School Board Meeting - July 8, 2021 - Full Video

001have a motion i do let me i have it in one of my tabs 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 one for the discussion consideration are interviews of prospective candidates for employment and the assignment appointment promotion performance demotion salaries disciplining our resignation of specific public officers appointees or employees of any public body second okay move by ms carlson second by ms lee that we go into closed session for the reasons listed ms johnston could you call the role please ms osborne yes mr alcaro yes miss carlson yes miss lee yes and mr page yes okay convene in closed session see you shortly see ya my so good afternoon it

002is now 6 31 and i called this july 8th meeting of the albemarle county school board to order um ms osborne do you have a motion from a closed session yes sir hey graham i think you have to certify first yes oh okay i can do that graham okay i i moved 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 authorizing the closed meeting or heard discussed are considered in the closed meeting exactly all right so move miss um carlson seconded by mr el carro that we mentioned whether that we approve that nothing was discussed in the closed meeting except for what the original motion

003it stated ms johnston could you call the role please mr alcaro yes ms carlson yes mr oberg yes miss lee yes ms osborne yes mr page yes motion carried motion cares and thanks mr oberg for calling that to my attention um now ms osborne yes sir i'm moved that we appoint the individuals selected by the staff to their respective administrative positions second second move by ms osborne second by ms lee that we accept all of the staff that have been appointed to administrative positions any discussion on the motion miss johnston ms carlson yes ms stroberg yes miss lee yes ms osborne yes mr alcaro yes mr page yes we will now have a moment of silence this statement has to be read in 10 minutes for each of our meetings that we are being that's

004being held electronically the minutes of this meeting should reflect that this meeting is being held electronically perceived to virginia state law and abamal 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 stream live on the alamo county public schools website and public comment may be offered through the zoom waiting room feature in accordance with the school board's protocol or by written submission it is now my pleasure to introduce our board members dr acuff is absent from today's meeting mr giano alcaro jono alcaro at large miss katrina carlson katrina calls in rio miss judy lee judy lee ryan district dave oberg dave volberg whitehall magisterial district helen osborne ellen osborne scottsville district

005i'm graham page samuel miller district and tonight we are very pleased to have a new student rep aj johnson aj um could you give us a few um introductory statements please um like a hello tell us what school you attend yeah uh community lab school okay all right aj and make sure that if you have that you feel that if you have anything that could contribute to our discussions during any part of the meeting that you make sure that you offer that information to us feel free to jump in at any time we will uh welcome you to our meeting as our student rep thank you could i now have a motion to approve our agenda for tonight's meeting i move that we approve the agenda second move by mr alcaro second by ms lee

006that we approve the agenda for the july 8th meeting ms johnston mr oberg yes miss lee yes ms osborne yes mr alcaro yes miss carlson yes mr page yes motion carried we need a motion to approve our consent agenda for tonight i move that we approve the consent agenda is there a second second move by ms del carro second by ms osborne that we approve the consent agenda in a discussion on the motion i had a question to ask about the um mask policy revision okay okay the same issue uh i've gotten a couple questions about just um the mitigation strategies uh referred to in the outdoor mask removal part of it uh what does that look like right now for instance dr haas or ms schmidt who's going to jump on that question i

007think we've got ms schmidt and also mr holden that could help you with that so i'm gonna let's go to rosalind first for the current state and then uh ross could address any questions about the policy can i make a point of order mr chair i think there's a motion before before the board typically what we do is pull the the concerned issue and then act upon the rest of the consent agenda and then come back to the thing that's been pulled okay we could do that i was thinking that there was a question on the motion but um we could hold in on the motion and then come back to this um to this item miss johnson could you call the role please on the motion um miss lee so i'm sorry dave do

008we need a separate a different motion then we just pulled that portion of the of the you're asking to approve the consent agenda with that item removed to be okay what she said was that she had a question on that motion she didn't ask to have remove it she just had a question which could be the same but anyway so if you want to discuss you just need to um have a motion prove the consent agenda minus that policy and then after you approve the consent agenda you can come back and talk about that policy i move that we approve the consent agenda uh less section 3.4 second okay it has been moved that we approved the consent agenda minus section 3.4 ms johnston could you call the world please ms osborne yes mr alcaro

