001Department to the Virginia Freedom of Information Act and identified in the motion authorizing the closed meeting were heard discussed are considered in the closed meeting second move I missed calls from second bam is Lee that we vote openly that everything that was discussed during the closed session was authorized by the motion to go into the closed session Ms Johnston could you please call the role Burg yes Mr Page yes thank you all right please join us just and stand for the Pledge of Allegiance foreign [Music] we will now have a moment of silence and I ask that we remember Ms Jesse Powell who was a teacher assistant at agna hurt who passed recently during this moment [Music] thank you [Music] thank you we will now entertain a motion to approve our agenda for tonight's meeting
002nice meeting Ms Osborne second by Ms Lee that we approve the agenda for tonight's meeting any discussion on on the motion if not miss Johnston Mr Ober yes Dr akuff yes Miss Lee yes Mr okero yes Miss Carlson yes Ms Osborne yes Mr Page yes motion Carriage thank you we will entertain a motion to approve our consent agenda by Ms Osborne second by Ms Lee that we approve the consent agenda in a discussion on the motion not this Johnston Mr alcaro yes Lee Yes Dr AKO yes Mr oberg yes Mr Page yes motion Kerry we will now have our Spotlight on education and the problem is I think that our student rep well let's see going back first to introduce the members of our board which hasn't happened yet um starting with Dr Acuff at
003Large Katrina Carlson Katrina Carlson representing the Rio District it's Judy Lee Judy Lee Rivanna District Mr Dave oberg for the very last time Dave oberg Whitehall met a stereo district oh wow okay we're so sorry to hear that Miss Ellen Osborne Ellen Osborne Scottsville district and I'm Graham page Samuel Miller District member and we don't have the introduction I don't think for um the spotlight on education because Miss Johnson do you happen to have a copy of that I think Phil might have a copy oh okay bill is saving the day Ella would you be able to read that to be able to read yeah you're just going to read it yeah but introduce yourself it's trial by fire is she going to yeah she needs to introduce herself so normally our student rep reads
004this but the student rep was unable to attend tonight so we are an alternative so we're getting her the the scripts that she can read it yeah yeah Ella uh Whitcomb is a student rep for tonight and um our ordinary rep for this second semester uh second nine weeks rather has not been here oh it's not here tonight say Allah is alternate so Ella I hope we're not putting you on the spot to do this thank you so I come from Community lab school this is the spotlight on education for December 8th uh 2022. a few challenges before our school divisions rise to the level of achieving true educational equity for all students and staff within our classrooms and within our school communities here in Albemarle Equity is a School Division of value firmly embedded
005in our strategic plan goals and it takes many forms including access to resources participation and programs and in the composition of our Workforce here's what the African-American teaching fellows of Charlottesville abnormal points out about the city and county school divisions nearly 30 percent of school-age children sheltered film Albemarle County are African-American but less than 10 percent of their teachers are the absence of African-American teachers leaves many African-American students feeling disconnected from school and the disparity creates misperceptions and stereotypes that disadvantage all students regardless of race note in particular that closing sentence all students regardless of race this is a particularly compelling call to action for a school division with students from 96 different birth countries and with families speaking 73 different languages at home if we are to meet our goals of thriving students in
006empowered communities the way we will succeed is through such ideas as one that Pearl early of odd miles high school is leading Pearl is the Student Success specialist and program manager for Albemarle Albemarle High School and earlier this year working with human resources and the University of Virginia she's making it possible to expand the diversity of her faculty she identified seven promising teacher of caller candidates many of whom are School alumni to serve in various roles within the school as they work towards their teaching certification Pearl describes the purpose of her pathway model as developing Sustainable Solutions to address the teacher's shortage and retention issues especially for teachers of color who are under underrepresented and underrepresented in the classrooms within our division Pearl is with us this evening to discuss this novel approach and to
007introduce us to some of our future educators it what has the potential to be a model for all of our schools we look forward to learning how this Innovative approach will support the division's responsibility to empower all students to reach their highest learning potential Pearl as we are looking forward to learning more about your pathway model please join us at the podium with your guests [Music] thank you good evening and thank you for that nice introduction my name is Pearl early has been stated earlier it is my pleasure to speak before you and our community this evening Miss early yes you pull the mic down a little bit more no wonderful okay it is my pleasure to speak before you and our community this evening about what we are doing at Albemarle High School as
008far as recruiting and retention of future teachers in September of this year I began discussions with the gentleman and the ladies and they're going to stand right now and they're going to join me I want all of the future teachers to come to the podium at this time I would like for each of them to introduce themselves by sharing their names high schools and the college or university where they earn their degrees Javon Carter graduate of Auburn High School graduate of Virginia State University down to Wood folk graduated by Alma high school and also a graduate of Virginia State University graduate Mills County high school graduate University of Virginia Sterling Nixon graduate of Orange County High School alumni of Old Dominion University buying laundry graduate of Almar High School also graduated Old Dominion University uh
009John Rademacher graduate Bob Marley high school and also Old Dominion University miles speech graduated Atmore high school and as well as Old Dominion University my name is Colin Clark I'm a current teaching assistant at Ardmore high school with Miss Pearl I'm a graduate of Virginia State University and I'm a current graduate student of the University of Virginia studying systems engineering thank you and I would like for them to remain standing with me but before I go into what I'm going to speak to you tonight it is very important and fitting for me to ask my principal Mr Bonham to stand okay layana Keys who helped me put this together Dr kimono Mary we worked really hard on this in October and Dr Jason Sears and we have ranika Barnes who is not with us tonight
010so I want to give great thanks to these people who are standing here tonight I was invited to speak with you regarding the creation of a program to support a recruitment and how I love teachers of color creature will in turn also support the same for any qualified applicants this is important as we address the current teacher shortage that is plugging not just our division but other Across the Nation thank you for your attention to this critical need for our qualified teachers in our classroom I our students present and future deserve the best Educators to ensure their success I have submitted to you to your proposal and this is just a proposal to give you an opportunity to help you with your discussions going forward creation of a pathway program to support future teachers with
011focus on teachers of color our objective to create the pathway model to address the teacher's shortage retention issues especially for teachers of color within Albemarle County Public School Division purpose the purpose of the pathway model is to develop Sustainable Solutions to address the teacher's shortest shortage retention issues especially for teachers of color who are underrepresented in the class room with Elmore County Public Schools division now I have potential provisional licensing teachers expect participant to have or obtain a bachelor's degree provide at least three counseling intro Dr a professional development sessions about obtaining a provisional license subsidize or cover the cause for additional coursework at a college or university support for a participant for to take their practice coordinate an apprenticeship for participants under a licensed teacher who is experienced in credentialed and cultural responsive teaching
012I will quickly say speaking and working with Michael Thomas and Dr Sears we this is something has been at the table and this is a part of what they have been working on I believe support potential teacher and potential teacher with connecting and networking with established teacher organizations and Alma County Public School teachers currently in the classroom hiring potential provisional license teachers and licensed teachers examine and discuss the hiring process applications include supplemental materials interview process many applicants especially applicants of color do not get beyond the first screenings examination elimination of any conscious and unconscious bias that may hinder qualified applicants from getting hired interview panels should include staff from human resources and Equity certified CRT staff and from the county office building expanding the student teacher opportunities to colleges and University Regional HBCU schools
013regionals community colleges regionals four-year colleges and universities outside of Charlottesville retention coming to the end retention all teachers especially teachers of color provide the mentor teachers and instructional coaches for participants Mentor teachers should be compensated for their participation examine how to provide teachers with additional planning mentoring mentorship time during the school day develop a sustainable evaluation and feedback system at the school level to obtain feedback regarding teacher retention lastly potential proposal and this is just a potential proposal pathway components potential requirements coursework for provisional license can one in the course of 750 dollars to 1300 per course per course mentors and instructional coaches stipend for Mentor teachers instructional coaches to work with now chers per current model Praxis preparation and there is just potential calls here 2500 for Mentor instructional coaches stipend initial license fee
014is 100 per person and in my closing I'm asking you as a school board to start a discussions start thinking about this and if it's all possible please put this in your fiscal year of 2023 budget direction to human resources for for our research and development a final proposal I want to thank you for your time and I want to thank Dr Haas who is amazing to me and he's someone who's been on the front line for years and there's nothing that I would not do to support his mission and vision and he knows this so this is the beginning for us in many ways so this is the time we can make our serious impact on teachers shortage right here in our Lamar County School Division thank you I remain it for you miss
015early uh do any board members have any questions or any comments for Miss early or for Dr shearers or my principal right yeah any of the delegation does it come and I think this is a very interesting proposal and I do hope that we we discuss it going into um our budget season which we're right upon just a question I don't know the answer to this what is the distribution of our teachers of color and elementary middle and high school I mean we've been very focused on recruiting and retaining teachers of color but I I really don't have a good sense of what that looks like well Dr shears or you have doctor Daphne back there or someone Mr reading is Mr brother is Mr ready I think that's in the um annual report it
016may be I just don't recall we can bring we can bring that back yeah that's in the annual report and we can highlight that for you I think that would be good I mean of of the people here I mean what level of teaching are you doing or contemplating High School in special education so yes I agree thank you okay any other questions thank you do I still ask oh I had some questions about the existing um support I thank you for the proposal um but existing supports that you're offering to to these wonderful um women and gentlemen that we see behind you um so I'd love to hear about that yeah well because this is uh just beginning as a as a program the the supports are the supports that we have for all
017of our all of our teaching assistants and um as well as our teachers so this particular cohort of of individuals were in the were attempting to create some additional sets of supports with Mentor specific mentors kind of study groups and um additional connections with the uni specifically the University of Virginia now and we draw mine I'm what so what are y'all planning on teaching like I know you said where you graduated and where you maybe some of you all graduated while we were on the stage if it was been within the last seven years some of them um so what are you going to be teaching while you're there okay special education yeah some are already on the staff at Avalon some are really already on the staff at that mall right yes this has
018your question um everyone did you see here is already is that out more High School employed by this Division and like they stated earlier there are alumni except two from Alma High School would anybody be willing to share how their years going so far with us I'm here to get my PhD and my masters from UVA and so as a part of that I've always been a part of the National Society for black Engineers um and so coming to the University of Virginia's chapter always wanted to give back to this community and just any community that I'm going to be living in in general and so once I found out that they did have a nesby junior chapter which Services high school and middle school levels I wanted to be a part of that and
019so I was connected through James Bland who's the director of the center for diversity of engineering uh to Ms Pearl and so that's been a great connection um just to see how I want to go into teaching once I do finish my PhD in my Master's but it's been great to see the differences in how this County does things versus the county that I grew up in so I went to a high school that was primarily engineering based and so I wanted to see how that type of curriculum can be implemented and tools up here and also seeing how having people of color be that mentor and that model for students especially at this developmental age is critical so for me being a woman in engineering I never really got a lot of representation until
020I got into higher education or into my professional career and so I definitely wanted to be that for students in this area because I see that there's a lack of that and there's also a lack of just communities yeah in general I wanted to get a hold of that and get the reins and so miss Pearl has been phenomenal with how she mentors these group of people that I've been knowing them since September of this year and just how she mentors them how she teaches them just to to be a part of these students not only do the the coursework would be there through them with their personal lives um and be an impact and so it's great to see especially a lot of these people went to my alma mater as well with Virginia
021State University it's great to see that these are products of hbcus who are also able to come back into their communities and and make change and so personally I'm taking this model from Miss Pearl back to my County because I want to see that implemented especially where I went to school I'm excited but I'm going to try to get her to stay here all right any other questions if not I want to thank you again for your okay I do just have one comment um as early as been really instrumental in getting the nesby junior chapter started at outmount and now we can see that she started this Pathways program so would it be putting you on the spot or asking too much if you would maybe be looking into expanding or trying to make
022contacts at at least well with the other high schools to see whether or not you can do something at those other high schools well I think really some way in the back room there um Mr Thomas and Dr shears and myself we we have we have started such a um we've launched such an approach right now we're focusing on Elmore high school and I also want people to know that Dr Kaiser she on connection it was like making connection I do believe she had over a hundred over a hundred people in that room interested in becoming teachers for this County so when I look at that we are an umbrella and I want credit to go to everyone who has been on board and played a significant role and getting moving these students here youngland
023forward and so um again my principle is wonderful and he knows I tell the truth so he's wonderful yes I would consider working with others to launch what we're doing here it's very very good thank you very much Happy Holiday s thank you thank you very much thank you Ms early again we will now have announcements and doing this portion I'm all about three student Reps for this semester this will be their last night with us so we have resolutions or letters that will be read by three of our school members for those three students so we'll start with Dr Acuff and please give us the name of who you're reading I don't have I will do that okay thank you chair page this is to miss Brisa Caballero Chico I think I've come close
