001all right good afternoon or good evening uh welcome to this uh march 10th meeting of the albemarle county school board we will now have a moment of silence okay thank you and now to introduce the uh members of our board dr kate aykoff kate akov jack jewett district mr giano el carro giano el carro at large katrina carlson riot district uh miss judy lee judy lee rivanna district ms ellen osborne ellen osborne scottsville district i'm graham page samuel miller district our student rep elizabeth alvaren hello good seeing you elizabeth i will now entertain a motion to approve our agenda for um this evening i move that we approve the agenda second loop of mr alcaro second by ms lee that we approve tonight's agenda in a discussion on the motion if not miss johnston osborne
002[Music] yes miss carlson yes miss lee yes dr acuff yes mr alcaro yes mr page yes motion carried thank you in a motion to approve our consent agenda for tonight i move that we approve the consent agenda mr alcaro is second by ms lee that we approve the consent agenda in a discussion on the motion if not miss johnston mr alcaro yes miss lee yes dr acuff yes miss carlson yes ms osborne yes mr page yes motion carried thank you reading into our minutes the minutes of this meeting should reflect that this meeting is being electronically pressing into virginia state law and admiral county ordinance because the covet 19 pandemic makes it impractical and unsafe to assemble a quorum physically in a single location the meeting is being communicated to the public electronically through zoom
003and streams live on navami county public schools website and public comment may be offered through the zoom waiting room feature in according with the school board's protocol or by written submission we are now at the point where we will have a spotlight on education introduced by ms del caro thank you mr page our spotlight on education is a two-part uh spotlight tonight so i'm going to do two different uh introductions it's my uh honor to first introduce two of our students and one of our uh uh learning coaches to uh for their extraordinary personal achievements this year our students are champions having earned this distinction last month at our division's annual spelling bee this year there were two separate competitions one for our elementary school students and one for our middle schoolers lila thied a
004mountain view fifth grader finished first among the spelling bee winners from all of our elementary schools and henry matthews from henley placed first among all of our middle school winners both lila and henry will be competing in the regional spelling bee the next leg to the national spelling bee which takes place this saturday morning beginning at 9 30 at albemarle high school we will also be represented by the second and third place finishers at each level they include claire meng from hollymead madeleine rasmussen from red hill catriona shuv from burling and seven gray from lakeside also uh with us this evening are katrina sims and kim gibson two of our lead coaches who serve as coordinators for this year's b please join me in thanking them and in congratulating lila and henry and all who
005participated in this year's program i'd like to ask katrina to formally introduce us to our two champions this evening ms sims thank you mr ocaro and thank you board for allowing me this opportunity to introduce our spelling bee winners um first again i'd like to just introduce myself and my partner kim gibson we are lead coaches and uh for the division and our um section is ela um i'm elementary and kimberly gibson is secondary it's our privilege as lead coaches to organize the spelling bee and due to covet this year we were in a unique situation with covet mitigations where we had two spelling bees and again students in grades three through eight were allowed to participate in the spelling bee and we sent our 21 best spellers in the county to the division b
006while it's true that in this digital age we can check our spelling in the blink of an eye with spell check understanding the spelling and root structures of words helps us comprehend more than just the patterns of letters that combine into a single word we better understand the ideas behind the words themselves and are better able to communicate with each other and so again i would like to congratulate all of the b winners that we have and again my partner kim gibson for supporting me through this process and now with lyla and henry again congratulations and now that you've progressed in the regional finals in the scripps spelling bee what advice do you have for all spellers in acps and future spelling bee participants the best advice that i can give to anyone who wants
007to participate in a spelling bee in albemarle county in the future would definitely be to read um reading is where i learned the most about spelling ironically not spelling reading you process hundreds of words every 10 minutes that you read and every one of those words you learn how to spell just a little bit better which i think is really a great way to learn how to spell of course so i'm really happy that um reading has provided such a great um method of entertainment and learning for students around the world thank you henry lyla lila we're wondering maybe could you tell us about your experience just being this first year within the spelling bee what excited you the most about participating in the b and no pressure i think no pressure at all we're
008just excited that you were able to participate with us and again we want to say congratulations and if you'd like to tell us anything about the bee we'd have we'd happily hear it now but it's not again reading lots of books is absolutely key and um yeah read a lot of books and talk to your friends and yeah stage fright is a real thing it's a real thing thank you so much milo we are very proud of you so again to henry and lila we wish you the best this saturday and thank you all thank you the second category is equity in education month the virginia school board association tells us on their website that when inequity and education persists there is a cost to all involved including missed opportunities for economic development greater dependence
009on government supports and fewer virginians ready to serve and lead if every student is to fulfill their highest potential and if the future of our communities is to be both personally rewarding and prosperous the contributions of our public schools is vital it is this truth that led the state board association to designate march as equity in education month tonight we have with mary morales who is a spanish teacher in mountain views immersion program serves on the front line of our efforts to institutionalize classroom equity mary's story is an unusual one among teachers who have entered our culturally responsive teaching program she has been a teacher for more than 30 years and more than 20 of those years have been here in our division her experience illustrates how this program is changing outcomes for students and
010for teachers by closing opportunity and achievement gaps ms morales i'm hoping that you will bring to life for us tonight some of your insight as to how words about equity translate into better lives for students welcome thank you so much hi everyone my name is mary morales and i'm a fourth grade spanish immersion teacher at mountain view elementary school and in the immersion program you have a partner teacher with whom you share students and in my case that person is abigail copley a second year teacher and she told me she was going to pursue her credential in culturally responsive teacher culturally responsive teaching and i decided to join her and here i am culturally responsive teaching is a rich intentional approach woven into every aspect of what goes on in my classroom it focuses on
011what students bring what they can do and it's about having high expectations for the success of each learner no matter what it connects students cultures languages and life experiences with what they're learning in school working towards my crt credential this year has improved student learning in my classroom it has strengthened relationships with my students and their families and it has pushed me to learn new ways to do things it has made me intentional about everything i do working toward in my class this year i have witnessed tremendous growth in terms of spanish reading levels 19 of my students have made two grade levels of growth in terms of reading 10 have made three years of growth and four have made four years of growth and i'm so proud of them and we still have three
012more months to go these are some of the elements of culturally responsive teaching that led to student success in my classroom this year first connecting with students i met individually with each student and we talked about ourselves until we found five things we shared we had in common and engaging in this activity taught me so much about each one of them and it brought us closer together it connected us the second thing is partnering with students i created goal setting sheets and on those they're focused on spanish literacy data and on those each student i kind of put where they were and put a star where we want to be by the end of the year for um spelling reading levels and us this assessment that we give and i also put a continuum of
013becoming an independent learner and we've talked a lot about that about shifting from dependent learning to independent learning so an independent learner comes into the classroom gets right to work right and so showing those behaviors really can shift how a student does in school and and in the future um another thing i did was partner with parents they're so important in what we do at parent conferences i asked parents for their support at home and we became a team they know the expectation was that their child read for 20 minutes in spanish every night on their weekly story and they contributed to their children's success by you know helping them read working with them making sure they did it and when i was listening to henry and lyla talk about how important it is to
014read it really is you're the time you spend looking at words and especially since i'm teaching in a in another language it's really super important for them to focus on those words and really have their eyes on what they're reading another important thing i did this year that i am going to do every year until i retire is student-led conferences that was like the most amazing thing um the kids recorded themselves and shared these recordings with their parents and i wanted parents to hear their children's beautiful spanish voices and hear them tell them how they're doing each student summarized like they told them what their favorite book was they summarized it their favorite story they read a little bit of it they shared a project with their parents and they shared their literacy goal and
015the last thing that i've changed in is assessment i've shifted from traditional quizzes and tests to more collaborative projects and assessment choice boards and the discussions the kids have while working on these shows their content mastery and tells me so much more than any quiz or test could all of these practices have led to tremendous growth in my students in spanish literacy and the best part of it is that i'm not alone on this journey i have my students their families my colleagues my administrators instructional coaches equity specialists honestly i have reached out to all of these people and all of the other teachers working really hard alongside me on this culturally responsive teaching journey thank you ms morales are there any questions from the board it was so interesting uh you know your your
016approach to uh culturally responsive teaching it's a wonderful program and uh and for any level of experience it's proven to be you know so useful and such a handy tool thank you for sharing this with us thank you for inviting me if i may miss morales what kind of feedback have you got from the parents very positive i mean i think some of them were really surprised at how beautifully their children were able to express all of the things that are going on in school in spanish in their conferences and they have been so supportive with reading with their children every night even if they themselves don't speak spanish so it's been it's been wonderful they're really great sounds like you're doing a great job thank you so much mr page i think i'll turn
017this back to you thank you again miss morales yes ms morales thank you so much for sharing um your views on culturally responsive teaching we really appreciate everything that you do so thanks so much thank you and also congratulations to lala and henry and we also thank ms sims and ms goodson for being with us here tonight too so thank you all we are now ready for um announcements and i think dr haas has an announcement to start a site with yes i have a few and uh i do want to take a personal privilege to really thank mary i'm so glad mary has been in the school system all these years in fact when i first came to the school system mary was a new teacher mentor so that meant um when i was
018a principal at alamo she would come to visit the brand new teachers that were there but every time she came i would i would take up some of her time as with her mentoring me and i don't really think i could have survived my first year as principal at albemarle without mary and uh a wonderful teacher and a great coach and i'm gonna be at mountain view on monday so i'm gonna come by and visit you mary for if if that's okay okay um i do want to thank katrina and kimberly they they really do a great job at that spelling bee and um if you do have time on saturday to just get over to al marl to check it out the kids are really great it's really a wonderful event that celebrates literacy
019and uh and excellence i um wanted to mention uh that we do have several principles here this evening we've got megan wood from lakeside beth costa from henley jen sublet from western elmore and let's see dara bonham's on my list uh he may not be here yet but um just wanted to call them out and they want to show their screens hey man um thank you so much for all the outstanding work you do i think beth is multitasking with one of her children's baseball games so there you are it's good to see you beth thank you for coming tonight really appreciate it and thank you for all the outstanding work you do to support our students and families and your colleagues and thank you i want to say that uh tuesday and wednesday night
020this week we had our final uh community forums and uh they were great we really that's part of our strategic plan work and um we had a great turnout on our family night that we did on zoom we had representatives from around the county schools we had uh at one we did have 25 different families that were able to come in and visit with our equity specialists our community engagement department and members of the cabinet as we uh engage them around these three central questions where they went into breakout rooms can you share an example of how we are or are not respecting your life experiences the second question can you share an example of how we are or are not supporting your child's physical and mental health and the third question is can you
021share an example of when you have felt empowered or engaged in your school community and so they had those three questions for families and then it was a different variation on wednesday night when we met with employees and on wednesday night we had 52 employees representing our schools and departments and so you can imagine it was a robust conversation around ways that our families and then also our employees feel empowered and or disempowered by their experiences with us earlier in the month we had meetings with middle school students and earlier in the year we had high school student meetings so these were pilots this year and we're going to keep building on that so we can keep doing these sessions there is a space on our web page where we put all where we put
