001good evening welcome to the regularly scheduled meeting of the jefferson county board of education on monday may 10th and if you'd 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 all right madam superintendent looks like we have a presentation this evening yes ma'am you certainly do you uh began the year with a presentation and fall from our cultural unity and equity group if you'll recall ms dallas lewis and several members of the group spoke about their experiences over the summer and some of the goals that they had um and they're here to update you on those miss dallas lewis hello good evening everybody it's such a pleasure
002to be here my name is tanya dallas lewis and i have the pleasure of being the cultural unity and equity and staff development coordinator for our fine district and so exactly what dr gibson said board members i just wanted to and friends and public and community just share a little update on where we've been and kind of where we're moving when it comes to our top three goals for our district uh cultural unity and equity for this year i'm going to share my screen in just a second here one second please let's try this now there we go all right and just give me a thumbs up somebody if you can see this thank you so much all right so here we are with cultural unity and equity our district's short-term goals and i'm really
003excited about this because i brought a few friends um many of you may be aware that the culture unity and equity department meets as a kid with our local community once a month and we've been doing so wow since last year and one of the things as a as a community that we've asked ourselves and i i kind of borrowed this lingo from an equity uh cohort partner of mine named dr flavo bolad from the outward bound he is the executive director is what makes us a community what are our goals what are the assets that we bring together even as we work across differences what are our needs what are our wants and how do we use our assets to help us to get to the goal what are the ways in which we
004are a community with intention and so here is how we are intentionally a community our community cultural unity and equity committee which i'm going to call ccc for short because there's a lot to say it is a tongue twister identified these three top priority goals for the 2020-21 year and as you'll see here goal number one had to do with recruiting retaining hiring more outstanding educators of color even as we seek to hire outstanding educators who reflect our current ethnicity and our diverse populations in jefferson county goal number two we wanted to look at those achievement gaps we wanted to take a closer look at them and even through transformative change attach meaningful action to the data that's been before us in ways that are supported by transport transformative change which pays attention to relationships
005and power dynamics as well as through our structural uh structural changes like policies procedures and how we um use resource flows to support that transformative change and then lastly goal number three we wanted to take another look at how we are supporting our hispanic latino el community in ways that acknowledges their assets and also honors their ways of doing knowing and expressing and so i want to show you where we've been and where we're headed what we've accomplished so far and so as you can see here go number one i'm just going to summarize this most of the information you need is on the screen we wanted to look at the ways that we are intentionally remember i talked about community by intention and by looking at all the various needs of all of us
006who make up that community and coming together to work across differences with our assets to achieve goals myself the superintendent human resources we sat down and so we accomplished developing a strategic goal that was objective number one we met uh to just look at how we were going to get to from point a to point b to point z that was accomplished objective number two we wanted to partner with local hbcus and hacus those acronyms stand for historically black colleges and universities and hispanic associate associations of colleges and universities we wanted to partner with them with the intention to form a reciprocal relationship where we would grant these institutions access to our districts our students our staff uh through program transits like washington high school's teacher education prep program as well as create some authentic
007and meaningful pathways to remaining student populations in exchange for our ability to deliver a personalized message to their school of education graduates to help increase bypoc and this term black stands for black indigenous people of color and to increase bipod educators in our district this is currently in progress and i'm so excited to say that those partnerships are forming we've met with representatives from howard university north carolina a t and virginia commonwealth university these are a mixture of hbcus and hacus to include marymount university uh and these these relationships are pending and growing our meetings were attended uh with representatives from those schools as well as the superintendent my department and our chief human resources officer ms amy lauren objective number three moving along we wanted to hold a diversity recruitment experience weekend uh and
008this would be targeted we're looking at june 4th through june the 5th and this is going to be a time again where we purposely target educators of color to bring them to our district to experience our district to meet our faculty our staff our students and show them that what we have to offer and kind of challenge maybe some of the things that they thought they knew about our district and then objective number three we are uh meeting with that uh district recruitment experience weekend we have stakeholders we are working with sponsors the chamber of commerce is partnering with us um the uh store college national alumni association the naacp the hispanic latino association and the list goes on we have community members and organizations of various backgrounds and again we are reaching together through
009our assets through our strengths and our weaknesses to help us meet this need objective number four we wanted to produce a district recruitment video targeting our educators of color and again those are school of education graduates or maybe perhaps people who are transitioning into education or in some cases educators who are going back to increase uh their expertise and getting their masters or their doctorates we're reaching out to those and i'm really excited to say that that that district recruitment video is in its final stages uh and we're really excited about intentionally remember i used that word intention intentionally reaching out to those particular groups based on the data that he had and the need that we have and understanding how rep representation impacts those achievements gaps and those ways that we make sure that
010our students see themselves reflected in our building not only in our curriculum not only in just our attitudes and the ways that we treat one another but also in the staff addicted number five we wanted to increase outstanding educators of color we wanted actually let's get number five if you look there and i'm trying to minimize my head out the way there there we go we want to uh increase i didn't say on number four we want to increase educators of color by nine percent so we gave ourselves like a smart goal we actually looked at the data and you know you know countering or counting considering uh the current geographic data the demographics in this area and the outlier areas what would we reasonably state uh in how we can project we meet those
011goals in increments and so that's where we get that nine percent from and then lastly objective number five not only are we retaining educators of color through support programs we also want to prepare our mainstream teachers to be ready to welcome these by poc teachers and again by pocketing black indigenous and people of color these educators and so that's where we are for goal number one i'm going to go through goal number two and three and at the end of that i've got some friends who are going to just say a few words about uh this initiative and and and what we've been doing and what we hope to do now you'll see goal number two our goal our top out of our top three priorities this one landed as number two like i said
012our community committee our community cue committee is made up of parents teachers administrators students community members external stakeholder organizations we have a very diverse group of people and our meetings are open to anyone in this community who wants to be intentional about how we support our community this is what they chose as goal number two and that is looking at those achievement gaps but starting with those mental models you'll see that on objective number one we want to address those mental models we understand that transformative change and impacting and attaching meaningful data to our achievement data is going to require um looking at this through a multi-pronged approach and that includes looking at attitudes looking at historical data looking at ways that we can support our students and teachers as we look to partner with
