001the United States of America into the Republic for which it stands one nation underground indivisible with liberty and justice for all right next we have our moment of silence and I just wanted to offer for remembrance if um you would like our Master Plumber Ryan rigland who passed since the last meeting thank you very much next on the agenda we have the approval of the agenda do I have a motion I move we approve tonight's agenda second move by Dr Acuff seconded by Mr Alco we can do a uh just a Voice vote on that all in favor aye aye any opposed all right motion carries next we have approval of the consent agenda I move we approve the consent agenda a second is there any discussion on the consent agenda yep okay we can
002also do that by Voice vote uh all in favor say aye aye any opposed all right consent agenda is passed okay next we have announcements we will have our Spotlight on education um opal Kendall we'll be reading that thank you Charlie 55 years ago a powerful idea was born that's when President Lyndon Johnson told our nation that Hispanic heritage is our heritage 35 years ago the celebration of Hispanic heritage week became Hispanic Heritage Month enshrined in law by President Ronald Reagan this year the celebration which will which formally begins tomorrow and continues through October 15th will recognize the contributions of our latinx community to our nation with its theme this year Latino's driving Prosperity power and progress in America this theme is reflected by a proclamation from the American presidency project Hispanic heritage holds an
003indelible place in the heart and soul of our nation the American identity is a fabric of diverse traditions and stories woven together since the beginning our country has drawn strength and insights from Hispanic writers scientists soldiers doctors entrepreneurs academics and leaders in labor and government our deepest values have been informed by the love of family and faith that is at the core of Hispanic communities all of these contributions help us realize the promise of America for all Americans one of the best ways to experience the value and the joy of our Hispanic Community will be to join civil sabroso the Annual Festival showcasing Latino art and cultural it will take place this Saturday from 2 to 9 pm in Washington Park it is free and open to all over the next 30 days schools across
004our division will be uniting their students and communities to create greater awareness support and appreciation for these contributions and their importance to Our Success together with us this evening is one such leadership group decades from students from Albemarle Albemarle High School's latinx club for more than a decade members of the club have been influential in making their school in the quality of life in our community better they have advocated for positive change enrichment resulting in legislation passed by the general assembly they have adjudicated for positive change in their school when a few years ago the first Latino was elected to the student council Association here with us this evening is assistant principal Leilani Keys she will introduce us to some special guests who will share their thoughts on this special occasion and their work for
005a better future for our School Division in our local state and National communities good evening school board thank you so much for inviting us from Albemarle High School Hispanic Heritage Month committee and our latinx club leaders for the spotlight on education this evening you know my name is Leilani keys this is Adriana Arroyo she's a brand new staff member at Albemarle High School she's an English learner teacher and she's also an official translator for interpreter sorry in our school division she's going to be interpreting what I say for the community uh yo soy Leilani cheese is you all would agree that one of the things that makes Albemarle High School so wonderful when you walk in the door is our Dynamic diversity are linguistically and culturally diverse student body has conceived of and produced numerous
006student-led initiatives programs and organizations that have benefited the entire school and surrounding Community one such organization that was created in 2014 was a club called Latinos unidos which is now the latinx club latinx serves the social cultural and linguistic needs of the Latino and Hispanic student community at Albemarle High users is organizations [Music] album Sarah Reyes please stand Sarah Adriana Arroyo standing next to me and Spanish teacher Teresa Stecker are the dedicated teacher advisors of the latinx club I want to appreciate them by a round of applause please these teachers along with our AHS diversity resource teacher Emily Youssef you can stand Emily members from all of our academic departments and student leaders are those that make up our Hispanic heritage committee at Albemarle High School in a few minutes our latinx club leaders Ashley
007Alcantara and Oscar Gomez will tell you a little more about their organization their motivation and our Hispanic Heritage Month events organizations are Hispanic and Latino students at Elmore High School make up 20 today I checked 20 of our student body 75 of the 416 Hispanic and Latino students at Albemarle High School have parents that prefer Communication in Spanish 50 of our Hispanic and Latino students at AHS are also currently in our English learner program and are striving to be emergent bilingual students so there's a great need for staff members who are Latino and bilingual to communicate with students and engage our parents after all we know that students who see role models and teachers who look like them and talk like them and our schools are more likely to succeed es hispanos is foreign one
008strategy that we've used to increase the diversity of our staff is to create a pipeline for former students of color to rejoin us as staff members at Elmore High to introduce the current leaders of our latinx club I'd like to first introduce you to Guillermo Guerra serpas who graduated in 2018 and returned to AHS in 2023 as our new Esau student academic and family engagement specialist he was a founding member and president of Latino sunitos the first Latino and Hispanic student organization at Alma High I was proud to have Guillermo as my student and I'm even prouder to have him as one of our excellent staff members someone who has returned to his community to help uplift his community someone who not only relates to our students but is uniquely able to motivate them to
009achieve their dreams because he was in their shoes at one time is foreign [Applause] members of the board I'm Jose Guerra serpas I'm currently the aldermott High School El family engagement and student support license where I've been able to create a self and welcome in space not just for my El students but for every ages student um the commitment I've been given I have been taking it personal um not just too long ago I was just sitting on those classrooms with those teachers um I actually enjoyed it I graduated from Alabama High School in 2019 knowing my classmates and I left at Legacy for future generations of young and strong students looking for a piece of Home in in unknown place for many of us okay buenas noches parami no much is as a young
010student like many of us I took my newborn choices and many more mistakes regardless of those Downs I face as a young Latino one of the the best decisions I ever made was to be part of the Latinos unidos now known as latinx in Alberta High School Latino sonidos started with only six students now we have more than 55 students currently enrolled with the club we just wanted to bring our community together and to educate our fellow classmates about our culture and our traditions I was able to become the president of the Latinos news on the the mentorship of Miss Sarah Reyes just like her I had many teachers and mentors at curvileon people that could guide me to become a better student a better person and now a better man after graduation I joined
011the United States Marine Corps reaching the rank of a sergeant after my listman I found myself becoming a role model that I once needed as a student is [Applause] um president maestras is argente is um now please let me introduce you to one of four students Ashley Alcantara current senior president of the latinx a 3.5 GPA College parent student see them my name is Ashley Alcantara Valerio I am the daughter of parents who are Latinos and even though I was born here I was raised in Mexico I came back to the US when I was 15 years old with the one purpose to finish my studies and learn a second language tomorrow is coming to a new country was its challenge in itself getting to know people with different cultures and learning a new language
012gave me a lot to be afraid afraid about but and thanks for all the support in my family thanks to all the support in my family my classmates and teachers I was able to overcome those obstacles and my fears that were imposing on me Inspirations opinions today I'm the president of latinx Club a club that was inspired by people with backgrounds that are Latin or Latinos that are looking to overcome these um these things in this club we look to create a environment that is safe and trustworthy in which the students can share their opinions organizations during this past school year we have um an up until now we have considered our in in sorry during the school year up until now we have made it a big importance in our agenda to establish ourselves
013with social organizations in Charlottesville Latina juntos and Plumas were our guides when we went to visit the campus of University of Virginia there we had the opportunity to get to know a part of the um the community the Hispanic community um and they gave us the time to inform us about all of the resources and opportunities that universities offer to students of Latin ancestry is organizations also we were able to have a work table where we were talking about topics of equality and diversity between students of Albemarle High School where along with other organization student organizations administrators of the school and office representatives of the central system the central education system of Albemarle County we had the opportunity to share points of views and learn different opinions that um that generate topics that are not
014very common Ultimo cavemensioners organizations participants lastly I must mention that we have given ourselves the homework to organize a series of activities of social activities like dances food and games with the with the objective to um to belong to a student Community where we can be participants is participation as many of you know we are about to initiate the celebration of Hispanic Heritage Month and in our school we have planned a series of activities and we would love if you all would in would invite we would like to invite yourselves to participate in them muchas gracias now I want to pass the word to my classmate and my my classmate and friend Oscar Gomez thank you very much Ashley principally my name is good evening everyone my name is Oscar David Gomez and I belong
015to the students of Albemarle High School from two years ago ever since two years ago I have been a part of the students that receive Services of the Department of esol at this school program the eso program has been a resource that has reinforced my self-esteem and has helped me on the way of adjusting myself to the education system Studio when I came to this country as it happens to many others my goal was just to work I never thought I never had plans to study commences Studios I started school alone without friends and I always repeated myself repeated to myself this is going to be very hard because of the language barrier but there's many factors that would make me doubt but listening to my my teachers and all of their advice I decided
016that the best thing to do the best goal to have was to study curricula the fact that my teachers spoke in the same language as me was a determinant so that I could understand and it would facilitate my process of comprehension in their curriculum is and all of the support that I've had from my siblings and Community my education community at Albemarle High School I am considered one of the best students in the department of easel and of the school since I have a GPA of 3.933 is my advice for many of the youth that comes to this country is to let go of the fear leave it behind believe in yourselves and continue in your studies and get better every day foreign mentorship College day I want to take the opportunity that you guys
017have offered me to invite you in the name of our our group of latinx at Albemarle High School to participate in all the activities that we have planned during the month and period of celebration for the Hispanic Heritage Month but in particular I want to invite you on September 13 on October 13th in particular to come to Latino mentorship college day foreign with this invitation we want to offer a space that will allow not only not that will allow you not only to get to know but also to interact with our studious Community our education community at Albemarle High School which has reached approximately 420 students students that we have accepted students have accepted and have committed that ourselves to challenge to the challenge to work on and give the best of ourselves in every
018area every day thank you so much um and please please send along the information about those activities so that we can attend them does anyone have any questions or comments from the board I mean I'll just say I mean I was trying to keep from crying you guys like Leilani and Dara that was amazing um the work you guys are doing the dedication of the two students and staff it is so inspirational for me personally and for everyone here so such a huge thank you um I just see it in the joy and the students and I'm so excited to to visit um as well as just to see it continue to expand because it is really what is going to change and continue to grow the great culture thank you so much Miss Berlin
019we appreciate that and the one thing that I didn't say that I do need to say um is that without the work and the support of principal Bonham we would never have these opportunities for students and for programming the way we do so I just want to thank him thank Mr Bonham for the work that he's done and how open he has been also he's learning Spanish is this is The Interpreter talking I also wanted to interpret what Miss Berlin said earlier is a [Applause] um I have a question for Ashley and Oscar have they decided or have you decided which colleges you're going to be going to or what you'll be doing in the future um [Applause] I would like to stay in this city and go to UVA I am in classes in
020K-Tech and I would love to study medicine um sorry for that I similarly with electrical engineer oh calendar thank you very much um earlier you mentioned that some of the students had done advocacy in Richmond what were the issues that that was around they were focused on uh we used to take all of our students and we are we took again last year students to Latino Lobby day at the Capitol and one thing that they worked on almost immediately was getting licenses driver's licenses for undocumented people that year that they went 2014 I believe we didn't win that we didn't win that but several years later we did win that and so this gives the opportunity for many in our community to be lice drivers licensed which makes our roads safer and people feel more
021legitimate isli this is The Interpreter talking I'm just going to interpret Miss Lee's question um hello Miss keys contestors for personas in documentas Bueno thank you very much I would just like to say thank you for your invitation to come on the 13th of October to college day I will be there I just printed my calendar thank you for that invitation gracias foreign gracias I know we're running a little bit long which is one more question Leilani I know that one of the things that we as a school division is are working on is community outreach and I wonder what role this club has in promoting that so we've worked so much with our families and and with our community in fact I think one of the direct results of having more Latino and bilingual
022staff at the school is those connections those strong connections that we've got to gain with our families and the community for instance we have Latino family forums in Spanish at Albemarle High School we have a latinx mentorship program and one of the students mentioned this but I just want to to um just mention Frank Valdez Frank Valdez is one of our Community Partners stand up Frank from Christian dejuntos okay um so just to continue uh Frank has been really instrumental in helping us to create a latinx mentorship program at school and bring that together with some of our staff members and we have 40 members of our latinx mentorship program who are going to continue this year and who you'll see at college today so we're excited to see you then Escuela thank you so
023much for coming this has been really wonderful to learn about thank you are there other announcements yes I have a announcement and try to keep this short um because we have a lot of people learn a lot of important things to discuss I wanted to take this opportunity to make my intentions clear to the community in terms of what will be happening with my position on the school board I intend to resign from my position on the school board this is not my goodbye speech and it's just an announcement so that people will know what to expect and can engage in the process of selecting my replacement there are so many important things on the agenda in the coming school year we have to continue and finish with collective bargaining we have to focus on
024reading recovery including which we'll be discussing this afternoon selecting a new reading curriculum and ensuring it's implemented with Fidelity and the resources needed to tackle our pandemic learning loss we need to continue to support the work of our groundbreaking anti-racism policy to protect the learning environment of all of our students and make sure that they feel welcome personally I believe we need to begin an audit of our instructional coaching model we need to make sure that we continue to engage in good self-governance through our evaluation process which is my baby we need to continue with diversity recruitment so that more of our students experience a mentor or teacher who reflects their identity we need to figure out Center two and K-Tech and we need to make sure we can get our students to school with
025buses so there is so much to do and it's important that it is done well I recently won the Democratic primary for the house of delegates and I'm gearing up to hopefully serve in that role I would love for you guys to visit me in January if you're going to do another day in Richmond becoming an effective leader in that position which is different than School Board also needs my full attention to be done well and I think acknowledging my time constraints is the best step for our Organization for my colleagues and for our community so I wasn't that short but um so I'm going to wrap it up but due to my pending resignation we're going to need to make an appointment to my position that's pursuant to Virginia code section 24.2 that's a
026lawyer me coming out 22-6 so I would I want to take advantage of all the people in the room here today and I want to encourage you all to look to your friends your neighbors and yourself perhaps and encourage people to apply for that role it is a wonderful opportunity to give to your community and to affect change by being an advocate for public education it has been a joy and an honor to serve so far and although my resignation feels very tough personally I am so optimistic because I've witnessed the passion and energy that new board members bring to this role and Infuse into our leadership and I know that will be a benefit to all of you and our students and two it means since I'm stepping down that someone else will be
