School Board Meeting - February 23, 2023

001um just to briefly give you the guidelines on public comment we invited actively the Publix in for matters relevant to school board governance and provide time in our business meetings to hear from our residents and community members during public comment we expect respectful and on-topic comments District disruptive behavior from speakers or for members of the public in attendance will not be tolerated anyone who willfully disrupt this meeting in a manner that prevents or interferes with the orderly conduct of the meeting maybe eject ejected by the chair following protocols would be expected state your name and address or your voting district address comments to the school board as a whole limit comments to those matters that are relevant to school board governance or School Division operations give written statements and other supporting materials to the clerk

002if you are unable to complete the presentation in the time allotted a copy of supporting materials will be provided to school board members three minutes will be allowed for each presenter to speak however the chairman well that doesn't applied tonight A color-coded light system is in the front to time presentations the yellow light means the speaker is two minutes into your presentation the red light means the speaker has reached the three minute limit and must stop at that point in order to maintain respect for all points of view the school board requests no clapping booing or any other audible forms of support or non-support be used if members of the public want to show their support for a speaker they may stand or raise their hands we have 11 speakers um tonight on tap the

003first three Troy Selmer Brennan lecti in Philadelphia Soto in that order good evening members of the school board my name is Tori Selmer and I am Mom to four children within the acps district I am here if as a parent in the Whitehall District my children range from elementary to high school students I am in a unique position as I am also an 8th grade math teacher for acps tonight I come to you as a concerned parent regarding what the future Middle School experience will be for my Rising 6th and 7th graders my purpose tonight is to ask for your guidance and intervention but also to make my fellow acps families aware of the changes that are coming to Middle School especially to our eighth grade students but also to a few 7th grade students

004like my son next year all middle school students will all 8th grade classes will be run on an every other day schedule just like the high school this includes math and language arts courses the county is asking 8th grade students to take eight credits of classes while freshmen in high school are only taking seven not to mention a minimum of 13 State and County mandated assessments from all core classes that 8th graders take middle school students are still developmentally developing socially emotionally and academically in order to be able to handle an every other day course load by the time they reach high school why are we not honoring an every other day at the healthy development of middle schoolers I'm truly worried about the extra unnecessary stress my children and all children will be under

005under with more classes all of which will be moving at a faster pace my soon-to-be 7th grader will have a choice for math class next year math 8 or algebra both which are every other day classes being advanced in math does not mean he has developed the needed organizational skills or maturity required to be successful in an every other day math class additionally there are only a few electives that he's interested in taking and would prefer to have math every day but we are being told that this is not an option why not why can't parents and students have a voice and a choice to place their child into a class that they will feel will be appropriate beneficial and build the student towards success at a time when we are recovering from covid by

006bridging gaps why are we cutting the time in half for our math and language arts classes these gaps are evident and do affect every aspect of learning in the classroom when asked for data and research that support these changes the county has replied to teachers and I quote the data is out there find it yourselves as a teacher I find this alarming but as a parent I find this response appalling as a school board you are charged with a proving curriculum at this increased Pace I am certain that not all the curriculum will be covered and that needs to be addressed I want to know that my children are receiving the full curriculum at a pace that allows them to think process ask questions and be involved in the learning process not memorize and move

007on I am left wondering why are these changes being made and at what cost to our kids I want the choice for my children and for all students to be able to enroll in year-long math classes and language arts classes thank you for your time thank you Miss Selma Fernand lecti good evening my name is Vernon lechte and I teach at elmar high school and I am president of the album Education Association I have right here an open letter to the Albemarle County School Board in regards to collective bargaining dear school board members last school year Albemarle County School staff United to gain basic labor rights already enjoyed by many public school teachers across the country after a law passed by the Virginia General Assembly went into effect in May 2021 teachers and School Employees

008were poised to finally receive a say in their working conditions by being able to negotiate their employment contracts through a process called collective bargaining because of the way the state law was written it requires Municipal workers such as acps employees to receive approval from their local government or School Board in order to have their right to bargain recognized here in Albemarle the alma Education Association started building broad support among staff to become the legally recognized bargaining unit collective bargaining is a tool that allows workers the opportunity to help the local government address the biggest issues that are causing High rates of turnover in staff shortages a recent research report from the Commonwealth Institute identifies how collective bargaining can be a critical tool to improve School Staffing pay in morale collective bargaining giving teachers and School

009staff a voice in what goes on in our schools will help achieve the goal of attracting and retaining quality Educators a goal shared by the entire community we are disappointed that despite the fact that the majority of acps workers came together to ask you last May to accept their collective bargaining resolution you voted against bargaining rights for your employees at that time since last spring our staffing shortages have gotten worse and other localities have begun to pass strong collective bargaining resolutions Charlottesville school bus drivers will soon bargain their first contract and the city schools are poised to pass a strong resolution in the coming weeks we worry if you do not take action soon our children and our schools will be left behind as your recruitment efforts become even more difficult the time for collective

010bargaining is now when we brought a resolution before the board we ask that you engage with us work collaboratively with us to draft a resolution that works for Albemarle County make sure that your most valuable resource for our children's education have a real say in creating the conditions that support both staff and Student Success sincerely the Albemarle Education Association and the following individuals thank you very much Mr lecti Miss Soto good evening my name is Philadelphia Elementary this evening I brought with me this beautiful golden apple an award I was given last school year by my colleagues my students and the families who this evening are here with us gracias families I have been a licensed teacher for eight years however I have been part of the alma County Public Schools for much longer than

011that this is a School Division I was born at as an educator this is the School Division I live in and this is a School Division that I really hold close to my heart I joined the album Education Association two years ago because of collective bargaining I believe after my County when we say that we want to do better for families students and educators however the steps forward are falling short collective bargaining will be more than a survey it will be more than an interview Collective Agony will make us active participants in the changes and in the decision-making process we teachers nurses counselors bus drivers janitors cafeteria and office staff we are the ones in the building we are the ones handling the best we can handling does not mean that one has achieved its

012is its best we need to be able to perform our our best acps surveys interviews and new comedies do discuss they discuss our issues but they don't have the power to solve them collective bargaining has the potential to truly change these things for the better when we look at the percentage of Educators who live each year it may not look like a big number however those of us who are in the building we know that every time an educator in our school quits just like two half quit in the last two weeks in my school we feel we feel those Educators living and the children feel the negative impact as well we can continue losing Educators because of the conditions in our schools for their workers this Golden Apple represents a commitment to do my

013best unfortunately the working conditions we educators are experiences are not supporting the commitment this golden apple represent suggests to collective bargaining let's do it together let's learn let's join the partnership families students teachers and School Board thank you Miss Soto our next three speakers Roberto pinita Amy Gardner and Allison Spillman good evening my name is Roberto Pineda I am a parent of a child at Jackson P Berlin Middle School I live in Rio railroad District [Music] I am here to talk to you about the collective bargaining for a School employee I was a teacher for 15 years in my country I know about that if for this reason that I support the right of teacher and School staff to have a voice in their employing terms Collective bargain Health educator feel supported and badly in

