001[Music] regularly scheduled meeting of the jefferson county board of education on monday september 13th and if you please join us for the pledge i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you before we start tonight pete doherty passed away unexpectedly yesterday he was a dedicated public servant and schooled served on the school board for almost 25 years um he'll be missed tremendously by the community if we could just take a moment of silence i would appreciate that thank you and mr cable i believe you wanted to say a few words yes i just had a couple of thoughts thank you for the opportunity to honor pete doherty who just passed away
002he and his first wife came straight out of college to jefferson county he and to law enforcement and his wife in teaching for jefferson county schools they both retired from those positions pete was a board member on this board for at least 25 years of that time mostly as president he is the one who encouraged me to become a board member and that taught me to be a good member and to work to better our schools it is very difficult to find people of this type uh of days he has truly served as a great friend and an outstanding citizen uh may he rest in peace thank you thank you thank you all right so we start our meeting this evening with the recognition um we do thank you so much it's actually very fitting
003that um we should actually end the previous discussion in a discussion of service um we have so many people that it takes to make this system work to serve children to serve families and parents and many of them behind the scenes and uh unsung heroes so um you saw posted up that there's a proclamation from governor jim justice uh proclaiming september 23rd as um school service personnel day and in that proclamation they talk about service personnel being dedicated and i think that that proclamation doesn't go anywhere near far enough they are dedicated they are hard working they are connected to kids they are loving they are kind they are oftentimes the first person a kid sees the last person a kid sees and sometimes the person that they trust and love the most in a
004setting and they make an enormous difference and we have several of them here tonight um that we'd like to bring up one at a time to introduce themselves and say where they work at in their jobs and say a few words so actually i guess we start with mr padgett i'm larry james paget i work at washington high school and been a school employee for working on my 22nd year and i go to work every day with with a smile on my face i enjoy what i do and and the kids are a big part of that they just to have a kid come up and say thank you for what you're doing you know being a custodian in the school that means a lot and i appreciate them as i guess as much as
005they appreciate me thank you [Applause] i'm richard buzzard i work for maintenance i've been working for a school board for probably 34 years now it's it's been changed over the years things i've done and matter of fact i'll tell you a little story it happened today i was up on the lolly house and i had all these children around me watching me throw these holes in the concrete and this little fella was sitting there and watching so i asked him i said come on over here and i'll drill this hole with me he came over he started drilling and he finished drilling us he walked back over sit down they took his picture and he made his day so you know that's what it's all about thank you [Applause] number one i can i breathe
006in this i can't talk that well but i'm full o best cafeteria manager had paige jackson this is my 36th year and i have 400 children love them all and my nickname is the lunch lady love my job loves seeing these faces every morning and just to get a hello morning lunch lady what turns your heart [Applause] in makes amazing spaghetti i might add uh we also have this barbie scott over here [Applause] hi my name is barbara ann scott i work at t.a laura elementary and i've been in the school system for 35 years and i work with pre-school special needs and i love every child that's there and we treat them like they're ours and we have a wonderful staff at tlr and a great principal of miss martin and i thank you
007[Applause] okay and i believe that we are a bag bagging cleanup for us is with heather pindell for those of you who may not be aware miss pindell was not only the service person of the year for jefferson county schools she was chosen as one of the finalists for service for service person of the year for the state of west virginia and she has represented us magnificently on the local and the state stage so miss pindell thank you my name is heather um thank you for having us and thank you for honoring um and um service personnel day um and all the effort we do for our students here in jefferson county i have been employed um with the school system for 32 years 30 of it was a school bus operator and this is
008my second year's transportation supervisor i can tell you that the last couple years have been very different very challenging but we as a whole got through this we made our kids our top priority and i've always said it takes a village to make success and i worked closely with flow we got food out for our kids we had our mechanics loading buses we had our bus drivers and our aides um gathering food up and transport into kids by bus and by personal vehicle we had our secretaries making phone calls we had our teachers delivering food or delivering items for school so we we made this successful because we did it as a team so thank you [Applause] and okay when i was growing up on mother's and father's day i always asked my parents and
009i said well when is kids day and their answer was every day well i know september 23rd is officially service personnel day but i just want you to know that jefferson county schools employees every day is your day i mean i i just need to take a moment to let it sink in how much we appreciate you because of the fact that everything that we've been through the past year and a half almost two years in addition to the regular stuff that we do and you're showing up and you're not just showing up you're doing it and you're not just doing it you're doing your job and you're possibly doing another job and another job i mean we have people in this building in particular that are out there teaching classes and doing their job
010in this building the way society is right now everybody is short staffed okay we don't have the option that starbucks has or that a store has then we're going to close a day or we're going to change our hours that's not an option for us we just show up and you guys get it done i mean i just i just want you to know how much you're appreciated because i you're doing it and those kids show up every day and you're you're doing it i mean from what i understand there are other systems in the state that you know or have had to close schools because they're short on staff but so far you guys are doing it so september 23rd may be the official day but every day is your day so thank you
011[Applause] all right moving on um to number three the presentation update on school counseling review dr gibson um i think the first thing to do is to let these folks who get up very very having delivered donuts to the uh bus garage before and asked j.r what time i need to get there and he's like oh you need to get here at 5. i'm like even the donut people don't get there five so that's gonna be tough so um i think that right now i am hopeful that this is going to allow me to share my screen [Music] okay i'll get over here so that the mic picks everything up so um as many of you are aware we had the state department come and complete a special uh review at our request to help
012us in making our school counseling services evolve uh into what our modern families and students need as you've stated and many of these folks have stated schools changed a lot over the last several years and what parents and kids expect of us has evolved unfortunately wevus is the one thing that hasn't evolved but um so we've sat down and getting that report back there were some hard truths in there and i want to be very clear with anyone listening or watching this those hard truths were about our need to evolve as a system they were not about the people who are doing the work every day the people are showing up they are putting forth their best effort they are spending a lot of hours before and after and outside of their contract time sometimes
013what we need to do is evolve new ways of doing things and different supports in order to be able to help them do the job that we put before them so we sat down with miss susan young who is actually uh here with us this evening and uh at the state department and ms charlene coburn and we created a comprehensive planning program uh we then met with every high school counselor high school administrator wievus and we developed point by point for every one of the areas in which it was determined that we needed some sort of um correction in order for that to work the ideal way that we want it to so for every one of these we looked at the programmatic area we created a comprehensive action we put out a series of
014action steps and these are all assigned to specific individuals with timelines on these so those areas include the comprehensive school counseling program um school course codes as you can see you see the lovely smiling miss kelly wolf and dr rowan they have pieces assigned to these and as each individual goes through and their timelines come up they check those off and we are all able to look at each one of these and hold one another accountable for the steps that we take through those so those include certification schedule transcripts communication and customer service uh central office supports what they can expect from the central office we have an faq section and in that section uh any questions that someone on the staff asks or that are posed to counselors or counselors back to the west
015virginia department of education we record them and then we denote the answers um like one of the things that we work through is currently when we have students test out of help we have had that traditionally as a system as a pass fail course the west virginia department of education has said we can no longer do that and now must be a graded course which means that that test will be held for a grade and it will translate into their gpa that is a change and we have to change our program of studies to reflect that and get communications out to parents so for all of these we have a series of action steps some of these things are things that we have already begun to put into place such as parchment which is an
016automated transcripting system to allow individuals who already graduated to log on uh go into the system pay their five dollars and it will automate and send them their transcript um in addition to this we have also um done quite a bit of scheduling um and i don't uh i need to both susan young and charlotte coburn are here and i'm going to turn it over to them in just a moment but one of the things that you can see i have to do a new share with you which is the central office scheduling roles where each one of us has gone through and we've taken every position that we have and the departments and we've assigned responsibility for every single part of scheduling for the next three years for us to ensure that we have
