School Board Meeting - January 13, 2022

001it's 5 45. um and i do call this closed session or leading into the closed session in twitter uh vice chair carlson do you have a motion i do um i move the albemarle county public school board going to a closed meeting is authorized by the virginia freedom of information act um section 2.2 37 11 a of the code of virginia so i'm trying to expand my screen under subsection 1 for the discussion consideration are interviews of prospective candidates for employment and the assignment appointment promotion performance demotion salaries disciplining a resignation of specific public officers appointees or employees of any public body also subsection 7 for consultation with legal counsel and briefings by staff members or consultants pertaining to actual or probable litigation or such consultation or briefing an open meeting would adversely affect the

002negotiating or litigating posture of the public body and lastly subsection 8 for consultation with legal counsel employed are retained by the school board regarding specific legal matters requiring the provision of legal advice by such counsel second okay moved by miss carlson second by ms lee and mr caro that we go into closed session ms johnston could you call the roll please carlson yes mr oberg yes miss lee yes mr o'carro yes miss osborne yes dr akov yes mr page so the motion care is so we will go into closed session i think everyone is back it's 6 33 and i call this a meeting of the alamo county school board for january the 13th to order miss carlson do you have a motion out of our closed session i do um i move that the

003board certified by recorded vote that to the best of each board member's knowledge only public business matters lawfully exempted from the open meeting requirements of the virginia freedom of information act and identified in the motion authorizing the closed meeting or heard discussed are considered in the closed meeting second move uh ms clausen second by mr lee that we certify that um the only thing that was discussed in the closed meeting were the items in the motion to go into the close meeting ms johnston could you please call the roll mr oberg yes miss lee yes mr alcaro yes miss osborne yes dr acuff miss carlson yes mr page yes mission carried okay the motion carries we will now have a moment of silence and doing this moment of silence i would like for us to

004remember mr sean karan a teacher at jack jewett middle school who passed on december the 30th 2021 we will have a moment of silence you this being our first meeting of the year is our organizational meeting dr haas will preside over the first section of the organizational meeting dr haas oh thank you very much uh chairman page and so at this point um i'm gonna carry out one part of the organizational meeting uh to get things started so um at this time i am going to carry out the part of the organizational meeting around selecting the alamo county school board chair and so what i would like to do is ask the school board if there are any nominations for the chair uh for the for the coming school year or for the coming year

005january to uh to the end of december uh 2022. yes it is my distinct honor and privilege to nominate mr graham page to be the chair of the albemarle county school board for in these turbulent times mr page is a man who i respect admire and appreciate he leads by example he remains calm in all situations he listens carefully to everyone and he always strives to find creative solutions to problems that demand them mr page has done an outstanding job as chair during the last 18 months he's a champion to all of our students parents teachers and staff in my opinion he has earned the opportunity to continue his work as chair of the albemarle county school board for 2022. is there a second so um i'm sorry i'm sorry that's i'm just carrying out

006my responsibilities are there any other nominations for the chair of the alamo county school board for 2022. all right having having no other nominations do we have so our one candidate is uh mr graham page and so is there a second uh is there a nomination is there now a nomination do i have to do i have a motion to vote for mr page i i make a motion that mr page be elected okay do we have a second second ms lee you were also seconding did you want to also second sure thank you all right well just third you can see why i don't do this uh permanently um are there any is there any discussion before the roll call vote move for unanimous consent well that's beyond my uh capabilities so this time

007i'm going to uh ask ms johnson for a roll call vote dawson yes mr oberg yes miss lee yes mr elcaro yes miss osborne yes dr akov yes and mr page yes i guess yes all right so at this time it is my pleasure and uh truly uh i i concur with with everything that um mr alcaro said and uh it's my honor to turn over the gavel to mr page for another year and i'm just really proud to work for you mr page thank you thank you for your leadership and thank you for stepping up for another year thank you thank you dr haas for presiding over that portion of the meeting thank you mr el carro for the nomination and ms lee and the rest of the members who second and again i'll

008try to do my very best to [Music] preside over our meetings and do what's necessary for the meetings to enable school board policies to move forward so thank you all again for that vote of confidence we will now have um vote a vote for our vice chair are there nominations for vice chair mr page i would like to nominate miss katrina carlson for a second term as vice chair of the school board like you she has shown grace under very difficult times she's given generously of her time and her talents to promote education in albemarle county and i think she would be a great choice second okay are there any other nominations for vice chair any other nominations if not we will close the nomination on um the name of ms katrina carlson as our

009vice chair i move for unanimous consent second second second all right move by ms doberg second by mr alcaro and miss dr akov that we uh elect ms carlson by unanimous consent ms johnston could you please call the roll that defeats the purpose so what do we do he can't get fancy with us dave thank you right all right dave so i i i set corrected so the motion then moves forward without any uh as if there's objection if there's no objection okay i needed to hear it from each of you individually i didn't want to go on the record katrina no i'm okay all right thank you and uh it is really a pleasure having ms carlson as our vice chair she has always been there and very very supportive so i'm really pleased

010to have her as vice chair again we now need to um have uh nominations and appointments to our uh various um what committers right and we have quite a few committees two of them of which we start out with to begin with um the long-range i mean uh the k-tech committee and let's see where are my notes on this okay k-tech committee first i think we need what one nomination to ktek jennifer can i get our grab if you know but um for some of these if you have it in front of you what's whose term is up who's serving whose term is up yeah pull up the attachment yeah we do have one member whose term well we have one person who we uh would be nominating to a three-year term so uh miss

011johnston whose term is up i think first mr page you need to appoint your clerk oh okay thank you so very much i moved that we appoint jennifer johnson as the clerk of the albemarle county school board second all right moved by uh mr oberg second by was that mr alcaro that'd be a point uh miss jennifer johnston as our school board clerk i guess those questions were sort of illegitimate until we really have somebody there so um this could be by unanimous consent since we don't have a person who officially can do it so are there any objections to ms johnston being our school board clerk all right no uh objections so ms johnston you are our school board clerk and now we ask you for the committee questions that we had thank you

012okay so for your first committee it's the um k-tech board um dr acuff has um her term expires at the end of this year ms osborne's at the end of next year miss carlson's term expired december 31st so there's the one vacancy that you need to fill okay i'm interested in that are you yes i mean if you want to be back on it i i i mean it's three years so who knows but i mean um i i don't know if that's a a concern for these appointments okay so mr lee are you volunteering for that i i would like to volunteer for that okay are there any other volunteers for the three-year term on the k-tech board if not thank you very much ms lee for stepping up for that position thank you

013so much thank you okay we now move to the prep committee and um currently ms lee and uh me the two of us are currently on our board um so we could have two new people if we have two volunteers unless miss lee wants to volunteer again i actually have a work conflict uh i discovered during the meeting time so yeah i hope for another night moved up to the representative while you were doing that so do we have um two people who would be interested in now positions on the prep war when do they meet graham it's usually a wednesday i think right it's uh i think it's the third or the fourth wednesday from 10 to 12. right i'll be happy to be the ultimate what now i'll be happy to be the

014alternate okay all right dave were you volunteering to be all right i i can't graham i've got if it's during the day i've got work i just can't do it okay do we have a volunteer though for that for our actual representative i am not volunteering but i'll put it so sorry but i will put um i will tell people it's a great way to become familiarized with special education and services that we're offering our students and their needs um i have served on it before and i have work on wednesday so i would not like to step into that one at this point in addition to doing the vice chair but it is um it's a fun board to be on yeah and you learn a lot okay if nobody else has stepped forward

015i will be our rep on that board again with mr alcaro as our alternate all right moving to our third one the cip oversight committee and these may not necessarily think you missed the audit well let's go to the audit and we can go in the order that uh they are on the sheet so the audit currently uh ms osborne is our representative i'll continue if nobody else wants it okay oh thank you very much ms asthma thank you so much all right um next is the capital the cip committee i would like to stay on that committee if possible and i would like to stay on it for one more year if possible okay all right are there any people who would like to replace those or are we going to accept their um

