School Board Meeting - November 11, 2021

001and i call um this meeting to order ms carlson do you have uh motion i do i move that the albemarle county public school board go into a closed meeting as authorized by the virginia freedom of information act section 2.2-3711a of the code of virginia under subsection 1 for the discussion consideration or interviews of prospective candidates for employment and the assignment appointment promotion performance demotion salaries disciplining or resignation of specific public officers appointees or employees of any public body second by ms carlson second by mr alcaro that we move into closed session according to the ordinances that she cited any discussion if not ms johnston ms osborne yes ms carlson yes mr oberg yes dr acuff yes mr alcara yes mr page yes motion carried all right we will go into closed session so see

002you there in a little bit uh peace good evening it is now 6 30 and i called this um november 11th meeting of the alma county school board to order miss uh miss carlson do you have uh a motion i do i move that the board 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 authorized in the closed meeting where heard discussed are considered in the closed meeting is that a second okay move by ms carlson second by ms lee that um we certify that the only thing that was discussed in the closed meeting was what was initially said to be in the resolution that started the meeting

003so uh ms johnston will you please call the roll mr alcaro yes miss lee yes dr acuff yes miss carlson yes ms osborne yes mr oberg yes mr page yes motion carried thank you we will have a moment of silence at this time thank you because of the covet pandemic we are required to read this until minutes for each of our meetings the minutes of this meeting should reflect that this meeting is being held electronically pressing it to virginia state law an ab mile county ordinance because the covet 19 pandemic makes it impracticable and unsafe to assemble a quorum physically in a single location the meeting is being communicated to the public electronically through zoom and streamed live on the albemarle county public schools website and public comment may be offered through the zoom waiting

004room feature in accordance in accordance with the school board's protocol of our written submission i will now introduce the members of our board dr kate akov kate akov jack jewett district mr gianno alcaro giano al carro at large miss katrina carlson katrina carlson raya district miss julia lee judy lee rivanna district mr dave oberg dave oberg whitehall managerial district ms ellen osborne ellen osborne scottsville district i'm graham page samuel miller district and our student rep is mr david androbius yup thanks for having me okay could i have uh a motion to approve the agenda for tonight's meeting that we approve the agenda second movement by mr alcaro second by ms osborne that we approved the agenda any discussion on the emotion if not miss johnston mr alcaro yes mr oberg yes miss lee yes dr

005acuff yes miss carlson yes ms osborne yes mr page yes motion carried motion cares thank you could i have a motion to approve the consent agenda i move that we approve the consent agenda second move by mr alcaro second by ms osborne that we approve the consent agenda mr chair may i ask that we just for the purpose of discussion pull the uh the coloring change okay all right so you want to withdraw the item three four right yes please okay are we ready to vote on that motion with the understanding that we're removing item three four but discussion yes okay all right uh miss johnston miss lee yes dr a cuff yes mr alcaro yes mr oberg yes miss osborne yes miss carlson yes mr page yes motion carried all right we did move

006um item 3 4 to be discussed at this point so mr um oberg we've had a few questions uh from members of the public as to why we're doing this and i just think it uh would behoove us to to address the issue i very much am in favor of it but i think we should talk about why it's necessary why we think it's necessary i don't know if dr haas could address that or dr collins or yes dr haas could you address that issue i would be happy to mr page thank you uh recognizing that um our we have uh what we what we term workforce instability at this point many fun-filled positions in the school system the extra time effort and going above and beyond the call of duty for our classroom teachers

007as well as our support staff we were looking at providing extra time in the spring for our teachers for our classified staff for our teachers to have time to get some work done that they need to catch up on to [Music] great assessments to make plans for the next day and be able to complete that during work time because a great deal of their planning time is being taken up right now covering for other teachers when they need to be out and just helping students recover at a greater rate than they may normally do and with our classified staff we've identified a need for them to have professional development in areas where they're supporting teachers or in the case of our nurses to catch up on mitigation work that they're doing so we felt that

008it would be a good idea to provide those work days we also felt it would be good to remove some of the half days that we had put in place earlier in the year because we recognize that our attendance on those days is an anomaly when compared to other days of the school week that are full days so by combining those uh plc days with some work time and moving them to fridays it would be more convenient for our families to be able to deal with that and i'd say the last part is that we really wanted to provide some work you know work related relief for our employees but to not do it now to not do it right now and give parents short notice so we decided to go ahead and make those

009plans for the second semester so that all of our families would have plenty of notice about the changes that those were our thoughts dr haas it's also the case that we are not we still have a very long school year i mean the seat time for our students is not below the state requirements at all and that's correct and um i did the other day just to just to validate that thinking and and the facts behind it i did check in with dr mclaughlin and because we added two school days to the beginning of the calendar to make up for the half days which are still school days uh that we were having later right now with the changes that we're making it's really just a net reduction i think of three school days all

010together for for uh students and families so i think we're still we're still well within the hour requirements if we run into inclement weather where we start to track uh long periods of time where we're out of school then we what we said in the uh in the initial work that we put before the board was that we would begin like if we had too many inclement weather days and we felt we needed to have some more school days we'd begin by removing the may 20th work day and then work our way back so that um we can make up for that time thank you dr haas for that um explanation and i i think i think one of the questions that someone asked publicly was what is encumbered time and why do we have

011to unencumber it and i can tell you that having worked with teachers for a very long time one of the dangers is that when you have planning time specifically climbing time somebody will schedule a meeting and so you don't actually get that planning time to do the work you're trying to do and so when we say that it's unencumbered it means that that is time that no one can say okay well you have this time so now we're going to do a meeting um it's to protect the purpose of the of the time off and it's not time off it's it's time to work but thank you thank you for that explanation dr haas uh i would move that we approved the change to the calendar second it's been moved by mr hoeberg second by

012miss del caro that we approve item 3 4 that was in the consent agenda in a discussion on the motion if not miss johnston miss carlson yes mr oberg yes miss lee yes dr acuff yes ms osborne yes mr alcaro yes mr page yes motion carried thank you are there any announcements um to be made at this time i would just say mr page as the board knows i do go out and visit a school every thursday and today i was out at holly mead elementary school i want to thank dr domer and his staff for welcoming me i just had such a great time with the ms foster's third grade art class she's doing a great job and also miss mcgee's second grade class i got to sit in with them and um just

013wonderful teaching and learning going on recognizing it's only one school i want to say that this great work that they're doing typifies the outstanding work that takes place in all of our schools every day and i'm really proud of our teachers and our support staff i do want to recognize that we do have principals here tonight that have joined the board meeting you all want to turn on your cameras just for a second so that everybody can see you um we do have kristen williams who's the principal of woodbrook elementary school we also have beth costa principal of henley middle school and dara bonham principal of alba mall high school i do want to check for one more principal that i think was going to be here but i don't see her so but i

014really want to welcome these principals to the meeting it's great to have you and um we really appreciate you being here and keep up the great work thank you dr huss and welcome to ms williams dr costa and mr bonham to our meeting we're really glad to have you here and thank you for all that you do are there any other announcements just last week oh yeah okay just last week i attended an event that was sponsored by three of our local um environmental groups as well as bluebird buses and we we got to tour an electric bus and we got all kinds of information about how efficient they were and it looked mighty nice i have to say and i guess we will be getting our two buses for the next school year but

015one of the pieces of information which jim foley was there so i'm sure he'll act on was that there's state money now available not only for electric bus purchase even if we just got some money but also for electric bus infrastructure so that was a very i did not ride on the bus but i heard it was lovely thank you dr akov today today being veterans day we have um sort of a special announcement in recognition at the 11th hour on the 11th day of the 11th month in 1918 world war one the warty in all wars officially came to an end and while regrettably not all wars ended that moment did signal the beginning of a very important event in the history of our nation from that moment on every november 11th became a

016time for a grateful nation to thank the men and women who down through our history have lifted us all up by their brave courageous and selfless devotion to our country's highest values this evening we join in thanking our veterans especially our active duty soldiers for their service to us among those who most gain from the service is anyone who cherishes the right of every person in the united states to a public education and to enter through the doors of equal opportunity in order to be as great as the promise of their potential but there is a strong connection between public schools and public prosperity we are responsible for preparing children to be future contributors to our nation to our communities and to our families our ability to to achieve this high purpose is strength strengthened

017by our veterans they have made it possible for public schools to exist in truth honesty and integrity improving our ability to plan for and achieve equity and excellence make it possible for school boards to be elected representatives of our communities empower the voice of our parents and students and teach us to be respected and valued and to share in making public education better this goal is a responsibility of each of us with the living breathing dynamic democracy that makes achievement of this goal possible is a gift from our veterans where school and service meet together as in our junior uh our reserve officer training corps program at monticello high school our students gain lifelong skills in leadership respect honor teamwork and fitness it's estimated that nearly 500 of our students and likely more than that

018are from families that have an affiliation with military service earlier today meriwether lewis elementary school held an outdoor concert and ceremony to honor the veterans in their school community there were 55 veterans who joined the event part of the school celebration of veterans day was to ask students to write to a veteran serving overseas one third grader wrote thank you so much i hope you stay safe i had a relative in world war one and my grandpa used to jump out of helicopters into shock infested waters just keep doing what you are doing and stay safe another said my grandfather was in the military he survived and lived to be 104. i hope you come home safely i bet it is scary to go to war i'm amazed you risked your life for us all

019of the letters expressed similar gratitude but my favorite may have been this one we can't wait until you come home i'm in the third grade thank you for protecting us my dog's name is zoe she loves people and she probably will like you too all of the lettuce cards and artwork for meriwether lewis will be delivered to blue star families of central virginia and will be in packages sent to service men and women from virginia who are deployed all over the world i'd like to close by quoting president biden who proclaimed today but generations millions of americans have answered the call to serve taking the sacred oaths to defend and preserve our nation's ideals of liberty and democracy these patriots represent the best of us on veterans day we honor their service dedication and valor

020and are forever grateful for their service and we are forever grateful to our veterans so happy veterans day to all of our veterans we will now have a special announcement by dr harrison about the partnership with the virginia tribal education consortium dr harrison thank you uh mr page and a good evening to everyone uh as mr page said i am bernard harriston your assistant superintendent for school and community empowerment i'd like to just share with you that the office of community engagement has been cultivating a partnership with the virginia tribal education consortium for more than a year this partnership serves as an example of operationalizing our go-to of the newly adopted strategic plan to affirm and empower the voices of our entire community in addition this partnership addresses our long-term goal of developing a culturally

021responsive environment that respects and champions the diversity of the life experiences of our students our staff and our families we have a special guest with us this evening he is ken adams the executive director of the virginia tribal education consortium ken is also a member of the virginia department of education's newly appointed culturally relevant and inclusive practices committee that was created by the general assembly in 2020 this committee is responsible for defining culturally responsive education in virginia redesigning professional development for the state as well reviewing history standards so um we have with us emeritus chief ken adams and he will share some of his thoughts about the significance of this partnership chief good evening thank you dr harrison and thank to everyone on the school board for having me here this evening i am so

022pleased to be here and i would like to discuss this partnership agreement between the virginia tribal education consortium commonly known as vtec and albemarle county public schools this partnership will allow vtec and albemarle county public schools to work together for the recruitment and retention of staff for supporting virginia indian students and delivering culturally relevant professional development training also we will be able to review and make recommendations to curriculum content that is considered respectful to promote accurate and inclusive representation of native american and virginia indian identities and perspectives let me explain how vtech was formed in 2018 seven virginia indian tribes received federal recognition from the united states congress that means that we have a direct one-on-one relationship with the government of the united states that recognition provided these seven tribes with access to housing assistance