024to her name and dear Brisa as you complete your service to our school Community as a student representative on Albemarle County School Board your board colleagues want to express our gratitude for you and your contributions to our school division during the past three months when we established the student represent representative position it was the intention of the of gaining greater insight into learning experiences and needs of our more than 13 500 students in their letter of interest you well captured the challenges before us when you said some days I almost think that no one is trying to think that no one is trying to make a change history has taught us that the responsibility of change leadership is a daunting one few step forward which makes stepping forward to articulate what must change so vital
025you summed it up perfectly when you wrote a big part of school growth is the ways in which students take action toward events and changes they want to see the power of an action-oriented approach is of course not limited to schools but across but relevant across communities having served with you these past three months there's little doubt that you have the courage strength the purpose and conviction to ensure that all voices are heard and respected and all talents and abilities nurtured to bring positive change into the lives of our communities another important intention when we created our board students board student position was to ensure that our young leaders experienced firsthand the process of representative government it's the process by which you change by which you change by which change should be sorry about that
026but change should be formulated designed and implemented having served as an officer for two years of your class and president for the third year you already know something about this it is our hope that you will continue to utilize your considerable leadership skills to improve the lives around you we are confident this will happen thank you for broadening our vision on the school board best wishes for a highly successful senior year at Albemarle High School and for you and your family best wishes for a safe healthy and enjoyable holiday season thank you doc Acuff and we are sorry that Brisa is not here we will be getting a copy of that letter to her all right Miss Lee dear Ella even before your selection by our school board as an alternate student representative you are
027making significant contributions to our body our division's strategic plan commits us to the well-being of students and one of the most vital of needs ever School Division must meet is protecting and promoting the social and emotional health of all students your letter of interest eloquently highlighted this most important of responsibilities when you wrote to us that some people do not have a comfortable home life in their school as their only Escape when school is unsafe for them as well it can feel like they have nowhere to go research tells us overwhelmingly that safety matters not only for the purpose you identified but for learning itself students really reach their full potential in a learning environment in which they do not feel welcome our intent in establishing the position of student representative was to hear thoughtfully
028honestly and courageously from students about the issues that most impact them your advice that when people who can make decisions do nothing the ones who have to follow the indifference suffer certainly not this standard and put the focus where it should be for the leaders of any organization or community another of our goals is to help mature the lifelong leadership skills of students through hands-on experience with representative government and involvement with issues that impact thousands of lives we were very impressed with your grasp of this responsibility and high purpose there is little doubt about the quality of the contributions you will make to improving the communities organizations and causes you will serve in the future on behalf of my entire board thank you for being such an important part of our governance best wishes for
029continued outstanding year and to you and your family for a safe healthy and enjoyable holiday season thank you very much okay I'll look at you just come around and shake hands with the members of the board and we do have you a copy of the letter to give you tomorrow you got it you can do it thank you foreign this is for Ms Anda Armand dear Anda it is with a deep sense of appreciation and gratitude that all of us on the Albemarle County School Board want you to know how valuable your service was to our school division this year before you even joined our board as a representative for our more than 13 500 students you were making a contribution by focusing on the challenges of the pandemic and its Associated 11 months of
030virtual learning your advice was straightforward yet Illuminating when you said if I cannot influence or suggest much in regards to our current situation I want to at least leave those on the board to further question if there's anything more we can do to better support our students trenched advice for a public policy board continuous Improvement is essential if we were to meet our responsibilities to ensure that every child reaches their Highest Potential there is always there always will be more we can do to better support our students when we establish the student rep position it was with the intention of gaining greater insight into the learning experiences of our students by providing hands-on experience on how representative government should function it also was our goal to help students develop lifelong leadership skills there is a
031practical component here there is a constant need in our nation for thoughtful honest and courageous ideas and actions if we are to move forward you certainly are one such leader leader and your dedication to the lives of those in need through such priorities as local food drives and raising money for medical research thank you for bringing your perspective to our work and for the positive difference you will make in many lives in the future best wishes for a highly successful senior year at Albemarle and best wishes to you and your family for safe healthy and enjoyable holiday season is here so please come forward Adam Superman yeah [Music] thank you good to see you so much okay good to see you again I know thank you good to see you again [Music] foreign announced a
032few moments ago this would be his last meeting so we do have a letter also to recognize Mr oberg on behalf of more than 13 500 students and their families uh 3 000 employees are very grateful um foreign County School Board I want to express our deepest heartfelt appreciation to you for your leadership in our County these past seven years it has been a period of great uncertainty and challenge throughout a worldwide pandemic increasingly complex demographic growth The Innovation neces are necessity for instruction to improve running outcomes in the infirmative of protecting and promoting the health safety and real being of students and staff in the midst of this volatility the power of your expressed values and your eagerness to lead with thoughtful intelligence and moral conviction have been a reliable Touchstone divorce that so
033forcefully canceled the removal of hateful images from our schools that advocated for the elimination of financial barriers to ensure that all students will have equal access to learning opportunities that insisted that all employees be recognized but they are selfless dedication to their profession that relied on experience humility their trusted Gifts of public education that voice was the compass that kept us moving forward your persuasiveness of course had nothing to do with your third degree black belt and Taekwondo impressive on such a an accomplishment it has a quintessential compliment to uh to those early mornings when you drowned a chicken outfit to keep students safe while walking to school support for our schools truly is a family affair given DJ's long service including a chair of parent Council and her insistence that she will only would
034marry you if you relocated from Alaska to New York that got you most of the way to Charlottesville I think it was Alexander Graham Bell that said that every time one door closes another opens that certainly will be proven true of your contribution she had to come to make the lives of Albemarle County families and students even better in the years ahead your voice will continue to be welcomed thank you for your positive difference you've made in our community best wishes to you and your family for a wonderful holiday season foreign next item we will have announcements by Dr Haas thank you very much Mr Page I do have a couple of announcements one um just want to acknowledge uh principals that were here tonight for a visit as you know we asked principals to
035attend board meetings throughout the year we do have Nancy McClellan who's here from Red Hill Joe McCauley principal at Holly Mead Elementary School Ashby Johnson principal at Journey middle school and in addition to that earlier we had Dara bottom Leilani Leilani keys and kimono Murray all from Albemarle High School that were with Ms Pearl tonight the other things I just wanted to mention was I did do a couple School visits over the last two weeks last Monday jono alcaro and I visited the Blue Ridge Detention Center as you know Blue Ridge Detention Center School is one of Albemarle County schools there are two State programs that are run here one is the Children's Hospital at UVA and that is run by the city schools as it's geographically located in the city and then the other
036program is Blue Ridge Detention Center School which hosts students who are either have been have had their initial hearing but are awaiting judication adjudication some are have sentences there and others are part of a transfer program around the state so you could have students there from Fairfax or Chesapeake or various other places we had a great visit with the students or with the staff they were having a work day but we did get a chance to meet up with several students that were in the gym working on murals anti-gun violence murals that they were working on a collaborative project with Charlottesville City schools and those murals the the panels for those murals will be put on display in the city the students were super excited about their work the staff was very welcoming to us
037and we really appreciated the opportunity to visit and it was great to get out with jono on Monday this week Graham Paige Graham and I visited Meriwether Lewis for to take a tour he he went on and had a tour with a principal Jen Underwood and I went out and did some classroom visits with um Laura Morris and uh just one highlight for me that was super exciting was I always love it when I'm out visiting and I recognize a teacher who is the child of one of our teachers so I got to sit in on Virginia Carew she's a first grade teacher at Meriwether Lewis and her mom Julie Carew has been teaching with Albemarle County schools for decades at Brownsville and she was of course Virginia was a real chip off the block
038using phonemes to teach reading with students and just great instruction going on so really was a wonderful visit and I want to say thanks to both of those schools for for having us out okay thank you Dr Hass for that update we will now have a public comment I'm sorry Mr Page I did have superintendent's business oh okay I'm sorry so I wanted to give the board just a couple of quick updates on topics so first I'm going to ask Dr McLaughlin just to provide a quick update on our RFP for our audit of our instructional programming thank you Dr McLaughlin thank you Dr Haas good evening board members I'm Pat McLaughlin assistant superintendent for strategic planning and I'm happy to provide a brief update on our work to examine student achievement in Albemarle County
039as you know we have formed a task force consisting of about 40 teachers administrators Central staff and parents from all levels of our division this team has met twice and has reviewed and provided feedback on the request for proposals for a consultant and are now studying other systems where traditionally underserved students are performing at levels higher than their peers to help facilitate this work we are studying Karen chenoweth's book districts that succeed and we're privileged to have Miss Chenoweth join our Task Force at their last meeting ultimately this team will be reviewing the consultant's work in providing advice to the board on how that might be implemented in Albemarle County in addition to that work a subgroup of this team has been tasked with reviewing proposals and selecting a consultant eight proposals were received for
040our RFP and we hope to have a vendor selected in the near future so they may Begin work immediately and have a report ready prior to the end of the school year I look forward to providing you continued updates as this process continues thank you Patrick and then I also wanted to get an update for the board on our community engagement efforts you know since the school year began we've had multiple uh employee student and family meetings and also informational forums so I asked Dr Kaiser this morning if she wouldn't mind providing an update for you all good evening chairman page board members superintendent Haas Daphne Kaiser assistant superintendent for school Community engagement uh thank you for the opportunity to update the board on the community forums Community Information sessions and the start of the
041superintendent's listening tour for this school year it has been great engaging with our students families and staff hearing about their experiences in the school Division and gaining valuable feedback and perspectives most of these forms is to connect directly with a diverse group of employees families and students so they can provide meaningful input and feedback with the goal of strengthening relationships and encouraging continuous engagement among our stakeholders hosting these forms throughout the school year will continue to allow us to collect stakeholder input that will be extremely helpful as we work to develop the strategies to support us in meeting the acps Strategic goal plan strategic plan goal number two affirming and empowering communities this semester the office for Community engagement hosted two of the three scheduled sets of forms for students families and employees in November
042and December the final set of forms will take place in early spring the topics covered this semester for the student and family forums centered around feedback from last year's Panorama survey data taking a deeper dive a deeper look at students feelings on belonging to their school Community feelings of safety in their schools and opportunities for student voice employee forms took a closer look at the feedback from the Gallup survey data specifically exploring recognition and affirmation support systems and professional development we will continue with the Forum series next semester with student family and employee forums scheduled in February and March currently we are analyzing Trend data from the various forms and information sessions to capture key themes and ideas once this process is complete the information will be displayed on our website to provide updates and
043opportunities for further stakeholder engagement on Wednesday November the 30th the office for community community engagement held a school safety information webinar for uh the community superintendent Haas opened the session and Dr Helen Dunn the division's deputy public affairs and strategic Communications officer moderated the discussion The Forum was recorded and posted on the division's YouTube channel and a link to the video was shared with families and employees a panel of School Division experts and public officials discuss programs and procedures in place to keep school facilities safe specific areas addressed included the partnership between the school Division and law enforcement authorities the investigative capabilities of the Albemarle County Police Department the legal consequences that can result from the inappropriate use of social media and the various in-school resources to provide social and emotional support services to students
044during the session participants had the opportunity to ask questions through the zooms q a feature panelists for this session included delegate Sally Hudson Virginia House of delegates 57th District Senator Cree Deeds Virginia Senate 25th district Dr Stephanie Rowley Dean and William R Keenan Junior professor of Education UVA School of Education and human development Dr Catherine P Bradshaw professor and Senior associate Dean for research and faculty development from the UVA School of Education and human development detective Michael Snyder Albemarle County Police Department Dr Jesse Turner acps director of student services Mr Miles Nelson acps coordinator of mental health and wellness we will continue the monthly we will continue with monthly Community Information sessions next semester today we made our first stop on the superintendent's listening tour the listening tour is a chance for the superintendent to