016statements sold so okay next is the uh communications committee and that is currently a seat held by dr a cuff and ms lee i would also like to stay on that um unless someone would like to have a cage match for that also okay all right miss lee what about you doctor i'd be willing to yield if someone wanted it i'll do it okay i'm a stover all right legislative committee listel caro dr aka this one i'll step in and say i'd like to rejoin it anybody i'd be happy to step down miss carlson and i would be happy to step down if anybody else would like it do you want to do it john i would be happy to step down i'll do it okay armas goldberg and miss carlson all right next committee

017is that all right um school board orientation committee and we don't need it uh i'll do that one okay all right i'll be fully in charge of it all right um public education the pef foundation i'm currently on that but someone else could uh jump in um ms osborne and i are on that steering committee and in anticipation of like 10 meetings i think we set out for this year so i would like to stay on that steering committee okay yeah but this is different this is different this is the people oh you're right you're right you're right sorry i had a brain camp you were right i'm sorry uh would you like to be on the pef foundation too no thank you i was on it for four years and i'm happy to yield

018this is no sir we think you're doing a great job no volunteers for the pef foundation i really would like to give this up so um i can do it graham okay thank you miss carlson thank you very much all right now next one is the school board discipline committee currently miss carlson me and miss gilbert and ms lee i think was acting as uh alternate on that committee i would be happy to step down and i'd be happy to step in okay all right i'd like to keep it yeah i'd like to keep it too i'd be happy to be the alternate i've never never been on this committee okay so miss carlson and me mr uh ms lee and mr alcaro is our um alternate all right the thomas jefferson adult and career

019education regional board committee i'm happy to continue yeah i'm happy to continue all right thank you yeah they didn't meet this year though yeah okay all right and then the last one the liaison to the accountability committee for environmental sustainability and this is our new committee right dr haycuff and miss carlson i think um we're sort of unofficially in that committee we we helped started and if i'm recalling correctly did you want to be the first one to serve dr no i i would be happy to yes um but if you wanted it i could yield as well no i'm happy to have you lead it all right you'll serve doctor aka yes okay thank you all right i think that takes care of all of our committees um fair page may i just ask

020a question i i sent a note to uh school board i think it was yesterday about having someone be the point person or mentor for our student rep um i think i don't whether it would be in a formal appointment like this or not i i think it would be it could improve the experience on both sides but we can talk we can don't need to decide that today necessarily all right but you will remember to bring that back up right i'd be happy to okay all right um next is the establishment of a meeting time date and place ms johnston usually you send that out as an email right the list is attached to the agenda item okay i can pull that up as well all right so we see on the screen um

021the dates for our meetings for this year for 2022. could i have a motion to um accept those dates i mean that we accept the proposed dates of the school board meetings i second that move mr oberge second by dr akaf that we accept the meeting uh the meeting dates that have been proposed for our school board meetings are there any is there any discussion on the motion um i just had a question um so is the retreat in june that's on a saturday the 11th i just wanted to be sure that that was accurate and then also is the discipline committee on that of that month also on a saturday oh right that that doesn't look right it should have been a monday okay but i may have let's see oh it will be

022june 13th i'm sorry you're 13. okay i just wanted to be sure right i will fix that okay thank you all right thank you mr lee that was really observant to um you know catch that so thank you so much well as you can see this is the way that i live right okay ms johnson could you please call the roll on that revised schedule yes um miss carlson yes mr oberg yes miss lee yes mr alcaro yes ms osborne yes doctor f yeah mr page yes motion carried listen terrorists okay all right so as customary for the last a little over a year we do read this entire minutes for each meeting the minutes of this meeting should reflect that this meeting is being held electronically personal to virginia state law an admiral county

023ordinance 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 and streams live on the alamo county public schools website and public comment may be offered through the zoom waiting room feature in accordance with the school board's protocol or by written submission and now uh to introduce our members of the board and our new student rep who is attending uh tonight uh dr kate akov who is not the student rep but one of our members katie acoff jack jewett district mr genoa alcara johno alcaro at large miss katrina carlson katrina carlson rio district miss judy lee judy lee rivanna district mr dave oberg dave oberg whitehall magisterial district ms ellen osborne ellen osborne scottsville district

024i'm graham page samuel miller district and it is my pleasure to introduce tonight a new student rep elizabeth albarin and elizabeth is here and she's going to give us um an introduction a brief introduction to herself and tell us about any other other things that she'd like to let us know so elizabeth miss albert alvarez hello my name is elizabeth alvarez i'm a senior at monticello high school and i'm excited to be joining here and representing my school thank you very much elizabeth thank you and we will be um really glad for any input you can give us doing any discussion point at any time that you are uh sitting on the board so you'll have a three-month appointment so again we really really welcome you to the board tonight elizabeth we strongly encourage you

025to interrupt mr alcaro as often as possible it's for everybody's benefit elizabeth nobody listens to mr oberg you don't have to either that's true okay moving right along all right we now need a motion to approve the agenda for tonight i move that we approve the agenda second move by mr alcaro second by ms leader we approve the agenda discussion on the motion ms johnston mr page yes dr akov yeah miss osborne yes mr ocaro yes miss lee yes mr ober yes miss clawson yes okay the motion cares we will now move to the approval of the consent agenda but before we get a motion ms schmidt um is going to give us um a brief update on item uh three seven thank you mr page i'm roslyn schmidt chief operating officer and as chair

026paige mentioned i just want to take a quick moment to draw your attention to item 3.7 that's the fy 22 budget amendments this is a follow-up from our discussion on december 9th and the plan for additional local revenues that the division has received in the current fiscal year it's a technical document but i wanted to highlight it because if approved it includes a mid-year salary adjustment of four percent for all regular employees in march this is something we are very pleased to be in a financial position to be able to do for extremely dedicated employees there are additional items including a transfer to the cip and other items i just wanted to specifically identify that aspect of the agenda item thank you mr man are there any questions on uh her comments if not could

027i have a motion to approve the consent agenda for tonight i move that we approve the consent agenda there was almost two but miss del cara i think i heard you and mr oberg are you second okay move by mr alcaro ii by mr oberg that we approve the consent agenda any discussion on the motion if not miss johnson could you please call the roll mr over yes miss lee yes mr yes ms osborne yes dr akov yes ms carlson yes mr page yes mission carried okay thank you um before we get to the spotlight on education we'll have an announcement one announcement by ms collins collins good evening i'm debbie collins deputy superintendent as you know we started back to school on monday after a three week break two that were planned and one

028that we didn't plan for we had our last school fully powered up last sunday afternoon just in time for monday and i we can report that students are happy to be back in school as i'm sure you you recognize this week has not been without its challenge in regards to rescheduling from a missed week and ongoing staffing challenges due to another coveted surge when we met with principals on wednesday we reiterated our need to stay vigilant with our mitigation strategies and problem solving mindset i'd like to thank all alamar county school employees our students and our families for working together through the challenges that we've encountered thank you miss collins before we get to the spotlight on education we do have our governor has proclaimed this week as principal appreciation week and i see at

029least four of our principals um sitting in on tonight's session mr canard ms england mr crutchfield and mr sanders all here i hope i didn't overlook anyone but this is the governor's proclamation whereas school principals work cooperatively to direct develop and inspire all members of the school staff and student body and to communicate effectively with parents to encourage engage them in the learning process and whereas principals serve as educational leaders responsible for managing the politics policies rather regulations and procedures necessary to ensure a safe and effective learning environment for all students in virginia's public and private schools and whereas principals and teachers are entrusted with the opportunity and the responsibility of guiding directing nurturing mentoring and imparting knowledge to our children while they are at school and whereas principals must work collaboratively with teachers staff

030students parents and the community at large to proactively prepare students be self-reliant and productive citizens and whereas virginia school principals appreciation week is an opportunity to recognize the hard work of virginia schools principles and to recognize the importance of principles in ensuring that every child has access to a quality education now that now therefore i ralph s northam do hereby recognize january 8th through 14th 2022 as virginia school principal appreciation week now commonwealth of virginia and i call this observance to the attention of all of our citizens so we do congratulate and extend our appreciation to all of our principals and again we really are pleased to have at least four of our principals attending tonight uh also mr page we also do have amy morris the principal at broadest wood so yeah all right