022our notes from these meetings as a as a piece of data around our strategic plan so that um anybody in the public can transparently see ways that we are i think doing well with engaging but also ways that we can keep improving and and keep striving for continuous improvement and i want to thank also our human resources department for uh last night that was pretty heavy on hr to help us facilitate that meeting he did a great job i had a terrific visit to brownsville elementary school on monday and i really appreciate the staff having me come by i was able to get out to paula gately and quentin bruce's fourth grade classroom the students were working on visual representations of fractions and uh when i stopped by i like to talk directly with students
023to see what they're doing and if they know what they're doing that's that's very important around engagement i asked the student what he was doing he said i'm making a picture with boxes and i'm dividing up the box and coloring it to show how many parts of the box the fraction means then he showed me a card he made representing three quarters sure enough on the card was a box divided evenly into four parts three of the parts were shaded green and i really appreciate the hands-on work with the students so they could see those fractions the next visit i made was to jenny mccartney and catherine almi's kindergarten class i sat at the table with ms mccartney and she had four students who were practicing reading the story a bad fox and as ms
024mccartney and i watched and listened in anticipation a student sounded out a word independently and ms mccartney said this is the most exciting part of my job when a student starts to read independently and sounds sounds out words on their own and it really made me appreciate just what a moment in time that is for our teachers when when students begin to take over i'll mention one more thing before i left the kindergarten class i was playing on the floor with a kindergartener who was arranging plastic animals near a barn she was putting a variety of animals in a group outside the barn you know a cow pig chicken and i i and i see kindergartners do this all the time they always put all the figures in one place i asked her what the
025animals were doing and she said they are having a meeting and immediately i thought that's a future superintendent and with that uh dr mclaughlin has an announcement that uh he would like to share and i think that's it thanks pat yep absolutely thanks dr house good evening board members pat mclaughlin chief of strategic planning and i have got some news today that we wanted to share you that's actually very timely as i know the board is in the process right now of selecting new student representatives uh for the board i was out at western albemarle uh for a meeting and happened to run into elijah witt uh who you all know was a previa former uh member of the school board as a student representative and he said well you've got to let the board
026know that i just found out this week that i am going to become a jefferson scholar at the university of virginia and he said it really seemed a sublet they're very happy to uh to say that and but what he really was focused on was the opportunity that this board gave him because he said throughout the process of uh jefferson scholars a rigorous process to uh to go through for sure um that he continually came back to his experience as a student rep on the board and things that really made a significant impact on the committee so he wanted to number one let you know of his celebration but also express his great thanks to the board uh for that opportunity and uh and a great promotion for the student rep program so i thought
027we'd bring some good news to you tonight on that front thank you dr mclaughlin for bringing us the news about elijah and that is really great news to hear that he is a jefferson scholar at uva thank you dr haas for your announcements and that future principle i mean future superintendent one is something for us to be aware of right and also thanks to uh my principals who are with us tonight ms wood with costa miss uh sublet and also to presenters doing um the moment the public comment section or rather not public comment but spotlight on notification so our two winners and also miss sims and ms goodson so thank you all for your part to now meeting um tonight moving to our next item public comment miss carlson yes i'm going to start
028off by religious center we did have we didn't do the school board business and just okay right now i'm going to see the page i'm sorry yeah school board announcements so uh we did announcements we didn't do we didn't do business okay take for granted we have an announcement no i have a small amount of business um that that ms johnston our clerk has informed me we need to do officially katrina and carlson and i have decided that she would instead of me that she would prefer to be on the k-tec board but we need to do this by board action we can't just informally do it like we thought we could so we just need to have board approval of this sub of this change we want a motion that affects dr akov arden
029did you make a motion to that effect oh i moved that we that katrina carlson be appointed to fulfill the remaining remainder of my term on the k-tech board second all right move by doctor aka second by mr alcaro and miss lee then miss carlson uh fulfilled the last portion of the remaining portion of ms dr acuff's um term on the k-tech board any discussion of the motion i would just say thank you kate for um reaching out to me and taking the initiative to figure it out i appreciate it well you're very welcome all right all right miss johnson could you call the roll please on the boat mr alcaro [Music] you're muted yes miss lee dr acuff yes miss clawson yes it's oscorn yes mr paige yes motion carried thank you okay thank
030you so ms carlson we are glad that you'll be representing us now on the k-tech board thank you and now moving to public comment i am going to go ahead and read the public comment guidelines and then we have three speakers signed up for today so the school board invites and actively seeks the public's input in the matters relevant to school board governance and provides for time during its business meetings to hear from elmar county residents and community members as authorized by ordinance of the county of albemarle the school board will hold its meetings electronically during the pandemic the school board is nevertheless committed to encouraging public comment despite its need to meet on a virtual basis for this reason there will be two ways for the public to provide a comment versus always reading
031comments may be submitted to the school board clerk or to the school board as a whole via email prior to the start of the meeting and will be given to all school board members for review second as long as the school board holds its meetings electronically members of the public wishing to speak during the meeting may sign up online by 2 pm the day of the meeting before public comment starts i'm going to announce the order there's only 3 so i'll announce all of them each speaker will have 3 minutes to speak i will try to notify you when you reach a 2 minute mark i hold up a finger it's easy to miss and so please try to time yourself if you can speakers during the meeting or those submitting written comments should state
032their name and address our magisterial district further speakers should limit comments to those matters that are relevant to school board governance are the operations of the school division although the school board will not respond to comments made during the public comment period school board members may address comments at the end of the meeting agenda under other business and with that i will go ahead and announce our speakers we have sarah harris who i see in here james mcclung i believe is in here and beth sarrocic so miss harris if you are ready you can go hi can you hear me yep my name is sarah harris and i live out in the whitehall district um we're at a really pivotal moment in public education right now and it's one that would be fascinating if we
033were watching it and not living it because it has potential to be really problematic parents are demanding so much oversight and control over what happens in their children's public school classrooms that they're losing sight of the fact that some of their demands are actually at odds with each other and they might have some unintended consequences ever since acps began a shift from a gt identification to a talent development model of academic extension parents have expressed concerns that their high achieving students are not being challenged in school that they have fewer options for higher level learning and that our schools are losing academic rigor this isn't the case but it's also not my point at the same time parents are advocating to restrict conversations and curriculum in our schools that actually promote critical thinking and it's
034the foundation for higher level learning we need to be careful in how we navigate this time in our history the college board announced a new statement of principles last week that any high schools that ban required topics in advanced placement classes could lose their ap designation this is the least of my concerns when it comes to censorship but it might be one that certain parents want to pay particular attention to don't fight to water down the curriculum in history or english give your kids the skills they need to find to take the high level courses you're advocating for by teaching them how to think critically from the very beginning our governor has rescinded several programs and initiatives that promote what he calls inherently divisive concepts although no legislation has actually been passed censoring anything i'm
035concerned that these measures specifically target teachers to prevent them from feeling confident to teach with depth integrity and professionalism we cannot let fear and the current social climate limit a teacher's ability to teach we cannot let kids grow up in a world in which they think that aspects of their own identities are divisive instead we need to empower them to think critically and compassionately about these topics and we can do that with the right instruction i hope parents remember that there are actual adult humans professionals with college and postgraduate degrees training and credentials and years of experience in our children's classrooms give our teachers the credit they've earned they did not enter this profession to indoctrinate our kids and as a former teacher myself i can assure you that they don't have time in their
036day to do so even if they wanted to they're there to teach and we need to let them do their jobs and if we don't we're going to lose them another unintended consequence of parental overreach educators in this district have been working diligently to produce and implement a curriculum that aligns with the anti-racism policy that students drafted and the board approved years ago from what i've seen of this work on the website including the middle school advisory framework and the reframing the narrative initiative is going to be great our students will be prepared to succeed not only in school but in a future that's more compassionate hopefully than our present please know that this community supports this work to provide a curriculum framework that teaches true history from kindergarten through graduation one that affirms and
037values diverse perspectives and one that represents every child in this district please ensure that this important work continues and please continue to support our teachers thank you so much for the for those comments miss harris our next speaker will be james mcclung who i also see on mr mcclung when you're ready good evening my name is james mcclung i'm a teacher at monticello high school and a student at aomor okay wait i'm a parent i'm a student at alamar high school i may look 17 or 18 but i assure you i'm not i'm here to talk about cell phone use in our in my high school and maybe others as well the student conduct policy regarding cell phones is pretty clear cell phones should not be turned on or visible during class and unless directed
038by the instructor however the realities of phone use in our classroom are very different we all know that cell phones are addictive in nature students have access to a handheld personal entertainment device anytime they choose few if any teachers can compete with phones as they try to engage and build connections with students what teachers see in the classroom are the negative impacts on social emotional and academic growth associated with phone use at school phone use clearly affects student learning as well as teacher morale leaving many of us feeling frustrated and feeling like we're not able to do our job of teaching and supporting students and please don't simply take my word for it you can ask any high school teacher so why am i here we desperately need help we need help clearly communicating to
039all involved in our schools what the expectations are this would create let's include creating a climate that allows and ensures these expectations are met and maybe most important help with communicating our strong commitment that everything we do tries to seek to be in the best interest of each and every student we also need help clarification need clarification about how to enforce the existing cell phone rules what are the procedures to follow when there's resistance to not following cell phone policies when if ever should we collect a phone from a student and request parents to be the ones to pick it up from the school how do we address the very necessary exceptions for students who must have access to their phones for medical conditions such as monitoring blood sugar or or other conditions so i
040am asking and maybe i'm actually pleading with you to help in any way that you can cell phone use in our high schools is out of control and it seems to only be getting worse and our students who we so deeply care about are the ones who are missing opportunities every day at school to learn grow and prepare for the rest of their lives i sincerely thank all of you for for your time tonight and especially for all you do for our schools thank you for those comments mr mcfly the last speaker will be bethany cerrossia who i see on stephanie when you're ready you can go sure thank you my name is bethany cersek whitehall district and my husband and i are parents to a current kindergartner at brownsville elementary school i'm here today
041to express my disappointment and frustration with our current situation and the lack of appropriate gnt resources and support for our son and our community over the course of the past eight months we have watched our bright and cheerful five-year-olds love of school and learning fade following three years of preschool he was so excited to enter kindergarten unfortunately has been left woefully underwhelmed as we are have been as parents my husband and i recognize and appreciate the value in a strong effective public school education and we want our children to benefit directly from its delivery which is why i'm here today and this past year unfortunately has changed our minds significantly we followed the appropriate escalation pathway we've met with his classroom teacher who is notably brand new to teaching this year along with a vice