014their profession When The War environment is pleasing for teacher the student the family of students and the community are the ones who benefits the most Educators looking for a new school division will choose the one that display a collaborative and respectful partnership between leadership and stuff collective bargaining is one way to achieve that thank you good evening members of the school board and Dr Haas my name is Amy gertner and I'm a resident of the Whitehall District I've been a teacher at Broadus wood for 30 years I'm the former president of the aea it has been eight months since I spoke before the board I talked about my recent death of my father the importance of relationships and the challenges of being an educator I reminded you the A8 was the fastest growing local in

015the state all the current AAA officers spoke at the last board meeting they are the reason acps employees strongly support Collective boarding and for this large crowd being here tonight I was asked are you sure you want to come tonight to speak with no hesitation I replied oh yes this is what a girl growing up in the 1970s dreams about doing I watched Billie Jean King Beat Bobby Riggs I watched Norma Jean stand on a table with her Union sign but it's not easy to be here 18 days ago I met with a hospice nurse to talk about my mother's care recognizing and saying I need help is one of the bravest things we can do accepting support is not a sign of weakness but a sign of faith and trust in other people hospice

016employees are the experts on how to navigate the final days of a loved one's life I trusted they would invest themselves in this journey with me because that is their job isn't this what acbs Educators have been asking and offering to do with you being bold and brave is less about finding courage and more about letting go of ego when you love what you do when you believe in the cause and hope to leave things better you no longer feel the need to protect self so the fear is gone my mother's Earthly Journey ended last night but I am still here we are still here do you have faith in us do you trust us to help and support to make the best decisions students families and Educators and acps I'm so grateful for the

017people that have come out tonight to support ecbs Educators the AAA and collective bargaining thank you for your time tonight thank you I know this is is no fun you all can appreciate this as teachers if we could stop the the sound and the reason I say that is because sometimes there are people that disagree with what you say and it just makes it intimidates people when they're talking if they're talking and they don't align I appreciate the look I feel you that's all I just want to note it thank you chair and Miss God no we do um express our sympathy to you and your loss of your mother we're misspellman hi it's good to see you guys again my name is Allison Spillman I'm a citizen of Whitehall I'm a parent to five

018acps students a concerned Citizen and advocate for teachers and support staff and a registered candidate for the at-large school board seat I know I already sent an email in support of collective bargaining but I'd like to take a few minutes to voice my wholehearted support strategic plan lists three main goals and I believe that collective bargaining will help the county in achieving these goals goal one is thriving students when educators are respected appreciated heard and have the resources that they need they can give students their very best collective bargaining is the strongest and most empowering way to give Educators a voice in advocating not only for themselves but also for great public education for every student every student parent teacher and staff member has been affected by the teacher and staff and bus driver Exodus

019and shortage over the past few years the educator shortage was a crisis well before the pandemic but the pandemic has made it worse experts like the learning policy Institute and the economic policy Institute note that low pay poor working conditions and lack of support for new teachers all play a role in exacerbating the educator shortage it is impossible for our students to thrive if our educators are not thriving as well goal number two affirming and empowering communities Studies have shown that collective bargaining supports the fight for social justice and racial equity in fact union members tend to be more engaged in Civic involvement and fight to secure vital public resources to adequately fund Public Schools collective bargaining is not just about teacher pay and benefits although it's a very important piece the National Education Association

020notes that bargaining has evolved in recent years to have a stronger Community Focus goal three Equitable transformative Resources with collective bargaining Educators Advocate not only for their working conditions but also for student learning conditions Educators working conditions are students learning condition wins they advocate for things like smaller class sizes less testing and more time for learning increased Staffing from nurses and counselors better classroom technology more social workers the Strategic plan is at the heart of acps and supporting collective bargaining for our staff and educators will help ensure that our students are thriving our communities are empowered and our students learning experiences and opportunities are transformed thank you so much for your time and consideration of this very important matter thank you our next three speakers Salish or Chavez Melissa Thaxton and Laura Hairston good evening

021my name is Sally Chavez and I'm a part of a child of Leslie Walton Middle School I'm here to talk about granting teachers the right to collectively negotiate the contract I fully support the teachers being able to have a say on the terms of their employment I support this because I think having a strong teacher is one of the most important things to my child education teacher feel strong when they are supported and have the resource to do their job well right now right now I don't feel or I don't think the teachers and my child's school or any other schools in Alabama account feel this way and that and that impacts in my child's education when teachers tell the School Division what they need we should listen we support the teachers in in our

022school Community because they care about what our children's need I ask you to listen the teachers and give them the bargaining rights they are asking we have all heard this before sometimes we need to pay a little more to get something that will last shouldn't that especially apply to the education of our children's this teacher are educating the children that will someday dictate Our Lives when we are too old to do so for our lives please I ask you this question what kind of education do you feel you receive to be sitting where you are sitting today making these decisions for us thank you for your time thank you mischievous is Melissa Thaxton here she said all right Laura Harrison I'm Laura Harrison I'm a parent of an acps student first of all I want

023to express my full support for collective bargaining for what is our greatest resource in this division our teachers and staff this board made some commitments when it adopted an anti-racism policy in 2019. to see how this is relevant tonight I'll read a statement from that policy quote the Albemarle County School Board and the Albemarle County Public Schools reject all forms of racism as destructive to the division's mission Vision Values and goals the board is committed to the following principles one establishing and sustaining a school community that shares the collective responsibility to address eliminate and prevent actions decisions and outcomes that result from and perpetuate racism end quote anti-union and Right to Work efforts in this country resulted from and perpetuate racism similarly the system of policing in this country resulted from and perpetuates racism if

024this board truly is committed to the anti-racism policy you will vote to allow collective bargaining without delay if this board truly is committed to the anti-racism policy you will reject Dr haas's budget request to fund the salary for a school resource officer instead you will redirect funds to resources backed by data that actually increase safety for all students if this board denies collective bargaining and or approves bringing police back it fails to uphold its commitment to the anti-racism policy as it is written and further tarnishes the Integrity of the division a choice to reject collective bargaining or bring cops back to our schools is a blatant and willful act of racism thank you Miss Harrison our last two speakers Caden Wright and Pilar Valley Tarot good evening I'm Kaden Wright I'm a student at Albemarle

025High School and I'm here to ask the board to vote in favor of collective bargaining Albemarle County Public Schools is not a division of accountants lawyers policy makers or superintendents it is a vision made of and run by teachers bus drivers Food Service workers maintenance and constructions workers and office staff the success of acps and the success of my personal education wasn't because of any decision made in this room it was because of the people behind me your employees they have and continue to go above and beyond to make sure that acps's students have safe and healthy learning environments so imagine how ridiculous it is that the needs of acps's employees are constantly put second to the agenda of their division you can whip out whatever excuses you like like well it's not in the

026budget that's been just added collective bargaining won't cost any more than any of your new programs or any of your Capital Improvement projects it's not a legal precedent there's no governing body didn't work with the aea to make it possible everyone I've spoken to doesn't support it I'm not sure about collective bargaining does it ever get cold in the Echo chamber that you live in frankly it doesn't matter what you or I think because they've spoken they have told you what they need what their students need and what's best for this Division and they know better than any of us the question is whether or not you care enough about Albemarle County Public Schools and its students to listen to them say yes to collective bargaining say yes to your employees and say yes to