013our students in this learning and help them become the independent learners of leaders of their learning objective number two develop and financially support an out of area recruitment plan again i have provided the details to this uh plan with our accomplishments but again i wanted to share this with our community and all of our friends so that they could see exactly what it was that we're doing and so we have done a weekly crt and five district video series that goes through our jcs update and crt stands for culturally responsive teaching there is a book by author zareta hammond she is an educational not ex she is an educational expert and she looks at the neuroscience and marries it to culture and the ways in which our historically underrepresented and underserved groups and marginalized groups
014receive and process information and that neuroscience is pretty amazing when you attach it to the data moving forward we've also had our first summer ambassador program that took place last summer 2020 we had over 14 candidates within our district applied and uh so we had 20 initial program applicants and 14 were identified and selected through an integra interview panel that included the superintendent and dr lee eversole who is the director of social emotional support to follow up with that we will have another summer ambassador training for our new applicants coming in and to date we have eight i'm just gonna move quickly through this we did also had a q student partnership uh program where dr chiquita howard bostic who is the associate vice president of diversity equity and inclusive inclusivity at shepherd university she
015came in and partnered with the community q committee to provide student leaders in our high schools an opportunity to learn about how they can increase their leadership skills and become a more aware of how they can be social change agents and that was amazing and then there's plenty of other things again that's outlined in that uh paperwork that i gave you let's move on to uh objective number three number three we are allocating funding to educational culturally linguistic and responsive teaching and learning programs and training for instance today myself and k through three coordinator maryland and i spent some time at ransom with various elementary educators looking at culturally linguistically responsive teaching and learning and how we can help those students to increase their intellectual capacities based on their cultural funds of knowledge and how
016we can help make the classroom continue to make it a place that's safe for them moving forward curriculum advisory committee that's been established through our cultural no let me go back that's why i said i call the ccc for short community committee for cultural unity and equity they have also formed a curriculum advisory committee to ensure that we continue to make intentional intentional steps towards having a more diverse and inclusive curriculum and then lastly we are working with the state wbde and a small cohort of educators to add an elective course for our high school students uh one would be africana studies the other one will be a mexican american or chicano or chica next studies and the goal for this is to ultimately move to a place where all of the different uh cultural
017groups are included in one class and it's a history class that just encompasses everybody all right and now moving forward to goal number three for goal number three our community oh i said we're going to call them ccc for sure our ccc group decided that another area out of all the goals that we have um presented uh my foregrounder mr henry thomas um he couldn't be here tonight that he would have been if he could be here he was the first cultural diversity coordinator for our district oh gosh 20 years ago what we did was we looked at that plan and we identified the top three and coming in at number three we want to make sure that we create more avenues to support our hla excuse me our el students and families in ways
018that honor their ways of knowing doing and expressing and one of those ways was to form the hispanic latino association the hispanic latino association is a group of teachers and community members and parents and partners who have come together to support not just our el students but also just our hispanic latino students and families as we work together remember as a community where we ask ourselves what makes us a community when we look around and see the various people in our community and identify the assets that they bring to help us come together and work for a common goal so number one is accomplished number two we were looking at the hla is planning on hosting a connection event this summer that is still in the workings of course code of 19 and safety and
019health health safety has been at the top of their list but that is something they are still moving forward and doing also number three we want to expand our current student programs with the hlas kind of bridging those gaps if you would representation matters and so we want to make sure that we are what i've learned in my research is that various cultural groups accept help or consider support in different ways than mainstream culture may consider its support so i may consider you know be offering you a glass of water a sport where someone else may not so we want to be really intentional about eliminating cross-cultural miscommunication by establishing opportunities for these groups and communities to come together and learn more than just the surface and find ways to partner and be aware of
020some of the challenges that are affecting other groups even as we take pride in our groups and how some of our challenges and conditions we can work together and all achieve the same goals objective number four we wanted to host the hla is planning on hosting el-centered and supported back-to-school nights targeting those that particular target group we're also very aware of the data that talks about how the supports from those representing your particular group uh student advocacy you'll see these are a group of latinas at jefferson high school these are some of heidi griffin's babies she heidi griffin is the el director coordinator for jefferson high school and she loves all her students and she has been an advocate along with maria howard who's recently retired and other teachers who are supporting these students and
021giving them opportunities to speak their voice and that's what i believe advocacy at secondary schools and so when i say secondary schools i'm talking about our middle and high schools and making sure that there are groups and organizations that data shows us helps students have a greater sense of self have a stronger student voice in their community and in their high school and improve their educational outcomes helping them to feel like they truly belong now for the interest of time i've skipped over a lot of things but remember i did provide these ahead of time i just wanted you to see a little bit of what we're doing including intentional training even for our hla members they recently attended a conference called preparate where they went and learned about how to increase the educational outcomes
022for latino and hispanics uh students and we're really excited about future endeavors as we continue to support our district um all of our students but looking at it through an equity lens and looking at who could use additional supports not from a deficit mindset but through an asset mindset and so how do we achieve success well you'll see these words that i have on the screen as i close we want to recruit we know we need to stretch we know as a community that we need to listen that we also must be accountable we want to validate and affirm one another we want to partner with our community members even as we help community members within our intersections of community that may need additional help through asset lenses not deficit lenses and we also want
023to continue to build so at this time i'm going to stop sharing my screen and i would like to invite uh miss dorothy for as i call her miss johnson principal johnson of north jefferson elementary school she will speak first followed by mr archie green and then lastly by our student representative miss katie wheeler hi everyone thank you for uh your patience tonight i apologize for my blink settings i'm at wvu at the hospital with my son and so i'm in a private waiting room but it's you know not the most beautiful setting but i just wanted to take a moment i had the pleasure of serving on the q committee and my daughter was on the black student association my husband's a part of the black teacher association and it has just overall been
024an absolutely incredible experience from every lens so i will say from an administrative perspective the work that our committees are doing is wonderful the partnerships that dr gibson and ms dallas lewis has formed with our communities between our teachers our students our community partners schools administrators teachers counselors has been amazing the work that we're doing i think is is going to change the face of education in jefferson county schools the things that we're doing with curriculum are things that i think as educators we've recognized a need for for years we just weren't quite sure where to start or where to go to get things started and to get things moving one of the things i think i've noticed for years as a teacher and then as an administrator is just the importance of our students