042principal on numerous occasions we've advocated for additional resources and ideas to continue to challenge our child to reinvoke his love of learning creativity and exploration after reading the recent article in the crozet gazette i've learned that the rationale behind the dissolution of the g d program was moving towards a more equitable identification of gifted and talented students with the shift in name and in mindset i'll point out about what this is personally meant for my child and other children like him who are in need of something more when talking about equity and fair distribution perhaps we should also speak to what we are leaving behind as we move to this new model case in point our kindergarten students who enter school with the same amount of knowledge they're expected to master by the end of
043their kindergarten year instead of finding ways to build upon this previous learning through differentiated assignments instead he spends most of his time during the day reviewing what he already knows completing things like coloring assignments or connect the dot worksheets or most recently now takes those same worksheets and creates paper airplanes i wish i was kidding but i'm not so perhaps through an unfortunate series of events we just drew the short straw this year we're returning aft to normalcy after a year of remote learning we have a brand new teacher who is still learning how to provide general instruction to 18 students never mind learning the skill of differentiated instruction between ability levels brownsville brownsville's talent development and resource teacher was also on a maternity leave for the first half of the year and if the
044idea of a new program is to teach the classroom teacher how to differentiate and support students of a wide range of ability levels and that has not yet happened it's already mid-march i'm thankful that we recently took our sun for an intelligence test the results of which showed us exactly what we already knew and we were able to leverage those results for another collective meeting with our classroom teacher the principal and the talent development resource teacher from this we now have an action plan for differentiated learning that will begin next week but why why did it take us having to spend several hundred dollars on an assessment to provide data to a problem that we already knew existed how many other students like our son are being affected in the same way so in an
045effort to provide equity across the district and dissolving the gnt program as we once knew it are we really elevating our collective student body in the right way i'm sorry your time is at the end um if you have a concluding sentence or you can email the remainder of your comments as well and we'll be able to read them or you can sign up again i believe we have a meeting um thank you next week thank you for that i'm sorry yep thank you um so that concludes public comment for today and i hand it back to you share page thank you very much vice chair carlson our next agenda agenda item uh the mountain view edition design development and ms hoopman is going to lead this part of our meeting this open miss hoopin
046are you there she's here but she's muted and no video right i am here with video and sound okay thank you hello my name is sheila hoopman capital project manager at building services i'm here with jack clark of rrm architects to present the design development plans for information and action tonight for the mountain view elementary edition the committee is requesting approval of design development and to proceed with the construction drawing phase i'll now pass the presentation to jack clark who will take you through the mountain view design good evening thank you for having me here tonight we appreciate it very much excited to talk about mountain view elementary school i'd like to share my screen right now can you see the powerpoint no not yet how about now no nothing [Music] there we go yeah
047there you go great thank you very much so as sheila mentioned we're looking for design development review and approval tonight a little summary from back in december we present the schematic design for mountain view decision was made at that point to approve a six classroom and cafeteria additions at mountain view to address overcrowding over the next several years five or more a couple of items to note is the enrollment at mountain view is expected to increase to almost 800 students by 2025-26 the current building and the eight classroom learning cottage will only accommodate the classroom needs of mountain view so the classroom and cafeteria editions along with the learning cottage will accommodate the classroom needs and the spaces for all required educational programs we had faculty and community feedback before the schematic design presentation and
048also back in february february 3rd faculty meeting february 7th community meeting and some of the comments that were incorporated into design from those meetings including the parent drop-off a covered walkway provided for students from the new parent drop-off location into the building easing of traffic on avon street extended very important item that brought up multiple times improved drainage and playground and play space redesign that also will address safety and access concerns and then question was raised about future solar and yes the answer is that roofs on the editions are designed to accommodate future solar panels proposed additions to mountain view are shown in green the yellow triangle is the front door to mountain view and the small green rectangle next to the yellow triangle is the cafeteria edition at the upper right of the screen
049is a two-story classroom edition let's see what those look like so here's a plan of mountain view this has been rotated so that the front door once again the yellow triangle is at the bottom of the sheet the oval to the right of that is the cafeteria edition and the oval at the upper left corner of the screen is a two-story classroom edition at mountain view first let's look at the cafeteria edition this edition will expand the dining at the existing cafeteria we're going to have an operable wall with glass panels between the two spaces the existing cafeteria and the new one of the items that came out of our discussions with the faculty and the community was the need for a larger gathering space for after after hours activities faculty meetings things like that
050so this cafeteria expansion will not only provide space for students to dine but also be a multi-purpose space with other uses such as faculty meetings it also could serve as a place for students to come in the morning as they line up on to get breakfast at the school and as well as after uh hours like community meetings be very accessible to the front of the building and the parking area the area in yellow is a corridor so we've extended the corridor out and that is a covered canopy going to connect to the corridor there's also in gray shown here are two individual toilets so we're expanding the toilet capacity at mountain view with these two toilets along with this addition some images of the proposed cafeteria expansion this is looking into the building into
051the cafeteria edition from the front of school inside a high ceiling lots of windows lights and another image looking back out towards the front from the inside of the cafeteria expansion once again a higher ceiling we've got acoustical panels around there lots of light outside this is what the addition would look like we mentioned before the bus drop off area how important it was to bring students into the building under covered canopy so that covered canopy shown here the area in brick with the higher metal panels on it is the cafeteria expansion a couple other views of this area one of the things that was talked about was to provide space outside for students to eat outside or to actually use it for educational opportunities like class projects so you see some picnic tables out
052in front of the cafeteria expansion another view of that from here and we're also looking at developing another area over towards the front of the building which would be on the left of the screen we're still working with our landscape architects on that and working the design committee then a final view looking at this cafeteria expansion from the front of mountain view now the second edition this is the two-story classroom edition at the back of mountain view this is the first floor plan the corridor is shown in yellow and the carter on the first floor will connect two existing areas of the building the d-wing which would be the red arrow at the bottom of the screen and then the two-story area at the back would be the red arrow on the right side so
053those two cars would be extended and connect through so we have opportunities for more circulation around covered circulation inside the building at mountain view there will be three classrooms on this first floor there are the areas in blue one of each of those classrooms will have its own toilet that was important from uh item mentioned by the faculty meetings because it gets a lot more flexibility for these rooms to be used and one of the rooms classroom one will have a larger toilet so it could have accommodate a changing table we're also looking at classrooms two and three to be have a operable wall between them for even more flexibility the area in the reddish brown is a flex room that will probably be used for a faculty room on the first floor this room
054is set up so it can be possibly divided in the half in the future the dotted line going through the rate through the room going right to left shows that because it has two doors to it we've also have a area of outdoor learning courtyard that's also in blue here and we'll look at that in a second in a more little more detail also on this floor we've got a storage room an office and a lactation room big request from the faculty was a privacy room or for a lactation room so that's incorporated in this design of the first floor with a two-story classroom addition second floor is very similar although there's only one connection to the existing building because there's only one two-story area at mountain view and that's the red arrow over on
055the right once again we have three classrooms these will be stacked over top of the classrooms down below for a total of six additional classrooms there will be an office shown in the orange yellow and then there will also be another flex room and this flex room can also be subdivided in half there's a faculty talent on both floors so additional additional faculty spaces toilet spaces and then the custodial space here at the bottom of the page is a stair this is a two-story stair we're adding another stair to mountain view here it's a access stair needed for fire codes some images of the classrooms we spent a fair amount of time in the design committee looking at how to design the classrooms for maximal maximum adaptability and use we've got sliding marker boards over
056top of storage you've got student cubbies got a sink in each one of the classrooms case work computer charging area and then mobile monitors work with technology on developing the specifications for that there's the last few showing the large windows at the back of each one of the three classrooms on the two floors this is an image of the fact flex room with the faculty probably be using this on the first floor once again we've got storage there sink refrigerator and flexible space the outdoor learning courtyard at rectangular space it's about the size of two classrooms this is an initial design idea we are still working with the design committee on how to develop this some of the important features here lots of paved area so there's not much in the way of maintenance of
057plants no grass but just it would be some ground cover and some trees we're going to provide shade probably a shade structure so that the area is very flexible for use during the warmer parts of the school year and this area is being continued to be developed a couple of exterior images of the classroom edition it is a two story it will tie into the two-story portion of mountain view on the back side here that's the upper left image once again three classrooms on two floors or six classrooms at that edition there are some interior renovations planned at mountain view the red dots indicate original classrooms at mountain view that will be getting new hvac a vav unit at each one of those rooms and we're going to remove the abandoned hvac from the original
058part of the building and re rework those areas to add some more space to each one of the classrooms the area of the black dot is the existing clinic and that area will be renovated made more useful the area in blue the blue dot represents a mechanical room we're going to have a replacement domestic water pump at mountain view how about outside the building what we're looking at here are site improvements including playgrounds play fields parent drop-off loops additional parking so the upper left corner of the screen we're just going to show additional parking in that location we're going to have a bus loop and parent drop-off improvements we'll show in a second that will shift to the south side of the mountain view building and then working our way around the existing play areas
059we've got to be set up in different grade levels the red pre-k k blue grades one and two yellow grades three through five and then we're going to do some improvements mainly drainage improvements at the existing play field on the left side of the screen are some images of similar types of installations that we're proposing here at mountain view images one and two there's a slope off the back side of the mountain view building and we're trying to utilize that slope and incorporate into it these proposed playground improvements so we have things like slides or incline climbing walls image three on the left shows some additional or shows playground equipment the intention for this project is to replace all the existing playground equipment at mountain view with new playground equipment and items four and five
060shows some exterior areas with covered spaces for outdoor projects more covered spaces for outdoor dining once again shade structures items like that to allow for the outdoor area to be utilized as much as possible site improvements the upper left corner of the screen shows 26 additional parking spaces added to mountain view off the existing lot at the front of the building that is the northwest corner of the building and then we're looking at bus loop improvements and parent drop-off improvements the intention here is to try and get traffic off of avon street extended and take it to the south portion of the building bottom of the sheet here for both parent drop off and bust loop so the triangles here indicate the direction for how this would work the parents would be the red triangles
061they would come onto the site and go all the way down to the back of the building to a cul-de-sac that's added turn around and come back and be able to drop off at the end of the gymnasium with a covered canopy that connects around to the front and then the blue shows the same basic pattern for the buses that have now but giving them the opportunity to exit in front of the building and up off the avon street at the top of the page at the northwest corner once again trying to get more separation between buses and parents and also to move traffic off of avon street extended here's the schedule for the project schematic design started back last year in september we have schematic design approval from the school board in december of