031thank you sorry thanks for recognizing okay sorry that i overlooked you miss morris now moving to our spotlight on education um tonight we are truly honored to have with us mrs lucille smith who recently completed unforgettable an extensive history of jackson p burley high school last year the school was added to the national register of historic places in her preface ms smith wrote black history matters we must continue to document and preserve the rich and brave story of african-american students in charlottesville city and at mile county before readers opened the book's first pages ms smith advises them that the interviews from students faculty and administrators are raw candid and from the heart her connections to segregated education includes her husband ryzelle who graduated from burleigh high school in 1966. roselle later served as chair of

032the charlottesville city school board ms smith grew up and attended school in north little rock arkansas across the river from little rock central high school a place forever known for its role in bringing international public consciousness the struggle for racial educational opportunity unforgettable the history of burley is not a volume though about separate and unequivoc unequal education in our community it is instead of instead a joyous celebration of remarkable young men and women whose time at burleigh comes back in pages filled with personal reflections copies of original documents and photos and a long list of extraordinary achievements it recounts a story that should be told again and again of how education teaches us perseverance pride and confidence friendship and the value of just plain hard work and how together all of these gifts build strong

033families and careers and selfless and un uplifting community service although she did not have the opportunity to attend burley the considerable talents of ms smith as a historian and writer would convince you otherwise she served for more than 30 years with the u.s army national ground intelligence center she now devotes much of her time as a volunteer to local boards and community organizations and to her church i understand that our school division will be making copies of unforgettable available to all of our schools to all of our school libraries i'd like to formally introduce you to lucille smith and ask our guest to share with us some thoughts about her important contribution to learning for all students in our school division miss smith welcome good evening and thank you chairman page for the introduction mr

034jeremy thank you for the opportunity to speak about unforgettable jackson b burley high school dr haas and dr dunn were very kind in allowing me to visit the county office building and go through old school board meeting minutes which really assisted me with my research i began volunteering with the burley varsity club in 2011 and i became very intrigued with burley high school and i kept hinting this great history needs to be documented it did not happen so i took the challenge and i decided to write the book because it has been more than 70 plus years since the school opened in 1951 and there has not been a publication or an official history written about the school and many of the students know all of the students are now senior citizens and many of

035them are no longer with us and the book tells some of the history of the school there's just so much that you could write about and there's the three area high schools there's a highlight of those jefferson high school in the city an albemarle training school and esmond high school in the county that united to become jacksonville high school there are wonderful interviews from students faculty and administrators and what's what was so important to me is that there is a picture of every faculty member all of the administration that was there from 1951 through desegregation and the closing of the school in 1967. there is a timeline of the building of the school as well as an architectural description of the school and there's many pictures of the organizations and the sports teams imagine for

036the first time two jurisdictions the city of charlottesville and albemarle county working together to build own and jointly operate a school my project began in 2020 right at the height of the pandemic so it was really hard to get into uva special collections library library of virginia the um historical society so it took 18 months from the beginning of my research into the publication of the book but i did have the opportunity to [Music] interview via telephone student and faculty which was wonderful and what i am stressing is that it is so important when writing history to pull in segments of or recollections that was what really wowed me that's so important and working with the burley varsity club we could only locate about 17 of the remaining faculty it's not that many more that

037remains anyway but i was able to interview 13 of them and get some wonderful interviews and i guess one of the most amazing things about that i learned about the community is that during a very tumultuous time the parents fought so hard for their children to have a better education so they partnered with the city and the county and for the first time working together they began to erase that unequal educational system that was there at the time and slowly it proved to be very fruitful and through my research some of the most important things that i learned they were absolutely amazing is that the land owned by mr burley was acquired by eminent domain the african-american students from greene county attended burleigh high school because they did not have access to a high school

038in their county there were some students there from nelson county and i learned that african-american students would only get an education through the 11th grade until burleigh open in 1951 and i think one of the most amazing things and i'm just really delighted about that is i had the opportunity to reach out to mr burley's granddaughter dr olivia boggs and she and i have continued to keep in touch she lives in atlanta now and that has been wonderful with her talking about her family but what i would like to stress is now is the time to document preserve and never forget the past as we begin to secure the future by writing our histories and being an advocate and making sure that others are doing the same the city of charlottesville and albemarle county are

039just rich in history and they have done an amazing job of preservation and i think that is wonderful so thank you for allowing me the opportunity to write about one of your schools that's a great preservation and your dedication to public education is absolutely outstanding because it is shaping the lives of our children and preparing them for a brighter future and one of my last thoughts because uh your chairman page had already mentioned about the uh burley being on the virginia historic landmark and being on the national register of historic places and that monument that marco will be unveiled in april of this year on the grounds of the campus and my last thought is placing copies of the book in all of the schools libraries will enhance discussions for students to talk about the

040schools of yesteryear and what's so wonderful is that school is now in burley middle school and it you know gets a lot of attention it's it's been a wonderful school and you've taken really good care of it you have wonderful students there and i love the administration over there so thank you for allowing me to talk about my book tonight and i hope that there's continued uh conversations and maybe at some point some of these very students in the book that gave interviews can go over to some of the schools and the young people can ask questions about the days of yesteryear thank you so much for allowing me to discuss this so i'll take any questions are there any questions for miss smith miss smith um one one person um that i know you

041are aware of who is an alumnus of burley high school grew up to be the chairman of the albemarle county school board yes yes indeed are you talking about mr page we bet i am and and we've had lots of discussions we really have and and where where can we find copies of of your book locally at this point well locally uh the new dominion bookshop on the downtown mall have copies and jefferson school uh the heritage center has copies we just completed our second printing because i was told that you're doing history you'd be lucky to pre you know sell 200 copies but we sold 500 copies in two weeks so we did a second print and that will be here on tuesday congratulations thank you and in response to mr alcaro's question each

042school board member will receive a copy of the book yes right that's great thank you autographed can we get it autographed right i would love to autograph your book i'd love to miss smith has just done an outstanding job we've worked we've served together on a few committees with the um varsity club programs and she just always does an extremely good job in whatever she's doing to organize something or to take charge of anything so i really appreciate the great work that you did on that book it's extremely uh inspiring and great thank you so much thank you for your kind words thank you are there any other questions or comments no i just very much look forward to seeing and reading your book ms smith what i don't recall what the size of burley

043was what was a student enrollment i'm sure that's in your book but well it started out in 1951 with 542 students and 27 teachers but you know it continued to grow and grow and you will also find a graduate composite of every graduating class from 1952 through 1967. now granted some of the pictures are not very sharp and clear because it's been 70 plus years but they're there to let you know that it's it's an interesting book there's lots of pictures and children are stimulated by pictures right well thank you for doing the work right and i'm not sure whether to give a warning or what to call this but i do have um like miss smith didn't include in the book since i was a member of the burleigh band she does include a

044segment with me in that in that part of the book and i would just like to sort of say that the picture that's there it's not the best picture i don't think so that's not any reflection at all on miss smith's work but the book is just what's interesting i put it for all the students that participated there was about 17 18 student interviews i did a graduating picture and then i did a now picture so there's a bin and a now so right not that interesting there's a great picture of graham at burley on the wall that i have seen if you want to see him as an eighteen-year-old uh or have him as an eighteen-year-old in that book right that's it thank you any other comments or questions okay again miss smith thank

045you so very very much for being here and for um talking about your book and again we really appreciate all the effort that you put into this so thank you very very much thank you okay our next we now have an announcement by um thank you mr page good evening board members i'm claire kaiser assistant superintendent as ms collins shared we have had some ongoing challenges with staffing due to the coveted search but we're able to continue our work in these times due to a group of dedicated employees who are willing to step in often at the last minute to cover classes as substitutes we are grateful to be able to make some adjustments to their pay for all types of the substitutes that we have this includes our daily subs who come in each

046day often in a different position every day to cover classes our long-term subs and we have retirees who have come in and substituted as well and we also have teachers and staff members who cover classes in addition to their regular daily work as a reminder the increased rate for retirees and the paper staff who do that class coverage for part of a substituted initiative as part of a recent budget the daily sub rate is going to be first adjusted and it will keep us competitive with our local school divisions and then the other rates will be adjusted accordingly this will we anticipate that this change will go into effect by early february we do want to very much thank those people with our subs our teachers and other school staff members who have provided coverage