023health care through indian health services and education resources through the office of indian education resources through the office of indian education has provided funding which allowed vtec to become a tribal education agency representing the seven federally recognized tribes forming this consortium for education for native tribes is the first of its kind in the united states and we're very proud of that the history of education for virginia indians is rampant with exclusionary practices most of my older brothers and sisters actually had to leave the commonwealth to get a high school education some going as far away as oklahoma and michigan when they're only 14 and 15 years old this process was heartbreaking for many virginia indian families and we are still recovering in 1965 i along with one other up madoff and i citizen were the

024first two graduates of a public high school in king william county prior to that i had attended sharon indian school which was the home for the upper matapani indian education no one ever graduated from sharon indian school as teachers could not provide enough high school education most of the other seven tribes also had schools of their own sharon indian school building is still in existence and is the only public indian school that's still in existence in the commonwealth of virginia it's not used as a school but it's still in existence finally after years of struggling we have access to education resources we could only dream of and now we are able to form partnerships with school districts such as album all in which virginia indians will have a stronger say in education for indian students

025this is a major step towards indians in virginia gaining equity and education that being said it is truly an honor and a privilege to be here this evening to discuss this partnership agreement since vtec was formed we now working to build a capacity through a state tribal education partnership we have developed a strong relationship with the virginia department of education and now we should develop relationships with school districts with significant native populations such as albemarle county the displacement of native students across the nation has caused lasting harm in many indian communities across the united states i have personally listened to many indians talk about being displaced from their homes and my family being one of those and sent to indian boarding schools across the country we cannot repair that trauma but we can certainly improve

026education outcomes for virginia indian students that is one of the reasons why this partnership agreement is so important with that said i look forward to working with albewah county public schools as partners for virginia indian education and i am so pleased to have this privilege to talk to you about that thank you so very much thank you sir at this time i'd like uh to introduce a lars holmstrom equity specialist who is spearheading this initiative lars would you share a few words with us sure thanks so much dr harrison and chief adams dr harrison and chief adams described four key areas of this partnership agreement the first recruitment and development of staff with specific cultural competence regarding virginia indians the second accurate respectful and inclusive curriculum with the history and present realities of virginia's indigenous

027people in mind third monitoring of success outcomes for native indian or indigenous students and lastly student family and community partnerships with native indian and indigenous individuals and organizations now i'd like to report that i'm courage that we've begun efforts in each of these areas we've developed and led professional development and community read sessions in partnership with vtech and i'd like to give special thanks to our vtech educational liaison cara canada for her partnership through making connections and so many other opportunities of late cara and the local monica indian nation have also partnered on our curriculum updates including but not limited to elementary reframing the narrative work with social studies lead coach neely reagan we've developed equity tables that show the landscape of our outcomes for students identifying racially as american indian with particular attention to

028career and technical education an area of specific interest to the virginia tribes what i'm most hopeful about though are our emerging partnerships with vtec and our local monacan indian nation i'm sharing his brief summary of these startup efforts to point to the fact that our partnerships must be more than words on a page we are temporary occupants of this land which has been stewarded by the indigenous people of virginia for millennia moving forward this partnership agreement represents our commitment to take continued steps to imagine and accomplish our public education and acps holding that knowledge in our minds and hearts and in communion with the virginia tribes many thanks to dr harrison dr haas school board chair graham page and the rest of the members and of course chief emeritus adams and the v-tech members for

029this important commitment thank you many thanks uh lars and ken for your support we are looking forward to building on this partnership to honor our division's mission statement uh dr haas or mr page what is your pleasure um dr haas well i did want to say i did have the opportunity to sign the agreement and uh dr harrison brought me a framed copy of it after we all signed it and i want to thank lars for your hard work to pull this together and chief adams it is an honor and a privilege to be able to sign next to you on that partnership agreement it's a moment i won't forget and i will honor it and i really appreciate you thank you thank you very much and and chief adams that um that frame partnership

030agreement will be presented to you in person in the very near future thank you very much yes sir chief adams we really are pleased to have you um with us tonight uh i'm very pleased to be here are there any questions from me uh any board members for chief adams or dr harriston in regards to this project i i don't have a question but i am just so excited about this i'm i'm really heartened by this work so thank you very much for um all who have done it right i echo your sentiments uh ms lee and i do have one question miss um chief adams you mentioned the sharon school where is that located sharon school is located in king william county when i was a young man going to ceremony to school there

031were two other schools close to us one was a white school which was just up the road and one was an african-american school which was just down the road we had our own separate school system and many of the indian communities in virginia had separate school systems something that very few members of the public are aware of wow okay thank you so much any other questions or comments well thank you for being here with us and we look forward to getting the uh signed framed copy of the resolution to you so thank you so much for being here miss carlson has an announcement and then she will also introduce a public comment segment yeah so i had a quick announcement i had the privilege of doing a school tour this morning with miss acuff um

032and then i went at meriwether lewis and then i followed that up with a tour burley and i wanted to um put it out there as a reminder to all the board members that we have the sign up sheet for school tours and school visits that we're trying to get implemented with uh with the hope that we can have it aligned with our evaluation metric which was um each school i remember setting a goal of visiting at least three schools um during the school year i have a personal goal of doing two i learned a lot it was really helpful to get back in schools i'm i'm just going to publicly admit it i said it to the principal so i owned it but i had visited um burley before and i barely remembered it

033going up you know that's where my own kids will be attending um so even if you've visited a school in the last four years it's helpful to go back um and get to talk to people so i just wanted to put that plug out there and say that i think it's been going great kate son visits uh graham i think spoke about having a great visit jono they mentioned you're going to be there tomorrow i was like maybe i should have scheduled it on the same day he was coming so you didn't have to do two visits back to back but um they were very they're looking forward to having you so that's all for my announcement um and then i will go ahead and do we have two people signed up for public comment

034so i will start by reading the public comment guidelines bear with me as i pull up my various documents okay the school board invites and actively seeks the public's input in the matters relevant to school board governance and provides for time during its business meetings to hear from elmoral county residents and community members as authorized by ordinance of the county of albemarle the school board will hold its meetings electronically during the pandemic the school board is nonetheless nevertheless committed to encouraging public comments 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 written comments can be submitted to the school board clerk prior to the start of the meeting it will be given to all school board members for

035review you can also email directly to school board members individually or as a group and then second as long as the school board holds its meetings electronically members of the public wishing to provide public comment during the meeting may sign up online by 2pm the day of the meeting i will go ahead and announce the two speakers we only have two of them when it's your their turn they will each have three minutes to speak i will try to notify you when you reach the two minute mark it's just me holding up a finger saying you have one minute left um so please be cognizant of your time speakers during the meeting or those submitting writing comments should state their name and address our magisterial district further speakers should limit comments to those matters that

036are relevant to school board governance are the operations of the school division and lastly 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 those are the guidelines the two speakers that we have are going to be sarah harris and scott guggenheimer so miss harris i see you on hi can you hear me i can thank you members of the school board my name is sarah harris and i'm a parent of three acps students in the white hall district first i would like to congratulate dr acroff ms carlson and mr page on their recent re-elections i appreciate your willingness to serve our community for another term despite the amount of pressure that school board

037members are under given the ongoing effects of the pandemic and the current social climate of our country the results of the 2021 election are clear albemarle county voters support truth and equity in our schools the majority of albemarle county voters did not vote for governor-elect yunkin who ran on a platform that goes against the anti-racism and inclusion work that students teachers community members and division leadership within acps have worked diligently to promote and implement over the past few years this county supports that work we do not want a whitewashed version of american history one that ignores the hard truths or minimizes the lived experiences of black native immigrant and oppressed americans taught to our kids we do not want to see tony morrison's beloved banned and burned we do not want stories and lessons about

038lgbtq civil rights pioneers questioned as to whether or not they are appropriate for children simply because they feature gay or transgender heroes thank you for your commitment to truth equity and inclusion of all in our schools thank you for continuing this critical work despite a baffling ongoing national narrative that suggests that teaching our kids the truth about our country and including the voices and stories from marginalized communities will somehow harm our children the opposite of course is true when we know better we can do better and it's a good thing that our kids are learning more than we did they will grow to be more empathetic more compassionate and more community focused they will grow up to be better humans and for that i am grateful thank you very much for this work and i

039appreciate you thank you for those comments miss harris our next and last speaker will be scott guggenheimer who i also see on hi yeah i'm scott guggenheimer i am the parent of two students at henley middle school i'm also a former english teacher and and in my day job i work with public school systems all over the country who are trying to lead change and better serve their students so so it's with various lenses that i've seen anti-racist work and i have some small sense of of how hard it can be uh whether it's at the individual level interpersonal level or institutional level and although i maintain this joyful work i know it's not easy so i'm just taking a moment to say thanks to dr harrison for his leadership dr costa at henley middle

040school dr haas the entire school board i'm just so grateful to have two young people in a school system that has set as a goal to end the predictive value of race class gender and special capacities on student success so that all of our students succeed but i actually think when when it's all said and done our success will be beyond ending the predictive value of those factors on success but but rather that we have deeper relationships that we have you know a more connected community uh you know more whole humans uh cross-system partnerships like the exciting one we just heard about and i know if that's going to happen we all have a role to play so in addition to saying thanks i just want to say that i know others out there along

041with me are ready to roll up our sleeves work alongside with you you know in whatever way we're needed to be used so so thanks and keep up the good work thank you so much for those comments mister goodnight that concludes public comment today i hand we're back to you chair page thank you vice chair carlson moving to our next item uh agenda item the covet 19 update dr mclaughlin hello and good evening board members i'm pat mclaughlin chief of strategic planning and before i get started with the covet update tonight uh i would like to welcome in stacy england uh principal of scottsville elementary school who joined us but came in after dr haas had greeted the other principal so i wanted to make sure we gave a shout out to stacey and thanked

042her for being here tonight so as i said my name is pat mclaughlin chief of strategic planning for the school division and i'm here tonight to provide a covert 19 status update uh as you know our updates line with the most recent guidance provided to us by the virginia department of health who gives us a five-step program protocol to consider for operational decisions that we make during the 2021-2022 school year and i'll take you through the key metrics that we monitor from this guidance tonight our first metric is the level of community transmission and uh some positive notes here if you recall just a few weeks ago when we looked at this map of virginia it was pretty much bright red everywhere you looked with the highest levels of transmission across every county we are

043starting to see those numbers come down with several counties including albemarle moving into the orange level of substantial transmission there's also some counties with moderate transmission and even a couple that have dropped down to the lowest level of transmission our total case rate uh or our case rate average per 100 000 people is at 87.81 that was over a hundred uh the last time we gave you an update back in october and our positivity percentage is 4.06 uh down slightly from the last time we gave you that update so we've got a low transmission level for our positivity we've got a substantial transmission level for our case incidence rate when those two disagree with each other we go with the higher of the two so we are at a substantial transmission rate but down a

044bit since the last time we spoke to you also good news is a look at our vaccination stats our um 12 to 15 year olds in our 16 to 17 year olds uh have each hit about 90 percent of one dose of vaccination uh and are both sitting at around 83 percent for fully vaccinated one thing that popped on uh to the uh to the site just a little too late for me to get it on here is the vdh has started to report percentages of five to 11 year olds who are getting the vaccine uh i believe vaccinations started uh last thursday or friday for those uh for those children and our number was up just over five percent uh in the county in just a couple of days so we're hopeful that we

045can start to see those numbers increase as well the final metric that we take a look at is our transmission level within our schools we continue to see sporadic cases last week we had 15 student cases and four staff cases within our schools but limited amounts of transmission taking place for that within the schools our attendance rate and student absenteeism on tuesday we were right at our baseline of 95 percent attendance rate and we had one percent of our students about 150 students who were out on um at home for quarantine uh purposes so again that 150 puts us just slightly above our baseline in our staff capacity while our absentee rate continues to be similar to what it's been in previous years as we've told the board before uh there's a significant challenge this