0622021. we are here tonight march 10th looking for school board review and approval for the design development portion of our project then we would move into construction documents from march to july did the project at the end of the summer and then construction to start in september and go through to october of next year one thing we are monitoring is material availability issues several items that we have heard and experienced that there are possible delays with or availability concerns with are including structural steel roofing materials and hvac equipment this is the project cost estimate for mountain view now a couple items to note here the approved design budget 638 000 the approved construction budget 5.6 million dollars now we have ex mentioned back in the december schematic design approval meeting that these projected costs for
063this project are higher than the construction budget right now we are showing here a additional funding in the county executive recommended cip of 2.2 million there is also a cip maintenance contribution for the playground of 175 all that totals up to 8.622 million dollars of funding now our estimate when we say base bids there's base bid estimate here that would be the basically the additions of the cafeteria and the addition at the classroom wing along with the parking lot 26 parking lot spaces and the playgrounds 8.65 million dollars so what what that comes out to is that we still think that we are 665 000 needed additional funding so this 8.65 is the base bids two bids there for we're separating the two bids out the cafeteria edition and the two-class two-story classroom edition the
064blue area indicates bid alternates one two and three what these would be is these would be prices separate prices we would ask general contractors to provide on bid day for each of those items those items are bid separately and they can be accepted or not depending on funding and the desires of the school board they do have to be accepted in order in other words if we wanted to do base bid two we would also have to accept base bid one so that one of those is important base bid alternate number one would be the original building hvac classroom renaults that would be 575 000. plus another 275 000. that would be contributed by the maintenance cip for hvac so that's actually 850 000 building interior building renaults 150 and then the bus loop parent
065drop-off improvements of 750 thousand dollars so you add those numbers up it's 1.475 million is additional funding needed for the alternates now i think maya is available if we had any questions about potential funding sources thank you jack um i'm maya kamala director of budget and planning and i just wanted to quickly jump in and mention in the process of how we might address the funding needed above what's currently allocated both the additional funding needed for base bids and the additional funding needed for alternates will be included as part of the fy 23 budget development process in april um we plan on coming back to you with updates that include final state revenue projections and projected available one-time funds which we will plan to build into next year's budget at that time we can discuss
066an adjustment in the one-time transfer to the cip as we prioritize our various capital needs known at that time thank you maya to finalize my part of the presentation next steps we are at staff is asking for design development approval to proceed with construction documents for the proposed additions and renovations at mountain view elementary school so that is tonight's presentation thank you so much for listening are there any questions that i could answer or staff could answer mr clark um with the hvac replacement in the older part of the building my big question is about environmental you know sustainability or keeping our footprint small what what standards for environmental sustainability do we have in the new construction and how will replacement of the hvacs in the old building old older part of the building impact
067that good question the um we are using a program that is already implemented there called energy star and so anything we do relates to that and what's already happened out at mountain view and so i think the we are replacing um systems in the existing building that are have already been replaced once so we will the newer system i think is a little bit more efficient but you do actually have an efficiency over when the building was originally built but we are incorporating the uh the energy star system and um into the design for the replacement hvac just one more sort of divergent question i i couldn't tell in the schematic for the cafeteria whether those windows could open and we've been very focused on fresh air and such uh in the past three years
068two years um and i couldn't tell i saw that there was a door to the outside but that's a great question we haven't gotten that far into the discussion but we can definitely talk to the design committee about that and make sure that's a recommendation we've always been talking about opening this building up to the outside and right so that would help that and it looked like those and the schematic for the classrooms did open i would hope that that was the case yes ma'am okay thank you thank you there are other questions from mr clark or ms hoopman uh related to mountain view's development edition mr clark uh but by looking at the uh photos or the the renderings of the um or schematics of the classrooms um what's the assumption for the number
069of students and those it looked like they would be about 20. is that is that kind of the assumption yes sir that is okay well i think that they at times there might be a few more students but that's the general assumption yes sir thank you i had a question and um was someone else speaking i was just gonna i was kind of wondering about the process i guess i'm getting a little nervous because we're so much over what was the estimated cost i guess i would like a little bit more information about why why that is is this something we should expect when we have future i mean because we started at 5 million something and now it's up to eight just to get the base with another 1.4 to get but you know
070is it i'm sure things change as we went and coveted things but i guess i'd like to hear why we were so off in our original estimate good good point uh good question two two areas here one is we are proposing more square footage than the original budget had we found as we did investigations discussions meetings out at mountain view there were more needs than just general classrooms the educational programs that they have out there for their students they do need more spaces more flexible spaces and smaller spaces so we're trying to provide those so there is more square footage it's a bigger addition for the classroom area it's also a bigger addition for the cafeteria it isn't just a cafeteria expansion it's also a new entrance and also includes some individual restrooms the second
071part of this is that there are significant changes in the construction bid market these days prices have gone very much higher than they were several years ago when this project was first planned a lot of it is to do with material availability issues supply chain type issues also even the labor market for construction labor is tighter than it was so those are the two issues its scope size of the additions and then the cost of construction thank you you're welcome thank you there are other questions i don't know if the question is for you mr clark or miss hoopman um or maya kamazawa remind me of how many additional students we can accommodate with these six classrooms and i'm asking because although our long-range planning advisory committee recommended three new elements well two new elementary
072schools and planning for a third one which would be in this feeder pattern uh we have that's not what we got on and so this is going to have to last longer than five to ten years probably so what is the additional student capacity we're talking about well the the basic answer is six classrooms times we'll say 20 students per classroom is about 120 students additional capacity and we do have some other support spaces and sometimes those are assigned a number sometimes it's eight students per support space so it's 120 plus as i say is the answer to that right i was just trying to recall i think we're already at about at mountain view is that about right okay thank you you're a big school are there other questions when this when this construction
073is completed and this is in part to uh dr ako's comments um will the learning cottages still be in use there while the uh other potential elementary school is in process of construction i believe the answer to that is yes you're right jack that's that's a yes we'll need that space for the programs until the new school is built i think that has to be the case for uh assuming growth because uh i think the original part of this uh project centered around being able to keep the fifth graders at mountain view and keep them in the building but with a growth factor in there before the other school is built i understand why you're saying yes to the need to keep the [Music] the learning cottages not crazy about it but i understand what
074you're saying okay thank you are there other questions for mr clark or miss hilton i just i just saw on the on the rent on the schematic solar tubes and i didn't know what that was those are like skylights but they are like enhanced skylights we want to put those down in that existing classroom down from above okay thank you all right so about so all of the rooms in would have some form of natural sunlight coming in we're trying to put as many windows in as possible yes sir all the all the new classrooms and the flex room would and several the offices would as well and of course the cafeteria expansion okay thank you all right if we have no more uh if we don't have any other questions we do need a
075motion to approve the design development at this point so that the process can move forward or the project can move forward so do we have a motion to that effect i move that we approve the design development so that we may move forward with this project second all right move by ms osborne second by dr acuff that we approve the design um development so the project can move forward is there any discussion on the motion if not mrs johnston miss lee yes dr acuff yes mr alcaro yes ms osborne yes ms carlson yes mr page yes motion carried okay thank you miss jensen and thank you uh mr clark and miss hoopman for your presentations um to us tonight thank you very much we appreciate it thank you and next item on the agenda is
076a covet 19 update dr mclaughlin hi good evening again school board members pat mclaughlin chief of strategic planning and i am here tonight with rajon schmidt our chief operating officer and ryan mckay from the blue ridge health department to give you a bit of an expanded uh covert 19 update so let's get started the first piece that we wanted to share was that since the last time we have spoken the metrics for community spread have changed pretty significantly i imagine you you heard about that a couple weeks ago on february 25th when the cdc updated everything and so i want to uh just take a few minutes to walk you all through the uh the new metrics that we're using around community spread so uh the cdc has three uh thresholds that we're looking at
077now uh the first is the number of new covet 19 cases per 100 000 people over the past seven days we call that the case incidence rate that should be familiar to everyone that's one of the metrics we've been using for quite a while but they've split it into two thresholds now uh fewer than 200 cases and more than 200 cases where it where it gets significantly different is that the other two metrics that they have us look at are based on the impact covert is having on our hospital capacity uh the first of those is the number of new covert 19 admissions per 100 000 people over the course of the past seven days and the second is the percent of staffed inpatient beds occupied by patients with covet 19. you can see that
078these have different metrics low medium and high based on how many based on your case incidence rate and how many cases you've seen over the past seven days one drawback that we've seen for this this new metric is that it's only updated once a week and it's updated on fridays so the board as we're updating the board on thursdays we're probably getting the oldest information that is out there so we can still get the individual daily metrics and i wanted to share those with you because currently as of as of last friday our level in albemarle county was still high when i went in today to check our levels uh our case incidents uh rate had dropped to 134 putting us in the fewer than 200 category our new hospital admissions had dropped to 9.4
079putting us in the low category and our percent of staffed inpatient beds had dropped to 5.1 also putting us in the low category so while i i can't truly see into the future i'm anticipating that with tomorrow's update uh we will be in the low category i would say definitely the medium but more than likely we will be in the low category so we can um we can watch that on friday when it comes through so in addition to that uh we also continue to look at our community vaccination statistics and uh as always in the pandemic we have had uh really high levels of vaccination both for the state of virginia and my guess is nationally as well with um uh over nearing 70 percent of our five to 11 year olds who have
080had at least one dose and into the 90s of our 12 to 17 year olds with one dose of the vaccination and then one of the final pieces we look at is the level of school impact uh we have seen trans uh the number of cases in our schools dropped significantly since they peaked back in january uh in fact the the number of kids who are home on who were home on isolation are quarantined yesterday was at one of the lowest i've seen i think 110 students uh or less than one percent of our uh student body uh was being quarantined those numbers were up in the 600s uh at uh at some points during the height of the latest outbreak so we are seeing at the level of school impact we have labeled our
081transmission within the schools low because of those uh those number of cases total cases last week were 48 students and 10 staff cases our attendance rate uh we think has kind of returned to baseline uh the attendance on three nine was 94 percent uh students in attendance and an additional 0.8 home for quarantine in isolation and here's where i wavered a little bit on the staff capacity because our um uh our staff capacity uh we only had 10 teachers out when we checked on tuesday for co for reasons related to covet um that's a number that's uh that's one of the lowest we've seen in a while but we did have teachers are out for other reasons right so we had a total of 84 staff absences that day we know that um that whenever
082we have staff who are absent from our buildings that puts a strain on us because we have we have struggled this year uh with our with finding substitute teachers as you all know in the budget we've got a number of uh of pieces uh designed to address that uh both this year and next year so hopefully we'll see some relief in that area soon so those are the um uh the metrics that that we wanted to share with you tonight and i'm happy to say that we've got ryan mckay with us again from the blue ridge health district uh who's going to give us a brief update on what uh what they're seeing from the health district perspective in the community ryan are you there yes thank you dr mclaughlin and thank you to the
083board for having me yet again um so uh dr mclaughlin presented a lot of the the great data points that we would expect to see everything is trending downward aside for one week in february where we had an increase in case incidence in el marlow county we've been on a very steep decline since mid-january and we don't foresee anything changing uh in that sense um both in terms of albemarle county but over overall with the health district um ancillary to that our testing uh in the county and in the health district remains uh highly accessible there's plenty of free testing uh regardless of the reason why people are getting testing in the charlottesville area and we'll continue to operate a similar schedule but we have been at least through march we may make some modifications