027your students [Music] thank you Mr Right okay okay good evening my name is Pilar Valtierra and I am a parent of a child in Jackson Burley Middle School and another child in stone Robinson Elementary I am here to talk to you about the many things that could be changed of collective bargaining is approved one thing that seems to be Universal for everyone is to have input in what goes into their duties and have those duties and responsibilities clearly defined in the contracts if contracts need to be changed the workers should have opportunities to work with the school board on developing and improving those changes another big issue among supporting staff is their pay compared with teachers many of the supporting staff are getting paid far less have fewer benefits and are working the jobs of

028other co-workers due to the amount of positions that have gone unfilled many do not earn full-time benefits because their hours are under 40 a week they find themselves having to choose whether to have benefits or to have a full paycheck a great way to boost staff Staffing would be to allow those working the jobs to have a voice in their wages benefits and working conditions which is something that acps could be the first in the region to implement the important thing is for acps to allow their teachers in supporting staff a voice in decision making the division can demonstrate respect and Trust by working together in good faith our teachers and supporting staff receive the support needed then our children will benefit from this I speak as a mother of two students in a former

029ta thank you for your time thank you Miss Bellator this ends our public comment chair Carlson thank you Mr Page is last year [Music] faulty Miss voltier I apologize I know I started smiling really big during your comments because I saw my husband and my son pop in the back of the room although your comment was very well received as well um but that probably seemed weird that I randomly was like um so on our agenda right now we have a break which I think might be um done in in error I'm not sure we need a break at this time we can but I don't want to take that off the table do you guys want to take the five minute break or would you like to press on to the discussion okay so

030I'm saying no no we'll move on so the next agenda item would be announcements do we have any announcements Dr Haas not tonight thank you okay after that we'll be school board superintendent business and as I'm sure most of the people in the audience are aware we have an agenda item under that which is discussion of public sector collective bargaining there is not a set structure to this agenda item it is an open discussion we have added it to the agenda after conversation with VA and wanting to have a more open dialogue about where our heads were at and so that is the goal and with that I'm just going to open the floor and see if anyone wants to jump in about how we feel about this [Music] um I'll uh I'll be honest

031I don't see why collective bargaining shouldn't be implemented considering how beneficial it is to all Educators and students being one for a healthy school environment all Educators need an environment where they can be mentally and emotionally like healthy and be able to do their work and have um sword like a place where they can put their energy into their work without it being mentally draining and the current system without them being able to have a say in their job is very much mentally draining and that's something that students also see um talking in my personal experience so so many of my teachers have ended up leaving and a lot of them ended up being like some of my best ones that were very helpful and I can only hope that their um in much emotionally

032better place I think implementing collective bargaining would be very beneficial this in general and um what would be any reasons why it wouldn't be implemented like it's something that I can only see all the pros of and not really any cons [Music] so I'm good job it's hard to speak and that was very eloquently said and thank you for sharing your opinion um yeah I'll jump in I I guess I'll start with the story I I was a teacher I am no longer a teacher I taught middle school math and I taught in a charter school which I've got in some Flack Flack from or about it was not a choice where I taught I did Teach for America and they put you into schools and the reason that some of these Charter Schools rely

033on Teach for America to stock their teachers is that they have working conditions that are really hard to manage so it keeps I taught at a kip School knowledge is power program and the teachers were required to be there at 6am to 6 p.m and you had to have a phone on you and you needed to respond to any requests from a student within 24 hours we got reprimanded I got observed once a week with feedback which is actually probably a good policy and procedure but it created a lot of stress and I couldn't be sick I had to arrange my own coverage if I got sick and I left um after two years I was done and my mom's a teacher and she's like that's not what teaching is like it doesn't always have

034to be like that but that is what I knew as a teacher it was really hard collective bargaining when we discussed it last year I I listened to those around me and the needs of our division and that includes everyone and the need at that time was that we did not have an HR department we were we were transferring from the county or from the county system to our own system which I think was a move made to help teachers and provide you guys with a better way to provide input and I and we had just come off raises it wasn't the right time for the division and I was the one who added that onto the motion the not at this time which I've had a great conversation with Vernon since then where he

035said well if you say that it seems like you're just kicking the can down the road versus versus giving a very set date when we're going to revisit it I did not know we were going to revisit it this soon um but I can tell you I do have some concerns but I can fully acknowledge that my concerns I feel like are something that we can work out in a process where we communicate with each other and work on a resolution together and I've been pretty clear with that when I've talked to people um and ultimately I have to trust um trust teachers to provide their own voice whether or not I have a disagreement with how it's happening I do want to be very honest that one thing that I would like to learn

036more about is how the organizational leadership structure is done with VA and and wanting to make sure that I'm what I'm hearing is is the collective voice of lots of teachers but if this is the process that you guys want then I guess I can abide by that but I was hopeful that meeting confer would allow us a way to interact with teachers across divisions across schools and really hear what we were getting from a lot of teachers and I wanted to give that a chance and I I've heard it's going well but it's I also hear from all of you that you still want to proceed with with collective bargaining and so that's what I'm personally in support of at this point and then I guess we can go through I mean if the

037if the goal here is just to let people know where we where we stand and where we see what we see moving forward we can go around Robin so I was the one person who wasn't seated when Collective Barney was brought forward um so I was a newer person to the table and when I came in um my initial thought was time right I had the Evac committee the steering committee had been meeting throughout the winter I was able to attend the first and second meeting and things were are going forward and there's a good process in place but as I talk across the county with teachers um and I appreciate everyone who spoke today but a number of things really struck me and kind of struck in what with what I was feeling um

038uh Philadelphia kind of the wanting to be active participants in a process um and Amy Garner who was my child's third grade teacher and my heart is with you right now um I the fact that you said kind of recognizing saying I need help is one of the hardest things to do it's one of the hardest things for me to do as a person as a teacher as a former teacher as a mom as a leader but I hear you and I think it's important for us to hear your voices to hear the voices of the teachers and the Tas and the assistants so therefore where I am right now is is wanting to come together and sit down with the representatives I do want to verify signatures partially because I really do want to

039make sure as we're talking we're talking about all the teachers and all the all the staff just to understand you know if there is a situation where there's a piece of the county or a certain subsection of staff that this isn't this won't work for needing to understand why and then what we need to do in that process um and then lastly really coming together and thinking about how do we work together on a joint resolution I've talked to a number of people in Charlottesville to understand the process there and appreciate the process that they put forward and think that's something that we should consider for the county [Music] can I jump in since you mentioned the verification I've I've heard there are two different camps there are those people who just want problem solved

040and think that Evac could do it and then those who want collective bargaining most of my issues from last time have been addressed the HR department there are a couple examples out there a place has been moving forward with this um I have heard when I asked teachers so what do you think about collective bargaining I've heard several times they felt like their arm was twisted on signing the card and I hope that's not the case but I don't know it might be also heard that they didn't exactly know what they were signing and they thought that meant they joined the union and that's two different things so a little bit more education around that piece would make me feel better about the whole thing um so I would appreciate that and also that might

041help the membership and the aea grow as well um just since you mentioned the card verification thing I mean I think that we know that collective bargaining is coming to Albemarle County the the question is when and how many casualties they'll be in the process or before that happens so [Music] sure Ellen can you say a little bit more about that I'm just curious about about which part about the casualties yeah I mean I don't think this has to be um adversarial process because I believe that we all want the same thing the best for our students and so the less adversarial we can make this the better the more Cooperative we can be the better hmm [Music] I don't have a whole lot to say tonight because this week Mr Holden arranged for a