047during these very challenging times and we are pleased to be able to institute these parent changes thank you dr cassidy any questions for dr kaiser okay if not thank you so much next item public comment vice chair carlson yes let me start by reading the public comment guidelines please bear with me isn't it i'm gonna follow these documents okay the school board invites and actively seeks the public's input in the matter is relevant to school board governance and provides for time during its business meetings to hear from elmer county residents and community members um real quick guys before i get into this because miss johnson was um emailing me i we are ahead of schedule and so i am not sure that everyone had logged on we have this scheduled for like five to ten

048minutes from now so jennifer do we have any speakers logged on yes miss maxim is logged on okay so i will continue um surprise provides for time during its business meetings here from melbourne county residents and community members the school board wishes um to maintain appropriate meeting decor so that persons can observe and hear the proceedings of the school board and that attendees online are not subject to inappropriate language and conduct 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 comment first as always writing comments can be submitted to the school board

049clerk prior to the start of meeting and will be given to all the school board members for review you can also email school board members directly or as a group second as long as the school board holds its meetings electronically members of the public wishing to provide public comment during the school board meeting may sign up online by 2 pm the day of the meeting before public comment commences i'm going to announce the order in which speakers will comment you'll have 3 minutes to speak i will notify you when you reach a two minute mark it is just me holding up my finger so um it's helpful to time yourself if you can speakers during the meeting or those submitting written comments should state their name and address our magisterial district and further speakers should

050limit 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 okay so now let me pull up the list sorry so we have six speakers signed up one of whom dropped out and the only one present is amanda moxon so miss moxon um you can go ahead and start miss carlson yeah miss mathown is here us too mathon great miss nathan is here that's the only other one um that i saw awesome great miss maxum you can begin good evening my name is amanda moxam and i'm in the rio district in late december a group of

051five families in the western alamo school district filed a lawsuit against the elmark county school board superintendent and assistant superintendent the lawsuit asserts that the county's anti-racism policy and the curriculum courageous conversations are perpetuating racism by engaging students in conversations on race privilege and systemic oppression hate free schools coalition of elmer county supports the anti-racism policy and the curriculum that challenges our students teachers and staff to teach historical truths and engage in culturally competent conversations this policy was developed by acps students and we endorsed their valuable work and are disgusted by the lawsuit's devaluing of this landmark policy teaching historical truths that are that have previously been whitewashed is of paramount importance for all students of all cultures and racial backgrounds behind this there is a coordinated right-wing campaign across the country which has attempted

052to consolidate any efforts to address racial inequality under the term critical race theory or crt this call to action for conservative parents has them touting any discussions of race as being anti-white anti-christian and anti-american what i find so interesting is that these political battles are nothing new in u.s history albemarle county is well known for its efforts to block the desegregation of public schools after brown versus board of education through massive resistance the policy that they officially adopted in 1956 created a situation where for 13 years our county schools refused to integrate even deeper than that in the 1920s i find it interesting this anti-crt movement is actually very much a mirror to the resistance to teaching the theory of evolution so if we can think about all of these pieces coming together the theory

053of evolution in the 1920s 21 states debated 53 bills trying to ban the teaching of evolution so my hope is with this lawsuit that we code it just as it is it's yet another one of these types of situations where the right wing is continuing to push and push and push and what we know to be true is that our students deserve better now more than ever with a pandemic raging across our country and within our schools highlighting such vast racial disparities that already exist we need bold truth telling from our educators and our school district and we have to have a school district that continues to side on this on the side of revolutionary work instead of continuing the oppression that has already existed thank you so much for those comments our next speaker

054is going to be illuminate emily mathen and that should conclude our public comment hi emily hi there so um i'm emily mathon i'm also in the orio district and um i was also moved to speak tonight because of the lawsuit that's issued against dr haas dr harrison and elmorel county public schools i've spoken here before in support of anti-racism policies and culturally responsive teaching that is still in the early stages of being integrated throughout the division i want to affirm and acknowledge that there is widespread support in the community for the work of dr harrison and his team that have led that dr harrison and his team have led and continue to cultivate do not be deterred by a small group of parents led by a group identified as a hate group by the southern

055poverty law center and with no connection or stake in our community the final sentence of the albemarle county public school mission is we will know every student and in order to do that we have to embrace the intersectionality of our children's identities and cultures we must adapt grow and change to create learning learning environments of belonging that requires effort intentionality and discomfort for some i wanted to tell you um for the past couple years i've been learning uh myself from anti-racism mentors that are based in waynesboro two women leading this organization channel mcguffin and sharon fitz and this weekend their organization called rise will be hosting a community conversation with three three powerful guests discussing this very important topic and i wanted to invite all of you to attend it's going to be at the

056crozet library at 11 a.m on saturday um and i can send an email as well with all the details so that you can look into that i just want to say in closing keep up the courageous work it's important thank you for those comments emily so that concludes our public comment the next item on the agenda i don't know if you want to introduce it graham or i can uh you can yep so the next item is going to be our public hearing for the redistricting of crosay in brownsville elementary schools and just for people out in the audience this is a public hearing to hear feedback from the public so um before we consider action at our meeting in january 27th on january 27th and any approved boundary change that is made on january

05727th will be implemented in the 2022-2023 school year so let me pull up the excel sheet for this we have one speaker signed up it's lucy guan from the white hall district um at this point we were on schedule so is she in the room so not seeing her i think that concludes public comment we didn't have three people come who signed up i'll put their names in the chat because i i think they're gonna be all right that they're not here um they weren't very creative names okay did you all get the emails names they were they were no shows so um i think we're all good mr paige i i give the floor back to you okay thank you what about mr butts seymour we're good we're good we're good mr oberg thank

058you our next item um if uh we'll have by mr zimmerman an update on our uh financial report or financial report for 20 20 21. mr zimmerman zimmerman you should be joining the meeting okay thank you we're good you're good ms dover thank you i'm sorry i i was uh i was listening to the to your live stream and was a little bit behind in this schedule uh good evening's for members i'd like to uh introduce the item for uh the comprehensive annual financial report each fiscal year the county as a whole completes an integrated single audit of all of our financial conditions for both the schools and local government in a single audit and today we would like to present to you the um the audit the comprehensive annual financial report uh and we

059will have mr josh roller partner with robinson farmer cox our auditors presenting the financial report mr roller has been a valued member of rfc for 14 years and has been part of the audit committee audit team for um quite a number of those 14 years also i'd like to uh mention that this the financial report was discussed with the audit committee in november and this is the formal presentation of the audit report to you tonight and what i will be doing is bringing up the pages of the audit itself that mr roller is speaking about um it will be very small on most people's screens but uh the the report is attached and mr roller as he's making his presentations we'll be listing the page that he's discussing and y'all can bring it up individually

060if you wish and make it larger as we move through uh this process excuse me mr roller are you online i am here i'm ready to go if it's if it's on me um first off uh we'll start with the letter if you can pull it out yeah so like jackson just introduced my name is josh roller with robinson farmer cox we're the auditing firm we're based out of charlottesville here um tonight here to present the fiscal year 21 audit report for the county and school board um and also like was mentioned in november there was a um an audit committee meeting where we went over the whole report the whole letter um and in much more detail than i'm going to today um i'll just kind of point your attention to a few things

061and be happy to answer any questions you guys have at the end so starting with that letter this is the communication with those charged with governance it's the standard communication required at the end of the audit and the first thing i'll point your attention to is that first paragraph under significant audit matters there uh talks about how there was one new accounting principle that was adopted this year it was gatsby 84. um how it affected the school board was that the school activity funds that all the different schools have we do separate audits on them on an annual basis and with this new implementation of gatsby 84 those now have to be included in the county and school board annual report once we get into the actual financial statements i'll show you how that actually

062affected the financials but it is something that will be a theme throughout this and if we can go to the next page actually we can go to the report from there jackson so i believe we are on page 26 correct yep so start on page 26 this is the second page of the independent auditors report this is where uh we have issued an unmodified opinion um for the county and school board this year which is a clean opinion um the best opinion that we can give you all uh the second and third paragraphs on this page here the change in accounting principle uh there were statement of beginning balances are both to referencing what i was just talking about there with the gas b84 um you will see on the financial statements the beginning balances