046year in finding substitute teachers to cover those absences so i want to thank the board for the approval they gave just recently to the modified calendar for the remainder of this school year i think those additional time for teachers to do their work within our schools will be greatly appreciated as a reminder we've got several key mitigation strategies that we feel are working very well in our school including promoting vaccination consistent and correct use of masks physical distancing improved ventilation strong hand washing and respiratory etiquette cleaning and maintaining healthy facilities staying home when sick and doing contact tracing when we do have a case at school and before we close tonight i would like to introduce kevin kurst who is here to give you a brief update on students with disabilities and mask wearing i'll

047turn things over to kevin thanks patrick um yeah just wanted to give an update to an issue that has come before the board uh and that was with regard to um my procedure on for the implementation of some really tight enforcement as the school started of mask wearing which included kids with disabilities and where the issue came up was there are there were students with disabilities uh significantly so that in spite of and that's really important to clarify here in spite of intensive and sustained interventions and evidence-based practices still we're finding it very difficult to wear a mask since that time since i want to say late september early october i reviewed practices with um with our school board attorney superintendents cabinet the school health advisory board uh and honestly uh importantly so parents as

048well and reviewed those procedures in the context of cdc guidelines the uh additional mitigation strategies that we're using offices civil rights and the department of ed and really uh looked to adopt other procedural mitigation strategies in order to bring students with significant disabilities and challenges wearing masks into school for their in-person instruction and we have been successful in doing that uh there were about 40 cases of students that had some issue with mask wearing and attending in-person instruction about 25 of those uh were more significant there were just issues but the kids were attending school but i wanted to report tonight to you that all of those issues are resolved meaning all students with disabilities that previously we had concerns with um have been offered and are attending school there are some whose parents opted

049not to come back but we have offered made clear the path and have revised our process mitigation strategies in order to introduce them back into our setting our school settings with additional mitigation strategies so that is that is my thumbnail update i'm more than happy to take any questions are there any questions from the board for either mr kurtz or dr mclaughlin i have a question for dr mclaughlin um i hear that some cabinet members are taking turns being substitutes since we're very short um in word on how that's going are you guys enjoying being back in the classroom correct dr haas has challenged us all to uh to get out at least once a month to our schools in fact we were just uh meeting with several a few principals this afternoon and offered

050up our services to them so that they could get out into their plc meetings so we always welcome the opportunities to get back out into our schools mr bonham uh has me coming out to substitute next friday if you uh would like to join my one of my classes uh miss osborne sounds good i think you'll be a great student mr cursed um what about me man uh no comment mr kirst um one of the questions that the parents who didn't come to public comment raise was you know learning losses i guess they're all back in the classroom as of last month or and and what have you done to sort of make sure that they can catch up so really honestly in the in the short term the we've doubled down on the efforts

051it's been every day since the beginning of the school year dealing with this issue that i will be honest we haven't even got ahead of things enough to say all right now that everyone's back in school what are the next steps so our team is expecting to plan um along with the department of instruction what is the summer going to look like what are breaks going to look like what are our days going to look like in order to address that issue but right now it was a matter of getting kids back some of which they hadn't been back in schools you know since march of 20 um and settled in so that dr that's kind of where i'm at haven't gotten there yet well you've made an important step forward in this the other

052issue that i've noticed is that among the the positions that we have it that we're having trouble filling are for special ed assistants uh how is that impacting what the work that you're doing well it i mean it's everyone is stretched thin you know i mean there's a parallel with with all staff um from bottom to the top so right but we're able to do the work but we're able to do the work i don't want to give the impression that uh you know we're unable to provide appropriate education it's more of the the the stress level uh on staff so i guess the message should be if anybody has a resume they want to dust off and apply that we have positions open absolutely thank you thank you any other questions for either dr

053mclaughlin or mr kurtz okay if not thank you mr kurtz for bringing us that very uplifting update and um dr mclaughlin are you going to be bringing us covet updates in a changed format after tonight's meeting well yes i am i have a very important announcement about the covet update it is moving to the consent agenda so all the information will still be there um in every board packet for you uh and it'll be moving to the consent agenda instead of being a stand-alone item but as always as you look through that if you see anything uh that brings up questions or concerns or anything that you want us to report on let me know and we can bring that information to you as quickly as possible thank you very much and i would also

054like to um echo what dr mclaughlin said about welcoming uh mr stacy england principal at scottsville elementary to our meeting so ms england glad to have you with us our next item on the agenda is a foundation update from ms dunn and also ms cromwell who will be presenting information about the acps foundation good evening mr chair members of the board and cabinet um i'm really excited to introduce ms larry cromwell who's the founder and president of foundation innovation the foundation consultant will be partnering with in the upcoming months as we start our own foundation for acps um mrs mrs cromwell was the first woman elected to an at-large position on our local school board as well as the first woman to be elected as its president she was also president of the local economic

055development commission and a founding board member of the local chamber of commerce she won chamber citizen of the year the outstanding service award by the texas pioneer foundation and provided foundation innovation in 2003. so the promo obviously has a great deal of expertise when it comes to not just schools but also economics and everything that kind of goes on in a community around schools foundation innovation is a consulting firm that has guided hundreds of school divisions in administration development marketing and training as they relate to public education foundation foundations and they were chosen from among several consultants who responded to an rfq that the division put out this april uh this past april and that rfq steering committee that chose foundation invaded innovation included kate a cuff graham page ross holden phil jeremia and me

056and foundation innovation and mrs cromwell have guided such divisions as dallas texas and williamsburg james city virginia in their foundation development processes so acps is main objective for starting this foundation includes increasing equity and ensuring equal opportunity across the school division of course that aligns with everything that we're doing the school division within the new strategic plan and and even before that so this foundation would act in collaboration with the current charlottesville alma public education foundation as well as with our school divisions ptos and booster clubs and will not be meant to replace them or to compete with them but rather just to serve as an added resource in this school division on a division wide level as opposed to more locally so there were two hundred thousand dollars put aside to fund this foundation

057development uh that was part of the school board reserve for the current fiscal year only uh that money is located as part of the executive services department budget and part of the work that we'll do with foundation innovation in the upcoming months will be to do studies that will help us determine next steps surrounding the 2022-23 budget and how will most effectively fund the foundation moving forward and so i'm going to turn it over at that to ms cromwell so that she can tell you all these amazing things that she knows and talk to you a little bit more about the process through foundation innovation thank you thank you helen and good evening school board members um i really appreciate the opportunity to talk to you this evening because we're about to launch something really

058exciting um we're about to launch establishing the education foundation and i wanted to just talk with you briefly this evening because i know you have a packed agenda but i wanted to just talk to you briefly about what that process might look like and how you might continue to be involved and updated as we move forward with this opportunity the education foundation will be a 501c3 organization which is just typically what we refer to for charities because they are governed by the irs code 501c3 we will be working through a small steering committee that would consist of a few of the people that were on the search committee some community members the superintendent to try and work through some of the infrastructure and corporate documents initially which is not the funnest part but it is

059extremely important part so we'll be submitting um applications to the state we'll be submitting applications to the irs and we'll be working on some policies and some organizational and structural um opportunities for us to develop this corporation we do want to make sure that in this infrastructure mode that we realize that this is a business even though it is a charitable organization we want to set this up to be sustainable we want it to be transparent we want it to be credible in the community so that is a really important step initially then we will be talking about who else we want to serve on this education foundation board and that's where we would really like your input we would really like for you guys to think about who might be a good fit and

060submit those names perhaps to helen or to another administrator to get to the steering committee so that we can develop our team we want to develop a very robust and a very diverse team that reflects the diversities in your own community and your student population so it's important for us to really think about every single individual and what they bring to the table and how they can build capacity for this organization so we'll be working on that board development piece as a steering committee and then we will invite all of the members of the community that we have identified that we would like to serve on the education and foundation board then we will be looking at how how do we look to people internally externally how do we create an image for the foundation

061so that we can become perhaps a charity of choice for some that want to support the school system then we will talk about programs and this is very important and we had an opportunity to discuss i talked with the administrators the other day about making sure that we align our programs with the school system we want to make sure that what are the needs that are most pressing with the school district are the needs that are most pressing that can be identified by the foundation to help support so we'll be identifying funding priorities and the programs that we want to support and that is really unlimited the foundation can support anything honestly that we deem as a foundation board appropriate so we will want to craft that to make sure that people know when they

062give money to the foundation what it actually will be spent on and then the final component is actually fundraising so i will be teaching the foundation board how to ask people for money we will try and make sure that everybody that's on the foundation board feels comfortable in that arena because actually investing in the foundation is investing in your own community it's investing and like helen said earlier it can help help economic development it can help motivation there are a lot of things internally and externally that may not even be directly from resources it can be indirect benefits as well so it's really exciting because i can't tell you right now everything that's going to happen but i can tell you it's a win-win that it is an awesome opportunity for us to be able

063to allow philanthropists private foundations alumni anybody that supports the school system to be involved in making sure that our students and educators have all the tools that they need above and beyond what tax dollars um are allocated for so i know that we have a few minutes left and i'd be happy to answer any questions that you might have thank you for being with us ms cromwell and uh do any board members have any questions for ms kramer i don't have a question right now but i do have a point of clarification that i think it's maybe worthwhile to say in public because we did get some feedback from community members with um them asking about they're believing for what for whatever reason that the foundation was gonna take money from ptos i think we

064can probably clear that up pretty easily you know and i think that's a very common um especially it's like seeing the invisible right now we don't have anything to to explain or to show them so we um have talked about this a great deal helen and i and we feel like it's very important for us to sit down with some of those booster clubs and ptas to make sure that they understand that we are not taking away revenue i mean we've been doing this since 2003. there are many ptas and booster clubs that actually financially support education foundations because there are many schools school campuses that have more capacity um from their parents or others than others campuses and so an education foundation can balance that out like the equity that helen mentioned it's every

065campus every student so there are many opportunities for us to reassure not only other charities in the community but our booster clubs anybody that may feel threatened by creating another charity we want to have a conversation with them so that they understand that our fundraising is going to be more like higher education where we're actually developing relationships with people that see our mission and see the return on the investment of of any kind of money that they were to um trust the foundation with so it typically i've never seen it impact negatively um booster clubs ever since 2003 but the most important piece of that is that there has to be communication so that they feel comfortable in this in this realm and that's a great answer and i would even go one further because

066i think what was maybe going around was that there was going to be like a dues like we were literally going to go into the budget of ctos and and take some of their funding in order to fund that and that is just not going to happen that's not accurate at all we got a few um emails about this i just wanted to say it out loud that that's not thank you for bringing that up in fact one thing that i really want to emphasize not only to the administration that i did the other day but to you as school board members if you hear anything good or bad please funnel that to helen because i can sometimes say that's an indicator that we have to address right now we've been doing this long enough

067that something that may feel insignificant to you that you've heard from a community member or parent may be really something that we need to address so please make this as much of the open communication as possible so that we can make this the most successful organization that we possibly can i just wanted to add since you're talking a bit about budget briefly that um i mentioned the budget that we have in the executive services that we've set aside for this development but i just want to make sure it's clear that foundation innovation is is costing us only 15 000 so not that entire chunk of money i just want to make sure that was clear to them watching right now i just wanted to and hi lori um i just wanted to add that i

068was part of the selection committee and we reviewed several applications and foundation innovation was i think by far the most experienced has a very large portfolio of setting up such foundations with public school divisions and also lori has a long track record of engaging the business community to help be a part of that foundation building and she brings both the economic development and the real knowledge of public education to bear and um i look forward to working with her same it's fame and you know i mean i say it every day that i love public education just like all of you on this call and and we we need to do everything we possibly can to engage and support um and a foundation can be that bridge between the community and the school division like