009yes ms carlson yes mr oberg yes miss lee yes mr page yes mission carried thank you all right miss lee so you had um a question on item 3.4 right yeah it's just what the um other mitigation strategies are for uh the unmath students outside in this policy um so when we refer to mitigation strategies we know that redundancy and layers are key right so currently we focus on hand hygiene uh exclusion of some symptomatic students uh and and things along those orders so we felt like it was important to at least make acknowledgement of that net policy because just because we're outdoors doesn't mean other mitigation strategies go away i think the one specifically is distance is there a distance strategy yeah so the approach we're going to take to social distancing outside is

010we're going to instruct um students and staff to distance we're practical and so i'll take an example we take a class out to eat lunch for instance and they're out there for a while and they're in their static we would encourage and require distancing if kids are running around on a playground we don't want to isolate and and police that so they will likely not be when kids are active and moving around uh be truly socially distanced mr holden do you have additional information on uh ms lee's question no i think schmidt responded to it it was a general acknowledgement that there are mitigation strategies that we are using to um you know maintain the health of the school community as best as possible and we just wanted to make sure that that was acknowledged

011and remains part of our mission um mishma is there uh i know that we are enjoying really high vaccination rates in albemarle county and we have very low transmission rates currently um is there a situation in which uh there would be distancing on the playground say or um just in those situations that's um also in the language we made sure that we were in line with and i can't i don't have exactly in front of me with the exact language we use but we want to make sure we're aligned with the is the most recent guidance right and so we made this decision in alignment with our local health department and local public health officials and so we will remain in contact with them and if they advise that for instance community rates are getting

012high enough that we should be more concerned around outdoor transmission we would employ more social distancing but from a mass policy based on current community levels we feel like this is an appropriate exemption to grant okay thank you if i might i i would just like to say that i understand we've we're changing some of the mitigation policies as regarding temperatures and things like that and i know that there have been um some learned people who have communicated with us about changing the mask policy i'm going to vote i want to vote for it this evening but i would like to have uh this brought up again i mean this is a fluid situation and i think we all are very well aware of that and and agree with it and so i don't want

013this to just go into uh to be approved and then not revisit it again and i would like to to make sure that we're revisiting it uh right around the time if not before maybe in our august first august meeting or our second august meeting and then on a fairly regular basis just to see where we are on this issue and the other mitigation uh issues i agree with agino and i think it's going to be an issue i mean i i hope that by the time you and i go off the board it will be in a situation where they're like what are you talking about but i suspect for for a period of time we're going to have to just be on this all the time right you know and one of the

014one thing along those lines is you know i've been talking with several people who have said you know the the cope it's over and and i bring up the uh wisdom of yogi berra which is you know it ain't over until it's over and if if we you're really not over tell i sing jono oh boy well hold off on that then but um 182 people died you know yesterday and i and i would submit that their families don't think it's over this is across the country and i know as judy said we're very lucky where we are right now but with the variants coming through um the others were 15 000 people who who got new cases and i i totally acknowledged the fact that they were not most of them were not vaccinated

015but i just think this is something that we have to stay on top of and uh and understand it's a fluid situation i agree with with uh mr alcaro and mitch schmidt whenever um the state issues new guidelines uh you would be making us aware of and sort of revising our policy in guidance with those new state guidelines too right absolutely so the current um public health order is meant to be temporary nature it was effective july 1st and it is set to expire july 25th and we are being advised that additional guidance will be issued so we will absolutely bring back any necessary changes as new guidance is released okay all right thank you any other discussion so we do need a motion then to approve agenda item 3 4. i move that we

016approve a consent agenda item 3.4 second moved by mr um alcaro ii by mr oberg that we approve agenda item 3-3-4 on our mass policy uh miss johnston could you please call the roll miss lee yes miss osborne yes mr alcaro yes ms carlson yes mr oberg yes mr page yes mission carried thank you it's my um privilege or well honor to introduce our um spotlight on education tonight and we have three people that we are presenting as our special guest um tonight i'd like to begin by reading a letter to mr nathan carter dear nathan among the values to which our school division will be committed over the next five years are two that are middle immediately come to mind when thinking about your recent service to our school division equity and family and

