001I know. Yes. Take two. He's on. Are we on? Okay. Again, good evening everybody. Um, welcome to the board meeting. Mr. Prudish is out of town. So, he is on the phone that Mr. Tomman has right there. So, he'll be participating that way. And, um, we will start with the pledge. Dr. Atkins, would you like to lead the pledge? I pledge algiance 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. >> Okay. >> Yeah, but you got me first there, don't you? >> Okay. So, Mr. Tman, your opening remarks. >> Yes, ma'am. I just want to give you an update. We do have the attendees and presenters from the Gear Up National Conference that took place
002on Sunday um July 11th to Wednesday, July 16th in San Francisco. And also the sale that stands for support, appreciate, invest, and learn conference in Charleston. They're going to give an update also that happened on uh at their conference July 29th to the 30th. Um, also want to let you guys know that uh, Mrs. Mitchell, Dr. Atkins, and myself met with Dr. Darren Martin, president of Bluefield State today at 1. And then Dr. Bethany uh, Min, the president at Concord University. We met with her at 3. >> Uh, let you know that we got the next training for Mike Mlanahan, the AD Vorium LLC purpose-driven management. The second large group session on leadership connecting is w this Wednesday, August 13th at 9:00 a.m. at the tech center and will be followed up at the small
003group session will be a few weeks later which will be September 10th at the central office conference room. Update: Timberwood Elementary and ribbon cutting date is set for this Thursday at 11:00 and uh we're uh ready. We've got some alternative alternative parking that uh I think you guys uh got that information where we're open up to the public and we'll have some water and some refreshments of uh of cookies and brownies and that there instead of u a whole big um planned thing drawn out with a brand new where we're supposed to park. >> You come up the top. We got you taken care of. >> Yeah. >> Oh, okay. So, we're we go to the actual school. >> We got Yeah, we got you there. We just since we open up the public, we
004got transportation provided by Mr. Rose that's going to transport uh everybody there that we put out on social media for >> John. And also uh we got items listed. You got a sheet there for discussion for the work session. Let me know if there's anything else needed. Dr. Bowling and I can put that together. That will come out tomorrow for the work session on Friday. There's a few bullet things that you guys talked about before that we wanted. I think uh you got them right there, Mrs. >> Yes, >> Smith got you the draft. >> And also I got listed that staff returns Monday, August 18th, a CD day, and then Tuesday is another CD day. And then Wednesday is the prep day, August 20th. And we got the students returning uh Thursday, August 21st
005for the first day of day for the students. And then Mrs. Mitchell, you have a great group here ready to present on u the gear up conference and the sale conference if you want to take the lead there. And uh we're ready. >> Well, we need to do citizens input first, right? >> Huh? >> Or no? Oh, we're doing that first. Okay. >> No, citizens inputs afterwards. I'm out of order. You're good. >> Gearup has been a big um part of Mercy for several years now. And um every year we've built on it and it's gotten just a little bit better. And so this past year was really good with the with boot camps for students and um different activities that we had that parents could come in, the community community could come in. And
006so we're geared up to be gear up this year in high school. We're moving to ninth and tth grade. So um the training for this summer was to put us where we needed to be so that that we'll be successful with that in the high schools. Um, with that being said, we have a coordinator that is our gear up coordinator, and that's Gail Web. Here's I was looking for you. And so, Gail is the one who arranged everything for us and and got everything lined up for the the group to go to San Francisco and do the training. And then, um, they're ready to come back now and tell us what they plan to do and how it's going to impact our high school nth and tth grade this year. >> You guys want us
007to come up here? >> Sure. get your picture. Okay. Come on. >> I have to give you >> while we're coming up there, I'm gonna I did a While we're up here, I was just gonna real quickly Brent, I've got a tiny little video and then we're going to let one of our student representatives talk to you about what he did in California and then we'll real quickly go through what we did. And he hasn't seen this. And I want you all to know he is performing with in front of 1,800 people. Oh wow. >> 1,800 people are available as well. >> What a lovely day today. >> It sure is sunny. >> It'd be awful if something bad would happen. >> I think I see some clouds rolling in. >> No, my Jesus. What
008are we going to do? >> What are you going to do? My crops are his father. >> Get rid of this guy. What? Where are your baby carrots? >> At least I got carrots. You're on this on your own. >> Ladies, ladies, look at what we're doing here. Can't you see that it's the crops that we all value the most? We need to stick together. That's what it is. [Music] Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Oh, [Music] heat, heat. [Music] It's remarkable that all of these students are upcoming ninth and tth graders. And now I'm going to let Ethan say what he's prepared. And by the way, he's dressed like this because Freddy Simmon let him leave two a days long enough to come over here. >> Thank you, Mr. Web. >>
009You're welcome. >> Good evening. I'm Ethan Thompson and I'm a sophomore at Bluefield High School. Before I tell you about my experience in San Francisco, I first like to say how grateful I am to Miss Webb for selecting me as the Mercer County Representative. She was not only enthusiastic and helpful, she was extremely kind to me throughout the school year and during my trip to California. She's awesome. >> I'd also like to thank Mr. Collins for selecting me to represent Bluefield. His belief in me means so much as a student and as a Bluefield leader. The National Gear Up Conference in San Francisco was a really fun and exciting experience for me. During my time there, I met and engaged with other high school students from all across the United States. We worked together in
010large and small groups on team building exercises that taught us the importance of community and being able to rely on each other to reach goals. Every day we listened to several motivational speakers and we were then given the opportunity to share our own experiences and give our input. Ultimately, I felt that the conference was geared to make us the students believe in ourselves and break through any boundaries we or other students have set up. They focused on self-confidence and self-growth as well as teamwork during our group discussions. Then they set up activities that promoted these characteristics. For example, we did an activity where they asked us questions about various personal boundaries and we had to walk to different corners of the room depending on our answers. We weren't supposed to talk, so the idea was
011to show us that everyone of us had similar or different struggles. It promoted self-awareness and empathy for others. We did another activity in which we had to complete tasks in groups while being completely silent. It taught us to focus on each other and the in the small details and the importance of each one communicating. The last activity we did was board breaking. We wrote what we struggled with most on boards and cheered each other on as we one by one broke through our self-set boundaries. Before I finish, I'd also like to say how much it meant to me that Katrice Robertson from Gear Up Concord scheduled so many activities for southern West Virginia representatives to experience San Francisco. My mom and I were able to walk through the Mirwoods section of the Redwood Forest. We
012rode over the Golden Gate Bridge. We had clam chowder on Pier 39 overlooking the bay on our in our free time. We even visited Alcatra and that was on my list of things I wanted to do in my lifetime. Thank you all so much for this amazing experience. Thank you. And now I'm going to ask his mom to say something about what they did with the parents. I also want to add that Emma Whis from Pike View High was a representative also and uh Shellyley his mother went with him and with her with her and they are having volleyball triyouts tonight and I think Shelley's a coach and Emma's trying out for varsity so she hated she couldn't be here. We also want to use Ethan all over the county and Emma too this year
013to promote it. Okay, thank you. >> My name is Amber Brittney Thompson and I am Ethan's mother. And when uh Gail called me and asked if I would like for Gear Up to pay for me to participate in the Gear Up conference, I 100% agreed. And um as part of the family leadership institute of Gear Up, I was able to listen to motivational speakers every day and go to workshops and do team building exercises. And the one thing that I really pulled from the um conference was that they wanted us to listen to our children that a lot of times we get caught up in parenting and it kind of gets in the way of not paying attention to what they're actually trying to say. And so we did an activity called the twominut rule
014where we talk to somebody but we could not talk while they were talking for two minutes. And it was really hard for me to not interject and say, "Oh, sure. I totally agree with things like that." But it made me realize I do that a lot with my kids. I don't like listen 100%. And so when I came back, I made sure Ethan's my oldest. I have two other young boys. And I realized, you know, I need to start listening to them a little more and not interjecting. And then we did some team building exercises with cables that were all different where we had to stand in line two and get a marble from one end to the other without talking. And every cable was different. And it was hard because the cables were all,
015you know, trying to line up and get this marble to the end. But they wanted us to look at the other team and decide, oh, they're doing this. We should do that. And so it's like a mom of a sophomore football player. I could pull something from a senior cheerleader mom and not really understand that, oh well, you know, we're different, but I can take something from her. So I learned a lot from that conference, and I thought that the parent side of it was definitely beneficial. So Europe definitely works. you can go back to let him go. Thank you, Amber. >> Thank you. Great job. >> Just as a quick segue to that, I want to go ahead and say that the main uh workshops that I attended at the conference dealt with parent
016engagement because in secondary education, it's hard to get parents involved. So, I have I'm not going to go over this. You all can read it. I'm going to give you a handout of some of the things I've learned as far as parent engagement and I also have a list here of our upcoming events for you. Um, and I want to invite everybody to the Western Kishnik kickoff presentation on August the 18th at 8:00 at Blue High School. Um, I think it's going to be very good. ities will go do a year-long training program for um for our secondary teachers. So, I'm really excited about that. So, I have and there's an RSVP on it for either me or Jenny Collus because we want to save you a place to park if you come. Mike Collins
017can take care of that. Thank you. Okay guys, uh well the theme of the whole conference is planting seeds and so as you guys know we all plant seeds in whatever level elementary or high school planting seeds so when they get out into the real world you know hopefully will grow into young adults. But one of the things that Christy and I were in together was social media and it was actually called you the hospital. So, you know, they started out with, you know, a lot >> but, you know, the one thing that they discussed was this was a gear up group that they run a social media uh group through their school. And the one thing I took back to bring back to Bluefield High School where the A's going to be a part
018of this and just doesn't know it yet. But um you know they they have their they have someone that runs their social media. It's they have a two people from Europe and what they did is they hired a student social media intern. And so Abe and I have already talked about that and we are going to have an interview process where we're going to have a student in charge of our social media who can build the the sites and build the you know a lot of the things they talked about is students it needs to be student centered. You know a lot of times school systems and others and we have a great uh social media. I think we're way ahead of of the of the ball game there but um you know a lot