017accurate codes we have students scheduled ahead of time students will leave school at the end of the year with a complete schedule so it has taken an enormous amount of work to get to this point um and we've been very very pleased with and proud of the individuals who've contributed to this we have gone through and created new processes for new course memos essentially we've set out a month-by-month step-by-step order for anyone who wants to request creating a new course so that we have a good deal of quality control over that process all in all i've been very pleased and i believe the west virginia department of education has been very pleased with the progress that we've made but i will at this point turn it over to susan young and charlene coburn of the
018west virginia department of education to share their thoughts about our progress you're muted sorry about that hi um i serve as the officer of the office of support and accountability and i just want to express my appreciation for the jefferson county board of education and superintendent gibson for being proactive and requesting this special circumstance review she speaks correctly when she talks about the system and that's what our team determined that there were some issues with the counseling system that was in place and um her team and her office has been very proactive in planning and working with ms young in our office and providing uh step-by-step plans for every finding in the report and uh before i turn this over to ms young to talk a little bit more about the specifics of the program
019that we're using to track this work i would like to express my condolences to your community for for the loss you're experiencing susan would you like to talk about the website that we're using and share some of the steps that have already been taken for improvement in counseling in jefferson county sure thank you my name is susan young and i am a coordinator in the office of accountability services and i just want to first thank dr gibson learn because from the very beginning she's been extremely proactive in coordinating and letting us know what the potential issues were going to be and then from that point blocking of welcoming us into the schools and then just this whole process that we're working through with all the corrective actions it's been an a pleasure and the team
020has done so much work i'm so glad that she took the opportunity to show everyone the planner because the planner is very impressive we took our report the special circumstance review and we took all the corrective actions and put it into a microsoft planner and from there we just put those corrective actions in there dr gibson has spent an enormous amount of time with her team coming up with those corrective action steps and they've gone into the planner in each one of those areas and added individual steps to each one of those areas and it is a tremendous amount of work that they have put in in just a short amount of time because they they got this report in july and so in one month it is extremely impressive the progress that has been
021made besides that we are meeting every month with our team to go through the planner and see where we can provide support we are scheduling professional development and we actually are working on that today for weebus so we can make sure that everyone has the same knowledge and skill set that they need to have for weaves which is coming up in october i'm also joining our monthly the monthly counseling meetings with all of jefferson county on fridays one friday a month from here for the next foreseeable future so we are here and supporting and it's just been a wonderful experience to work with jefferson county schools thank you very much ma'am so i will be coming back to you um we have a review at the semester break and i will be coming back to
022you ahead of that review to give you a progress update on this planner and our actions so that you can see it from the point of view of the counselors and you can see the progress on the task list and you will then have a verification review by the west virginia department of education where they will come in after the first semester and they will issue another report on the progress that we've made so we are holding ourselves accountable for getting the results that we need for kids so thank you all right next up we have the deputy superintendent for instructional support update okay good evening board members good to see everyone um i have a brief update for you on some instructional topics i'd like to start off with i'll put a copy there
023in front of you so you can follow along uh jva update i want to let all of you know that we have a forum for jva parents on wednesday the 15th at 5 pm that's for all parents and we we do have uh reliable uh email addresses for all the parents so in the past when we started this at the beginning of the year we were sending out messages and and uh on the website and phone calls hoping that they would get the message at this point we have email addresses for all their parents so we're very pleased about that um afterwards after our meeting on the 15th we'll also follow up with individual family and teacher conferences on wednesday and thursday any additional questions that you may be receiving please feel free to write
024them down and i can get those to miss fitzgerald and she can answer those on wednesday night with the parents as she speaks with them tomorrow i mean wednesday night canvas rollout as you know that's our new learning management system we are checking in with principals and our academic coaches our coaches have been so important in this learning how canvas works and also helping to train teachers in each of the buildings so as we move forward as with any new thing we've been making adjustments and so things are going well with canvas 48 to remote is a document that was in place in the event that the school system would need to go remote and it's basically defining people's responsibilities and who does what so that there are very clear and concise guidelines uh what
025the school does what the administration does what the central office people do as well so that all things are covered uh we had our first principle i had my first principles meeting on 9 7 last tuesday a great meeting and some of the topics just wanted to share some of the things that we talked about we took the 48 to remote document to the principles ask them for feedback on that where some things that need to be tweaked from last year to make sure that we are prepared in the event that we would have to go out remote as a district uh we also took some time discussing the difference between what a counselor i'm sorry a coach an academic coach does versus what a teacher mentor does sometimes if you if you have overlap
026then our new teachers are getting different answers from different people so we wanted to clearly define what those were and ask principals for feedback there also something new we have an assessment calendar which basically defines all the assessments we're giving to our students and the windows that we'll be giving those in and we passed that out to the principles in our ongoing discussion about that i hope to finalize that on the 21st at our next meeting and finally i'm sure you've all seen the calendar that gets approved by school districts has that grid and then it has colored boxes with letters in it and it really doesn't mean anything to anyone other than the people who develop it so we wanted to put it in a format it's easily understood by parents and by employees
027so we're working on calendar highlights for staff and parents so that is currently ready to go out and then finally i wanted to let you know that we are in the process of beginning our instructional walkthroughs those start in october and folks from the central office going out to schools getting in the classrooms giving feedback to teachers visiting with the principal afterwards finding great things in classrooms and we're really looking forward to that so that starts in october and that is my update for you yes ma'am yeah i have a few questions so um can board members go on those walkthroughs with the with you oh i refer to dr gibson i don't believe so but i don't know that for a fact we haven't previously had board members go through on there but however
028if you if a board member would like to go through on one just notify us ahead of time and once we have the schedule we'll let you know what the schedule is and you just tell us which ones you'd like to see would be be able to view the virtual classes as well the virtual classrooms are on a separate uh platform in terms of going into the school and seeing those certainly we could set up again with notice if there's a particular school or if there's a review of jva we can do a random selection of teachers and go through there um because i just have a couple more questions i just noticed there's a lot of adjuncts on the consent agenda for the last few weeks so are there full-time teachers on this virtual
029yes so why are there so many adjuncts there are many adjuncts at the secondary level because there are classes that are not offered that we need to offer uh and our adjuncts have been doing great job of filling in and taking those courses on so i'm just curious how they're paid like is there a different fund for these adjuncts i don't know if there's a different fund it's all part of the jva program oh okay yes all right thank you so much you're welcome thank you mr banks next we have the approval of the minutes is there a motion to approve the minutes of the regular board meeting held august 23rd and the special board meeting held august 20th thank you miss ogden is there a second thank you mr cable any discussion i have
030a couple concerns for the 20th um so i was told that ms harder is no longer to put comments that the board members have into the minutes yet i notice that there's a comment from you ms skinner so it just i just wonder why my comments i'm told my comments can't be included in the minutes but i notice other people's comments are able to be included that's the first question and then for the um see the 23rd feeding i disagree that the executive session was held for a personnel reason and that's just my opinion so um i'm not quite sure what you mean by that but which thing both well i i was told that it was your idea to um have my or nobody's comments could be in the minutes so because i'd ask
031well how come how come i noticed a lot of people's comments minutes are just minutes of the board meeting and you know the if you want to go back and read word for word what happens you're more than welcome to go back and watch the video no i understand it it's okay if if it applies to everybody but it doesn't seem like that because i see one of your comments in this these minutes so that's why i'm bringing it in which comment was it the one you talked about emails were half and half yeah okay just i just you know and it's happened other times that i've noticed other people's comments get you know in there and i can i can fix that would you mind um revising your motion to reflect the one comment
032that i made be struck from the minutes and then approve them that way i'm so moved thank you mr cable would you second that well i didn't understand all of what you said i'm sorry she wants to uh i revised my motion to um strike the comment on the that was noted in the minutes by miss skinner so it will not be reflected in the minutes so i revised my motion so that i'm going to accept the minutes minus that comment be stripping would you second that please second thank you any other discussion all in favor of the revised minute say aye aye aye opposed okay all right um citizens comments first up we have elizabeth herwin by zoom and following elizabeth we have valerie arnold hi can you hear me yes ma'am okay sorry