063of the net position and beginning fund balances were restated but that was solely because of this um the implementation of gas v84 so now we can flip forward um quite a bit to page 186 page 186 is the balance sheet for the school board itself um as you can see there's this cooperating fund the school food service funds school capital projects fund and what's new this year is that school activity funds um and that number there is combined of all of the schools together [Music] and if you flip forward two more pages to page 188 you'll see in that third column there at the very bottom of the page the fund balance began the year has restated that 3.1 million dollars that was the ending balance from the school activity fund audit report last year

064that's just rolled forward into the beginning balance for this year for um on the annual report here for the county since it was it was new implementation this year and then flipping forward to page 213 [Music] page 213 this is our audience report on internal controls over financial reporting um as part of the audit process we have to do um various tests of controls on the county and school board over you know payroll accounts payable um receiving money revenues reported and as part of our audit process nothing came to our attention that needed to be reported in this at the bottom it talks about deficiencies and internal controls there's two different levels of deficiencies where there's significant deficiency and material weakness we had nothing to report um on this letter for any of those so

065a clean clean slate there as well and flipping forward two more pages to 215. 215. this is our audience report over the federal compliance piece of the county and school board which increased quite a bit this year uh with all the cares um and and covert funding um we're required to test various programs depending on size depending on complexity and depending on the last time they were audited um and the programs that we had to audit this year as part of the single audit process we had no issues that came to um anything that has to be reported as an issue of non-compliance so again another clean uh slate there and the kind of the last piece i'll point your attention to is the schedule of expenditures of federal awards this is page 217 through

066219. the school board piece is reported starting at the bottom of 218 and mostly on 2 19 here and as you can see at the bottom of page the total federal expenditures for the school board piece this year was 14 million 291 um a couple of things that are a little unique and new this year or um the first program at the top of that page there the uh coven 19 chrono virus relief funds 2.4 million dollars um and then down closer to the bottom under cover 19 education stabilization fund another around two million dollars there so as you can see for this year comparing to previous years there was around 4.4 4.5 million dollars of federal revenues that were expended during the year and that's my quick spiel i'll be happy to answer any

067questions you guys have if there are no questions for mr roller we'd ask the board to receive this for information and move that we accept the comprehensive annual financial report as presented second it's been moved by mr alcaro second by mr oberg that we accept on the report given to us by mr roller any discussion on the motion miss johnston miss carlson yes mr oberg yes miss lee yes mr alcaro yes miss osborne yes dr acuff yes mr page yes motion carried okay thank you thank you and thank you mr zimmerman and mr rowler our next item is our covert 19 update by uh that will be introduced by um dr mclaughlin yes thank you good evening board members i'm pat mclaughlin chief of strategic planning for the school division and i'm here tonight to

068provide a covert 19 status update uh with me tonight i'm happy to say are eileen gomez our school nurse coordinator and ryan mckay from the blue ridge health department who can help answer questions and provide some context for tonight's report so let's get started as you know our updates align with the most recent guidance provided to us by the virginia department of health and the virginia department of education and the first metric that we monitor uh with our covert reports to the board is the level of community transmission which we determine using two factors um one both of these have jumped to really the highest levels that we've seen since the beginning of the pandemic due to our current omicron surge the first figure that we consider is the total number of new cases per

069100 000 people in the past seven days uh the most recent data we have is from monday january 10th and at that time our seven-day total per 100 000 people was 850.64 uh to give you a little bit of context around that um you know the level that the threshold for high transmission is 100. uh we were typically seeing ranges in the round um you know just over 100 uh at the beginning of this surge so so significantly higher there the second number that we look at is the percent positivity over the past seven days uh that number has also gone uh much higher than we've seen in the past to 27.98 and that's percentage of of nat tests that come back positive uh in our community so uh these levels are are both in

070agreement with each other and clearly put us at the high level of transmission in albemarle county and as you can see we are really as the whole commonwealth at those high levels the second metric that we monitor is the vaccination rates among eligible school-age children and those continue really to be a bite a bright spot for us uh locally statewide and i'm assuming at the national level as well so in albemarle county we've got 61.2 percent of our five to 11 year olds who have at least one uh dose of a covered 19 vaccination for our 12 to 15 year olds that number is 93.8 percent and for our 16 and 17 year olds that is uh 92.3 when you look over at our fully vaccinated numbers for 5 to 11 we're at 46.6 percent

071uh 87.4 percent for our 12 to 15 year olds and 86.1 percent for our 16 and 17 year olds the final metric uh that we look at is the degree to which covid is impacting our school operations and as expected with this surge we're seeing increased numbers of cases as students and staff members return to school from the winter break numbers so far this week on the covet dashboard show 47 students and seven staff cases throughout our school division we are and will continue to investigate whether any of these cases can be attributed to transmissions within our schools and while we do not have any indications currently that any of these are school transmissions as we investigate that could change we continue to monitor student absenteeism and numbers for general absences remain slightly elevated with

072an attendance rate yesterday of just under 93 percent uh to put that in context our historical average for attendance is about 95 where we are seeing an increase this week is with our number of students who are working from home due to quarantine that number was below 200 prior to the winter break and as of yesterday stood at 554 for the school division uh and finally i'd like to give an update on staff capacity beginning on monday we have increased our detailed monitoring of teacher absences from once a week to daily reports from each of our schools so each day schools give us their total number of absent teachers and uh whether or not those absences are covered related uh this week those those numbers are coming in kind of in the low 100s and

073prior to winter break they were kind of in the mid 70s uh so elevated um again there and you know that is probably one of the most significant strains on our system um having teachers out and knowing the challenges of of finding substitute teachers for them um just as a reminder that uh we continue to have confidence that we have strong mitigation protocols in place in our schools uh and those uh greatly reduced the risk of school in school transmission they include promotion of vaccination consistent correct use of masks physical distancing uh imprint enhanced ventilation hand washing and respiratory etiquette cleaning and maintaining our facilities having folks stay home when sick and contact tracing in combination with isolation and quarantine and so in addition to our um our regular covet update which was all the

074previous information that you've seen i'd like to provide an update and reminder about our covert dashboard and communications protocols we've been getting some questions about that this week since students have returned to school we've maintained an acps coveted dashboard so that members of our school community can get the most up-to-date information about covet in our schools as we can possibly provide them when we are informed of a positive case in one of our schools our first priority is contact tracing an immediate notification of anyone identified as a close contact that is followed by a notification to classmates of that student and then a general notification to the school community about the case after all of those notifications are complete we then update this information on the division covet dashboard because of our priority of direct

075notification and the increase in numbers we are seeing with the omicron surge sometimes there can be a delay of one to two days before those cases appear on the dashboard it's also important to note that our dashboard only reflects cases of students who have been positive while they're physically in our buildings cases that occurred over winter break with students who did not come to school are not included on the dashboard and with each case that happens with our students guidance on who needs to quarantine and for how long is one of the most common questions that we get we're working in close partnership with the health department and local physicians around our quarantine protocols and we feel that we have strong place car safeguards in place to prevent the spread of disease a communication is

076currently being developed that will be sent to all stakeholders in the near future it helps to provide additional clarity to those procedures and finally tonight um i'd like to welcome back ryan mckay from the blue ridge health district who can provide the board with some additional information about our local conditions and answer any questions that you may have ryan thank you and thanks to the board for having me this evening again my name is ryan mckay i'm the director of policy planning and code operations for the health district and just sort of to reiterate some of the numbers that dr mclaughlin had presented we are seeing by far the largest surge that we've experienced in our community i would say at this point it's uncontrolled surge but our focus and our attention really is on

077more of the high risk or locations it may have the potential for spread so thinking about congregate settings schools for instance is where a lot of our attention is focused so that we can do everything we can to keep schools open to keep children in classrooms to keep disease out from locations where it's going to be at risk for those who are most vulnerable in terms of some recent changes from the cdc and this really speaks to some of the quarantine and isolation components the cdc had altered its recommendations for the general population so isolation reduced from 10 days to 5 days and quarantine reduced from 14 10 or seven days down to five days now that's provided that the individual who was in isolation or quarantine can mask the entire time that they're outside

078of their home between days six and ten and what we recognize is that there is still the risk that someone is infectious or that someone can develop disease between days six and ten to potentially infect others so our recommendation to schools um throughout the health district and to daycare centers has been to maintain the 10 days of isolation and quarantine given how quickly omicron spreads and the volume of numbers we're seeing in the community again to meet the sole goal of keeping our schools open so that students can continue in-person education thanks ryan we certainly appreciate you being here tonight and we would be happy to take any questions or hear comments from the board um i have a couple questions ryan um can you talk to us a little bit about what the testing