019of them it's a lot about adults and different things, but they really said, you know, to get your students involved. Number one is, and we've already all heard this, but Facebook is for us and Instagram is for them, the kids. Now, they get they get into a little bit of Tik Tok and Snapchat, but I don't think we're ready for that yet. You know, we're really going to push maybe going into Instagram and uh building in we do have an Instagram page, but really building that for our students. So one of the things that they did is they involve a lot of videos, a lot of reals. Again, that's new to me, but you know, they use their social media intern in their school then to build those reels and build those social media platforms
020and then it is ran through the advisor uh and they approve or disapprove and then they post it. So everything's done through the adults in the building, but that student with a little bit of What would we say? I guess a little bit of youth to them >> would be able to build something that our students want to see and get us excited. You know, we heard a lot about, you know, selling our brand and selling our school our schools and our school system. You know, we've got to get our kids on board. And that's something at Blue High because again, I shouldn't say this out loud, but I will. Mike Collins kind of oversees and a Lily oversee the social media page and we can do that. Well, that's that's what I was going
021to say about Senior High School. When I came there and Jennifer Purdue went to the board's office, I kind of inherited I inherited Facebook and obviously if you look at our Facebook, it's not very creative at all. What you see with kids is kids are so creative. They have all the trends. They know what to do. They can make the canvas. I don't know how to do that. So, that's something that we're going to look at as well is getting our students involved and working directly with me with social media and trying to sell our brand. The other thing that I wanted to say real quick, it wasn't necessarily about the conference, but um I had never participated in Gear Up before because I had been an elementary ad elementary administrator, middle school administrator, and
022I kind of missed some of those middle school years where they had that at Princeton Middle. So, this has been my first experience this year with Europe. And I really didn't know what we were getting into, but to say that I've been impressed is really an understatement with everything that Miss Webb has set up for our students, all of our ninth graders this year. I if I heard it once, I heard it a thousand times. They really enjoyed going on the college tours. They enjoyed going to Concord to New River to everything that they got to experience to get some workplace experience or even just some career driven experience about what they want to do. Um, and I'm also excited that Gear Up's going to pay for our students to take the PSAT next spring,
023too. So, I think that's huge. In addition to they're also helping us with the SAT boot camps, I think, and some of the funding there. So, that's for me it's never have done it before. It's it's really opened my eyes to a lot and I think it's outstanding. >> A lot of what we learned about was AI and AI was included in most of the presentations in some way, shape or form and a couple of the things that I took away from it and in fact my department chair in English and um myself have even had a Zoom meeting with this one product that's called YOP and I'm going to give you all a handout. It's a youth um writing program and it's an 8-week like indepth and Miss Burr is going to work together
024with it's through the University of Alabama. She's going to work together with this yacht writing program for eight weeks. We're going to give it a try. At the end of the eight weeks, they should have a very well-ritten essay and in during this AI will help them and it will help Miss Burr as well because it helps with the editing process. It prompts them to be more creative with their writing and they can see how AI can be a tool to help them as opposed to a tool to just help them do it. In fact, if you ask the AI um widget or whatever it is in the program, if you one kid asks it, can you write can you just write this for me? And the AI person comes back and says, I'm not
025that kind of teacher. I'm not writing it for you. So, we really liked it. We appreciated all that it had to offer and we are looking at getting that for our students and again it's called YOP and there's a little handout about that and also a lot of um I went to one session and it was um sponsored by Blue Origin which is Jeff Bezos's space program and um there's a lot of free curriculum out there all STEMbased that we have access to and that I can I can show the middle school and the high school teachers how to access that. There are lots and lots of free um steam lessons that the students can do. And they have very affordable rockets that we can use in earth science and have the kids work together
026in groups and they have full lessons that go along with those. And I was as a science teacher, a nerd, I was super impressed with that. And we actually even did a couple of the lessons in the session that I went to. And we got to build a thing to we had to build a tool to collect space trash and each group had to design something different. And then we went on like a treasure hunt and learned all these different things about space history. >> I thought that it was great and I may even use one on the 18th with our teachers in our sessions, one of the lessons that we had there. So that was really, really good. And I've got something about the Blue Origin thing. Um, we talked I went to one
027that talked about the social and emotional well-being of students and the overload of social media and the overload of phone usage. And that's something that we are all thinking about right now. So, there was a whole lot there. And I would also like to say that Emma and her mom were very sad about not coming tonight, but she was she Emma is a very many of you all know Shelly. Emma's a very kind of quiet child and she's she doesn't have a whole lot to say. She's very backward. And Shelley talked about how much this brought her out of her shell, how much she worked with those students. She did a lot of the art and making of the masks and all the a lot of the artwork that went along with the students presentations
028and she absolutely loved it. She loved breaking the board. She wanted to save it. She wanted to take pictures of it. She had a great time and learned so much as did I. I mean, we went out a couple days ear early and went to Yoseite and I probably wouldn't have had that opportunity before, but we went out before the conference started and that's stuff that we can bring back to the students as well. So, thanks. >> So, I'm going to give you a handout real quick. >> These are the key takeaways that I took from the conference. uh they had this eeky guy leadership method and what that focuses on it focus on four questions. So the kids ask theelves, they say, "What do I love? What am I good at? What does the
029world need?" And then the last question, which is the most important question, is what can I be paid for? Because just because you like doing something doesn't mean that there's a job market for that. So there's a map that goes with it. And if you'll look on the U second page here, I put a a QR code there. So if you go to that, you'll be able to see that. You can pull that up on your phone. The second thing, it's kind of like what Anna was talking about the I think she called it the or whatever. But um what is it called? Okay, I'm thinking about the song, right? Okay, but um anyway, this is kind of similar to what she's talking about that program in and a lot of the school systems that
030we heard from were from California. And everywhere you go in California, every billboard, it says something about AI. I mean, I don't care where you're at. That's what they talk about. But, um, what I thought was really cool about this school system was that they had worked with another company and came up with their own AI agent. They had developed it. And so, that put the parameters on the AI for the kids. Like, they set it. Now, I don't know what that cost. I have no idea. But I just thought that was really neat because that is definitely a concern that everybody's going to have. You know, I saw something where they they're developing these programs that can detect I mean almost immediately if you use AI. So they they had this really cool summer
031workshop that they did with the kids on scholarship essay writing and they used what they called their their AI agent was called Scrappy. And so what it did instead of uh the kids just saying, "I need you to write me an essay," it would prompt them with questions that they needed to answer to write the essay. So, I love that. I thought that was a great a great idea. And I was going to go last, so I guess uh I'm going to let Abe go and then Are you going to talk about what we're going to do? >> Okay. All right. I'm going to let Abe go. But there's more on here and flip through there. I put some of the rubrics in on the essay topics and uh on the scrappy agent. So, I'm
032going to let Abe go. >> Good evening. Um I really appreciate them letting me go with Anna to the to the trip. It was really nice. Uh Anna and I sometimes did we have we have educational discussions not about kids but about what's going on in the classroom because I'm in the classroom. And one of the things that uh we did go out early and she did drag me through. >> You went willingly. >> I went Yeah. Yeah. But it was really nice. But I'm teaching ninth grade earth science this year. I have not it's been about six years since I've walked down that that pathway in my science career. So it was really nice to look at formations and kind of sparked some ideas for me to bring back. even the bridge itself of
033how it was designed in engineering because I did teach a STEM classroom when I was in Raleigh County and I really enjoyed that. So now I'm going to get to bring that back. The big thing that I looked at being a TIS and was the AI itself. Um and also being a librarian a lot of people have said well libraries are are outdated and things like that. No, our role has changed. It has changed. Instead of us handing out things, we have become sources for our schools. If you look at it, teachers come to my world and say, "Hey, how can I do this better, easier, or quicker? Save myself time so that I can spend time teaching." So AI has been the big hub. They're going that's going to take my job. Well, we
034talked about Wikipedia like that and that was one of the things that we talked about. Wikipedia well it's not a really a good source that you can site in 11th and 12th grade in other words but it can be used as a source to spring you off to give you some ideas the AI can be the same way one of it was opportunities risk and reflection was one of the AI sessions that I went to and there is risk to it and we need to accept that but there was risk to Wikipedia because some of the information was not good right now in the news and I was one of the things talked about you know colleges and things like that that were going on is about uh the other one was AI literacy. What's
035the difference of digital literacy of looking at information correctly and knowing the source and where it comes from and whether it's good or not. Even the colleges now have developed for their schools ways to detect in their information when they turn the assignment in. They have an AI that actually looks at the digital background of that work to see how many times they paced, how long they spent in it, what they were doing. So that was the big thing. And AI literacy, how to use it as a good tool not to do my job for me. >> That's the big thing. And sometimes you need a little push. And you know, we do get stagnant as teachers and as students. So if we look at it that way, instead of it being, oh, it's the
036great demon, maybe using it as an idea to say, hey, this is a tool you can use. I bet you when the encyclopedia came out, it was a it was a problem because all I mean, let's let's be honest with you. So that was one of the things I took away from that. And the other one was the mental uh health issue. I know we as a school system and me being in this county listen to most of our drama comes from the technology teaching them to be responsible for what they say and what they do and that was the big thing for me for their mental health. We have kids today and I mean I worked in the college system that this affects them about their body image about who they are because they
037are intated with information. We have to tell teach them how not to internalize that that it's not about them. It's someone else's putting something out there. We have to walk away from that and how to teach them to do do it in a good way. Um this one was a generational shift from playbased to phonebased childhood which I never thought of it that way. I mean some of you all will remember this because you're in my group. Uh Atari 2600. I see some smiles. Nintendo, Kolinko Vision, you know, we didn't share online. My nephew was online talking to friends and talking to people that he did not even know and they were making judgments about him that had no idea about it. So, we have to teach them to be better digital literacy and AI.