033that's okay whenever you're ready okay um this will just take a second and i'm just trying to find the camera look right at you i just wanted to say thank you so much um i was this last meeting where we were discussing mass requirements in the schools and i wanted to share my deep appreciation with board of education members who voted to acquire masks in school following cdc guidance that made a huge difference to my family a huge positive difference i urge you to continue to follow cdc guidance and best practices in schools as they're currently saying that regardless of vaccination status they recommend asking for everybody again huge huge huge thank you and i also wanted to urge some compassion for those who are on the no mask side and i i don't agree
034with their concerns but i'm hoping that we could offer them some compassion in terms of uh they want to keep their children out of school until the conditions change to make that as easy for them as possible and as easy as possible for them to re-enter when conditions are more comfortable for them but again a big thank you to the board of education for listening and for following the cdc guidance and i hope that you will continue to do so thank you thank you next up is valerie arnold and followed by karen buck so i'm just curious are you guys doctors or nurses exposed to this stuff that the cdc is saying that is so good to be a requirement i'm just curious just curious so i just want to point out a couple things
035um in a august 2021 article published by david zowaig to the new york magazine they did a study of 90 000 elementary school students in 169 georgia schools november through december of last year findings were statistically significant that showed no difference with mass for the kids okay also in august of 2021 the aclu with disability right of south carolina brought a lawsuit to south carolina over masculine schools it's one of the seven states along with texas iowa oklahoma arizona utah and florida that have policies in place banning schools from mandating mass 13 states have laws that mandate mass in schools children with disabilities are suffering greatly okay physically emotionally i think i brought this up the last time i spoke so you might want to tread lightly west virginia this is a very serious issue
036here i'm just here for accountability i have no stake in this personally my kid is out of school but i'll eventually have offspring that will go to these schools i'm sure so and everybody who you know i'm speaking up for people who are afraid to speak up there's no reason to be afraid one person can make a difference here i mean i see this every day this is ridiculous somebody who creates a vaccine and the virus and has a patent on it it's a little bit of a conflict of interest you might want to go do some research thank you next up is karen buck followed by jody karan yes we do have a lot of great people in our schools and we thank them but everything is not peachy keen my name is karen
037buck with the citizens comment which is purely my opinion and meant for entertainment purposes only good evening to the now six board members which the optics have not been lost on us okay the internet is forever period no matter how hard you scrub it in july of 2014 a criminal lawsuit was filed in virginia in relation to massive child abuse massive child abuse of students the defendants were the virginia department of education henrico county school board the criminal lawsuit alleged that students suffered due to a code of silence in the schools cover-up and indifference towards students meaning they didn't care i heard it cost that school board 20 million of taxpayer dollars to settle that lawsuit i urge everyone to read congressional bill h.r 2083 of the 113th congress it's only seven pages it's called
038protecting students i want you to pay particular attention to page five in may of 2015 jefferson county schools got a new superintendent since january we have seen communist critical race theory black meth genius segregation program masking of children school vaccine competitions the threat of vaccine clinics in our school high school counseling department failures teachers quitting unclear school budget entries and now we have this okay we have this and it's at least two incidents possibly three in the same school with the same principle and the same superintendent in charge yes parents it's a lot and it's bad and it's going to get worse the bigger problem is these people truly think they know what's best for our children and parents are just in the way with such laxative lacks permissive indifferent leadership fostering these types of
039decisions and this atmosphere in the schools this will go on and on and on parents and teachers can either put up or shut up and keep your job teachers can quit if they want to for the christian minded parents and teachers this is hell on earth and they know it parents and grandparents need to make some tough decisions pull your kids out by october the 4th just say no vote next may the 10th thank you [Applause] hi i'm jody curran president biden's speech on thursday motivated me to speak tonight it motivated me to speak excerpts from it paraphrased back to you on the school board and to you parents i trust you all listen to the speech because why wouldn't you when a president speaks all citizens and students students should be listening not to
040the cliff notes on the news afterwards but always straight from the horse's mouth we are adult thinking humans and can listen and learn for ourselves the speech was full of powerful words to all americans and if some of his words don't sound familiar to you here then shame on you for not paying attention i've paraphrased for us good evening my fellow west virginians i want to talk to you about where we are in the battle for our children's education parents it starts with you understanding this we have the tools to combat the woke virus if we can come together as a county and use those tools if we raise our expectation of schools protect ourselves and others with knowledge expanded testing and identify people who are woke infected and quarantine them many of us are
041frustrated with the small but loud connected and powerful racists and socialists who are still out to destroy a nation that is safe effective and free and to make it worse there are even elected officials actively working to undermine the fight of parents for their children to work hard and test up they overrun our school boards our local offices leaving no room for parents whose hearts are only for the children talk about bullying in schools i want to emphasize that i know there's a lot of confusion and misinformation out there this is pandemic politics of anti-family socialism and this is all this is all about freedom and personal choice the bottom line we're going to protect our students from un-american school policies because we have voter and taxpayer authority tonight i'm using that same authority to
042warn those who think they run the schools and to wake parents up parents reach out to your neighbors wake them up what more is there to wait for what more do you need to see are you waiting for jefferson county to do away with any great requirements for graduation like oregon just did to president biden and the members of the board we've been patient but our patience is wearing thin so please do the right thing listen to american families who are watching their schools take their final breath saying if only i'd gotten involved if only it's a tragedy please don't let it happen let me be blunt if the school board won't help us beat the socialist agenda we'll use our power to get them out of the way at the voting booth in may
04322. remember it's may not november that is election or eviction day for our boardvig when joe biden came into office he promised unity but he has instead executed divisive measures and hate biden says if you break the rules be prepared to pay that's what socialism does it threatens and he says by the way show some respect like joe biden we say to you on the board show some respect to the citizens that elect you stop working against us let me close with what president biden said i'll paraphrase a little now is a critical moment parents we have the tools there is nothing we can do man bless you man [Applause] next up is jennifer krause here i am uh my husband emails you every few days some statistics science that you say you follow since
044the beginning of this pandemic in west virginia as a whole there have been two hundred eleven thousand seven hundred six thousand people diagnosed with code in our state as of today this afternoon as of this afternoon excuse me there have been 3 238 deaths that is a recovery rate of 98.5 that does not include those who have had mild symptoms or no symptoms and they were never tested the true recovery rate is estimated at well over 99.5 percent that would be 99.99 for those under age 60. the percentage breakdown for the 3238 deaths in west virginia ages zero to 20 zero percent 21 to 50 4 in ages 51 and up they account for 96 of the deaths in our state for our county as of today there have been 5741 people diagnosed with covet
04567 of those deaths with code that is a recovery rate for jefferson county of 98.8 percent which is better than west virginia as a whole the breakdown of these 67 deaths in jefferson county ages 0 to 20 zero deaths 21 to 54 deaths 51 and up 63 that is 94 of the deaths in jefferson county these are not our children these are not in our schools this year there have been no deaths of anyone under 40 in jefferson county since the beginning of this pandemic there has been only one i would like to know now that we all know that dr reedy was speaking for himself not the board of health why are we allowing our children to bear the fun why are we forcing them to go through their day with a mask on
046why are we quarantining entire classfuls of children when they're all wearing masks why makes no sense it makes no sense our children are not at risk and if they're worried if people are worried about them bringing this home i'm sure that their parents their grandparents anybody concerned have been vaccinated or can get vaccinated if they so choose i'm tired of this i am fed up and you all are losing students [Applause] all right next up we have the consent agenda um excuse me i applied on sentinel to janet to speak on that was on friday i'm sorry i did have you you did i'm sorry um okay but you didn't sign up today that's why it didn't happen well so the last year i signed up for tonight exactly i signed up for it tonight
047to speak okay but you didn't sign up outside i didn't that's why i was your name no miss fuller you're welcome to speak then we just missed your name sorry about that hey guys hi as you all know my name is barbara fuller what you might have heard is that i have filed my pre-candidacy for board of education like last time i'm sure the word is out that i should not win because i'm a mean girl and we all know that mean girls don't care but i do just so happens in the past couple of weeks service personnel have been contacting me it's disheartening to read their emails i'm going to pick one group tonight there are bus drivers some of these complaints are that these buses are so overcrowded that you have three students