045meet face to face with various stakeholders and receive direct feedback from individuals who engage most with our students we visited with Stony Point Elementary fifth graders and gained students perspectives on the following questions what three things are going well what three things can the school improve on and what three things that the students would like to change first students were candid with their feedback with lots of discussion about their love of reading and love for their staff in addition students also advocated for longer lunches recess and specials on the next stop in January we will be meeting with the journey Middle School staff and continue with monthly stops next semester in addition to the forms Community information session and listening tour the school board has started their magisterial Community meetings the first meeting took place
046in our Scottsville District in the Southwood community in October with Miss Ellen Osborne and Mr johno acaro along with Dr Haas and the office of community engagement team um we were able to engage with students and families in order to better understand how we can continue to support communities families and students the magisterial meetings will resume in January with Miss Judy lee ravana magisterial district meeting with families students and staff hosted by the baker Butler Elementary School the office of community engagement will continue providing opportunities for stakeholders stakeholders to provide input and engage in discussions around the Strategic plan during the second semester we would like to thank our students families and employees for their participation and feedback which helps us grow and become a better school division thank you thank you Dr Kaiser appreciate
047it [Music] okay thank you Dr Oz we will now have a public comment Miss Carlson yes and I had one additional quick announcement which is that I am doing a school tour of Albemarle tomorrow at 12 30 and I think I'm the only board member signed up so if anyone else is available tomorrow at 12 30 let me know Elmore High School um just send me an email so moving to public comment now we have three speakers I see two of them in the audience I'm going to start by reading the public comment guidelines these are the ones that are shared um on School Board site so you can see them ahead of time if you ever have questions about what they are we invite and actively seek The public's input and the matters relevant
048to school board governance and provide for time in our business meetings to hear from our residents and community members during public comment we expect respectful and on-topic comments disruptive behavior from speakers are from members of the public and attendance will not be tolerated public testimony guidelines are as follows speakers should adhere to the following protocol one state your name and address or vote in our voting district to address comments to the school board as a whole three limit comments to those matters that are relevant to school board governance or School Division operations four you can give written statements or other supporting materials to the clerk Miss Jennifer Johnson over here if you are unable to complete your presentation in time you can also provide your supporting materials later to the clerk or you can email
049them to us directly three minutes are going to be allowed for each presenter to speak there is a system of light system up here that's green when you're speaking it's yellow when you have one minute left and it's red when your time is over in order to maintain respect for all points of view the school board requests no clapping booing or other audible form of support if you wish to show support for a speaker you may stand or raise your hand or if you have signs you may hold those up that's all I have for now so I'm just going to announce all three speakers so you know what order you're in and Miss more I'm going to apologize if I mispronounce it I've written it down but I don't have my notebook with me
050so I'm sorry if I'm mispronouncing it again then I have Mr Jordan Barr and then Jonathan Gardner so Miss Moore you're up first thank you Miss Carlson yes my name is Nancy Muir I'm from the White Hall magisterial district and I want to speak tonight about the instructional materials policy that you approved just recently and that is the policy that aligns with the law otherwise known as the Senate Bill 656 parents right to review sexually explicit materials appreciate your work on that policy for Albemarle County I want to thank you for taking these important first steps forward in involving parents in the review of student curriculum um I think we can all agree that the best way to protect kids is to protect parents involvement and their children's education and we're just grateful to maintain
051a continuing dialogue with you the school board as we all work together to provide the best education possible for our students in Albemarle County thank you for those comments Miss Muir Mr bar your next all right thank you very much my name is Jordan Barr and I'm in the Rio District um like Miss Muir here I want to comment today on the revised instructional materials a lot of changes were made as you can see in the red here so I appreciate that I've read that over multiple times appreciate a lot of the comments that and line items that are in there that's really an acknowledgment that parents have a right to review that parents have the primary commission for guiding directing and protecting their children and so I think the school board and the superintendent
052for that and really this is a call to action for other parents in Albemarle to get involved and to Advocate on the rights and protection of their children and so I would say to parents out there in Albemarle County that complacency is no longer an option and I'd say you know for the parents out there get online and read the documents for yourself and re-read it and read it again until you understand it and um in particular you know for including the necessary means for parents to be informed and if any explicit or otherwise questionable materials considered in the classroom and also that you know when I was here last time we talked about copyrighted materials and I see that there's a line item in there for that for the ability to review in person
053so I do appreciate that and you know that just got his ordained parents with the care of their children and you know a lot of people stepped up like we see all these people here today that have stepped up to take back uh their god-given rights in the schools and I really appreciate you all coming out here today in support you didn't have to do that and you did it anyway and you may not even have children in the school right now but your selflessness in coming out here today is much appreciated and especially thank and you know all these community members so also um I want to thank some folks at AHS at Albemarle Ohio I had the opportunity to meet with my son's counselor and some teachers and I was really impressed with
054their professionalism and you know keeping the interest of the students in mind I really had a good rapport with them and I really appreciated meeting with them here recently and I also want to highlight something that Miss Acuff said she said you know you said a few people stepped forward and that's so true and I just want to thank you know the people that do step up and advocate for the children and that's much appreciated so thank you thank you for those comments Mr Barr and I imagine that this is Mr Gardner coming up [Music] that's right it's either that or you're trying to sneak out yeah we're doing a good job nothing um my name is Jonathan Gardner I'm I'm from the Rivanna District um my daughter is a second grader at Stone Robinson
055Elementary School I'm here tonight to talk about the buses by my count this is the 67th day of school her bus has been late for at least one of two runs and most often both for 27 of those days including a run of 17 days consecutive days through today I pay attention to the news so I'm aware of the challenges that all employers including schools are facing with Staffing and I'm sympathetic to those challenges tonight I'd like to make you a little bit more sensitive to the uncertainty and disruptions faced by families that don't have reliable transportation to school my family is fortunate I work from home 100 of the time my wife has flexible work arrangements so we can provide transportation on all of these days but I can only wonder what it's like
056for those families who don't have such flexible employment options to that end I have some questions how for example is it decided that one bus route should be should run chronically late While others I assume have a 100 reliable service but this is decided because it's been determined that the other route has more parents who are unable to provide personal Transportation I can accept that but if it's just our bad luck to be on Stone Robinson Route 220 it strikes me as a little unfair I will pause here to to note that we appear to be the Unlucky 1.27 percent of buses running 60 minutes or more late in the transportation report you have in your packet tonight my next question is what became the school's discussion of non-bus Transportation alternatives that seems to have
057disappeared can the transportation department do a better job of providing us with some information on when the current late streak might end I will applaud the department for letting us know very early in the day before my do not disturb is even turned off on my phone that a bus will be late on a daily basis but it was only by having a casual conversation with office staff that I learned that the our driver is out because of an extended absence I feel like we shouldn't have to seek out that information but rather it should be provided to me proactively finally I'd like to make a green pitch here school buses are America's most extensive mass transit system children from Inner City New York to Wyoming ranches get mass transit to school and every time
058we get into a personal vehicle to drive our children to school it adds carbon to our atmosphere microplastic from tires into our water supply and another car on our already crowded Road I am eager to hear about any solutions you may have for this thank you thank you for those comments Mr Gardner that concludes public comment for tonight hand it back over to you chair Paige thank you Vice chair Carlson um we will now move to the special education advisory committee and Ms Jessica Allen will introduce and present information in this segment good evening I'm Katie compel the director of special education tonight the special education advisory committee also known as seaac they're a group of dedicated individuals composed mostly of parents of children with disabilities who represent the majority of our schools in Albemarle
059County their primary responsibility is to inform the superintendent and the school board on their needs of children with disabilities educated and served by Albemarle County Public Schools ciac is highly valued by myself and my special education administrative team as they partner with us throughout the year to share ideas and experiences as a result of that sharing we are able to get helpful feedback and direction that guide us in working to continuously improve our services to students with disabilities Jessica Allen the Currency Act chair is here tonight to review with you the seaac annual report so this time I'll turn it over to Jessica thank you Katie can everybody hear me good okay um thank you school board members Dr Haas for the opportunity to share the sick annual report tonight thank you to the Department
060of special education for their continued collaboration this year and very importantly I want to thank my 24 fellow ciac members and all the parents and Educators and community members who have engaged with us this year our disability Community is fierce and it's passionate and it's dedicated to increased accountability and change it really is an honor to stand up here and do my best to represent that Collective voice this evening I'll assume each of you has read the annual report and I'll just do a brief summary in order to leave time for questions and next steps so our report shares the top four concerns not necessarily in that order number one increase family engagement there appears to be an overwhelming feeling amongst our families that their voices don't matter that decisions involving are just over 1800
061students with IEPs are made Behind Closed Doors by a select few and without input from parents or our community this distrust of the system drives disengagement and sadly impacts our students by alienating families from their educational community in the lawsuit filed in September against the Fairfax County school board and the Virginia Department of Education it specifies that over an 11-year period that Virginia had the worst ruling record against parents who filed claims under Ida it alleges that the hearing officers are not impartial and in fact ruled in favor of parents only 13 out of 847 cases that's an entire generation of children in the state of Virginia that may have been failed so when you think about that and think about how it impacts our families and our ability to advocate for what's best for
062our children I can tell you from personal experience that absolutely nothing could have prepared me for the struggles we would face parenting a child who's in a marginalized population and to be clear it's not the parenting of the child that's the struggle it's doing it in a society and inside institutions that still often see my child as just a diagnosis we request a greater emphasis be placed on listening to the voices of our special education community and re-engaging with our families in a way that honors our input and Life Experiences this is directly reiterated in our next point and this is the one I hear about most frequently time and time again number two include parents and IEP teams in all decisions regarding the placement and location of services for children with disabilities I know
063several of you have degrees in law and I do not nor do I think debating the letter of the law versus the spirit in which we assume Ida and Ada was written is the purpose of this report our Point here is pretty simple to our knowledge there is not a single instance where the parents of a neurotypically developing child received a letter in the mail informing them that their child would be removed from their school community and sent to a different School other than their neighbors and peers that scenario only happens to parents of students with disabilities and that's a problem in the heading of every student's IEP at States quote the IEP describes the students educational program the attending school is defined by the school division and is subject to change end quote that
064perpetuates the fear that your child can be moved to any school at any time and as the parent of a child with a disability in Albemarle County Public Schools you currently have no input in that decision that is inequitable not including parents and IEP teams and decision to change the educational placement and location of services for a child with a disability undermines the integrity and Fidelity of the entire IEP process furthermore by telling a student with a disability that they're no longer welcome in their school Community you're creating a culture where ableism is built into the foundation of that school and telling other students that it's okay to see those with disabilities as less human and not deserving of the same civil rights as their peers I see some eyebrows raising and I'm frankly relieved
065because I can tell you it's not easy as the parent of a child of down syndrome to stand up here and deliver those comments and that feeling from our community I can tell you it was not um easy to receive that letter in the mail is my introduction to Albemarle County Public Schools but it's my sincere hope that there's just been a lapse in communication between leadership and our disability community and now that we're openly discussing it and you're aware of it we can work together to put those practices more in alignment with the mission and values of albemar County Public Schools number three provide increased support for inclusion however well-intended one individual or one department is inclusion is not a special education issue it's a mindset it's a civil rights issue it's the core
066belief that our children with disabilities belong in our homeschool communities with appropriate accommodations not tucked away in a classroom somewhere or segregated in a certain number of schools within the district there's a quote by Dr Tom hair that I come back to frequently in this work do we accept the dominant negative societal attitudes towards disabilities do we seek to change the world through education and I would hope you would join us in the latter because that education has to start with each one of you there are schools with paraprofessionals teachers and administrators leading beautiful inclusive settings every day here across the district but the Grassroots Roots efforts must be met and driven by the school board and Dr Haas this is the first year that bdoe has required each district to submit an inclusion action
067plan you approve the plan for Albemarle County public schools in your last meeting and we very much look forward to hearing from you the timeline and how this will be implemented across the division to better support our students and educators all these facts I've talked about in points one two and three affect our fourth point and I was going to thank all the teachers who were picking to go into special education but I think they've left for the evening number four increase teacher and support staff retention so typically when a system fails when emotions run High when things get volatile when people feel like their voices aren't heard it's always the First Responders that get the brunt of it and burn out the fastest we saw that a lot in in various models throughout the