038I thank you all for letting me go because I really it kind of respsparked me as a teacher to think about what I'm going to do in the classroom with phones. I know we that's a hot topic but yeah but for me there is a time and place for everything that we do and that's what we do as professionals. So thank you all and I appreciate that. Kale >> I'm gonna go really fast here because I know there's a bunch more presentations. So the theme was planting seeds and they talked to us as you all know public education is taking a hit. They want charter schools. Our government wants charter schools. They want private schools. And one of the things that one of the guys said was they thought they could bury us. They forgot
039we were seeds. And that stuck with me. I thought that was beautiful. >> We just need to plant those seeds. and we need to plant them on good solid ground with our parents, our kids and our teachers. The other thing was beware beware of weapons of mass distraction. So when people are negative, we need to come back. We need to be ready to come back with the positives about public education. Um I just want to briefly say some of the things Gear Up has this year planned. We're going to do that Weston Kishnik event. He is a year-long um professional develop for secondary teachers. The cost for that is $87,500. You all approved that back in February and we have everything in plan from August to the end of May. >> So we have that
040for next year. We received some carryover monies. We have um >> Yeah, we know. >> Let me make this clear. This is all funded through the Gear Up grant. >> Yes. >> Um we're going to have high dosage tutoring in English and in algebra 1. >> We have mastery prep boot camps for 9inth and 10th graders, all of them. And that is $67,000 that our carryover money is paying for through Gear Up. We have Desmos training. It's coming up in November. And Desmos is the online calculator that comes within the PSAT and the SAT. Not only do we have that for all of the students because we're going to kind of cheat and put the 11th graders in with the ninth graders and the 12th graders in with the 10th graders so they all get
041it, but we also have it for the teachers. Um, we're going to have an interactive book fair for ninth and tth graders. I'm going to work with Laura Presley on that and Jenny were Jenny's always my person to go to. She and Angie help a lot. Um and then we are also paying for that PSAT for all ninth and tth graders in March or April. So we're lucky to get this money and I'm excited about it. I want to use it in a meaningful way. Do you all have any questions for any of us? >> Yeah, I do. It's Oh, man. mic. >> I got a mic here. >> Yeah, he's got one. Shows you how much I hope >> this may be a big very involved question. If it is, perhaps some of you
042could come on Friday to our work session. But on Friday, we're going to be talking about cell phone policy. >> It sounds like some of the things y'all said we need to hear. >> We have plans to be there. >> Okay. You can tell us on Friday then. Okay. Thank you. >> Okay. Any other questions? who normally excuse me takes the PSAT and is it just students whose parents pay for it in the past so this will so it's probably not a huge participation then if that's >> schools have uh paid for it in the past with ISA funds >> okay >> but I think it's all the kids since our end of course test is the SAT I just think this is inval I think it's great. Yeah, absolutely. >> For all of them
043to be able to take the PSA. >> Yeah, that's wonderful. >> And it'll get them a college board account. They'll know how to do that. >> Right. >> So, >> is there any way to identify the students that that know even at that age that they want to come to MC to be a welder or whatever? It's not that I don't want them to have that or be have access to it, but is there any way to identify these? Yes, we have a co we have a college and career interest inventory that we give the students every year and we're planning to take students in groups to observe at MCT not to tour MCT but say send a group of students who want to be welders to go observe for session this year we have
044that those plans and works. >> Anything else? Well, thank y'all so much. >> Thank you. Sounds like a great conference. >> Thank you all. >> There's one thing that we did experience was the driverless car. >> Oh yeah. How was that? >> Which we used, which was the same price to use it as to use Uber. >> Regular Uber. Yeah, >> it was the same. But you didn't have to tip them. >> Yeah, that's true. It >> was great. Um and it was using AI. It It was even that night. We we did one night journey and it showed all the people that were lit up and I said look at all the ghosts out there >> lit up on the screen because it actually detected them. It was really very smart. Now I did
045ask one of them about um someone from town said yeah when they first came out they hit everything. So but but they said but now it's very used very much throughout the town and they all go to sleep at the same time. They all drive in go charge and stuff. >> Oh that's funny. It's a really >> lady would go. >> I mean, I was like, I want one for school to drive me back and forth, >> but it was And it didn't even talk to me, which was even better. So, >> it didn't talk to you, but I found myself trying to talk to nothing in the front seat because I was afraid it was going to hit a tour bus. >> But it was cool. Okay. So, we're going to move on to
046the cell conference. We actually had three different groups go and present, but um when I put this on the agenda, I did not know that one of our teachers from Bluefield High School, Brie McKenna, had presented at that time. So, we'll get her at a later date. she was invited by the state to present as well as our next presenters in the yellow jackets. Um, so these ladies are now called the network. Last year, uh, Amber Rif and I had sit down. We just talked about that we didn't think what we were doing for new teachers was working. And so I was at Princeton High and I ran into Laura and we got into a very long discussion after school and started talking about like what do the teachers want? what do the teachers want
047for this program? What would be the most helpful thing for them? And so from there, I'd already had Leanne and Amanda. They were working with me on mathematical mindsets. And then Haley, she was just super excited and she just came into the group. And so we formed the network. We also have elementary people that are on that. But these ladies, I don't and I'm going to let Laura tell this story, but these ladies were invited from the State Department to come and do this. And then by the time they left, they were invited to be state mentors. So I'm so proud of them. And so I'm going to introduce them. I have Haley Hankis. She is from I'm going to call it Green Valley, Mount Valley. I'm not elementary. I'm sorry. And then Laura Presley.
048She's from Princeton High School. She's an English teacher. I have Leanne Owen. She's a math teacher at Pyu High. And then I have Amanda Reid, who used to be our math teacher at Princeton. I'm going to cry, but she is now at Concord and she's still going to work with us. We We're still going to keep her because she's wonderful. She has a doctorate in STEM. >> Is that right? >> Okay. But anyway, I love these ladies and I'm so proud of them. >> So, I don't need a mic. So, if I get too loud, just you can tell me to shush. But while Laura's getting this up, she did want us to talk about our color because as you can see, I feel like Big Bird. That's what I asked my daughter this evening
049if I look like Big Bird. Um, and everyone at the conference, we walked in and I felt like we were like this little golden posi and everyone was like, "Where'd you get your jackets? What are you all doing? Is that are you a bumblebee?" And we were like, "No, we're not bumblebees." But we are so happy to be here. Um, and we picked yellow mostly because at those initial meetings, we felt like, as you all know, I don't have to I feel like I'm preaching to the choir, but like education right now could be really heavy and really negative. Um, and what is the opposite of that? like positivity and sunshine and joy and we were like yellow golden. And so all of our marketing has been kind of like this golden color. Um and
050no, we're not bumblebees. So you're going to hear a little bit more about um the key components of the network, but Laura and I both don't like silence. So she told me to just Can I say anything else? Should I >> Oh, we're ready. Okay, here we go. Right. >> And we are going to speak quickly because this was a 45m minute session that we have now condensed to like 10ish minutes. Well, it's been a year-long um passion project really. So, it's hard to narrow that down. So, um again, thank you for the introduction and um this was um really something we were privileged to present at the state. Um we're excited to share with you tonight because um this is the core of teacher retention. We have to be there for our new teachers
051and um Miss Grossclo said that we were the network but really the network is so much bigger than us. Um it is that's why we call this the network instead of the new teacher seminar where it was a stigma right I remember sitting here as a new teacher and people were preaching at me and made me feel nervous. So the network we learned probably more than the new teachers this year. So it really um empowered teachers at all levels. Okay. So we >> So as uh Miss Gross Coast stated, we had all been working together on different projects. Um Laura was my national board mentor when I certified two years ago. Um I was Haley's new teacher mentor years ago and Ma uh Amanda and I had worked on several math projects together. So we
052kind of already knew each other and we're used to working together. And um when we were approached, we started thinking about what is the network going to look like? So what do we want it to look like? So the network is a model that partners new teachers with mentors in their buildings and district offices. So that was our first very important thing was that your mentor teacher needs to be in the same building as much as possible, same content area, same grade level if at all possible. So that was our first target. Um our second target was we need to foster relationships. We need to support our teachers. Um I tell people and many of you know me because I worked 12 and a half years at the central office after working 29 years as
053a accounting finance person. But when you go into the classroom, the only people you may see during that day is who is right beside of you and your students. So, we wanted to give those teachers support and we wanted a way to energize. Like Haley said, education is heavy. A lot of our times our kids go through a lot of difficult things. So, we wanted to energize and encourage all educators, no matter if they have right out of school or they have 25 years in the classroom. So our purpose was to modernize new teacher support through authentic mentorship to promote teacher retention by encouraging teacher autonomy. So defining teacher autonomy means to give that teacher a choice as to what it is they feel like they need. I need help on classroom management. I need
054help on technology. I need help on curriculum. I need help here. So we um survey our group after every session to plan for the next session. We did not plan but for one session at a time throughout the whole year. Um we also wanted to offer strategic uh professional development and prioritize purposeful collaboration. And we have a couple of words from Emily Smith. Emily talks about how she used um the network in her school and how it turned out for her. >> Part of teacher retention is ensuring that new teachers feel supported and one way of doing that was through the network. New teachers were able to gather as a community and share their struggles and successes that come with being a brand new educator. Also, they were able to work with their mentors and
055mentors from across the county and share new ideas and learn things from each other. One thing we did at our school was have our new teacher share some new strategies and things that she was learning. So, that also gave her the opportunity to take on a leadership role in our building. So, it just provides support, confidence, and lets them know they're not alone in their new teaching journey. I think Emily says it all. It really gives new teachers a network, a group of people to really support what they're doing and um and have answers to the questions that they have. So, here's a little bit about the participants that we had. We had um 33 mentors and 56 mentees. So, the ratio um was about 1 to2. Um as you can see most of them
056most mentors and mentees were secondary which is really powerful um because in secondary um especially from my background coming from an elementary to a secondary um education that you have less opportunities for professional development in secondary. So that was really powerful that we had a lot of um secondary participants. So I thought that was really awesome. And like Leanne said, after every session, we gave our participants a survey um to rate, you know, how they um felt about the sessions that they attended and what sessions they felt like they needed, what questions they still had um so that we could prepare each session tailored to what they needed. And so this was just this was the very last survey that they took. Their overall experience is really um says a lot. um most people um
057rated a four or five which is really awesome especially for the first year um implementing this this new network. All right. So the big four that we really focused on were authentic mentorship where that mentor is with the mentee in their building. Um we really wanted the new teachers to not have that stigma um where it's us versus them. We called it the network so that they can learn from us, we can learn from them, providing that teacher autonomy. We did incorporate a portfolio. We have some examples of those. I think we're passing those around for you. Um, we'll tell you more about that. And then obviously we really focused on reflection because that's how anybody grows whether you taught for one year or 20. Um, this is a video from a science mentor, Carol
058Whitaker, at Princeton High School. and she has a really powerful testimony about, you know, she's only a six, she's been teaching for six years and how this really helped empower her as an experienced teacher. >> Hey, my name is Carol Whitaker. I'm a science teacher at Princeton Senior High School and I was involved in the mentor program this la past year. And so I was asked two questions. What is my favorite part of the network as a mentor? Well, my favorite part was getting to work with a teacher that was in my school. That made it a lot easier. Also, it allowed me to get to know her better. Um, and we actually were able to collaborate together and come up with um really great labs, not only for her class, but for mine. And
059we were also able to take our honors classes on a field trip. The next question inspired how did it inspire me in my current position? So I have been teaching for six years um been in the science biology mostly but um it has inspired me to want to do better. Okay. I enjoyed going to the meetings where we would go and to our little breakout groups and learn new things. And that inspired me to want to do better, to want my students to enjoy class and have more hands-on activities. So, as Miss Whitaker said here, really cool part of the network is it wasn't just for new teachers. Their mentors came to the meetings with them. So, they were getting training, they were working together. Um, and so we really coined this phrase mentor by
060modeling. Um, we weren't molding, we weren't telling new teachers, you should do this. When I would go into my mentor's classroom, my mentees classroom, she didn't use assigned seating. I do, but I didn't say you need to use assigned seating. I ask her, why aren't you teacher autonomy, right? Um, and so we really enjoyed um, learning from those new teachers. We hosted at Princeton um, every every time. And you can see there some of the elementary people with us that were also on our committee. This next slide is Are you talking? >> Yeah. And I just was going to reiterate what she said about the difference between molding and modeling. Um because some of those words could sound a little confusing. Um we we reiterated this a lot during the cell conference, but again it's
061like the coaching in real time. Let me show you how you could do this. Let me reflect with you. Let me ask you all these questions. So that really felt like the difference maker in order to get them to reflect more genuinely with their collaborator. Um, and so this is Anna Boros. She teaches at Mountain Valley where I'm at and she's phenomenal. So she's going to tell us a little bit about her experience in the network. Hey, what was your favorite part of the network? My favorite part was getting to go in field trips and seeing other classrooms. I got to observe Stacy Batesil. She is the chair for the music department and it was life-changing. my classroom management, my curriculum planning, everything changed after I got to see her. So, that was pretty awesome.