048to a bench seat it's unsafe it's not so bad when the kids are tiny but when you have high school and middle school kids it's just dangerous some people have come up and said hey did you know that i see kids riding sitting in the aisles i can see them from the back of the bus as i'm following them that's insane if i would my kids rode the bus i'd be so mad i said [Applause] one of the newest things i'm hearing about is that these bus drivers are not being notified when there's a positive covid case with riders on their school bus do they not matter do they not get to know if someone was sick on their bus how are they supposed to handle it in their own homes we are so concerned
049with grandparents of our students but did we ever consider once that our drivers might have elderly at home did we ever think that most of these people have two to three jobs just to make ends meet and they're gonna go out and spread it all over the community why it's not fair i'm sure it's probably not legal that we don't let them know that there's covet on their bus we seem to have a shortage of school bus drivers it's not because we pay less in matter of fact in our neighboring counties it's basically the same pay but one thing that berkeley offers is a county attendance bonus so basically you get awarded a thousand dollars if you're paid in your paycheck if you've list missed less than four days it was taken away from ours
050why i have no idea but other other areas do get them there's no incentive for them to come to work when they're treated so horribly i think it's fair time with everything that they've had been put through from mandatory masks in hundred day heats with buses with no air conditioning to the possibility of being force jabbed it's ridiculous all right the consent agenda we have a couple of folks here that i'd like to introduce from uh dr gibson is there any way to move that mic closer to you the one that's on that corner of the table no oh that's okay i'll stand up right here i need to get up anyway um so on your consent agenda tonight with the recommendation from the superintendent is a new administrator to our system uh mr robert
051bittner is here with his family um mr bittner comes to us highly recommended from arlington virginia he has four separate certifications in administrative k-12 curriculum history social studies and elementary education a master's and a bachelor's from the state university of new york thank you for finding your way down here um and i am recommended that he be appointed the new assistant principal at shepherdstown middle school mr bittner if you could introduce yourself and your family that would be great good afternoon thank you or good evening thank you for having me um i'm robert bittner i'm hopefully going to be accepted as the new assistant principal at shepherdstown middle school my wife is behind me melissa and my newly one-year-old daughter chloe and we are excited to become part of this family we are looking forward
052to getting to know more about jefferson county we are in the process of moving in this direction and i am ready to serve this community of learners parents and students and couldn't be more delighted to become part of jefferson county schools so thank you very much for joining us it's always education is a family business and it's always nice to see someone's family is in it with them um so uh next up i have a a couple of familiar faces who are very graciously stepping up to assist us in a time of need and one of them your mr matt week has graciously agreed for us to be the interim assistant superintendent for special education uh for those of you familiar and i'm certainly one of them my son spent the last three years having
053a magnificent middle school experience in a school that made some uh just outstanding academic and social emotional gains there and i lay that at the feet of the two people here uh and their uh faculty so uh obviously mr wink's acceptance of an interim assistant superintendent means that we need an interim principal at charlestown middle school and for that i am recommending miss nikki reed for those of you who may be new to the county mr brittner miss reed's roots run really really really deep here uh if you haven't already you will meet miss dean reed because everybody does um and they've been a backbone in this county nikki reed's been a backbone at charlestown middle school i am thrilled and the faculty is thrilled to be able to have the consistency and the continuity
054uh and the expertise that they bring and we're very grateful to them at a time when yes we are struggling all over every school system to find staff i texted with a superintendent just this weekend that had to close the two largest schools in monroe county because they did not have sufficient staff to staff them they could not safely open schools so it is always a joy and a pleasure to be and an honor to be here in jefferson where we have folks who are willing to step up for us and take leadership positions that we need so thank you very much [Music] [Applause] and middle school on top of it yeah exactly wow so tonight with the board of education's approval i am looking forward to stepping into the new shoes of acting assistant
055superintendent of special education education runs very deep especially special education um it's uh it's a fam it's in my family um and i'm looking forward to working with awesome people that are in the special education department and continuing to foster the education for all of our students especially our our special needs learners so with your approval tonight i look forward to stepping into their shoes as soon as we can thank you just to echo off of mr dr gibson i am thoroughly thrilled to have this opportunity and with your approval tonight i am very excited to build off of the foundation that mr wink has left me behind and continue to make charleston a great place for our students and our staff in our community thank you well i can also personally attest that you've
056had a great mentor these past few years so mr wife will be missed at charlestown middle school i'm sure but congratulations to the three of you [Applause] all right and then i saw there was one deletion of number 17 is that correct miss lauren that's right and no other changes correct all right is there a motion to approve the consent agenda with number 17 deleted [Applause] thank you mr osborne is there a second second thank you miss ogden any discussion yeah um a couple of things first is for the finance um i had asked miss marone about adding a column for the public to explain you know what some of these expenses are because i heard that request and so she said she'd look into it and then she came back and said no it
057can't happen so i'm wondering why that is and if there's another way to maybe be more transparent about what money is being spent on because i mean i have a hard time deciphering it so i know that the public does that's the first thing so the other thing is um um i i'm just curious why it's an interim assistant superintendent i guess you can't answer that but another question is number 44 this new position um i just i i i'm asking what this is about it says position creation that it says position change so which one is it um and there was a um attachment given to the board that is really hard to make out because it's still an address it's in a it's in the form of a draft so it's you know
058red lines and well that shows us what all the changes were that's the purpose of giving us okay um so what's the purpose of this change the purpose of the change is that it's replacing um somebody who has left the human resources department that we're replacing that position but we're requesting it to replace it from a facilitator to a coordinator which is um a higher level position and from 240 days to 261 days but why i mean that's right the reason why is because it's a year-round service it's a year-round support that we are needed and required to provide for our school community we have service positions that need to be staffed for the opening of school um so having it on a shortened contract does not produce the time and the ability for somebody
059to to do that in addition with the increase of um summer programs and summer positions it has cost a significant amount of manpower on my department to coordinate that between the departments that need those positions and also with payroll it really is the central piece into making sure that everything is posted hired and and through communicating all that necessary stuff to payroll so it's quite a big lift it has caused some staff to leave as a result of that pressure and so being able to have the timeline and the ability to staff where it would be fair to that person who's completing the position so it provides for better support to function with the demands of the position um in addition we have several two um service employees that are 261. so if this position
060which in its nature is just support service personnel and they're on a 261 and this position should be available to provide them as support as well the facilitator role was designed before i got here to be the second the backup position to me however in the hierarchy of positions within the department the facilitator technically falls underneath the coordinator i have two coordinators in the department so this position is supposed to be my backups and how it does that make any sense if it's some down the hierarch hierarchy with the change from 240 to 261 if you are concerned about the increased cost with it um it actually wouldn't be that big of an increase of cost so really ideally the strain on the school system is pretty much non-existent with the person who had departed
061if you replace that individual with a master's 45 with over 20 years of experience you're only looking at about a 5.5 000 increase if you go with somebody who um a successful candidate would happen to have lower qualifications then it would actually result in a cost savings even over increasing the responsibilities and position days of this position um i just feel like you know we lose kids every year as this you know the number of students decrease this board increases positions and we actually had a student increase this year of 243 children right and as i mentioned this position is already in existence so this is not a new position we're just asking to modify some of the responsibilities and increase the base between to 61 and as i also explained it does not have
062a cost burden on the school district will that help alleviate some of the major issues we had this summer with no help um in hr trying to run this jba and everything else yeah and frankly a much more robust summer school program that i'm assuming we're going to need for at least another year it is it is yeah because obviously you know folks are rotating through vacation time in the summer as well and so when you're rotating vacation and you have some on 240 contracts then it does leave a hole in the staffing also do you remember um maybe you remember dr gibson was the was that talked about even when we looked at probably time to get it back out our um we've developed our central office reorganization plan yesterday i thought i had
063remembered we had talked about it nauseam at some point and we put it off until the next stage of the plan and then next stage of the plan and then the paintings and mr would you mind me asking really quickly um on the finance piece that you said you weren't provided what what is it that you're looking for exactly there could be just an extra column that explains to the public what exactly the payments for for example um follow it i think is a company that you know money is spent for but unless you take the time and google you don't know that that's maybe a textbook provider well the way that accounting systems work typically is when you get a report it gives the check number the vendor the invoice number the date the