068pandemic in this case our First Responders our paraprofessionals our teachers in our in-school admin right there are the boots on the ground left to feel the questions from upset parents from policies that they didn't create they're the ones who have to work harder to gain the resources to include their students with disabilities they're the ones being left to Champion what inclusion and appropriate accommodations look like when it doesn't come from the leadership and that's not fair to them or their pay grade we respectfully request that the challenge is specific to navigating the educational system you've created here for children with disabilities be considered when recruiting and retaining teachers and support staff in special education lastly it's critical that our community understand next steps from this report last year the report was presented in April and
069it took six months to get a response it honestly felt like a box checking exercise which perpetuated the concerns discussed in point one we can do better than that the seaac is an extension of the school board by Virginia regulations and I'd love to take your questions as well as hear your thoughts and comments on next steps for these recommendations and how we as a seaac in a disability Community can best help you create positive change for our disability community thank you Miss Allen are there questions or comments on Miss Allen's report from board members Miss Allen uh thank you for for your presentation I look forward to my visit to the seaac meeting I believe it's in in uh next to oh I think is it next Tuesday I think you said December but
070I could be wrong and maybe next Tuesday I will send you an email I will look it up as well okay um in terms of increasing engagement um some some solutions to that what would you like to see I heard part of what you said I mean I heard what you said that kind of answered that partly but specifically I mean because we're always looking for solutions to people's requests what's what types of Engagement are you looking for and please be you can yeah so I think starting with an official response not from just the department of special education but from the school board and Dr House in response to the annual report is a good place to start um I think that the inclusion action plan um did not mention all of the points
071that we discussed tonight but it did mention several of them and I thought it was well written you know it also I think in one of the conclusion points and somebody please correct me if I'm wrong um you know was that we need an entire School District approach to inclusion it's it's simply not something that can be championed by one Department you know so we stand here tonight and we bring our troops to the table I know for example last year in our siac meetings we heard from a multitude of parents specifically about their children's disabilities being moved to different schools we heard from a mom who parented a child with autism in the third grade that child had been moved every single year and you know that's not an easy thing to come and
072talk about especially because at the end of the day we know we have no parental right in that decision meaning they could move the child and she can do nothing about it so having The Bravery to come and speak that truth despite knowing she has no say in the decision made by leadership is is a scary thing to do I don't know what happened to that Mom but we didn't get a response to the report until October of this year that's six months that's six months of people speaking their truth and talking about their challenges to deaf ears you know that does nothing but continue to drive disengagement and that needs to change you know I see it's probably a longer answer than you were looking for um you know I I get surveys I've
073been here two years next month I get surveys all the time about name review committees about budgets about technology nights I've never received a single survey about special education as a parent of a child of down syndrome we get one in the snail mail that goes back to the Virginia Department of Education I mean where's the quantitative data about how we're functioning you know we're the we're the only District in the state of Virginia Who Am has provided a program model of a b and c Bass you know it's impossible as a parent to get information of that from anyone outside of Albemarle County public schools because it doesn't exist anywhere else you know that's a concern I mean if it's if it's amazing and I've not been here long enough nor have I seen
074the qualitative data to answer that but if it's amazing well great let's publish that let's get the word out there let's talk about it but if it's not who's asking those questions and who's reviewing that because when parents come forward and they ask they don't get responses from you guys and that makes them reiterate the fact that their voice doesn't matter anything else I can no thank you I mean I could go okay all right anybody else I I don't know if it's a question or not I mean over the past several years of seaac reports I know that the the issue has been raised about educating there's a special ad universe and then there's the rest of the education exactly the universe and that there's been a real advocacy by seaac that our entire
075teaching staff have some education about special ed and I noticed in your report that there were instances about the new teachers Forum or some of you know what various kinds of workshops that didn't really were not inclusive and it's not really a question for you because you've already said it doesn't happen or there's issues with it and I don't know where we can go with that I do think we should do a better job because we talk about others we talk about special ed teachers as a universe and they're obviously necessary but that knowledge is necessary to permeate it seems to me throughout our teaching faculty um we could not agree more how do we make that happen that's an excellent question and that's something I'm very interested into because I mean as you said
076you're eighteen thousand eighteen hundred students you're 12 and a half 13 percent of our total student body and if we are genuine about promoting having every student Thrive we shouldn't say every student and then the special ed kids are elsewhere and I know a lot of our students do well and we have a lot of very excellent teachers but I think that should be baked into the bread a little bit more you're right because that's what's happening we do have excellent teachers but it's putting them on an island and saying well you all figure it out because there is no top-down approach to inclusion and there is no top-down approach to it not being special education or general education yeah in one of these at the top of one of the pages about materials you
077talked about not having at that special ad ever Educators have struggled to receive resources in order to ensure their students succeed is there something else I don't know what that means exactly I mean I know what it means we've heard um from teachers I mean I got pages and pages from teachers um this was truthfully a lot heavier than I anticipated when I was elected to this position um you know but I think the what I've heard from the teachers and I hope I'm going to describe this well um is that when you're teaching multiple students who have disabilities in general education they may you may be teaching students across various age across various grade levels and so if you're talking about for example a reading program it's my understanding that those reading programs cost
078money and that if it's a grade level purchase that a special education teacher may not have access or be given the funding to have that reading program available for their students they would have to get it from the general education teacher who belongs to that seems affixable situation not by me but yes you're right just email me with some more specific information if you would I would love to do that are there other questions or comments just just one comment and that is that I was looking at my Monday schedule I've got it down for today I'll see you perfect I think Judy you're coming yeah I think you're coming on Tuesday as well um if no one has any more questions I have one follow-up Point um what do we do now do we
079we go back we have a meeting on Tuesday you know I don't think I think kind of in response to your question about engagement I don't think that one report a year and 15 minutes in front of you is sufficient um with where we're currently at in special education in this County do we schedule a follow-up meeting with the school board and interested families do we like what do we do I don't think just me walking back to my seat is going to be where we want to end up I think that raises a question for me about the process of this all because I and I'm sorry I don't if I don't know but I feel like you guys were in front of us in April with your annual report and now it's December
080and it's the annual report so why is it off cycle I when I visited their meeting a couple months ago I asked for them to do this now because the way it was being done before it was after the budget was already complete okay so I wanted them to bring it a little earlier which I really appreciate because I know it took a lot of scrambling uh to get it together and I really appreciate the report I think you all did a great job with it um there may not be another group of parents who's as dedicated as special education ones oh yes um I grew up in household with special education parents that were Fierce Advocates from my brothers so I'm well aware and this was in the 70s that's amazing these are very
081different then I watched my parents suffer and struggle and do a lot of things for my brothers that special education parents don't have to do today so I can appreciate what you're going through um but back to what I was saying I asked them to put together a report now then that way we can bring it into um the the budget development process so what was happening before was they're like for example a couple of things y'all talked about around special education teaching assistants and efforts to hire and retain special education teachers can align them now with the work that we're doing potentials for signing bonuses or comp increases or making adjustments to work conditions so that we can be more successful also the effort that um the community got to see tonight with pearl
082early and those young men I mean you noticed how many of them are going to be special education teachers so anything we can do to improve the quality of the work we're doing I for one having worked in the county now for 18 years think that and I know I'm biased but I think we've got an outstanding special education program but it's severely underfunded by the federal government the state of Virginia is finally sort of waking up to the whole idea of preschool special education that they actually are something that's an integral part of pre-k through 12 through 16. so we're kind of going through I think a metamorphosis now and your voice is greatly appreciated to help us continue that upward trajectory but we can always get better we can always get better with
083what we're doing and even if I what I heard you say and what I heard some parents say in the meeting was understanding that sometimes you don't necessarily get to be part of the decision-making process however the lack of communication sometimes or often from what I was hearing really doesn't help heal the wound of of having to make a change like that those are areas like Dr akov said there are many areas where I think we have low hanging fruit that we can make things better but they start with getting into the budget process so thank you for your report thank you for the recommendation to do it in December um I know I think you mentioned you will continue to come to our meetings is that I will be at the next one because
084I'm teaching a class that night but it's my plan to continue to attend just everyone okay thank you yes so I guess what I would like to see or I guess what I would suggest um is the action plan that the video is requiring the inclusive inclusion includes an action plan yes so if we only have to do that every three years and you said you were generally pleased with with how that was written uh there were parts that were very good yes so I would like I think what I'd be interested in as an individual board member is like a deeper dive into that and a way to tie it to accountability standards because there are I like how that has clear action steps if we're seeking like what is the next thing that
085we do but it concerns me if it's we don't have to check in for three years and with another plan so I don't know maybe you and maybe we can meet and I guess I'm I'm curious about the plan that's the legal mandate um so that it's we can tie it to accountability standards that's just been something a practice that I I like where there's specific things that we work on and check off I think accountability is huge um I also think um you know that report was written by the department of special education so then and I was going to ask so what is the interview I think that's true right yes okay yeah so that what is the interplay there do you feel like there's the ability to give input um there was
086no there was no official meeting to discuss that or input from the CI given to that we received a copy after it was approved by you now you know they may have hopefully took some of our things that we talked about on the CF meetings into account but there was no official um nothing official done to include seek in that process so my last point would just be to commend you I think you have a really powerful speaking style and I the um all of you guys I know that you many of you were there I see um anything bad about the last one but this wrote report in particular was very well done and very detailed in a way that um felt very impactful to me and I just wanted to call that out
087for what it's worth okay Dr Haas is going to come to school board meetings we're going to talk yes right okay um when are your meetings uh they are it is listed on the website and I will be happy to email the schedule to you um there want them once a month on Tuesday evenings from seven to nine PM in this building okay I think we're I think we're all signed up for one you somebody got us to sign up I think just three of you signed up I think I think I'll sign up for one yes yes you were one of the three some of them I'll try to make it two only two of us can officially attend a meeting at a time you can go as a buddy system Graham what you're
088working on it great I'll send you guys all the schedule again all right thank you thank you this is I'm sorry this is for for Dr Haas I mean I would like to see say our our professional development curriculum be more integrated instead of having special ed and I mean I need to look into that I mean I'm I'm I would really want to see that myself I'd like to see what the data is around special education teachers regular education teachers in terms of professional development my feeling I think what I'm hearing you say is that and the things I've seen not just in Alamo County but the conversations at the state level is there needs to be more professional development for quote-unquote regular education teachers so that it's and as a teacher as having
089been a teacher it's often the special education teacher trying to advocate for accommodations to try to work with special education teachers that often don't understand they will look at an IEP and it becomes compliance driven rather than how do we how do we do the best we can and again I think that I would just venture to say that um it's not about often about will it's not about I'm not doing that or it's not important to me it's if you don't have professional development to work with students with special needs then you're not going to be equipped to do it and you don't necessarily lean into it so I agree that we need to look at more for our regular education teachers yeah I mean since we're talking 1800 of our students exactly all
090of our teachers need to be at least minimally you know educated and special ed here's another mind-blowing fact in regard to that 13 of that 13 percent 51 of that are economically disadvantaged that's over half of our students with IEPs are we hearing from them are they you know like you tell us are they in the seaac not usually not that we're aware of you know and and that's a problem you know I think that's the case in you know pick an Avenue in our society those that may need the most help are likely not those that feel like they can speak up the most or those that are getting it you know so if it's this I mean I I have lost track of the hours I've spent not as a lawyer Reading federal
091law and state law and the amount of regulations that it's required for us to know as parents just to ensure that our children get the appropriate education that they um it shouldn't have to be that hard and it's hard for all parents so the more marginalization levels you put in the more difficult it is I have a follow-up question about that um since you're here and the seat committee is here I think it might have been in the interview not sure because it was a little unclear where we're supposed to match the percentage of identified students that's the expects like eight to twelve percent or something so how does CX feel or do you take a position on over-identification of underserved populations is that a problem that you see in this County or that is