069you've never seen before so um great things are ahead i have no doubt you know i already spoke but i'm super excited that's a great presentation i i'm really looking forward to having a foundation and tapping into um the altruistic nature of our community i know that private schools do a really good job of it's acceptable in a private school to donate to a school whereas public schools we don't always foster the mentality that you know it's great to give back to your community and your students and so i'm really looking forward to seeing what can some of this thank you and i'm available anytime you have questions um feel free to reach out to me um because i want to make sure that you guys stay informed about what we're doing and how this

070is developing as we go along i wonder helen whether some of the other members of the school board might like to look at the innovation foundation's website that might be a useful link absolutely i'd be happy to send that around in any further information um i i would just like to echo what dr katie kaufman mentioned a minute ago which is that um ms cromwell knows just an unbelievable amount and and so much about this she's truly an expert and so i would love to showcase that by sending around a little bit more information so i'll i will do that tomorrow thank you okay and thank you so much lori for for being here tonight absolutely y'all have a great evening thank you again miss cromwell and ms dunn thank you also for the presentation

071tonight update we will now have a report from our anti-racism policy dr harrison and miss jasmine fernandez good evening everyone i have this sticky key sometimes it will let me in and sometimes it will not but once again a good evening to everyone i'm bernard hairston your assistant superintendent for school in community empowerment um joining me for this presentation this evening will be jasmine fernandez our project manager and jamie gilner the chair of the policy enforcement subcommittee uh we would like for you to know that this report represents our progressive steps towards striving to become an anti-racist school division as per your directive next slide please this report also represents the second annual update of the anti-racism policy as you well know adopted in 2019 we honor the wisdom of the student-led policy writing team

072which required staff to collect to review and to provide an annual report to this board they strategically organize the policy and regulations for easy implementation and accountability under these five major categories first the policy communication subcommittee shared examples of twofold of the twofold mission of engaging and informing the albemarle county public schools community about the policy and how our students are being engaged second the leadership and administration subcommittee focused on piloting a departmental equity needs assessment identifying disparities in course participation and reviewed alternatives for improving the tracking of suspensions third the curriculum and instruction subcommittee explored cultural and racial diversity updates in curriculum and instructional materials fourth the professional learning slash training subcommittee documented staff participation in required cultural awareness coach responsive teaching and anti-racism professional development opportunities in addition to how our major frameworks

073such as the professional learning communities and the teacher performance appraisal practices have been reviewed to consider an anti-racist perspective and fifth the policy enforcement subcommittee provided an overall evaluative review of the policy and regulations to include lessons learned and next steps next slide please thank you this report also represents our efforts of aligning the division's anti-racism statement that we reject all forms of racism as destructive to the divisions mission vision values and goals to our mission statement which states working together as a team we will end the predictive value of race class gender and special capacities for our children's success through high quality teaching and learning for all we seek to build relationships with families and communities to ensure that every student succeeds we will know every student a powerful statement next slide please an

074anti-racism stirring committee was established to implement the policy it is composed of staff from various schools departments and division leadership it has grown from an initial 12 members to as many as 35 contributing members the steering committee meets monthly and the subcommittees meet in between the committee meetings the committee spends quality quality time focusing on what it means to be anti-racist leaders in addition our meetings focus on understanding and applying the policy definition of anti-racism as the practice of first identifying then challenges challenging in order to change the value structures and behaviors that perpetuate systemic racism as a committee we practice practice for self growth next slide please we are learning and confirming that the anti-racism policy is planning is playing a significant role in institutionalizing division priorities as per our newly adopted learning for

075all strategic plan through the three goals for example the thriving students goal is being addressed by focusing on eliminating opportunity access and achievement gaps through the policy regulations that all teachers and students shall be trained in culturally responsive teaching practices this information can be found on page 28 of the report over 370 staff members are currently receiving training to complete their credentialing and culturally responsive teaching also may i add the board recently received an excellent report from mr mike craddick the director of center one he outlined their efforts to recruit minority and other untapped student group groups these efforts were influenced by the policy regulation of addressing course enrollment disparities the second goal of affirming and empowering communities was highlighted in the partnership agreement with the virginia education tribal consortium presentation that you heard in

076an earlier agenda this initiative aligns with the regulation that curriculum and instructional materials shall reflect cultural and racial diversity and include a range of perspectives and experiences now the third strategic goal of addressing equitable and transformative resources was captured in the october 14th impressive hiring update presented by dr daphne kaiser and the hr team their work was influenced by the policy regulation to develop and conduct a systemic needs assessment for the division to identify processes and practices that that cause or contribute to inequitable outcomes and that's on page 12 of this other report under leadership and administration i want to acknowledge the board's foresight and leadership of modeling the value of excellence by honoring high expectations of accountability to adopt this policy and to hold us accountable for mitigating barriers to student success i'd like

077to turn over this over to jasmine fernandez uh to carry us through some of the next slides thank you so much dr harrison as mentioned my name is jasmine fernandez i serve as a project advisor and the anti-racism program manager for the anti-racism policy steering committee as dr harrison mentioned earlier ultimately we aim to address policies and practices that perpetuate racism and hinder our ability to advance our mission i would be remiss if i also didn't acknowledge that while we have taken some steps in the right direction we have a lot more work to do and we recognize that there is still much more that we can also do as facilitators and leaders of this work with that i trust that you all read our report which includes comprehensive status updates for all of the

078key projects the report captures work implemented from last november to present day for this evening to honor the time allotted to us i will focus this presentation on a few particular projects next slide as it pertains to the policy communications subcommittee the student equity advisory team seat hosted a second student town hall c partnered with two student-led organizations the young asian american and pacific islanders of charlottesville and albemarle high school's black student union together the students shared their experiences with combating hypervisibility the height and scrutiny associated with their race they also discuss their experiences combating the pressures associated with being perceived as the model minority which is rooted in stereotypes and dismisses the individual differences and talents of members of the asian community recently the policy communications subcommittee partnered with our anti-racism training subcommittee and

079acps community education open doors program which you'll see on the next slide we facilitated a modified version of the anti-racism orientation next slide please we facilitated a modified version of the anti-racism orientation the community session included an overview of related definitions videos and small group discussions here is some of the feedback about the session i will give you a few seconds to read through the comments as outlined in the report on pages 10 to 20 the leadership and administration subcommittee has been working on a number of projects this evening i would like to bring to your attention a new project while not a specific deliverable in the regulation we have created an anti-racism equity decision making tool the tool aims to guide administrators and departmental directors on addressing a related issue the tool originated after

080a series of equity issues occurring in schools and as a response to a grant with the charlottesville area community foundation the tool includes reflection questions alongside six key areas of focus we have already started to pilot the tool alongside a few schools and departments the plan is to archive and workshop the case studies at our division level leadership team meetings in hope of exchanging best practices and building our proficiency to address equity issues in a manner that will reduce harm before adopted for system-wide implementation we'll evaluate the tools effectiveness similar to the leadership and administration subcommittee the curriculum instruction team has a number of projects under their purview you can learn more about the various projects on pages 21-25 as it relates to the deliverable developing anti-racism curriculum tonight i would like to bring to

081your attention our middle school advisory framework the rollout of henley's anti-racism advisory lessons was a learning experience for us all to allow for further review of age-appropriate content a group of acps educators including diversity resource teachers and educators trained and culturally responsive teaching convened this summer they created a sample framework for a middle school advisory experience as you can see in the image to the left the team recommended four domains affiliation identity mindset and success one of the concepts to be explored within this framework is anti-racism the department of instruction consulted a researcher trained in anti-racism and developmental psychology to advise on the preliminary framework and offer feedback on the design process i want to emphasize that the advisory curriculum as such this framework has yet to come to you for approval as it is

082still under development but we are looking forward to making progress this year and designing lessons that are relevant and aligned to anti-racism pedagogy the next two slides are about projects within the training subcommittee as you are aware last year when we presented we were in the process of finalizing the content of the orientation i'm happy to report that today 89 of the division has completed the orientation and while some schools and departments completed the training together each staff member so that's approximately 2 600 employees out of 2900 staff completed an exit form the feedback received gave us valuable insight into future training topics and ideas for how we can ensure that the content is accessible to non-instructional staff in addition to the orientation as a means to build the racial consciousness of the division as

083you are aware we implemented a division-wide book study and trained the trainer model based on glenn singleton's book courageous conversations about race next slide please at each level the school board to the cabinet and division letter division level leadership team everyone participated in a number of training sessions additionally we hosted a monthly optional session after school the courageous conversations about race forum we met as a large group and then broke out by feeder pattern on average 50 to 60 people attended the forums the forums allowed for another opportunity to engage in deeper conversations about people's experiences with race and racism i would like to thank our anti-racism professional development implementation team a team within the training subcommittee that included instructional staff school administrators departmental directors and central leaders they played a valuable role in developing

084the content and facilitating the sessions this said we recognize that importance of addressing acts of bias and racism in and outside of the classroom on page 34 in the report we discussed a training we hosted over the summer in collaboration with the department of instruction together we facilitated a training aimed at all athletic directors and sports coaches this is an area of continued growth for us developing more tailored trainings for non-instructional staff and the broader community next slide one of policies enforcement's deliverables included producing this report i would like to give a special shout out to sarah dunsberry and jamie gelner who were instrumental in compiling the data this summer we also worked on rebooting the anonymous app alert we retrained administrators on how to manage the app we recently circulated new new posters across

085all schools and we also updated a few policies including policy gb equal employment opportunity and the student version jb equal education opportunity both policies outline clear procedures for reporting and monitoring acts of racism in the spirit of transparency we thought it was important to share some of our lessons learned from this past year the first lesson school board members i have to tell you the comprehensive nature of implementing this policy requires extended time for staff there were plenty of times that the anti-racism professional development implementation team and our steering committee had to meet before and after school hours to develop the content and facilitate programs to avoid staff burnout a lesson learned is that we need to continue to explore ways that recognizes the efforts of our staff but also provide further opportunities for access

086to professional learning around race and anti-racism during the school day oversight of the anti-racism orientation there were quite some some operational challenges specifically around cleaning the data in the future it might be more seamless if all new employees complete the orientation during their onboarding another important lesson is creating space for constructive feedback as mentioned in the report we recognize that we too have room to grow as facilitators and leaders of this work we also recognize that everyone has different beliefs and that everyone is at different points in their journey and so we we acknowledge the need to have more spaces for people including our staff and community members to offer constructive feedback whether that be via surveys or through small group discussions this said the greatest lesson and perhaps a validation of our work is

087that when we institutionalize our priorities we we d and can make progress this year in particular we institutionalize anti-racism into our strategic plan the school improvement plans and our professional learning communities however again we acknowledge that we have a long way to go there is no doubt about that we must persist we must continue to remain committed to this work of addressing racism in our division and ensuring that all students have the opportunity to reach their full potential for the sake of time next slide please here are some of our future priorities for this upcoming year in particular i would like to bring your attention to leadership and administration in alignment with the policy the department of human resources will circulate a division-wide needs assessment which will examine trends related to employment engagement and organizational

088culture the department will also facilitate targeted focus groups to further learn about people's experiences working at acps and that includes their interactions with race and desired supports to help inform their experience and then policy enforcement i would just like to presence that this is our second year but this upcoming february will mark three years since the policy was adopted and we would like to explore the opportunity of having an outside evaluator assess our strengths and areas of growth i realized that this was indeed a lengthy update but before we open it up for questions i would just like to publicly thank our anti-racism steering committee which includes our student equity advisory team for their leadership for their passion for their persistence around this work i know that dr harrison and dr haas also share the

089sentiment that we are looking forward to continuing to work alongside them alongside you the board and our community to one day become an anti-racist school district thank you jamie are you there yes thanks dr harrison thank you jasmine for presenting on behalf of our team and at this time we would like to take any questions from the board questions or comments this is a growth model so we were we really would appreciate your suggestions in terms of of your observations after reading the report i thought it was an impressive report what is the level of student interest in being on the sca the student advisory committee i would say that there's a growing interest in student participation in that group we have begun to establish relationships with multiple student organizations and we are seeing students