017community these are timeless values and necessary ones if a school division is to be an exceptional performer for students employees and in the broader community the best decisions are those that welcome and call upon the wisdom judgment and participation of as many voices as possible the pandemic that brought a temporary halt to in-person meetings of our school board more than a year ago introduced high barriers to collaboration it complicated face-to-face communications and it increased the urgency for us to update information that's when we all came to appreciate the behind the scenes quiet and troubling troubleshooting conferences competence that you brought to our meetings as the professional professional who opened increased online access to our constituents we saw attendance at our meetings go from a few dozen to several hundred and on one occasion more than

018one thousand as we move through important decisions on health and safety on policies on budget issues on equity and on our strategic plan the engagement of our community now transferred to the whole on world online world nearly was flawless on behalf of our school board and on behalf of all those families students and community partners that increased their knowledge and interaction with our school school division we are grateful for your work thank you for your foundational help in leading the way to more inclusive and meaningful meaningful connections between the decision makers and those who benefit from the most informed of decisions we look forward to continuing this important work with you thank you very much nathan so let's give nathan a round of applause here well thank you guys i appreciate it it's been my

019pleasure thank you mr carter our next two individuals are those in our county who received the mcintyre prize for this year it was nearly 100 years ago that one of our state's most successful business and community leaders paul g mcintyre said that culture and education is a means to improve the quality of life in an increasing technological world a statement made by the way about 70 years before the iphone was invented mr mcintyre established an award to encourage high school seniors to be leaders in promoting a better quality of life for future generations the mcintyre prize has been a part of albemarle county high school graduations since before franklin d roosevelt was president of the united states this is a pretty impressive figure fewer than 200 of the more than 500 000 students who have

020come through our school doors have received this award this evening we have two with us our award winners for this year nahomi medina roman is an all mile high school graduate and andrew sein is a graduate of western alamo high school i really valued what nahomi said about leadership that you need to be a good listener team player and always be focused on the goal her advice for us on the board is to keep supporting students she tells us that students need someone they can trust someone who will listen without being judgmental that's very useful advice for anyone even those who are not school board members let's me even more impressive about this young lady is that she came to our county a few years ago with her focus very much on her goal of

021completing all of her high school education in three years and that's exactly what happened now she's in a program to become a pharmacy technician she says she learned about the importance of this service from a family member who depends upon life-saving medication leaderships come easily to our other special guests during his career at western andrew was a class officer and vice president of the student executive council but probably his most unusual claim to fame occurred not in a classroom but on the water andrew was captain of the school's championship rowing team and a state champion himself you don't often see someone who is 6'5 in a boat pulling over us but andrew insisted he that was his secret weapon asked about how one wins the mcintyre prize he says engagement is important as his dedication

022to problems problem solving being a positive influence on others and always welcoming newcomers he will be taking these exceptional equalities across the country later this summer when he begins his college studies at cal poly please welcome our two student leaders beginning with nahomi i'd like to ask both to share some thoughts with us on leadership and goals and perhaps office offer us a little advice so first nihomi we're pleased to have you with us mrs johnston is new homie with us um it was i don't see let's see um it looks like they're gone out of the meeting okay both of them um andrew anderson andrew okay oh yeah no no homie is back okay okay new homie yeah okay all right so um please give us some remarks um wait i i'm lost uh

023my computer just took me out of the meeting so i don't know what we are talking about right now okay we are talking about you receiving the mcintyre award okay and um any advice or any type of remarks or anything related to that that you would like to bring to the board well i will say um that the teacher supports me too much um i'm very thankful to them and i will say to um that as a student i think we need to match the teacher support so i would advise that the teachers keep supporting the students and talking to them and try to get closer to their students okay thank you so much nihomi you're welcome any questions or comments from our board members for nahomi um no one great job thank you yeah

024we really congratulate you on receiving the award congratulations on sorry i apologize for for saying that poorly i was there when you received it uh at graduation and uh you just looked so proud so happy and i know your family is so proud uh for you and happy for you thank you all right andrew hi thank you all for having us tonight um i am very honored to receive the award and honored to be here um over my four years i found myself and definitely some um odd leadership roles that i didn't see coming in a lot of ways both formal and informal and i'm really um honored to have those and to be able to have the opportunity to speak with um with you all tonight my leadership philosophy on my own is simple