027able to do this very meaningful work and serve and the more people that we have invested in public education whether it's here at this table or it's in Richmond the better for all of us so please be on the lookout for the application process I hope we get tons of applicants and thank you thank you very much representative Carlson um there will be more information forthcoming about uh filling that role so next we'll move to public comment Rebecca Berlin we'll be doing our comment tonight thank you we invite and actively seek The public's interests in input in matters relevant to school board governance and provide time in our business meeting to hear from our residents and community members during public comment we expect respectful and on topic comments disruptive behavior from speakers or from members
028of the public in attendance will not be allowed anyone who will fully disrupts the meeting in a manner that prevents or interferes with orderly conduct of the meeting may be ejected by the chair individuals and or organizations wishing to speak during public comment must sign in with the Curve Simon is available beginning 9 A.M on the Monday of the meeting week until 2 pm on the day of the meeting public testimony guidelines are as follows speakers should adhere to the following protocol state name and address or voting district address comments to the school board as a whole limit comments to those matters that are relevant to the school board governance or School Division operations give written statements and other supporting material to the clerk if you are unable to complete the presentation in the time
029will allocated a copy of supporting materials will be provided to school board members three minutes will be allowed for each presenter to speak however the chair May reduce the time allocated for all individuals to speak to two minutes depending on the number of individuals who sign up given that tonight there are more than 10 individuals there are actually 20 signed up for public comment each speaker will be allocated two minutes to speak a color-coded light card system is used to time presentations the yellow light card means the speaker has one minute in is one minute into the presentation and the red light card means the speaker is at the is at the end of the presentation and much wrap up in order to maintain respect for all points of view the school board requests no
030clapping booing or other audible form of support or non-support be used if members of the public wish to show their support for a speaker they may stand or raise their hands when multiple comments on the same topic have been presented the chair May request additional comments on the topic be limited to those who have new information to present debate and dialogue with the school board are not allowed use of the projection system is reserved for the staff schedules since we have 20 speakers I'm going to call people three at a time so if you can line up when we get through those three I'll call the next three um so Paul mcarter Bellamy Brown and Andrew West yes hello my name is Paul McCarter I live in the Scottsville District I'm also the author of
031a petition asking the board to not renew the contract of Dr Haas that ends in 2025. I have been a party personally to Dr haas's leadership I've been on both the kale name change committee plus the committee addressing the fifth graders at Mountain View Elementary I'm an independent voter not a member of a party not supporting a candidate this is a completely non-political petition the petition was built as a way for parents to express their displeasure with the current leadership at the central office the focus of the petition was the nuts and bolts of running acps such as allocation of resources such as building staff buses communication with stakeholders proper education of all students and problem solving that we expect of a leader this is not only about the buses this is a small sample
032size of people that saw the petition and were willing to input their information into changer.org to be a public signer so they're even with that after removing out of area signers there's still over a thousand people who signed we learned three things that were surprises to us the concerns are shared across the political Spectrum we heard the words fear of retaliation and retribution way too much when it came to asking people if they'd be interested in signing when they agreed people are scared to make a change of leadership for better results because they're afraid that we're going to lose the progress on the social aspect and that's just not true so our call to action to the board is with understanding that this is an 18-month process to hire a new superintendent we asked the
033board to immediately start the process to get a true understanding of the environment and satisfaction with Dr Haas to determine if change is needed this needs to include focused groups and surveys of all stakeholders that ensures the fear and the threat of retaliation is removed if that research matches the results that we found then we asked the school board to make a change our kids teachers staff bus drivers and the community deserve better than what a ucps is delivering at this moment thank you thank you hi my name is Bellamy Brown 101 Ulta Circle Charlottesville Virginia I'm here and speaking in support of the alma Education Association and to be clear more so directed to the elected officials of the democratic party as part of the charter and bylaws of the Democratic Party of the
034United States states clearly that we acknowledge that a political party that wishes to lead must lead must listen to those that it would lead a party which asked for the people's trust must prove that it trusts the people we pledge ourselves to be open honest Endeavor and to conduct of public affairs in a manner worthy of a society of a free people article 9 section 17 of the charter States and this is the Democratic party Credo that we believe it is responsibility of government to help achieve a fair Society a society where all workers are guaranteed without question the legal right to join unions of their own choosing and a bargain collectively for decent wages and conditions of employment a society where we recognize that the strengthening of the family and the protection of children
035are essential to the health of our nation and reading the Albemarle County Democrats what we believe quality education we believe that public education is a Cornerstone of American society providing public education of equally high quality in every Community is essential under workers rights we believe that everyone who works should earn a living at least earn a living wage we support the rights of workers to unionize without interference from employers and at bargain collectively we believe that all workers are entitled to a safe and non-hostile work environment I encourage you based on that that you support the Elmore Education Association that you support our Public School Employees and that we stop with the union busting tactics thank you again please no clapping Andrew West members of the school board uh good afternoon my name is Andrew
036West I'm a teacher in Albemarle County Public Schools and I'm resident here in Charlottesville City Schools I mean Charlottesville city um I came here today to express my frustration and distress regarding the state of collective bargaining negotiations and Evac I have sat in meetings and committees and convocations proclaiming how much support we Educators enjoy and deserve so I do not understand how it is that we Educators and our supporters are at such opposite ends of this collective bargaining conversation we're asking for a say in the terms of our employment that's it we're not asking to dictate anything or even any part of your jobs that's a privilege you enjoy you get to dictate the terms of our employment with no input from any of us would you be willing to sign contracts at a group
037of Educators with similar electoral supports decided on with zero input doubtful do you really believe that the professionals that you hire don't know enough to have a say in their own livelihoods what is it about Charlottesville City School Employees that are more deserving of a voice than us to boast of 70 whole concessions that you have made is more than tone deaf every single thing we do at our jobs a concession to all of you every day because we do not have a say or a voice in our job I would also like to express my frustration regarding Evac as a member of Evac last year I watched as a room of dedicated employees tried to make any Headway on any issue and Evac we were assured it was not a replacement for collective bargaining
038that my presence would not be used as to argue against collective bargaining which of course it could never be why because Evac is only willing to discuss items that affect every Department of acps so individual concerns of teachers or bus drivers or ltis who deserve a seat at the table will never be addressed because it is out of Evac scope no changes that affect the budget can happen because that would be too hard what real change then will we see what change did we see literally the least possible how groundbreaking and Progressive you made Evac to find out why teachers are bailing in this County and you hired Bella to figure out why we can't close our achievement gaps they told you to listen please listen to us thank you uh the next three speakers
039are Katherine lochner Mary McIntyre and Vernon lectin please come up to the podium laughs [Music] are we ready hi I'm Catherine lochner I live in Rio magisterial District I was planning on three minutes so I'm gonna try and crunch it down and I hope I make it termination of lease of the Piedmont Regional Education Program I read in the Albemarle minutes you recently voted to terminate the prep lease in 2025. this program serves us and six counties in the city of Charlottesville it has a joint Board of control one of you sit on it plus one alternate I tried to find any minutes from long-range planning committee on both the prep website and ours and I did not find any so what do you imagine as the future use of the Ivy Creek Building I
040hope that we can use it to alleviate the overcrowding At Greer and Jack Jewett I'm so sorry I don't remember the name of been out of the county for a while so help me with that or forgive me additionally I hope the board and the six other board members can mutually relocate the prep program to continue to serve the students the most highest of the needs and they have the lowest incidents I would also like you to review the policy JM restraint and seclusion specifically review the requirement to notify parents in writing the description and date each time the restraint and seclusion has been deployed on a student policy jhg reporting of child abuse mirroring the code of Virginia subsection 63.2-1509 at sec are we providing annual professional development and training on the proper complaint
041parameters what meets the definition of abuse I ask you to review this section containing the words act in bad faith with malicious purpose I'm sorry I do have two others but I will submit them in writing thank you for your time very much yeah [Music] hi I'm Mary McIntyre and the vice president of the aea and resident of the Rio district and a teacher at Journey middle school tonight I'm reading a statement written by a bus driver who would like to remain anonymous greeting boards Members First I want to say how sad it is that I feel the need to express my thoughts anonymously because I worry about putting a Target on my back several of us feel that that is what would happen if we say anything negative about Transportation leadership second everyone thinks
042the bus driver shortage is all about money it is not everyone wants more and we wouldn't turn it away but that is not why it's happening look at the Gallup poll results we get no recognition or appreciation for anything we do I feel invisible A lot of the time leadership is not available or they are condescending if you can get in touch with them a few more things we used to have guaranteed hours and we don't anymore for example if a special needs route doesn't have two of their students that may cut off half an hour to an hour of that route the guaranteed hours meant we wouldn't be penalized for having absent students or a shorter route but now we are told they will take our personal leave hours to make up that difference
043we want our 12-month payback we were told it was illegal but other departments are doing it another thing taken from us was the ability to park our buses at home this was a big perk for drivers when the news found out at the beginning of the year that we had lost four more drivers our director was quoted saying we aren't trying to get rid of drivers the question I have is what are you doing to keep us we were told at convocation that this year's theme is relationships was that taken into account when drivers with strong long-term relationships with students and their families were taken off of their routes and placed elsewhere a relationships being thought about when we are being talked down to and finally is the board thinking about their relationship with us
044when they do not support our Union and make it impossible to draft a fair resolution for collective bargaining a respectful relationship would include a seat at the table for everyone not just board members knowing we will have a voice is what our a voice in what our job responsibilities are is yet another way to obtain and keep drivers thank you very much good evening my name is Vernon lechte and I'm the president of the Albemarle Education Association during our August bargaining resolution meeting we told the school board Representatives that there were items in the draft resolution that were so antithetical to collective bargaining that we would be forced to Halt negotiations if they were not removed here are the provisions we find unacceptable one School Board could alter contracts at any time they declare an
045emergency or a change a school board policy this gives the board power to change any negotiated provision at any time this is not collective bargaining second to allow bargaining at the school board to allow bargaining the school board is requiring an election participation threshold of 66 percent of employees this threshold is higher than any in Virginia a voting threshold is antithetical to the Norms of American democracy third the draft contained a provision that would invalidate most of our signed authorization cards stealing the voices of more than a thousand employees this measure invalidating nearly all authorization cards is also unprecedented in Virginia at our meeting last week school board Representatives informed us that the school board remained unanimous in keeping these heinous items in the draft resolution we were not given any indication that tabling them
046once again and returning to them at the end of the process would yield a different result we refuse to lend our name to a draft resolution that is on its way to becoming the worst for workers in the state the provisions we need must be removed from the school board's draft resolution if negotiations on the rest of the draft resolution are to resume the community wants acps staff to be treated fairly we asked the school board to listen to your Workforce and your community and remove those Provisions from your draft resolution so talks can continue to make a fair and effective collective bargaining resolution thank you the next uh three speakers Liz koning Jason Cason and Susan Carter please come up to this podium [Music] I'm Liz Koenig Secretary of aea and preschool teacher agner
047hurt and Woodbrook the anti-democratic resolution you paid for makes a mockery of true collective bargaining despite your statements in the spring we can plainly see you're not really committed to allowing collective bargaining the burning question is why not collective bargaining hasn't always been legal here for public sector workers it was banned in Virginia by racist white leaders after the heroic efforts of black nurses at UVA Hospital to unionize the barriers you are putting up to getting this done puts you firmly on the side of the anti-worker racist voices of the past if it doesn't bother you to be upholding Decades of discrimination why not I spend a lot of time talking to fellow staff custodians who just want to be able to take time off work without having to show paper proof from the doctor
048to their supervisor nutrition workers doing the jobs of several people because positions continue to go unfilled with no extra compensation Tas and edep staff who don't get paid nearly what they're worth to students collective bargaining is a vehicle for solving these problems if you don't want to root for solving these morale eroding problems why not one thing making people really mad is the refusal to accept our cards other school boards in Virginia have extended the date of the cards no problem this constant insinuation that people didn't know what they were signing or somehow tricked into signing them is patronizing and insulting employees easily read between the lines you don't trust them why not we are do answers and you cannot continue to hide behind protocol and confidentiality the public deserves to know exactly your reasons
049for invalidating cards and forcing undemocratic elections have a public conversation about the details of the resolutions yours and ours so employees can understand your reasons for what you insist upon behind closed doors so we can hear why we don't deserve at least the same protections and treatment as our colleagues in Charlottesville we stand together and if you won't stand with us why not [Applause] um I'm good thank you very much I just want to remind the audience that no clapping booing or other audible form of support or non-support be used Berlin my name was gone wrong but my sister I would like you all to ask let her speak first let me go next please would that be agreeable gentleman Christine what is the I'd like to you you spoke my name wrong to begin
050with but anyway my sister I'd like her to go first because it made that little bearing on what I say next is that I don't think I'm sorry okay as long as yes I'm Susan Carter yes thank you I'm Susan Carter a 30-year Transportation employee October 13th of 2022 I stood here describing difficulties experienced when needing to take one hour and 15 minutes off from work to care for our son that has pancreatic cancer January 19 2023 despite receiving news the test results indicated I had ovarian cancer I attended a mandatory lead driver meeting instead of asking me why I wasn't engaged or didn't go to the correct breakout group I was chastised more than once afterwards it was brought up again by William shifflett at my year-end evaluation during seven months of treatment surgery
051chemo hormones not one supervisor or manager in transportation has contacted me to wish me well to check on me nothing no surprise a contact of Transportation earlier this month regarding returning to work asking about a morning run despite making multiple attempts all documented with emails to arrange a return as a morning driver I was not able to make progress no surprise the retaliation that Kelly Washington described is very real why do you think drivers quit and don't speak up when you do as I have as others have you become a target from a condescending Mail Manager asking me repeatedly if I understood what he was saying and telling me repeatedly that I was too direct audio is available to this to being chastised repeatedly for being mentally absent the day I received a cancer diagnosis