092on your radar it is and there's a ciac member who I've spoken to about that who's not there this who's not here this evening but racial inequity is a problem in special education just like it is in the rest of the district I think any problem you can think of that you see is Amplified in students that have IEPs you know I think that's especially alarming because don't quote me on this but you know I think that that data has been around for a significant period of time which makes it even more disturbing because if we continually see the same thing year and year again obviously what we're doing isn't working I don't know who's asking those questions and I'm new enough to this and new enough to albemar county in the state of Virginia
093I'm not sure how the process is supposed to work but it doesn't seem like it's working I know because I'm concerned that if I hear that half the population is economically disadvantaged because special education should exist at some sort of stable percentage you would think of the population if you're identifying I mean what does that mean does that mean that when we see kids who are struggling maybe because we're not reaching them that they don't just identify them I mean I don't understand yeah I'm just curious if that's a conversation that you'll have as well because I don't know if it's competing interest because we're also trying to improve special education and a little part of me is like there's a benefit to having a focused attention on a student that's struggling um but also
094there's a problem with if we're identifying students that and we're putting them into account I don't know I'm curious as someone yeah I think it's a problem and I don't think I'm probably the expert you want to talk to about it but we can find you that expert you know and I think the important part is that those questions need to be asked and they need to be asked by each of you not by a group of parent volunteers who meets once a month I mean I think that question has been on a radar I guess I've just yeah I'm curious if it's a conversation that you guys have um we don't have always after meetings well just for perspective I mean it used to be far worse in the United States and in Alamo
095County and one of the interventions it used to be when um and I'm not trying to be like going down memory lane but when I was a teacher you you that a teacher could make a referral for a student simply to be have a child study that's what it was called child study and that that was all of a sudden an open door just quickly to special education so a teacher could say well you know Johnny is having difficulty reading and I've done what I can child study and students would land in special education that way and while we have our identification issues those are National issues that's those are all around it's across the country over representation in special education with free reduced lunch students black students so Albemarle County is a microcosm of
096that and when I began working here there was a pivot nationally and also in Alamo County with great Fidelity to move to a school-based intervention team process where the first the first place that a student would go who that may be having some difficulties rather than going straight to a child study and and then quickly to special education often would go through school-based intervention team review where their their performance was matched up on on a school-wide assessment or School district-wide assessment to see where their capabilities were you know where they needed help and support and then a specific plan is made for that student so that it's a it's an effort to to keep students from being unnecessarily referred into special education which again has a disparate impact on on students of color and free
097reduced lunch students so over time if you if you haven't been following it but I'm I follow it when I came to the county 17 of our children were in special education now it's down around 13 these are changes that take take time they take considerable effort and I do think that our our systems for intervention are flawed because no matter what happens when you put a system in place and keep working it people it's people dependent over time they you have entropy and you have to keep coming back to it and working on it and making it better one of the positions that the board approved at the last budget cycle was a director for education and tiered intervention services and that's that's Craig Domer and his role is to harness all of the
098intervention programs at all of our schools which are operating independently under the supervision of the principal and have them centrally supervised so that we have consistent practices across the division and to further cut into the over identification of students of color and students who are are free reduced lunch into the special education program but again you just did that so it's going to take more time it takes time to keep making these changes I know that's not a satisfactory answer for a parent who currently has a child in the system but but the effort is there the work is there we are constantly reviewing our data we you know the board reviews the data it's um you can't in Virginia so much is changing rapidly that there's no there's no hiding what's going on I
099mean you make reports to the state the state then supervises the school system and tells us what we need to do to keep improving so there's no no uh doing anything people use the term sweeping under the rug and and I guess I understand that there's a low level trust right now for people like me and people that work in administration and school systems that's just part of the process right now but it's unwarranted we are doing everything we can to support students but we can get better and we are going to get better but again I want to thank you uh for your for the report and thank you for getting it in so we can get it into the budget and we can keep working on those efforts to to make a difference
100for your child and for all the the students in the county thank you for that I think um I obviously don't respond to each one of those things he said um but I think a big one for our community and you know when you talk about it not being warranted um you know simple things like that wording and every IEP yep that underscores that our voice doesn't matter you know those are things that you can change that's right you can change that probably tomorrow if you wanted to you know that's not regulated by anyone other than each one of you sitting here um you know so those are things that I hear what you say um but the action steps of showing our community that are more important than the words right now and and
101I'm not you know I'm not I'm not directly arguing back with what you're saying but there are reasons for language that I love a good academic debate I mean go for it the the reason oftentimes when you talk to the special ed folks and attorneys is a lot of the languages in theirs because this is a highly litigious field and unfortunately school systems can be bogged down with lengthy lawsuits due process if they leave language out in letters now that's not to say that you we can't keep improving the language we use and help parents be part more part of a decision I know whenever I'm involved then the decision making does open up to a greater extent but it I I would say that everything we think about taking out we have to think
102about what are the consequences for it later and it's it is sad that we have come to this place in society where a lot of what we do is compliance driven around the law but it's also again where Public School Systems find themselves over the the litigation that is often brought upon them and I've been part of that over the years from special education parents and so what I wonder is how do we get to a point where we stop going straight to due process or stop and you don't you haven't but um I think in general that's not something any parent wants to have to do I don't think that's um that's I think that impacts this I mean we're here for the students you know and what happens to that student during that
103due process period of time you know it's it's not a win for anybody I think when you box parents into situations like these where they feel like they don't have a voice and they feel like these decisions are made behind closed doors and things like our Point too you're you know we heard from parents all night long about parent input parent input parent input we should have made signs or borrowed than other groups um that's key to our everyday lives like at any point in time we can be told our student is moved to another school well we're on the same page you know and so I mean let's stop it let's you know let's look at that practice let's put something in writing that our families can see that they don't have to fear
104every time over the summer that they walk to the mailbox that they're going to get a letter and have to explain you know I think about what that would do to our family of having to explain to my neurotypical kindergarten why his brother is no longer welcome at the same school you know and those are the questions you're those are the parenting you're wanting us to do you know if somebody is different if somebody needs more help we just bust them somewhere else or if their school is redistricted 240 students were removed from Brownsville to Crozet and they had no voice in that and that's true but it's not only students with disabilities we have to be able to concentrate services at the schools where we can offer them again you and I I feel
105like we're on the same page we just need to get to a point where parents are part of more part of the process than they are yes that's the key point and I think you know we have seen I think we were given last month a revised Katie remember the name of it spring case load the checklist okay spring case um which apparently has been revised um from what it previously was it is still the decision is made by a select few and the parents are just informed sooner inform Sumer they're not part of the decision-making process it's clear so that's not really a change right that's just telling us in a different way or telling us earlier it's not changing the bottom line is parents still have no input and that's the part that
106has to change and if we're on the same page like awesome let's put that in writing and really be on the same page about it can we do that I need them to come with me everywhere I'll be at your I'll be at the meet the meeting after this month and we'll keep the conversation going okay okay all right put on the agenda okay Miss Ellen thank you so much for your before and you will be seeing some of us at your future meetings but thank you thank you email you all and Katrina we will set up a meeting okay [Applause] we will now have our compensation strategy report but uh Mr Redding and Brody Downs okay how do I get the notes and that's what I need all right good evening school board members
107uh Human Resources is uh back with you this evening to talk about our compensation strategy this is all based on the market study recently completed by Siegel as with all of our work in HR we come back to the vision and mission of the school division thinking about how the work of HR supports the team that's mentioned in the mission that is achieving both the mission and the vision a robust compensation strategy aligns with our values of equity for our employees and for recruiting and retaining excellent employees that's woven throughout goal three related to Equitable and transformative resources our compensation structure is the heart of strategy one and as we move through implementation of our compensation structure we expect to see enhanced results related to recruiting and retention of staff within the success measures you
108see some of the data that we will see movement on as we Implement these changes to our Compensation Plan so as we prepare to talk about the recommendations and the rationale behind them we'd like to frame this work with what's gone before we've been before you talking about the comp study several times in previous meetings the board has heard the full report from Siegel and digested a great deal of data related to a new comparative market and to acps's comparative position for more than 80 jobs within the school division board approved that new market for us going forward and approved a phased implementation plan that will bring salaries for positions that are out of alignment with the market back into alignment and do additional work for some positions that will be impacted by those moves
109the board also approved the use of funds for a one-time bonus for all employees and employees will see that in tomorrow's paycheck now we're with you tonight to recommend a compensation strategy to take forward as we work on next year's budget and to guide our work in coming years related to compensation I'm going to turn it over to Mr birdie Downs our director of Employee Services to walk us through what's being recommended uh good evening uh it is a widely understood best practice for an organization to have a thorough Compensation Program I think we would all agree with that on this slide are several reasons why it is prudent to have a robust and thoughtful and purposeful Compensation Program among them are ensuring Effectiveness and consistency while macro and micro level Workforce Trends ebb and
110flow additionally having a Compensation Program allows job Seekers who are increasingly who are increasingly more observant of employer trends to maintain a sound understanding of the organization's practices and also allows an organization to differentiate itself from its peer competitors transparent compensation practices also support engagement and mitigate risk and liability we discussed this information or the information on this slide at prior meetings but it's probably helpful to walk through a broad overview of a Compensation Program to help frame up the remainder of the presentation there are two main components to a comprehensive Compensation Program there are of course several policies and procedures therein but when we look at a Compensation Program we focus predominantly on two things the first is ensuring that our program is and continues to be Market competitive we ensure that we're more
111competitive by identifying a benchmark group of organizations with which to compare and then we consistently evaluate usually on an annual basis our compensation levels in comparison to that market you'll recall the school board as Mr Redding just mentioned recently adopted a new competitive market the second component is internal Equity it is important to ensure that our compensation levels are comparable within the organization we utilize a robust analysis process for measuring key factors to equitably place roles within our pay grade structure internal Equity also applies to individual employees as well we utilize objective criteria to evaluate applicant and employee experience education and other qualifications to place individual employees in the pay grade scale correctly so I want to pause for a minute and revisit the first component of a Compensation Program the market competitiveness and specifically
112the second bullet on the spring uh or on this on the screen not spring having a strategically identified adopted uh competitive market is critical but once defined the next important component to a comprehensive Compensation Program is to identify how that organization will consistently Target its place in comparison to the adopted Market in other words is the organization going to Target being at Market being Market competitive where the 50th percentile or is the organization going to Target a different approach this topic is the focal point of our discussion tonight uh what what should the albino County Public School Division use as its strategic Target within its newly adopted Market to date the School division's competitive strategic targets have been for teachers to beat the market targeting the bottom of the upper quartile or the 75 the
11375th percentile for classified positions it has been to be at Market where the 50th percentile it's worth noting that our strategic Target for teachers also targeted the 50th percentile until the school board decided to Target a higher Benchmark several years ago and the targeting of the 50th percentile had been shared had been a shared strategic Target with the local government so the question of how does our former adopted Market compare to the updated adopted Market has been raised a few times over the past few meetings in which this topic has been discussed and while this comparison was not part of our compensation Consultants Siegel which is part of their scope of work for staff to make a recommendation regarding updating this the Strategic targets it's a question that really needed to be answered so we've