025seeing that representation you know opening a textbook and hearing their names seeing their faces um looking at their teachers and their principles and you know their their leaders and seeing their faces represented and knowing that they can they can hold those power positions and they can achieve those things so i think the importance of recruiting employees and representing themselves in the curriculum is going to be it's going to be life-changing it's going to add to their self-esteem to their self-worth and it is really going to be a monumental change so i truly hope that you see the value in the work that with dallas lewis is doing and that these committees are doing and personally i just want to say thank you to all of the members of our community and our our educators our
026students because it has definitely made a great change already and i really hope that that you get a chance to see in a few moments just the value of our students i hope that everyone's had time to see some of the presentations that the different groups have put on over black history month and just in general but it has been a wonderful experience and i hope it's something that we continue to invest in and continue to put our time and energy into because it will truly have a difference and make an impact on our education and our school system so thank you for your time and thank you for giving us the opportunity to do this as a team good evening everyone my name is archie green and i'm a 7th grade social studies teacher
027here at charlestown middle school i appreciate your time this evening thank you for an opportunity to speak a few words i would back up what principal johnson just said and what tonya said earlier we do appreciate the support of these programs because they are very important one of the things that we found out this year based on having the program in place is a supportive nature of our students some of you may not understand the history of know the history but part of the initiative came because students were coming to teachers and saying that they wanted to have safe spaces that there were questions that they had as youngsters in the school system and they wanted to feel safe and comfortable asking those questions in a lot of cases preferably with someone who looked like
028them and they entangled themselves in certain situations and they wanted to know how to address certain situations how to address certain questions how to act how to be how to speak so that they would not feel endangered or feel harmed in any kind of way and we wanted to provide that forth and i believe so far in this program it has been a success and not just with the students on campus but as principal johnson just said we've made great inroads in the community from a social emotional standpoint we have young people that are coming to our weekly tutorials that are engaging in activities for them they're being personalized and they feel like they're being supported so they're asking more questions they're being more engaged and they therefore we expect the outcome to be higher
029higher based averages and grades and also in testing but the main part is that we're making partners in the community and we're making partners in the business industry and partners within the historical entities like story college the local naacp chapter in the black historical society we're making those partnerships and re-co-creating excuse me those relationships that are bringing bonds that you can't put a dollar figure on but we know it's going to pay off big dividends in the long run so we appreciate the opportunity we hope for all the support that we can have to continue being successful not only for our students but also for our community and also for all of us as adults thank you for your time okay thank you so much and now kaylee and then uh our last partner miss
030jeffries katie are you ready to speak haley is a senior at washington high school and she's been very active on our community oh lloyd i said i was going to call it ccc community cultural unity and equity committee she's been wonderful along with lyric johnson they have been trailblazing a path for students and it is because of them that we have had our first initial student q ambassador training as these students have asked to host a community roundtable that is student-led as we kind of equip and increase our emotional resiliency and our global dexterity and our cultural iqs and have some difficult conversations our students are ready to talk but they acknowledge that they need those tools and so kaylee welcome we'd love to hear your voice hi everyone like ms tanya said i am
031a senior at washington high school and i also attend james starts a technical institute and i'm here just to talk about my experience as i'm going through the ccc and i just want to start off by saying that i am a student but my generation is ready to engage my generation is ready to speak our voices we have talked so much about the things that we have to say the things that we feel and we we have also said that some adults aren't ready for the conversation that we are ready to have we have talked about how we have links programs at our high schools at washington and jefferson high school and some of the things we talk about are things that we just don't have a understanding to or we just don't really understand
032the point of it we rather talk about something that's important something that is happening in the society something that relates to us and we we feel that as teachers they're not allowed to talk about certain things but we feel like we should engage on being able to speak our voices and being able to be heard you can be in a class and sit in a classroom setting and we can talk about a certain topic in link's class and a student can say his or her feelings towards it and the teacher will immediately shut it down because no one is ready to have the conversation that we are today we have talked about engaging in our community and going to different middle schools and high schools and talking to our fellow classmates about doing different things
033in our community we have talked about getting boxes together for people to just write down things that they want to do in our community or things that are ready to talk about we have talked about having student ambassadors my apologies student ambassador the ambassadors to lead to um to lead the committee and to just to go out there and just for our fellow classmates our parents our friends and families whoever just to hear what we have to say um we have talked to miss howard and she she was such an amazing woman it was so nice getting to meet her it was it was an amazing experience being able to have the opportunity to talk to her she she was ready to she was ready to listen to our voices she had an amazing platform
034to talk about she had goals things things just it was it was just such a great experience and i'm pretty sure we've decided to have one again or have start doing it monthly but it was just an amazing experience because as students i will speak on my behalf as students i felt like it was such a great experience because we had somebody to relate to we had somebody to listen to the things that we wanted to say so that's pretty much what i have to say it's been such a great opportunity to work with ms dallas and um another fellow classmate eric johnson she is not able to attend today because we do have practice and i'm here to speak to you guys but um her mom and her dad are on here and miss
035tanya is just such an amazing person to talk to if you know about anything and it's just been such a great experience to be in this committee and we value student voice thank you darling we appreciate you so you've heard from mr green second grade teacher charlottesville middle school and leader for the black dude association you've heard from a principal miss johnson from north jefferson and now last but not least this is miss kara jeffrey she is a teacher wears many hats at harper's ferry middle school and she also is our faculty advisor or teacher liaison for the black student association yes i said the black student association at harpers ferry middle school and so she's a cultural unity advocate and she's also a summer ambassador um cara we'd love to hear from you for
036for a few minutes and after that we will turn it back over to the agenda well i want to say i thought when i applied to be a summer ambassador that i wouldn't be chosen because it i didn't know enough that i i hadn't brought enough to the table to be able to share with others but what i learned in being accepted into that training was that i was given up the tools so that i can be part of those uncomfortable conversations and that i can say this this makes me uncomfortable can you help me understand can you teach me and that is how i feel i will continue to move forward with my liaison position in a black student association but i have watched myself and my other cultural unity um advocated at harpers