064amount you know all of that information so you know when somebody's typing in to pay you know air gas usa they're not putting anywhere into the system it's for you know i don't even know what air gas is for but you know gas at you know right denny elementary school or whatever it is i mean you're asking for information that's not captured in the system if you look at the account numbers you can figure out exactly what it is put towards so i'm sure miss marone could give you a list of the account numbers of what they are well i i mean this is not for me because i can ask miss maroon it's for the public who they open this up and they're you know why is there so much money for amazon what
065is atlantic security are we hiring a security private investigator well amazon's a perfect example i mean there's you know a half a dozen on here and like one is for 591 dollars and for the accounting department to go through and figure out okay that's for that 500 is for these 20 items do you want a report that lists exactly what that's for i mean that's um so i mean we know what jefferson high school is and of course we know what amazon is i said that because it was the first one there but there are things like lawson products what it what would that be leaning forward and some of them get real expensive meredith mchenry somebody's more than welcome to google what it is i mean you know lawson products it doesn't have on
066here you know what it does or what is that's not their job to do that yeah i'm you know i'm just asking that's all in addition to the fact that you know our finance department is very you know short staffed at the moment and our cfo actually was transferred to a different position and she's kindly keeping her current position until he finds me to fill it so yeah i mean it's not anything for tomorrow but it's just a request that i think would be helpful to the public that's all okay it's just not it i i live in the accounting world so i understand so that's just not a you know reasonable request to put on a report like this it is if you're in the public and you're 80 of your tax dollars goes
067to schools or whatever the number is they are concerned so you know and they're more than happy to see what it goes to but what it's you know and they're always welcome to come in and request to look at an invoice i mean all of our books are open it's just for somebody to go in there and you see how many pages this report is for somebody to go in there and itemize you know this is for 27 gallons of milk or whatever it is it's just not that can't happen i just want you to understand it's not miss maroon being difficult it's just the way that has never been difficult to me i mean not to my face that i know of it's not that i'm saying she's being difficult it's just that um
068you know blackstone roofing is that for the i mean just some of these are really large five hundred thousand dollars for one three hundred thousand um you just wonder what some of this is so if there was a way that the public could maybe you know if there's something on the website where they can access what just a little more information i think it would be helpful okay any other questions on the consent agenda um if you can just talk about since we just had the guidance thing about the two-part positions that that they're looking for or what that's going to help with the different things that we just want the corrective action plan like what exactly is it going to be those are two that i think are very necessary yes ma'am so when
069we went through the process of defining duties um both with the counselors and with the guidance of the west virginia department of education one of the things that they were clear about and you saw some of the work that we did was to delineate the roles of the counselors versus administrators and to look at the amount of clerical duties that were assigned to those offices and like many other positions the growth and the expectations for their positions over the years so those two positions we sat down with the west virginia department of education with the counselors we created the job descriptions based on the things that they said counselors should not be doing these things they should be with kids um some things that we handed back to administrators in the building some of the
070clerical things we put in those positions we had wvde review them uh they were very supportive of us adding those positions to be able to help right now our goal is and we saw it was pretty ambitious but our counselors will spend 80 percent of their time face face-to-face one-on-one with students this year every single student beginning with rising seniors second freshman and then sophomore juniors will have a one-on-one face-to-face documented pet plan meeting with their counselor with a signature from the student and a verification from the clerk so uh we've put in a very very ambitious plan and like anything else if we are going to demand a certain level of performance we have to give people the tools and the supports to meet that level of performance thank you any other questions on
071the consent agenda all in favor of the consent agenda say aye opposed no all right moving down to unfinished business request approval of draft attendance policy have a good evening guys and approval of two attendance workers to support the new attendance policy actually so i do believe that joyce white uh who is remote um uh i believe that jason is moving her over for an introduction uh thank you thank you you're so no you're so thoughtful and respectful of hey i don't want to don't want to steal joyce's thunder thunder before she has an opportunity good evening madam president members of the board i am here to ask this evening for um approval of the draft attendance policy and two attendance workers to support that policy we did have two comments uh when our policy
072was our draft was out for public comment i'll just review those comments with you so that you are privy to those the first comment um was concerns about staying in school for four years students who acquire enough credits to graduate early the attendance director responsibilities they felt were unclear should be clarified michelle may may consistent either or religious holidays excuse absences anyone can make up a holiday at this point they're a stated specific holiday observed in terms of day days off the policy needs to read state approved holidays strike through zone brackets under professional appointments determining excuse charities puts more work on them the second comment goes line by line a line 254 change may result to shall result line 303 change director to director may to director xiao line 443 should be the total
073number of credits not four years as some finished early this mentor has seen in the past children be absent and believes nothing happens but if her child was out she got letters she wants it to be all or none which is a fair and equitable solution she views it as plain favorites so those are the two comments that we had regarding policy and i'll await your motion when you're ready for questions all right is there a motion to approve the draft attendance policy and let's should we do this in two separate pieces dr gibson are all ones the physicians and the policy i would say in two separate pieces depending on the policy decisions okay is there a motion to approve the draft attendance policy with the changes that have been made is there a
074motion thank you mr cable is there a second is there a second second thank you miss ogden all right now we can open it up for discussion so are we discussing the policy or the position the policy there's a lot of issues with the policy still throughout it says director i don't know if that matters that we don't have a director but i did mention that before um line 407 contradicts line 302 um line 502 there's no condition given it just gives consequences um so line 571 is kind of they just says that the superintendent shall develop administrative guidelines just seems like there should be a date or a timeline for that well this isn't a goal it's a policy so i don't see an issue with that specifically is it every year i mean
075is it going to change with the state code then line 326 all this information about magistrate responsibilities i mean i don't see why that's necessary if it's already part of state code what is why is that's not part of our policy it's part of the magistrate and what they are you know doing based on code um yeah i was curious about 56 to 60 compulsory school age so it's they have to be six years old by july 1st but then it talks about kindergarten could you explain that so the i'm sorry can you clarify your miss pearl would you mind coming to the podium i don't understand um this 58 through 60 those lines it's supposed to begin school by their sixth birthday unless they went to kindergarten or so it and it is saying
076that compulsory school age does not start until they turn sixth of july first however a student can enroll in kindergarten previously it was um it was a september first date and they and the state changed that to reflect july one and if you stand at the podium you shouldn't need to be hunched like that i should pick you up i don't want you to go home with a backache um thank you so so the compul that that's did that answer your question no because what if they start kindergarten at you know i don't know five or four it doesn't give that and they turn five in november so if a student enrolls when they are five once they're in kindergarten then they are required to participate in the compulsory school age once you're enrolled then
077you have to meet those requirements but what the law states is that students do not have to enroll until they are that that date but if they do want to enroll in kindergarten there's no age for that listed that's because the state did not have that in their code that is something that could be added to our policy of the board well it seems that a parent could come in and say well my child is for they want to go to kindergarten and now they get to go to first grade at sit at five because it's not in your code but you do say that if they go to kindergarten then they get to go to first grade so it seems like that should be made clear is that in our policy somewhere other than
078the attendance this is in the code that's in a different way okay so it's just in a different spot so then why put this in here at all then because it's it's in the state code and so our policy adopts the state code and then we made the recommendations that we've added based on the attendance committee feedbacks and the feedbacks from the board so this is nothing different from the state code what you have what you're saying the the compulsory school age the compulsory school age yes ma'am so why does it need to be in the attendance policy then if it's you know already it's just this is a lie of information for a policy it just seems like if you're going to do an attendance policy you would just make it an attendance policy
079i think what they're trying to do say in is of the attendance policy if you don't enroll your child by this age okay so if you're willing to list the kindergarten program why wouldn't you just list the age of you know the age that they would have to be the cut off for kindergarten so what if they come from another state and they've had kindergarten but they had it when they were four or five if they come from another state and it's a state certified program in the past we have had to take them where they are already if they went through a state certified approved program there are states that have different age requirements and if they're in maryland and they have started early which maryland may let them do then when they come