062>> Amazing. And what was the thing that helped you grow the most in your practice? >> I think it was having Josette as a mentor by my side and getting to meet with her. We met um for 45 minutes to an hour Tuesdays and Thursdays. And it was great to have her guide me with the things that I was learning and things that I was working on. And we also worked on our portfolio then, so it made it really good. >> Yay. >> Do I sound like that? Um, so anyway, that was a fun experience to hear that again and again. But Anna's uh portfolio, by the way, is really just amazing. I think it might still be up wandering with you all. She's great. So, you should definitely look at that. >> That's yours.
063>> Well, they're all different. They're all different. >> Mr. H. Just kidding. She's great. Okay. Um, so up on the board, we have two words, phrases, whatever. We have field trip. We have invitation. And so I want you all to think about the connotation of both of those things. We get invited to a party. Yay. We go on a field trip. Well, maybe teachers aren't as yay, but students are. Yay. Um so the field trip was basically where um the mentee could go out into the school or sometimes like she said even to another school on a field trip to observe a teacher that they wanted to collaborate with or learn from. um the invitation vice versa is when they have that autonomy to say, "Hey, I'm doing this amazing lesson next week and I
064want you to come see me and give me some feedback." And so we had those two components of that kind of fed right into the reflection and the portfolio that they were then um collecting data for. Oh, still me. Okay. Uh this is actually Carol Whitaker's mentee, Betsy Ramsay, another phenomenal teacher at Princeton Senior High School, and she's going to talk about her experience. Hi, my name is Elizabeth Ramsay and I'm a science teacher at Princeton Senior High School. As a firstear teacher, I was asked to take part in the network where I was a mentee who was assigned a mentor from within my school. Um, I was asked to answer a question, two questions about the network. Um, the first one was what is my favorite part of the network? And I have to
065say that my favorite part of the network was working with a veteran science teacher who was able to help me modify my labs and lesson plans for my classroom. Um it was great to be able to work with her. We were even able to collaborate and schedule a field trip for our honors classes. Um we took them to Lost World Caverns and that's an experience that a lot of them would not have had otherwise. Um, the other question that I was asked to answer was how did the network inspire me in my current position? And I have to say that it inspired me to want to learn more. Um, a lot of the professional developments and breakout sessions that we did were a little crazy when you looked at the titles of them. I was
066like, there's no way that a math lesson's going to correlate to my classroom, but it actually did. Um, so it did inspire me to want to look for different types of professional developments and stuff like that, even if I think right off the bat they're not going to correlate to my classroom. >> So, we've watched these videos probably five or six or seven times or more. Um, and I I smile every time I watch them because how powerful is it and inspiring for me um to to see other educators, you know, enjoying um what they're doing in professional development and and gaining things from that. Um, and that's the purpose of the network. We wanted teachers to do things that were useful to them and things that they needed. Um, so the title of our
067presentation was not one more thing because we know teachers have a lot to do and so we didn't want the network to be something that new teachers just dreaded. Oh, I got to go to this network meeting today. Um, you I got to sit there for two hours and do nothing. Um, so we wanted them to to have something that was meaningful and purposeful. Um, and so this is where the portfolio came in. So originally it was a resource um that we wanted them to use there. We did try to provide meaningful professional development. You know, you get a lot of hands handouts. You get a lot of things that you want to take back. So we wanted them to have one place that they could put all of those things. I'm sorry. I'm hiding
068behind the the flag. >> I think the flag has invaded my personal >> might have to move that over a little. Um so like Laura was saying um so purposeful reflection and um teaching teachers, new teachers and experienced teachers um about the art of reflection was really meaningful to the network. So throughout the network we asked them to write reflections and you'll see some feedback on that in just a minute. Um so we wanted them to have a place to um house all of those reflections as well and we wanted them to see their own growth. So, in the beginning of the year, they're going to write reflections about how they're feeling, the experiences that they had, um, but also what they're seeing in the classroom. So, let's say they saw something in October or
069November that they really wanted to try, but they couldn't remember. Well, here's your notebook. You know, here's, um, here's your portfolio. Let me go back and see what did Miss Pzel do because clearly she was very inspirational. So, um, we wanted that. And you're probably wondering why I'm still up here now that I'm with Concord. So, the really cool thing um is I was actually talking to uh my department chair um Dr. Campbell about my experiences with the network right before I um presented with these lovely ladies in Charleston. And she was like, "Well, why don't we um work together and offer some graduate credit for all of the work that these teachers are doing?" I was like, "That is awesome. So, now we have a connection with higher education. um I'm going to work
070and create some opportunities for graduate credit for new teachers and experienced teachers um to gain some of that credit. So they're going to be have an opportunity to gain six hours which for new teachers is what they need in their first three years. So through the network the portfolio is also going to be um a product for th for that those courses. So that's really awesome. We're really excited about that. I get chills when I talk about really cool things. >> It's okay. You can't get rid of me. Sorry. Um so as you can see here so part of the portfolio um part of the surveys that we gave people our participants um were about what pieces of the portfolio sorry um were meaningful to them. And as you can see the reflections were by
071far um the most meaningful particularly the one between the mentor and mentee. And so this is um a really key piece in the network and um and what us as a network and as a district need to be mindful of as we're choosing mentors. The relationships that our mentors and mentees had was a really important part of um the success of the of the network. >> We're gonna skip a few >> that sounds good. And you could see that um between the two teachers um >> yes, Mr. Ramsey, Miss Whitaker, thank you. Um they were a mentor and mentee and you could see that they both gained something from that and they built a relationship and took their students on a field trip together and that was really awesome. So we this is another um
072little bit of data from the the survey we gave our participants. You can see that 51% said that they would like to work with the same mentor or mentee. And so that was really awesome. That means we had really good experiences with over half of the participants. Um, and the network is not something that the four of us, you know, just decided, mandated we're going to do this today or we're going to do this next time. Um, we really tried to work with teachers and ask I know we had our teacher of the year, Miss Yaya, come in and um, do some professional development, but we wanted teachers to be empowered. Um so we want more teachers to come and be a part of the organization and so 14% of the participants said they would
073like to um provide professional development or help organize a network in some way. So I think that's awesome. 27% said they'd like to be a future mentor and then we had 8% that said they would like to work with a different mentor. Um so again that was powerful data because we need to be very selective on who we um pair together because the experiences um they need to be similar in content and um we try to pair them with the same school. So we need to think about maybe personality and what teachers need when we're pairing those people together. >> All right, we're going to finalize. This is me. >> Okay. Yes, >> that's okay. >> All right. Um, so I think that I covered that first bullet point. Um we are going to revise
074some of the portfolio components again to take care of that graduate credit and we are going to partner with Concord um to offer that for teachers and Lord's going to talk about and the last thing is um we were asked to be mentors at the state but we also um got word today there is um a 4count partnership um that is they're called um the educators network and they've asked us to come and do virtual meetings and to mentor them in mentoring their teachers. So, you know, it truly is not just a network in Mercer County, but in our state, and we're really proud of this, and we um we hope that it will continue to grow. So, if you all have any questions, and we'd like to hear your questions for sure. I know
075time might be an issue, and you can tell we could yap about this literally for hours. So, if you want to email us, there's our information. Um, and I also just wanted to kind of reiterate that there's so much good going on in Mercer County and this was never ever about just like us and we can't wait to just get more people to come including people who have been teaching for 20 years. Everyone is welcome. >> Any questions? >> How do you select or u recruit mentors? Yeah, that's a >> Well, right now we have people that are certified as mentors, but what we did this year because the whole point was we we wanted the teacher to have somebody in their school that they could connect with quickly. So, we offered mentoring. They do
076it. The state department does it online. It is in the evening. We paid them a stipen, but as you can hear, like we I feel like >> that's the training we're about to >> Yeah. So, they're going to be a part of this, but we're creating more leaders. That's what I love about this, you know, like I me and Amber had not like we we inherited that program. I inherited Rosemary inherited. There's several people here that inherited that program and that's how it was done and that's how we did it. But like it was just blah. >> So, you know, Amber and I had we acknowledged that it's just not good. And so when I when I thought about this idea, I thought I want my teachers to tell me what the teachers need. I
077I don't know what that is. They know what it is. I haven't been in the classroom in years. So I feel like by ma, you know, empowering them now, they're empowering other people. And we have several elementary teachers who uh came in at the end of the year, but we want, you know, we want more people to be mentors. And they're not going to do all the training. we're going to have other people do it, but they're going to help. So, I just I think it just creates a a network and a community for our teachers to talk to people and and, you know, gain lessons and knowledge and have somebody to talk to because teaching's a stressful job. So, anyway, we we're going to have more mentors. It'll just depend on who we have
078this year and who's in their subject area. Is that somebody that you got people you guys will recruit or how will that happen? >> I think asking like we know that teachers that have positive attitudes, right? And and that's probably why some of that negative data was there. Um so just by knowing the other teachers in our building, asking our principles, you know, who do you think would be a good mentor for this person? Knowing personalities and but then they do have to apply. It was the application process. Okay. >> So, >> well, when you first got here dressed like you were, I thought you were going to sell me something. Did we sell the network? >> That was my second little phrase. I said, "And so I'm sold." >> Um, >> really impressed. >>
079I think you all done a good job. Of course, knowing all of you, working with some of you, I'm not surprised. I can remember my early career. Some of you, well, nobody probably in here, but uh in my early career, I I used to say my first three years probably was survival. >> Then you actually felt like you were beginning to find yourself. But then I always talk about the art of teaching. I think what this program does is probably get you to that art of teaching. And you all who are teachers know what I'm talking about. When you can feel things and you can look reactions, it's it's not in black and white. It's being there. I really think you all are going and get these teachers to the art of teaching much quicker
080with this kind of program. So I applaud you. I'm really impressed. >> Thank you. >> Well, thank you. Thank you. >> Yeah. Great job, ladies. Thank you. >> Okay. I know I know it's turned into a long night. This one, I promise you, will be very short and sweet. So, and I don't know that I'm the person to talk about this. Do you want to talk about it? Come on up here. >> Cuz she went too. >> And then everybody else that's involved in this, y'all. Come on up. >> As part of sale, they um department at Department of Education wanted to also look at instruction and how we were delivering the instruction, whether it be from the administrator helping the teacher or the teacher helping the student. So, we were invited uh to attend