052to having positive input from others being omitted from my evaluation the list is endless it's no secret transportation is a painful work environment the above is why we must have collective bargaining we must be protected be treated with dignity and respect we must have recourse when retaliated against and treated unfairly conductive bargaining is just that working collectively except nothing else I'm fully retired honestly discharged green it was great to hear that Hispanic man up here good thing in this community tell you what I'm a baseball coach from way back too we're up and busting we were welcome in the whites hey hello what are you saying it's mine can you hear me hello would you put on your listening ears and say in school ma'am I'm gonna say some words compassion sir are you Mr
053K son yeah you don't pronounce my name wrong announcement I'm in branchlands area districts wanted to be clear for the record thank you yep that's the record gentlemen ladies compassion diligence I was asked to speak at the last moment essential wheel in the Cog hello bus drivers what are we showing our kids you know what I did I went out in Western Elmore I'm poking around with some friends I know some coaches I know some families I know some of them are working class folks some of them got a little more money they found out some stuff that one there was told as a supervisor a few years back she she didn't quite understand how to deal with difficult kids and kids from diverse backgrounds she happens to go to all black school because we
054weren't welcome in the white schools and segregation in Virginia so put on your list and yours hello and pay attention you guys got a bigger problem you know but you can solve it real quick passion that Miss Berlin explained and here that we're sincere from our heart somebody tonight and I commend you miss Callison weren't you doing moving to the state level put your head on that little pillow think about those kids up in Whitehall District Generations old families that are struggling to figure out how to get those kids to school is it and I'm going to leave but that young lady that spoke and said it isn't a class this morning intentionally I know some of the kids in the others don't Trail all of them are walking over there y'all have a good
055one there's a thing called in the country for you country boy snooping and pooping but it also goes on in the military too a snooping passing along this information on my family member alone that dedicated 30 plus years and owned a small successful business and what y'all have done to that individual family very much the next three speakers Ariana zlotnik Cassandra baber and Jennifer Turner please come up to the podium [Music] good evening my name is Ari zlotnik and I'm a school counselor at Red Hill Elementary I'm speaking tonight to encourage you to make changes to the collective bargaining resolution that would allow negotiations with the aea to resume specifically I'd like you to honor our authorization cards remove the 66 percent election threshold and remove language that would allow you to change our bargained
056contracts at will there's a difference between saying you're negotiating in good faith and acting in good faith what you call good faith on your part we call disingenuous I want to be clear that I support the aea's decision to suspend negotiations and I believe they were acting in good faith on behalf of the employees they represent I do not have the same belief in the school board right now instead of pushing a misleading narrative that the aea acted unreasonably I urge you to turn your pledge of good faith into action by making the changes we are asking for thank you very much I'm Cassandra baber I'm a teacher at Monticello and I live in the Rivanna District I'm here tonight to share some lessons I've learned this fall in my 17th year in the classroom
057one of the first things I learned Upon returning for new teacher week or for pre-service week is how to prevent how to barricade my door and have my students form a human chain across the floor to prevent a shooter from entering my classroom I also learned how to break my classroom window with a stapler and clear the frame of broken glass so that we could Escape should we have a violent critical incident this is a training we all receive that is unsadly necessary given our profession and the time and place in which we live I accept this reality and so do my fellow educators we also accepted for many years the fact that we had no voice in the day-to-day year-to-year decisions affecting our students our teaching and our quality of life then the prospect
058of collective bargaining offered us hope in the face of some of the most difficult teaching years we've ever experienced we do this job because we believe deeply in the work we want to partner with you and add our insights expertise and feedback in order to improve education in this County for our students and our own children the AAA does not merely represent a small handful of male contents who complain about things that most people don't care about it represents the vast majority of Staff in this County many of whom are too tired too stressed about money too intimidated and too fearful of Retribution to speak out if membership is lower than you think it should be to indicate General agreement with the things that are said many people cannot afford the 25 per paycheck that's
059extracted from our income paychecks that now are in different amounts every two weeks and make it very difficult to confirm whether they're accurate or not my colleagues and I signed authorization cards eagerly excitedly and with full recognition of the significance of this choice not because we didn't understand what we were signing not because we were forced or coerced hello my name is Jen Turner and I'm a parent of a seven and ten year old who attend Murray Elementary in elmoral County public schools in the Samuel Miller District this is my 17th year as an educator for acps I started as a sped ta and stayed in this role for 10 years as I worked and also took classes I'm fortunate to have four amazing administrators at Monticello High School but that isn't enough I'm glad
060and appreciative that I have the experience as an instructional assistant at the elementary middle and high school levels I've spent the last 12 years at the high school level in the last seven years it's a collaborative special ed teacher starting with two years at Western and beginning my fifth year in the same capacity in Monticello I earned my micro credential and culturally responsive teaching and also earn my full certifications in CRT when did I have time to do this while having a full schedule coaching at school and for my children and raising two Elementary School age Sons I did not have the time and I felt overwhelmed and burned out I forget I also jumped in to cover classes for a few years during my planning for the entire school year and I also worked
061with students and families during that time that covet shut down buildings remember the physical school buildings were closed but Educators bus drivers cafeteria staff Building Services LTI special service providers and others in acps are working harder than ever including giving up privacy and boundaries to reach all families colleagues look down for me because those are the top of the food chain that acps did not I worked all about two and a half weeks this summer including two weeks of summer school and then enrolling and taking professional development that I elected to do to better myself my practice acps School Board how do you think employees feel do you think we feel seen respected and Affirmed we are professionals and we deserve and demand to be treated with respect and have a seat at the table
062this is why so many people are jumping ship to Charlottesville City Public Schools where collective bargaining is a thing and the compassion the compensation and work conditions are better or they're leaving teaching profession altogether I end with words I will Winston Churchill Success is Not final failure is not fail and is the courage to continue that counts thank you thank you very much uh the next three Amy gertner Adam Florence and Tim kolbuchar [Music] good evening members of the school board and Dr Haas my name is Amy gertner I'm a resident of the White Hall district and a teacher at Broadus wood I'm speaking out in support of aea and collective bargaining our entrustworthiness continues to be questioned by members of this board during pre-service week we spent a day practicing active shooter drills this
063training was to empower us but I know we were expected to be prepared to lay down our lives for our students I will be the last to leave the classroom and I practice this during our drills and two of the three scenarios I was shot and I'm not worthy to have a voice in my contract I'm not the smartest more most educated person in the room but I'm willing to speak publicly and give voice to our Humanity for one more year I'm going to present myself as one of the many faithful and dedicated Educators that continue to show up each day and give our very best to our school Community I've taught the children of people I graduated high school with 40 years ago I have taught the children my former students I've taught three
064members of our staff and the husband of another staff member relationships matter this year the daughter of my primary care doctor is in my classroom I was so excited to meet her at Open House I got down to her eye level and said your mom is my doctor and takes such good care of me I'm so glad I get to be your teacher and take care of you relationships matter I know who you are I'm so glad you were here and I'm so grateful to be able to spend time working with you all of my 22 families showed up for open house to meet me yeah my card is stale and you don't trust me I am not worthy of having a voice in my contract I will never question the Integrity of Vernon lecti
065friend was my son's Latin one Latin 2 and world history teacher I had a parent-teacher relationship with Vernon before he ever became a leader of the aea relationships matter I know him I'm so glad he's here and I'm grateful to be able to spend time working with him I plan on retiring at the end of this school year but I'm not quietly quitting I will continue to advocate for a better future for acps educators thank you for your time thank you very much good evening my name is Tim Klobuchar and I'm an English teacher at Monticello High School and a member of the collective bargaining resolution committee like Vernon I was in the room so I'd like to offer a rebuttal of sorts to the misleading statement that was released by The Division this week
066one myth that was promoted by the the statement is that our suspension of talks was a surprise fact we told acps Representatives one month earlier of our intentions at our meeting on August 9th we told division reps that if they did not alter two specific items by our next meeting we would be forced to pause negotiations at our September 7th meeting the Reps told us that the school board had unanimously decided to not change any language we then did what we promised to do myth there was nothing that prompted us specific to leave the table fact we were reacting to two conditions that are literally the worst in the state in their category elections they are number one the Nullification of more than a thousand of our signed authorization cards due to a 12-month expiration
067date the aea got nearly 70 percent of licensed staff to sign authorization cards in early 2022 well more than the required 50. the division wants to disregard the will of those employees who signed a card saying they want collective bargaining with one acps rep saying that they quote didn't trust the cards what does this say about the division's regard for its employees that it thinks our signatures don't represent our actual intentions number two unless at least 66 percent of the employees in a bargaining unit turn out in the first election the election will not be certified the school board is trying to hold us to an electoral standard that it couldn't meet itself in its wildest dreams it lie it flies in the face of basic American Democratic principles and common sense in a scenario
068with a hundred eligible voters the union could win the votes cast 65-0 and we lose the election because 35 people didn't vote again the division doesn't trust us to know our own best interests our actions should tell you more about the egregiousness of these conditions than it does about us it's fitting that one division Committee Member said we quote took our ball and went home like they were talking to children because these conditions also good evening I'm Adam Florence proud bus driver I love my job but he's driving my old bus right now the Bruiser like I call it rosin I drove her daughter when I drove for Brownsville um I read an email the other day and I was surprised 66 percent the only thing I can say is did you get 60 66
069of your vote did you get 66 of your vote did you get 66 percent of your vote so why should we it's that simple it's that simple thank you thank you very much the next three speakers Michelle defano excuse me if I mispronounce anyone's name I forgot my glasses today Michelle Stefano Kate Selmer and Catherine Thomas hi my name is Michelle DeStefano um Beaver Dam Road on in Keswick and I'm also a write-in candidate for the Ravenna District School Board position this is in regards to the bus transportation issue Virginia code states that schools are only required to provide transportation to disabled and special education students this is the minimum acceptable standard that you have been hiding behind throughout the whole Transportation crisis I'm guessing that before school started you probably didn't even view this
070as a potential crisis because you were meeting the standard why are we as a county content with the minimum acceptable standard on Transportation County residents myself included were shocked to learn that transportation is not a requirement for the general student population it is in my birth state of New Jersey I think there is consensus in the community to make transportation for the general student population the required standard here in Albemarle doing so would prioritize Transportation above some other projects that you handle so capably such as school renaming and solar energy production you'll then be able to handle this issue just as capably in the slot those presently occupy in the priority list the goal being that the next time a transportation standard is met here in the county it will cause no crisis thank you
071thank you very much [Music] before I begin we are having a massive case of stage fright with permission may I read my daughter's words yes thank you high school board members my name is Kate Selmer from the Whitehall District my teachers matter it's that simple why are you not working in good trust to make collective bargaining happen actions have consequences if I ignored all my family I would get grounded if you ignore your employees what do you think will happen all the good teachers will leave is that what you want my teachers matter all employees matter do better for them thank you thank you very much good evening my name is Catherine Thomas I am the grandmother of fourth grader at Baker Butler and I am so disappointed that I have to be the bus
072driver every morning coming we live in Camelot subdivision so we already know that 29 is awful the traffic is ridiculous it's backed up to Greene County I spent two hours a day dropping off and picking off my child's grandchild from school and most of that time is waiting in line it's a shame and we didn't really even get the two weeks that they said that we were given to know that we would have to figure out how the child's get to school you know everything has gone up gas I spent 50 dollars more a week now just to take the child school and pick him up yo yes the parents could do it but they work so I would rather they go to work and I not have to support them but I mean this
073is ridiculous so I want to know when we get a bus for Camelot subdivision we deserve it I pay my taxes and I am so tired of paying five dollars for five five cents for a bag when I buy my groceries but I can't get a school bus to take my child to school so you all got to do better because it's a shame on you because it's a shame you all had knew this problem over a year ago and this is what we wound up you tell the parents you figure it out well we figured it out that you all are you at some point we have to vote for you so remember that we remember it's like old dogs don't forget future don't forget and I do not forget thank you thank you
074very much the last two speakers are Sally Hudson and Heidi Gilman Bennett good evening my name is Sally Hudson I serve Almont County in the Virginia House of delegates and I'm here tonight to say I'm sorry I am sorry that the general assembly put you in the position that brought so many people here tonight in 2020 when the House and Senate passed legislation that finally lifted Virginia's ban on local public sector collective bargaining we pushed all of the responsibility of defining a fair bargaining process onto local governments and that wasn't fair to you in the house we understood the need for Clear guidance to local governments and so we passed a detailed bill that defined all of the critical components of a fair bargaining process the bargaining units certification elections and more but the Senate
075gutted that bill and gave you one skinny page that pushed all of that work onto you I want to thank you for engaging in that work but I also want to acknowledge all of the limitations that so many people have already raised tonight and to make very clear that the draft ordinance that you've currently presented would be illegal under the standards that were passed by the house in 2020. that's the direction Virginia is going it's the direction that we deserve to go in and so I hope we can work together with our local legislative delegation now to look ahead and pass an ordinance that is not just fair to our local Educators now but we'll stand the test of time because I think the general assembly you're going to see elected this fall is going
076to be a much stronger partner to local workers and so we should we should look ahead and see that process and do what we can now to deliver a more durable resolution for the Long Haul thank you thank you very much hi my name is Heidi Gilman Bennett I am the parent of two kids in Samuel Miller District I'm here tonight to talk about both reading and our teachers because our teachers working conditions are our students learning conditions higher teaching morale means higher student outcomes they're related so the information you're going to see tonight about the reading Sol scores is really tragic and it's heartbreaking and I do believe personally that collective bargaining will make a difference for our kids I want to focus um last Friday we had about 50 movers and shakers in
