so we've really gotten a lot of great ideas on these there are 27 separate action items

170on these so i want to be clear right now that my strong advisement to the board tonight is going to be that i give you a very broad overview of here are the types of actions that we've looked at they will have dollar amounts attached to them timelines when we think we can do them my advice is to hold a special session completely for nothing but this retention plan and long-term planning because there are some near things here and some long things here questions i believe it ma'am yes ma'am but it's the thing is is that this is our um democracy takes time and sometimes it's messy and sometimes it's conflictual and the reality is all those voices need to be heard right as sometimes as frustrating and as we're as people get with each

171other it's it's important it matters and you come out with a better product at the end so just like lean into the discomfort of that sometimes and keep your mind open and be willing to hear the things that we can do better so a lot of this was about talking to folks about the things that we can do better so i want to highlight a couple of these for you so i'm going to let you know jason when you when you scroll so i give you just a lot of data on page one and this will be posted up on the website so uh if you could keep going that's a lot of data about um how we got here in recovery a guide to the action items listing where it shows and you guys

172talked about this with having a code you know sort of like a codex where you could tell what each thing was so proposals for action um a couple of things i again i'm going to be super brief on these substitute support for school our staff are um i i can't begin to tell you how valiantly they are struggling out in schools with staff shortages uh the staff up here have been out in schools subbing regularly i myself and since school started i've subbed into second grade i've subbed in fourth grade i've done a high school math class i've been in the kitchen it is just it is unbelievable what our staff are doing now is all of it working out great you heard from some folks tonight we do have some places where we really

173are struggling to keep staff or we'll bring staff in and quite frankly teaching is hard work and they are sometimes struggling to stay in there so when we one of the first things that we have recommendations for are about substitute support for schools day-to-day subs are nearly impossible to find our best ones we've sort of sucked up into long-term positions and that proposal is about us creating sub-positions full-time sub-positions with benefits our sub-needs are so incredibly great right now that uh relying on someone who's willing to go day-to-day for a hundred bucks is just there's no well right there with additional support for special education personnel in school as well schools that have very high needs special education populations ta lowry jefferson high blue ridge washington high wildwood middle charlestown driftwood and harpers ferry we

174would ask for additional um service personnel special ed positions in those again these are proposals with dollar amounts to them as you can see for this all of these positions right now would the cost of these would be covered by our current savings on both unfilled positions and subs we spend about three million dollars a year on subs and we're not spending it because we're not finding them so a lot of this would be the cost of adding benefits and that right now we can absorb that because we have those additional funds available um we've got some great ideas from staff if you could scroll up to the next one one of the ideas and this actually came from uh charles wall and i thought it was a great one um right now if a

175retiree wants to turn and work for us as a sub they start off at zero as if they are a first year teacher no experience right they have to work their way up under the way that the west virginia code is set up we would love to see some policy changes where they can come back in and sub at the rate that they left at for their valued experience they would probably be more likely to come back and sub for us um one of the things that i want to draw particular attention uh from the board that i strongly strongly recommend uh be one of our highest priorities moving forward is a bus driver equity plan i don't know how many folks are aware of this but every other service position there's a secretary one

176secretary two secretary three cook one cook two cook three there's a place to go to gain additional pay in west virginia a bus driver is a bus driver is a bus driver there's there's nowhere for them to go and like any other profession we have some amazing bus drivers um my son uh loves his bus driver more than some of his teachers she will she will text she will cover him she will make sure that her kids are are fed and taken care of she's she's amazing and so we actually had a group of bus drivers um and actually i want to give a shout out to lisa alberti cynthia carper and crystal deangelo uh they worked with uh j.r holland to create a bus driver one bus driver two and bus driver three um

177and we will be recommending strongly to the board that we adopt a policy that puts those pay ranges in place that would increase pay scales to d e and f uh those are long overdue much needed and i i believe that that is something that the board will give some direction on moving forward for us to to continue to pursue that that has to be a policy change it's not the only service personnel classification that doesn't have steps to it yes sir that is currently the only uh uh one that that i i'm aware of correct me if i'm wrong yeah that's the only one um which is a travesty quite frankly and i i will say that will be entirely local because the state has no such designation so we would be the ones

178creating in jefferson a bus driver one two and three um the next page expanded preparation schedule essentially right now teachers come back and they have three days to get school open of those there are about 10 hours of mandatory before the start of school thou shalt have this staff development from the state so they are they start the year off under the gun we spoke with the faculty senate and they had some really good ideas we had originally said add two days to the contract they were not they they felt like there wouldn't be um consistent interest in that some folks would some folks wouldn't so uh we altered that recommendation to be a flat rate to come in for a prep class prep and a commitment from us that it would be devoid of