081the conference the same time sale was going on in Charleston. It was another three-day conference and it's called instructional rounds. And this particular um conference that we went to involved a pilot that they're doing for the state and that pilot includes Oakill High School and Princeton High School. And so what we're doing is we're going to spend this year going back and forth. They're going to come to Princeton and they're going to uh come into our classrooms and give ideas and do some modeling. We're going to go there and do the same thing. But our teachers that went with us have been trained now on the um the expectations of what instructional rounds do. So I'm going to let them tell you what instructional rounds are, what that means. Okay. So, um, Angie and I
082typically go around and we are the ones who do walkthroughs. Um, of course that is not the evaluation, but we do walkthroughs in classrooms. And what I'll say is the two days that we spent in Charleston were very eyeopening as to um how to change our practice and really look at facts. I know when I go in the classroom and I fill out our form in observe for success, I may have a question as to what came prior to um entering the classroom or what the follow-up activity is going to be. And I always put that in the notes. Um currently in observe for success we have it set up to where we follow um the CSI school observation form which is objective. Um but it instructional rounds is really looking for um the issues
083in your school and identifying those issues based on facts, not subjective um comments. um just looking at the facts that can be shown. Um so we started I there is a book that goes with this. I know Mr. Hodgees will have to get you a copy. I know you love to read and I know you're always interested in um the material that this is coming from. So um the book instructional rounds, we are going to have three book studies on that and they'll be by Zoom. So if you want to join us, please come and join us. Um, we'll let you know the chapters we're reading as we go along, but um, what we were asked to do is go through and identify a problem of practice. Um, we were taught how to conduct classroom
084observations, again, that were objective and based only on fact. Um, and that sounds like it would be easy. Um, but there were a lot of post-it notes like we watched three video or four videos on four different elementary classrooms and we all were asked to um make observations on post-it notes and I mean we threw a pile away um that had something that was subjective or uh judgmental in that. So, um just learning to gather your evidence based on um objective observations. Um the next thing that we looked at was really identifying a problem that our teachers um and assistant principal Linda Lindsay um helped identify. So, we've got this document. It's your page three that we've started. It is not comprehensive. Of course, this will grow as the training continues. It will become more
085lengthy, but we went through to identify the problem of practice. And looking at the test scores below, I know the proficiency there is really small. Um, and we are coming back up. Of course, 2425 is not on there yet. So we're going to see a little increase there as well. Um but the problem that we identified based on the data that we had um uh is do all students have the opportunity to gain skills in depth of knowledge do one through four. Um some guiding questions we're looking at as we go in and observe in the classrooms. What is the student task? and we're going to identify the DO. Um, how does the teacher feedback increase the DO? Um, it shouldn't just be basic call and response that we're looking for. Um, it needs to
086go deeper in that, especially at the high school level. And let me say this is not um unique to Princeton High School. It's unique to every school uh probably in the state if not the nation. Um, Oakill began their work on the same problem last year. So, we're working on similar problems. So, as they come and observe us, they're going to be able to kind of coach us along to and getting us up to speed where they currently are starting. Um, of course, there will be professional development, uh, just looking at what DO means and how you develop that in your classroom. Um and of course increasing the do of everyone's lessons and questioning strategies. Um the next page is just our data that we used. I'm sorry. First is demographics. Um, so that is
087the demographic makeup of the high school currently and the context includes all of the data that we use to come up with our problem of practice. Like I said, that is not comprehensive. Um, but it does use our GSA scores uh for 11th grade, which is the SAT. The last page and then I'll let our teachers talk. Um we will be traveling to Oakill and Oakill will be traveling to us like Miss Mitchell said. Um the funding is very minimal for this project. They gave us $500. So that basically covers the travel to Oakill twice. Um so that's very very minimal. I don't know if any instructional money's been allocated to the high school for the text or not. I know we got the text, but um really we're the ones who need it because
088we're we're the trainers at this point. We're the people who have been trained uh in instructional rounds. So those are the dates that we will travel to OILL and OIL will travel to us. I apologize for the typo. I do know how to spell kill. I've already revised that, emailed it back out and I'll let you know. I even sent that to an English teacher >> and I wanted her to take her red pen to it. No. Um, we also have the book study dates on there. Um, since we're so close, we might just come together and do those together via teams and, uh, anyone's welcome to join in on those, um, if you want to. So, I'm going to turn it over to Miss Heights if she wants to add anything or just say
089ditto. Well, ditto. Honestly though, to reiterate, the biggest thing for me uh for this was number one getting back out into some kind of professional development. That was very exciting. Uh being involved with other teachers around the state. uh being able to see other teachers, talk to other teachers, get their feedback, get their problems, get their the good things that happen in their classrooms. Uh the biggest thing too with this is being able to work with Oakill High School and they've already done it for a year and their administrator is very knowledgeable about instructional rounds and um I think she'll be a tremendous asset for us. Um, another thing is, um, when we go into the classrooms, we are not judgmental. We're not judging the teacher. We're not really evaluating the teacher. We're evaluating the
090depth of knowledge. What is the child doing in the classroom? Now, that does kind of reflect on the teacher a bit. Um, but we are not going in there attacking any teacher because we have a hard enough time holding on to who we have, our good teachers. So, we need to lift them up and we need to make sure that they have the support that they need. And this is amazing. And thank you very much for giving us the opportunity to go. >> You don't have anything to say? >> And I just I just wanted to say we appreciate them so much. I mean, this is a highly stressful position we put them in. They have to go into those rooms and it's it's going to be different, but we appreciate you guys so much.
091Thank you, Princeton High School. And thank you, Dr. Bond, for >> what I'll what I'll say the the teacher team that we have from Princeton High School. These are three teachers who um exhibit the characteristics we want to see in the classroom and they really do challenge their students. So, we've got a good team to work with. And again, thank you all for letting us go and have this experience. And we just hope to grow this throughout the county and and eventually we're going to be traveling to other schools around the state is what we what we hear. So, thank you for the opportunity. >> That's awesome. >> Yeah. Do you think we should take a break together? >> That's up to you. Yeah, we can do it and then we'll do that. Okay. Um,
092we have one person signed up for citizens input and that is Miss Hypes who was just up here with us. >> Just a reminder that you have about three minutes. I almost >> Okay. >> I just wanted to um get my name on there so I could give you some handouts for you need the microphone. >> Get the microphone. Got it. >> Oh, there you go. Thank you. Sorry. >> No, they can't. >> Yeah. Okay. >> Um All right. So, this is just me giving you homework for your work session on Friday for the cell phones. Um, I gave you maybe a little bit of focus because I don't think we're going to be able to do everything that we want to do this year uh for cell phones. And then there's also a handout
093from Carol County in Virginia that it's just a brief handout that they sent out to their parents uh to make it easier and easier transition for cell phone uh usage. So if you all want to pass those around and I would love to be at the work meeting on Friday if that is a possibility. >> I mean anybody's welcome. >> Yeah, it's open. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So please join us >> always. >> Thank you. >> Okay. Thank you, Lisa. Um we are going to take about a three minute. No, this is my stuff. It's coming. We're gonna take about a three minute recess. If any of you who came to present tonight need to leave or want to leave, you don't need to be and you don't need to be here for the rest of
094the meeting, please take advantage of that at this time. Thank you for joining us. And we will um reconvene with the rest of the agenda in about 3 minutes. Greg, >> you good? All right, I got you right here. Good deal. Thank you, sir. >> All right. And then uh they got a different proposal on u the travel tracker for 23,73. There's some things are up. So, if you're leaving, please leave. And if you're staying, please have a seat. >> Please leave. >> Yeah. >> You said finance just update, right? >> Is that good enough, Greg? Yeah, that's good enough. >> Okay. Well, thank you. >> Okay, we're moving on with the rest of the meeting. Um, first up, we have approval of the minutes from >> Did you want to hit 24? I'm sorry.
095>> Oh, yeah. We can do Sorry, I'm not doing a good job of keeping up with the agenda. Sorry. No, it's okay. >> That's okay. >> Yes. For 2322. I don't really know if this works. um for 2322 will be >> very brief because I know we've uh spent a lot of time this evening sharing all the great things that secondary are doing to uh uh support teachers and improve instruction and student achievement. So, I'll be brief, but you know, last meeting we did talk a little bit about some of the um gains that we have made and and I mentioned that prior to that information coming out that the state did come down their PR department and do a video. So, I thought it would be appropriate to show that video. It just highlights
096some of the things that Mercer County Schools um is doing with science of reading and uh highlights some uh staff and uh the things that we're doing. So I thought it would be appropriate to show that Sydney. Mr. Mr. Murphy has it on on Q. So that that's all that we're sharing. [Music] So, who made this video? >> How about How about while we do this, if anybody Mitchell or anybody else in 2322 have an update till Brent gets that going? Anything? >> I'll pass mine on since we did so much earlier. I'll let somebody else have >> anything on that. our training. >> Okay. >> Dr. Phil Peek, anything you could? >> Okay. Thank you. Thank you, >> Mr. I didn't see it on the agenda. I was shocked though. I didn't see where
097they had that on the state board agenda. I looked that hard and I didn't see that. So, I know I said I don't know where they're going to do it. Maybe out of maybe Michelle Bl Superintendent Blat report it might come from is what I was noticed. >> You got us earlier. We're good. We're waiting. >> I know. I got ready. >> That's good. [Music] That was in last week's superintendence update date also that I sent you on Mondays that you get. >> Mhm. >> Having the opportunity to have a um just a a program that's really going to dig deep. give them the time to study and learn with a program like Lexi and Letters, I think is just so beneficial because we're lifelong learners. Educators are lifelong learners. Um, and being able to
098do that is just going to strengthen our profession. It's going to strengthen my school and it's going to in turn help all my students be proficient readers. We're very excited about um letters because we have so many young teachers and so many new teachers that haven't been trained in the science of reading and you know those are uh proven strategies. You know that is settled science that's been around for I think 40 years since the National Reading Panel that um we know works, evidence says it works and we're excited that all of our teachers will have those explicit strategies in their toolbox. >> As teachers, you know, we're always learning too. But we want to better meet the needs of our students. And we just know by, you know, participating in this, we're going to
099learn more skills to be able to um teach our students new strategies and in um explicit ways. You know, one of the biggest things that I think that we've learned from the science of reading so far is just about like the high frequency words, which we call them now heart words. um you know back previously we didn't really I feel like have a good understanding on how to teach the high frequency words and just by taking those courses we now know that we can teach kids to decode those hard words. >> It's been really eye opening I think to see the science of reading and how it really it really does work and how that research is being proven as we're using it in the classroom. So when letters was offered I was all over