077the community gathered to talk about reading as a civil right so on the Sol scores I want to focus for just a second on the third grade scores which as you know are key Milestone the scores reported um for the third graders last year are for children who spend an entire first grade year trying to learn phonics and decoding skills from home I have such gratitude for their teachers however about a third of the kids in third grade are below State average and at more than two-thirds of black third graders and those who are economically disadvantaged are failing to learn to read I'm worried about what's happening with our kids and I'm worried about what the leadership is doing this year I want to know more about what is happening by the leadership with the
078Bell leather audit the results are a clear indication that the being a reader has failed I really wish you had listened to teachers previously when they explained so strongly that what was happening in the classroom the tools they were provided with weren't working I'm pleased to see the reading adoption on the agenda for tonight I do want to point out that there's zero opportunities for family input but I am pleased to see that the voices of teachers and reading Specialists are made a high priority Albemarle kids and teachers can't wait thank you thank you very much tonight yes thank you very much for all the public comment next we have school board superintendent business so your superintendent business as a lot of employers are leaving I just want to take this opportunity to thank everyone
079for a good start to the school year I did get out to visit Woodbrook Murray Crozet Stony Point and Center one this week and a lot of very positive things going on for kids through the efforts of our employees bus drivers cafeteria staff administrators lots of positive experiences I do want all of our employees to know I appreciate them letting me stop by for a walkabout I'll be out at Baker Butler tomorrow and I want to thank everyone and I hope everyone's heading into a nice weekend after tomorrow and I'm going to turn things over to Rosalind she does have an update on Transportation foreign [Music] Schmidt Chief Operating Officer and I'd like to provide a brief update on Transportation last time I was before you and before the school year started we had nearly
0801 000 students on an open route as you will see on this week by week report we have been able to reduce this each week this has been through a combination of starting new drivers route reconfigurations utilizing part-time and temporary temporary drivers this week which is the last column we had 275 students on a fully open route another 600 165 students who are only being served in the morning this means we are serving 95 percent of students who requested Transportation obviously we are not where we need to be but we are moving in the right direction we have 11 drivers currently in training so we are optimistic the numbers will continue to approve over this month and next and lastly we are starting to have actual ridership figures now so the department is looking for
081consolidation opportunities as I said last time we know how impactful this is to our school community and are committed to solving it back at the next business meeting in October with um another update and hopefully improve numbers a quick question Roslyn of the 11 which is four more than you had a couple weeks ago when are they going to be finished training I mean are we talking November are we talking January so I know it'll vary but yep so I'm going to give some various we have some that will be as done as early as two weeks others could take as long as end of October or Beyond they're all coming in at different points with different CDL experience and some with none at all 11 more drivers will be great are the parents notified
082of maybe how much longer it might be before their students would be affected by we have not shared specifics um we are training them as fast as possible but it's not a guarantee so we don't want to give them a date and not be able to fill them we're not we notify them as soon as we have a firm date so they know what to expect okay thanks um statistically where are we in terms of about 10 that we were talking about where we see the numbers drop I know these are the hard numbers but like do we anticipate they're dropping more you know what we were talking about every year you know people sign up and then it drops yeah so we know there's a big gap between the number that are registered and
083then those that are actual writers so we are gathering attendance we had 300 families notified today that they haven't been writing 10 days or more and are removed from the route what we're finding though and we're going to tighten up that data is it's just inconsistent ridership it's not like they're not writing at all but they're writing here and there and so we're going to start having some conversations with families of ones that are writing every one every 10 days um just understanding their need and but we're also utilizing the ridership data just average daily ridership even it varies who the kids are will have firmer numbers on on average this route only has 50 and will allow consolidation opportunities so do you have a sense of when that consolidation and Route reconfiguration might happen
084that's going to take a couple weeks that's a lot of analysis and a lot of moving Parts our priority right now is to get these new drivers on routes as quickly as possible uh-huh have you done any trouble shooting with parents or you know can you just talk about what it's like yeah so we um at the direction of this board last we made sure that we made contact with all um attempted to make contact with all families who did not have a ride schools have done amazing work with the resources they can have we have some schools that are using the van to pick up kids on a daily basis they've offered early drop-off facilitated carpools we know we're not meeting all the needs but we've done what we can with the resources we
085have I hope it continues in this in this direction thanks very much Miss Smith [Music] any other school board or superintendent business okay next we have school division business we have building service Building Services updates summer 2023 project updates Lindsay snotty good evening I'm Lindsey snotty director of Building Services Department and I first want to thank the board for taking a moment of silence and dedicating that to Ryan Ragland with our department so we'll be going through a lot of project updates that happen over the summer and some in the past winter tonight but one to First highlight the Strategic plan alignment that all these projects have we're first going to talk about some staff that we hired on our project management team who do feel fulfill that attracting and developing the highest quality staff
086we're going to talk about developing sustainable modern facilities and also infrastructure and equipment and how we try to distribute these resources equitably across the schools and we've done a lot of work on a video to highlight some of these projects because it is hard to get to all these schools so we're going to run through this and give you guys a view into what you might have missed about a year ago acps hired project managers to design and manage all School capital projects this summer our acps team was excited to implement projects that have been designed and procured over the past year this video highlights a summer of successful projects with the acps project team hi my name is Kagan Squire I'm a project manager for Building Services for Albemarle County Public Schools I'm James
087Allen I'm one of the project managers for Elmore County Public Schools my name is Gerald Harris I joined Albemarle County public school system in August of 2022 as a senior project manager prior to that I had been working in Colorado for a number of years for General Contractors as a project manager where I used to work through the interest of the contractor now I work to the interest of the owner and helped manage the contractor to assure that the requirements of the documents are provided compliance is maintained the work is finished on time and we finish it in budget my experience coming into a new role it's been great you know I've had a lot to learn just about you know some of the Opera operational things internally that happen that already existed here but
088as well as trying to figure out you know efficient ways to operate in this new role but everyone has been extremely welcoming it's a very team oriented approach to a lot of things I came to the project management team from the actual from the uh electrical department on our maintenance staff I was their electrical foreman and you know just just wanting to get you know uh advancement uh with the opportunities that that they that Building Services provides I get offered this position and and I felt like it'd be something I'd really want to do like being challenged I like learning new things so that's you know it's it's it's it's really been it's really been fun for me I'm a senior project manager for the Mountain View Elementary School Edition and site work renovations the
089scope of the project involves replacement of air conditioning in the existing classrooms the addition of a cafeteria significant changes to site work and all new playground equipment the site work primarily involved redirection of the parent drop-off and pickup of the students to reduce or remove the impact of the backup of traffic on Avon we've provided for dry planes down on the south part of the building and student drop off and pick up areas in that location the cafeteria Edition maintains a connection to the corridor of the main School the playground equipment the kids are excited about it so I guess we did something right in that area it contains areas for lunch Outdoor Classroom as well as for climbing swings basketball and a blacktop area where they can draw games and pictures on it we
090have a play feel out adjacent the playground areas who've been working on Mountain View since last year and will continue on the cafeteria Edition through December of this year but in addition to managing the construction on Mountain View I've also worked on some summer renovation jobs as we call them the Albemarle High School project we abandon four grouped toilets which had common interests to multiple toilet spaces the new plan included single-use toilets off of the hallway with the sanitary facilities that is hand washing sinks along the corridor wall this uh provided more security for the students we're here at West narma High School on the lock removal Corridor renovation that was funded by the high school renovation fund it entails the removal of 200 linear feet of of lockers that were no longer being used
091by students and placing a solid surface style bench table tops and countertops in their in their locations it's given them a place where they can they can sit out and get together and do other activities outside the classroom and also it we added some updated the paint and everything to make it a much brighter space these are our solid surface benches they chose this chose this colored top here to give it to give it contrast rather than have everything just be white to give some contrast and kind of match what was already existing in the school these these These are the tops that you're actually able to sit up underneath of and and you know have their laptop here rather than having to sit off to the side all of the counter countertop spaces have
092power added added to them so that students can place any kind of electronic equipment they need laptops whatever because of the length of some some of them there's as actually a half inch tubing uh steel tubing that runs the length of it and and down the legs to to give it reinforcement so when they sit on it it doesn't Buckle in some of the challenges with this project has because of the reinforcing in the benches and table tops we had to use some steel and that's one of the things that has long lead times because we're still feeling the effects of the shortages so here at Community lab if you just see behind me that's an air handler um what we're doing is we're replacing two former split systems um and you know providing updated
093equipment which will be much more efficient than the dated equipment that was installed here we're also placing it in an area that is more accessible for our crew so it's much easier for them to provide maintenance and upkeep of the systems as well it used to be up in the ceiling actually which you know provided some challenges to to access it because we'd have to remove ceiling tiles things like that now it's in a closet where they can walk in it's easier to change filters things like that which then requires since it's in a different location rerouting some of the duct work and the goal was to just reuse as much of the previous ductwork as possible which helps us expedite our sketch so outside there's a large concrete pad that we just put in
094and so what we're going to put out there is a larger air handler unit and that will service the gym for us previously it was up in the ceiling and so where it was before it actually used to be a stage and so it was all open ceiling and the air handler air handler unit and there was way up there and so it caused some issues with one getting up there too it was kind of a safety issue with having to have a platform up there and having Building Services Crews get up there so we relocated it down on the ground here which then required us to reroute some of the ductwork obviously Construction in general there's always several challenges and moving parts that you have to accommodate for but specifically in the school system
095we only have about you know eight to ten weeks to get all our work done so we try to cram everything in and so that also needs to include work that you know our custodial Crews need to to need to account for and get done as far as waxing floors cleaning areas that they aren't able to get it to you since the buildings you know being used heavily by students and staff during the school year as well as just you know updating painting and things like that that just happens you know normal wear and tear items um so it's coordinating you know a whole plethora of things in a very short amount of time this is my first year here so I think now that I've done a few projects seeing all the students come
096back and and see how they appreciate all the work that we've done is is very satisfying and you know just to feel the Gratitude from the students and the staff I have always moved to school work as my Preferred Choice because it provides such opportunity to provide structures that really have a purpose and Aid in the ability to educate our children to become the future of Tomorrow the acps project team will continue to support the Strategic plan with particular focus on developing sustainable and modern facilities infrastructure and equipment and distributing all resources in an equitable manner to transform learning experiences and opportunities foreign love that video we had some great help from Patrick Huddleston to take us through that and have just we really appreciate his expertise I'm now going to introduce Matt wertman our
097deputy director at Building Services and he's going to take us through some more Project work thanks Lindsay good evening Dr Haas and members of the board as Lindsay said I'm at Workman the deputy director of Building Services as you know our work is funded out of the County's capital budget and is not part of acps's operational budget this slide shows let me see if I can make this full screen this slide shows just um the the other nearly two dozen projects that our team completed this past summer just a few highlights I'm not going to go through the whole list but this Summer's work included nearly a hundred and seventy thousand square feet of new roof on four schools a major HVAC overhaul at Burley Middle School several systems upgrades and of course our annual
098flooring and painting and casework replacement projects with one exception all of these projects were delivered on time and equally important our entire maintenance program finished on budget and we did all of that without having to cancel any of this year's planned projects this has not been an easy task because as you heard in the video from Jamie we are still feeling the Ripple effects of the pandemic in terms of what it had on the supply chain for several key materials in summary our team installed over 12.7 million dollars worth of work this past summer if you think about that over a 10-week period that's more than 1.2 million dollars worth of work going in every week we recognize that this is a significant amount of taxpayer funding and we do not take that burden lightly
099you can see here the breakdown in spending by feeder pattern well not exact it is very nearly equal between the three feeder patterns and 29 of these expenditures went into Title 1 schools we take our mission of providing sustainable and Equitable facilities seriously and are committed to doing our part to ensure every student's success [Music] none of this however could have been possible without our incredible team you saw in the video three of our project managers that we hired a year ago and I want to introduce to you um the rest of our team our newest project manager April Newton on the left just started with us in August as you may recall under the current fiscal year budget we were able to uh to secure a fourth project manager to help with our workload
100so we're really excited to have April on our team Caitlin Wetzel is our management analyst she helps keep keep our budgets in line Lisa Walker is our senior project planner Sheila hoopman is our senior facilities engagement manager and Mars eagleson is a project administrator on our team I want to say one quick thing about Mars Mars started with us when she or when they were an intern at Albemarle and they have worked with us every summer through college and are now working for us as a project administrator they do incredible work and we are so so grateful to have them on our team you heard in the video about the internal growth opportunities that having an in-house project management team has created within Building Services and why each member of our team values the critical
101work that they perform but I want to expand a little bit on why acps having its own project management team has made a large impact on our Capital program this slide shows the annual CIP maintenance expenditures for the last six fiscal years the blue chart is the original dollar figures and the gray bars show those expenditures adjusted for inflation the Orange Line shows the percentage of CIP maintenance budget of the CIP maintenance budget that was spent as you can see from this data with the exception of fiscal year 19 which was an outlier the amount of CIP maintenance expenditures had been on a declining Trend prior to this past fiscal year what's worse is that when we look at the annual bus budgets also adjusted for inflation they had been on an increasing trend this
102shows that the efficiencies of our CIP maintenance program had been declining however as you can see in the graph we reverse that Trend this past year and having our own project management team has enabled us to fully utilize the resources that built the Board of Supervisors appropriate to the school division foreign the benefits of an in-house project tennis management team however extend well beyond the financial impact we have observed more efficient Communications with principals been able to enhance our community engagement efforts with students teachers in the broader community optimized our design collaboration processes with maintenance staff and have had a worse smooth integration with the operational teams and Building Services and perhaps most importantly we are better aligned with acps's court mission these improvements have been observed by others as well when asked about his