037ferry middle school miss miranda what we have been able to do with different activities every month through not just about the music not just about the food but learning how to go deeper and help learn about all the cultures i've learned a lot in my time as a summer ambassador and on part of the ccc what i have gained most is the student leadership has taught me through their unwillingness to sit back and be quiet and that's what i want to leave you with that is where i see jackson county schools going so we're no longer sitting back and just letting it happen we're saying where's the change let's bring it thank you so much for your time thank you can we ask questions we ask questions is there time for questions i defer to
038the agenda we could take just one or two questions if you don't mind okay well um i wanted to second that um dr howard bostick's program was wonderful um i've watched that um so you would mention the achievement gaps and i don't where is the data do you maintain the data and can we have access to see what you're referring to locally good absolutely that data is ready right at your fingertips if you go to zoomwv.com okay okay yeah i'm familiar with the state zoom i thought maybe i i was i was if i could finish i was i wasn't done speaking um i was going to say there are several avenues to getting that data which includes zoom wv um i also have to share that data i can send it to you directly
039um i have presentations it's available so i can definitely get you that information if you'd like to take a closer look at the data and the proficiency rates across various demographic risks yeah i'm familiar with that data i just didn't know if there was any more detailed data besides what the state maintains on the zoom anyway um the you so may is asian pacific islander month i was wondering what jefferson county schools students are doing to recognize that or is there anything yes ma'am there is so as a district the cultural unity and equity uh uh department along with the help of some wonderful cultural community and equity and school ambassadors we put together a ready-made morning announcements now these announcements are so important because they allow for entire school impact now the schools have
040several ways in which they are recognizing the heritage of the students as a culture union and equity department our goal is to move past the cultural compulsory celebrations we really want to get to a place where we're celebrating culture every day and every way that is a multi-pronged approach and of course transformative change requires small steps so until we get there we are um you know participating in you know book reads as well as displays some schools are bringing in speakers of course those morning announcement generates conversations and not only do they inform our students but they also at times inform our staff we're learning things as well and what i love about these announcements they go beyond surface we go into things like um cultural greetings uh and those uh unspoken type of things
041about culture that require more than just your knowledge about food or dance or music so we're really excited about this one step my my last question is about the um black math genius summer program that i saw posted can you talk about that sure i can so the black matte genus program is one of the ways in which we attach meaningful action to the data so as a nation we've had access to data we can look at the performance and the achievement before groundwork versus the board of education and we can look at that achievement after and what we're seeing uh is one of the uh contributing causes to that achievement gap is instructional approach and of course that feeds into a whole lot of other core relations which include um the representation of teachers
042of color uh before brown before brown versus the board of education in 1954 we had half of the nation's teaching population for black men and black women educators administrators after brown versus board of education well look at us now we're less than as far as uh black teachers since since you had mentioned the black math genius program that's less than nine percent when it comes to black male teachers is less than one percent and that data that's available that shows the impact that one teacher of color has on a black student it shifts their trajectory and improves their educational outcomes uh beyond what words can explain and so we do need more educators of color we do need them not just for our underserved population but for our mainstream and white students as well everyone
043benefits from being able to expand their global dexterity and having access to multiple perspectives and diversity and so that's beyond raise of course diversity includes age gender gender preference language body shape religious beliefs i could keep going on and on and on and so these things impact our data and i'm really excited about targeting our lowest performing students and so with the black mac genius program tara mahoney my partner and i uh that she's in curriculum and instruction at jefferson county's uh you know at the central office we didn't go in looking for the black kids we didn't go in looking for the lower ses kids we went looking for the data that showed us the lowest performing students and we found that the lowest performing students in math were black students some so this
044ancillary program black mac genius program provides a pathway to mathematics that speaks to this particular group in an instructional approach that previously when used had them scoring this is just based on the data black schools that were that that were not integrated they were scoring their test scores were on par to their white counterparts and in some cases excelling exceeding so we've got a lot of work to do and that's not shame or blame that's just us taking a look and being accountable and seeing why you know what has been standing in the way for the last 60 years to improving the educational outcomes of this particular target group something must change and so i'm really excited about partnering with the superintendent and the department of curriculum and instruction as we move forward with family
045community members and all teachers who will come in and teach these students um to you know increase their intellectual capacities by tapping into their cultural funds of knowledge and their ways of knowing and doing it expressive i know that was a long answer but i just wanted to make sure i answered you please fidelity i have a lot more questions but i don't want to monopolize so do any other board members have any questions no just thank you very much that was great information thank you so much for your time you guys have a wonderful night okay next we have deputy superintendent for instructional support mr sean dilley good evening board i wanted to provide you an update this evening i wanted to let you know that jefferson county schools was recently notified that we
046were awarded the steely foundation sparking early literacy grant totaling fifty thousand dollars they're going back to consider another fifty thousand dollars at their gym board meeting to see if they can support the full scope of the original grant request the grant will support a collaboration with the boys and girls club to support a summer program and after school clubs for four schools outlook locations next year the grand intent intends to improve literacy levels of children impacted by the code of 19 pandemic and i want to thank mary lynn for her work on that successful grant application i also want to mention this evening the golden horseshoe winners recently the west virginia department of education announced the 2021 golden horseshoe winners for jefferson county since 1931 students have been honored as knights of the golden horseshoe
047having demonstrated exceptional knowledge of west virginia history on the state administered exam this year 222 winners will join the ranks of west virginia citizens who have won this prestigious award jefferson county schools county's winners will have an opportunity to recognize the west virginia department of ed's golden horseshoe ceremony on june 25th 2021 harpers ferry middle school had braden adams sarah hall tanner wilkins and carl drumgool iii as their winners charlestown middle school also had megan brady and annelise bower so we want to congratulate the young people and their success for winning the golden horseshoe for the county i also just wanted to let you know that the schools have started the process of completing the general scientific assessment for this year and we've been pleasantly surprised by the participation levels of our virtual students returning
048to the building to complete their testing over 675 ap exams are being administered over the last couple weeks and we will continue finishing those up and these include both person and virtual in-person and virtual students and we want to thank all of the staff that have been facilities facilitating this testing there's a lot going on uh so it's we want to thank those individuals for that also wanted to mention this evening dual enrollment that jefferson county schools dual enrollment numbers have continued to increase increase every year since 2017 jcs enrollment shepard university has increased by 71 and blue ridge community and technical college has increased by 158 percent so we're proud of this continued growth and we're hoping to see that mount further and further as we go forward i also want to mention this