079situation in brhd is right now and how you expect it to evolve uh yes so testing is the demand for testing is beyond what any of us who are doing weekly testing events either through the health district through uva health and even some of the private providers can really manage um so we are offering testing uh tuesday through friday at fashion square mall these are um walk-in appoint walk-ins on uh tuesday through thursday and then by appointment on fridays right there that's probably somewhere in the ballpark of 15 to 1800 tests depending on staffing levels through our vendor next molecular they run those on tuesday through thursday uva is operating uh testing events monday tuesday and wednesday and in charlottesville at two different churches um and that's probably six to seven hundred tests total uh

080something new that's opening up on saturday is a new testing center for the community um in the pan top shopping center in charlottesville they'll be open on saturdays through thursdays closed on fridays um and then they're gonna offer around 2200 tests total for the week and those are by appointment only for those testing events there are no requirements um you do not need to be asymptomatic um age uh is a little bit of a requirement for the new community testing center at pantops i think you need to be three and above while others i think it's down to six months um so within those those different locations it's about four thousand to forty five hundred tests um depending on the week they're going to be available to the public and again just given how much

081we're seeing in terms of omicron in our health district it's going to be difficult to get to some of those testing events we are trying to relieve some of the the burden in charleston almost making sure that we're offering testing events throughout the health district in each of our localities but again there's going to be limitations both in terms of the hours but then lab space is also going to be a bit of a limitation as all these events aside from uva's events are sending tests to our lab at the state office in in richmond um so we'll maintain that level for the next month or so and then potentially increase uh depending on the availability of lab space and then what this new testing center uh begins to see there are a couple of

082private um testing vendors out there one in particular that's doing 400 tests a day they're operating out of seminal square which is right near where the community vaccination center is we do anticipate that there will be more at-home tests available either through the federal government or distributed through um health department or pharmacies but again these don't necessarily provide the right level of reliability that a pcr test does so if someone is asymptomatic and getting a test because they've been exposed it's not going to be as accurate now when someone is symptomatic it does offer a higher level of reliability the problem with that is that some of these tests unless they're proctored they're at home there's no reporting component to it and so we're really not relying on the individual who tests positive to report

083that to the health district or obviously to schools one thing i would add to that so depending on where the the test specimen goes uh wait times for the results are going to vary so right now uh tests that go to the state lab it's taking at least 72 hours um labs that go to uva health are probably taking somewhere between 48 and and the next molecular i think it's somewhere around 48 to 72. um so that is going to be a little bit of a factor in terms of um when we we we are able to find out which tests are positive and how we respond appropriately patrick what is the i've just gotten a lot of emails a lot of phone calls from parents who are really stressed and i i know a

084bunch of students who are really stressed because they just don't know where we're going what is the threshold at which we throw up our hands and go okay we're going to close for two weeks is there a threshold and if so what is it well i i what we are doing is monitoring school by school uh right and so it really does vary school by school i'm not sure we can quite say if it's uh x percentage of teachers who are out or x percentage of students who are out because of the the nuances at each school right some schools have the ability to combine classes or get those classes covered um so so i i understand that right that folks want to know hey if we hit this level um we want to know

085what's happening and and i just don't think we can get that specific with it um other than saying that we're we're monitoring each school and if we feel like the school can't um can't function in an in-person environment we've got uh plans in place to move over to a virtual for a period of time i have a question i don't know perhaps it's for miss gomez um i had a question last week about the quality of the mass much of the literature i've been reading i mean there's a lot of variability you can see it if you just walk down the street but what is our policy in terms of providing nk 95 mass to our teachers and staff at least or to students and what is what are we doing and what should we

086be doing we are providing k and 95 masks are all of our staff optional for them to use and we do have a very good supply event lindsay snotty who is the director of building services has been looking at the options of trying to get other masks for students our medical advisors suggested that we look to purchase three ply surgical masks for students because those are probably the most comfortable the most the ones that they'll most likely be able to wear for the entire day so she's pricing those and looking into the availability of those for our students do we know just by direct observation or most of most of our students wearing cloth masks or i'm just wondering if if our our levels of mitigation if we could do it a little bit better

087because we all want to keep the schools open of course well i i've heard from the schools particularly in the middle of the high school level that the students prefer the disposable masks they prefer the um the surgical so sometimes they will wear cloth masks until they get to school and then they'll change into the the ones that the school offers just to follow up on that how often and how are we distributing those k n 95s because uh i think that comes as a surprise to some people listening here well they there's a supply liaison at each school and usually it's the school nurse and they we suggest that teachers you reuse them so probably one or two per week per staff but it can be more than that if they get soiled or

088their teachers request additional masks and so the the teacher and staff they should go to their school nurse to do that yes to get that yes yes okay thank you and i i actually um this was one of the questions i had for brian before was you know are we offering some kind of guidance along the lines of what dr akef was talking about in terms of like what is more efficient because like someone like me i did a bunch of research early on and then it turns out all that's wrong so um you know a lot has evolved and i was just wondering how we're communicating that or if we can we certainly can communicate that in fact that'll be one of our big points of um uh highlighted tomorrow in our newsletter that

089goes on each week so um obviously things that are high filtration n95s kn 95s kn94s are going to be the ones that are most successful at trending preventing spread but also protecting the person who's wearing it surgical masks offer a little higher um protection for individuals and certainly um for those wearing them than cloth masks masks but and i do think the key point um that eileen mentioned is that uh it's really about comfort level with the mask um and is it a mask that a student particularly younger students in elementary schools are going to be good with wearing throughout the entire day um aside from when they're eating when they're drinking when they need a little bit of a break and because we want to make sure that they're comfortable so that they do

090wear that all day long um k95s or kn94s for children are going to be a little bit more difficult they take a lot longer to get used to and the breathability obviously is going to be a little more challenging and that's sort of the trade-off when you use those for protection i do think it's a great idea that teachers have access and staff have access to the kn95s um they're going to be able to adjust that a little bit better than obviously the students will um and and we are looking at procuring through a donor between 20 and 30 000 masks that we would distribute to schools of varying sizes so that they could be distributed to elementary students middle and high school for those that don't have access but also as another way of

091protection that schools can use to to mitigate spread i have a quick question um and maybe it's for you miss gomez it's i know we're doing the ten i know we've gotten some emails about still keeping with the 10 day out for students that test positive and i guess i'm curious about all the collateral students especially with testing being really hard so if you have a close contact with someone that was tested positive i know that my pediatrician won't even test you unless you're symptomatic so if you're asymptomatic vaccinated but a contact how long are the schools keeping those kids out of school the did you say the asymptomatic fully vaccinated yeah i can be very specific so if my one of my sons is positive and the other one is not and is vaccinated

092and is asymptomatic i'm assuming he's out the whole 10 days but what about all anybody who was around you know like what are all those people i'm kind of just curious i don't know how the periphery students work and how long we keep them out for well fully vaccinated students do not need to quarantine so it's the uh the partially vaccinated or the unvaccinated students that we asked to quarantine okay i guess i did not realize that because yeah because it's it's really hard to get tested right now you can only because it is really hard students to the testing sites in the community because a lot of pediatricians are not testing they don't have the capacity to test all the sick kids as well as the students who are asymptomatic okay thank you okay

093i have a quick question um even though our vaccination rates for the students is pretty high what are we doing or are we doing anything as a system to sort of encourage those uh kids who have not been vaccinated to be vaccinated and are there any problem groups in that unvaccinated uh category well we did hold vaccine clinics in the schools and we can continue to do that we do have an upcoming one at ktek it was scheduled for last week but it was postponed to the weather so we continue to offer that and we continue to provide information about where parents can get their students vaccinated if they're interested in that i don't know if it if it helps to say this but um i did have you know as you can imagine i

094talked very frequently with our county executive um jeff richardson and he told me last week that in every uh age group alma county is the most vaccinated uh locality in virginia so i feel like those trends um are if it's hard to prove a negative but um having the what you whatever you might call success that we've had with vaccinations um has been you know this is a this is a community that's sought vaccination um with just exceptions to it the one thing we did do i think um above and beyond was we did require all of our employees to be vaccinated or to go through uh weekly testing which that's unusual in in virginia and then also um requiring our athletes to be vaccinated or do testing as well those were those are measures