090who are surfacing and want to be a part of that process uh karen waters wix is leading that work she has an excellent relationship with our students in multiple schools and we see that as an area where we're going to have a lot of impact in the future dr harrison if i would just add um one of their goals is to ensure that they have representation from all of the middle and high schools and as a starting place one of the priorities for this year is to actually create a directory of all of these student groups so that they have an opportunity to do more recruitment throughout different schools i guess i would also like to ask our student representative antrobius about the level of awareness of students about this work sure um to be

091honest with you i haven't heard much of this i have heard of that some of the student groups you mentioned namely that asian and pacific islander group um i see posters for that all over monticello and i think it's got a pretty big presence in the community um so honestly i think just um promoting it among the students directly um the posters are definitely one helpful way but um honestly i wasn't aware of it um but it's definitely something i'm interested in you know a comment and then and then a question is that for the five of us on the board who were uh around when the anti-racism policy was passed we we talked at the time that this did have a long way to go that this could be a generational uh uh progression

092this could be the the school cycles um you know to to get to the point where enough students have gone through it from you know kindergarten to 12 to have this just be an a a concept that is inculcated into the culture and it becomes a routine and part of how these uh students uh see the world see each other and uh i'm intrigued uh miss fernandez about your comment about having an assessment done of the program um you know in in the uh maybe at the third year anniversary or at some point during the year could you expand on that a little bit please sure i'm happy to i also would like to welcome our policy enforcement chair to weigh in um i'm happy to kick it off we recognize um that we are

093very attached to this work um and so just to allow for a broader perspective right sometimes when you're doing the work you're there is such thing as confirmation bias and for us as dr harrison mentioned we do believe in a growth model we recognize that we have areas for improvement and so we believe that having an outside evaluator come in will just allow us to have a different perspective and we can use that information to deepen our areas of growth jamie would you like to add to that um i think that pretty much hits the nail on the head i mean we do internal evaluations i am a program evaluator for the division but i think somewhere from three to five years out as jasmine said we adopted the policy in 2019 so we're coming

094up to three years but somewhere between that three to five year mark it may be good to get an outside perspective to come in and validate some of the work that we're doing are there groups who do that for this type of a program or is this a new enough concept that there aren't groups per se that that are focused on anti-racism policy implementation i think that's something that we'd have to explore and put out an rfq for but yes i do think there are groups emerging to do this work thank you i i found the report really um compelling as well it had a lot of uh interesting data presented in it one thing um that i just found curious uh was the orientation completion rates um at various um it seemed not as

095uh disparate with groups uh and departments but i it did seem a little bit over all over the board at school locations and i was just wondering if you had any thoughts about that or if you had any sort of lessons learned about that well uh let me just share with you what our uh plans are moving forward to get as close to that 100 as possible because of it states in the policy that we expect all of our staff to um participate in this uh initiative for the 300 or so staff members who have not completed it thus far uh they will continue to receive communications um that it is an expectation there will be timelines established by which it must be done and if it's not done uh by those timelines uh then

096there will be um some um some um expectations or reprimands for not adhering to our expectations so um that is a plan we're going to continue to work with staff because we want them to be um committed to the work but we do have expectations for everyone to participate in it because it is policy in the report i saw um that the app had been updated so um how much has it been used and what type of information has it been able to give to the team jasmine can you respond to that i'm i i we have we we have i don't know if we can respond to that uh today uh mr page um what we know is that uh we are tracking um the reports that are coming in uh dr jesse turner

097has oversight of that he's been working with karen waters wicks as part of our communications committee and quite frankly uh we have not checked i have not checked those data recently um what i can say though is um we in touch and base with dr turner uh most recently there have not been a lot of reports i believe might have only as of to date um nine specifically related to um some sort of use of of racial discrimination or language but i i do want to just reiterate we just rebooted the app um and also this is part of the work right going back to what our student representative just mentioned on this call how do we continue to educate our students on the use of this app and also are there other ways that

098students can report acts of racism so this is an area of growth for us in our next report we will certainly make sure that we have data but i just want to emphasize that um for us it's also about continuing to do the work hopefully one day we don't have to use this app but at this time i just want to preference that um this is still in the early stages of being rebooted mr page as a that the app is available how will you let students know that you know that's there and that it's for their use yeah so we've circulated um posters i think we might have had a picture in the report those posters have been recently circulated they're all throughout all of our buildings in the past couple of weeks we

099also are going to continue to work with the student equity advisory team they created a promo video that we want to circulate but we also recognize that we have to be more thoughtful about how we leverage social social media and leveraging our student advisory team to get the word out about how to report sorry dr harrison did i cut you off were you trying to say something no i was just going to share with um mr page as a lesson learned and as a part of our rebooting the app we realized in the first year of using the app that the language was such that when students re reported it was so vague that they did not present enough information that would want an investigation from the school administration so we were able to rewrite

100some of the language uh such as give us some specific times you can give us names you don't have to give your name because you are anonymous but we need names of individuals who are being victimized uh times days etc that would allow administrators to have more concrete information so we're hoping that that will make a big difference are there other questions from other board members racism update yep um juan thank you guys for preparing this it's wonderful um so my question would be for the general public because there's a lot of information in there um how could they what's an easy way for them to access this report beyond pulling up the school board thing going into the date and pulling up the agenda item it is being uh posted on the division website

101okay is that good is that good enough would you like something else i think the division website is good as long as it's um it's not really easy to find is what i'd say sometimes these things get buried it's hard even for me to sometimes navigate through and figure out where things are um because there's a lot of information um and so my second thing which would just be thank you is i really appreciated the way that you represented some of the data and it gives us i think a lot to think about because it isn't all um roses i guess to say but i think you all did a good job putting that out there and letting us see it and see where we are for example the crt credentialing and kind of the

102trajectory we need versus where we are and and understanding that i think that's stood out to me and i really something we've talked about in the past but i appreciate it is uh putting the individual schools and how they're performing on some of these metrics like the orientation that judy mentioned i mean some schools got hundred percent those schools should be commended that takes effort and i appreciate it so those schools i don't know where we really stand on like giving them credit because i don't want to like put down these schools that didn't do but i mean we have administrators that are that are rocking out on all this so thank you to those who are and it's in the it's in the report that's all i think that's an outstanding idea um one

103of you mentioned i think jasmine mentioned earlier how hard everyone that is working on this is working and i think we do need to do more to recognize the schools that achieve a level of um buy-in and you know really getting it at the ground floor to do this work so that's that's a takeaway for me i don't think we really do enough to celebrate our schools for their successes under our own terms we allow other outside organizations to rank us and tell us how we're doing but this is a this is a marquee just a cornerstone project for alamo county schools and we should do something to acknowledge those schools publicly that hit a home run like getting 100 the other thing i want to follow up on is that um dr harrison and

104i met earlier this week and he came in and he felt confident enough at that point to let me know what the exact percentage of uh completers was for the um orientation they had used i think a google form initially to try to track all this so it had gotten somewhat hazy at some point our next step on that is going to be i'm working on a letter that will go out individually to employees a paper letter uh to let them know they had not completed uh the orientation and then we would be following up to with the standards of conduct uh guidelines around that for years we did something called an online annual training through our human resources department and everybody got a follow-up and we got to 100 so we will be getting

105to 100 percent on the orientation and then that way as we hire new employees and we onboard them then they'll have to go through that which they make it sound like they'll have to go through it it's a great orientation and you learn a lot to go through it so that we shall all want to uh to do these experiences so we will make sure it gets to uh 100 um but i i really want to applaud the the team that worked on this the big takeaway i had right away when i when i read the report was the amount of integration and boundary spanning that has gone on among the departments around this work uh there were you know in the past we you have groups uh that might go after this important initiative

106but not have other teams other departments other leaders other other people get involved uh to the extent that we have now so it's really been amazing boundary scanning that that this committee has done to bring everybody together on the same page the last thing i'll say is we weigh underutilized student email um there's no reason why david should not get an email that says here's the anonymous app link here's how it works we just i don't know why we can't break that paradigm uh we email everybody else everything but we don't email our own students so i want to give a public shout out we have got to use student email we should not sound out any communication to families without sending it to students as it's age appropriate i have students tell me that

107they said dr hawes why would you send an email to my parents about me about something going on at alma high school and not send it to me so we have got to get on board and employ our students in this work they are unemployed in this work we need to employ them and i'll i'll leave it at that but very proud of the work let's keep moving let's get those 13 000 plus students on board with us dr haas that would be a task that we will share with our seat team advisor asap thank you sir are there any other questions or comments i'm sorry to go twice people i know it's a long night but i just want to say um i noticed that the the end you mentioned that one of the

108things in the fall evaluation is looking at the outcome so i just want to tie it because i know we're doing a lot of things here and i know you guys are aware of it but you know that the outcome that we want is higher student achievement for all of our students and i love seeing the progress it's small but the hope is if we can get that small amount of progress year in you know year over year over year then we'll we'll write some of these wrongs and so um i'm really looking forward to that update and i hope we keep that component as part of it because there's a lot of move i know there's a lot of moving things going on and that's the end goal that's all thank you guys thank

109you any other comments all right thank you dr harrison miss fernandez and ms gelner for that excellent report keep up the great work because like we heard in the public comments our anti-racism work here in albemarle county is really important so make sure that we continue on this path so thank you so much all three of you for the report thank you we will now take a 10-minute break we all reconvene at 8 21 pm 8 21 thank you it is now 8 21 and we are ready to proceed with our agenda dr mclaughlin is coming to us with a state of the division report dr mclaughlin good evening again board members my name is pat mclaughlin chief of strategic planning for the school division and i'm here tonight to present our annual state of

110the state of the division report which we have entitled looking forward turning newly developed capabilities into higher levels of student engagement and learning before we get started i want to let the board know that this the process of creating the state of the division report began a long time ago back in august when we started to get our sol results in last year and i really want to give a huge thank you to the team that worked on this including chris gilman jamie gelner india han lauren hunt helen dunn jennifer butler and phil giarmita among countless others the state of the division report provides a look back at our most recent school year allowing us to celebrate our accomplishments and set targets for continued improvement a link to the full state of the division report

111has been provided an electronic school board for all board members and is posted on our division website and similar to our previous presentation on the anti-racism policy tonight's presentation will deliver highlights from the report included in our including our new online format for the report a review of several bright spots from last year areas that we've identified for continued focus and our transition from a report based on our now retired strategic plan horizon 2020 to one frame by our new strategic plan learning for all so as you may recall in previous years our state of the division report was a static pdf document with the implementation of our new web platform this year we've been able to transition the report to a more user-friendly online and interactive website that allows users to move easily to

112more easily navigate to the information they seek about our school division hosting our report in this way allows a wider audience to access our report and the tab design makes it much simpler for stakeholders to find the specific information for which they are looking our online platform also allows us to embed graphics that can be updated in real time on our website as things change and one quick note about the new site in case you're going there we're currently experiencing a bit of a compatibility with the firefox browser so if you uh are checking out the report online it's best to use chrome edge opera or safari so before we get to the heart of the report i think it's important to remind ourselves what our school experience looked like as we navigated the pandemic

113last year as you recall we opened our school year in stage two of our return to school plan during which time nearly all of our students were learning virtually we moved to stage three on november 9th and welcomed back many of our students in grades pre-k through three for two days a week of in-person instruction and then from december through february we went back and forth between stages one and three as the conditions changed in our area but we were able to fully return to stage three on the first day of february the final stage we entered was stage four on march 15th which allowed our pre-k through three students to attend school for four days a week and our students in grades four to twelve to attend school two days per week in person