049evening that the jefferson high school charisma dance team created a film to honor the late ruth bader ginsburg this film titled bright star dance film will premiere on the arts alive broadcast on west virginia public television scheduled before thursday june 3 at 7 p.m and the rebroadcast on saturday june 5th at 11 a.m and i will forward you all an email the link to that video watched it earlier and it is fantastic i'm going to congratulate the young people for being selected for that my final announcement this evening is at the last board meeting you approved my resignation to jefferson county schools and i wanted to take a moment and thank the board and dr gibson for your support over the past two years it is truly bittersweet as i leave in july for my
050new role as the director general of emirates national schools this new adventure will place me many miles between us jefferson county will always be near and dear to me i just want to publicly thank all the wonderful people i've met and worked for the past two years and just cannot speak positively enough about the work that dr gibson has been doing and her support and selection for me to be here the last couple years so i just want to say thank you publicly to all of you for your support that's all i have this evening you will be missed mr dilly thank you it's not too late to change your mind just so you know we can make an adjustment to this agenda or put you on the next one or whatever we need to
051do we can do but you know from time to time but um my parents were expats for a couple years and i know it was a great adventure for them and i i really wish you and your family well you you have a lot to look forward to thank you very much all right next we have approval of minutes is there a motion to approve the minutes from the regular board meeting held april 26 2021 thank you mr cable is there a second second thank you miss ogden any discussion or clarification on the minutes all in favor of approving the minutes from april 26 2021 say aye aye opposed thank you citizens comments all right um just please remember to limit your comments to three minutes i will set a timer first up we have
052karen buck and after miss buck we have wayne moore thank you members of the board and superintendent gibson for allowing me to speak my opinion here this evening my name is karen buck i'm a concerned grandparent of a second grader blue rich everyone should go to america's frontlinedoctors.org get covet medication they'll mail it to your door that way if you get the covid you can knock it out in 24 hours you're immune no injection necessary now let's talk about coveted vaccines in the schools i have a copy of a letter to the parents of the charlestown middle school saying that under the direction under the direction of the of the jefferson county board of education a pfizer vaccine clinic will be held on may the 25th for kids 12 to 15 years old as of
053this morning this injection is not even approved for kids 12 to 15 years old people around the world are dying from complications of this injection sometimes days or weeks after but this letter goes on to say that your child will be observed for 15 minutes after getting the injection before going back to class now is that 15 whole minutes the consent form has a a box that says i understand the risks and the benefits but how can anybody understand the risks when these studies have been withheld from the public one of the studies is from pfizer itself saying how dangerous this vaccine is their vaccine is so this is under the direction of the jefferson county board of education what could possibly go wrong given little kids an untested vaccine this is the same board
054of education responsible for common core critical race theory the failed virtual classroom falling grades of our students hiring more and more administrators and building three more schools with our tax dollars when we have declining enrollment this board of education has the opportunity right now to protect our kids and keep this dangerous vaccine out of the schools and you know it's nearly impossible to make this many bad decisions in a row nearly impossible when will you ever put our kids first at this point everybody knows kids don't get the coven 19 flu but nobody knows what these vaccines are going to do to our kids it's experimental is it going to sterilize them parents will not this this will not stop at the middle schools the primary school and the and the elementary schools are next
055until we say that's it no more for god's sake leave our kids alone we the parents and the grandparents are seeing things very very clearly we're not happy and we're not alone here's pfizer's own study saying how dangerous their their vaccine is dated april the 28th thank you very much miss buck thanks for your time next we have wayne moore followed by bobby block okay so we have bobby block and followed by bobby block we have judy price miss block are you there ms block can you hear us we can't hear you yes ma'am we can hear you now whenever you're ready thank you good evening and thank you for this opportunity to speak the children are continuing to watch and they are still here they also want to remind us oh the devastating toxins
056and they also want to remind parents yeah and the community as a whole that there will be testing at san michael's park saturday day 15 and sunday the 16th it's free testing and we are encouraging people to come and help protect their children the fact that the nonprofit science board will be testing our children where possible lead arsenic sulfur dioxide manganese and coal-bush speak signs you know i'm not able to speak volumes regarding the toxic and greedy behavior of public officials including in this testimony is a link that will explain all those concerns rationale for hair testing you do the pot the toxic presence and that together you protect the children and your environment please do not allow toxic stress accomplish your children in our community you have heard me testify before but this time
057i'm testifying to make sure that people know that this coming weekend it's an opportunity for parents and staff and health professionals to take a stand and say no and to be silent it's not acceptable and you've heard me testify before in regards to the helping and risk assessment but i wanted to take this opportunity to make sure that the community as a home stands up and protects our children with gracious support thank you miss block that's your time next we have judy price and after judy price we have camilla jones her fleet as the man behind the curtain searches through the names to find ms price she's not in there there's no miss price okay then we have camilla jones fleet can you hear us well they're online so jason can you tell if they're
058unmuted hello oh there we go good evening whenever you're ready no i didn't have any comments i just um wanted to voice support for the cultural unity presentation and also see more information like miss joy on the achievement gap and the impact ms alice lewis's program is having but that was my only comment okay thank you very much thank you all right next we have the consent agenda and were there any changes to the consent agenda that we know of all right is there a motion to approve the consent agenda thank you mr osborne is there a second second thank you miss joy any questions or discussion on the consent agenda all in favor of approving the consent agenda say aye opposed thank you all right unfinished business none moving to new business 12 a
059request approval for an rfp for a wash based safety improvements at jctof i bet that's miss white good evening good evening this evening board members i would like to request a motion so that operations can go out to bid for safety improvements to our wash bay at the bus garage all right is there a motion to um approve an rfp for the wash bay safety improvements at the bus garage thank you mr cable is there a second second thank you ms osborne or mrs osborne miss ogden they both start with elm all right all right all in favor of approving the rfp for the wash bay safety improvements oh you have a question mr osborne yeah what does this entail joyce this entails making the floor safer for the bus operators the current surface is
060a little slippery so we want to make sure that we're able to rough it up so that it's less of a slip tripper fall hazard thank you any other questions i'm sure it would be much appreciated all in favor of going out for the rfp for the wash bay safety improvements say aye aye opposed thank you all right now the exciting stuff ms white request approval to advertise for architectural services for the new ransom and shepherdstown elementary schools is this evening we're asking you to make that decision a very exciting one to go out to bid for expressions of interest for an architect now there will be a choice before you this evening as i discussed at the last board meeting in my update we can either go out for one architect which will support