084in april as demand continues to decrease but we don't foresee any significant changes it would certainly be able to ramp up a little bit more if testing were required hospitalizations continue to go down that's a little bit of a lagging number um just based on how long it takes for individuals to go from being sick with covet to being hospitalized and then being discharged but all of that looks to be headed in the right direction as well so thanks ryan and ryan is going to stick around through the remainder of the presentation because we're going to turn things over to um schmidt right now to give us an update on where we uh kind of our plans for moving forward through the rest of this year and into next year ms schmidt thank you dr
085mclaughlin i'm rosalyn schmidt chief operating officer as we turn the corner towards the end of this this school year and as we started to develop uh what our spring code mitigation strategies will be we first established what our goals will be with our spring plan and these goals are outlined here first we want to continue to maintain a safe environment for our students and staff second we want to align with the most current public health guidance we are currently not in alignment with certain recommendations so you'll see a common theme of this plan is to better align since the beginning of the pandemic we have followed the recommendations of the cdc vdh and blue ridge health district and we want to continue to do so third we want to be transparent and communicate any changes
086we know anytime we discuss changes we know that we will be met with different thresholds of acceptance so we want to make sure that we are committed to transparency and clarity of these changes and lastly we want to begin to transition to an endemic state with more sustainable infection control practices than what we currently have so we've organized this plan into four categories first i will go over changes that will occur this month and related to student masking and our quarantine and isolation timelines next we'll go over changes that will occur next month related to contact tracing third we have a category of practices that will not change for the remainder of the school year and lastly we have items that operationally we cannot change and that are instead governed by the school board policy
087or resolution and cannot change until you as a board take action so starting this month there are two k key changes one has already occurred and that was effective march 1st max masks are optional for students for the new state code but second effective march 14th we will reduce some quarantine and isolation timelines to be more in line with cdc and vh guidance refers to an exposure someone who is identified as a close contact and is not up to date on their vaccines at this point must quarantine uh currently our practice is 10 days but we will now reduce that to 5 days which is the cdc and vdh guidance that's five days from the last date of exposure but they must remain asymptomatic and they must have a negative test so we've developed some
088tests to return procedures and those apply to both students and staff isolation that refers to when a person has tested positive for coping 19 and has to stay home for staff we will reduce that timeline now to five days assuming certain conditions are met they must be fever-free their symptoms have improved and a negative test on day five or later they also must consistently wear a mask and distance when around others on days six through 10. our isolation timeline for students however will remain at 10 days we acknowledge that the cdc and vdh guidance does give a five-day option but part of that guidance is that the individual masks for days six through ten unfortunately the removal of a mask requirement creates risk in a scenario where we can't require masking and furthermore it's difficult
089to manage the logistics of school such as eating and other times when a mask has to be removed so those are changes that are happening this month so fast forward to next month in april and april we will suspend contact tracing for individual cases and utilize only when there are outbreaks and sustained transmission so contact tracing refers to the process in which our school nurses and infection control team members identify who has been exposed when someone has could have been 19 and has been in school while contagious we will suspend those efforts but isolation practices will remain in quarantine practices for household members will still be expected this uh change aligns with the current guidance of the vdh which is that schools are no longer expected uh to identify to close to contact trace every
090individual case and matches the health district's current practice for community cases again going back to that second goal of being in alignment with the current guidance it is current guidance but we are not doing it sooner because we want to ensure we know the impact of the mass policy so today we have had very limited conversions of those quarantined individuals turning into positive cases um so we are confident in uh removing that risk mitigation but again we want to ensure that the removable mass does not impact our transmission rates and then the other change that will occur in april is that we will modify requirements for a negative test or a doctor's note uh our current practice is to exclude any student who is displaying any symptom of proven 19 and require either a negative
091pcr test or a doctor's note before returning we know one of our best mitigation strategies is to ensure sick kids stay home but as we enter the spring allergy season and our case rates go down and pcr testing availability in our community may be less accessible uh this approach may no longer be practical so more work to come on this exactly what this will be but there will be uh modifications we wanted to foreshadow that change so then the third category is that these are the practices that we plan on keeping for the remainder of the year these include maximizing social distancing including during lunch we will continue to maintain a signed and consistent seating charts encouraging eating outdoors frequent hand washing all of our improved ventilation strategies we want to keep our commitment to
092the transparency so we will maintain our coveted case dashboard so the families and staff know how many cases are in our schools we will continue to mean our testing maintain testing sites for employees and masks will continue to be available for students and staff so the last category i want to touch upon are those items that require board action and that includes our staff and visitor mask requirement as well as our staff vaccination or weekly test requirement some timing considerations are identified here including the community levels and current cc guidance on masking the easing of the dolly requirements which are workplace requirements requiring masks that have gone away and then just in timing consideration of the overall context of all all the other changes going on and when when changes to these two policies may
093be considered in addition to these topics we we had a school health advisory board last night and they talked about this plan and these items as well um they did not come to consensus as they acknowledge that there are many paths forward but there was general consensus that any change in mitigation strategies should be tied to level community transmission so we will share the full minutes of their discussion once finalized but that occurred last night so in summary uh here is our spring plan our goals that i went over the four goals and then the list of changes that will occur this month next month uh that will change and then ones that require board action so with that i'll open it up for questions and any discussion any questions from schmidt or uh mr
094mckay or dr mclaughlin schmidt you said that the health advisory committee didn't come up with any recommendations at all for mass staff masking or any of those other controversial items right um they did not re they didn't we didn't like take a vote or anything but we can share the comments of their discussion yeah okay all right yeah i for one would love to to hear some of those comments because uh that show would weigh on on i think many of our decisions right yeah ms could you share some of the comments yeah so i so there are draft minutes um and so miss gomez has circulated to that board once approved we would be happy to share them and i can go over some of them but i would like their formal approval uh
095before formally sharing but you would have that next meeting but again the consensus was it really made sense to tie some of those decisions to community level so when community levels are low it would be appropriate to remove a requirement around testing for example but they also talked about some of the values of keeping mask right so that's it's modeling for students it's normalizing mask wearing um and so they were i it's hard to capture a single focus but um they also discussed around you know we don't necessarily need us the same policy for staff and visitors right so they talked about the scenario right now our visitor policy applies to weekend use activities right they feel it's not necessary for those building you know users that don't have anything to do with students still
096having a mask requirement so they were in favor of setting a standard and then a time frame for one mask to be optional but no particular time frame on their part in terms of a recommendation okay i mean we are in a situation where we do have a lot of vulnerable students including it certainly at our our elementary schools we have pre-k classes where students are not even eligible for getting a vaccination and they may be at particularly high risk i guess a question i have for mr mckay is what are the current cdc guidelines for step school staff and teacher math squaring or as it's as ms ms schmidt said tied to community um up levels yeah the recommendations are going to be tied to the levels that they've posted [Music] so anything in
097the high category would recommend masking indoors uh anything below there's not going to be a miscellaneous recommendation for that and ms smit weekend use for example this weekend spelling bee will have both students and a lot of visitors so that's i don't know if that's an exception to your comment but it's not as clean a line as one might think are there any other questions for [Music] our panel just a question ms schmidt it appears that we won't have a recommendation from the school health advisory board um so is that the case i mean we will have the minutes of their discussion but we won't have a recommendation that that's correct now if you provide direction we could seek one um i mean our hope is if you want to continue this conversation you could
098what additional information would you like to to help this discussion and so that's something that we could seek if that's the board desires okay thank you miss man all right um maybe we can just sort of pull the um the board members to see where you stand as of this moment with requiring a mask for our staff so starting first with dr acuff how do you stand on that item it's more complicated um i would tend to favor mask wearing of our teachers in classrooms where we have vulnerable students um although i'm not certain i would con support continued requirement for testing weekly among for the teachers and staff i mean that's sort of messy but that's about where i am right now you are saying mask you would uh prefer i would i would
099i can be persuaded otherwise but my inclination is to support continued masks wearing at this point for at a minimum on the classroom well people in schools i mean and it'd be cleaner to do it with all staff until we get some official numbers from the health department um we have heard from quite a few of our parents about vulnerable students in the schools and even though we only have about 300 pre-k kids that's quite a few kids that have absolutely no uh no avenue to getting vaccinated at this point okay thank you dr aka alright mr alcaro mine's a little messy too um i i intend to reach out to um my member of the school health advisory board uh to get her thoughts uh on it she's always been extremely uh valuable and
100uh to me in any decisions that i make i have to say that i'd be willing to potentially uh favor and this is a fine line in terms of the phraseology i could favor suspending the masking requirement based on the numbers that we're seeing locally and in light of what mr mckay is is saying about our local situation um but i don't support rescinding the requirement uh just yet um you know it maybe it's it's trying it and if you know i i don't know if another variant or strain is going to raise its ugly head between now and the end of the school year um in which case i would favor reinstating masking for teachers and staff um but i'm hopeful that in either case we will be able to not have the requirement
101for anybody you know uh when we start school again in august so bottom line i i would say that i'm in favor of suspending the masking requirement in light of local community um results but i i i think we should kind of [Music] not completely wipe it out uh just suspend it for the time being and [Music] with an eye to reinstating it if conditions make that require it okay thank you all right uh miss carlson i think both miss acox dr eric cuffs and mr alcara alcaro's comments were well said i would say i am on the more lenient side i am i am okay with reducing our requirements on teachers they're adults they have the chance to be vaccinated um my the best argument i heard was kate's where this in classrooms where
102students don't have that option um that's probably where i would see more of an argument towards requiring teachers to be masked um i will just say my mom who's who is a teacher in alexandria which is a bigger you know which is more urban setting they've relaxed their massing requirements and although at first she was um really nervous about it she has talked about how it has um really changed the environment in a way that it feels um she doesn't feel less safe um and she appreciates that they were given the option so um that's where i stand i'm okay as long as we're abiding by the guidelines that are coming from the thomas jefferson or health district or the health district then i'm okay with that okay thank you miss carson miss lee um
103i i think that yeah everyone has had very sound arguments on this i feel like it's um just one other uncharted territory that we've been in for the past two years uh i would tend to lean toward the arguments that dr akov made about just keeping our immunocompromised and ineligible students and their families safe um so i and i feel like we've been in this position before where we all had hope and um i am just very concerned about child of omicron son of other greek letter uh coming at us and i just i want to make sure that that doesn't catch us flat-footed so my tendency would be to keep the masking for now and um see if we really can get rid of it at some point but as also as dr akov