114it was certainly a year of uncertainty in transition for our students and one we hope we do not need to repeat anytime in the near future so despite all those challenges we still have a lot to celebrate in the state of the division report included in the state of the division report is a link to the virginia school quality profile for albemarle county this is a site generated by the state department of education that provides a comprehensive look at a wide variety of metrics for the school division including some that we'll highlight tonight and if you're ever interested in in really digging into what uh performance looks like in albemarle county it's a great source of information both for our division as a whole and for our individual schools so one of the metrics that

115we wanted to highlight this year are sol results from last school year as we said many challenges were brought on by the pandemic including a reduced number of students who participated in end-of-year sol testing so both the positive results in our areas for improvement around sol testing should be viewed through this lens these challenges however were similar in all divisions throughout the commonwealth and some bright spots in our performance include that our overall division reading results only dropped by one percentage point since the 1819 school year which is the our last pre-pandemic year that we have sol data from that puts us eight points above the state average of 69 percent and you can see that we didn't take nearly as large a drop as the state in our reading scores math results kind of

116as expected took a more significant drop in albemarle county and they fell 16 points to a 65 percent pass rate but that was still a better result in a smaller overall drop than the state of virginia so one of the bright spots is that uh is that we did not see those drops go as low as they had as low as they did in other areas of the state despite the same challenges another bright spot in our report is our sat results as you all may know sat results are reported by graduating cohorts of students and while significantly fewer members of the class of 2000 of 2021 took the sat compared to previous cohorts the students who did participate greatly outpaced both the state and the nation in our percentage of students who met the

117college board's college readiness benchmark with our division coming in at 87 percent the state at 63 and the national average for that at 56. in addition to this our on-time graduation rate came in at 96.5 and that was the highest we've seen in several years and 3.5 percent above the state average one of the metrics we also look to is the number of the percentage of students receiving advanced studies diplomas uh as they graduate our percentage was 64.4 percent uh well above the state's 52.8 percents nearly 12 points higher than the state there and as you heard in a recent update from our human resources department we are continuing to make progress in hiring a more diverse instructional staff by hiring 41 teachers of color last year we had a net gain of 18 teachers

118of color for the division our overall percentage of teachers of color has increased from 10.04 to 11.13 since the 17-18 school year moving us closer to our goal of having the demographics of our teachers mirror the demographics of our student population and for several years we have presented the an equity table to the board this table helps us to identify disproportionate achievements for students of color economically disadvantaged students special education students and english learners among others moving these numbers is a challenge that takes time but there are some areas where you can start to see us moving closer to proportionality for our students those include the percentage of students who have who are identified gifted who are economically disadvantaged you can see that when we started monitoring that metric in the 16-17 school year we

119were at six percent this year this past year we were at 12 of those students economically disadvantaged students for our percent identified gifted we looked also at our percent of students earning an advanced studies diploma who are economically disadvantaged and that number has risen five percentage points from 11 in 1617 to 16 this past year when we look at our percentage of middle school students who are enrolled in high school math courses who are hispanic that numbers come up from five percent to seven percent that one wasn't one we started watching until 1819 so in the past three years we've managed to start to move that and also our percentage of students who are identified gifted who are black has come up two percentage points from the 16-17 school year to the 2021 school year

120also of note in regard to students who identified as gifted board members will likely recall that we've been shifting our focus to a talent development model over the past several years this model serves all students in the school division by providing opportunities for all students to explore experience and identify their unique talents at our next board meeting in december you'll be receiving a more detailed update of our talent development program at your business meeting finally each year we ask our graduating class to what degree they feel acps prepared them for life after high school they score each response on a five point scale with five indicating that they have a high degree of confidence in that area our seniors again affirm that they felt prepared for life after high school with a score of 3.8

121they felt that we had helped them develop a plan for life after high school that came in at a 4.2 they told us they have the tools they need to succeed in the job market or to continue their education with a score of 4.0 and they told us that they understand their personal strengths interests and values and possible careers that they might be interested in pursuing that came in at a 4.2 and while we do have a great deal to celebrate in albemarle county we also have a number of areas where we need to continue putting our focus for improvement while our students who took the sat did very well as mentioned earlier participation rates were down significantly from previous years typically we have over 70 percent of our graduating seniors complete an sat and

122that number was closer to 25 for the class of 2021. this was due to challenges such as finding open testing centers and that coupled with many colleges taking making their applications test optional this particip participation rate was particularly pronounced for our black students and our economically disadvantaged students who represented only two percent and one percent respectively of our students who took the sat the sat does provide us with valuable insights into our work with students so to mitigate this trend we have started to administer the sat to all 11th grade students free of charge during the school day in the spring of their junior year we expect to see our participation rates in future years approach 100 we've removed the barriers of cost transportation and weekend timing for our students to help facilitate that in

123addition to the sat scores we saw a five-point drop in our pass rate for our advanced placement tests the feedback we heard from schools and students indicate that the structure we put in place last year with four classes in the first semester and four classes in the second semester likely impacted both students participation and results because as you recall many of our high school students took ap courses that ended in january and were not able to take the associated ap test until may and while anecdotal we feel that likely impacted both participation and performance and while our slr sol results were higher than state averages achievement gaps for our students persist as you can see in this table gaps for black students are 23 points in reading and 29 points in math for hispanic students

124there's a 30-point gap in both reading and math for students with disabilities we have a 28-point gap in reading and a 22-point gap in math our economically disadvantaged students have 30 points in both reading 30-point gaps in both reading and math and our english learners have a 59-point gap in reading and 44 points in math improving these outcomes and closing these gaps is going to be a strong focus for our work with schools this year and into the future all schools are delivering and analyzing common assessment data to monitor our progress toward raising this raising achievement and closing these gaps and i hope to come back to the board with a report in march when all of our mid-year assessments have been completed to give you an update on our progress to date this year

125and finally although we have some bright spots in our equity dashboard we still have a majority of areas where we see inequities for our students while i won't go into every element of the table tonight this table is posted in the state of the division report and anyone who wants to go in and look at that can see it and as a reminder of our equity table to see inequities you look down this column that shows our the makeup of albemarle county we have six percent students who are asian eleven percent who are black fifteen percent who are hispanic sixty one percent who are white six percent who are multiple races as you look across the columns horizontally if you see these numbers differ from those proportions there is an inequity either a positive or

126a negative inequity for our students you can see the same thing for students with disabilities economically disadvantaged students and english learners i think that a key takeaway from this year's report is that just about everything we report on has been impacted and impacted pretty significantly by the pandemic and it's time to now to look forward as our title suggests a key to our next steps is our new strategic plan learning for all as the greater albemarle county community built this plan last year a clear focus quickly emerged around equitable outcomes for all students and i'll end tonight by reminding you of our strategies to move the division forward it begins with our vision that all learners are engaged in authentic challenging and relevant learning experiences becoming lifelong contributors and leaders in our dynamic and diverse

127society and that vision helped to shape our mission our key goal for the entire plan that working together as a team we will end the predictive value of race class gender and special capacities for our children's success through high quality teaching and learning for all we seek to build relationships with families and communities to ensure that every student succeeds we will know every student that mission will be moved forward by our values of equity excellence family and community and wellness and it will support our three goals of thriving students affirming and empowering communities in equitable and transformative resources plans are already underway for next year's state of the division report and as you know learning for all will provide both the roadmap and the metrics for in the metric system to show how we are

128positively impacting education in our division i want to thank you all for your time tonight and i would be happy to take any questions or hear any comments you have about this year's state of the division report dr mclaughlin i think i think the report looks very good and i think it'll be more accessible and more flexible for people doing research one of the areas i have to confess i have not focused on as much as i should have is english language learners and um i just wonder if we have sufficient strategies for helping them thrive in our school division i i think we i would say yes that we do and and quite often we see our english language learners as a bright spot in the division i do think they were disproportionately impacted

129by the pandemic right you know that typically when we have uh services for our english language learners they're really one-on-one they they are about relationship building in person in our schools and when we're learning over zoom for a good part of the year it's very difficult to to build those relationships and to mitigate the language barriers that are there so i i agree there is uh there is a disproportionate impact in that in those achievement gaps that we saw last year for english language learners uh those are one of the the a group of students that we knew was important to get back into our schools as quickly as we could um and i think with our schools being open five days a week this year we're going to start to see some immediate improvements

130in those results i i guess i'm just concerned for many english language learners the deficit is beyond language i mean language is necessary but it's not sufficient they may have significant content gaps as well as you know better than i but anyway i just want us to also focus on that population because it's about what 12 13 of our kids um so we need to raise those scores up too absolutely i had two clarifying questions get into substitute stuff on the um if you go the slide that was talking about the percentage of students that took the sat and said um you know only one percent of our economically disadvantaged students is that one percent of our entire student population of which economically disadvantaged are only 30 something percent or is that only one percent

131of the 30 percent of students who are identified as economically disadvantaged and one of the things i'm going to do is uh call on my wingman chris gilman from our strategic planning department he is really uh our our expert on all of these stats and can answer that question for us uh that's uh one percent of the graduating senior class because that's how they report the data and so um it was a very small number and the way that they identify economically disadvantages a little bit differently than we do they based it on the reported income of parents as opposed to the actual frame reduced lunch status of students and so that it varies a tiny bit and that can impact a little bit of the reporting okay would you have a hard number for

132that one r for the two percent of the black students just so i can put a number on like is that like 30 students i mean how many students took the sat i think i was african-american uh it was i think it was six of the graduating class um for chronic thank you for the chronically absent i noticed that on the equity dashboard how did we calculate that last year given that we used the state's formula for chronically absent so those were it was still the same way of measuring it um the the way that teachers took attendance shifted a little bit but the category or the formula that we used to calculate that did not shift and so it was students who were marked absent for an entire school day over 50 over 10

133percent of the school days they were enrolled okay those are my clarifying questions and i have some other questions later but i let other people speak as well right now dr mclaughlin um one of the things that i really like in this report and i continue to really like our equity dashboard for is while i know it's important to be comparing ourselves to other divisions in the state or the state as a whole and the nation as a whole it's interesting and and it's and sometimes it feels good this last year doesn't feel good but getting into really comparing ourselves to ourselves is where the rubber hits the road and uh there are some things i mean i'm looking at the the life after school numbers that i think were 3.8 4 4.2 and 4

134out of 5. that's 76 percent 80 84 80 so it's like a mid c two low b's and a mid b and so uh they're they're obviously if you just do it on a percentage basis based on five and so um uh you know i i really am looking forward to seeing what what that's going to be going to become over the next couple of years uh because that's one that we we can compete against ourselves but i will tell you that the equity dashboard and for anybody listing in who's never really paid attention to it is one of the great tools that the school division has developed where none of us can run none of us can hide it is what it is and these numbers are not great for this past year understandably

135so in many ways but i love the transparency and uh and the standing up and taking um accountability and responsibility thank you um i i actually uh please thanks um i uh also appreciate the equity dashboard and i sent this as a message late into the night last night um about the equity dashboard is that i think that you know patrick the way that you explained it in terms of you know when you see when you compare it to the student population then you can see that there is inequity but i think that the way that we present that data uh obscures the magnitude of that inequity and i i i'm not suggesting that that's purposeful but i think that that can be an outcome of that um what i did appreciate about this presentation

136that you gave tonight was that you did have that one slide that showed the actual disparity um with like the 77 percent of reading and whatever 65 of whatever the math i think and then so you could see really where the big disparities were and truly the magnitude of them and so i i just think that while uh our equity dashboard does share the type of information and the actual real numbers and i do appreciate that i think that when they're calculated based on the whole and you have to do the math of like okay so this is four percent but there are seven percent so you have to sort of think you just have to do a lot of backward math to figure out what the true magnitude of the disparity is so i