061and complete the project for both schools or each school can have its own architect we can let you know our recommendation and that would be that we sought one for consistency purposes however that is completely up to the board and will defer to you for that decision in your motion so you want it in the actual motion whether we go out for one architect or whether we go out for two in the advertisement is that correct that that's up to the board but yes i would like your discussion if you'd like to make a broad motion that is up to you but i would like discussion and feedback as to what we'll be seeking so that there is some clarity surrounding the issue and we can move forward in a unified way okay is there
062a motion to approve to advertise for architectural services for the new ransom and shepherdstown elementary schools thank you mr osborne is there a second second thank you miss joy all right any discussion about going out for one versus two or do we just advertise both schools and if one architect bids on both of them then we take that one architect or i'd like to see it both ways to be truthful with you and look at it when it comes back and see what it looks like at that point i do understand the consistency aspect though if you would have one architect so i think what we can do based on your motion is to um you know part of that process will be me putting together a committee and getting the expressions of interest and
063going through those with the sba and committee members what we'll do then for you when we come back is to narrow it down to the top three architects and then at that time we can decide one or two but i am more than happy to bid it both ways and i think that's a fair way to do it any other discussion or question how other than the um consistency obviously for the buildings how else would that affect one way or the other i mean i'm assuming an architectural firm if they're working and doing two schools they're not necessarily going to give you less of cost i don't know maybe they would um but it would get different and don't have the architects bidded it could be less of a cost um depending on the expression
064of interest and what they said you know what each architect said they would do the job for so it could be a money savings it may or may not until we see the expressions of interest we won't know that if it'll be a money saving or not i think we ought to put it out that they could that we could hire one to do both or we could could uh make one for each school i think we i think that's what she's thinking about yeah i think so but i just you know i i think we need to do that because there might be some we might save some money if we like one one person doing both schools there might might be a money difference if you have two different ones i i think
065we have you know what do you want bid on and what do you want to charge and then we have to look at it and make a decision that's what we're going to do we need the best for the less price okay so we have a message when i put out the expression of interest we shall write it both ways that we are seeking one or seeking two and i'll have them bid it as if they're bidding one or as if they would be awarded two then we'll have a cost analysis for us thank you thank you you're welcome all right so we have a motion is um to approve to advertise for architectural services for the new ransom and shepherdstown elementary schools all in favor say aye aye opposed thank you all right item
066c action on approval of jefferson county schools 2021 to 2022 calendar adjustment see mr dilly you're back you you can't leave no this evening board what we have in front of you is once we submitted our calendar to the board to the west virginia department of education it was determined that we actually were one day short for employees and so we have inserted a curriculum development day there that you can see sort of underlined in the sample that's been provided this evening to equal to 200 days under the contract for teachers we're not quite sure how we overlook that our initial assessment is the platform in which we developed this about all the correct information but somehow it did not add up to or indicate that we were one day short so we apologize for
067the incorrect initial submissions that we have this corrected and it should not be a problem to get approved by the department at this point all right is there a motion to approve the calendar adjustment for next year thank you mr osborne is there a second second thank you miss ogden any questions the other question of what is outside school environment the outside school environment are days that are dedicated for basically placeholders in the calendar to insert if we should have to make up snow days or things like that so they're just basically days outside of the regular school calendar and then equivalent time what would that be equivalent time is one of the abilities basically when we are utilizing more than the minimum minimums required for a daily uh we have the opportunity to utilize
068that time to build in the five professional development days to utilize that and that's what that is the equivalent time so we're basically using those or banking that time to create uh the opportunity for professional development phase in our calendar okay thank you all right there's a motion all in favor of approving the calendar adjustment for next year oppose thank you all right item d fiscal year 2020 2022 draft preliminary budget presentation i'm guessing that's miss marine good evening good evening um can you see the screen share yes ma'am okay all right this evening we're here to talk about the fiscal year 22 proposed a preliminary preliminary school budget this year we are operating six different funds fund 31 our bond construction fund and fund 71 our new funds to the fiscal year 22 budget
069tonight we're going to highlight some of those funds but primarily focus on our general operating fund for the presentation 121 is our debt service fund and it is where we accumulate principal and interest to pay our debt this year we have added the bond construction fund to our debt service and also will continue our lease revenue bonds which was the bonds for updating our transportation department has added 44 million dollars of construction non-construction voter approved but 61 is our special revenue fund where most of our state and federal funding resides special education in our title programs and in some situations local funds that we've contributed for renewal or replacement values i've listed not all inclusive but a summary of some of those funds or initiatives that the board and the leadership team have designated over
070the past few years since fiscal year 19 and so more recently such as our digital one one initiative fun 51 is our capital projects fund and it is where a lot of our board designated reserved and replacement for repair funds resides this is our first year that we've put a primary focus on accumulating and sustaining some of our high expense line items such as athletic fields our hvac systems our roofs vehicles and buses with a set of village senseville 206 the um unrestricting of those funds has shifted that responsibility to the local board of education 171 is our federal stimulus and stabilization fund this is a listing of the grants and the total amount of what we've received with a specific footnote for the competitive grant and the east surf seoul summer experience grant those
071are two federal grants that we were awarded and would not have received had we not put in the work and the application for how we wanted to utilize those funds fund 11 is our general operating expense fund and this year we are at 100 almost 105 million dollars um our baseline budget is a summary of the total revenue and the total expenses that will be included in our general operating expenses or our general operating fund um you can see that this year some of the process or some of the assumptions that we went into this budget with were the fact that the pandemic had created a significant student enrollment loss which at the state level was not no relief was forthcoming from the legislators this year to assist us with that unusual student enrollment loss
072so as we prepared for the budget we knew that we were 443 students down we also knew that that translated into a state a decline of approximately 3.8 million which also translated into less funding 34 professional positions and 19 service positions we also understood as we went into the fiscal 22 budget process that our voters had approved at 67 percent and 61 um of a renewal of a five-year excess levy at approximately 23 million and a facility's construction bond at about 44 million so with all those data points in um in line we started out with the target of wanting to ease the transition with staff alignment by supplementing the care's funding for approximately a million and a half to maintain a certain positions but we also looked at our enrollment trend and wanted to