095the employee vaccinations and athletics were above and beyond what what the norm is thank you okay thank you are there any other questions from our board members just one um it was on a slide you presented dr mclaughlin um in terms of are we defining fully vaccinated does not include booster right it's two two vacs two vaccines two shots correct for our um students uh in terms of like who needs to quarantine uh and who doesn't for students that is fully vaccinated as uh is two shots right okay thank you and i actually had one more question about the strain that we talked about and i'm very glad that we're assessing that daily now i think that's great um are we also does that include staff non-teaching staff as well for strain on resources yes

096i believe i'll uh double check with ms schmidt but i believe we are uh we are collecting both of those um figures uh instructional and non-instructional staff is that correct ms schmidt that is correct we are assessing um teachers that are in the classroom additional staff and then i'm in contact with all our operational uh departments as well it's a daily monitoring of the of the core staff members okay thank you and um another one for ryan i know that this has come and obviously the answer evolves and changes but when do you expect to see a peak in our area what we've heard from the uva's biocomplexity institute is somewhere at the end of january between the 23rd and the end of the month um and then we would begin to start to see

097things falling a lot of this is just based on their analysis but we're also beginning to see potentially the peak coming down in areas where were hit before us so the northeast new york city and washington dc have seen significant drops in cases so we're lagging a little bit behind them i would anticipate that we're going to see high case numbers certainly through january and well into february where we would likely then see numbers starting to fall somewhere in the first second or third week of february and sort of related to that how um how are we doing with hospital capacity so the hospitals um i think as a monday evening at our town hall we're seeing the most that they've seen uh throughout the pandemic i think on uh sunday there were 89 total

098in the hospital uh at uva health i also know that uh center martha jefferson are seeing the most cases they've seen i'm not sure what that means in terms of icu beds being occupied for individuals with kovid but one thing they're also seeing and it's sort of hard to separate the two right now which is people are in the hospital due to covid and the health outcomes that they're experiencing versus those that are in the hospital for something else and also have covered um and so it's a little bit of a difference there but hospital capacity they're managing um but that means there's not much wiggle room for other things since harry came out and said i think it was last week that they're no longer doing elective surgeries and procedures um so that's an

099indication of sort of the burden that's on the hospitals and there's always a lag when it comes to hospitalizations and covet it's about one to two weeks when we begin to see what that looks like um from our current situation to what that means for the hospitals so it is a strain um their stopping is strained we're going into year three and their staff are are extremely tired um and so it's it is a challenge um what we heard on monday is that they're managing it um and we'll see where we go from here thank you thank you are there any other questions can i i'm sorry can i add to that i just given that this is schools what we know from the pediatricians at uva they're not really seeing pediatric um hospitalizations due

100to coded and that's consistent throughout the pandemic i do want to make that one clarification i apologize for the interruption no problem just a quick question from miss gomez in terms of employee strain how are our school nurses doing school nurses are feeling the strain they they're they're doing all the contact tracing and we've had a lot of cases these first few days and it's so they're very busy also seeing patients and the teachers are sending a lot of students to the nurses to be evaluated they are under strain [Music] were we able to fully staff all the schools i mean i know at the beginning of the year we were down a couple perhaps mostly we've had a few medical leaves so we we are down a few but i think i think we're

101just down uh one right now two two right now that means you have your running shoes on at all times right yes that does mean that [Music] all right if there are no other questions or comments thank uh thank you dr mclaughlin and mr mckay and ms gomez for um your presentation tonight thanks very much thank you it is now 8 11 we will um take a break take a break until 8 21 and then we will reconvene okay it's now 8 21 and our meeting is reconvened our next item is a talent development update and ms collins is going to introduce this segment of the meeting ms collins good evening mr page i'm debbie collins deputy superintendent i have with me for tonight's presentation ms kim gibson lead coach with responsibilities for the oversight

102of talent development and dr melanie lichtenstein talent development specialist tonight we're going to bring you an update on our continued shift in gifted programming we will be looking at some historical data to give context to what acps has been doing since the last board presentation on gifted services during the fall of 2018. this slide deck is full of resources and additional information so that you may check those out at your leisure we will not be discussing every link that we've provided specifically tonight we will provide information on where we were in the fall of 2018 what we've been doing key strategies that are making a difference our results to date our next steps and at the conclusion of the presentation we will take questions if you recall in the fall of 2018 our equity dashboard

103continued to identify the inequities in our gifted identification process these glaring inequities brought forth a call to action a comprehensive plan of action was provided to rethink gifted programming and with the approval of a budget proposal for the school year 2019-20 the work began in earnest this concentrated effort has evolved our definition of gifted and the types of services we provide we are moving from a model of giftedness for some to a framework of talent development for all at this point i'd like to introduce melanie lichtenstein who is our talent development specialist she will guide you through the rest of the presentation dr lichtenstein came to us with a doctorate in educational planning policy and leadership with a specialty in gifted intelligent and equity she has helped us focus and concentrate our efforts on key

104strategies for shifting our practice dr lichtenstein thank you miss collins and thanks to the board for allowing me to speak this evening about our work that has been happening in the schools around talent development and rethinking gifted education for albemarle county schools as ms collins stated there are a new numerous links throughout this presentation that are available for you to peruse further i'm going to highlight three key areas that have been important in making the shift towards talent development they are professional learning the teaching and learning structures put into place and data collection the fourth strategy was to align the local plan with the language of the division strategic plan equity language and research based practices i will not spend time reviewing this document but the link is provided before starting with these i want

105to mention some background on changing the name of our model from a gifted program to talent development services in addition to explaining the paradigm shift it is it also fostered a mindset shift this also meant a name change of the teachers from gifted resource teachers grt to talent development resource teachers tdrt the name is more reflective of the work that they do so starting in the fall of 2019 we conducted monthly professional development with principals assistant principals and other division leadership around the ship from a gifted identification model to a talent development framework this helped inform school leaders around the inclusive focus and understanding of the shift of the role of tdrt and to ensure that school structures allowed opportunities and services to be available to all students professional development work with the certs focused

106on instructional strategies of differentiation in the classroom this allowed for tdrts to develop partnerships with teachers and help the understanding that talent development is not limited to a single teacher but a school-wide and division-wide practice the goal is to continue building collective efficacy of all teachers around student strengths and talents professional learning would not have been possible without directly working towards addressing the understanding of strengths and potential in students throughout intentional professional learning the school administrators teachers and tdrts have been introduced to the use of observation skills called tops teacher observation of potential in students this tool has allowed for deliberate work with educators to practice seeing talent in all students and understanding that gifts look different for everyone and how to spot talent and potential in students this practice aligns with the division-wide approach

107to culturally responsive education i'm going to go through these series of slides fairly quickly because i want to get to the the good part as we began collecting data we had a cumbersome system of tracking using uh google sheets we were able to see when and what learning experiences we had with the students and what we found was that although we were able to understand the time and what they were doing we needed to have a more direct connection with who specifically was getting talent development experiences and who we needed to adjust so we worked with mark leach and sarah dusenberry of the technology department and we moved from spreadsheets that were like this they gave us this sort of data where we have lists and then some slide we were able to see time

108and how what specific services were happening and then we shifted to our newest approach which is integrating documenting services with the division-wide student information system powerschool and this is brand new and it allows us to link services directly with students and teachers so the direct face to face with teachers that are is collaborative as well as working directly with students in this slide you'll see four images on the top left it's the entry screen where tdrt's enter the different talent development experiences and once that's recorded the system allows us to if we wanted to goes to a specific student and see what talent development experiences they had we can see how the services are distributed across grade levels and because of the use of powerschool we can get more accurate data around the demographics of

109the students that are engaged this allows us to have useful data to audit the services so that we can shift our services to ensure access for all and build capacity for all teachers this is still in the development stage and the trts are working through the system to ensure it's the the best use of the tool i'm very proud of the work that we've been doing with in this regard because it positions acps as a leader in the state and potentially nationwide around how we're collecting data regarding talent development instead of the previous model where it really only showed us who got a gifted label and then on the flip side who did not get a gifted label so the results of our data shows that as shifting from a program mindset to services along