114spent several uh several days within the past few weeks working to collect and compile information to that end the purpose of this slide is really to illustrate how our former and updated adopted Market compare because our strategic target has been the 75th percentile a true Apples to Apples comparison should as well so what you're seeing on the screen is how the former adopted Market compares to the new adopted Market at the 75th percentile on our masters master's degree step scale we selected the Masters master's degree step scale because a majority of our new hires that come out of um that are novice teachers are have master's degrees as opposed to bachelor's albemarle's information is also provided represented by the dark blue line You'll see the updated adopted Market compensates more aggressively compared to our former
115adopted Market staff's recommendation is to update the School Division strategic targets for both teachers and classified positions to beat the market by 10 percent beating the updated adopted Market by 10 percent equates to targeting the top 40th percentile to help guide this recommendation you'll see on our on your screen a few important pieces of data again through the lens of the Master's Degree teacher scale you're seeing you're seeing the top two rows how the recommended strategy to Target beating the market by 10 percent compares to the strategy of targeting the former adopted markets 75th percentile so essentially the new recommended strategy versus the old the third row shows that comparison of percentages and the recommended Target lags the former strategy on the lower end of the scale by no more than point six percent and
116compensates as much as 3.9 percent more in the latter stages of a teacher's career below you can also see how the school division's current Masters teacher skill Compares beating the recommended Target by as much as 6.4 percent while indicating that we do have some work to do on their teacher scales and the upcoming budget cycle at the higher end of the scale one topic that we had to work through was the wisdom of targeting a lower percentile going from the 75th percentile to rec to the recommended 60th percentile but in working through this with Siegel beating a competitive market by targeting the 60th percentile compensates that more that more that sorry that compensates more aggressively than the last adopted Market is a robust and sound strategy focusing on consistently being 10 above Market would allow
117for the school divisions levels of compensation to not be a deterrent for employees and job Seekers alike foreign so next steps our compensation work is certainly a large-scale project that will be completed in multiple layers as Mr Redding mentioned phase one changes will be effective in December by April phase two changes will be implemented in June of 2023 any approved annual adjustment will take place and the competitive market survey and Analysis based on the Strategic targets will be conducted in the fall of 2023 to help guide budget work for the following school year questions and discussion I just want to thank you for the labor in doing the graphs because I think that that was the information that I really wanted to have is how much better is this new market compared with the Old
118Market and I know it took a lot of work so it was very helpful yeah the graph and table really do a good job of showing us the comparison are there any other questions from board members um I I also I got a lot out of this information um and I understand why we got the information for the Masters person but I was just wondering if we could get that similar information at some point for um someone on the classified scale as well yeah we can do it I'm not sure if I've got this right and uh so what I'm hearing is that I understand that we're in a higher paying New Market and I I get that um the 75th percentile is what we were in in the Old Market and so the numbers
119of taking it down to Market plus 10 percent still ends up with with the exceptions you know that that were noted in there overall higher pay correct because if if we're going to be saying well you're in the top 60 uh top 40 percent it's got a whole different ring to it and so I'm just wanting to make sure that I'm understanding the specific numbers in that yeah so there's a a couple nuances one one thing just to be really clear so we're um we're targeting the the 10 percentile more than the midpoint so we're not targeting the midpoint and then adding on 10 percent um so over the course if if you if you were to pull the data and let's say there's a range of uh just for simple math right 50 50
120000 to 55 000 midpoints 52.5 right so you're not doing 52 5 plus 10 percent you're looking at uh what's the 60th percentile of that range from from 50 000 to 55 000. Beat It by ten percent that's what I was referring to yeah it's it's as we were looking at the slides that he actually pointed out earlier today said you know that might be a little bit of a Nuance we might have to work through so you were correct um But to answer your question about the the you know the 75th versus the 60th and those two Targets um one of the things that we talked about with Siegel is the fact that the the new market is so much more robust and it does compensate so much more aggressively that our ability uh
121to be able to to more thoughtfully provide a little bit more of a Target there is um uh certainly it doesn't allow uh for for job Seekers to look elsewhere we're certainly not disincentivizing people from staying based on on compensation um you know I caught up with our director of talent uh Jason Dr Jason Sears earlier today we were talking about the presentation and um he said you know he said compensation's certainly critical right and our ability uh to continue to compensate aggressively as a school division is also very critical and we're doing that um but but if we were to if the difference between that 75th and 60th or even the 75th and the 70th of the new adopted Market that's not what's going to cause a teacher to come here or not it's
122the other many things that we can provide more holistically uh as a School Division culture said hope yep so you will be bringing us um more recommendations about classified employees too right yes sir okay any other questions comments just do we need to adopt do we need to make any kind of decision tonight okay I don't think we need to take any action okay and presented tonight okay thank you both very much thank you thank you all right we'll take a 10 minute break that means that we'll be back in session at uh what 7 30 I mean 8 35. is going to present us with um FY 24 budget good evening I'm Maya kumazawa director of budget and planning and the purpose of this item is to get your feedback on new proposals as
123we draft the funding requests that will be presented in February um as you're aware our acps budget aligns very well with our learning for all strategic plan with regards to the vision and Mission but in particular the budget aligns with objective 3 under goal three which is to provide resources in an equitable manner that transforms learning experiences and opportunities for all students so here's just a review of where we are with today's meeting from September to December we've been working to develop our Baseline budget and schools and departments have been have also been working hard alongside us to submit their budget requests as you're aware we've been in the community conversations process and at the end of that process really is getting your input by reviewing the results that we've received from Community conversations from
124now through February we will prioritize proposals against projected available revenues for next year and then in February a draft funding request will be presented followed by budget work sessions with you all as we begin each annual budget development process we have five budget goals that we keep in mind when doing our work number one we develop a budget that advances the school division's mission as part of the Strategic plan number two as you heard earlier from our HR staff we want to provide a plan that supports competitive benefits and salaries that reflect Market adjustments and as you are aware the majority of our budget is dedicated towards employee compensation number three as we discussed at uh the last November 10th school board meeting any budget decisions that are made on an annual basis should support
125the long-term Financial stability of our organization to keep that in mind over the long term and number four any new budget proposals that are presented should align with the Strategic plan as well and your priorities and then number five goes along with that is that in order to um confirm that new proposals are moving our strategic plan forward we will incorporate metrics as part of logic models to ensure that those proposals are being are effective foreign this is a visual that uh that represents the process of our community conversations which was our budget input process from our various stakeholders we'll start at the bottom of the pyramid which represents building level conversations so throughout the fall we held meetings with a school level employees and students we also held meetings at the department level for
126all of our departments and we also had meetings with a majority of our advisory groups who represent employees in our community as well to gain their feedback and input as we think about developing the funding request from there we had a division level conversation where we asked Representatives who were part of those building level conversations to come together at a central level to talk about budget priorities the common budget themes that emerged from the division level conversation led to the development of the community budget survey which was released in November and recently closed and the results of that survey and other feedback we receive will be used to draft the funding requests that will be presented in February here's our community conversations by the numbers so in terms of participation rates we had about 30
127meetings with schools and departments we had seven meetings with advisory groups and from those we received 39 ideas and at our division wide Forum we had 98 participants resulting in 15 ideas and then the survey that went out in November we had a response rate of 1493. participants on the right is a pie chart of who participated in that budget survey and later when we look at the results of the survey you'll see that there's a generally good demographic representation as well in terms of the input we received so um I hope you all had a chance to take a look at the budget survey results um the blue bar at the top is a link also to those budget results um so if you want to take a moment and read those the examples
128provided in the survey questions themselves are the result of what we heard during the Central budget forum and then the free response that the community gave those were additional ideas that supported that specific strategic plan area so it's important to look at both of those areas and on the slide are some examples of what we heard and you can see that they are categorized within our strategic plan goal areas so this evening this time is really dedicated for you so if you want to spend just a few minutes getting your thoughts together about what sort of input you want to provide to staff as we work on the funding request we'll share what you think after just a few minutes for you to pull up the results if needed I had a clarification question of
129course my thing just went away on the survey results um how does it work when it says it's asking them do they do we think these particular do we think do they think that these particular things are going to support the objective do we break it down because some of them are pretty you know like one of them says proposed recommendations to support the subjective question for maintain lower class sizes the second bullet point create a single sign-on portal well there was and there's 42 percent of the pop of the response said that that they think it would support it very well did we break those apart because it might like which one did it might be that they really think the lower class sizes is what's supporting it and they could care less about
130a single sign-on portal for student resources did we break that down no it was presented as a group to say are we thinking about that area in the same way are these generally it was more General was more General yeah um and and the free response I think people answered clarified what their response was that was if they didn't and why was that just because that makes it really hard to kind of parse out what is what they're actually supporting or they think is the most useful especially I mean some of these have like four or five bullet points that are pretty spread across ideas yeah I think one of the goals was to keep sir the point of surveys you want a lot of participation and feedback and so if you had a really
131long survey with every idea um it would have just I think it was about brevity and making sure that it was just a few minutes of everyone's time but it's feedback that we can take forward that if you think that we should break it out in the future we can my feedback would be to break it down so that I could have a better idea of which ideas have support versus groups of ideas but I'm glad to have at least this to look good may I also clarify one on question two uh bullet point to saying provide all student materials to all students so all students have equal access to learning are we not doing that I mean I'm surprised by the verbiage so good evening again board members I I believe that came out
132of a a suggestion that we start providing school supplies to students uh instead of at the beginning of the year sending home lists that say you need this many boxes of pencils this many boxes of tissues this many uh cans of hand sanitizer that come into school and to that's correct yep and to speak to miss Carlson's question when the survey was designed to give some examples of what people put into that category we didn't try to pull everything out of there that came out of the survey to say uh you know here's a list of 30 items that that emerge from the um from the conversation with staff so if in the future we would you know you'd suggest that we we do that with any recommendation that comes up we certainly could but
133this was designed to to give folks who didn't participate in those meetings an idea of some things that might fall into that category and asked if they supported that category in general so I did not think that this was the one of the better surveys that we've done so I I do think if there are people who just want to give us input on what we should do better that we should still be accepting emails and conversations on this you know we are open to hearing more for people who could not make it through the survey it's not really for you that's for all right I had a question about the SEL counselors are they not this was a pilot program or what was the deal about making them permanent uh they're currently funded with
134one-time grant money and we're making plans to see how we can whether we can keep those continue fighting them for another year but it's not something that we can do recurring year after year [Music] foreign together if you could choose at least one one idea in each of the three goal areas and presented as such that would be helpful and it doesn't necessarily need to come from the survey that's just something to help you but it can be from other conversations presentations you've heard this evening presentations you've heard throughout the year as you know the budget input processes year round foreign to share your feedback okay I'll jump in on goal one thriving students um I think the biggest one for me is low low class size maintaining low class size I think that helps
135teachers I think that helps students and it looked like there were some additional I don't fully know that's calculated but I think there was an additional idea about Tas for classrooms that have over 22 students I feel like classroom management in particular is also an issue that's hard when you're teaching and having more adults so and that's I feel like got a big budgetary impact I will say I don't think all of these had big budgetary impacts so like some of the lower hanging fruits like a single sign-on portal for your materials would be hopefully something you know could do but that's a big one for me low class size are we going category by category or person by person category by category I agree with Miss Coulson about maintaining low class sizes I know
136in yesterday's meeting it was suggested to me by one of our colleagues On The Board of Supervisors at the fat you know the fastest way to close the gap would be to increase class sizes um and I would resist that and I think our surveys have consistently shown there's strong support for that in thriving students I mean I did I don't know if it's a suggestion or question I know we have reading interventions but I don't know our math scores are also in need of some help so I don't know if we currently have math interventionists or not um but I would like to explore that as well and just to be clear you were talking about closing the funding Gap not the opportunity gaps funding Gap yeah probably hits on both but yeah in
137terms of thriving students I guess um I'd be interested to know what comes out of the RFP I mean obviously there are going to be a lot of um suggestions and things out of that but one thing that I hear about a lot and think about a lot and we heard about here tonight was continuing professional development for teachers we hear about tonight for special education but um we hear about that all the time so that was that would be something for me in terms of thriving students I don't have it just narrowed down to to one um you know I did have a question about needs based for the school bus assistance to help monitor students and the Tas based on enrollment and and I just don't know I mean as to whether or