104said i would be okay with relaxing the testing policy thank you miss lee uh ms osborne i'm definitely fine with relaxing the testing policy and i think i would like to see more than one low transmission week before we did anything assuming that tomorrow tells us we're a low transmission week i also think that maybe we don't have enough information yet because it's only been what two weeks since the students have been unmasked and i feel like i would want the information from the school health advisory board but i'm not dead set on one way or another right now okay thank you all right i too would be in favor of right now remaining um with our teachers and staff um continuing to wear masks because of all of the unknown factors that everyone else
105has cited here and also i think most of our students are still wearing masks even though it's not really required so until maybe we have uh i would like to receive a recommendation maybe from the um health advisory committee and then we can probably use that to help us make a decision on this but let's also ask uh miss alberan our student rep since you on the front lines each day your thoughts on it um i personally think that um teachers should keep their mask on i think it's setting an example to many students especially the younger ones who look up many thought the teachers and also just keeping family safe the ones the elderly and making sure that animals are protected with this covered problem okay thanks this helper all right so um the
106consensus appears to be to keep mask on for our staff but can we have a consensus or an agreement to ask our student health advisory board for recommendation on this and then discuss this again at our march um 24th meeting i would support that same sounds good okay all right then all right so michigan could you take that back to the school advisory committee and let them know that we'd like a recommendation yes okay thank you and thank you dr h yes we want recommendation with respect to a continuing mandate on vaccinations and testing a and b whether masking should be optional for teachers and staff those are that's what we're asking yes right okay thank you all right and you did get those two points right ms schmidt yes okay thank you page yes
107i i should know this and i know that dr mclaughlin will when is our spring break uh we start it's the first week of april so i believe that is that monday is april uh fourth uh that week so we would have an opportunity at our next school board meeting to [Music] consider changing the rules effective when spring break is over that would be one option of many yeah because our next meeting i think is scheduled for april i mean for march 24th right oh yeah right thank you okay any other any other uh discussion on that item before we move on okay if not thank you dr mclaughlin and the entire team that presented to us that that information our next item um approval of our funding request for the 22-23 year this kumazawa
108thank you good evening school board members i'm maya kumazawa director of budget and planning um thank you all for your engagement during the budget work sessions this year this evening i will facilitate the approval of your 23 funding request before i do that though i wanted to take a moment to provide you with a straight budget update as it relates to the development of next year's budget late last week the senate and house versions of the biennial budgets were released and on this slide is a summary of the two directions that the final conference budget could take a full summary is included on an electronic school board on this agenda item as an attachment and all the details can be found on the virginia department of education website in the first column are the state
109revenue assumptions used in the draft funding request based on the governor's introduced budget in december this slide just pulls out some of the more significant changes in the new budget versions total operating funds from the governor's budget are about 65.9 million dollars in addition to 3.6 million dollars in cip funding the purple section in the middle of the table shows the relative change from the governor's budget to the house version of the budget basic aid sales tax and sales tax hold harmless are shown together due to the formulas for these items being intertwined while there is an overall increase in this area in the house budget it is offset by a significant decrease in at risk funding in addition the salary increase has dropped to four percent in both fy23 and fy24 as a reminder
110we can still implement a salary increase as proposed by acps that is different from this the state's portion however of the cost of our salary increase will be reduced accordingly in fy 23 and in future years in addition 3.6 million dollars in school construction funding is eliminated in the house version on the other hand the portion in the blue shows the relative change from the governor's budget to the senate version of the budget here you will see a significant increase within basic aid sales tax and sales tax hold harmless the assumptions for the salary increase and school construction funds remain unchanged we are strongly in favor of the senate budget and urge this version forward to provide more benefits to acps we will move on next to our funding request the current version of the
111request remains the same as the draft funding request presented by dr haas on february 17th it is a balance and needs-based request of 242 million dollars in revenues and expenditures a 30.8 million dollar increase or 14.6 over the fy 22 adopted budget the revenues that support this budget include a local transfer of 167.5 million dollars as included in the county executive's recommended budget here's a breakdown of the funding request 178 million dollars for 74 of this budget is dedicated to instruction and represents a 23 million dollar increase from the prior year of the 30.8 million dollar total expenditure increase other categories for expenditures include administration attendance and health technology building services transportation and transfers in addition to our school fund operating funds the funding request includes 20.8 million dollars in special revenue funds these funds
112are also balanced based on each individual fund's projected revenues and expenditures for next year at this point we recommend that the school board adopt the funding request is there a motion to do so i move that we okay i move that we adopt the superintendent's funding request for 20 22 23. do i need to say the numbers uh you can't funding request of 242 million and 20 million hundred and forty two thousand nine hundred and seventy six for special revenue funds second moved by dr akov second by ms lee that we adopt the superintendent's budget request with the figures that's shown to us now on the screen any discussion on the motion in a discussion i don't think we were calling it the superintendent's budget requests were we didn't have a um on the agenda
113it's just called the um school board with a funding request right not really listed with a title not that it matters but i thought the purpose was for all of us to have ownership of it oh okay all right you're right miss osborne that was my mistake okay so the motion is basically to approve this our budget request of 242 million uh for school funds and 20.8 million for special revenue any other any other discussion if not miss johnston could you please call the roll wisconsin yes miss lee yes dr aka yes ms osborne yes raquero yes mr page yes mission carried thank you all right so our budget is uh unanimously adapted with the amounts shown on the screen our next item uh i just have one more slide to wrap up oh okay
114i'm sorry no that's all right um so the next step in this process is to bring the school board's approved funding request to the board of supervisors next week chair page and vice chair carlson are planning on facilitating this presentation as representatives of the school board in april as i mentioned earlier i will provide budget updates to include final state revenue projections technical adjustments and updated available one-time funds to help you prepare for your final budget adoption in may um and this doesn't mean that the budget development process is over we are still open to questions and feedback from you all and from the public so please feel free to reach out at any time thank you okay thank you miss school this hour our next item uh second quarter uh financial report mr zimmerman
115good evening school board um jackson zimmerman your school finance officer i want to present for your consideration the second quarter financial report a very positive financial report that i will bring up and share on the screen shown here is our uh our second quarter financial report ending december 31st uh we do have significantly updated numbers in this financial report from the first quarter keep in mind in the first quarter we have very relatively little operation of the division in that point in time in the second quarter we have a significant amount of operation of the division and we also have an updated revenue stream associated with with the the state's projections so wanted to sort of provide you with some some background information as as before we are anticipating getting about 56 more students than
116we had originally budgeted um typically this results in a very slight increase in state revenues but the one thing that i wanted to point out in this particular report is that state revenues have been very very positive for both the current year and for future projections as you have seen in your budget development process so in the current year the governor has released updated numbers for state revenues and we believe that associated that with those associated updated revenues that we will see approximately 1.5 million dollars more in additional state funding than originally budgeted this is primarily due to updated sales tax numbers and some other updated numbers that are provided in there these are based upon the governor's proposals that were introduced in december we do not yet have any changes that the house or
117senate may have had to current year revenues in uh in the in the mix so we do know that there will be some updated numbers in those in in this time period but we do not have them to date so this is the best estimate that we have for revenues to date so in terms of revenue stream we should see a little bit less local revenues primarily due to building rental and other kinds of activities that are taking place that are pandemic impacted but overall we're going to see about 1.1 million dollars in revenues that are greater than what we had originally anticipated on our expenditure side where we will see uh significant changes in our expenditures we have estimated um savings associated with our payroll just keep in mind we have had a pretty
118significant changes in payroll over this time period we have uh shifted from monthly compensation for our employees and then in in january we instituted bi-weekly pay for our employees along with a series of other changes that were associated with this we've taken all of our most recent payroll data and projected out into the future we do believe that we will save about 630 000 in payroll-related um um monies by the end of the fiscal year this number may be subject to change as we update this but this is our best estimate at the current time based upon our bi-weekly payroll structure at the at the moment on the operational side we do anticipate seeing some significant savings associated with operations in the two primary areas that are associated with this are um we do expect
119to see some savings associated from our general operations but the biggest one is about 2.8 million dollars in the most recent updated local revenues about 2.8 million were devoted toward the 4 pay increase that was effective in march it turns out that that that because of our updated compensation model that 2.8 million dollars that was dedicated toward payroll is actually not necessary and so we're projecting that as being savings and operations and that was transferred into a contingency account that's why it's shown as an operational savings so overall we will be seeing about nearly a 5 million dollar savings in the current year 5 million balance of revenues over expenditures in the current year this will have a very significant i will skip over to the very end of our report regarding fund balances we
120do have information in here in terms of a more dedicated split out of our revenues a more more operational spread out on where our expenses took place but where the rubber meets the road as we're budgeting and planning for next fiscal year is uh fund balance information so if you remember correctly we finished at the end of fiscal year 21 with a very positive fund balance 15 million dollars there were significant plans for that fund balance so we have the initial 15 million dollar fund balance our adopted budget called for the use of 5.2 million dollars and then we had some significant carry forwards of items that were unfilled from the prior year carried forward of purchase orders the mountain view project in esol wida funding associated um with prior year purchases that did not
121get filled in time to meet prior year expenditures we also had a significant transfer of money to the cip so when all of these transactions took place right here we got down below the limit of the two percent in the current year we did have 4.1 million dollars associated with a revenue update that took place in december 10 million dollar revenue update that we had in december and then here's an additional the five million dollars nearly five million dollars that we're anticipating um having available at the end of the fiscal year so we're projecting at the end of this fiscal year we should have around 13.6 million dollars in available fund balance at the end of the fiscal year assuming that we just stopped operations when we look forward to 2223 of that 13 million
122dollar fund balance the budget that you just adopted includes almost 4.1 million dollars in the use of fund balance staff at this point believes that we we do have uh we will be bringing forward proposals for um suggested uses of one-time funds in light of the multitude of identified needs that have been brought forward to the board over over the last few few months uh we will bring bringing forward suggested uses of approximately 5.4 million dollars of one-time fund balance money as part of the oct of the april 14th school board meeting and assuming that those those items are brought forward we would have an available fund balance of approximately 4.1 million dollars which is below the 2 threshold set by board of supervisors policy very quick overview a very very positive financial position that
123we are in uh we are fortunate to be able to um discuss having these one-time monies available for future one-time purchases um you know i would be happy to entertain any questions that the board would have regarding uh the financials for the second quarter mr zimmerman um i see that in mar well we transferred some of our fun balance last year to capital do we anticipate any of this 13 million dollars would be transferred to our see the cip we just we just sat through a presentation on our mountain view uh school so i'm thinking about where that's coming from i believe that that that 5.4 million dollar proposed one-time uses for future discussion that would be brought forward on april 14th may include discussions of transfers of those monies to cip okay thank you
124are there other questions for uh mr zimmerman if there are no questions i'd be happy to entertain a motion to approve uh receive this this financial report okay we do need a motion then to receive the report i move that we we receive the second quarter financial report as presented this evening second okay move by mr alcaro second by ms lee that we remove the second quarter financial report is there any discussion on the motion if not miss johnston dr acuff yes miss carlson yes mr alcaro yes miss osborne yes miss lee yes mr page yes okay the motion i thank you mr zimmerman for that very positive report we now have a break that's scheduled should we uh back in census do we want to take our break or should we move forward with