042labor attorney to come in and speak with the school board next week in a special a closed meeting before next Thursday's session I expect to learn a lot I've got a lot of questions for him or her I'm not sure which which uh sex that person is and um I have said to people who have spoken to that the concept of collective bargaining I'm not necessarily opposed to I'm not sure that the structure from the law the structure the fact that we don't have taxing Authority we are and we we're not authorized to make contracts for to spend money that the Board of Supervisors doesn't sign off on it's part of what's going on in Charlottesville they're trying to work it out with their city council for funding and so um I hope to learn

043a lot next week and if we have another one of these sessions in the next couple weeks I'll be able to give you a stronger opinion okay I can go next I guess um I've listened really carefully over the last few weeks including tonight to all the comments that's been made about collective bargaining and all of the support that we have heard from our teachers other personnel and parents and um when I was in the system I taught science in the county for quite a few years and I realized now that what's going on in the classroom is like day and night compared to what it was when I was in the classroom I realized that our teachers are facing tremendous pressures both politically and maybe in many other ways that I didn't have to

044face when I was a teacher and that is really sort of changed my mind compared to last year about collective bargaining um I'm really in support of collective bargaining and notice here in Albemarle County we take great pride in the things that we have done like our anti-racism policy like the changes that we have made in framing the narrative the things that we have done for our Sinners and I think that we now need to take great pride in moving forward with collective bargaining because we really like to think of ourselves as being in the Forefront and I think that we need to Now sort of move to the Forefront with collective bargaining so I'm fully in agreement with collective bargaining at this point in time I realize that we'll have to really work with

045aea in order to sort of come up with things with the proposal and with the work with this but I'm really thinking that as a board we need to do that at this point in time can I say how much I appreciate the public commenter who mentioned the um thing about us trying to be an anti-racist organization and yet the whole right to work State came from a white supremacy standpoint and so it I'm surprised that we have not talked about this before because it's it's just it's huge [Music] um I I don't think we can be I don't think it's we're being consistent if we don't adopt the collective bargaining right maybe one other thing to jump in and that I sort of overlooked um also I think quite a few of the outcome

046minutes have been mentioned that with Charlottesville in the process of moving into collective bargaining and possibly some other places in the state if we really want to be able to sort of keep our best teachers here in Albemarle County we have to recognize that that's something that we have to deal with and we can't have the system right next door to us with collective bargaining and we not with it we I think we'd be losing a whole lot of our teachers to CPS so um I will say you know I have been a big supporter of collective bargaining and um I am still I you know I want for us to work together um to make a resolution uh one thing I will say is I know it's a complicated thing and you only have

047three minutes and then we have however many you know obviously we've looked at studies um that show various things and it's the same with the sros it's like we look at studies that say some people feel more safe we look at studies that say um it's not truly more safe actually one is a perception and one is a reality and um so there are studies that um outcomes for students of color aren't necessarily better in places that have collective bargaining um so I I appreciate the anti-racist you know statement and history and I think it's always important to think about those things but I think it's a little bit more complicated than that um [Music] and I also appreciate the things that collective bargaining can bring because I believe in Sharing power I think that's

048an important thing for us to do I also know that we don't have taxing Authority so there I just think that some of the things that we would want to give or want to do we might not be able to so um I I guess that's just where I am with it I support getting together working together um but also understanding you know setting expectations I guess yeah and I think that's one of the goals tonight is just transparency and and letting you guys know what we're thinking and that's interesting that you mentioned that because that was another thing that was on my mind is that um I believe in Sherry power and allowing teachers and especially also I want to note I really appreciated that we probably had more diverse commentary tonight than we

049ever have in the past um so hearing from the voices that we don't typically hear from and or where I'm I'm most worried and I will own although it's a hard thing to say one thing that I was worried about when you guys first came to us is that the voices I consistently don't hear are from students that are struggling or left behind students that remind me of my upbringing and so I was thinking of those studies too where I'm like if this is not tied although it doesn't all need to be tied but that was in the back of my mind is that I'm I'm not necessarily seeing the correlation between doing this and then helping our achievement get get smaller so it's something on my mind it's something that we can discuss as

050we're moving forward I'm still in support of it um but in the full in the spirit of full transparency about what goes through my head when I'm thinking about it that is one of the biggest concerns for me when we're when we're talking about what we want to achieve together it's making sure that our students are are coming out of school with opportunities to grow and have better outcomes which I know is what we're all doing so yes but not least um I my concerns have been that uh in a state that didn't have collective bargaining for 50 years and with a very poorly drafted statute we don't have a lot of guidance we don't have court cases we don't have the legislature did not flush it out we don't have case law which doesn't

051mean I would never support this but my my position lasts spraying was why don't we just push pause look to see yes we have three jurisdictions in the state that have in there in some point in the process of collective bargaining since we don't have other guide posts why don't we look at what other divisions are doing take you know avoid some of those pitfalls and adopt some of the successes um broadly I have always favored unions in the private sector I think it becomes much more complicated in the public sector particularly when an organization like School Division does not have taxing Authority because every decision every decision about more planning time or an extra day off or more oh professional development has dollar signs and we spend 86 percent of our budget on staff

052already that doesn't mean we can't overcome that but it may significantly constrain the topics that we could bargain over so I am interested in seeing what the attorney I'm an attorney by training this is part of why I'm cautious in these things generally you don't want to be the first one that adopts a brand new policy that's not been tested but I'm I'm I'm cautious that's just my training to be cautious thank you just one more thing I absolutely understand that you are committed to um getting collective bargaining and I respect that I don't think it's fair to say that the only way we can show how much we appreciate the work and contributions you have made to alberwell County Public Schools is through collective bargaining it may well be the preferred way and I

053get that but I'm open to further discussion so I hope that provides at least a little insight into what we're thinking so based on you guys presenting that resolution last time the next step that we took was we set this agenda meeting so that you can know where we kind of stand we did go ahead and retain a lawyer who I think we should get the benefit of having a meeting with them that will be before the March 2nd meeting and then we will move forward from there with a resolution I think just by sort of the tallying of the votes right here you can see that collective bargaining is is in the cards is in the future and it's what we want to work towards the the question is just going to be how

054we get this kind of rolling and I think it's a good and careful Steward of public resources and decision making to to meet with the lawyer on the second I am a lawyer I will we're praying for making lawyer jokes um and then and then go from there so after that meeting I guess we'll set another agenda item from then on based on based on that content does that seem fair sounds good okay I would um like to say thank you to everyone up here I know I've been in the hot seat when we're discussing very difficult topics in the past and it's hard and so thank you all for being very open I feel like and very honest with where we stand even if it might not have gone over well thank you to

055all of you for being out here this is probably the most well attended meeting I've ever been at and it brings joy to my heart to have people participating in the process and and hearing from people that um I'm just gonna be really honest here for people that look like me and that means a lot so thank you for the work that that you did to get people turned out and talking talking about issues and please feel free to reach out to us if you have any other questions I've been responding to a lot of emails you can reach us all individually or you can write the School Board General email that comes to me and that's all I am going to go ahead and do the break now then before we divide up into