073target positions of 10 positions specifically for maybe through attrition not replacing this budget season we had decided that to uh we there's a goal of targeting a five percent non-salary decrease across the board utilizing the care spending for a million and a half and then also applying for a one-time waiver for the ela textbook adoption in addition in order to help the transition and move us into fiscal year 22's budget and balancing it we projected that we would also supplement the budget with a 900 000 dollar carryover with those in mind the other task that the board and the leadership team put to the fort front of this budget was establishing a capital reserve and replacement fund for current and future needs including sustainability of the digital one-on-one initiative for for both staff and students
074athletic fields hvac's roofs vehicles and buses um and in the other qualifier for this budget is when in doubt we looked at our fiscal year 19 expenditures which was the last full traditional budget to actual data that we had our excess levy budget trend data this is something that we've been tracking and trending and i just wanted to note that this year um in fiscal year 22 even though we are collecting or projecting to collect 23 million that we are still 200 000 approximately 000 short of what we were collecting on our exos levy in fiscal year 10. our second month enrollment is the official data the fte which is used to fund our state aid which is a large percentage about 49 of the revenue that we received in order to operate our school
075system and this just trends that data and 21 was a very um unusual year with the pandemic with a significant student decline this budget and this budget does project that we will recoup 60 to 70 percent of that student enrollment or approximately 265 275 additional students next year staffing again a significant achievement or accomplishment this is positions this does not affect people although the transfers may have people moving to a different position or teaching in a different location overall anybody who was employed with us in fiscal year 21 will remain employed with us in fiscal year 22. you can see that 20 and a half professional positions and basically a half of an fte which is a 261-day position for service were shifted to fund 71 in order to achieve a balanced budget for our
076general operating fund squad 12 just gives you an overview of our fund balance at year end and the fund balance is at the end of the year when we close our books and we look at budget to actual for our revenue and budget to actual for expenditures how we finished up at the end of that year in fiscal year 20 which literally we just had the final audit approved in march we figured we carried over or finished up with a 9.3 million carryover based on that 9.3 million we did designate um some current and future needs the most significant one was the digital one-to-one initiative in addition the board chose to award or supplement all employees pay for the pandemic instructional change for a one-time supplement of 500 to each employee revenue um this is
077our current operating uh budget and our revenue and as as i said earlier we started with about 3.8 million down in state aid our local taxes were up two and a half or about 2.48 in assessed values which translated to an increase in both our regular or current levy our current year property taxes and our excess levy other local revenue there are some key hitters for the increase in that area one is we have chosen to include pink card as a payment which we receive a rebate on an annual basis for the use of the p-card for payment of invoices so we slightly increase that there is also a significant increase in indirect cost transferring into our general fund from the stabilization fund so for every grant that we receive on the federal level we
078had an indirect cost rate which allows us to provide for the administration at the local level in our system medicaid we've had a new systematic approach to recouping or medicaid reimbursement that we've been tracking or trending for about five years and this year our budget was increased to look at that trend data and bring it closer to the actuals that we are receiving so there was a quarter of a million increase in that area are there any questions on revenue or any questions on previous slides at this point or did you want me to continue on to expenditures i have questions but i don't know where it fits so do you want to hear it kind of summarize the expenditures and then we can go ahead and okay um expenditures salaries and benefits you can
079see overall that there was a decline of 2.6 million a large portion of that is the shifting of those salaries or about a million and a half of those salaries over to the stabilization fund and all of the other benefits and indirect costs associated with those salaries also shifting on the expenditures for non-salary items i'm going to sort of highlight the increases or at least the significant increases or decreases professional educators uh travel and employee training although decreasing those funds have been shifted to step 7d which resides in fund 61. so although they're declining in our general operating budget we are picking up those expenditures of those costs in fund 61 and i think if i'm correct about a quarter of a million dollars has been allocated for employee training this year other professional services
080the increase is primarily due to contracted services in the special education realm and the significant difference between employing psychologists and behavioral behavior consultants and contracting for those services under uh utilities repair and maintenance some of that decline is um due to a local senate bill 408 which funded increased our growth enrollment for capital improvements and um because of the three-year five-year rolling average for receiving those funds and the fact that our enrollment has declined over three years we were not eligible for the past year to receive that or for the fiscal year 21 or fiscal year 22 for those that funding the rental line item is a decrease then that is for the lease of or the capital lease or 14 buses that we purchased i think brought a year two of five years and
081has actually shipped it down to the debt service it was just incorrectly budgeted and 21. nothing else significant unless someone has questions on this non-salary line items under supplies i will say that one of the significant goals for the budget for fiscal year 22 was that the per pupil student allocation at the school level was not decreased and was not impacted by the five percent decline in all other departments the leadership team felt that the focus on instruction should be maintained at the school level so that they had the flexibility to deal with what we're still considering new challenges for for and from our current and future for the pandemic unforeseen items that may be hitting our school level books and periodicals is our actual one-time waiver of the ela adoption that is where that
082decreases technology i'm going to highlight because i had to dive down into that data and understand with our digital one-to-one initiative what exactly a decrease meant and um it it the day the data suggests that we are now centralizing um that digit those digital or those technology purchases into a centralized spot or technology department which means that even though we did not have a formal one-to-one initiative prior to last year we informally were with our textbook and our instructional resource budget um supporting those purchases and that decrease is actually just decreasing in um other departments versus just the technology department painting equipment as you saw earlier we are now in fun 51 preparing and sustaining or moving towards a annual contribution for sustaining purchases such as equipment this particular 25 000 was for a vehicle
083that was purchased out of the general operating budget last year the request for those types of purchases now will not show up in the general operating fund each department will manage a um manage a cyclic budget for a placement schedule and will be funded out of the available funds that reside in fund 51 that related is that capital lease project increasing here but decreasing from our rentals our reserve we have a reserve for contingency at the board level for 350 thousand dollars in addition to a 350 000 um reserve for unforeseen or a transitional type of cause that will have leadership authorization as one-time request for funding in mid-stream of fiscal year 22's budget transfers to our capital projects because we were able to fund starting balances through reimbursement of the fund the bond resolution
084that allowed us to reimburse our for designated construction fund or board designated annex fund and in some cases our table referendum fund and fund some of those higher capital need line items this year there are new transfers on the annual basis or for fiscal year 22 into any of those funds because they're they're being established at the end of this year or through those transfers of funds for fiscal year 22. special revenue fund is primarily our child nutrition fund which we transfer about 2 million on an annual basis to support the expenditures on that program and balance that account any questions yeah i have some questions um okay maybe other people know this but i i don't so i'm trying to understand so i guess this 350 000 reserve and the other 350 000 that