025um to lead with respect and transparency um obviously i think that respect um for each other and just in general is of the most importance and sometimes we kind of skim past it um and when things get heated we can lose it and i just um that's something that like i feel like on my own when i'm reflecting upon my experiences in leadership is something that i want to continue um going forward and transparency is kind of i mean i'm sure you've like heard respect before but transparency i found to be really um important when i'm like when i'm working with the team and um is kind of my i don't know that's my advice or recommendation um but that's what i've found is really important in my own leadership roles um i just i

026think it's essential to a strong team and so that members can have a full clear picture of the situation and goals they're working towards um i'm sure that you've probably found found similar um similar success or similar um importance to these two things um but over my four years i've learned that no matter how hostile situation may be or quickly tensions rise um to remember simply in your decisions and actions to put empathy first i'd like to believe that we all mean well at heart and that human nature is to care for one another and watch out for each other um so don't let i tell my self not to forget that and i guess that's my my recommendation is to keep that at heart and keep that in the forefront of all of our

027decisions when we make those listen to each other when we share experiences remember to watch out for each other in our interactions and in decisions i've found that the students that i've been around and that our students in general are brave and resilient especially in this in this past year um and i think just that's my recommendation what i've found to be successful um and to just keep keep in mind how important it is to keep our spaces in which we learn um spaces that are safe and inclusive where students are able to be treated equally and with compassion thank you so much for those very profound remarks andrew thank you very much uh any questions or our comments were answered i i would like to share that i've known mr simes since miss pam's

028music uh 13 years ago and um they say that a tree can be judged by the quality of its fruit and andrew archery has done something right because you you're a great guy and i wish you all the best uh thank you very much endeavors i think you're going to be awesome thank you mr oberg i think you really speak well or speak the sentiments of the entire board really even though we don't know andrew as well as you do but thank you and thank you both andrew and nahomi for being here with us tonight and again we congratulate you on receiving the mcintyre leadership awards thank you both thank you very much thank you we will now have announcements and i know that mrs collins has one announcement from the cabinet thank you uh

029chair page thank you so much good evening i'm debbie collins deputy superintendent i'm pleased to share with you some information about our summer learning for this week the start of our pre-k through 8 programming our morning session sessions have approximately 1 640 students attending our afternoon sessions which are being run by our community partners uh has about 1 240 students enrolled our high school summer youth course programming our traditional high school summer school has approximately 1065 students enrolled in addition for grades 9 through 12 we have 200 students coming to complete courses from the previous spring all of these numbers are higher than previous summer programming numbers we will bring to you a full report in the fall with more detailed informations but i wanted to give you uh the these numbers they're strong numbers

030and we're pleased with the number of students that are engaging in summer learning finally i'd like to invite you uh to stop by at our elementary middle or high schools to see its students and teachers in action summer learning continues through the month of july thank you okay thank you ms collins any questions on any of the information presented to us by ms collins okay then thank you very much for that update on our summer school program i don't think there is any other uh announcements right from school board of superintendent all right so we're now down to public comment vice chair carlson public comment sorry i'll go ahead and begin by reading the public comment guidelines the school board invites and actively seeks the public's input in the matters relevant to school board governance

031and provides for time during its business meetings to hear from albemarle county residents and community members as authorized by ordinance of the county of albemarle the school board will hold its meetings electronically during the coven 19 pandemic the school board is committed to encouraging public comment despite its need to meet on a virtual basis and 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 are sent to the school board directly prior to the start of the meeting or really anytime that works for you and will be given to all of the school board members for review second as long as the school board holds its meetings electronically members of the public wishing to provide public comment during

032the meeting may sign up online by 1 pm the day of the meeting um so instructions have been provided for our speakers today but for the courtesy of our observers we do have a new process not everyone is in our meeting right now there'll be three speakers at a time three in the waiting room and we will rotate through as we get through all 40 speakers i will add that for our speakers please be paying attention to the zoom meeting not just the live stream because there's often a delay that can cause some confusion so before let's see um so speakers during the meeting are those submitting written comments should state their name and address are the magisterial district speakers should limit comments to those matters that are relevant to school board governance are the

033operations of the school division as a reminder the clerk has the ability to disconnect the speaker who is disruptive per feign or fails to abide by these guidelines for orderly discourse speakers have two minutes to speak i will try to notify you when you have one minute left please be paying attention to the time um and lastly although the school board will not respond to comments made during the public comment period school board members may address comments and often do at the end of the meeting agenda under other business so with that and i would add for those online that please be gracious with us because this is the first time we're doing it this way so the first three speakers which i'm assuming are already in our meeting are going to be matthew merzojuski