137would put in a pitch for changing it such that we can actually see more easily the magnitude of the inequity thank you we can we can look into that uh in future reports too thank you are there any other questions or comments or concerns about the update yeah i would just speak up to say i i've got concerns this is not a good it is a good report patrick in that it is well prepared and i appreciate that we're transparent but like jono said it makes it so that we can't hide and i think we need to put that out there openly this isn't um compelling our particularly optimistic to hear tonight um knowing that we have out of three um high schools only six black students that took the s.a.t is is um upsetting

138that's hard to hear i feel like i could personally i guess i feel like with as much effort as we're putting in we and we're painting we're willing to pay for the sat we should just i mean have a class and make it i mean it's just that's there's stuff well just just a quick clarification there that graduating cohort did not have the opportunity where we were paying for their sat or any of those things okay so yep and i'm trying not to it's hard because i don't want to diminish the work that we're doing i know we're working hard so i it would be rude to say oh i could go and i could gather up like 10 students and say you better take the sat or else um i mean but what i'm

139trying to get at is that that's hard that's hard to hear um it's hard to hear that only one percent of economically disadvantaged students are taking the sat after all the effort that we put in it's hard to hear that the the even the progress that we showed you know we we touted our sat scores and then later we say no economically disadvantaged student took it um and we showed the progress which if you look between the before and after it is progress small but progress but that's over a five-year time span on some of those if we continued at that rate we would get what we need to be in another lifetime so and that's not and that's hard to say because i know and value all the work that you guys do and

140i know how hard we're doing it i just i guess want to say here that we aren't hitting the mark this isn't it um it's not it to say that we've got a one percent increase after five years of focus and that's like the difference between a whole generation getting to go to college and have opportunities and one's being denied it so it is that is hard to hear is all i want to register and just so that we know the urgency with which we need to tackle these issues it is not um seeing that and saying we're doing good it's not we're not and that's i mean me like i feel bad personally like this isn't a good um this isn't good um so but i appreciate i don't know how to say that

141without also acknowledging and saying that i know you guys are working hard and these are hard problems and i think you know what what we should see uh within two years are those numbers approaching 100 for the sat right we have we have we saw that that was something that was that was as concerning to us as i think to you and and so we mitigated those barriers we took away the cost we took away the need to do it on the weekend and provide your own transportation so as we start to look at the class of 2022 and 2023 i promise you you are going to see significant improvement in those numbers that this pandemic year was as last year's state of the division report called it a year unlike any other uh in

142terms of just being able to access uh things like an sat test well yes because so many of the sat opportunities were just flat out canceled last year i mean more than half the opportunities in our area were gone so it's part of this is on lack of opportunity from the college board position as well so and that's worth noting but i also want to say it's not all sats that was just a striking number to say it's like back to the the table where we were showing all the metrics and showing growth and it's just you know it's it's growth so that's good but um i just want to call attention that at that rate it's it it will be a whole generation that is missed and beyond so hopefully we can continue um

143with urgency and know that it's important and and it's not i can't be pleased with numbers like that that's all patrick i think it's great that we're going to be offering um removing a lot of the barriers for the sats but as you know many kids get some preparation about what to expect with the sats and they do much better so that's just something to think about well just a a quick update on that is that we also give the psats to um to all of our students in 10th and 11th grade and by taking the psat that opens up free sat prep uh personalized free sat prep through the khan academy for any student with a college board account so again that barrier um has been has been greatly diminished um to get that

144prep and it's likely i think better than uh you know the old kaplan courses that uh that we used to offer to kids at incredible expense well thank you you anticipated my question do we require the psat i mean do we we make sure every student takes it yes so we you so it the the one barriers if they don't show up to school that day uh is the only reason they wouldn't take it but every 10th grader and every 11th grader we get uh one day to take it uh that's assigned by the college board uh typically in october sometime and then every every 10th and 11th grade student at the school takes it that day are there any other questions or comments um oh i i guess i just didn't um not that

145you are alone in this katrina but i just didn't i just wanted to voice that it's incredibly sobering this i i found it to be very sobering but i too had that um conflict of like oh well i know that we're all working really hard on this i know that we're really focused on this and i know that a lot of people put a lot of great intellectual and emotional work into this um but it is quite it is quite so boring and i i know that a lot of it some of it is covid but um you know obviously a lot of the disparity was there prior to that as well i think i think a lot of what you see with um with the kova 19 is you see the impact that being

146able to come to school had had in the past that you know without the remote learning had had some um some success stories with it but there's no substitute for being able to attend school and and have those opportunities that are right there for the students um i'm sure everybody's familiar with the the book that was written by jim collins entitled good to great uh one of the things he talks about in it is the flywheel principle and the the notion behind the flywheel is that's a it's a very heavy stone wheel that you begin to crank and it takes an enormous amount of energy effort you know personal resources to get it moving and as it picks up speed on its own then it starts to move forward with less effort i i believe

147that we are getting the right things in place we have reckoned with the lack of success that we've had with all the students that were obligated and we have a social contract to be successful with so that they can be successful we've reckoned with that and that's that's a painful reckoning and having said that once we reckon then we can put the things in place if we choose not to ignore it which i think we are unique as a college town school system to uh not ignore uh these lackluster results but we are face facing them head on we're putting the effort in and there will be a time when it begins to accelerate it will not be one percent one percent one percent it will start to take on a life of its own

148as i said earlier we have 13 over 13 000 students many of whom are still unemployed in this work they have not engaged and when you see our panorama survey results that we recently did you're going to see another issue that we have is students feeling engaged with school and feeling connected there's a lot of work to be done let's just keep doing it and keep we are heading in the right direction it will start to pick up steam you will not have to wait an entire generation to see better results in alamo county schools thank you dr haas and i completely agree with what you are saying and i also completely agree with what miss carlson and ms leah saying i think nish has ranked albemarle county in the top 10 school divisions within

149virginia if not nationwide for at least quite a few years and we can see that we are doing as a whole system a good job but when we look at our black students our hispanic students and our economically disadvantaged students we can see that we have a completely um failing system so we have a whole lot of work that we need to do and we can't rest at all if we really believe in our strategic plan learning fall we have to make sure that we really really begin to work on this and we can see some progress being made but we can't rest on what we've done so far i completely agree with ms carlson and with ms lee we really have to make sure that we are working on these things are there any

150other comments or questions thank you dr mclaughlin for your report thank you thank you so much we'll now move to our fourth quarter um update on our unaudited financial report mr zimmerman is going to come forward with this good evening sir thank you very much i want to present for your consideration the fourth quarter financial report so for the fourth quarter ending fiscal year 21 the school division finished the year in a very strong financial position we did have uh significantly fewer students than were originally projected throughout the year so just keep in mind is not only did we have the challenges associated with remote instruction and then returned to instruction very very late in the year for a number of our students but we also had fewer students throughout the year and that's reflected

151on our average daily membership numbers that are shown at the top so we're about a thousand students fewer than we normally would have now usually in most fiscal years that thousand student decline would also result in a decline in state revenues in particular because revenues follow students and as your numbers of students drop the state revenues decline that did not take place in this past fiscal year if you remember during the general assembly meeting they had a number of discussions regarding revenues revenues were extremely good for the state plus there were whole harmless provisions brought in by the state for divisions that lost enrollment because the pandemic was hitting a number of school divisions not just us very hard in terms of enrollment numbers so if we take a look at our revenues we experienced

152a slight decline in our local school revenues which we would anticipate for particularly things like athletics and building rentals declining but we saw a very significant increase in state revenues there are two reasons behind that one is uh very very strong state sales tax revenues and the other is hold harmless provisions for the numbers of kids that are in the division that are that are attending schools we anticipated a thousand additional kids they provided funding for a thousand additional kids that we actually had so we had a rather extraordinary year for state revenues in fact sales tax was probably the most extraordinary number that i have ever seen when we were anticipating a recession and sales tax was roaringly strong throughout the entire fiscal year federal revenues were down very slightly overall what you can

153see is that we did not need to use any of the budgeted fund balance that we actually had originally budgeted to end up with revenues that exceeded our original appropriation by almost a million by over a million for in terms of expenditures pandemic was very very difficult to estimate expenditures overall our compensation was about two and a half percent lower than originally budgeted and when you consider that our compensation and benefit packages represent more than 85 percent of our total dollars two and a half percent is a significant amount of money almost 4.3 million dollars saved in compensation and benefits over the entire fiscal year large portion of that was due to some pandemic issues associated with hiring is one part other part is we didn't we didn't have enormous numbers of overtime nor substitutes

154nor part-time work that we would normally have in a year in which we would operate in person we only operated a very short time in person we also had significant savings in operational accounts if you look down here we had about almost four million dollars in operational savings again not operating schools during this time period not running buses during an extremely large portion of this time period inability to get things that were ordered because of supply chain issues during this time period so we had some significant savings in terms of our overall operational accounts and so when you look at our overall operations and revenues in compensation we ended the year in an extremely positive way 9.6 million dollar revenues over expenditures and if we take a look at how this affected our ending situation

155at the end of the fiscal year we look at our 1819 we started 1819 with four and a half million dollar available fund balance we increased our fund balance from 1920 and so fund balance as of june 19 we were 9.5 million dollars almost 9.6 we had an estimated salary savings uh elapsed factor savings in essence of almost 4.3 the additional revenues the additional operational savings now if you remember if you remember during last fiscal year we did transfer a significant chunk of money over to our cip for uh some of the cip projects that were on our list to get accomplished so we moved four million dollars of our fund balance over to the cip all right now there's an uh an ordered adjustment of about fifty six thousand dollars so overall with our

156calculated june 30 2021 fund balance it's about 15.2 million dollars now when we look at that initial 15.2 million dollars we have programmed more than a third of it already you remember uh the board has has taken uh carry forward of prior your purchase orders of just under four hundred thousand dollars it did an appropriation of a fund balance for mountain view to address some overcrowding issues associated with mountain view and we did originally budget 5.2 million dollars of fund balance in the fiscal year 2122 budget so our projected available fund balance for 2122 just at this point we have not uh we have not we are still undergoing audit so we're still in the midst of the audit process is 8.6 million dollars if you take a look at our fy 2122 school fund

157appropriation we're at 214 million and so if we if we look at the two percent fund balance that's set by the board of supervisors that would be just under 4.3 million dollars that we would have available to us in this process so that's a brief and quick overview of fiscal year 21 in terms of our financial performance which is extremely strong and it puts us in good stead for our fiscal year 21 22 first quarter report that will be coming up next but otherwise i'd be happy to receive any questions regarding fiscal year 2021 otherwise i would ask the board to receive the fiscal year the fourth quarter fiscal year report for 20 on 2021. thank you mr zimmerman could i have a motion to receive the uh report that has just been delivered i

158know that we receive the financial report as presented by mr zimmerman second move by mr oberge second by ms lee that we received the report that mr zimmerman has given to us ms johnston could you please call the roll dr acuff yes miss carlson yes mr alcaro yes ms osborne yes mr oberg yes miss lee yes mr page yes mission carried report is received all right so there are questions or discussion on this any questions from mr zimmerman thank you board members i will uh i'll present for the board's consideration that the fiscal year 21 22 first quarter financial report okay just they're just we're just starting the fiscal year when we're looking at this this financial report runs from july through september and so we're we just have a snapshot of our expenses during

159this time period this is going to be the first year in a while in which we've started off the year with a full set of operations and a full set of students we are still under whole harmless provisions from the state so in terms of uh of the numbers of students that come in it will not affect state revenues so state revenues will be relatively flat during this time period at least in terms of what's planned regardless of the numbers of students that are either increased or decreased we still do anticipate some lower school revenues local revenues than we had originally budgeted but we think that there will be some additional discussion during the general assembly in which there will be potentially new revenues coming from the state because the state revenues are at historic