100it and it was just really cool. It's very detailed and it has really helped me in my classroom. I think these programs are awesome because it kind of helps give us a head start. I mean, letters is just amazing. So, I think it'll um give us a way to meet those kids where they're at, meet them where their needs are. Um, help them in ways that they just need us to help them improve their reading. I think with reading, um, it's something that we have to have. It's a foundational piece throughout our whole life. life and I tell my kids that every day. This is not just a school thing. So, I'm always looking for ways to improve my way of teaching reading to children to keep them interested. That's what made me want to
101sign up for the trainings because I'm always looking for further knowledge of how to help our students >> and we're just really proud of the the staff. And Bren, I really don't know if this microphone is doing anything, but um we're really proud of our staff that were involved in that. As Mr. Tomman said it was on the state superintendent update last week and our understanding is they're going to use it in a variety of ways for promotion um you know letters we have 78% of our eligible staff signed up which is the highest percentage in the state and it's a huge commitment uh for PD and professional development for uh teachers and principles and title one teachers and special ed teachers in K3 that is uh on the science of reading and um our
102trusted individuals on our MCL team feel like that that have started with it the program feel that it's really going to make a difference. So, we're excited about that. And again, that was done before we knew that West Virginia had the second highest third grade reading proficiency increase in in the nation and Mercer County had was identified as one of nine dynamic districts and we have the highest um average change of those nine districts. So, we're just really excited about the work the teachers and the principles are doing out in the schools with that. >> So, how do we promote that? I mean, you and I have talked about this, Ashley, but how do we promote stuff like that? Everything I read says we have children that if you don't catch them in the first
103three grades, and look how great our program is that the legislature did kind of throw on us, but now it it's showing it's coming to fruition. But we've got all these people that aren't in our schools. Are they getting this kind of treatment and training and help at home or wherever else they're getting it from? >> How do we know? I mean, I know it's not fair and it's probably the wrong way to blurt it out, but it just it just blows me away that we're we're this good and we have so many people as as Ashley has told us that aren't in our schools. >> Sure. Sure. and and I think that Miss Harrison behind me here is doing a a good job communicating that and she's doing an increasingly good job on doing
104that. So, and our our schools, you know, really it comes down more so to the school level and to what they can can share, but we appreciate the state department using and and uh highlighting our district as a leader in the state. And so, I think all of those things will contribute to we're the best option. Well, keep doing what you're doing and the recognition will take care of itself. >> I agree. >> Anybody else? Anything else? Mr. Bailey say anything, but I'm all right. I can deal with it. >> All right. >> Okay. All right. Let's move on to approval of the minutes for um the board meeting on there was a work session on July 24th and then a regular meeting on July 28th. Do I have a motion for approval? >> So
105moved. >> Thank you. >> Second. >> All right. I have a motion and a second. All in favor, please indicate by saying I. >> I. >> Yeah. >> Thank you, Greg. >> Wake up, Greg. >> All right. That passes five to zero. Okay. Next up, under old business, um the first board memo is number 22. Um we have a new updated memo this evening you all should have on paper in front of you. Um this is um about the continued subscription to travel tracker transportation software co-op pricing. Um this is an updated price um through the byboard co-op for traveler writing software utilized by the transportation department. The renewal consists of easy routing and safe driver 360 subscription for 10 tablets. The cost of $23,73. Um Mr. Toman recommends approval and excess levy funding will
106be used for this um subscription. I know this is something we discussed last meeting and decided to move it to this meeting and Mr. Rose is here for anybody that has any questions. Do I have um do we do a motion now? Okay. >> Okay. I have a motion. Do I have a second? >> Second. >> Okay. Thank you. Okay. Any questions for Mr. Rose, Mr. Tman? >> Explain the difference. Okay. Uh basic basically what we have here is uh the easy routing is still what our secretaries uh will use in the office. It's the established routes that we already have. It makes it uh a lot more efficient for them when a parent calls in needing to know what bus their child's going to ride or what school that their child's going to go
107to if they're new to the area. uh the easy routing, we punch in their address and it uh comes up and lets the secretary know almost immediately of what school and what bus that child will be on instead of having to go back through paper routes and take the time trying to figure out exactly where that kid's going to go and what bus they're supposed to ride. >> Does that Mr. Rose does that include the bus stop location? >> Yes. >> And the times? >> Yes. I think the question is so how why is it cheaper and what do we do what we not do this time we put in a memo I think is what I think the board would want to know >> what we're not what we're what we did away with
108is we had tablets on every bus for every bus driver >> well the regular bus drivers know their routes they don't use the tablet for their dayto-day route that's why we saved 10 tablets which cut our subscription down tremendously that's basically for the subs >> so that you know We have 10 subs out there that will have it. The routes will be in it. It will assist the subs. That was the whole purpose of the travel tracker to begin with. >> Uh so the uh the fact of of doing away with 80ome uh 80ome tablets subscription wise took a significant chunk out of what we're paid >> $50,000 out. Yeah. >> Yes. So, I know last time it was mentioned something about using the tablets to do their pre and post checklist. >> That's a
109different tablet. That's a different table. >> And that's not part of this system. >> No. >> Okay. So, this will be and just so I make sure I understand it. One part of it is to help identify bus routes for students. >> Yes. >> And bus stops and times. And then the other part will be for substitutes to give them the route when they're driving those buses. >> Yes. And and that's the part that we have our district lines done digitally and so forth. So that way we know which school uh is in their district. Uh and one of the other things we done away with on this would be our the trip side of it. We're going to do trip sides in inhouse. >> Okay. >> Uh Brent and them's working on a program
110to do the trips and stuff in house. So we don't have to pay for that. >> Okay. >> What's the logistics? So the subs are still going to get a tablet showing them the route. Yes. >> How do they obtain those in the morning or whenever they decide to do the route? >> They will be 10 tablets there at the office. They come by, pick up their tablet, they go get their bus and go do their routes. >> Will that be required for subs? >> It's not required, but it's an assistance. It's a tool for them. >> Okay. >> Do you think it should be required? they will definitely use them because the fact of it is if they don't know the route, that's that's the tool they're going to use to to be able
111to follow that route. >> Well, and after they if they're with the subs we have, I think you'd agree that after they run it three or four times, they're going to know it. >> Yeah. If they run the same route several times, they'll they'll say, "Well, I don't need the tablet. Let one of the other subs use the tablet. I I know his route." >> But you've had pretty good feedback um from subs in the past with using the tablet. >> Yes. Okay. >> All right. Any other questions or comments? All right. Um, all in favor of the memo indicate by saying I. >> I. >> Yes. >> And oppose. So that passes five to zero. All right. Um, one more item under old business. uh board memo 432 of it's a second reading of
112a new policy about um homeless students. Um I see Alicia's here if anybody has any questions or comments um about that. And do I have a motion for that? First of all, >> thank you. Do I have a second? >> Second. >> Thank you. All righty. Any questions or this has not gone out for public comment yet? It has. >> Yes, there's no comments. >> There's no comments on there. Second reading. Okay. >> So, no comments were received. That's correct. Right. Okay. Anybody have any questions? >> No. All right. All in favor indicate by saying I. I. >> Yeah. >> Thank you. All right. And so that passes five to zero as well. Alrighty. >> Just a intro before the consent agenda. You have number 13, the prek collaborative contracts. We're pulling that till the
113eth >> 8th month this month of the 25th day. >> Number what? >> 13 the prek collaborative contracts. >> 46 or 46. >> Number 13 on your agenda. >> Okay. All right. Then let's go through the rest of the consent agenda. All right. Uh first is board memo number 34 which is an RFQ for a maintenance truck. It's a 2026 GMC Sierra. Um four vendors were asked for bids. Two submitted bids and it is recommended um to purchase it from Remy Chevrolet which was the lowest of the two bids for 48,270. Levy funding will be used for this purchase. Uh board memo 35 is um children's home society u memorand memorandum of understanding um basically to confirm that that that we will work together to improve and expand school-based mental health in West Virginia. Um
114there'll be no charge to Mercer County schools for services rendered. Uh children's home societies responsible for insurance and billing. All right. Number 36 is I'm afraid I'm going to miss which one you told me was pulled. Let me put that up front of my Okay. All right. Number board memo 36 is Angel Track camera update. Um this is uh authorization to upgrade 40 camera systems on our buses. This will allow remote viewing of bus video footage. The purchase utilizes a co-op contract and the total cost is $27,767 and the Mr. Tman recommends approval. Board memo 37 is approval of surplus technology. The technology department has identified um an attached list of devices to um be obsolete. Um they want them to be declared surplus and sold to Total Technology. Um that's a Mountain State ESC
115vendor. Um and the list is attached that lists items and quantities. All righty. Um board memo 38 is incident IQ renewal. Um this is from the directors of technology and maintenance. It's to renew the subs the software subscription for incident IQ. It's a work order system for maintenance and technology. The renewal cost is $46,662. Um last year we were charged about half that, but that was just for a partial year of service. Um funding will be split between maintenance and technology and um county technology county funds. All right. Board memo 39 is contracted services computer tech services. A contracted services agreement has been drafted for database and computer technology services with Roger Robertson for this upcoming school year. Uh compensation remains the same in the past at $45 per hour. The total paid um to
116Mr. Robertson last year was 57,240. And Mr. Toman recommends approval. Okay, board memo 40 is college contracts for placements of students for clinical experiences. Um, this is colleges and universities are listed about uh with a list of student observers and student teacher candidates um for the upcoming school year. And of of course all placements as always are pending background check and a a site supervisor. All right. Board memo 41, athletic field field maintenance. We had a request for proposal for a field maintenance at the high school athletic fields. Requests were sent to 10 vendors. We received one proposal response from Aspen Corporation. Um total cost $106,635. The the cost for this past year was $74,50. increases due to the board being solely responsible for maintenance of the Honeyut baseball field and the additional services at
117Pike View High Soccer Field. Um, and is recommended that we approve that expenditure. Board memo 42 is Kajet bus Wi-Fi renewal. Um, this is from the director of technology. It's for a subscription, Wi-Fi subscription for one year for 84 buses. It allows all student devices to connect to filtered internet during bus trips. It's also used for remote viewing of bus camera footage and driver tablets like we just discussed with Mr. Rose. Um the total cost is $46,448 and this amount decreased from the initial implementation cost of 59,719. Board memo 43 is gear up um subawward contract. This is um approval of the subawward contract for gear up um southern West Virginia grant for 230,000 and that supports the college and career readiness initiatives for 9th and 10th grade students and that is what um some
118of the activities that Miss Webb was talking about earlier. Um board memo 44, security and access control maintenance renewal. This is from um this is for Cox security. Um the renewal price remains the same as last year. Total expenditures last year were 137,782 and funding is provided by the excess levy um for security services board memo 45 contracted services ABA therapy. Um this is um retroactive to cover July 2025 to June 20. Why does that say retroactive when it's this? I guess because it's now August. So that's why it's just starting before now, but it's still moving forward through the rest of this year. Okay. So from last month through next June, um compensation is 125 per hour um for BCBA and I don't know what that stands for. What does that stand for, Emily?