034sandra holbrook and um matthew holbrook so mister oh yeah matthew murray he you're up if you're if you're ready can you hear me yep my name is matt mirzieski from the whitehall district with a henley student i've spoken on recent school board meetings regarding courageous conversations pilot program and lack of transparency after the june 10th meeting many school board members noted that they were not familiar with content and curriculum presented in the pilot program so i asked the members of the school board have you had a chance to review the powerpoints and speak to dr costa regarding the program have you reviewed uh quantitative data for the program was it a success love to hear soon a vote will take place behind closed doors to decide if this pilot program content available open public surveys

035and forms to discuss the materials and findings these requests in my personal opinion are a simple measure to engage parents and community members in a review of the subject matter dr oz i also inquired about a response to the petition recently and was originally assured that quote the henley advisory is a pilot subject of in-depth evaluation and assessment will continue in the summer there'll be opportunities for parents to review any proposals that come out of the review and offer feedback before any decisions are made about the future structure of our anti-racist advisory lesson plan since the petition request for public review has been ignored or denied i'm not sure i'm personally requesting clarity on these two promises and please comment at the end of this session if you could so that all 420 plus signature

036signatures of the petition can hear it directly number one please share the details of your in-depth evaluation and assessment with the community and parents of the pilot program and number two clearly outline how parents in the community can get involved what are the opportunities for proposal of feedback before decisions are made about the anti-racism advisory lessons the fact that we've exceeded our limit for public comment on this meeting means we need more transparency and dialogue on this topic and i ask and request for those opportunities to be clearly stated and made by the board thank you thank you very much for those comments sir the next speaker will be sandra holbrook hi there hi hi um i just want to say the next speaker my husband he's not able to make it but he notified

037the board as soon as he received it that uh he was caught up at work and couldn't make it and ask that it be given to someone else thank you for letting us know you can go ahead with your comments now okay my name is sandra holbrook i'm in the ravana district i'm a parent of three children in albemarle county in light of emerging research i'm extremely concerned about the prolonged use of masks in children since march 2020 we know more about covid it has been established that the virus itself does not have the same impact on children as it does adults and children are not the drivers of the disease data from the blue ridge health district supports this there have been a total of nine children under the age of 10 hospitalized during

038the last 16 months and zero deaths under the age of 40 from covet in the blue ridge health district although children are the least likely to get seriously ill from covet they are the ones that have suffered the most by the restrictions we placed on them emerging research shows the benefits of masks especially in children may not necessarily outweigh the risks a 42-page study that i sent to each one of you from the international journal of environmental research and public health highlights the effects of prolonged mass use such as increase in heart rate skin temperature and dermatological conditions decrease in oxygen saturation rates dizziness impaired thinking and concentration and increase in fatigue levels the study reports after only two hours of wearing the mask the pathogen density increases tenfold in experimental observational studies our kids

039are not wearing these masks in a sterile surgical setting as a result they are literally walking around with a petri dish on their face these are only the physiological consequences the psychological consequences may even be of greater harm and are yet to be fully determined especially since our local mental health services are overwhelmed with acps students initially children were made to wear masks to protect staff members we are past that phase as every single adult has free access to the vaccine we can unmask our children and still keep our kids safe by continuing with some common sense mitigation strategies such as air purification increased time outdoors limiting shared materials and not allowing children with symptoms to come to school those that wish to continue to wear a mask should be free to do so the

040mass requirements for our children need to be lifted before more harm is done both physiologically and psychologically thank you for the those comments ms holbrook and i really do hope that your husband is not here we will move to the next we'll move to the next three speakers which will be tony bruno daniel mays and sharon flynn tony bruno has not joined the meeting okay so i'll put a note and come back to him at the end if he if he pops up in the waiting room daniel mays who i think i saw on earlier my name is daniel mays i'm the father of two children a resident of the white hall district and as many parents do i want our children to learn and grow in a safe welcoming environment which is free of