103experiences and working with our new team Steve Saunders the principal at Greer Elementary School stated we've found that the acps project management team was exceptionally organized and responsive to not only the scale of the project but also the day-to-day details that emerged in addition we received increased communication and on-site support that made the project better and run more smoothly now Lindsay's going to talk to you more about operational improvements that we've made over the last year [Music] he was first finding a new program for our work order system our scheduling tools our scheduling system that we use for Community usage and internally and also our inventory management system and we've integrated fmx we are fully implemented now and we're working with the system throughout the division we like it because it has enhanced tools for
104better communication with key stakeholders and our community users for facility rentals and it also has an asset management tool that's new to us and is helping us not automate how we work into our Capital maintenance fund but definitely help when we're getting to the end of the age of different systems to have that captured within this tool so we have a more efficient way to build those budgets each year it also has enhanced reporting on kpi tracking capabilities I wanted to make sure the board knew about our new assistant director for custodial Services Tiffany Morris she survived her first summer with us and she did a great job that included waxing of over 1.2 million square feet of floors and she has done an excellent job training staff retaining staff and just really listening to
105staff as well we've been very happy to have her on board Jim Flory finishing happen at multiple schools you'll see listed there on the maintenance side we also had a busy summer as we always do both doing our regular work orders and assisting contractors which is always part of the work that we have to do to get those projects across the finish line on our maintenance team I wanted to highlight for the board that we do have three K-Tech students that are currently working with us and we've had one of them for more than a year and we're hoping to retain them as they graduate and keep them on board with us but it's been exciting to have some youngsters as we call them on board with our skilled trades over the fiscal year 23
106we completed over 11 000 work orders and then over just over the summer over 1400 work orders completed so it's a busy busy summer we also implemented as you probably saw at several schools or conservation mowing program that was initiated through our advisory committee for environmental sustainability we after we did some explaining and some education we I feel like we're having good results from the program you'll see a picture there of scottsbon kind of what you tend to see at the at these campuses where we're doing conservation mowing where we're definitely maintaining the edges of the pit places but we're in areas where we don't have students accessing Fields often like the fronts of areas like Scottsville and Walton we've reduced the mowing but kept that clean Edge for the environmental benefits and for safety
107benefits for our staff as well when it comes to steep slopes you'll also see a break down the slide of the different types of work orders by trade so definitely balanced and we need every crew member that we have all right with that I will open up to questions I know you've had a long video so far much more to come but we appreciate your time and the ability to show you these projects thank you I don't know if it's a question for matter excuse me or Lindsay before we brought the project managers in-house how did this work um so prior to this past fiscal year uh some of the work was was handled in-house the annual flooring and painting for example was handled in-house with with Building Services staff the larger capital projects had
108been outsourced to local government employees we worked in tandem with them but one of the as I mentioned one of the the major benefits to having our own our own team has been that increased communication even just the you know you know their team was located here in the county office building they do great work they do fantastic work for for local government and I think they would say too that that because of this change that they've been able to provide a higher level of service for for the local government teams that they serve so I think it's really been a mutually beneficial step I have a question about this security film over the windows has that been completed now at all of our schools we are we just finished up the last two this
109past week so we are com and when I say complete that we've focused on strategic windows so it's not every window around the school it's all entrances any side lights around entrances and then glass that we deem to be um in a more of a risky location or someplace where it was a higher risk for entry so that's been completed at all schools okay thanks trailers I saw that the trailers were removed from Brownsville do we repurpose those or sell them or they by the time we get rid of them we do something else so it depends on the location that Brownsville it was a lease for that for that ones we do own some all the eight classroom pods that went in over the pandemic we own all those pods so that's the high
110schools and and Henley so we own those units but those single units and the older ones are typically the either we own them and they've been around for a really long time or the newer ones are in decent condition they're in the least situation I'm just gonna make a small comment that I'm always interested in hearing about students who are a um albemar students who come back and so you guys talked about Meg you talked about three potential K-Tech students and then Ms Keys talked about Jose so I just think that's such a great thing for us to continue doing because people always talk initially about teachers but I think computer staff Building Services custodians however we can continue to like keep students in our community going forward it's just great I think Mr boolia
111I think this is he made the initial introduction to Mars and it's been they've been wonderful and and it's great to see the skill development over the years and continue to utilize that cool I don't have any uh question but I just um from the video I just every year when we see that I'm reminded and I know I should be thinking about this all the time but I'm just reminded about how every single person who works for the division is part of our students achievement I mean truly I mean like bathrooms you know the places for people to sit at was all those things so I just I really appreciate your work thank you very much thank you thank you for support and their time yet again Lindsay you and your team and Matt
112and uh you know just done terrific work over the summer and throughout the year um I love walking around the schools in the summertime and just watching it all happen and it's just so impressive every single year thank you thank you now we're planning for next summer thank you thank you Lindsay thanks man next we have a 9.2 Human Resources hiring update Dan Redding thank you [Music] all right give me a moment to try to get through the technology here Jason this is what we want all right well good evening school board members cabinet members and Albemarle Community my name is Dan reading I'm with human resources this evening we bring you the annual Human Resources hiring report and we're very excited to share this data with you ah come on as always our work
113is grounded in the Strategic plan beginning with the vision we seek Educators and support staff who will support our students as they become contributors and beaters in our Dynamic and diverse Society okay the people we hire every year become an important part of the team that will end the predictive value of race class gender and special capacities hiring a diverse and representative teaching force is important for all students as they learn to navigate a world of diverse people and perspectives we seek hires who exemplify who exemplify our values and we support them in helping students experience and embody these values during their time in our schools and of course goal three objective one attracting developing and retaining the highest quality staff is at the heart of what you're going to hear this evening and tonight
114we'll present to you data that demonstrates progress over the past year on the school it's important to consider the national state and Regional climate that we're working in right now as the labor market remains historically tight and teacher and bus driver shortages impact school divisions all over the country in very very significant ways despite those environmental challenges acps continues to lead the region and the state with our hires and there's plenty of good news in this report so to share that good news with you I would like to introduce Dr Jason Sears our director of talent good evening board members Dr Haas Mr Holden again my name is Jason Sears director of talent I'd like to start oh it's already there I like to start by highlighting some of the successes our team is most
115proud of through a concerted effort um of our hiring managers our school leaders and especially our recruitment Team 25 of our new teacher hires were teachers of color with the license or knowledge of Michael Thomas with the support of school staff like Mrs early in principals like Mr Bonham at Albemarle High School Mrs Johnson at Journey middle and Dr blunt at Burley Middle School we launched the initial class of our tops program then as interests grew so did the tops program um now with the support of many other principals uh we have tops teachers across the division through the diligence of Dr Sarah Lynn Albemarle was one of only 10 School divisions in the Commonwealth of Virginia to secure a two hundred thousand dollar apprenticeship grant that will among other things support the professional development
116of two veteran special education teachers and fund the fund the professional and academic development of two former teaching assistants that will become special education teachers our talent team has secured or is in the process of securing Innovative tools that will ensure our provisionally licensed teachers meet their requirements and new teachers have the mentorship that will secure their success our recruitment team includes Brandon Edwards and John McCulkin as as well as Jason Crutchfield and they have used talent and and specifically our handshake software to deliberately and intentionally identify and recruit potential candidates in both classified and licensed positions as well as making their application process as quick and efficient as possible finally Eva McGee our District substitute coordinator has significantly increased the number of registered substitute teachers as well as increased our substitute fill rate data
117from the Virginia Department of Education teacher and school Staffing vacancy dashboard demonstrates that among our comparable districts Albemarle County not only achieved favorable results [Music] [Laughter] too close not only receiving favorable results in 2022 but we are continuing that Trend and and in a unfavorable labor market now we recognize that zero percent vacancy is and should always be our ultimate goal but the diligent work of our HR team School leaders across the district have netted us an impressive 1.3 percent vacancy rate in comparison a recent Jay Lark study a joint legislative audit and Review Committee study for the Virginia legislature noted the average vacancy rate among districts across Virginia is 4.8 percent as you may recall last year we struggled filling all of our special education teaching positions some of them remaining vacant for the
118entire year we are excited to announce we are fully staffed in our special education classrooms this represents a significant level of support in reducing caseloads increasing opportunities for collaboration potentially reducing classroom management and compliance issues and increasing total student support all of these things help to ensure our special education students receive effective instruction we are very proud the number of teachers we hire is up slightly to 215 new teachers this year what we believe is in a very impressive 27 percent of our 215 newly hired teachers are teachers of color the number of first-year teachers increased by 79 this excuse me increased 279 this year we note that nearly half of our new hires were in their first three years of teaching our newly hired staff remain highly qualified and well educated with over 60
119percent of them holding at least a master's degree this data informs us that our newly hired teachers are trending slightly more novice with more bachelor's degrees as a result we are working with the Department of Instruction the special education department and the professional uh and professional excuse me professional development department and our University Partners to have a laser focus on teacher training mentoring and check-ins to ensure the success of our new teaching staff as we take a closer look at our new hire diversity we can see that over the last five years we are succeeding in increasing our teachers of color and continuing to work toward making our teaching staff a true reflection of our community as diversifying our workface Workforce remains a focal point we will continue to build relationships within the community be
120more present on college campuses and work with our school leaders as they continue to identify and excuse me identify highly qualified diverse candidates we continue the trend of increasing diversity in our teaching force 13.37 of our teaching staff were teachers of color which represented a 3.3 percent increase since the the 2017-18 school year the annual change increased from under one percent over the past four years to over two percent this year while we are pleased at this continued forward progress we acknowledge racial diversity is only one aspect of diversity in the upcoming years we will be establishing Affinity groups and other structures to work toward increased staff retention Human Resources has partnered with classified hiring managers to lead the way in hiring diverse candidates as you see we have hired 55 Transportation employees 17 of
121which included full-time lead or part-time drivers of the vacant positions we still seek to hire six home excuse me school to home drivers to fill all student transportation requests these vacancies also include other staff including office staff mechanics and and many other positions within the department this chart shows the status of hiring for other support departments as well we will continue to collaborate to fill all vacancies some of our efforts will include social media campaigns specialized job fairs and working with our University Partners to staff our classified positions on this slide you will see our commitment to diversity is also seen in our leadership team this slide represents a mix of external hires as well as internal transfers and promotions over 50 percent of our external hires were employees of color we we believe just
122as our teaching staff should mirror our school community so should our leadership team this year we hired a larger than a larger number of provisionally licensed teachers than acps typically hires within this group are a number of Veteran paraprofessionals in APC acps who have made commitment to complete their coursework that leads to licensure as well as start working as a classroom teacher they meet all the minimum thresholds to teach while pursuing pursuing their full credential 66 teachers which represent 31 percent of our new hires were provisionally licensed due to decreases in enrollment in traditional teacher preparation programs the trend to hiring provisionally licensed teachers will likely increase over the next several years this means that teacher preparation training and support will shift from traditional Collegiate teacher preparation programs to school districts through provisional licensure many
123of the provisionally licensed teachers we hire this year came from our existing Workforce such as substitute teachers teaching assistants safety school safety monitors and other positions within the district this gives us the opportunity to introduce teachers that are significantly more representative to our student body because these candidates come from our community we are collaborating closely with instructional coaches professional development department and special education department to ensure we closely monitor these teachers progress and ensure they are trained to meet the high standards of all acps instructional staff finally we plan to continue on the successful path we have undertaken over the last part excuse me over the last five years we will continue to Target our recruitment efforts for all of our schools and departments to ensure effective and efficient use of all of our resources
124we now have the ability to build significant on-campus Presence at some of our closest University Partners which will build an even greater opportunity for relationships with current and future candidates we will continue to the Innovative and transformative programmatic work to further Define and refine our tops program the apprenticeship of the apprenticeship program and communication with our future Educators in our high schools in our high school career clusters the use of Boutique job fairs that Target employment groups in the locations times and ways that yield the most and best candidates will continue to grow our use of power of the powerful handshake software will allow us to connect directly with candidates across the country and in an intentional and deliberate manner and finally we will develop robust employee retention plan that will reach across all staff
125members that will help reduce turnover and and increase Employee Engagement before I turn it back over to Dan I would like to acknowledge the human resources team that that hung in there with us this afternoon um and thank them personally for the amazing work that they did today thank you [Music] all right so as we wrap up I just want to point out that some of the data those numbers are changing constantly the data was pulled about two weeks ago we continue to make progress there are still vacancies in our school Division and we are still working to fill every single vacancy we are we are not satisfied the work is not done we are pleased with progress however and we want to point that out uh like Jason I want to Express gratitude to
126our HR team and to hiring officials in the school division who make this a smooth process and really this is everyone's success with that we will open it up for any questions you may have a question about the fed Staffing at the hundred percent yep that's great can you tell me about what percentage are provisionally licensed in that department within special education for our new hires so 25 of those uh that's not enough that's not of all the special ed we hired though that's of the special no that is the special ed teachers we hired wait a minute sorry I got just mixed myself up um we don't have the direct numbers right now I can get that for you follow up with roughly I was yeah and the follow-up question to that was going