138not there is a need for for that but the ones that I was I'm in favor of um are the SEL counselors the summer school programming and I think we should consider a 12-month school calendar um and in in in the increase of intervention Staffing for every school and that I think can be driven through uh PD because I know that there are people who are being kind of pushed into intervention you know with that don't necessarily have the training just as as there are situations where special needs uh talents and training is necessary for people who teachers who have to provide some services that they're not properly trained for so those would be my three four three for me I think it would be a favor more support structures for staff and that would
139go along with more adults just being around whether they're interventionist or or whatever [Music] um just because along with smaller class sizes you know it's just the more adults we have helping our students I think is going to be better yeah I had a lower class sizes and also um continuing the counseling counseling positions but also maybe uh after school activities too Dr Haas I have a question about the SEL counselors I'm not exactly sure how to differentiate them from our Mental Health Counselors and I don't also don't know what the N is you know do we have one for school or some that go out as I my understanding is that they support the teachers they're almost like SEL coaches am I wrong about that so I think that the names get used a
140lot interchangeably um really it's just one counselor per school that was added that and I've heard them referred to as mental health counselors and SEL counselors but it's just it's the same thing okay and um yeah so did you have an another question about that or so it's one per school right now and we really didn't use any kind of um Staffing standard for that we just used we used one-time money and we figured we would just have one at each school we are what we're thinking about doing is building out the school counselor uh Staffing standard to be more robust and you know sort of subsume the um social emotional counselors into those numbers and keep the numbers higher but have it all become a standard rather than just one at each school because
141you know you've got one at Alma high school and you've got one at Red Hill Elementary School right right so that that's that's we we had a budget meeting today right before the board meeting that was the what we were talking about achieving really all of our school counselors should be should be social emotional counselors I think particularly at the high school level they do a lot of helping children look at classes right and I think that we need to just keep working on that model and shifting it more towards social emotional support because the students classes and programming that's that's one feature of what they do but a lot of that they can they can do they do on their own and they can do on their own I have one piece of feedback
142I guess about this process and doing this I whatever proposals we move forward with and some of these we're already doing I think my focus or what I would want to see is uh the data or the research or pinning this to student achievement in some way I always get a little bit and we're just kind of picking and choosing like this sounds good you know this seems good seems good to me but it can often be the case it's something that seems good is it doesn't turn out to be that great so that's what I want to see I always feel a little weird when we're just when I feel like I'm just picking things like oh I know low class size is connected to student achievement I don't know the provide all student
143materials are all students so all students have equal access to learning I don't know that might not even cost that much I've seen it in my son's school where they don't have to buy supplies anymore it's just there but I don't know if that's driving student achievement in that school or is necessary so I don't know that's what I want to see it tied to when we ultimately get a budget I think it's I think it's a good point I think it might be more difficult to tie Mental Health Counselors I mean what I mean the the piece of that I would be surprised if we could find a good a tight relationship I just [Music] um impressed in a bad way but in I noticed the numbers of of mental health contacts that our
144counselors are getting and it's quite High and so even if we can't even if we don't have data points that show it it seems to me that intuitively it has to make a difference if students feel listened to and supported in the schools I could be wrong well yeah there's a great deal of research to support that and there are also things that we do in schools that we just do because the kids come to school and you know for example we provide lunch for students which actually next to time on task is the only causal relationship is breakfast and student achievement everything else we do you you're not gonna you might find a high correlation or you might find a relationship a positive relationship but almost every intervention that's done in schools you'll there's
145no cause or relationship for it because there's so many intervening variables that take away from what you're trying to accomplish but over the years federal government has chosen to use schools as the place the conduit for social services and redistribution of wealth so launch programs counseling programs uh having students doing screenings for scoliosis Vision all those things aren't necessarily related to education but and schools have become the de facto providers for those because that's what we do so sometimes it's just a question of what do we want to provide you know in terms of materials for students to be able to use there's probably a lot a lot tied to that you know when you're the student in the in the classroom that doesn't bring in anything and all the other students are bringing in
146bags of kleenexes and paper towels and all that other stuff you know I know some people might say well that's that's just the way it is I mean but if we can just eliminate that practice altogether and have everybody start off with the same materials so they don't have to see the Haves and the have-nots in one more way I do think that that might be valuable in terms of school climate that's just that's a tough one for me I'm not gonna have much to say about the other ones I will say but the thriving students as a as a student who who lived through that I didn't have any of the school supplies and they were and it was a I remember when people had like those cool boxes in the Lisa Frank I'm
147the age of Lisa Frank the really colorful Trapper Keepers I never had one and but we're not going to be able to eliminate The Have and Have Nots if we don't equip our students with the the skills they need to get have opportunities and to to get themselves out of low-income situations so while that is Meaningful and I'm not saying we need to take that off I win our only goal at this level is to kind of focus in where we want to do it I just want to make sure we're being so intentional that we're not just doing things because they sound good but because they really are tied to students performing better so although I like a lot of these ideas I guess I want to see more things tied to student like
148the reading I would want more detail I guess it needs to be tied to reading scores improving it needs to be tied to [Music] um yeah it needs to be tied to student achievement on on these factors um so I don't know but I'm not saying anything that you said is wrong I'm just the point here if we're going to focus it in is I want to see proposals and one I could pull out I also want to see things that we could be taking out that might be diverting resources and I'm going to throw this out I'm not saying this but like our world language program we put a lot of money into that to serve certain students at certain schools so that they learn an additional language so I want to maybe also
149see areas we can remove so we can focus energy on on what I think is important um and I say that as someone who had it back when I did if you had free lunch you got a green lunch card it literally was a different color than everyone else's and you had to use it and it and it sucked and you know I'm saying that that does have an impact but also it has an impact to leave school and know that you've got all the the stuff you need to to make it in the world so yeah I I got lunch tickets yeah I remember my dad my dad got a second job and I stopped getting lunch tickets I was really pretty ticked off about that um but yeah I mean having had that
150shared experience so yeah I agree um the just to kind of say one more thing that we're just trying to honor the process of hearing feedback from all of our schools in our community so that's how these things reach reach the board and I appreciate that I appreciate hearing the idea that is since this is a timed input I just want to always hone in on what I feel like she's important it's sort of related to that I'd like to also see the one about collaborating more with Community groups to make sure that families know about resources within the community I wanted to um oh I'm sorry Grandma useless oh um to Second what you were saying Katrina and also with Matt and probably many other people on this dice who had those differently colored
151lunch tokens and the fake guest sweatshirt um I you know I I just sometimes when we're talking about these things um and we're trying to weigh things but we don't have numbers Associated to them it's hard for me to figure that out so like I think our school is either most of your school supplies are provided or all I can't tell um but I don't know how much that costs across the division uh and so it's hard for us to have these directional conversations without having an understanding of what it costs in something that might help with achievement in a different way and the impact because I mean kids also still bring in their own supplies if they're fancy supplies so it's like becomes the Baseline you have this but then you know who has
152like the off-brand I know it's very minor but you know who has the off-brand crowns versus the I got the so just a very intentionality around achievement that's what we were talking about at the the AFE last night we you know we provided Baseline field trips but then you know parents come in behind that and add more so um and then so just for in terms of the the dollars again we can reverse the process but what what our hope is to get input from the board on what your priorities are and then we'll bring back the price tags for it as opposed to I guess sort of like we're doing right now with the CIP which is here's the big price tag you fit the the fit what you want into we're trying to
153say what what's interesting to you you know what would you might like to pursue and then we'll bring back the dollars for it and if there are things that you want to strategically abandon um that that would be good to know you know one that I forgot from goal one was to consider how to connect students and their families to Community Resources within the school environment and that's the community school concept right okay I'm be interested in learning more about that in goal number two I agree with Graham on the um uh collaborate with Community groups uh to provide more services kind of the same thing um and the other one was to increase access both financial and spaces available to after school activities uh also that what Graham had said including edep with uh
154trans bless you with uh Transportation available I've got three others on the next page if I can I might as well just go for it for goal three to create a professional learning plan for new teachers to ensure they're familiar and prepared to use all division adopted materials and I would put a period there and then say PD um build systems to support staff to become credentialed teachers licensed drivers and certified professionals I think they're that's worth exploring definitely and then you know with the one that says focus on both on building new schools rather than renovating existing schools I feel strongly that the answer to that is both and the last one is consider other forms of environmentalism and uh such as moving away from single-use Plastics Etc and Dr akuff and I sat
155through a presentation last year in June at Albemarle High School and and their AP biology uh course and in fact Brisa was in that room and was one of those students and uh they're already thinking about this in the schools and I think we've as we did we've done with other exercises including the anti-racism policy should be listening to some of the ideas that the students are having foreign item three but um the plan to move away from fossil fuels to see if we could come up with some way to do that and then also to audit our school facilities to make sure that they're all consistent from one school to another anything else okay is that it yeah I think what's great about this process is we call it budget input but it always
156turns out to be input there are some things that will fall nicely within the budget process and some things that don't but it's good to and we're all here so it's good to receive that feedback so thank you um so all I have is next steps we will lay out all of our proposals as we start to get Revenue information in December and January so we'll see what we can get close to balancing of anticipated revenues for next year and we'll know that by mid January and then the draft funding request will be presented by the superintendent on February 16th as a reminder these are your budget work sessions there will be a budget work session following the draft funding request presentation that's why you see that date February 16th twice and the public hearing
157is scheduled for March 2nd on March 9th we've scheduled for you to approve your funding requests so that's sort of the budget development process is there any questions or anything else all right and then for anyone in the public there's a budget development website that's listed at the bottom any questions or further feedback you have you can send those at budget K12 albemarle.org okay again we appreciate all of your efforts toward guiding us toward a good budget in in the spring so thanks so much thank you excellent work is that yesterday in in the meeting with with the supervisors uh it was said that the county executives budget is going to be given to the supervisors in February and is that correct I mean I I it wasn't it pushed back just as ours was
158pushed back from January a couple years ago yep traditionally we used to present the funding requests in January but that was before we really got a good estimate on local revenues so we're trying to time our first draft with their first draft so we have the same assumptions so we're not swinging back and forth so they're they are going to be they are in February February yep it'll be about a week after um last year was we did ours one night and then and then Jeff did his the very next day so correct it was it was that it was very close so we're getting pretty we're getting pretty close good okay thank you thank you also for the presentation that you made yesterday that was very good you've had a busy week yeah all
159right now we will move to our school board evaluation Ms Carlson yes I am leading our discussion and I'm noting that we are starting at the end time in the agenda so I will try to be quick um we're going to be a little late folks so I put together a presentation while Jennifer is loading it I will say we didn't compile all of our scores we only got five of the seven so far compiled into it and we didn't have it till this afternoon so this was a presentation that I made while um waiting for my son at gymnastics right before this meeting it is nothing spectacular um [Laughter] I'd like to object and go to the next one great thank you so much it means a lot okay so um really quickly segwaying
160off of Maya's work the point of the evaluation tool um is well I'll get to that in one second so the evaluation tool is modeled on this calls him given 212. I think you're the evaluation just bear with me bear with me um it's modeled on the grading School boards Rubik created by Bellwether and America secedes uh secedes and it is developed to it was actually developed I'll just read it it was developed into advanced policy loose Bellwether is an organization that develops and advances policy Solutions the major challenges in long-standing inequities facing policy managers point is it's a research-backed rubric that is used to help school boards hone in on the indicators of successful school boards um in some successful districts that have been tackling the achievement Gap um and we decided to use
161it we revised it significantly in 2020 thanks in large part to Mr Holden and Miss Johnson who spent a lot of time and took our feedback so we made quite a few changes so it is not at one point it's it's supposed to be a back tool that you can use your score and it really means something statistically significant it's not at that point anymore but it's significant in that it's helping us get annual comparison next slide . because I'm just kidding this is and so just as a recap the whole point of doing this one reason is it it just going through it reminds you of the characteristics we should be striving for in our board it's always a good reminder to read through them and be like that is something that we should