179any staff development there would be absolutely no staff development on those days it would be nothing but uh get your classrooms your lesson plans ready um next one is the uh extending an attendance bonus to service personnel currently the state pays that attendance bonus for personnel uh uh professional personnel strongly recommend that we extend that to service personnel all due respect they're the backbone of the school system they're they're what um makes this place run and um it's well deserved uh next page you'll see right now subs and coaches have to pay to come to work for us there are background checks and certifications that they have to obtain where they have to pay out of pocket before they can come in coaches in particular you have to pay the wb sac 500 bucks um

180to come in and get your you know two thousand dollar stipend for working thousands of hours we're recommending that we pay those long term sub equity folks may not be aware of this we have right now we have about 65 long-term subs in our school system these are people who have bachelor's degrees but they didn't go to school to be teachers right um so they have um always been uh given the same salary level as their peers in teaching with the exception of they get none of the levy payments we provide levy payments to those levy checks go to certified teachers not to long-term subs and a lot of discussion with the faculty senate and there are mixed feelings about this there should be an incentive for you to be a licensed teacher it's hard

181work and you need good people to do it so there should be an incentive to do that work and become a teacher and actually this came as another suggestion um that uh because we had some folks who said yes give it and some folks who said no and the suggestion was is that once a long-term sub comes in and actually gets their certification that we would retro back pay the last three years worth of levy checks to them if you really want to come in and you want to be a long-term sub but you're not willing to go and take the classes and get your certification you just want to be a long-term sub because you don't want to do the work of that well then why should you get paid the same as somebody

182who spent their life really student loans and working away and student teaching and doing all the work to be a a licensed teacher but if you just need some time to do that then we've got you and pay it retroactively so again great suggestions from the committees about creative ways to do this teacher mentor pay paying teachers paying strong teachers to mentor others uh the therapeutic services pay scale offer bus operator trainees uh the service career ladder and again those are ways that we have to create ways for service personnel to have additional income as they get more education staff development autonomy uh the social emotional engagement funding right now principals are doing most of this out of pocket and the second piece of that is the allocation for student materials for service personnel right

183now teachers get faculty senate funding where they get money to spend for kids materials and items um in their classrooms to keep them from paying all these things out of pocket to get things for their kids service personnel have never gotten that so one of the things that we did is i sent out a proposal to ask number one to create a senate um a service senate where again just like faculty senate they would meet once a month with the superintendent and leadership and tel and tell us exactly what their concerns are the information that they're receiving uh how we can help them they make sure that they get accurate direct information um not off of social media um and it would also give an allocation to each school so that if you're a classroom

184aide who wants to start a chess club guess what we can buy chess boards and chess pieces if you're a bus driver who wants to have a behavioral incentive plan on your bus you don't need to buy those toys for the toy box we can we can reimburse you for that you you want to do good things for kids you shouldn't have to do it out of your pocket particularly when you're um not making as much as you should be in the first place um additional training and support and special ed for service personnel we heard loud and clear from service personnel uh and and best stated and you will hear it over and over again the unbelievable level of needs that we're seeing in kids right now were most of you to go into

185a i was in a kindergarten class the other day had 22 kids in it one was a child who suffered from fetal alcohol syndrome who has sensory issues another were two students who are in the process of getting diagnosed with autism and it was unbelievable had another student in another room one-on-one by themselves in a completely uh separate room because it was just tearing the place apart because at the second grader who came to school for what one semester and then came back out on covet out for the entire first grade year so now he's in second and he's been you spent what three months of your life actually in real school and now you're in the second grade and you are just off the chain so um really getting some additional training and support

186from our staff who are seeing behaviors that they are ill prepared for uh tuition reimbursement now these say we're financially restrictive uh so go keep going the next one these say financially restrictive r r projects um a couple of these we've heard loud and clear from our staff we need better pay absolutely agree a hundred percent um there are limitations to that so some of these are ways that uh we are looking at being creative in terms of badging and credentialing and this is uh you may have heard of micro credentialing in other areas things like behavioral management safety cultural competency customer service folks who completed those training courses could earn additional badging where they could earn additional stipends that would supplement their income a loyalty contract signing bonus basically a payment if you continue

187to sign your contract year after year and complete your full contract there would be a loyalty bonus with that one of the excellent ideas that we got if you could keep going a step shift so um we had looked at a pay scale shift for professional and for service which essentially would be how many years of experience up would we have to shift everyone to be competitive with a washington maryland um right now that would be about 20.7 million dollars per year if we came up to the same starting pay as as those for both service and professional we don't have an extra 20.7 million dollars a year and our staff recognized that and actually this idea came out of faculty senate um every year the west virginia department of education provides what's called a