127to be how are we making sure that we support them so we're in collaboration with the special education department with instructional coaches for a number of our provisionally licensed teachers they're currently in classes at UVA I want to shout out two of our principals uh Dara Bonham and Albemarle and Ashby Johnson at Journey who built schedules where they're special ed teachers who are on a provisional license have common planning time and the department chair is also in a planning period at the same time which provides for robust mentoring and a lot of support that that ease of just-in-time answers to questions special ed coordinators are also providing really critical support thanks I have a comment short I just wanted to say thank you so much it's a wonderful presentation and I really like how you
128infuse throughout the presentation data about our diversity hires I know that's been something that's been a consistent ask and I feel like you guys were very upfront during this presentation and so just thank you thank you for doing that not that you weren't up front before but it was just nice I I just like to Echo that I mean this has been a great first year and and um so I hope it continues I'm sure it will I would like to ask and and Dr Sears I'd like to ask you what do you see as being the key to hiring more employees of color I mean is it let's let's talk teachers is it an out of further Outreach is the firm handshake a really good package well yeah I think there are multiple reasons
129and and ways for us to continue I think Outreach is is definitely one building relationships with all of our partners having the opportunity to be on campuses whether they are historically black colleges and universities starting those type of of opportunities I think we really had a great opportunity to to reach into our our current staff that our classified staff is is significantly more diverse than our teaching staff and those individuals that are interested and and ready and willing to come on board as teachers being able to identify them and put the supports in in place to bring them on board as well handshake is uh is is a is a pretty cool tool that allows us to to Really um uh give opportunity one of the things that we're going to be trying to do
130is uh build our recognition among all universities um we're working on uh presentations to have folks learn about um what we're doing here uh our desire to have our teaching Force look like and and mirror our community so I believe when people find that out and have the opportunities to to speak with our teachers and and folks that love it here that will begin to to see that change and again I think the last thing I don't go too far over but you know having um you know it's a when you have a number of diverse candidates uh diverse candidates feel more comfortable coming here um you know I can speak from uh from experience when and I think um Leilani's group talked about that when you are the only uh individual of color in
131a in a building uh you're isolated in that respect not in all respects but you know in some respects you are so when we have you know seven eight nine teachers in a in a building when we have the opportunity to bring candidates in and they can see themselves in the teaching Force then they begin to understand okay I I do I think I will be comfortable here um because a lot of that is comfort so I wish I could put it on one thing but I think there are a lot of things in in the staff we're really trying to to get as many as we can thank you sir Kate and I were at the special education advisory committee meeting on Tuesday night and when it was announced that there were zero vacancies
132in special education teachers I can't tell you the feeling in the room from both the parents as well as there were a number of teachers there how appreciative they were um because they know how hard it is to find teachers for those positions and so a huge thank you for everything for this you know 1.3 vacancy rate but particularly for that it means a huge deal for those kids and those families to know that they have a consistent teacher this year thanks [Music] um I don't know if it's Jason or Dan with the with respect to the the provision way I'm glad that we are supporting our provisionally licensed teachers but what does that time Horizon look like for them to get fully certified great question the provisional license per Virginia Department of Ed is
133a three-year license and they must complete all the requirements for licensure within those three years so that includes passing the Praxis any general methods courses and any specific content courses the number of courses varies by the subject that they'll be teaching but it is a three-year limit with I think there's some exceptions for extensions but they do not like to provide extensions and HR keeps track of their progress in their annual reviews and and we have some helps them along okay goodness um I had one question um Dr Sears you mentioned that it looks like the provisional license um hiring is going to be something that is going to be on the rise likely uh are we doing anything structurally to account for that to welcome that Trend in to make sure that the you
134know we're still supporting the original licensed teachers throughout the years yeah absolutely um we uh are you know one of the things that we're trying to do is make sure that um what's happened well one of the things that we're trying to do is make sure that our provisionally licensed teachers have a very clear picture of everything they need so we're kind of handing them kind of a road map and we're going to be doing some checking in to make sure that they're they're hitting their their goals and things of that nature um but we are like I said before we're working very closely with the Department of Instruction uh professional development and special education to really make sure and it's been it's been great to work together working with those professionals seeing the programs
135and uh processes they already had in place and then working for us to to make sure that we can reach those reach those candidate provisionally licensed teachers and build and continue to build those programs as well and I think if I'm a part of the the ask for the structures is going to be funding we would like to be in a place where any classified staff member who has a bachelor's degree can come forward and say I want to become a teacher I'm a TA currently I'm an office associate currently I want to become a teacher and then we can map out for them looking at their transcripts what does that look like for you what's the coursework progression to get you licensure in the area you want to be in that does require funding
136to pay for the courses but we we want to get there I I would just want to note a couple things um as jono pointed out this is the HR department's First full year as a department for the school system this is uh it's it's two years since we started making the shift so um I know uh and a lot of that time they weren't fully staffed and they've been able to do really impressive work I mean to be able to outpace Virginia in terms of the vacancy rate during an extremely challenging time and so I think their work speaks for itself I also think that Dan has been particularly Visionary in getting traction with initiatives from the state level it is true that the Virginia Department of Education over the last year has not
137lowered the bar in terms of teacher certification but they have removed a lot of red tape and the timelines have changed so that um so that if someone is seeking provisional license they still need to do the same things that they used to do but the the red tape the lack of Staffing at the state level they've really worked on getting that straightened out so that the person can stick with us and be encouraged and keep moving this this will be a trend but uh for my part I see this as a very positive trend education reformers have talked for decades about Shifting the old system of people getting their four-year degree getting their license all in a bubble at the University level and then being pushed out into classrooms with very little experience they've
138talked about shifting it to models used in other countries where teachers they have some training they begin to get their feet wet in the classroom like our paraprofessionals do and then they they decide hey I want to I want to be in a different role I want to move up to be a teacher so really they've been acting as an intern and then they move into an apprenticeship their compensation increases so that they have that sustainable wage and they get all that support that goes with it so the one takeaway I had Jason was that we've got to keep working with our professional development staff our HR staff because we have to build a whole new infrastructure to accommodate the provisional licenser but I think it's going to be well worth it because the other
139solution is we do know that in terms of instruction and evidence-based reading teaching is very lacking from our four-year universities and since we're bringing people in at the ground floor we can do that training and not have to reverse what's not been accomplished at the state level so thank you for letting me say a few words I'm really proud of the work you all are doing thank you thank you very much next we have a 10 minute break and I see it's about 8 57 I'm gonna say so we'll be back at 907. foreign let's do our business next up we have Family Life Education review and updates with Katina Dudley can I just close this um I don't know if this mouse is working oh there we go thank you sorry now that you
140got up here sorry about that Christine good evening School Board my name is Katina Dudley I am a lead coach for science Health and Family Life I'm here tonight to present to you updates and new recommendations regarding the Family Life education curriculum every seven years we're required to put together a community involvement team that will review our curriculum and our materials and we're also annually asked to take feedback from our stakeholders and make adjustments based on feedback yes the Family Life education curriculum and Albemarle County Public Schools is approved by our local school board we teach standards that have been locally developed but are aligned to the Virginia state standards any changes that are made to the curriculum must be approved by the school board you might remember that I stood here a year ago
141to make recommendations for the upcoming school year so during the 21-22 school year we engaged in conversations with that Community involvement team and in the fall of 2022 we presented recommendations from this team and implemented the approved changes during the 22-23 school year during that school year we received lots of feedback from our stakeholders and so tonight we are coming to you to provide updates but to make additional recommendations based on the feedback that has been received linked here are um documents for the opt-out forms last year in the elementary school and at the elementary level in grades four and five we recommended that the opt-out options be a choice for families that students could engage in the Family Life curriculum either in a gender separated or a gender combined class when we sent those
142opt-out forms home if people didn't opt out if people did not opt out principals didn't know which class to put the students in so there's some changes and recommendations on the recommendation form at the elementary level but we also made some changes to all three forms to include additional information for families to access the Family Life curriculum and for families to have contact information for the family life educator and so you'll see those changes on those forms so as we changed how family life was taught we received lots of feedback throughout the year a team of teachers came together this summer and so I am presenting these recommendations on their behalf at the elementary level we are really just recommending that we change the reproductive diagrams and so you'll see the updated versions of those
143diagrams linked here and then if those are approved we'll replace the old diagrams at the secondary level all of our classes went to gender combined classes so every student that was participating in the Family Life Education participated in gender combined classes secondary educators are recommending updates to the family life lessons to accommodate these learning environments in grade six they combined the two reproductive systems but the changes that you see in these particular slide decks are noted in the notes section so that you could see that the male reproductive slides had some additional structures added so that it would complement what was added in the female reproductive slides in grade 8 the teachers recommended updates to the slides to include updated data and this updated data is in regards to pregnancy prevention and Disease Control and
144so again where you'd see those changes are noted in the notes section of the slide deck so you can see exactly what information was changed I believe in that slide as well we actually removed an image um this year as well so I noted that in the notes as well our high school teachers came together conversations significantly decreased at the high school level when the students were combined and so they actually made some adjustments to a couple of the slide decks this particular request is for new videos to be reviewed to be recommended there are several videos but only one of them is lengthy so they're very short and they are pretty concise to the standards that are to be taught but they would like to replace our old videos with new videos that are
145aligned to the standards and then the last slide deck recommendation is on sexually transmitted infections so again all of the data that you see changed in these are updated to be more current they also increased information about current facts on particular STIs that are to be taught in the class and then you'll see a section of slides here um they're kind of like did you know type slides so that students would hopefully in a small group environment be able to have conversations about the topic without feeling like they needed to put themselves out there in front of the entire class so some of these recommendations that you see in the notes are to update information but the other information is to the other changes are to increase student engagement in the classroom the recommendations that
146have been presented to you tonight are aligned to our locally developed standards if you have any questions we'd be happy to provide you with that information I do thank you for your time and for your consideration to these recommendations I guess one thing that would be helpful from would be links to maybe what the old stuff was so that we can compare and see the changes because I don't know what so I'm happy to put that in there some people felt like that was confusing because the they weren't they're not identical side by side slides so that's why any changes were made in the notes but we have all of that and it's public for even now but I'm happy to put this slides Linked In for you to make that easier and it doesn't
147have to be in the presentation if you don't want if you could just if send it so we can compare that would be helpful and then also I guess I just I guess I'm curious about what level of this is being dictated by um code section and legislation I mean you know like if you look at the teen pregnancy one yeah uh you know going through that slides I've got some concerns you know it but I know that you'll do a process for this so I guess I'm just curious the conversations and how they win and what is like being um what that looks like and what we have to say so for example my issue with the teen pregnancy one is you know there's one slide for contraception and it's three of the bullet
148points are about abstinence and then one slide saying there could be other methods and it doesn't list them tell them or any information on them and then it's got some stats around teen pregnancy which is fine but then some of the ones which I'm assuming are supposed to be convincing or persuasive are a little bit odd like limited paternity leave not really something that's going to affect High School males when they they have baby but you know I don't know I'm just curious because I don't think this is all from RP I'm just curious what it was and what were required and why it might be so limited yeah I have similar concerns regarding the the birth control methods and you know if it's that there's there's blue code or law that we're we're supposed
149to be highlighting abstinence but I don't think that is the only thing we should be highlighting but I can actually pull this statement for that for you guys so that you know what the Virginia stamp States statement is around that particular guideline and then we'd be happy to take your feedback from that statement and make adjustments to that slide deck I think teachers have lots of similar feelings so not wanting to necessarily speak but yes I will take that and I'll share that statement with you guys because that's easy to access from the state standards thank you I gotta be honest here I mean this is that's terrible what is the statement this is like feeling like it's going backwards I feel like I've read articles when I was a high school student that was
150like how abstinence only sex education actually increases pregnancy rates so I am just flap a little bit flabbergasted I mean I get that we're doing our job but we're literally telling high school students who are sorry some of them are going to have sex that abstinence is the only method and we provide them no information for if they're not abstinence abstinent that seems like bad public policy that might be something you need to handle at the state level I don't know you could do that but I'm thinking you're right I will provide you with that information Katina I know you convene with stakeholders and the teachers got together but what kind of feedback do you get from the high school level students I mean I'm not concerned about the middle Elementary and that they would
151give a lot of feedback but I don't what do high school students think of the level of material do we do any formal evaluation I don't have any formal evaluation we had a team meeting today with all of our health and PE leaders and we even had some of our teachers that are former high school students and they were just talking about the limited amount of change that's happened even since they were in high school with this these standards in this curriculum I think the biggest thing that the high school teachers really kind of want to address is really how do we engage these students in these conversations on these topics and let them know that there are resources available to them if you know it in all of our standards locally every unit ends
152with a standard that talks about making sure students know that there are local resources and local agencies that are available to them and so that is one of the things that they I think tried to also um include in that particular slide deck as well thank you Katina so I look forward to getting that uh statement figure out where we align on all those things is there um so we're taking this for information and then we need to do action on it next time yes um I think too one thing that you can note on the opt-out Forum just to help you guys with you when you think about the clarity around this when local school boards determine what the standards are that are to be taught on our opt-out form what the state requires