110with intentional work around how we use the gifted label to ensure students needs are being met in the classroom collaboration with the culturally responsive education practice to shift mindsets and practices has shown an overall increase in our historically underrepresented groups of students having a gifted label additionally as the new state mandate is presented for the the school board the state school board rather we are going to be well ahead of the curve illustrating how talent development is a practice that is more inclusive and more intentional for all student educational trajectories so what's happening next our goals moving forward are to further develop services and practices that are sustainable transferable and equitable to continue fine-tuning our data collection and continue site-based talent development evaluation and expanded partnerships with community content experts and the equity teams and

111what i mean by sustainable transferable and equity services that includes strategic planning around strengths based instruction student autonomous learning and further development of student potential and interest specifically creating an intentional through line from elementary to the high school learning communities and onward to post-secondary success the tdrt's will have contin to continue development of products that encourage the use of tops uh participation in the plc plus process and responsive talent development opportunities and asset based learning lessons for our kindergarten to second grade students that we call k2 able this will also include continual professional development learning with the tdrt's they are a wealth of knowledge and we want to ensure that they are you know utilized to the best their ability at their schools as resources for teachers as well as working with students and the

112online the ongoing practice that we have of equity audits allows us collection of meaningful and useful data to ensure that students educational needs are being met in the classroom and will guide them throughout their k-12 experiences so at this point we will be able to take some questions there any questions for dr lichtenstein thank you for your presentation and i did check the local plan link and it was very very well put together uh i i learned a lot in in going through that today what is our plan i mean as you know we have an all virtual school um and and i don't know how it's going to be modified next year or what it's going to look like but has the does it have a tdrt a talent development person or how are

113we addressing that um so the virtual school does not have a tdrt however um there because the state addre adjusted their mandates around how uh gifted services in the online learning environment um currently if a family wants child development services specifically around those kind of extended opportunities it would be through their home schools their base schools but we have discussed how do we support the online learning school teachers in you the use of differentiated instruction currently we don't have specific ways of going about doing that but it's not beyond what we currently do you know i was just looking at the uh results to date page a little bit more closely and and i love seeing the the arrows up in the right place and and uh i i think that it's great that we're

114going in that in those in the right direction do you have targets that you're aiming at for where you hope to be in [Music] three years and you know so so that you know if we're trying to get up to uh you know a parody with the numbers of our kids and our in in in each group within our schools uh with with their percentage of population is that what you're aiming for um how do we know when we're there so um the office of civil rights actually frowns upon creating quotas so by putting numbers on who we want to include and exclude it kind of is counter to our model so our goal is to ensure that there the teachers are collaborating with the tdrt's to build their efficacy regarding differentiated instruction and understanding

115what talent looks like as well as documenting who the teachers are working with and the tdrt's i mean so that if they are missing certain groups because there are structures in place that are preventing that we can then make moves but we haven't defined a particular threshold in regards to what is a talent development experience because as students as when we look at the data from elementary middle and high school it changes very significantly so in elementary you see a lot of whole class uh work where the tdrt is collaborating and pushing in there are some opportunities for small groups currently because of the mitigation strategies small grouping has been kind of held off a little bit because we don't want to have cross-contamination of students in classes in middle school when they get there

116the students are able to really kind of start thinking about what they're interested in and so the work becomes more about small groups more about class selection not as much pushing in and doing whole class instruction unless it's for a collaborative process and when they get to high school you see a lot more one-on-one work with the tdrt because of students who are interested in post-secondary applications governor school opportunities and sometimes students will not work with the tdrt because their interests lie in other areas because in high school you have more specialized experts so you can have students who may not interact with the tdrt but they work extensively with their physics teacher or with the drama teacher so the model has kind of it fluxes as the students learning needs go with them so

117right now defining a threshold like we don't want to say every kid will know that they've had this much but we want to make sure that the experiences are accessible okay but dr lichtenstein um with the new system it doesn't i would add to that that i think the dashboard that um dr lichtenstein has worked on with the deaf with our data gurus has really enhanced our abilities to know which students we've worked with and which students we haven't yet and i think that to before this kind of data collection we were a little bit um not sure about which students had had certain uh kinds of experiences in which students had not okay all right so the new system does show all of the students and all of the services that they have received

118right correct okay thanks yeah if you look on that slide i'll um i'll see if i can share my screen again the student example that is actually a screenshot from a specific student i anonymized it so you didn't have any but you can see this child has had um has had uh and i know it's very tiny but has had three whole class experiences and it's potential for another child to have like a whole class a one-on-one a small group um and because it's so new it's we're slowly in the process but it it and it just um but the goal is that they will be able to document this from their start in albemarle county to their finish very good news are there other questions or comments on our talent development update okay if

119not thank you very much doctor and ms collins thank you just like to thank the tdrt's and dr lichtenstein and ms gibson for all their work in this area for us right thank you all for having us our next item is the school-sized work session update or follow-up brother and uh ms schmidt is going to lead this segment of our um meeting what do you think uh roslyn schmidt chief operating officer i think this may be a quick item we just um back in september if you recall the board had a work session to discuss school size policies and receive data that may guide the developments of such a policy in october we had a follow-up conversation and at that meeting a motion was passed to table the discussion and revisit the topic in january

120it's hard to believe that it's january already so that's why we brought the item back to today we have no additional information to present we are just looking again for direction on how the board would like to proceed on such a policy or receive any requests for additional information thanks okay heard ms smith's um request are there any comments any questions any suggestions to give to her for guidance in this um in this aspect of our work on on on i've reflected on this a little bit and my position simply hasn't changed i just don't think a policy is appropriate i agree i agree and to that to that end because i i agree with this too and i think there are pieces that are missing in in that would be able to get us

121you know towards the policy i'd be more in favor of guidelines as opposed to a policy because i've got i've got concerns about voting in favor of a policy that's going to we're going to be in violation of on day one but if we had guidelines to work towards um [Music] uh that that would be you know more of a positive to me but the other part of this that's missing is we still don't and and dr akov and i um you know worked with the cip group and i'm going to be very interested to see what the county executive's report budget request is going to be because we weren't able to really get a strategy in place that would create revenues or direct monies to cip for building of schools and until we've really

122got a channel and a system in place and i you know i mean there are so many different ways that can be done but um you know i i just wouldn't be comfortable with doing a policy uh in this area guidelines maybe would it be fair to say that by unanimous consent we are agreeing that we don't need a policy right now in school size yes okay we all in agreement on that okay schmidt though does that give you um the guidance that you need for this point in time it does thank you okay all right thank you or do we have other business either by board members or by uh superintendent starting with our superintendent any other business thank you mr page uh i did have a board member reach out to me who

123would like the uh specifics on our substitute pay increase and um dr kaiser is somewhere out there in the in the zoom meeting thank you dr kaiser thank you it's uh good to be back um the what we are doing is the salary for the daily subs is going to be 140 a day and then we will adjust all the other rates up based on that those numbers have not been set yet at one thing that dr kaiser uh you know this was a part of a slate of um improvements that we did around substitutes and the other part that the the um the increased funding into our base operational budget for this year that the board approved tonight uh as part of the consent agenda that ms schmidt pulled that's uh that's helping to

124fund these changes in addition to having hiring a permanent substitute at each school as a beginning and then we're going to establish staffing standards so that you know larger schools would have more uh what we would call permanent substitutes at the school to help uh cover when teachers need to be out um it's it's certainly needed during this time however i really feel that prior to the pandemic we we did have shortages of coverage for our teachers so they can take off when they need to take off so that they can be well so um that's just one of the pieces that the board approved tonight among if you go back and look at the the line items for that approval you did you put a lot in in place a lot of things for

125our employees around compensation and and other benefits that are going to help them through the spring so thank you thank you dr haas and dr casa i think um i think uh ms lee did you have another question that you were gonna ask uh i did have another question and i don't um i'm not sure what form this takes because i know that it's uh an operational um thing but i just uh the uh rule i guess or um of letting vaccinated close contacts in um i guess without testing i'm not clear about that but um i just i wonder with with omicron and with so many breakthrough lagging cases um i i just i wonder if that's going to be the path that helps us keep our schools open uh so i yeah i

126appreciate you bringing that up um and so what we'll do is i've i've written down i think i understand the question around