056the work session so we'll have a 10 minute break and you do not have to stay for the budget work session if you do not like you can make your your Hasty retreat representative we're all the people that come for the fun stuff okay I believe we are all back in our seats and we are ready to proceed all right good evening I'm Maya kumazawa director of budget and planning and I'm here to introduce our budget work session number two do and as usual here is our budget timeline we completed budget work session number one today we're at number two and we'll have one more next week on Thursday along with our public hearing tonight's discussion is going to focus around goal three Equitable transformative Resources with particular attention to objective one acps will attract

057develop and retain the highest quality staff strategy one acps will Implement a total compensation structure that makes us highly competitive compared to other employers and objective number three acps will provide resources in an equitable manner that transforms learning experiences and opportunities for all students this evening I'm joined by our human resources staff and we'll have presenters who are sitting right behind me we have Mr Brodie Downs Director of Human Resources Miss Claudia Claudine Cloutier program manager for benefits and Dr Jason Sears director of talent this is our agenda for this evening and I'll come back to introduce part two to talk about a shift in the proposals that will be presented tonight versus next week so with that Mr Downs good evening it's great to be with you all um as uh Miss kumazawa said

058I'm here as part of your human resources department to discuss staff's recommendations for the fy24 budget in regards to compensation and benefits just referencing in the budget book a32 833 and C13 staff is proposing staff is proposing a five percent increase for all regular employees effective July 1 2023 this recommendation supports the school division's strategic plan by supporting thriving students by affirming and empowering communities and through Equitable transformative resources revisiting a slide from Dr haas's presentation last week when discussing staff's recommendation for compensation increases in fy24 it's important to be aware of the school division's overall commitment to employee compensation an FY 23 alone employees have received two increases six percent and four percent other efforts include a one thousand one-time bonus one sorry one thousand dollar one-time bonus as well as two phases of

059adjustments focused on roles and positions identified by our compensation Consultants season in addition to FY 2223 efforts dating back to June 30th and including staffs proposed five percent increase on July 1 2023 an employee who has been here for the duration has experienced more than a 20 increase in their compensation as mentioned staff is recommending a five percent increase for all regular employees effective July 1 2023 Siegel the school division's compensation consultant recommended that we use the employment cost index as a sound resource for guiding our annual work when recommending compensation increases December's ECI the recommendation was 4.5 percent for School Division employees and that's certainly closely aligns with the governor's budget targeting of five percent increase staff's recommendation also includes an increase to the differentiation between teacher step skills currently the acps steps are

060about 1.2 percent apart and this budget includes work to increase that to 1.3 percent a step towards Siegel's recommendation of 1.4 percent differentials the proposed differentiation of 1.3 percent brings the acps closer to the competitive Market's midpoint and also allows the school division to be more competitive at the top end of the scales the slide is a visual representation of how the acps is projected five percent in addition to the 1.3 percent step differentiation work positions the School Division when compared to the adopted Market using the dotted blue line and to the city of Charlottesville Public Schools the dotted green line this slide represents the Master's Degree scale as 68 of our teachers are on the scale and 65 percent of our new hires are placed on this scale as well as seven percent of

061our teachers are at T30 or higher you'll notice how the acps Compares more favorably than historically has towards the end of a teacher's career the slide is provided to broach the impact of a potential change at the state level the draft funding request assumes a five percent salary increase and which is in line with the governor's introduced budget as you may be aware both the House and Senate amended budgets include an additional two percent salary increase and while not final there is a possibility that this does get approved in that case while the state contribution for salaries would increase we would need to provide an estimated 2.5 million to 2.8 million dollars in local funding to support an increase of a total of seven percent this is provided for informational purposes at this time and

062budget staff will certainly follow up on this as the state budget is finalized another slide from Dr haas's presentation last week this section started with the slide entitled investment in our Workforce highlighting the compensation efforts during the current fiscal year staff's recommendations for fy24 are a continuation of those efforts and before turning it over to Claudine Cloutier the school divisions program manager for benefits for more information about the school divisions benefit programs I did want to pause and take any questions you may have regarding compensation could you go back to the slide that showed um the city the county yeah so they will be still slightly behind at the very end of yeah okay yes sir no question from a33 is not but not necessarily with these slides should I wait on that oh I'm

063just curious because um you know for our outputs for the compensation increases we'll have accessory data will not include compensation is one of the top five reasons for leaving um as a data and engagement survey Trend data three to five years will indicate an aggregate decrease of 20 of employees who are dissatisfied with compensation and I'm just curious about how we're getting the Baseline for that is that something we already have or is that something we're Gathering in terms of I didn't hear the first part of your question so we just have trends that we're trying to accomplish here and I don't know where the Baseline is from to get to that in terms of people leaving because of dissatisfaction with surveys so exit survey data is one source of information and then we also

064look at our Gallup engagement survey work as well which indicates there's a question there about compensation there's not a direct correlation between the Gallup work and why somebody's leaving because that's an engagement survey but those two data points in tandem certainly give us a lot of information that we can measure against but so at just as it pertains to this compensation increase and then ultimately the red yellow green chart that we'll have on it in the next five years what will the Baseline be where which data are you using for the Baseline is that this year last year um I believe we landed on last year right Dan the exit survey data for the reason why uh but it'll be more comprehensive yeah so um Mr Redding we have limited information last year so we

065do have a starting place but it'll be much more comprehensive this year because of the work that our program manager for retention at Dei has included um we'll have to look at that from a data perspective and make sure those two numbers correlate but we do have some information for last year but we can present that back when we do land on what that foundational number should be great I would like that thank you foreign I looked it up really briefly but can you explain the employment cost index that you have yeah so Siegel let me go back a little bit and provide a little bit of context so historically the um in tandem the the School Division and local government utilized a couple of resources one of which was world at work to land

066at a benchmark number that we could put out every year that would be part of um the you know the data set that would allow us to make a recommendation for what the annual increase would be the other big piece of that work is that we do some survey work for a competitive market that takes place over the summer so those two sort of aggregate pieces of information together lands us at a recommendation each fall Siegel has recommended the employee employment cost index as one they've provided a couple different options we're looking at evaluating each of those but that's the one that they landed on most recently as a as a contributor that we could utilize for this this cycle what are the other options um I have to go back and look at the

067report specifically um there's there are acronyms ECI EPI and there's an additional one as well I'm already impressed okay yeah yeah but we landed on when we spoke with uh Marianne who I think was here presenting a few months ago she landed on that one uh for this year as a recommendation some of them take into consideration the uh inflation rates the ability for employees in certain industries and sectors to be able to afford inflation rate and there's a lot of different factors that they do utilize thank you this isn't really budget related but just a question and and in terms of when we will be talking about the strategy of where we want our teachers where we want our classified staff to be on the scale in the in the new market do we

068want to be aiming for the top 75 percent of top 85 percent uh that was something we we touched on back in the fall and it was going to be coming this spring I'm not ex I'm not expecting it to be involved with this but I'm just wondering when it's anticipated that we would have that conversation um because we want to set the goals is that my understanding is that we did land at the at the 60 the 60th percentile so our Target is the um 10 percentile above the midpoint for both classified and for uh teachers and I recall when that was what that was brought up but then there were some of us who thought that was too low and so we were going to try and talk about it again in the