119>> Okay. All right. Thank you. Um the year the date amount paid is $7787 and um it is recommend that we approve and 46 is what we're skipping minus in front of that. Is that a mistake? >> It's a dash I think. Yeah. >> Yeah. Okay. Um next is board memo 47. Um Dr. Atkins is requesting authorization for shipping charges um for books supplied by the Dollywood Foundation. They're provided free of charge and shipped to each school birth to age 5 on a monthly basis. Funding is provided by the third grade success act and total shipping for last year was 23,257. Okay. Board memo 48. Application support analyst Christopher Constantino. Um this is to renew the contract of Mr. Constantino um as an application support analyst. Um this is posted and filled through the SCESC.
120Funding is split between transportation and excess levy tax funds. Um and this is a professional position with the salary determined by the professional pay scale plus the 5% to the SCSC for hiring and administering that job. Okay. And last on the consent agenda is board memo 49, payment of invoices. And so you have attached the list of invoices um for August. Okay. Do I have a motion for approval of the consent agenda? >> Move we approve. >> Second. >> Okay. Thank you. Any comments or questions on any topics? Yes. >> Memo 37. U Brent, any idea what kind of price or cost or money we're going to get for these surplus devices. >> Uh that table not on there. >> No, >> there's a table, but it doesn't have it doesn't have any dollar. >>
121Yeah, it just have that uh I can give that to you. >> Okay. >> I don't know it off the top of my head, but it actually Yes, we have the cost >> for each each device will be a different >> so you know before you turn them over what they're you're going to get out of it. Okay. All right. Any other >> We seem we we did auction these in the past and this pricing is better than we >> better than what we got at auction. Okay. >> Yes. >> Good. Let's get >> um Roger >> Robertson. Is he doing stuff we can't do or why are we using >> what's he doing? >> Yes. >> You need your mic? >> He does this every year. >> Yeah. He's done it for a long
122time. Roger's been under. >> So just take it just take it as yes and move on. >> Roger Roger's been under contract since I've been here. I think this is in the beginning of my fifth year. So he's been here ever since. >> He does a lot of database work. Um he manages a lot of the systems that we used to do. He's helping us digitize those and he is >> I was just asking. >> Okay. Well, I want you to understand it's a great he's he works there almost all the time. Does he work remotely or does he work at the central office? >> He's at the central office. >> Okay. I wasn't sure about that. >> And we're memo 41 >> athletic field maintenance. >> Yeah. $106,000. >> Yeah. >> What all does
123that entail? Cutting the grass, making it good. What What is What is it forund $100,000? I want to know what >> seating, fertilizing, irrigation. Uh they troubleshoot >> irrigation. >> Yes. >> The sprinkler systems, if we have sprinkler systems like at Pike View High School soccer, we have them at Princeton soccer, the baseball field. Pipes burst, they leak, the heads need change. They do all of that work, too. >> They do. >> But and and we should have included the schedule. I'm sorry. We've always done that in the past, and I didn't catch that it wasn't included. But there's a spring and a fall. um they fertilize at one time and then they overseed. They kill the weeds um and and they're certified to do that whereas we are not certified to do that. Um
124you they're also overseeding with rye instead of the Bermuda just as we're doing at Honeyup because we have had complaints from the schools. >> So that's why they increased prices by >> the primary in in the past the Princeton Baseball Association paid half for the baseball field. We paid half and they paid half, but the whole thing went through them. We gave it to them. So now we're still only about half of while it looks like a $30,000 increase, it's about half of that because they paid for the pass. >> But they also said the increase is because of something different in park. >> Yes. And and that's part of it is the soccer field and I think the football field too. I don't I don't remember precisely. I'll know next time. But the soccer
125field is the primary one. They're overseeding that, switching it over to Ry. >> Yeah. The Bermuda for Blue or Bluefield Princeton area this. >> So they don't they don't charge us like when they they charge us a lump sum and when they have to come out and fix sprinklers or whatever that's included in that. >> Yes. And then anything any additional quotes? This is primarily um winterizing it, making sure that they, you know, blow out the lines so they don't freeze, etc. When I first started, it it there were huge holes in the soccer field in particular because it's that irrigation system is very close to the soil and it freezes and maintenance would try to do it and they're just not experts. So, we had holes and lots of expense repairing those. >> Tom,
126your people aren't involved with this. They don't who who cuts the gr Who cuts the fields? People the schools with the mowers that we bought schools. >> Is that right? >> Yes. Yeah. They don't mow for us. So they're just >> they're fertilizing, seeding, taking care of our properties, making sure our athletic fields are safe and and nice. >> Okay. >> I got to ask if we're going to spend that kind of money, I want to know what it's for. >> Sure. Get it. >> Everything we're doing, spending money. >> Well, that's all we do. >> Yeah. >> Mr. Bailey, can we go back? I I was trying to pull a fact out and we we kind of we were talking about the tech resources before and you asking about justifying the cost. One thing
127we had uh just to throw out there on the travel tracker alone software development is very costly is a and so the the travel tracker alone it was $61,25 for for that we were able to remove just from the trip side. So, if these development resources that we've got, um, they're going to do that inhouse and among a lot of other things, but they can save us a lot of money by doing that that stuff in house. >> I think I think it's wonderful. It's not that I'm no >> penny pension with Mercy County Schools money, but I just like to know if if you know, somebody hears it, you know, what are you doing spending $100,000 for this or 80,000 bucks for that? And if if they see that we went from two weeks
128ago going to spend 80ome thousand bucks and now we're only spending 20ome we need we need to know that. So if we have have to be held accountable >> sure >> we know what we're talking about >> right but but to be able to remove that and do those things in house we need those resources. >> Understand you think you can handle it. Okay. >> So any other questions on the consent agenda? That's board me >> security >> what do they do for us Leslie? >> So I can answer that. So yeah access control. So door access control the badge badge scrapes and access control closed circuit TV. So all of your security cameras which we have uh increased almost exponentially uh since I've been here since 2015. We continue to um we we never
129can meet the demands that we have of security cameras >> when they if if you have something go down at Pike View High School and they have to go out there and make a service call then they have to fix it. >> Yes. But most of the time >> most of the fix it us in this 130 something >> we pay for we pay for labor and materials and that's what a lot of times it's the cost of the equipment itself is is very pricey. And these cameras are several hundred a piece. >> This is the one I had a question about. It's $137,000. >> Mhm. >> And I I For what? I mean, seriously, for what? >> Well, so for security? >> Well, no. We've been We've had security monitor. >> Yeah. >> Bought
130cameras we've paid for. So, what what are we getting here? >> It's repair. These are repairs of existing camera systems. Um, anytime we do if a camera breaks got a we've got labor to replace it and we've got the cost of the equipment. If a computer complete system like a DVR fails, that's I think it's 2500 bucks for one piece of gear. Also, the monitoring of um each one of those schools is included I believe Leslie and that the annual monitoring. So, if if a security alarm goes off and calls 911, it's got to be monitored and there's a fee associated with that. We can't call directly to 911. It has to call a call center first and then go through a call list >> and call out. So there's there's several fees. Um >>
131can I Yes. This is not a fixed amount contract. This is going to be price per service contract. That's just how much we spent last year. >> Yes. >> That's okay. That >> is authorizing us to contract with them. We have a policy that we will not issue a blanket PO unless it's a contract for a fixed service. Um, $1,000 or above requires a separate quote. So, this is really just authorizing us to to allow them to >> to continue to work. >> Yes, exactly. >> Monthly, >> the the monitoring is build monthly, but anything else it's going to be a quote. They'll provide us and and we'll do a separate PO for those. >> Okay. And it's >> any other questions? And Paul has a question. I think Greg Let me let Paul go
132first, Greg, and then we'll get you. Okay. >> This first one I noticed on there we had a IQ renewal. I just wonder if I could get in on that. >> Yeah. Which number you want to renew? That's pretty good. Okay. >> And I do have >> You'll have to deal You'll have to deal with Mr. Atkins because it's his department. >> Okay. >> What is that? >> I do have a separate. What is the application support analyst? I don't know the number. >> This is for Chris Constantina. That's uh he is digital documentation. He works with Roger Robertson. That's the two resources we have for developing primarily these digital documents and and forms, but also supporting the applications that we've got. Um it's from HR to special ed. We've got databases and applications and
133they they perform the support of those. >> He also has done the mapping with the bus drivers for every one of those routes. So while you know the software is there some he works with the bus drivers and programs them in he does reporting for Mr. Rose. He's he's there half >> so that's why he's allocated to Mr. Rose. Yes. >> And he physically works on our property also. >> Yes. >> I need to meet these people. I know who they are. Okay. All right. All right. Is that your only question? Okay, Greg, what are your questions? >> Okay, just a few just it's a series of questions about the maintenance truck. >> Okay. >> How many trucks do we have in our maintenance fleet currently? >> Without looking, probably about 18 to 20. >>
134Can you hear him? >> 20. You hear him, Mr. >> I don't know. Can you? >> Yeah, I heard him fine. I heard him fine. Okay. >> And what are we replacing with this purchase? snowplow truck. >> That's a 2012 model. >> 2012 snowplow truck. >> Okay. Because that's a a 3500H heavy duty is a big truck and I was just curious what what we replace it with. >> Yeah. I always go one ton when we when anytime we're having a salt truck. >> Okay. Well, that's all I got on that. Um on the um athletic field maintenance. >> All right. Being a baseball guy, when I go by honeyut field, I'm never very happy. You should never see grass in an infield, even in the middle of off season. Um, it's it looks pretty
135shabby. Uh, and I was curious, following up on a question earlier, who should be maintaining that when we're not playing ball on it? >> The high school. >> He's at the high school. I don't know if you heard him. Well, then we need to talk to the high school because it if once you get grass started in your infield, it's a beast to get out. >> Mr. Mrs. Mitchell's on those concerns of facilities and uh she's met with the high school principles. So, I'm confident she's got some deadlines set also. So, hopefully we see some changes in the near future. >> I think somebody needs to go over and evaluate. And I can speak from personal experience. The difference between the height from the infield to the baseline is a good two to three inches
136right now. And not that that's a reason I fell and did what I did, but I just felt like there was something going on. I mean, it it sits up that high. And then from you go to from that period, that space down to the to the baseline. It it to me it's dangerous cuz I went to Bone Field to see the difference and theirs might be like that and ours is about like that. So maybe >> the biggest difference observation here is when when we had a a pro team there, they took extraordinary care of the fields because they it was required of them. Uh when they're not there, you have parents and and assistants that may not know and understand the proper way cuz there's a way to do a infield in the
137baseball field and there's a way not to do it. And you know, perhaps we need to have some training on the way to do it and limit who does it because you can get lifts on the field that become dangerous for players. Um, you you get uh rises and falls that shouldn't exist. Um, it's it's an expensive facility. It needs to be taken care of appropriately. >> Yeah, >> that's all I got. >> Okay. Thank you. All right. Any other consent agenda comments or questions? >> The most of the questions that I had have already been addressed. >> Okay. >> Just something that work what Mr. Mr. Prudish pointed out. Uh that grass on the infield if and if our guys are not able to treat it isn't the best way to treat the infield