153is taught at in all schools is listed there and so you'll see that those are things that we have to include in our family life education when it's taught locally and then the state document it's it's going to be easy to find what your request is because the state document starts with that statement [Music] what percentage of our of our students opted out I mean I'm sure it probably varied My Level but maybe not it did you know we actually have the numbers and I should have put a slide on that and put the numbers in that because we asked the teachers to report we have to give an opt-out form at the very start of the school year and then we have to give a second opt-out form two weeks prior to the instruction
154of Family Life Education um it not only varied by level but it also varied by school communities as well and so we have those numbers I'm happy to just share that with you I think one of the things that came up in conversation today was just making sure that the language on our opt-out form is friendly for our elementary families because when you state what we have to teach at the local level some families think that's all taught in fourth and fifth grade but that's the progression from fourth through 10th grade and it was even recommended today that we clarify that even on our opt-out form we wouldn't be changing any language but we would be clarifying what's taught at elementary middle and high school so that families don't think they're going to get all
155of this in fourth and fifth grade and to be honest with you we're talking about two to five days of what's being of of a lesson right and so even we're talking about five hours of instruction annually that we present to you with the feedback we get a lot of feedback about that five hours of instructions which this is a really important tip I personally feel like this is really important I really want our teachers to feel comfortable because I think that sometimes this is where these students are able to have these conversations so that's one of the things we're working with the teachers is to really think about what the engagement looks like through these particular lessons that can be difficult in front of a classroom with students and are these forms in Spanish
156or what do we do with our Esau student we do post them in Spanish as well and everything is now posted on our website so when things go on the website families can get any of our documents translated even our slot decks in any language thank you this is extremely granular about since you were talking about the opt-out forms wouldn't each grade level have its own yes so um yes we have if you were went to the website you would see one even K through 10 we just don't have a lot that we changed with the K through three it's really the fourth grade where things start to uh when we start to get a lot of feedback from our families um but yes there is a form so the elementary form would both fourth
157and fifth would have the same changes that you see on the sample there and then the Middle School six through eight those forms would all be consistent and same with the two High School forms but yes there's one per grade level what's different about the forms at each grade level is we list the standards that are taught because families have the opportunity to opt out of some standards and not all standards thank you Katina I know I just behind the scenes I know all the work that you all put into this and what I would suggest you know given the boards thinking about that the particular lessons is when you email the board that information if you can include Helen because that could just be something they talk about in terms of legislation priorities going
158into this season okay I appreciate that thank you thank you recognizing that you you have you cannot control that all right thank you very much for your time thank you Katina the literacy act resource selection process Chandra Hayes okay good evening Dr Haas and board members I am going to actually turn this over to Miss Michelle Kastner and it's Karen hethcock to share this presentation as part of the steering committee good evening board members how are you this evening thank you for this opportunity we're actually super excited to share this tonight we're excited about our literacy adoption process I'll start with saying that um as you know in 2022 the general assembly passed the Virginia literacy act which is to improve early literacy outcomes for all Virginia Young Learners and beginning next year every student
159in grades K through 3 will receive core literacy instruction based in the science of reading so Karen is going to go over our current state currently the guaranteed Bible curriculum in Reading K5 is being a reader when the Virginia literacy act came out requiring that next year at um all core reading programs in K3 are evidence-based literacy instruction being a reader was not a program that was approved as a vdoe approved program it scored well in developing comprehension and background knowledge small group instruction writing and independent practice where it didn't meet expectations was around phonological awareness phonemic awareness and phonics so to shore up phonics instruction this year every K3 classroom teacher received a you fly foundations program which is an explicit and systematic phonics program that follows an established Scopes and sequence so that's
160being implemented in addition to Bar in classrooms across the county to shore up the phonics piece that Barr didn't meet for the adoption is we are totally committed to having transparent process for parents community members staff and school board and the school board and we're also committed to be inclusive we want to work to hear all voices and that would include all every elementary teacher in our County and also parents we have figured out a way to do that and we're going to be super thoughtful thinking about our learners for today and also with our goal to catch everyone up and we're going to provide a clear process with attention to the details I just wanted to you know share with all of you the members of our steering committee if you'll notice we have
161representation from many departments in our division and basically our goal as a steering committee is to help guide the process so in terms of the larger committee we will have five building level administrators we're going to have actually three teachers from every Elementary School we're going to have a K-5 teacher we're going to have an Esau or sped teacher and we're also going to have a reading specialist from every school and we also will have at least five Community Partners as part of the larger committee okay um so the adoption steering committee has met several times really to just lay out the logistics of of what the timeline will be and how the process will flow and we have our first meeting as a big group 65 or so people coming together on Wednesday next
162week to look at the six programs that have already been vetted and reviewed by the state and approved by the state so those are the six that we're going to be looking at on Wednesday next week we will be splitting into study teams and each study team will be assigned a different program to review we're using a rubric that is aligned with the rubric State developed and each of the study teams will go away and have until the October 25th meeting to take a deep dive into that program using the rubric coming back with pros and cons to share with the larger group and answer questions kind of give give the feedback on the program that they took a deep dive into and at that 10 25 the end of October meeting we want to
163try to be able to narrow it down to the two choices um that the the larger committee agrees to as soon as those choices are made we want to get um each of these kits into every single school and to Center one so that teachers and families have an opportunity to come in and view it through the month of November we're going to have QR codes that lead to rating scales for teachers and families to give feedback and to ask questions when we come back together on the 11 29 November 29th we will have all of the feedback from the schools and families and we are going to have the two Publishers come present and then answer questions that may have come to the foref through the feedback process once that happens then our goal
164is to have a recommendation to send to the board on January ultimately we want to make sure these kits are in the hands of teachers and that there's a comprehensive PD plan in place before the end of this year so that people can come back confident that they they know how next year will look right I was going to add that our goal is actually to be Forward Thinking when it comes to PD that we want to be able to provide the PD well before the end of the school year so that teachers will have multiple opportunities to actually dig deep with the new program so that's not that we're getting training in August and then a week later kids welcome to the building so we're going to be super thoughtful about that and then
165I think the next one just shows the six approved programs that the state has put out and we're in the process of getting all the kits right now being delivered to us and now our County so I just want to open it up for any questions you know Michelle you talked about what we're going to do in this intervening year to buttress to be a reader um but how does this I mean and assuming that you know next year we'll have one of these programs what do we do about the kids say in fifth grade that have not had these programs I don't even know what I'm asking yeah but is there going to be a continued support for them to get them up absolutely yeah so we have shared support yes we have a
166tiered support system um currently under that system we use something called sips which is explicit instruction in phonics and phonemic awareness so I think that I'm not worried about that I think that right now if you were to walk in any Elementary School uh principals have already come to us saying this is what we need in terms of extra sip materials whatever it is we need especially for our at-risk schools we have already provided those materials for them so I'm I'm confident that our reading achievement data will increase this year I'm confident in our principles that we have in all of our schools and our teachers and Karen is new to the role she's a literacy expert herself and she's already been in all 15 schools and she works closely with the literacy specialist so
167we have a constant communication constant communication from schools basically letting us know what they need and then we're also going into classrooms and modeling Karen you're in classrooms today right just kind of observing firsthand how the instruction is going and it went super positive today so I think the key getting through this year is keeping lines of communication open and that us and central office our remaining super responsive to the needs of our schools and our students and that's what we're striving to do and I know that Patrick depart Patrick's department is actually doing working on the same work we're we're all trying to wrap around all of our schools just to get students what they need and teachers who are who are the community members of your working group I mean not individually necessarily
168but just are they parents are they Educators at UVA yes so we have a combination we have parents we've reached out to um to see if we can get someone from UVA um to to want to join us in on this work and then we have um community members that don't have students in the school but are interested in the literacy work so it's a combination and we didn't want to just say parents we don't say families huge thank you for putting the special ed and English learning teachers at the same level because I think that's really important um the one I know it makes it difficult because they're on an hourly rate but because so many literacy groups are led by teaching assistants um I don't know if at this point it would be
169possible to put any teaching assistance on that team because I think looking at those curricula with that eye to how they're being implemented kind of put from a teacher lens but also from a from a from an assistant lens or at least as people are doing a review kind of having that in mind okay I yeah and teaching assistants can are certainly going to be in the schools with the programs for the month of November and I would open up yeah for anyone who's actually a good idea it has that role in school right yes sir so during the month of November 1st to about December 15th we're going to coordinate so that every teacher and we can include teaching assistants that they have the opportunity to look through all the materials and go through
170the ratings yeah yeah so in a way and with that just knowing they're hourly making sure that they yeah absolutely um and then the other thing I was thinking about is as you mean obviously as you go through this there's the budget and we what are things did a number of us were at a reading event last Friday and they were and the uh Dr Koons agree with that right yeah and she was talking about you know it's about the materials but then it's about the training which you've talked about but then it's also about um scheduling and time and calendaring and so I think um more information as we go forward about kind of how you're going to partner with Maya and Roslyn and kind of on the budget side of this so in
171addition to the uh or maybe you guys are already there yeah how are we going to talk about the cost of training and then time needed to really do this work what's that what's the total total cost of ownership as we go into the next budget season right and Dr Hayes has already set up a meeting with Roslyn to discuss procurement so I think we're on top of it and we're happy to come and give updates that'd be great I think that's a this is something we should kind of continue to partner on moving yeah any other questions I would I just want to concur with um Dr Berlin around the teaching assistants that's feedback we get is that they want to be an on the ground floor of making decisions and also the PD
172I think that and we all know the critical role role to Dr akov this and Pat will talk about this briefly but for students who I mean the the reading results in Virginia across the board were poor and sat still the new state superintendent coming in announced a program called All Hands Virginia and part of that is uh high-intensity academic tutoring and so every School Division in Virginia is going to be required to provide high intensity academic tutoring for students that either failed their Sol tests and reading and math reading or math or scored below a threshold of passing that identified them as at risk of failure so um and that's it's not you're going to do it next year it's not you're going to do it in January it's you're going to start doing
173it in October uh so while it's going to be a heavy lift for us because we've got to find tutors we've got to figure out our school schedules uh May mean restructuring some some things in terms of the elementary school day just to get this fit in but I also I support it because what it does is it mandates something that people kind of nibble around the edges to try to accomplish and she just basically said we got to catch up so here's the resources there's funding behind it and um I I'm glad you asked that question because it leads into this mandate that we that we need to deliver for our students and for our community with the goal of catching them up yeah I don't think I have the bandwidth to look at
174all these six programs but once it's narrowed down to two I would love to for you to just brief us on on the two and why those two and then like I dig in a little bit more okay we'll be happy to do that thank you I don't have so much a question as a comment I appreciate um I appreciate you guys sharing this because I remember us it was Ill time but discussing being a reader um December 2019 and I was checking on minutes and the only other time we looked really discussed it was in January of 2020 right before the pandemic and I certainly didn't have as much of an understanding about how we had done the selection process or any of those things so I really appreciate all of this getting shared
175with us having really rigorous process for input and I really appreciate you mentioning making sure and already thinking about how we implement it with Fidelity because that's something we heard you know years after we put you know well the pandemic happened in the interim but two years after we put being a reader into place so I'm glad that we've learned from that and thank you so and add to your point I just want to say that um years and years ago being a reader started in our school system and there was no uh formal selection process uh it started out at a couple of our schools I think it started out at Stone Robinson as a choice we didn't have a program across the school system and uh and again this was many years ago
176and so um based on some principles using it with their staff and the staff enjoying using it it started to spread around the school system because they they had really enjoyed the program called being a writer before that so there are so many lessons learned about uh you know how you do this work and again I I the thing I appreciate appreciate about the Virginia literacy Act is they're saying the basically from the video we down we're saying these are all vetted programs that if they're implemented with Fidelity you're going to get the results that the state expects instead of in the past basically saying we expect results here's the standards now you figure it out and so for us as a school system that has really wrestled with implementation over the years this is
177this is a blessing for us to be able to have this kind of direction from the vdue and it's common in other states and has been for a long time but Virginia I've often said is a is a place it's a museum of Education like how did they do it in the past go to Virginia and find out so this is a step in the right direction there's going to be uniformity in the state and I really want to just say I I how appreciative I am of Dr Hayes and Karen Michelle for their the Outreach efforts that they're going to engage in to make sure we do it right this time Matt back to your comment that there's money attached to the Intensive tutoring would that also apply for intensive tutoring like in next
178summer school so you want to talk about the money well let me broadly broadly so uh I'm I'm going to send you all the Playbook tomorrow and I'm sending it to all employees in the weekly check-in so basically there's uh what the what the video is saying for particular students is a requirement of a number of hours that they need to do of tutoring per week and then they provide different options right so it could be before school after school I would prefer during school trying to figure out how to use some of our intervention periods and times when they're in the the response to intervention work there's also a provision that they can do it on the weekends but summer is also a time and you can take funding that comes with it to
179use it during the summer time to fund the high intensity tutoring we're also you know not that we want to get too far ahead of ourselves but we do have a summer school debrief meeting coming up next week and one of the things I'm interested in doing is expanding our summer school because right now it's just essentially what is it 19 days I'd like I'd like to see it be two weeks longer and we've had a lot of positive feedback about our summer school program this last year and the changes we made to it so you'll be getting an update on summer school either the next board meeting or the first one in October and I'm going to make a pitch to say we should do another couple weeks of it and we can use