069spring or my miss am I misstating that jono I'm going to be brutally honest with you and tell you that I was finishing my cookie and wrapping up my wrapper and throwing it in my bag right when you said that but then you looked at me and I assumed that what you were asking was a follow-up around the compensation study and I've got the work document pulled up so I'm going to add it to the list and then discuss it with Roslyn and Matt about women okay when we can follow up on that so I will follow back and check up and that's a good reminder to all board members feel free to throw brainstorm ideas into this for future agenda topics for just to be clear though these numbers are based on the 60th

070percentile so what you're looking at is on that basis here blood binder you're gonna impress me and like tell me the current year of scales are in the FY 23 adopted budget we typically don't publish those so we finalize the recommendation but if you look in this year's budget it'll be in section g section g thank you I don't think there's any additional questions on that okay so I'll introduce Miss Claudine Cloutier our program manager for for benefits there you go thank you good evening I feel like it's been three years since I've been in the same room with you all so it's very nice to see you again I am Claudia Cloutier and benefits program manager and I am going to be walking you through our health insurance program um we'll be talking about

071how our self-insured plan works how we make the decisions that impact the health care fund and look at potential impacts for 2024. as is obvious given the cost health insurance is a major benefit offering so we're going to spend a few minutes talking about the way we offer this benefit to our employees we have what is commonly referred to as a self-funded or self-insured health plan in the traditional Insurance model an employer would purchase coverage for their employees from an insurance company that company would offer access to a discounted provider Network create the planned design which includes things like covered Services co-pays deductibles and out-of-pocket maximums and set the rates that the group would pay for that coverage but most notably they also take on the risk for ensuring that group if they collect more

072in premiums than they paid out in claims and expenses they make a profit if they collect less than what they've paid out they experience a loss and if they lose money they're likely to raise the premium rates for that group at renewal I can almost guarantee you that will happen so the self-funded model Works a bit differently and this slide illustrates how it works instead of paying an insurance company to take on the risk of insuring our group we basically insure each other and we pay the insurance company which is currently Anthem to administer the benefits and process claims for our plan as you see employees pay premiums just like in the traditional model but instead of these going to an insurance company we put those premiums along with the applicable employer contributions into the

073health care fund we then use the fund to pay claims administrative fees stop loss coverage and so for those of you unfamiliar with stop-loss coverage that basically limits how much we'll have to pay out of the plan in a given year so it's traditionally called reinsurance coverage but the way it works is if you have someone who is incurring a lot of claims on the plan there is a limit that stops us from the fund paying any more and an insurance company will pay us back for any claims we pay beyond that limit so if you have a really bad year on the health plan where you have several or more than several people hitting that that limit it keeps your fund from being wiped out so it's very important coverage and wellness activities like

074vaccine clinics and our employee assistance program also come out of the fund so if we take in more contributions than we actually spend the excess contributions go into the Strategic Reserve if we spend more than we actually take in then we use the reserve funds to cover the excess cost being self-funded gives us the most flexibility in terms of determining rates plan design and administrative processes and allows us to take advantage of years in which revenues exceed expenses any questions about this [Music] the healthcare fund is a shared pool that covers participating employees of acps the local government and Affiliated agency stakeholders and their families decisions that impact the fun are made through a two-tiered committee-based structure the healthcare plan committee consists of human resources and finance representatives from acps and the local government along

075with a representative from one of the participating stakeholders working with our benefits consultant the committee meets throughout the year to research and consider options analyze plan and fund performance and make recommendations as to rates and plan offerings to the steering committee this team which consists of acps and local government leadership is the formal plan administrator and has ultimate responsibility for all decisions impacting the fund this slide illustrates how our fiscal year straddles two of our plan years as our plan years Run January through December it's a good little visual um as we budget for the fiscal year 2324 we use a blended rate from both the current 2023 plan year and the projected 2024 plan year as noted on the previous slide this budget assumes a seven percent increase in employer rates for the plan

076year 2024 but it is very early in the plan Year we're only two months in now so we have a lot of time to see how things are going and we will continue to refine the projection in the coming months the 1.4 budget 1.4 million budget increase represents the additional budget needed for employer contributions to the Health Care fund when assuming the Blended fiscal year 23-24 rates as we just saw the draft funding request assumes a seven percent employer increase in 2024. at this time we're also projecting the need to increase employee premiums for 2024. again it is very early in the plan year and actual rate increases will be determined later and shared with the school board while the employee increase does not impact the acps budget it does impact our employees so here

077is a potential scenario for January of 2024. using a five percent employee contribution increase we would anticipate that employees would see a one to Seventeen dollar per payroll increase in their contributions toward the health plans as Brody mentioned as a continued investment in our employees the employer will bear the bulk of cost increases for the next year and you can see the potential impact on the employer contributions on those coverage tiers this is the last Healthcare slide fund slide that I have for you any questions hi there hi I'm assuming these are monthly increases correct this is the per payroll or per I should say what okay per payroll per pay so twice the first two payrolls in every month okay what percentage of our employees take our health insurance [Music] and the School Division

078side or until 89 89 yeah or is my finance department lifeline um I haven't heard anything in the recent years about the prescription drug costs and I know that we've talked about over the years whether we should have a different funding stream or different solution for those costs which tend to increase faster than health care costs how are we handling prescription drug coverage sure so for this last year we went out to bid again for medical dental and prescription and an Anthem was the um the best offer right now we always have the ability to go out and look to carve that out and and go so there have been times where our consultant might say to us you should go out and look elsewhere and see if you can do better so that that

079is one of the things that we've done most recently is just going out to bed my question might be might be needs of our teachers and staff are only increasing kind of pre-pandemic through the pandemic and now what is the kind of level of mental health coverage because I know it definitely varies plan by plan about what's covered as well as the availability of Mental Health Specialists sure so the ACA basically set co-pays for mental health to be equivalent to regular traditional doctors visits so that the high deductible plan would be a allowable charge thing that's kind of beyond our control rip because of tax law so um they it's it's the same as you going to see your family doctor basically and there are no limits on visits during the year so someone can

080seek Services as often as they need to without any restrictions and of course we have our employee assistance program that offers eight free visits uh update free visits if someone doesn't want to go out and establish a relationship with a provider thank you Claudine I know that last year we increased the expenditures something like 2.4 million um so 12 or so how did that impact the reserve remember way back in the 216-1718 we were always talking about the reserve she needed to put more into it or the ability to do holidays sure for insurance how's the reserve looking well um would you like to yeah we've definitely drawn down the reserve a bit so I'll let our expert here this is Laura Andrea she's from the um the local government office of of OMB yeah

081okay um thank you for um allowing me to to step in I'm Laura and Drake I'm chief of shared services and analytics I work in the Department of Finance and budget and so I serve on the healthcare fund committee and the reserve has drawn down at a rapid Pace over the past three years because of a couple of factors one of those factors is because we have offered holidays during the um 2020 and 2021 we offered two employee holidays for one month all employees that participate in the plan and the employer did not pay premiums for that month um and so that Drew down the balance quite rapidly um additionally I believe Mrs Cloutier said that we the employer absorbs the majority of the costs over the past couple of years last year was the