041any kind of discrimination like most people i want to see the eradication of racism and prejudice of any kind uh despite acps's good intentions with the implementation of its anti-racist policy courageous conversations and culturally responsible teaching i strongly disagree with its methods of fighting discrimination with more discrimination children should be taught personal responsibility and that hard work and effort is the key to a good life and that race is not a factor there are far too many successful americans of all races and creeds which disproves the idea that the color of one's skin is a detriment to one's success teaching anti-racism like privilege and the other ideas of critical race theory has no place in k-12 education it just creates resentment and division and serves no good purpose i urge the school board to take

042into consideration the objections to the anti-racist policy courageous conversations in crt thank you thank you for those comments the next speaker is going to be miss sharon flynn i did see her on flynn if you can hear us your turn is now okay i will go ahead and put a note to come back she is in the meeting though and she is not muted so jennifer i don't know if you can mute her and send her a message to let her know that it's her turn um she was just it looked like she was just connecting to her audio can you hear us okay in the interest of time i will note and miss flynn if you can't hear us i will um cycle back but for now mr john smith if you are in

043here you are the next speaker not logged into the meeting i need to get a better system than my little color coding because it's getting confusing come back they're not in here go back she is okay not in yet yes miss flynn is that you yes it is okay great so let's go ahead and do you now um and i'll put a note to come back to mr smith if he shows up in the waiting room okay thank you it's my observation that some children and parents have had negative experiences with courageous conversations and they're trying to share constructive feedback with the county to make it more inclusive to all as part of this curriculum our children are being taught to be activists told to speak out loud when they disagree many kids watched parents

044speak out at the last meeting only to be doxed on social media by a group ironically called hate free schools coalition of elmer children saw parents listed by name and labeled quote a threat to all children one woman promoted contact with employers of the parents to wrap them out as bigots this was after these parents asked for a pause in the roll out of this curriculum after sharing real experiences with bullying confusion shame invasion of privacy and feeling unsafe at henley for the sake of our children i ask this school board and the community to be inclusive and kind to children who are uncomfortable putting labels on themselves and their friends who are uncomfortable deconstructing their identity or discussing sexuality with teachers and peers consider instances where kids are feeling shamed like a mixed race

045child or white child living at the poverty level what's the real takeaway for children who are being taught to be activists that they should only speak up if their opinion matches that of their teachers or else that's what children parents and even many teachers are observing right now will you pause listen and take feedback or is it true that some kids feelings and vulnerabilities are more important to you than others if you really listen i don't think you'll hear opposition to teaching kids about role of racism in u.s history you'll hear the kids already do acknowledge and accept peers with differences dr costa even said herself that when asked about accounts of racism at henley the biggest problem was school is too white when i asked my own son about his observations at henley he

046said mom i'd like everyone if they're nice i don't care if a boy likes a boy dresses like a girl or has different color skin we play soccer recess with anyone who's nice it reminded me a lot of dr martin luther king's message about looking at a person's content of character not their skin color it appears now that with social justice being paramount to academics our kids are being taught what to think not how to think and anyone with an alternative view will be forsaken it's not too late to press the pause button collect input and work together with parents students and teachers to affect a united goal thank you so much for those comments miss flynn thank you time the next speaker will be sherdon jenks who i believe i saw on and following

047that will be marie merzichewski and eric schmitz so chardon i see that you're on and you are not muted i can hear me it's your turn to speak i worry that what might be causing this is people are listening to the live stream um and so they don't know when they actually get called to speak so if you're you are listening to the live stream and when you hear this in a few seconds please pay attention to the zoom meeting so that you know when your name is called so miss murzajuski if you are on we can go ahead and listen to your public comment now and i'll come back to shirt on okay thank you so much thank you for having me school board um um i wanted to say thank you for listening

048to all of the concerns i know it sounds like it was um a big deal that you guys have had this many comments um i think i've read something like it's been over a decade since you've had to do a lottery so clearly there's a lot of concern and i'm grateful for you guys um hearing what we're saying and taking into consideration um i want to be very clear i'm never for discrimination of any kind i have a sibling themselves that would not um be considered they wouldn't fall into the very white cisgender category okay i'm not racist i'm not a bigot i'm not any of those things however i may not ascribe to the same liberal ideology that many of the people that are okay with this liberal agenda are for we must protect