138is with a herbicide. So, shouldn't that be part of the process out of 100 100 thousand? Shouldn't there be some type of maintenance, especially in the spring through the spring? >> Do you want to Can I answer that, Mark? Do you want to do you want your son out there playing in a field that had herbicide sprayed all over it and it's kicking up dust and coming up at him and I don't want that. >> So, it is in the spring >> on the infield. >> It it is on a maintenance schedule. We have a spreadsheet that each school has in each field what happens whether it's aification whether it's an herbicide and they have been very good about in the spring before anything sprouts aspir aspen is here to spray so that it doesn't
139sprout in the spring that's already taken place if I remember right we had to >> that is contracted >> we had to notify the coaches and the uh >> yes >> community that we were spraying herbicide and that there was a I can't remember what it was. >> It is it depends >> 44 48 hour time window >> before practices and that's exactly it and and the way it works we do not have anyone over athletics in in total. So the athletic directors and the principles are responsible for their fields overall. We are responsible for making sure that there's no holes. We have um verification and seeding, a lawn care treatment, lime application, soil test to make sure that you know what they're using is applicable. And then in springs, we they do airification and
140seeding. Again, two different lawn treatments, grub control, and a pre-emergent. The pre-emergent is what they use to treat before um you know if there's another treatment that's needed during the season the athletic directors or the principal have to contact maintenance or purchasing so that we're aware of it. We are not at those facilities on a daily basis. >> I understand that and so perhaps uh discuss that with the principles so that they understand their responsibilities so we get a better job on that. What about >> Mr. Mitchell? Do you want to address that Mr. virtual. >> I was just going to say that um I did meet with principles last week. Um two in particular that we had um Princeton's with the the football field as well as the soccer field. They're getting ready to
141have their kickama that they do every year and it needed a lot of maintenance. Um and also just the grounds themselves around the schools. Um and and at one of the schools they had an atrium that was all grown up. So we set a deadline when that had to all be cleaned up and we had to have something where we can do a walk around and see what's there. So um on the 18th we will be walking around the campuses at the schools and seeing if we have met those um directives um and they should be and to be honest it it truly a lot of this is falling back on athletic directors. So I have met with the principles and the athletic directors because you know then it goes back to the principal if
142the athletic director is not doing what they need to be doing. So we have we have addressed that last week. >> The the only other question I had and it also dealt with athletic field. What about I I don't really quite understand which fields are included in this 106,000. What about the girls? One I'm particularly thinking about is the girls softball fields at Pike View, Princeton, and Montcom. >> 100%. They're treated the exact same way. You know, they just may not have the the Bermuda grass issue right now that we have going on, but they overseed every year. They do the exact same thing. They treat it for for weeds and treat the infields and the softball fields exactly the same. And again, I apologize. Normally, that's this schedule that shows all of those is
143included. I will make sure I email that to you as well. >> Just for public, when we went to the Bermuda grass at Pike View, um the company that sold us that was bragging on a new >> hybrid mix. >> A hybrid mix and it didn't work. So just that's why this cost >> well and knows that. >> And if you look last year, we did this. We basically overseeded the Bermuda honey baseball and it's a thousand times greener. The grass is healthier. Everything's better. So I I actually approached Aspen about um overseeding and taking taking over the Bermuda Pike View because we just don't have the temper. We don't have the temperature or the people and the equipment to maintain that Bermuda. >> Yeah, we have a much colder environment. >> Sure. >> Thank
144you. Good situation. >> Okay. Just a final followup for me. I'd like to see what herbicides they're using, specifically what chemicals they're using >> on surfaces where kids are playing. Um, I just want to look into it. I want to see myself what we're what we're doing here. uh if you've been around baseball as long as I have, you know, if if they're spraying those infields uh with chemicals uh 48 hours later, you put kids out there, they're getting brick dust all over them. They're inhaling it. We need to know exactly what it is they're using. And I and I just might add that in all the years we did Little League, we never sprayed an herbicide on our infield. We worked the infield. We cut the weeds out of it with manual labor. Um,
145that might be a step too far for us, but for the school system, but that's how we do it. >> That's all. >> Okay. >> All right. Um, let's vote on the consent agenda. All in favor indicate by saying I. >> I. >> Yes. >> Okay. And oppose. So that passes five to zero. All right. Next up, we have additional business um which is TRA policy board member number 50. Let me get myself back together here. Okay, board memo 50. And where is that on here? >> Oh, I gotcha. Now I see it when I'm scrolling. Okay. today. >> That's okay. All right. So, board memo 50 is um policy G12 travel. This is the first reading. It's being changed to update and clarify language and to make grammatical changes. No action is required at
146this time. Okay. Any comments about that? We don't need to take any action. Okay. Then board memo 51 is personnel. We do have an updated agenda that we received on paper this evening. You should all have um do I have a motion for approval of personnel agenda? >> Thank you. Do I have a second? >> Thank you. >> Any update? >> Any comments, questions, comments from Dr. Phil? >> It's okay. >> No, not really. We just we still have several jobs we need to fill, but a lot of the jobs that you see listed at the top are we've advertised for them and either no one certified as applying or we have that are notifying at all. So this is kind of what we end up with every year until we right now it's slim.
147Everybody's beginning to start school back. release people out of contracts and those type of things you're referring to. >> Okay. Any questions for Dr. Philipac? >> All right. All in favor indicate by saying I. >> I. Okay. Thank you. And oppose. And so that passes five to zero. >> All righty. >> Yes. >> Do the travel policy. >> Yeah. It didn't have just a first reading. frustrating. >> That's okay. That's what I've seen running around practice. I've seen the rescue squad pretty much at every school. >> I've seen I've seen the rescue squad at different practices throughout the past week or so. [Music] >> Okay. What about admin? Are we ready for administrative updates? >> Yes, ma'am. If any administrator has any updates >> We did. Yeah, we did. >> That's okay. any any updates?
148>> Actually, I do have a question um for the uh ribbon cutting ceremonies. I have all five of you as speaking um saying a little something and I just wanted to make sure uh when I'm finalizing the program that you all are speaking. >> I mean, do we need to all speak? >> Why you keep looking at me? >> I feel I feel like >> we had we had different different statements back on that. I'm fine to speak, but I feel like it's going to be very repetitive to have all five of us >> speak. I come up with something different. >> Oh, brilliant. >> So, Mark, what was that? >> You were okay. >> Share your brilliant idea. >> It was a little quote thing. I'm just going to be very short, but it's
149not extraneous for me. It's a quote. >> I mean, what are your all's thoughts about that? >> Don't don't want us to speak. I mean, I don't I just think it's going to be repetitive. >> Have you on there if you're not going to say anything not to talk? >> I think all some of the majority want to most people want to >> in Jim's district, too. >> So, Mark, you want to speak? >> There's something I'd like to say. >> Okay. All right. I guess just leave us all on there if everybody wants to speak. Now, Paul's pressuring me to come up with some great presentation. >> If anybody has any tips of something to say that's meaningful. >> Yeah. AI. Yeah. Exactly. >> Yeah, that'd be funny. >> Do what? Chat GPT. >>
150Thank you all. I I appreciate that. I think Miss Harrison is I think we're ready. We're ready to go. >> Do we need to be there? Should we be there? What time? >> Well, what you recommend? >> Go ahead and and probably get there >> 10:30. >> By 10:30 because I would say the public's going to start showing up early. >> Okay. >> Wear code. Probably not, >> but you're going to have a spot saved for us, right? >> All right. >> Okay. Any other updates? >> Amy, have you looked at the weather? >> I haven't. >> Yeah, I'm good. >> 40 40%. >> Oh, we're inside. >> Yeah, it looked like 40% the other day, so we're we're >> Oh, it's all going to be inside. Okay. >> Yes. >> All righty. It's exciting.
151>> What about furniture at Timberwood? They're still They're still in the process. It's actually come along very well. >> It's coming along very well. >> Be ready by Thursday. Looking pretty good. >> We think it is. >> We think so. >> That's the goal. >> Okay. Gotcha. All right. Any other updates, comments, or questions? >> Anyone else? >> Just one real quick. >> Tom just said the furniture is in it's in process and that the goal is to have it done by Thursday. Okay, Brett and I did confer online IQ upgrade for Mr. denied. Sorry. >> My apologies. >> Yeah, we don't have that much money. >> There you go. >> Anything else to come before the board? >> Okay. Uh we received our summer school grades today and um of course you know that
152program was a little different uh than last year. We had 178 courses that were enrolled through proximity. Um two students had some extreme circumstances and didn't take their final last week. So we're still waiting on those. But um we had 84 students I'm sorry 84 courses or credits earned in summer school. So um that makes it a 47% pass rate. Um the teachers were very good about providing notes about um you know kids not logging in or not completing their modules or um so on so forth. Uh what I noticed is we had a lot of students who um had very low grades on the exams um or zeros across the board. So um still need to look at the engagement with those students and um see what's going on. So >> these were all
153students who had previously failed a course and they were repeating it. um we only had two students enroll to um get ahead per se and they took algebra 1 um so they could be ahead in math um for high school eighth graders going to 9th grade um no problem there they earned the credit um so yeah out of 178 176 had failed the course >> and is that do we mandate that they do summer school or that's their choice? >> No, it was optional this year. It was um free for the students registering. Um I you know we we did have a lot more classes enrolled this year. Um as far as the pass rate, I'm going to have to go back and look. I I think our pass rate traditionally has been better when
154we when we did charge and have some skin in the game. uh so to speak. Um but that does, you know, we've never turned any student away if they couldn't pay. >> That's what I'll say. >> And Dr. Vaughn mentioned earlier about the testing. It it has been stated all over the superintendent, everything. They're going to release that. But I noticed the agenda and I just had her double check, but it wasn't anything on there. So hopefully we'll get an update and and if we have that I don't know if you want anything with test scores or anything uh members of the board on the agenda for for Friday or anything. I do have a a brief property update but we'd have to go in executive session if you wanted to refresh my memory when
155you say the pass rate. Was it I I forgot what we've done. Was it a pass fail or did they actually get a physical grade? >> They actually get a grade now. All right. because it does >> can they be used for eligibility purposes? >> Yes, they can. >> That's why >> and I've had ads checking on that. They last week they started what are the grades? What are the grades? So, >> so you're wanting to do that tonight update about the or you're talking about for Friday. >> Friday if you needed that on the agenda and then Mr. Purich mentioned the finance update uh with the state releasing some things. >> No, I'm talking about the real estate. Are you want to do that tonight or >> I'm okay not doing it tonight? No.
156Yeah, I'd rather have Mr. Purich here. >> I think that's a good idea. >> Do that also. >> Okay, that sounds good. All right. >> Anything else to come before the board tonight? >> All right, Mr. Hodgees, you're up. >> We journ. >> Thank you. Do I have a second? >> Second. >> Good job. All right, we're journ.