080to us then we have to accept them where they are and that's why it says or upon enrolling in a publicly supported kindergarten program and there are there had been in the past some approved programs even within our county that weren't part of our school system the montessori program was one that comes to mind years ago that had state approval now i don't know whether it does at this point in time or not um i i just think that part's fake but that's the least of my concerns about it just seems like i said that the contradiction of um line 407 302. um in the case of five unexcused absences the attendance director chao make meaningful contact but on line 302 i think it was who's going to be doing it 407 forums shall make
081meaningful contact but in 302 it says that they're going to do something very specific which is not just make meaningful contact because you define meaningful contact to be something very could be anything but 302 it says that is a home visit it's going to happen so it seems like 407 needs to say there's going to be a home visit i mean i don't know why you're repeating it anyway but lines 302 to 304 were the recommendations from the attendance committee that was in addition um an extra layer from the state policy and that states that after five consecutive unexcused absences um the uh home a home visit shall be conducted by the attendance director um principal or school designee and so that was an addition based from the attendance committee recommendations um which was that
082extra layer of support i understand where it came from but i'm just saying that it's it's not consistent because line 407 seems to contradict it line 302 says five consecutive unexcused absences will receive a home visit and line 402 says five total unexcused absences will make meaningful contact so i think basically what they're saying is if i have a child that has missed five days consecutively of school and i don't know where they are i'm going to go to that house and figure out where they are if i have a child who's in the course of two months missed five total unexcused absences then i can make meaningful contact with that parent but i don't necessarily mean that does not necessarily mean i'm going to actually go to their home so different things why is
083it under principle and not under you know the different policies for when you would make meaningful contact it it doesn't is there a reason for that because it's confusing that's how the state policy reads if the board would like to make recommendations for it to be moved elsewhere we're open to any of those recommendations well i'm definitely glad there's a clarification between the two because you know we get parents mad enough when we send them a letter saying their child is missed five days i can't imagine what it's gonna be like if we go knocking on their door saying you know your child has missed five days that's so the consecutive and the you know five total that has to have a distinction there i feel do you see any issues with this policy overall
084i had we have to go to executive session if you want um it's legal advice and line 502 like all those things are going to happen that's what it's saying i just want to make sure that's correct they're giving counseling they're put in a truancy program the parent has to attend a program um take the appropriate legal action and then do whatever the sat team says is that really what you want that to mean that all of those things will happen so it should listen it there was some discussion before about may versus shao um and the recommendation of the board members were that it should say shall um and so if it reads a shall then yes we want our schools to do all of those things if we change it back to may
085then they can do what they feel is appropriate on that list is that correct yes this this the magistrate stuff line 326 like is there a reason why that's in there because that is what reflects in state policy so long story short we have to do what state policy says correct and we can just do in addition to what state policy says yes ma'am but if it's already in state code why do we have to restate something that just doesn't seem relevant unless you're saying that the school system is somehow encouraging this magistrate i don't know it just seems like it just shows up and that it's not it's already part of the code when there's a when there's an attendance policy from the state may i just ask a few simple questions just to
086get greater understanding here for myself and anybody else that's watching and doesn't know how this works um when the the state has an attendance policy is it written just like this i mean and then we add stuff to it throughout it correct we don't take the state policy and move stuff around or anything like that we just take the policy and we add to it is that correct yes ma'am so if i were to take the state policy i would see this and then it might not have this paragraph here or it might have not these two words or you know whatever that might be so we're not like taking it and jumbling it up and mixing it up we're just taking it and adding to it yes because we have to do it what
087they say is a minimum is that correct okay so the fact that they have that magistrate section in there i mean we're not putting that in there that's what the state put in there so it's recommended that we leave what the state puts in there and just add to it and not take something out that the state has in there correct correct and i know i'm talking a lot but i'm just trying to make sure yeah going round and round thank you okay it's just that it it there's things thrown in different places it doesn't read um it doesn't flow it's not consistent um like the earlier the question about five consecutive unexcused absence so you have to go 100 lines down to see well but if they're not consecutive absences then there's something else
088going to happen it just seems that if everything was organized to make it more user friendly for the public and also this attendance director issue because that's the route i don't know if that means that if the board approves this policy then okay well now the board has to approve an attendance director since it's in the policy well we've been through that and we've gotten permission that the coordinator versus the director so that's that's not what i'm asking i'm just saying that if this says attendance director and we don't have one does that mean that we will need to now hire one or should you just change this from director to coordinator so if it's the will of the board the the the attendance director language is from the state code and if it's the
089will of the board then it can be the key how about every time it says attendance director we put attendance director or coordinator with that work or is that just gumming up the works even more it would be my strong recommendation that you continue to use the language that is in the state policy and if you wish to add something to it you certainly can but as we have established and we have verified with the west virginia department of education ms devin pearl qualified to serve as the attendance director regardless of what her title is here she serves them with this instructor so i would certainly maintain the language that's in it so it's kind of like you are the superintendent yet you serve as a secretary of the board i'm good then for that
090piece of it okay um miss pearl can you give a just a quick overview so that we can have some understanding with if we're going to add the shall the the must the maybe the you know all the fun lawyer language trying to pick what you you're going to say can you break it down very briefly in the schools every school has an attendance policy person correct from elementary all the way up somebody is taking attendance every day is that correct so attendance is being entered every day at the school is that yes is that your question buy a person who works at the school who enters the attendance yes ma'am okay so that then rolls up to whom so typically at most schools the secretary or the attendance clerk enters the attendance every day
091they enter all of the absences then the note codes and and all of that and then if you're saying the next question and then our secretaries administrators they are running absence reports making those meaningful contacts based on the absences that they see um and then it would roll up to me i think that's what you're asking this often yeah that's exactly what i'm asking okay so the principals in the buildings are responsible to pull the reports and then assign who if this policy stays the way it is that it they shall do one two three four five so i have an attendance office person or a secretary or a clerk or whoever's in what school that is inputting data and the principal has you know 15 fires to put out before they ever even get
092to it which is the end of the day probably i mean who knows right it can happen and they push the button they pull the report and now they have 15 kids on that list who have because that doesn't even include jva right correct so we're not even so so jva attendance is taken and those reports are also run in meaningful contact is also made for those okay but the principles of that building don't do that i'm assuming that would be the building principle is not going to take care of that anymore is that correct well so anyway so hold on so we get back to it and we say okay so now i've pulled this report and i have 15 kids on this list who need now these five things because if we leave
093it shall then these five things have to happen correct depending on their level of absences and so the the first step is that meaningful contact in three days um and it might be not it might be determined that they no longer need those steps but if student who would continue to accrue unexcused absences after that meaningful contact yes we would say these shall these things shall happen and but what i guess what i'm asking is what is that principal who's sitting in a building who has to continue to manage her building and has this list what does she do send the email to you and say here here's the list you need to take care of this at washington high or jefferson high and these are the people i have like how is that communicated
094right now what what is happening at the building level where's the breakdown happening that we need if we do this to other positions to somehow support it i guess i'm trying to get to the bottom of what are we needing and how and like expl how does it how does it work now and if we change this what are we going to do with it and where are we where are we keeping track of whether it's a successful or not system to use okay sorry so am i in prison yeah yes ma'am so right now the principal in the schools have that process and we do find that to be a little cumbersome and overwhelming uh devin and i have developed a process where we retract that information it will be a shared board with
095the school and we've developed something to keep careful tracking the information with follow-up questions so we thought that piece through about how we would get that done specifically if there were two attendance workers then they would join devon on her i'm going to call it project board so that we could track students and make sure that every student was in fact seen what the results were of the visit if it happens again etc does that answer your question it's all good it does i guess i'm wondering where are they going to be placed and and you know how is that who who will be supervising them will they be service personnel jobs you know what is it that we're looking for now uh social workers with an independent certification because that is the job classification