180some of this funding to defray that yeah I'm just going to quickly comment on the state budget as you know finally was adopted we don't have the specifics we just can send what's from the headlines the spreadsheets will be released soon but it's our understanding that there is a pot of one-time money that is supposed to be devoted towards learning recovery and can be spent over more than just this year so it can go into the summer so we're excited to see those details and our plan is to present a budget update to the board in November and so you didn't have to correct me on anything everything you said was accurate I had a I have a question just to make sure I heard everything okay there are teachers from each school that's going
181to be involved in the selection process thank you yes right yes okay then once the program has been chosen there will be intensive training for our teachers on how to implement the program yeah yeah okay yes yes and yes okay thank you okay thank you thank you thank you next we have the assessment and accreditation update from Patrick McLaughlin this is usually Jackson Zimmerman's slot you know you took the words right out of my mouth I said I finally get to see what it feels like to be Jackson Zimmerman up here it's a good feeling too you know I get to keep it it's all in my hands right now I get to keep everybody here so sorry I think this is getting a little feedback on there so good evening board members uh it's
182a pleasure to be with you here tonight my name is Pat McLaughlin I am the assistant superintendent for strategic planning for the School Division and tonight I'm here to provide you an update on our Sol achievement data for the 22-23 school year a primary reason that we share this data with the board each year is that our Sol results are really one of the key indicators we have of whether or not we're meeting our mission specifically they tell us how well we are trying how well we are moving toward ending the predictive value of race class gender and special capacities on our children's Success Through high quality teaching and learning for all as a reminder before we get into the details tonight there are two ways in which the vdoe compiles and reports achievement results
183in our schools the first are what they term assessment results these results indicate the number of students who passed an Sol test by earning a 400 or more in our spring testing window these data are provided both the division level and at the individual School level the second way in which the state reports School level results are what we term accreditation results these are results of Sol tests with adjustments for student growth which can be achieved by showing improvement from a previous Sol test even though a student did not pass that test these results determine in individual school's accreditation and are reported only at the school level so we'll begin tonight by looking at our assessment results this chart shows our reading results and the four bars that you see on the bar graph uh
184show our assessment results for the last two years compared to the state of Virginia the light blue bar on the very left is our 2122 County results the lighter red bar is the 2122 State results the blue bars the darker blue bars are results from last school year and acps and the darker red bar is the results from the state of Virginia from the 22-23 school year the state reports these results for all of our students combined and then for seven distinct membership groups Asian students black students Hispanic students students who are multiple races students with disabilities students who are economically disadvantaged and students who are English learners so in reading last year our overall pass rate dropped by one percentage point from 2122 and in our membership group categories we improved in three and
185declined in four yeah looking at our writing results our overall results in writing Rose by six percentage points and our membership groups saw six groups increase and one group decline Patrick I'm sorry for the interruption but it's a clarifying question um and I'm sorry if it's just late I'm not getting it where would be some you know what's the bar for someone who doesn't identify as one of these groups so they would they would be in all so like we have some groups that are too small so if you had say uh um Asian Pacific Islander no I mean like a white uh that is not a membership group that gets uh that's that is accounted for in accreditation purposes um so we tend not to have that up there I can add that in
186there yeah because I'm so the all is the average of all these ones so you know that piece the majority of our students are white so it would be interesting to see how that is in comparison to the all the breakout groups yeah typically so absolutely we can add that back in um and I'll show you and we can get that off pull that off of the school quality profiles as well uh so back to our writing uh we had a six percentage Point increase in uh our overall uh results last year six membership groups increased from one year to the other and one group declined for math Trends uh our overall results Rose three percentage points with five groups improving one remaining flat and one declining in science we saw an increase of five
187percentage points overall and we saw increases in all seven of our membership groups and finally our history scores were a six percent with six groups improving and one group staying flat so in summary uh in those five categories each one has eight uh groups that are reported out we saw Improvement in 30 categories we were flat in two categories and we saw a decline in eight categories one thing that I think is important to to take a look at also is where we are in comparison to the state and outside of our overall categories we continue to be below the state averages uh in most uh reporting categories that we just shared in addition to the assessment results the vdoe reports accreditation results for individual schools School accreditation is based on six quality indicators for
188our elementary schools and middle schools and those are achievement Gap those are academic achievement for all students in English academic achievement for achievement Gap groups in English the same two breakouts for math academic achievement for science has only looked at for uh as a for all of the students in the school and chronic absenteeism in our high schools there are three additional categories for which they are judged for accreditation our graduation and completion index our dropout rate and our college career in Civic Readiness index to earn a rating of a level one or level two generally that means a pass rate for level one of 75 percent or higher in Reading 70 or higher in our other subjects a level two is 65 to 75 in Reading 65 to 70 in math and science um
189and below 65 percent would put you into uh level three uh if schools have one or more indicators at level three they receive a rating of accredited with conditions but it's important to note also that the state Awards what they call three-year accreditation waivers so if a school meets all of the benchmarks at level one or two for three consecutive years for the next three years they're granted accreditation regardless of where their results are uh and we'll talk about why that will see the impact of that on some of our schools uh in just a minute so while official accreditation results have yet to be released I believe the official date is the 18th of September if they don't change it uh I can share with you tonight what we believe we're going to see
190in those results based on a preview that we've gotten that we've received from the state so last year out of our 24 schools 20 were fully accredited uh four were accredited with conditions those are Greer Mountain View Red Hill and Woodbrook and of our schools that were accredited we had eight schools that needed to use a three-year waiver to receive that accreditation meaning they had at least one level three category uh that was there this year we're anticipating that 21 schools will be accredited and three will be accredited with conditions Greer Red Hill and Woodbrook will continue to be our schools accredited with conditions Mountain View improved enough that they moved up to an accredited school this year also we have some schools that are getting their accreditation through the three-year waiver but that number's
191reduced to five from eight from uh last year so to sum up our accreditation status and what we're anticipating uh from the state we've seen an increase in accredited schools uh and a decrease in schools accredited by a three-year waiver so in both our assessment and accreditation results we have some bright spots but our work is far from done as it relates to student achievement and our goal of ending the predictive value of race class gender and special capacities on Student Success I'd like to spend the final few minutes of the presentation providing a brief update on how we plan to address academic progress so as you heard in the previous presentation uh we've got a couple of things in the works one is the Virginia literacy act which will go into effect for all
192school districts in the 24-25 school year we are accelerating some elements of this act to have them in place this year this includes having at least one reading specialist and our interventionist in each of our schools with up to six positions in our Title One schools to support this work we have 15 teachers enrolled in the VCU reading specialist cohort to earn their reading specialist endorsement additionally we are supplementing our reading program with dedicated phonics instruction using materials from you fly the University of Florida literacy Institute as Dr Haas alluded to as well and you're probably aware that Governor younken's office recently announced all in Virginia plan to address covid-19 era learning loss by focusing resources on literacy learning and attendance an element of this plan is the development and implementation of high impact high-intensity
193academic tutoring and this week we received an update from the vdoe on recommendations for implementing this program and staff is currently working on developing that implementation additional areas of focus for improvement come from recommendations we receive through the Bellwether audit while you will receive a more comprehensive update for our work in our work session in October I'd like to share a few highlights of what we have moving forward so far this year each of the main bullets here is a direct recommendation from the Bellwether team so this year we're increasing the use of formative assessments for the first time in my memory we have assessments division created assessments uh that all students will take in grades three through eight and for our high school end of course Sol classes these assessments will be given different
194assessments each quarter for the first three quarters of the year they're aligned to division Curriculum maps and pacing guides to ensure coverage of a material prior to assessment and I'd really like to point out the tremendous work that the office of instruction has done to make this happen prior to creating these common assessments the team turned around the creation and revision of pacing guides with Incredible efficiency in many hours of work over the course of this summer our division is in the best position I've ever seen it as it relates to pacing and assessment the Department of Instruction is also in the process of adopting a new Ela curricula as you heard just a moment ago as well as looking at secondary math in our Algebra 1 curricula as recommended by Bellwether our learning walk
195tool has been redesigned through a partnership with the office of strategic planning in the office of professional learning and the board will hear much more about the work that Jamie Gellner is doing around theory of change at the October work session as well as the process of reimagining the instructional coaching model and the engagement supports we have in place for our families finally as a division we've also identified six schools that we're calling accelerate schools these schools we feel face different challenges and need different supports than many of our other schools we challenge the principles of these schools to consider what they currently need that they do not have that they would make the most difference in improving student outcomes each School worked with departments across the division to identify their areas of need with
196most focusing on teacher professional development the creation of new support positions in the acquisition and implementation of progress monitoring tools we'll be working closely with these schools as they work to accelerate progress for their students so while there's much work still to be done we have many puzzle pieces that are falling into place and as we conclude tonight I'd like to remind the board that detailed information about the School Division and our progress can be found on the Virginia school quality profile site I thank the board for their time tonight and we'll be happy to take any questions see a similar adoption process for secondary math and algebra 1. I can't remember where that sat on the timeline so the so so Bellwether had a process looking at math that went out through about the
197summer of 2025 uh for that there were some kind of immediate pieces uh that Melissa Mitchum and our instructional team that works with math have in place uh have started over the summer that's primarily focused on our high school algebra one courses uh working with the teachers there uh two needs that they've identified they felt like they needed a um a better diagnostic tool uh and so they are what they're developing something for that there and then following the use of that diagnostic tool having additional resources that are there so while I don't have all the specific details of what those resources are I know that that is is in progress and that team's working together right now with uh if you look at the Bellwether audit it's got some step by steps through summer
1982025 that includes things like summer Bridge programs and uh and additional supports at our middle schools following on we're thinking in math tonight Rebecca um I mean I'm con I'm delighted we're doing something about the reading I really want to focus a lot more on the math and science as well does any of the Intensive tutoring funding from the state permit us to focus it does it it focuses it uh is designed both for reading and math uh and so you'll as Dr Haas alluded to based on students performance on the Sol students who actually I think they set a pretty high bar up all the way up to a score of around 450 for most kids which is 50 points higher than passing those students will be eligible for tutoring for reading and and
199for math based on their results they're not they're not students are going to need more input before they get to the freshmen or eighth grade ninth grade or freshman algebra to be ready to do it anyway you know where I'm going this is a random comment but um I vaguely recall that at some point last year we set Target goals for what we wanted to see with the Sol data and we laid it out and I feel like I'd appreciate a slide or an update on where we hit the goals where we didn't hit the goals and kind of that slide this was like a table getting filled in so that we can see oh we wanted to improve by two points here we did it for our Hispanic students we did not for and
200then in an Ideal World which I won't be here but um I'd like to see that hopefully tied you know Bellwether talked about creating like a comprehensive kind of theory of change um and like tasking like so we can see what is being effective towards changing that so I'd like to see that in the idea but just in the short term I'd like to make sure that we're or maybe not maybe we don't care about the targets I do anymore no I mean I think we should I think it's important to like what did we say like you said at Target you can't just say it's over here but it says like look at the data we made it or we didn't what are we doing and then I think I think that's one of
201the things that you know Bellwether has talked about it's like with those kind of targets both for kind of dates by which but also what we do like having an open transparent process that every two months every quarter we kind of look at where we are on meeting the not the score goals but the benchmarks regarding um what the tasks to be done oh yeah like the theory of the theory of change and then I think also you know then when what does that mean for the scores and how what are we going to do as we're not as we make it or aren't making it I think it's important to I think to me though I mean I think it's important to have that for all the things that Bellwether set out when we
202were making those goals I think it was hard oh yeah I just did it like very mathematically and you know I think for us for me Bellwether is a watershed moment and so those things that I was thinking ahead of that I didn't have a sense of what was wrong yet I mean you know we did have a sense but we didn't have as clear of a sense so I feel like if we were to do that project again maybe after having this theory of change that might be a little bit more meaningful I mean I get what you're saying definitely about like hey if we say something we should stick with it but I just didn't think that it was educated in in the way I was doing it others may be different but
203that was how I felt about it yeah I think you're getting at what I was feeling it's like I do want to not drop off the fact that we set clear goals and said we'd have an update on here's the metrics and did we hit them but I think yeah I have do have that feeling of well you know how did we set those goals how do we set those goals we basically just said let's try for two points in every category um yeah that's great Patrick what happened at Mountain View I know you know it's it's hard to pin anything on any one thing I think it's a combination of of our teachers of our leadership of our community you know that there's so much that goes into a school improving and if it
204was if we could simplify it and say well here's the one thing Mountain View did well then we do that everywhere right and so it's uh you know that that a a the system model that a school has is affected by so many things but I will say that um you know I think about the the leadership that Cindy uh brought to Mountain View I think that um that we wouldn't have seen it without strong leadership at that school we wouldn't have seen it without strong teachers who are dedicated to moving this work forward uh but it's hard uh other than speaking broadly about it to to be able to pin it to one thing all right thank you so much thank you thanks Pat um last item on our agenda that I already put
205away other business by board members and and or superintendent um I just a super quick one because I announced that I was running but I didn't save the date um I that would be effect and I want people to think like I'm resigning right now I effective October 15th but I won't be at the next meeting um but I will be at the October 12th meeting that's all thank you I was just going to say and Rebecca already mentioned it she and I were at the seaac meeting on Tuesday and we had a huge turnout Dr Haas was there Doctor Hayes was there uh several other Daphne Kaiser was there and several other people but what was most impressive is representatives from all of our 25 schools it was they said it was the biggest
206turnout they've ever had so it was I highly recommend going I'm not as energetic as Rebecca who says she goes to every one but you need to go to at least one all right barring any other business we returned thank you guys [Music]