125the last three items on their gender i would say 10 minutes would be great i'd like a break as well okay 10-minute break we all reconvene at 8 42. thank you foreign it is now 8 42 in our i call our session back to order our next item on the agenda is uh the plan to return to in-person meetings this portion of the meeting will be conducted amid schmidt hi good evening again so as we all know the school board has been meeting electronically during the covet 19 pandemic but anticipation of the county office buildings lane auditorium opening once again we would like to present a plan to return to in-person board meetings next month the board of supervisors recently discussed their plan for in-person meetings and so i want to first start with some
126excerpts from that from that meeting for context the borders of brothers are utilizing a tiered approach for public meetings in tier one which begins april 4th members will meet in person and attendees will be in a hybrid fashion this includes the board of supervisor meetings planning commission and school board they were all transition in this first tier these hybrid meetings will be in lane auditorium at the county office building hybrid means that while board members will be in person the public and other attendees will have the choice to attend in person or participate electronically here is a look at what the capacity of the auditorium will be there will be mandatory social distancing on one side of the room for those that elect to sit there and then normal seating available on the opposite side
127board members will be distance on the dice so here are just a couple additional details about the school board meeting specifically the first in-person meeting will be april 14th that's the first uh available first that's the next board meeting after that april 4th date the mask requirement will be dependent on the requirements at cobb at the time of the meeting they are currently required now but we understand that they are monitoring community levels and may change that requirement before then the meeting will be streamed live on our website which is the same as our current practice and the public will have three options options to participate in public comment in person electronically by a zoom or by written submission and dr diggs our chief technology officer will speak more about that aspect of the meeting
128good morning school board good evening school board members i'm christine diggs chief technology officer we are pleased that we can provide the option for public comment to be via zoom or in person for public commenters that choose zoom there will be no need for you as board members to open zoom to see or hear the speaker everyone in the auditorium will be able to hear the speaker the zoom participant will be displayed on each board member's laptop screen and the zoom participant can view the board members via the meeting stream they will see the acps logo that's shown here on their zoom screen the zoom speaker may also need an auditory signal that time is running out as the timer that's at the podium is not loud enough to be heard over zoom and in
129person comments public comment will resume with no changes with that we welcome your questions about the return to in-person school board meetings a while back that the board of supervisors was going to be testing this process is has that have they been doing that and is it working well um the their technical staff has been testing it as has our technical staff they have a different setup than we do and they also have as i believe either three or four people staffing their filming of the meetings and providing the hybrid solution we have one thank you um dr diggs when will the streaming meeting look like it did before the pandemic basically like a big pull out of the dies it will yes it will be um well they switch the cameras but yes it
130will be the the camera setup that's in the auditorium will be feeding that stream thank you there are other questions from schmidt or um dr diggs i started piggybacking on miss lee's question um the scene that was shown to us earlier in the slide would be roughly what it would look like with the live stream right because that was like back quite way quite a ways from the main podium the camera was looking toward the podium right mistakes i there are multiple cameras in there and as i recall they switched the cameras so i don't know that it's always a fixed shot okay okay right right thanks um i will explore that further but it's not if i saw miss schmidt nodding that it's not a fixed shot okay are there other other questions on
131uh afres in-person meeting scheduled for april uh the 14th any other questions on that okay thank you very much for the presentation just just a personal note if i might um mr page given that uh mr oberg is not with us tonight let's not tell him that we're meeting in person for april 14th okay we'll see if he catches on thank you mr alcara our next agenda item is one that has been of concern to the board for sever several years and that is how we as board members can have more of a presence in our individual mediterranean districts on mr alcaro's uh case of the entire county dr bernard harrison and mrs karen waters wicks from the department of community education or community engagement rather are here to present us a plan that might
132help us to sort of solve that problem so dr harriston and ms waters wicks thank you mr page and good evening school board members um jennifer can you share the slide presentation i will have to find it and pull it up for you typically you share from your screen so hang on just a minute okay um miss karen waters wix mr page and i would like to share an initiative to allow each of you to model an expectation within the strategic plan of affirming and empowering expanding expanded voices from a culturally responsive focus i'm taking my time to give jennifer a little bit of time the proposed plan not available of interest as equity-minded leaders miss karen waters-wicks will share the initiative mr page will follow with what his personalized initiative might look like hint
133hint personalized initiative might look like and we will follow with questions and our comments before seeking your guidance for moving forward karen thank you dr hairston good evening everybody thank you so much for having me i'm karen waters-wicks and i'm your community education coordinator speaking on behalf of the department of community engagement and i'm excited to share our proposal to partner with you to achieve goal two of the acps strategic plan goal two of the strategic plan is all about empowering all of our citizens to actively engage with as part of our school community and to find multiple ways to bring people together can you go to the next slide please jennifer objective 2.3 requires that we provide an environment that values lived experiences and is culturally responsive which enables a wide range of community
134voices to be heard and it calls on us to find a variety of means to meet these folks where they are jennifer can you go to the next slide this proposal seeks to create a partnership within the with the office of community engagement which will enhance the board's ability to connect with a diverse group of stakeholders in each magisterial district our intention is that school board members at the end will have a nice pool of people who may want to serve in another capacity perhaps as a volunteer or as an appointee to another board of a commission or commission we hope that each school board member will do one meeting within the next calendar year and then at least two annually going forward the way we propose to go about this is to survey our
135school board members uh to get an idea of your passions as dr harrison mentioned as well as your meeting style and preference and your logistical requirements we will then identify community partnership organizations and individuals who might serve as meeting hosts sponsors or participants then our staff from the office of community engagement will collaborate with you with scheduling and facilitation of your meetings if it's needed and finally school board members will have the opportunity to invite our meeting participants to serve as a more diverse pool of individuals who are available to serve as a sounding board or potential volunteers so that you'll have a group to choose from if you need other folks to call on for future focus groups appointments or event recruitment for each magisterial district if this plan is endorsed by the board
136we'll send the survey out to you immediately and based on your responses we'll get started helping to organize meetings for you in each of your districts does anyone have any questions before we go there uh karen mr page would you be so kind as to share with your colleagues what a personalized plan might look like for the sam samuel miller district and then we'll go into questions all right do we have the questionnaire on the um on the slide presentation or was it remember the blank question here jennifer can you click the link where you see the word surveyed should come open yeah okay all right so let's see now um where uh with the question what is your meeting style preference i would probably prefer at the beginning having groups probably of about 20
137people or less and i'd be willing to sort of have the option of either having a zoom meeting or in person i would be sort of leaning toward in-person meetings but if not then we'd go with zoom moving down a little bit more jennifer all right a little bit more art you write in uh the group set would be of interest for me would be um minorities in samuel miller district and also uh low-income families those would be the two main groups that i'd be probably trying to work with most in the beginning in uh my district and then moving down to the next section top top topics of main interests for me it would be underrepresented populations at school board meetings and then as a other promote and diversified board appointed committees in samuel
138miller district quite often even though we have good appointees good people that have been applying for positions i would still like to have maybe a pool that would be able to sort of have more diversity or candidates that would be more diversified to put on some of the committees and this would be one way i think to do that now moving down a little bit more i think where it gets to who would the contacts that you would make uh probably the main contacts i'd be looking at right now would be the p2o ptos especially for the two smaller schools in samuel district which would be red hill and scottsville although scottsdale is in the uh scottsville district but still students from my district go there i'd also be probably looking at the yancey community
139center group and also probably contacting social service department in order to find out more data that could be used to sort of invite certain groups from the minority group and from the low income group to that meeting so those would be the main things and then i'd probably be looking or trying to start this probably in the middle of april right after um spring break so that would be typical answers to the survey for me as an individual so are there any questions or any of things else or either returning it back to dr harrison harrison for uh other comments we would love your comments and our questions board members i'll just chime in and say oh sorry i didn't see you um just for me personally um i i'll make this clear at the
140bottom where there are other comments um i have times i'm pretty flexible uh in terms of meeting um so i want to make sure that if there are people who want to meet with me as a part of this that um like i just don't have a sense of when people would want to meet so uh that's i think that's just something that we're probably i am certainly a little bit more flexible on than maybe necessarily shown in that right yeah because on my survey i put in that the best times for me would be in the evening but still just like you too i would be open to other times if other groups could meet at those times so that's a good point um miss costa carlson you had uh yeah i was gonna
141chime in and say that um juan i really appreciate this this has been something has been something that we've been trying to spearhead for a while and i just wanted to remind you i appreciate that you're reaching out to different places and different ways to do the community engagement because i think when we first started this discussion probably three or four years ago we were doing town halls at that point and consistently doing them and counting that as our community engagement but there would be one to three people who came to everyone and usually the same one to three people um and i think we wrote it into our school board evaluation that we would do better metrics and i feel like this will meet it and i will say personally i do really well
142when there's accountability for myself so being able to like log and track and having the help of you guys pointing out events and arranging things that we can go to i'm just very appreciative of um and i think it's aligned with a lot of the work we've been trying to do so thank you our thought was based on the information you provide we can then go another step and say okay for example uh mr page is interested in low wealth populations um who do i know in that area that might be willing to spearhead a meeting and serve as a community host and then have them invite people we're hoping that that way or working with our student populations having them uh work with their parents to host a meeting and invite others may help
143to expand out from the areas that you all identify so we just want to sort of amplify what it is that you would like to see happen in your particular district i think that's fantastic and also um going to people where they are already congregated and are gathered so making space just to speak at something that we might know there's already going to be good attendance and our interest i'm excited thank you i think it might also be of use i was just trying to think how these could be not podcasted but preserved or i mean if we had a if we hadn't if i had a town hall for example on reimagining well about the high school centers for example and what that impact might be it might be nice to document that somehow
144and put it on the website because not everybody would be able to show up if it was about world languages or whatever it was about um but no i i'm with katrina i guess in my early couple early before covet made many attempts to do community meetings and you would have a community meeting on budget and one person would show up wanting to talk about the open burning rules which so so the challenge will be to select topics that are salient for both those with kids in the schools and those who don't have kids in the schools i know we know from our we keep hearkening back to the referendum vote we know that there's broad community support for our schools but we've never found i've never found a hook to get people beyond a
145handful of parents showing up so that's a challenge i want to get my arms around it a little bit more and and i think this would involve having some conversations with you bernard and you karen and i i would very much look forward to that because a number of years ago and dr hairston um dr acuff and miss carlson would remember that and that dr haas that we tried to do something with um in the different magisterial districts and as dr akov said uh we got minimal number of people i think we got our biggest crowd at southwoods and that was about 10 people and we were trying to reach out to community members to parents who had would not normally come and talk to the school board who would not come and talk to