085would be where maybe we would be able to give supplemental pay to the teachers and service personnel throughout the year is that where that money would come from if you are referring to something that is unbudgeted at this time for example if for some reason in the middle of the year you decided that you wanted to provide a supplemental pay i would encourage you to budget that next year in the budget cycle however uh yes those funds are reserved and they're typically reserved for unforeseen expenditures more like um if we didn't have a balance in our roof uh line item and maybe we had an issue with a roof that wasn't an insurance coverage issue we and if we didn't have anywhere else because all other things in theory that were budgeted are going to
086come in as we expected we could then reach into that contingency fund and cover something that was unforeseen and why why wouldn't you budget it now for those things like supplemental pay for teachers let me um i'm sorry i might have misunderstood your question dr doyle so if you look on page under salary other there is a 4.2 million dollar line item that does cover all three of our supplemental checks the one in november the one in march and the one in may if you look under the next line item called supplemental that is projected supplemental pay for employees that would include overtime and supplemental pay for service personnel that would include for professionals over 25 pay one set of coverage pay and trended projected expected supplemental costs that we have normally incurred um in
087previous festival years so is there any way to give raises to the um service personnel and teachers is there is there some way that our school system other than these um supplemental pay is that the only way we could do it because of the state regulations well no and it it's a little bit complicated but i'm going to try to simplify it to the best of my ability and so in the school system we receive what you'll hear as a step up so for every year of experience the state um salary scale determines what that annual increase is so every year every employee who has served for i think it's like 133 out of 200 days will automatically automatically get that step up or that additional increase in the annual basis is that service personnel
088as well absolutely okay absolutely every year up until i think professionals go up to 35 years and i haven't looked at it lately and one of them goes for 35 years and one of them goes to 40 years so up until you hit 35 years or 40 years you are receiving that annual increase in addition what our excess levy and that 23 billion dollar supports our k scale is significantly above what the state um uh permits us to pay so even though um you can't see that because our pay scale projects like if you went out to our pay scale out on the website you would see you know if you are a masters with 15 years you would see a base salary scale which would be a 200 scale and then the additional checks
089added to that if i took that pay scale and broke it down for you you would see that at 15 years jefferson county for a 15 year professional 15 years of experience for a professional we're supplementing 2500 additional dollars compared to what the state is funding the school system um so i know that doesn't answer how can you get pay raises but really the renewal of that excess levy is allowing us to continue that higher level of pay than what the state um finds us i guess that that step up and how service personnel get that step up wasn't clear to me i asked it before it's not i mean it's very complicated it's honestly i've been here 16 years and i am just um fully comprehending the pay scale and the difference between the
090state and i mean it even gets more complicated because on both the service and the professional if you have zero to three years you get x amount of extra dollars from the ex excess levy four to eight years you get x amount of dollars but um i mean i'd be happy to do a one-on-one and give you like i could show you the excel spreadsheet on how it feeds to what you're seeing on the website because it's all that fact data that actually when you look at it it becomes a little clearer on how we're funding our employees and how we're funding and supplementing uh what the state truly says that yeah i just wanted i just wanted to know that you you're telling me that they automatically get it service personnel automatically get it
091every year so that is what i wanted to know so i just got rid of them and ms brown just for clarification this is your um budget presentation you're not asking us to approve this this evening is that correct that's correct if um this is just to let the board see what our preliminary thought for the proposal it will we will schedule a budget hearing at 6 45 for our next board meeting allowing the public to have comments or input and at that meeting we will be asking the board to adopt the preliminary budget okay any other board members have questions i just have one question are we i see that we still have is it the is this budget still include 1.6 million in the referendum funds for table games it does it does
092and actually dr gibson and i had a conversation about that um actually this morning um at one point we were contributing 1.9 million of table referendum funds and obviously the pandemic has significantly decreased that revenue source and that may be a target goal over the next three years should be taking that 1.6 million down closer to a million um in future budgets it's it's this year it's we're good um we've got 1.3 that we're projecting as a balance and i actually looked at it earlier today april was the first month since the pandemic that looks more reasonable to what our trend trend data for fiscal year 19 looked like um of course in 20 both i think april and may we collected zero because the racetrack completely shut down but this month i think we've
093collected about almost 50 percent more than what we collected last year um still a little lower than the year before the pandemic but i think the next three months will really tell the tale of if that revenue source is going to rebound for this fiscal year or not but either way i think that it might be a good goal to look at reducing that 1.6 contribution into the general fund over the next few years even lower i know we've definitely talked about that over the last several years yeah um yeah i mean if you would have asked me before pandemic time i would have probably felt comfortable at 1.6 um for three to five years and then looking at our different sustainability for those hvacs and roofs and things of that nature but as of
094today and looking forward and with pandemic in mind i think it may be better to have that closer to a million which could take three to five years to get us there but that that should be a target all right thank you very much for all of the hard work that goes into that i know budgets are not they can be challenging at times well and i'm going to shout out to amy lauren and dr everson everybody that contributes and was something that i had a conversation with dr gibson these are just some numbers that are getting compiled and put together but there's a significant amount of work that goes into aligning staffing with student services and especially when you're valuing employees at a high level and trying to transition all of that and to
095take everything we've been through over the past two years and still reduce 10 positions and not riff or unemploy somebody is a significant accomplishment well thank you all right action item e action on approval for new resolution authorizing investment and consolidated fund and that's to open the new account through the west virginia treasurer's office for the purpose of investing the funds for the construction projects is that correct yes that is it's going to be for the bond construction it will actually i think get a deposit on wednesday and that is and the highest interest faring account that we can get that the treasurer's office wanted board approval for the creation of that new account okay is there a motion to authorize the investment in the consolidated fund so thank you ms ogden thank you mr
096osborne any question or discussion all in favor of the resolution authorizing investment in the consolidated funds say i i opposed thank you very much all right number 13. ma'am superintendent do you have any comments for us this evening um only two things uh first and foremost we did procedure notice that uh pfizer has approved the vaccine for ages 12 plus and those vaccines will be provided free of charge by the west virginia department of education for any family providing written permission for their child to receive it those will be conducted the week after we conclude testing and our summer experience program continues to have both an online sign up and qr codes and manual sign up to date we have over 400 students who have signed up for that experience and that continues to grow
097i would strongly encourage parents to go to our website and participate we have a significant number of academic social emotional programs embedded within those so there's something for everybody and i just want to make sure that families know they can take advantage of that thank you very much and we don't have an executive session this evening all right that brings us to the close of the meeting at 8 43. thank you very much you