162maybe be doing in our board it provides a quantitative comparison tool for us to see if we're improving in specific areas it helps us focus our efforts on areas where we could be approving and it helps with goal setting and I've wrote it's better than reading the book because Matt has suggested the book of successful characteristics of school boards many times and there's always a little pushback although I think we probably all have read it but this helps break it down into nice easy little chunks that we can look at next slide so this I'm going to go through real quickly I just went and crunched the number so this is the first time that we can have a year-on-year comparison I didn't do the total score because I feel like there's some issues with
163Fidelity in where we put specific characteristics because like we only give 13 points for student achievement but then we give a lot for you know in it so I just did it by section by section so if you want to look at it it's there in short um we made some improve we made actually I think quite a few improvements we had a few areas we felt back on the student achievement characteristic is one of them you go to the next slide these are all in the the tool which you can't fold up on your laptop if you'd like um and yeah so you can just see where we did how we did compared to last year I know that's something we were interested in seeing and I think it's kind of neat to see
164and you can find that in the individual thing that Miss Johnson set out sent out that shows everyone's scores um and then [Music] next slide looks like we fell out of bed with um so now diving in to the specifics um so the positives I always think it's good to do the positives the positives are a lot there's a lot of the individual indicators are what's in the the document that you pulled up I wasn't going to like screenshot it but in particular we're doing well with values ethics and conflicts of interest we're doing well with school board operations and meetings I think that's probably pretty it hopefully pretty evident especially if you view school board meetings that are happening elsewhere we have a strong superintendent relationship we're doing great in on our markers of
165cultural responsiveness and educational equity and a focus on that and we're doing great thanks to miss Mr Zimmerman for financial condition of the division and Maya also we've made some positive changes because of this evaluation tool one of them is getting the budget input for Budget input meetings prior to the budget process is something that came out of this evaluation tool there's been increased access to meetings we got more points for that because we have zoom and we post our meetings WE Post our videos um and achievement goal setting our most recent thing gave us a lot of extra points on that one because we've we've made some progress there next slide and this is the last one other than discussion this is what I just pulled out before discussion points if we want to
166talk about this is where we were um these are ones that I would think there'd be growth some people gave us points on the fewer than 10 percent of the schools but we did Pat send us some information and we did not meet that criteria so it should be a zero across the board more than 10 percent of our schools are accredited at 16 of them are at the majority of the meetings we had mixed answers on this at the majority of meetings do we talk about goals specifically advancing student achievement I I asked I mean I wasn't sure we probably could be more intentional with that anyway these are just ones I pulled out where we like had low percentages Communications I feel like that's one that we've all pointed out like a clear
167policy for how we communicate with constituents like via email and and stuff like that that's something we could see growth in um school board members receiving training and understanding I mean we can just ask I don't think we do so I think that's a zero I I don't think we all receive training that's like an easy low-hanging fruit that we could all get a training and how to understand financial statements I'm sure Maya would love to help us with that too I am he said she already left was she like so that's just what I pulled out and you can look through the data and pull things out other things out and this is a focus on the quantitative side they're also qualitative questions in the back that we can go through but the whole
168point of this is we made it uh we wanted to move it to December we want to do it every year so that we end up having data over the year and I'm sorry we're squeezing it in at the end of the year at the end of a meeting but at this point I think we would just open it up to discussion and for the audience and also for newer board members who's you're not new anymore but uh historically what we did prior to this was we just had a meeting where we kind of answered open-ended questions about how we were doing and so this was trying to make a move towards like really quantifying and setting goals for what we wanted to improve in the future well your presentation be did you email it
169to us I just emailed it to Jennifer yes so I'll send it to you okay all right you know I just have one comment on it and that is the what you had on the last slide about um basically a school board PD was also on the slide before Mr oberg's swim team video and um you know about it looked like we fell out of bed in terms of doing PD and and all that over the course of the last year and I think that's very important for all of us that was also one of our lowest scoring ones was PD I felt like that might have been a little bit of coming out of the pandemic but last year it opened back up so we can get back on um I think that this
170is a lot more helpful than the one that you're describing which is like how are we doing let's talk about that but um a little bit when I was filling out the questions and maybe this was because I did it at like 4 55 on the day that it was due I didn't know a lot of the answers and so luckily we got you know some objective answers these were like questions that had actual answers that I did not have so I I do wonder about that if like some of it we could more interpret as like maybe there's not enough communication Among Us that we don't know all these things um I don't know if there's like another part of the rubric that can address that but some of it just seemed like I'm
171ignorant of this thing I also think if one of our goals is greater communication communication with the public or greater communication connection with the schools that we should somehow keep track I mean I know many of us go to schools all of us go to schools most of us I don't do a lot of other things so um I mean I I there's got to be something between just saying globally you know we should do better uh I think I would love to see some sort of you know I've gone to you know a seaac meeting or gone to this or that other meeting I think it would be of interest to keep track even if we kept it secret you know each of us but I think entering you know I've visited five schools
172this year I've gone to you know you worn a reindeer suit and went up in the cherry picker for Christmas toys you know those kinds of things I mean I think it would be help help us understand what we are doing collectively and where we might want to spend some more effort I mean not saying you must do this or that but what are we actually doing is that what are we supposed to talk about that during school board announcements or business or something so I can't I can't tell sometimes people do it sometimes I do it sometimes it feels like I'm bragging though it feels like oh look at me I got one up in a bucket truck uh so I don't know bravely with no railings you went up in a bucket truck
173dressed as a reindeer I did I think it's important who did it Dr Haas dressed as a reindeer oh the chicken and the reindeer to go together I'm gonna I'm gonna wave my comment so miss Carlson went up also as a reindeer aside from the reindeer one thing I would like a little bit of help understanding is how can we better connect the dots like we had this excellent seaac report tonight and not once did anything about student outcomes for our sped students come up that felt tangible so if we can somehow connect the dots better between things that we hear and then okay how can we do things that are going to fix that so that we have better student outcomes not just make the families feel better but actually make the students learn
174more I don't want that conversation just to like go away you know well I think if we're looking through the lens of the tracker where I see that most closely aligned is probably the little piece that was around um organizational operational like to what I think sometimes a clearer death defining of the roles with the CIA presentation I know I felt frustrated because it felt like a blending of the how can I help you on the ground versus what is my role here and what is your role there so I feel like there could be some more clarity around um especially since that's one of the the achievement Gap things that we were looking at one of the demographics we were looking at we could also communicate more with each other just about our various
175committees I mean Ellen and I are on the foundation board and I'm sure probably some some of you don't have any idea what we're doing and I'm the liaison with the Enviro the advisory committee for environmental sustainability and likewise I mean we and I know from the K-Tech board I mean the rest of us you know would probably like to hear occasionally what K-Tech is up to um but we are all off on our little on our committees or boards and we don't communicate about the work that we do on those yeah it's almost as if we need an annual cycle of committee reports on some of these other things that we do outside of these meetings yeah because at one time we talked about um communicating that more often and I guess it just
176ought to feel about a Wayside but either on an email or even you know just a few minutes doing the meeting could be a time that we could report those things the alamoral foundation for education is taking donations right now all right I think what I would like I'm trying to walk the line here because I'm not trying to guide the discussion but I'm I also want to pull because this has kind of been my baby the evaluation tool I'd like to pull the pieces that we want to work on for the next year and when I think I'm hearing from you guys now but also I'm probably putting my own spin on it so feel free to push back is keep track of school visits some kind of even if it's a Google Document
177where we can have an idea we've talked about that in the past and we know then that like every school is getting a visit um so I'm open to that if y'all are open to it um Communications policy not policy I wouldn't say policy a procedure that's in place that's visible that is one of the track the tracking things was make that policy visible or procedure visible so that when people send an email they know what to expect if they're not so I would like to see that change in the next year um committee updates I feel like we could maybe have an agenda item where like in the middle of the year we just take a 20-minute chunk and go through what's going on in the Committees versus the kind of Hit or Miss
178because it's a little hard to keep track of like who's going to give an update at what um what time and maybe the school visits to Judy's point would be addressed if we kept the visible Google Drive where we had it and we can just have a a call out of what's happened maybe and it's less personal we can you know like you don't have to personally Advocate say oh I went here I went here and just be like here's what happened this week according to our tracker that's some idea and I'm open to new ideas I'm just trying to take them down um and I'm trying to think how it's going to get us more points on our evaluation achievement Gap here which one thing I would like to see is an agenda a
179visible agenda list of upcoming items so that I kind of I know you keep that Jennifer but I would love to have access and I think all of us should have access to like what is on the list of of coming up and making sure that we're checking because a lot of those questions I couldn't really answer I'm like did we specifically talk about achievement four times did we is it on the future I just want to like have it and make sure we're checking off I'm sorry I'm making you stand up there Jennifer at least it wasn't 212 slides um and then I wrote down the student outcomes piece review so I mean those are some goals I have I guess that I'm going to try to push for next year so that we
180get a better score and hopefully you each are taking away something that we can work towards right this is my data driven mindset all right any other comments or additions to board evaluation to keep those things in mind and working on it I will take ownership of the things that I just said to try to push towards those I will say they're also the qualitative responses and some of them are feedback on the tool I don't I'm not particularly inclined to change the tool a whole bunch just because we don't have a lot of um time having gone through it but obviously I'm open to feedback it's not a perfect system I think Judy I land on your side when it was I didn't know the answers to a lot some of them not to
181some of them as well and I thought I probably should know the answers to this this is a good motivation to go track down what's going on yeah and when it says all board members did blah blah blah it's like well I don't know if everybody did that yeah oh financial statements we can also I think we could try to make sure we get a training on yeah Financial how to read financial statements although we I'm not sure we need it every year right I think it would just make sure you did it at least once yeah yeah Dean did it for me when I before I right after I got elected before I started he did one for me but okay is that Ms Carlson I've talked too much I'm done all right thank
182you so much uh is there any other um is there any other board business or items to come before us for tonight yeah oh you Mr oberg we really will miss you but a statement yes okay uh I want to thank every one of you uh you guys are my family I love you guys I'm going to miss you tremendously uh somebody asked me what I've done well and I just thought I'd say first thing was making sure jono and I were both on the board I take pride in that fact hiring Dr Haas I think was the most important thing I did on the school board I'm so grateful for everything you do Dr Haas um the uh getting rid of the the hate images in our schools is something that people can hate
183me for and I don't care I think it was the right thing to do and I'm very proud that we did that I think it's great and I'm very proud that we hired a school board attorney because I think having Mr Holden at our meetings at our desks has made a substantial difference and I am so proud that we have student reps I just want to thank all of you I want to thank the people I know I've offended everyone in the public I'm sorry it was never intent well sometimes it was intentional I'm not sorry about pounding uh Debbie's crackers I thought that was funny but everything else I really am I'm sorry about um I will keep you guys all in my prayers the one thing I would tell you when you're selecting
184my my replacement make sure that they love the kids because that I mean that that's if if you if you if every decision the board makes is to make sure that we're thinking about the kids first then nobody can ever criticize what we do so thank you guys thank you very much Mr over something along the lines of what Dave was talking about is that we spoke last week about an orientation for our new and uh member and uh and for all of us to kind of get to know each other better and and and spend spend that time plus doing the training for him or her and uh so um Jennifer do you have some materials that go to each new board member um may I get some of those so that if so
185that I because I guess I'm the only one since Dave's uh Gone who's going to be giving that orientation and if anybody else wants to I I welcome you to do that do we have a board book and didn't we meet I mean when I got on I met with the attorney County attorney well I think that's part of part of the whole thing going around and meeting everybody so um I thought we had a manual too but I'm sure so in the chicken soup and the chicken soup so that would be great what was that and the chicken suit oh yeah right right that comes too or do you have to do it yeah so the new person has to get their own chicken soup or can it be a reindeer chicken is better
186okay does that satisfy your yeah just well how about on the orientation is is that something that we've got in [Music] place I mean I'm happy to work on it if we want to do that yeah I thought we had a manual already we do we have a manual I mean the orientation um of getting our new person and all of us together it used to be with Allison Lenny but I think I think we could schedule that at the beginning yeah that wasn't an orientation it was like a basically we need to do a retreat we didn't do it it was an introductory one at least when when Dave and you and I went through it yeah but it was still more like an introductory right okay yeah okay yeah introduction okay so we'll
187be looking at it I think we should just make sure to schedule another Retreat I'm resigning from The Retreat committee if someone else can it rain I love working with Kate but I'm absolutely with a lot okay no other business we stand adjourned foreign