096that we're asking for so it has to be very specific devin would be their immediate supervisor and our vision for this and she can expound upon it if you'd like to get into job description our vision was was an attendance worker at each high school and each attendance worker would then work the theater pattern of that high school that would include going to the school at least once a week for check-in and checking with actual staff and students in the building you know meeting with the principal and then gathering data that way as well the social work aspect would not only allow the attendance worker to go to the home and make the visit but to provide them with resources and work with them in the home and and hopefully work with the family we
097did hear from a principal because the attendance committee has seen this uh draft attendance policy they have seen the job description for attendance worker and i think devin has before her some feedback from a principal if you would like her to read what a principal says how these positions would be helpful i'm still on this policy though i mean can we finish that yeah we haven't made a motion on the let's hold off on the positions right now let's just continue with the policy um again that line 494 prevention and corrective measure there's there's a few things says we're going to give incentives and rewards but we don't know what that is that's a million dollars per person or you know what's going to happen there but then there's a lot of really um serious
098corrective action measures you know so it's punitive um very clearly punitive but i mean there's a lot of stuff that the school is gonna do and i just don't think anybody's gonna do all that that's just as much as i would like especially if you know children are not in school because they're being neglected um but you're saying you shall do all these things that i think that means that that's what you're going to do and you're going to be held liable if you didn't do them that's the way i think but i don't know so maybe we should ask the um laura sutton um are you referring to 503-514 yeah but then i'm also pointing out that there is no explanation of these incentives or rewards i know they were paying kids at jefferson
099for a while i don't know did that work or you know do you have data on that is that a i'm just i'm just saying that you're not clear about what these rewards and incentives are it just says a system of incentives and rewards i certainly if i understand the feedback from the committee the administrators and the folks who worked on that wanted to give the principles within we'd certainly maintain the budgetary guidelines of it but they know their kids best at the different levels what works for an incentive for a third grader is it going to be the same thing that works for an incentive for a high schooler to your point encouraging folks to come to school when they had the renaissance program and the cards hey if you have this level of
100attendance then you can go into a drawing for a parking space close to the school so things that are incentives for different levels we trust our administrators to know their children well and they do and to be able to offer them the support that those incentives within bounds are going to be motivating to those students so we have the same procurement laws we've always had for what we can and can't do we don't purchase gift cards we don't hand out cash they're not those kind of things they're things that are there to motivate kids to come graduation tickets was a big one at one point at one point extra graduation tickets above and beyond the standard for everyone yes ma'am maybe for these preventive and corrective measures there could be a tier system where because
101maybe the first step is assign the truancy intervention program and then the next step if that doesn't work do the next thing because i mean this is just a lot of stuff here at once how about if we just change 502 to may instead of shall and that way they can pick and choose the appropriate level i mean you know legal action may not be appropriate for one case where you know counseling to the student may be appropriate well the way it's written every one will be taken under legal legal appropriate legal action and we don't need to do that so so can i ask this question though with regards to that if we have a student who ends up in trouble or we have an issue with attendance and then we have to go
102um send information and whatnot to the parents and we end up at the magistrate level what of these how are we held accountable to that and what is this the requirements at the magistrate level with the state to be able to make sure that all our eyes are done entities are crossed if we have an issue obviously we don't want to get to that place but we also don't want to not have what we need if we do so one of these is required by the magistrate's office and state and what is our thought idea process so no no no no no um i just want to do a couple of things just like the state providing the policy to the counties and saying thou shalt meet this at a minimum and then you can
103uh request require things above and beyond that the magistrate court holds us accountable to the minimum that's in the state law now sometimes they can ask for a different format or additional information to make a decision but in terms of accountability you are correct anywhere in this policy where you say shall the magistrate and understandably so because they're making sure that you're following the policy says you said thou shalt do these seven things did you do all seven of them so uh you know it's it's accountability to the degree that is in the policy but you also have you have experience with the magistrates court of of additional things that you might want to discuss if you if you have anything to add my experience with the magistrate court was previous in berkeley county um
104and so the expectation from the magistrate court was that the student had the unexcused days that we filed upon and that was the the request what we did at berkeley county schools um and that i apologize that's my point of reference of my previous experience but we would also provide a summary to our magistrates that said this is the day we sent our ca2 letter which was any student received after five unexcused absences we would include the home visits that the attendance workers would conduct any phone calls that we had left voicemails and so all of that was supplemental that we submitted to the magistrates it was not required by our magistrates but but also um i just put my mask down because you did i'm sorry don't forget um but also um kelly wolfe
105the previous interim she also submitted her summary of when those letters were sent all the phone calls attempted home visits attempted any correspondence and all all of that is shared with the magistrates i think that this if if i was a parent and i was legal action was taken against me i would complain that yeah but you know this other person they only had um counseling you know or there's no clear um it doesn't seem fair it's not you know there's it's just so much room for you know subjective interpretation and bias unless it's you know these are the steps we'll take or um because it could be i mean what's the first step the first step is a referral to a set right anyway isn't that normally so then it's um and i think
106at school level depends on whether you know whether those absences are for you know if somebody's been in the hospital or somebody you know if the parent's been in the hospital i think you as a principal as a building administrator you have to evaluate those reasons i mean you wouldn't want to take legal action if it was because the child's been in the hospital i mean and i think you need i need you need some flexibility there life's not always equal and maybe say shall shall utilize one or more of the following that way it's you know you don't have to do all of them but you've made it clear you're going to do something and you have a choice of which one just the way it's written it's um it seems like a lot
107to achieve last question i had is do we have anything in here i didn't see it or do we have to include anything in here that might include covet like if the child gets coveted and they're out you know 14 days 10 10 days whatever they have to quarantine i mean obviously it says that you get your work you can make up your work the number of days that you were out but at the same time how do those absences count so covet absence is a student who is out due to covet or quarantine those are excused absences and so it has to be a diagnosed like who who like if they're quarantined and taken out that's one thing if they're diagnosed then from a doctor like how many days do they get as unexcused
108and how does that work there's not any kind of there's nothing in here that states anything about it and i don't know if we should have something in here or not i don't think it's going to go away frankly um well right now covet is treated as any other illness if your child was out with the flu if your child was out because they got a stomach virus covet except for quarantine covet is classified just as any other illness that we have so do we classify the quarantines the same way if we have to quarantine a child that is not sick and does not qualify for an illness but they get quarantined how do we trace that and what do we call that it's still excused because we send them home correct so so there
109are um so there's a separate code for that and the state guidance there's two two pieces of guidance from the state regarding coding for our quarantine students if a student is being quarantined and participating in academic um instruction during that time if they're home and they're able to participate then they get something which is called a virtual of a v1 virtual code and that is counted they are counted as present elsewhere if they are unable to participate um during that time then they get a health exclusion code and that is considered an excused absent and not and an absent if that if does that i'm sorry i said i think i stuttered but so the codes are representative of what they're participating in during that time but they're both excused and that came from the
110state regarding pebt cards if a student needs to be eligible for a pebt card that's why we've been asked to use the v1 codes for students who are quarantining and lori just just to be clear our nurses have it well documented who's positive who's quarantining so the documentation is there and that is used in conjunction with um with dylan's uh with devin's office so uh we do keep track of that if that's responsive to your question okay i have a question are you done with that i have a different question um the religious holiday i'm just wondering about like wiccan and all the other religious holidays it just says any religious holiday so um i don't know if that matters but is it are there state approved religious holidays and are there or per the