082first year that employees had seen any change in their premiums in the past five years and so that burden was was born by the employer and the reserve and so at this point we're at about a 26 percent Reserve our sweet spot is between 17 and 33 percent so we have our Reserve right in the the place that we want to keep it does that answer your question yes it does okay thank you I have two questions um on an earlier slide you said that it was acps employees local government employees and then other stakeholders who are the other stakeholders in the plan um Blue Ridge juvenile detention center right now and also the Service authority and then my other question isn't a question perhaps but it's a confusion that happened with me so I

083guess I want to clarify so when we have our our budget presentation I understood it as we were increasing our employer insurance premium rate that was like one of the three things and I guess what I'm understanding is that it's also increasing for employees so we're increasing our percentage but we're also increasing employees contribution that's what we're looking at right now obviously again I think I mentioned this a few times um it's early in the year so we have to see how things are going how well um how well the fund is performing so right now we're saying at least a seven percent employer contribution and the potential for a five percent employee contribution but that's certainly not set in stone this early okay and then I have one last question since people have cleared

084out the room so I can be um uneducated on this you know I work for the city and my insurance is through United I think or one of those things so our our employees what is the there's no company associated with is it say what does a company name that it is it's Anthem okay so yeah we're just not paying the insurance company to ensure our risk we're taking on our own risk but Anthem it looks like an insurance company from the outside they're processing the claims we're using their discounted Network um so that's that's how it works in the self-funded model okay so they work through like a well-known accepted kind of insurance thing and then behind the scenes we're just paying the right so it right Anthem processes the claim just like any

085other insurance company would you go and seek Services you file a claim the insurance company sends the payment to the provider and then Lara pays Anthem after those claims are filed so so it looks like again on the outside it looks like we have an insurance company it's just that we're funding things differently and they cover the reinsurance part of it as well um no we went out to bid like they were previously we went out to bid this last year uh because uh they had come back with a renewal that was higher than we had anticipated so we did go out to bid and so now we are with a new company thank you yeah thank you [Music] so on the second part of this evening we're going to start a series of presenting

086about our new proposals and I just wanted to bring your attention to a little bit of a shift in the new proposals that will be presented so this evening we'll start off with the substitute program improvements phase two and then the plan is for work session number three next week to cover these topics Maya I'm so sorry but I thought for whatever reason we were continuing on this subject just a little bit I have one final question which is what is the combination effect on a teacher's take-home pay or an employee's take-home pay taking into account the employer rate increase and the the anticipated rays like how did how do those what does that look like in numbers so is it and then what comes to mind is when my mom said when she worked

087for Stafford she got like a two percent raise but the employee the insurance went up enough that it was actually a negative one percent outcome for her pay or something like that that's the number I would be curious about you don't need to have it right now but I would be curious marginal what is the marginal pay increase yeah what is the actual pay increase for an employee who's reliant on insurance at the various levels yep we can send some examples because it depends on you know every employee has a different rate since it's a percentage salary increase the dollar amount will be different and the impact yeah okay yeah so it sounds like there's a lot of variables that go into that so the best way to do that would be to show examples

088not necessarily a formula okay yeah thank you are there any questions about this agenda and then if there are other topics as I mentioned last week requests for information that you haven't already communicated please do so and we will attempt to cover that at next week's work session as well thank you good evening substitute teachers have served an essential Personnel have served as essential Personnel to support the daily and long-term operations of schools stepping in when teachers are absent they have demonstrated flexibility and commitment to working to ensure that our students are supported in the learning in phase two of The Substitute program includes a 1.4 million dollar budget proposal this proposal includes both a continuation and an enhancement of the substitute program improvements that were approved in the 2022-2023 budget The Proposal requests an

089increase of 997 thousand dollars to include to continue to the implementation of higher substitute teacher pay rate and that has supported Recruitment and Retention of substitute teachers and increased fill rates the budget proposal also includes an enhancement to last year's proposal by requesting an additional 10 school-based substitute teacher positions that would be assigned to schools that have an average substitute fill rate below the 40 percent below 40 percent during this school year this slide Recaps the phase one of the substitute program improvements that were implemented by the board there were 46 school-based substitute teachers implemented during the 2022-2023 school year those school-based substitutes were in schools every day to support unexpected teacher vacancies and support others aspects of the school day a substitute coordinator began last year as well the substitute coordinator has focused on

090Recruitment and Retention of our substitute teacher pool training on our sub-management and Chrono systems as well as professional training acting as a liaison for substitutes and many other functions there was an increased daily substitute pay rate from 97 to 140 dollars per day this increase has led to noticeable increases in fill rates and recruitment that will be mentioned later finally phase one included a provision for substitute incentive pay this instructional when instructional staff are asked to cover unfilled sub jobs they are now compensated for their loss in planning and other time The Substitute fill rate is one of the metrics used in our logic model for this budget initiative in reviewing our substitute fill rates from September 2021 we can see the impact of the board's emphasis on compensation once the daily rate the daily

091rate was increased in February 2022 it had an immediate impact the data shows fill rates steadily increased from 42 percent in September of 2021 to 69 percent in January of 2023. while below the historic pre-pandemic average and our gold fill rate of 85 percent it is a marked increase and with phase one and phase two substitute program improvements we expect to see continued Improvement along with celebrating increasing substitute fill rates we are simultaneously seeing an increase in substitute positions needing to be filled that increased substitute need is being demonstrated in this slide a general example of the increased substitute teacher need is seeing 1162 Subs needed in November of 2021 across the entire division in November of 2022 that number increased to 1747 substitutes needed that represents about a 66 percent increase in substitute teachers

092needed year over year this increased need in substitute teachers is foundational to the proposal for additional school-based substitute teachers to add Clarity around the proposed edition of school-based substitutes we are presenting data that comes from a two-week Time study we conducted with schools on how they were filling the substitute needs our reported fill rates include Frontline which is our day excuse me which which are our daily subs and school-based subs We Believe an increase in the number of school-based substitutes would further increase fill rates in addition we believe it will decrease the additional demands on staff allowing teachers to keep their planning time and ta's office assistance and other professionals to resume their primary duties in conclusion you will see our phase one successes and our phase two proposals in Phase One higher daily rates

093of pay which have improved our substitute fill rate from 42 percent to in September of 2021 to 69 in January of 2023. our overall substitute pool has grown from 209 active Subs in August of 2022 to 314 August excuse me active Subs in January of 2023. there has been an addition of 46 school-based substitutes that assist in with last-minute coverage unexpected vacancies and support other unfilled vacancies one Central Substitute coordinator Miss Ava Eva McGee who has done a phenomenal job in recruiting and retaining substitutes training substitutes on our new systems being a liaison between our schools and central office and finally one of the most exciting projects Eva has begun is creating new opportunities for substitute voice and professional development our phase two proposals will undoubtedly build on our phase one success and they include

09410 additional school-based substitute teachers to be strategically placed at schools that have suffered from a less than 40 percent fill rate increased substitute budgets will which will support the higher daily rate and increased usage and need across the district a substitute incentive that will increase or increase our average number of days subbed currently the average the average number of days subbed is 19 and this incentive will kick in at 35.70 and 140 days subbed days of subbing excuse me and finally a referral bonus to continue to grow our substitute teacher pool and encourage additional days of subbing thank you okay yes ma'am um this is just a clarification I'm sure you said it at some point but I didn't uh hear it understand it so a fill rate of 100 would be like I have