160levels and we also have heard that local revenues are extremely strong as well county revenues and we do think that in terms of the revenue picture that our overall revenues are very likely to be strong for this current fiscal year if we take a look at our expenditures for this fiscal year our expenditures we anticipate to be very similar as to what we've had in the past probably better expenditures um probably still fairly strong savings in terms of our overall compensation and benefits probably not as strong as what we saw during the height of the pandemic because we we are returning back to school and we did hire more staff but we're still having some difficulties in terms of hiring staff and so it is very likely that we will see some compensation savings during

161this fiscal year in terms of our overall operational savings we still do have pandemic related delivery item delivery issues in in the division so we may see some savings in those areas as well so overall right now with this snapshot of just the first three months of operation for the division we do think that we're going to be very very strong in this fiscal year we do have a very strong fund balance if you look on the last sheet it's very it's it's basically a repeat of what you've seen in the fiscal year 21 of fund balance report we do have a very strong fund balance but we're probably also going to have a very good fiscal year this current fiscal year and um i believe uh if there are any questions i'd be happy

162unfeeling these questions otherwise i was going to turn this over to dr hawes he uh had some recommendations i believe to make to the board from this financial report so uh thank you very much jackson i really appreciate all the work oh did you have a question uh could we accept this report also before we get your recommendation sure okay all right so could i have a motion to accept uh the first quarter financial report i move that we accept the first quarter financial report as presented by mr zimmerman second move by ms lee second by mr alcaro that we accept the first quarter financial report any discussions on the motion if not miss johnston yes miss carlson yes mr oberg yes miss lee yes dr akov yes mr alcaro yes mr page yes motion

163carry okay thank you all right dr haas all right please excuse me mr page i didn't mean to jump in front of you there sorry about that um so thank you jackson and thank you for all the work you did to produce the information for the board tonight um mr page based on the health of our finances i'd like to recommend the following to the board in light of the fact that our employees have been and are going above and beyond the call of duty during a very challenging time and they are facing many challenges of their own including the highest increase in inflation in 30 years that we've seen i'm recommending to the school board that we provide a one-time payment in december for all staff members in the amount of one thousand dollars

164to all regular staff from one fte to 0.7 fte and 750 for all regular staff that work less than 0.7 fte to be eligible i recommend that employees must be employed before november 30th 2021 and receive a december 2021 paycheck i am certain that such a payment such a payment will signal to our workforce how much they are appreciated and how valuable their presence and their work with our students families and each other are to their community thank you board members we've heard dr haas's recommendations to the board i move that we direct staff to provide a one-time payment for all regular staff members in the amount of one thousand dollars to all regular staff from one fte to 0.7 fte and 750 for all regular staff that work less than 0.7 fte employees must

165be employed before november 30 2021 and receive a december 2021 paycheck and after making my motion i will say that i think this is not only appropriate from a from a morale circumstance from an inflation standpoint but because we are changing the way paychecks are going as a result of you know our our father in the county um my hope is that this will will help ease some of that pain because it will be a pain for some of our employees uh with that change is there a second to mr o'brien was that mislea yes sorry i jumped the gun on that side no no problem okay it's been moved by mr oberg second by ms lee that we accept um dr haas's recommendation and that we give all of our employees making certain qualifications

166or meeting certain qualifications arrays in a discussion on that motion i would like to echo mr oberg's comments after uh he made his motion i think this is a positive on many different fronts for all of the affected staff and i support this wholeheartedly uh the discussion just with the qualification mr page that it's not a raise it's it's a one-time payment wait a run time payment one-time bonus and like mr burgessing and also mr accaro um [Music] not really maybe enough but it's really showing our staff all of our staff how all of our employees how much they are really treasured so it's not often that we can give them some financial um benefits but we really do treasure the work that you're doing any other comments if not miss johnston mr elcaro yes

167miss lee yes dr acuff yes mrs carlson yes ms osborne yes mr oberg yes mr page yes motion carried nothing carries so again we are so pleased that due to this great financial report we're able to give our employees a bonus we are now ready for our next agenda item fsba policies and regulations ms osborne and mr alcaro will lead us in this yes so as a member of the virginia school boards association we get a say in their legislative um priorities and you saw those in your packet they are not controversial this year um and having read through them and talked with helen dunn about it those they seem like things that we would want to agree with and support i'm wondering if you guys have read through them and if you have any

168questions a lot of them are language based things like changing terminology from internships and apprenticeships calling those work based learning things like that that aren't going to have a much effect do we have any questions for ms osborne or miss delecaro on the regulations i think it's fair to say that ms osborne and i uh agree and support all of these okay could i have a motion i move that we uh approved the vsba policies and regulations as reviewed by mr alcaro and ms osborne uh for the general for the vsba delegate assembly next week i guess it'll be monday monday monday okay let's see our second back day cuffs um motion is there a second okay miss lee thank you all right so it's been moved and properly a second that we will approve

169the regulations presented by ms osborne and ms del caro any discussion on the motion if not miss johnston mr alcaro yes mr oberg yes miss lee yes dr acuff yes miss carlson yes ms osborne yes mr page yes ocean carriage all right thank you our next item on the agenda is the sustainability advisory committee this report will be given to us by dr acuff and vice chair carlson i guess i will start with this um colleagues i think most you may remember that in february on our february 13 2020 meeting this board approved the establishment of an advisory committee on sustainability that and and charged ms carlson and me to develop uh the substance of that committee i have to confess that it fell by the wayside through much of the pandemic and but we

170have once again met with both roslyn schmidt and lindsay snotty on this and we have a proposal to establish the committee which we will unless there's an objection called aces the advisory committee on environmental sustainability and that committee would be modeled substantially like our long-range planning committee is is modeled the mission will be largely to look at the very key areas where we can make an environmental impact in our buildings our buses and the education of our students and staff it will be to coordinate with the county which has just approved its climate action plan and ms snotty has already reached out to gabe daly who is the point person for compliance to the county's environmental plan and he's willing to work be a member of the committee and we would also have a commitment

171to work with more broadly with regional partners such as uva as it turns out uva the sustainability specialist at uva without prompting reached out to me this week to talk a bit to advise about a conference that i i went to webinar on net zero schools and so that's a whole topic but we would propose that we work to reduce to track or work to have our own guideposts in terms of environment uh sustainability um [Music] but it would require um well why don't you do the mechanics of it that's it yeah so in terms of the composition of the advisory committee what we were thinking um unless her objections is that every school board member would appoint a representative to the board presumably somebody that has a specialty which it is will be written

172in the thing somebody who has a specialty in environmental uh sustainability practices there will also be three department representatives selected by the superintendent with the idea that those will probably be from the three main kind of areas transportation building services and child nutrition where we we have um a lot of our issues coming up although that's not set in stone it will just be three appointees we are looking to have one student member selected hopefully to give our students some real time exposure and practice and potentially let them do some advocacy in the high schools and then we'll have a representative from the from the board of supervisors which i think although dianna mckeel has already volunteered for that but maybe they'll select someone we'll have a representative from the school board so one of

173us will hopefully be able to sit in on these meetings and then um uh who am i missing who am i missing that's that's basically it but we have it all typed up and you'll be able to read it but kate and i wanted to get it in front of you because once we get it posted we want to get it posted so we can start getting applications in so that come the beginning of the year you will have applicants who you can look through so that we can get people appointed um i can actually just paste in our composition paragraph that we have written into the chat so you guys can read through it but does anyone have any concerns or questions or about how we're thinking of to compose it and we want

174um we want them to report to the superintendent but also provide an annual report to us so that we have oversight over kind of what's going on thoughts thank you miss carlson and ms and dr akov thoughts questions thank you very much for taking that on or has it already been written or is it going to be written and posted was the it's been substantially written with some so kate and i have met um and we've met twice with lindsay and ruslan it's been substantially written i think there's some minor things pending y'all's feedback but in essence what we told you is the thing so if you haven't we should be able to have a final draft of that document no by monday i would say okay miss carlson has already posted it in the

175chat box right all right or at least part of it the composition part in case anybody had any questions about that but we did quite a lot of back and forth about what was an ideal number how many student reps and there's been a lot of conversation and thoughtful dialogue around why we want to do it like this although we're obviously open to suggestions if you have them oh there it is we didn't do it five minutes ago i didn't call kate five minutes ago and say let's come up no i mean i i would be interested in what our student rep would think about representing we talked about whether to have a student rep from each of the schools that started to feel unwieldy on or every three months and that sounded like you

176wouldn't get your teeth sunk into the issue but any input would be welcome david um i think the longer terms make sense um they can probably get more involved with an actual issue and maybe do something practical substantial um but i think um the more variation in students the better i mean getting greater diversity of the students is going to get you different perspectives um so i think doing one from each school uh might make sense and i think it just depends on the size of the board um to actually decide but um i think a longer term and the more students the better thank you david so i will say on the just the selling the marketing kate and i are really excited i hope you guys are as well just even having a

177conversation with kate myself rosalind and lindsay it was really exciting to think of the various things we can do to tackle sustainability and improve our climate impact which if you remember we were one of the that was one of our lowest scores when we had the consulting agency look at our schools um i mean i'll just throw out lindsay had this great idea which the the aces committee the aces will hopefully be able to to evaluate and see if it's good or not but she said you know we definitely have teachers that are passionate about the environment in each of our schools um and for example we have composting i know we've got a presentation on composting but there's not always high compliance with composting it really takes she said a teacher who's willing to

178stand there especially in the beginning of the school year for a few weeks to kind of teach students how do you separate your stuff so that it can be composted correctly and she was saying which i think is neat we should look at if we can do um a bonus just like we offer for coaches or people who are taking on extra things it would give our teachers a chance to take ownership over something and increase their um money and their salary and get to do something that they're probably passionate about anyway so anyway that was a great idea i'm excited about the work that they're going to do so appreciate the board support on it the the the sustainability director at uva sent me another email today and suggest well her kids went to

179i think greer i don't know where they are in the in the progression now but she said we've we and i we have done as a school division a lot in terms of um sustainability already and that i think most people are unaware of what we have done and that she suggested perhaps having you know town town halls or school meetings or or i have to reread her but something to sort of see where we are as a baseline and then start working toward making some improvements but i think there's a lot of activities we can do but we the next step is establishing this committee and get it rolling and i'm excited that after this long pause we are ready to go thank you too for bringing our ace aces um committee report to

180us if there are no objections uh we could put this on the consent agenda for our next meeting are there any objections to that hearing none the aces committee report will be on our um consent agenda for our december second meeting i do ask as a point of clarification for jennifer and i take perhaps this is on your mind as well so if we have general approval for it um and we can send you out the document in terms of just posting something to the website so we can start at least getting some applications it will still be open all throughout even after we get through the consent but i think the more time we can get people to apply and and um express interest the better is that gonna is that possible dave your

181procedural guy yeah it's not a problem as long as just i would term it in terms the school board is planning to okay so that would be the goal then is get it posted as soon as possible and then we can approve it in final form in the december meeting okay just one more issue and i would raise to the board and get input um we have student representative on the on the school board but it is not a voting member and this for the advisory committee i mean i think if it's a voting member then suddenly having four students if we want more representation that's that is a different dynamic than if we have one voting member or maybe it would be better not to have the student as a voting member i would

182love input on that i i'm just going to object to the extent that we're going to be doing a committee of the whole on something i i don't think this is the appropriate form my input would we we can leave it i think substantially similar to how we have it for now which is one student and if they decide it could be something different there they work out if that one student wants to be the liaison for other students i don't know but that i think can be worked out later okay all right so we are in uh agreement then that it will be on the consent agenda for the december meeting the first meeting in december correct all right moving to any other uh moving to our next item then is there any other

183business by our board members or by the superintendent any other business last call if not our meeting for november 11th is adjourned and we thank everyone who participated and gave us reports of any kind and also any of our listeners who listened in tonight so thank you all