111school calendar there are identified um holidays they're not identified in the state policy okay and we have the um the attendance committee have recommended like you know just um i'm sorry recognizing all religious holidays and so not to have them listed but the state policy does not let state approved um just some things could get controversial that's like i don't know kkk or you know whatever people come up with and call it their religion i'm just curious if the state has any way of defining it i mean i understand that you want to give everybody religious freedom and i guess if they want to take a day off you know they could just call in sick anyway so i think they probably have some type of parameters for that maybe if it said that you
112know i'm not sure how religious the kkk is well i don't think they are either but i'm sure that they have some parameters for defining that who's that you mean the state yeah i'm sure that they have some parameters for defining religious holidays well if we run into a problem i'm sure we can come back and revisit the policy i don't perceive running into a problem so we can just leave it for now and as you said if somebody takes off wiccan or whatever day you think might be an issue then we'll address it at that point in time that's for clarification at that point all right i do have a quick question though it was brought to my attention that some school systems and i might be way off base with this but some
113school systems have it in their policy where if a child is absent you know the 10 days rather than doing a home visit the parent brings the child to the school now i don't know if that's a good idea a bad idea but it definitely puts the burden on the parent as opposed to the school system going out there i mean you know i'm not there are situations that i'm not comfortable putting our staff going and knocking on doors so number one you know if anybody thinks it's an unsafe situation definitely get help from the police department of the sheriff's department don't just go out there and start knocking on doors if you think it's an unsafe environment but um miss white have you or miss pearl have you guys thought about that at all
114as a possibility where the parent brings the child to school and that would alleviate the additional positions because with these positions that are going out there and knocking on doors you know i mean we have a hard time getting staff now when you're talking about a position that needs a certain certification for attendance i'm just afraid we're going to have this great policy but we're not going to have the people to enact it and if you don't have the people to take care of the policy then the policy is worse than it was to begin with unless you chose to delay it upon being able to secure the two workers i think your idea is viable i think it would have to be an idea where once you ask them to come to school if
115they didn't there would have to be a consequence at that point such as if you don't bring your child to school and we don't put meaningful eyes on your child then we have to go ahead and file for truancy and make a mandated report of educational neglect for not bringing your child to school so i think we would have to do that so that parents would take that seriously and would understand that we care about your child and we want them to be safe so the other concern i have is you know just can they get arrived to school could some of them be able to do that and it still may mean that we end up doing some homes home visits and there would have to be i would think some distinguishing factors between
116when does when does that occur you want it to be fair well i i think that if if it's a serious situation then going into the home you're gonna have more up an opportunity to see what's going on you could see that they're living in filth there's no food there's you know all the kids are in the corner or i don't i guess you have a better opportunity um and if it gets to the point where there's five unexcused i don't know i just think there's a big difference between bringing them in and going to to visit i mean how many kids are we talking about anyway is it possible to have a meeting with the prosecutor's office and matt harvey or whoever else works for him whatever to be able to look at some
117of these guidelines especially for the truancy that we have suggested the shall and the must and the may or whatever and come up with a plan and a guideline that we can maybe partner with them to where maybe they rather than hiring two physicians here we may have some some additional help or resources to deal with the outlying issues and then shore up our reporting system for how we're actually communicating the data from one school up to the top and you know what are we doing with it how are we tracking it and then have it reflect in this policy a little bit more comprehensively so our bases are covered because we have actually gotten guidance from the people who hold us accountable to the guidance i think that's a good idea i mean i
118contacted the magistrate office to ask them how often we're there and it's an hour a month because the hearings are 10 minutes i mean that's just um for the magistrate's office so it's not like you've got somebody sitting going to court every day and so it made me wonder well how many children are we actually thinking about you know to ask for two positions it's like well there's going to be hundreds of kids and anyway but i think it's a good idea to get clarification because um i i think that they might want to have input because it's my understanding that they weren't getting the reports the way they requested them um previously so i don't know what the issue was but maybe they would like more information when the school system makes reports just
119be careful is it better to withdraw my emotion of a second or is it better to um call for a vote well we can call for a vote but just um one thing i want to caution you on is the training that we just went to down in charleston for the school board association going into the magister's office and getting information and doing your own investigation remember we're just as a person we're nobody i mean it's as a board so i'm hoping they're not always a board member i just asked how it works how often does schools you know i didn't go as a board member well remember they said there's no distinction between you and a board member i mean so just be careful you know doing an investigation on your own yeah i
120didn't do an investigation i just asked how how often it happens with you know um when parents are asked to go to court but i think it would be good to get the whole picture talking to matt finding out their policy what they expect all right so miss ogden are you saying i will say that there were on the committee people from um the prosecutor's office so they have seen everything but they haven't seen the changes aft the committee came up with something and then it was changed from may to shall and things like that is that correct or has the committee reconvened and gone over the latest version uh correct me if i'm wrong devin did you send out the uh second version to the committee because i know we sent out the first
121one yes it's been so they had that too i'd also like some feedback from them on what they may be able to add or help with along with those positions instead of just hiring tumor physicians since we've already had budget season so are you asking that we tabled of course after did you have a motion on the table but barring that are you saying that your suggestion that you'll take to the boarding once the board votes that your suggestion is going to be that we table this go back to the county prosecutor's office ask them to either come to the board or put something in writing about what resources they're willing to commit to the policy that they agreed to or if they have any suggestions on how they would like to make sure that
122we follow that policy or if they have any other input on that policy for having eyes on kids what are we supposed to do within the county and making sure that's safe because i'm just not sure that us having two more positions of social workers when we have an entire solo staff and a social worker from what i thought we had was in every building we have many unfilled social work positions that's certainly i that's been part of the discussion is okay to the extent that we i shouldn't say we you as a board uh create a policy that says to mark's point thou shalt thou shalt thou shout we do not have uh enough people to cover every one of those vows and we can certainly as she stated they had enough foresight they
123put folks from the county prosecutor's office on this they saw the original they've seen the follow-up um we can certainly go back and ask them if they have any other suggestions that they didn't share if they have any resources for us that would change the suggestions that we have in the policy now actually or if there's any state grants for positions like this it seems to me that this is a pretty complicated thing you're you're getting ready to go into and i don't care what you do with it they're gonna be some things that are really good and they're probably gonna be some things in there that are really bad not because it was poor or anything it's just the way these things do you have to get into them and get kicked around a
124little bit before you figure out okay this is what we really need to do so i mean sitting here and listening to all this stuff tonight that's fine it gives you some ideas of what to listen people want to look at what what to listen to and all of that but you're going to have to run it for us for for a year and find out how it really works and you might as well quit trying to get this thing down to the uh last center because you're not going to do it you've got you've got a good start so go with it and see where it goes that's the only thing you can do and i don't care whether it's this or or building an automobile or i don't care what it is that's
125the way it works you can't make it perfect the first time thank you the only other piece i add is i think if we're going to have an attendance policy it needs to be comprehensive and also include what is what are expectations specifically for jva within the policy instead of two separate policies they are our students and they're part of our population so i think if i was a parent and i went to find the attendance policy for jefferson county schools i would want to see what it included for my child no matter what my child was in and if they're in jva they're still part of us so i need i need some kind of a breakdown as to what what are my guidelines and if they're the same it just needs to state
126how it's the same what does it mean for for that thank you so much ogden are you amending your motion to table the approval of the draft attendance policy yes all right mr cable do you second promotion to table the attendance policy i'm sorry i can't hear you do you second my motion to table the attendance policy until we add these things and they take the recommendations that we've given okay all right so there's a motion on the table to um table the approval of the draft attendance policy all in favor say hi hi all right opposed all right and then is there a motion to table the approval to attendance workers to support the attendance policy yes thank you mr osborne and destroy did you second yeah all right all in favor of tabling
127the approval of two attendance workers say aye opposed thank you and miss pearl congratulations again on your new position i believe the honeymoon period may be over and then number 14 no new business down to superintendent's comments dr gibson i'll have your comment thank you all right and do we have anything that needs an executive session no we need not all right 908 meeting adjourned thank you [Music]