146the to the end of the schools you know to speak with teachers or administrators uh you know whether it was culturally you know something that they weren't used to or whatever um and um i i like the approach of this um [Music] you know in terms of because i want i really do want to understand who is going to be coordinating it and um you know and and and bringing people in because as has been said before getting people to come in it's got to be they've got to be topics that you know we want to talk about sure but that people want to hear about is is even uh more important and then i would love to get some clarification and this is just self-centered um because what we were trying to do before
147was to have the local school board member be there and the at-large so that people were seeing you know both of their representatives and so um you know i'd love to know what the thought is will i be doing uh in your thought process will i be doing six different meetings and so then there would be six other meetings being done by the local board representative and i mean these are not things that have to be answered you know right now but i would love to be able to sit down with or or speak by phone or zoom with uh either of you too uh to kind of talk this through because i love the concept you know i mean i love where it's what this is intended to do and i've just got a
148whole bunch of carroll uh first thank you for those comments but first and foremost uh we see this as our school board members taking the lead and giving us some direction in terms of how you're going to affirm and empower your community it's like your community is going to be a classroom and we're going to be there to support you we want you to be able to let us know strategies in terms of how you might want to i'll survey them and we'll do the work relative to specific topics in terms of groups that you may want to engage you have a number of people who are making public comments every day about given topics you have folks who um are you are engaged with in different organizations uh that we can uh seek but
149we want you to just have that passion topic and we want to be able to support you working with our communications office to push out any sort of topics that you have and we will be supportive of you but we need you to lead this work because we want you to model how to do it and do it well and respecting the strategic plan that you have adopted so we're going to be here as a support but we need your leadership okay so we have great minds and we just want to just push those minds but we'll be the backbone for you yeah i'll just make one comment to that and and uh um and then i would still love to you know learn more because it's hard to really say in all six magisterial
150districts um i want to do meetings this uh and without understanding what are the resources that i can be calling on and that all of us can be calling on you know who will be doing it how would it be done and uh i'm sure it's all thought through i'm sure there are things in place i just would love to be able to know what options we have to work with so you know i i think we're saying the same thing in concept i'm just looking for a little bit deeper dive in terms of understanding and then i can make some decisions absolutely your situation is quite unique you can decide to deal with one and pair with graham or you can decide to do six and work with everyone else so once again it's
151your call you know as the at-large person or you can do one and invite representatives from each of the districts i understand yep all right we'll work with you we'll personalize for you thank you are there other questions or comments on the presentation i think this is great i really appreciate you guys pulling this together so mr page i'll turn it back over to you it sounds like we have consensus to move forward right we do so thank you survey out and before uh ms waterswick's leaves um this is just something i heard through the rumor mill so it may not necessarily be true but i understand that she's only and one of her main incentives for doing this for us is that she expects some new cars over at the at mile high school
152so we might have to look at some of those one-time funds for her new cars i'm not sure really that's what rumor mill was saying i think it's one per high school mr page one per high school oh i thought that was all at our mile but okay one per high school so monticello western and now yes sir we'll see what we can do okay i think the students would like really fast ones okay all right thank you okay our next item is the 2022 work session topics and this will be led by mishmit good evening again this is my last item uh tonight um and this is about work session topics for the remainder of the calendar year so we formed a work session committee it was comprised of staff and representative board members
153including miss lee and mr accaro we have drafted topics after the reindeer of the calendar year before we get into the topics though i want to first start with the purpose of work sessions the school board implemented the use of work sessions to gain greater understanding of critical issues facing the division and to provide staff with direction in support of the division strategic plan so in other words work sessions are an opportunity for deeper work and typically the first meeting of each month is a business meeting and then the second meeting is a work session the committee has drafted a common framework for each work session outlined here all work sessions will have a direct connection to the strategic plan they will be data driven connect to current policies and then we'll all all will
154conclude with a common discussion and stir clear purpose and direction with questions such as what further information does the board need what are the next step what are the next steps for the board on that topic and always tying back into our funding and budget cycle as well so there are six remaining uh scheduled work sessions in the calendar year and so for each you will see a date a topic and then the connection to the learning for all goal and strategy or objective and so the first three which will take us to the end of the school year are listed here our next work session is on march 24th and that that will be on what we call the first part of two that are focused on achievement data and the topic will be
155a mid-year data review in april we propose a work session on the cip this will be a more global approach on the process and program as a whole and not about specific projects it will be an opportunity to better understand how the county assesses affordability forecasting financing options as well as how we produce enrollment projections and other data in may we will plan a session about school climate and mental health this will include information on student climate data our counseling and sel programs instructors such as responsive classroom design development and freshman seminar as we come back from summer right in august we will start with a session about intervention services and that will include rti sped esol and our title programs in september will be the second part of the achievement data discussion and that
156will focus on the year end data it will also be an opportunity for the board to develop their goals for the 22 23 school year and lastly we will conclude with a work session about a school board community and stakeholder engagement we're still working on the details of these but we've talked about a deeper dive on the rural advisory committees perhaps reflection on the work of the of the work you just discussed or other topics so with that i will ask if there's anything mr alcaro or miss lee would like to add or expand on and then open up for discussion and feedback from the board i would say that i i now understand uh what dr harrison was saying to us during the meeting that um about what the uh uh plan was that
157we just heard um you know in the previous session and um and how that would relate to that last meeting in october um so um that becomes very clear to me now um i also what i want to note is that you know we asked board members for topics and i think we got a lot of very important and interesting topics but um one thing that we discussed during our working on these work sessions was what maybe could take 30 minutes and what maybe could take two hours so i think a lot of those topics that were on that list will end up being um business meeting topics uh and then because two hours just seemed like a lot for some of them so i think it's fair to say there's still a work in
158progress but this i think these are great starting points and so i would you know ask all board members to you know come in with more ideas on them and uh i know there's gonna be some flexibility but thank you to judy and thank you to rosalind and the rest of the folks who were so helpful on the on the committee i think it's a good running start i very much like this structure and i very much like to like knowing what we're going to be doing in the work sessions for the rest of the year often they have seemed and have seemed ad hoc and not board generated and i think this is a very good path and tightly linking them to data and to our strategic plan i think is essential so this
159is a step out from our work sessions but we also need to discuss retreat which i hope is in a work session rather than a series of tasks that we do but we that we can talk about that at another point perhaps but it's coming up quickly there are other comments or questions related to our work sessions if not we thank that committee for your work and we look forward to our first workplace in march 24th thank you all again do we have other business either by board members or by the superintendent um chairpage i just have a comment i know that you and ms carlson will be making uh the funding the board's funding request presentation to the bos soon and i would ask that at least one of those slides includes the capital
160something about capital which dr haas included in his funding request to us although i'm pleased that we have funding now for one center and one school in the next five years when we wanted two and we have 10 probably 10 percent of the less than 10 percent of the funding for renovation i think this is a drum we need to continue to beat and just raise include some of the elegant slide points that dr haws had in his presentation just to keep it on the front burner and and to that point that dr acuff that you're making about let's just round it to ten percent uh over the next five years or ten million dollars that makes it a 50-year project to get through all 100 million dollars and that's not something that the schools
161or the school division or future boards can afford to deal with as as the law of entropy just makes things disintegrate more and more it can't be a 50-year project this this needs to get done within the next 10 years all right miss carlson i was going to respond to dr akop and mr alcara ocaro and say that um we did have a run through today and there are at least two if not three slides i think dedicated to the cip and kind of making sure that we're reiterating that we need funding there and i think those slides are well done so yeah they are thank you on a different piece of business one of the public speakers mr mcclung has emailed me um a few times and i had a phone conversation with him
162and then he came today for public comment and so i didn't want to ask more information from maybe um j j thomas about what exactly our cell phone policy is is it throughout the three high schools is it different by administration by school by its classroom um i would just like some more clarity around that i was actually going to share that we are starting on monday next week high school cell phone task force uh jamie gellner will be leading it from the central office we are including teachers from the high schools pretty much everything that mr mcclellan said is true we have always had a policy in place that said that telecommunication devices are not to be out visible or used in the classroom for anything except instructional purposes at some point along the
163way they became very popular and [Music] i don't i personally do not think that our that our teachers have been supported in uh in enforcing that policy uh we had success with the middle school program that we instituted a couple of years ago and so the middle school principles that spearheaded that project are part of the task force as well so that work is underway i i did ask pat to invite james to attend to be part of the task force and so i you know i was actually going to mention that during other soups business tonight to let you all know that we're we're going to be working on it it is a serious problem it is probably one of the most distracting and anxiety provoking things for teenagers to have is their cell
164phone and it's not really fair to our teachers to ask them to provide high quality teaching and learning while everybody kind of walks away from the students using their phones all the time we need to figure out a balanced approach that respects the fact that high school students are young adults but at the same time we need to deal with it so it will be changing next year i don't know exactly what our stance will be but there will be more strict enforcement more support for teachers and students and more focus on students learning in the classroom rather than being distracted by their phones if i might miss alberon could you give share with us your thoughts on this subject is this a a major issue in your school um well i personally feel like
165in my classes we're pretty good with the like cell phones not being out while the teacher's teaching but i feel like um i don't know when we have free time i feel like that's when most of the time we bring it out but i feel like personally in my classes we don't really bring out the phone so much unless our teacher allows it like when we're doing reminders or putting it in our planners because usually people do it electronically we're allowed to get our phones out and do that that way thank you okay any other um discussion on cell phones any other board any other business by board members or dr house you mentioned that you might have some other business oh no that was it right there okay thank you all right again last
166call for the business by board members okay before no before y'all go i will i just have to call out the fact that my our dog passed away and my kids were very sad so i went to the richmond science museum and they have rap basketball and that day i went and bought two rats two rats quickly became 21 which is why now in the back of my meetings i have my rat enclosure and i finally found homes for all of them except the two we're gonna keep so starting tomorrow it will be more normal but no one has called it out and you all have been very gracious in the fact that the background of the meetings if you ever look at what's going on behind me yes those are rats crawling around i
167was ready to call it out because i just noticed that they were crawling around so yeah are they playing basketball i haven't you know i haven't taught them yet that was the goal but i was looking more for one on one not actually two fully staffed teams with benches um so once we get down to a trainable amount that's when i'll work it work on the training you may need to catch that one that walked across the window a few minutes ago that could that might be a work session then for us once you uh train them to play all right no other uh business uh uh meeting for march 10th is adjourned so thanks to all staff members and all people who present it to us this afternoon and good uh good evening good
168night