188step increase it's basically you have a year more of experience so you step up to the next level of pay and that runs anywhere from four to six seven hundred dollars uh depending on how experienced teachers are and the idea would be that we would have a local match to that step pay so that over time it would incrementally increase pay without us doing some heart dropping that we don't have so we can't i can't manufacture 20 million dollars a year but i also can't look people in the eye and just keep saying well i don't have 20 million dollars a year so i can't help you that's that's not an option so looking at incremental increases and those would also allow us to reward folks who've been here the longest and who have the

189greatest service and the greatest expertise cost of living payments because of the cost in jefferson child care there are several no-cost ones like paperwork requirements we have a committee who is looking at and will be conveying to us what paperwork requirements they think we can reduce lesson planning and reporting structure and we also have uh additional recruitment resources in terms of us having to reach far and wide used to be people would back in the day come to us and now you have to reach out and chase them i gave a lot of statistics on the drops in individuals going through education programs i think i'd shown you earlier that while there's been a 5.27 decrease in west virginia students in the last six years there's been a 53 decrease in folks going into education

190it's become a very different um place right now it's very much under siege so it's not incredibly popular so um what i'd like to do is to set up with this board a uh special meeting for us i will post this online the board uh has an opportunity to review and to give us feedback and then we come and ask for specific action items some of these require policy changes like the bus uh uh equity plan so we with a special meeting we can sit down and uh go through what policy changes would be necessary and get those enacted you said you're going to post it online yes so the public has a comment is this for public comment too uh certainly oh okay so it's gonna go out for a public comment yes we'll

191post it up and anybody can could come in we'll have a comment we'll have a um we'll set up one of our uh pass-throughs where you can click type in here and have a public comment on it yes we can certainly do that can you just clarify two things oh did you have a question well the social emotional engagement i couldn't figure out what that meant i mean i read all of this and then i couldn't figure out are you saying that did it was it just i think you mean that not just the new teachers get the 15-year step up but also those existing teachers get a 15-year as well did i okay um i think i think i understand your question if i don't answer it you tell me okay so um your

192first question about the social emotional engagement funding when we spoke with the principals uh one of the things that they said is that um they are struggling to help support their staff and um they were expending out of their own pockets things like let me buy pizza for the staff on fridays hey let me um here is a uh oh i'm trying to think of some of the things that they had some of them are paying for folks to come in and do stress reduction classes with their teachers and what we said was look we'll have a fund you can you can request things out of it if you have something that you think will help your teachers and your service personnel and their mental health and social emotional support you tell us we'll have

193a fun for you to be able to draw from from that so that we could monitor what it is that you're interested in and the other one was actually um what we looked at was if we jump everyone up i think it was nine years how many no 14 years ago yeah even if we started if we shifted it and we eliminated zero to 13 right it started on 14 right and then we calculated so to your point yes ma'am it was both it was everybody so you would come in at year 15 and then everybody else would bump up and then we got questions about you know 35 are we still gonna have a cap at that those would be things we need to work through in the special session okay and that's not

194against the state that's allowed we would on many of these we would either have to get a waiver or there are there are some we are able to do locality pay uh under certain circumstances so again part of this is as best said you can have just about anything you want but you can't have everything we can't do all 27 of these even if you had unlimited money we couldn't we don't have the manpower the bandwidth so some of this is things that would require policy change yes we would have to go to our legislators or at things that required a waiver we would have to go to the west virginia department of if you're with retirement and things i'm sorry i just see it affecting retirement well i'll be honest with you our levies

195are beyond what other systems are paying but yes but our retirement is still based on that so you know that is not a conflict so i'm not sure one of these would be a conflict monetarily well if you've only worked here for a year and they're giving you 15 years you're not you know suddenly you're able to qualify for retirement according to the state not just with one year well that's what i'm saying it's somebody's i see i see what you're saying if if we're not very clear about the parameters it could lead someone to have which is why especially for some of these very big ones like i said we can't chase every one of these rabbits they are very complex affecting thousands of of different processes that we do in individuals things like

196substitutes where for the first 10 days you're at one pay rate and then you switch to another pay rate once you've had 10 consecutive days and that's a manual process and then once you've had 30 days overall you switch to another pay rate there are some very bizarre complex uh personnel and payment rules in west virginia and the more that we attempt to make changes for the betterment of our staff some of those we we get tangled and we have to go to them but either ask for a waiver or ask for a policy change i would like another paper copy of that i will i will post these uh online first of all we'll get hans to create like a pass through so somebody can read this and then click on if you have

197any comments and then i will deliver uh paper copies to uh all of the boards okay we're on to action approval to change our regular scheduled board meeting on october 11th to october 12th because of a holiday is there a motion to that effect is there a second second discussion all in favor say hi hi suppose no motion carry superintendent's comments uh no sir i feel like i've spoken enough uh we do have an executive session it does uh involve personnel and i need a motion to go into executive session and there will be action second second discussion all in favor say aye aye opposed no motion carries we're going to take a 5 minute break [Music]