09510 positions open and I have 10 Subs right correct so um and it looked like we were getting to about 65 I guess across the division 960s mid 60s um is that a really broad range that we have enough schools with a fill rate below 40 that we need because you have more subs ten more subs it isn't it's not a broad range there there are selected schools that have um because because it's an average there are selected schools that have a uh a small a bit higher excuse me a bit lower fill rate um and then are needing to use um additional uh excuse me teachers on their breaks and and Tas and things of that nature so it is a smaller it's a smaller number of schools that do have unfortunately a lower

096fill rate so how many um how many extra Subs I guess permanent subs or I'm sorry um so would each school then are you talking about like three schools five schools uh I I think it really it would really depend on uh really looking at where we where we end up this year and in our fill rates with where we like to put those we'll be taking a deeper dive into fill rates for the rest of the school year so should the board move forward and approve 10 additional school-based Subs we'll be pulling that data and really analyzing one of the things we'd like to get to is actually training some of these school-based Subs at a higher level to work with our special education students because chronic vacancies with special education classrooms really has

097an impact on children that most need consistency yeah it was that was gonna be one of my questions is do we know if there's certain class types of classrooms designations of classrooms who tend to need subs longer because of chronic um unfilled positions in special ed or potentially those classrooms meeting Subs more often I'm hearing and I just had a hearing anecdotally no data anecdotally only from teachers that you know special ed teachers and assistants needing more time off just because of the stress on them and so wondering if they're in a way in doing this you maybe designate some subs that are special education only or give them Advanced Training so that they are better prepared for those classrooms that tend to be a little tougher yeah I think we're hearing similar anecdotal evidence

098and we're very interested in that we're actually offering our very first training for substitutes on March 31st where they will receive pay for coming and one of the says one of these sessions is working with our special education students and understanding their unique needs the intent would be yes to go forward and provide that additional training but special education is one of the areas of Greater need for substitutes you would be great if we could see some data if as you're getting it if we could see some of that data are these vacancy is the the need for filling the vacancies um is this like in the average workplace it seems like there was a pretty high level of vacancies on a given day and I just wonder what we know about that you know

099someone out of maternity leave whether a kid was sick or what kind of do we know what PT you know what personal days off look like um I I don't know that we know exact reasons I think we can make some general assumptions for example the surge in absences in October November December time frame I think of flu RSV and covet all converging at that time frame um we can make some generalizations like that but we don't have specifics beyond what employees put in in terms of personal leave sick leave so yeah and I just did some quick iPhone calculator math well uh Dr Sears was running off those numbers but in November you had a seven percent daily average absentee rate the the standard really is five percent so if you can have a

100daily absentee rate of five percent you're doing you're doing pretty well so even in the midst of the a tough time we were still at about seven percent across the division thank you okay so just to clarify what I was hearing uh you say was that the the numbers of the uh the fills are going to be looked at at the end of the school year and then adjustments will be made or proposed early in the summer for the following school year for next year yes for the addition for the additional school-based Subs yes other way the to the to the yeah so is is other principles and assistant principles nurses like who would other be I mean I know everyone does other and no one knows but it's like is that like that's my

101guess based on looking at this it's uh it's principles assistant principles it's staff from central office and lots of times it's um instructional coach lead coach sometimes the school will be going through like a um everybody having the flu like Red Hill might say man you know we have seven people out today and then we all just kind of say okay he's gonna go covered today at Red Hill so that's your other category a lot of it is school administrators yeah okay now I have a question I know in the past sometimes we would have like problem schools that might be hard to fill because of where they located in the county do we still have that problem man will this be able to address that yeah uh there there are some that have less

102sub attendance especially if they're relying on a regular network of Subs who might live nearby um so this yes if the school Falls below that threshold they would be eligible to be assigned one of the additional per minute subs and Dan you might put your you some of the conversations you've had is a school might need more than one depending on they um they're trying to figure out like a calculator for you know you get below 40 but some of the schools in the urban ring have a lower fill rate so it might be so low that you might say well if we have two there it'll it'll make the difference absolutely and um the small rural schools the staff numbers are so low that by having that permanent sub out there it's really made

103a huge dent in that in the issue you were talking about because they don't have a port like they don't have a lot of absenteeism so just having the one sub there really helps them cover okay I think y'all did I think the board really you know it's it's always a risk when you're looking at something like this but the thing I would point out is that even with the the continuation of covid-19 and then um other infections flus things like that that have come about the beginning of this year our teacher attendance has really kind of held firm so I think your your investment in the permanent Subs is solving a long-term problem and it's a little risky because you know I when I talk to my colleagues around their state they're like what

104a permanent sub in a school you know you're going to have more absences but our our employees haven't created more absences due to the fact that they have the coverage our permanent Subs on a um teacher scale or is that a staff scale they are they're on the same pay grade as a ATA so they're a pay grade six they're eligible for benefits leave I I want to personally say thank you for this presentation I think it was really well laid out and I um appreciated the stats and the numbers and the way that you guys did it so I know I say thank you a lot but this one was this one was a winner for me so good job and thank you um they're all winners but this one's this one's a good

105well I'm just gonna stop while I'm ahead thank you it was great thank you all um so I just want to remind the board and the public that there if there are any follow-up questions they can be directed to budget at K12 albemarle.org at any time and there's also a URL on the top right of the slide that has all of our materials in it so if you want to go back and review anything everything will be posted to that website so that concludes work session number two is there anything else before close out well done all right thank you thank you very much [Music] leaves it to me um is there any other business by board members oh I did want to um say that we I think many of us attended the equity

106and opportunity Fair last Saturday at Burley and I I thought it was really great I um I went to the lunch with um principal Blount and um I'm so sorry that it's a rusty Lucille about the history of Burley and that was really Lucille Smith Lucille Smith that was really amazing and then I went to the um afternoon panel of teachers who are CRT certified and students in classes and that just I got chills during that and I just wanted to thank everyone who was involved in that and I talked with Dr Kaiser earlier and I just I thought it was really good and I hope that I hope to see that again any additional business it's not really business but I I spent two hours this week at Greer and uh ending the meeting

107on a high note uh principal Sanders talked about the association of Greer and the UVA football team the football team was um are required to do a day of community service and he thought maybe there'd be two or three football players that showed up there were 35 and not only that but they have continued to come every week this year and so much so that they have a the UVA oh not only that but one of the the football players who was graduating in you know December was so concerned that and they were each assigned to a classroom and they consistently go one of the football players was graduating and he made sure that he had a substitute football player to go into that classroom 100 fill rate 100 full right they really expected this

108to be a one-time deal but the football players really have gotten a lot out of it I got a bracelet that says UVA loves Greer Elementary and I am told that after the shooting at UVA Greer had produced one that said Greer loves UVA football so it was it was a great visit we talked about other things and fill rates and stuff like that as well but I thought that was a very inspiring story it's awesome maybe we can send them a thank you maybe Phil can get a thank you note that we can sign and send to them as a sign of appreciation um that's great to end on a good note I feel like we should make that a habit I kind of like doing announcements at the end and hearing all the

109positive stuff that's going on but with that I call this meeting adjourned so that we can also go home and go to bed