049all students but all means all right all so i have a question that i'd like an answer for and i want to be clear this is not a redundant question i actually want an answer for this what does acps plan to do when teaching courageous conversations conflicts with the teachers when it conflicts with the teacher's moral conscience what happens when a practice saying muslim catholic anglican mormon refuses to present material that includes words such as cisgender transgender etc all of these religions and many more teach that god created two genders only how will you deal with such a situation it would violate basic religious liberty you guys if there is not set provisions in place that allow for the many teachers who do not agree with gender fluidity to be forced into conversations such as

050these so again i ask where is the place for the many teachers who are already concerned that are going to have to teach this next year where is this truly safe place for them also how are we going to be handling bathrooms so that all children feel safe those that would identify as transgender but those that would identify as cisgender and are not comfortable sharing a bathroom with something of the opposite sex regardless of how they identify i think if you guys ascribe to your humanness can go back to your middle school years most middle schoolers don't want to share bathrooms with people of the opposite sex regardless of how they identify miss thank you thank you thank you for providing your comments the next speaker will be actually um sherdon jenks if you are

051on it'll be easier for me to take you off the list now but still nothing okay the next speaker will be eric schmitz is not in the meeting okay the following speaker will be john bryce um that's my husband and he actually was not in from the waiting room okay thank you for letting us know that we will go ahead and admit him and you are actually the next speaker miss bryce so he's in the meeting oh he is okay um there's just no other baby right now so he's gonna have to go later miss bryce how about if is he in your house he isn't his audio is not connecting so how about you give your comments and then maybe he can hop on your camera and give his comments after that so i'm

052gonna go ahead and start your timer now okay thanks my name is meg bryce and i have four kids in the samuel miller district i want to speak about the proposed policy on the treatment of transgender and gender expansive students i too feel that we need a policy that protects all students and that recognizes the dignity of all students however um there's one aspect of this proposal that i feel sets a precedent that should concern all parents regardless of how you feel about the rest of the proposal so i want to draw everyone's attention to the section on privacy and confidentiality um this says that the school should ascertain the level of support the student receives at home and if the student doesn't want the school to contact the parents then the school should respect

053that request for privacy but let us be clear these are our children these are minors if you intentionally keep something from me about my child i don't think that's in the name of privacy i think that's secrecy and i'm sure that there are many people here who would say well i trust my teachers and i trust the administrators at our school to handle this i do too we have loved our teachers and our administrators and i feel incredibly lucky but um i don't i don't know who my kids teachers and administrators will be forever i don't know who they'll be in two years and five years and 10 years and if i'll trust them so regardless of how you feel about this policy i ask you to please consider the precedent that would be set

054here are you comfortable with the school being able to keep things from you about your child would you still be comfortable if somebody on the opposite side of the political spectrum had the right to keep things from you about your child if that were the person at the school who are making these calls because you may like this policy but you may not like another policy a few years down the road and you will have set a dangerous precedent here today so um i'm optimistic that we can come together on this and we can find a compromise we can write a policy that protects students but that also respects the rights of parents thank you so much for those comments um mrs brett nice oh i do see your husband now he's muted i don't

055know why i spoke louder when i say that as if it makes a difference but mr bryce you're muted yeah i'm good now you hear me sorry about that i was holding our two-month-old baby so we can only need two of us for that job so uh okay uh i'm john brice from samuel miller and i'm here to comment on the acps draft policy on the treatment of transgender and gender expansive students the 35-page draft policy greatly oversteps what is required by virginia law this draft policy still needs a lot of work and should be reformed with input from a diverse group of acps parents rather than a small group with a political agenda the idea that acps doesn't need to inform parents of a student's desire to transition or of a student's desire to

056exist as a different gender at school is alarming referring parents to child protective services when a student deems their home unsafe isn't unique to the treatment of transgender students these protections already exist and don't belong in this policy specifically calling out those protections in the policy sets the precedent that cps has the right to oversee the moral and religious views of parents the idea that same-sex bathrooms and locker rooms can be used by students who identify as that sex regardless of biological gender is a recipe for disaster the idea that male student athletes that a male student athlete should compete against female student athletes just because the male student athlete identifies as female is both unfair and demeaning to female student athletes i'm requesting that you form a committee comprised of a diverse group of

057acps parents to guide the rework of the draft policy and restrict the policy's reach to only what is required by state law thank you for your kind attention thank you for those comments mr brace the next three speakers just so people are ready are going to be stacy williams ryan looney and chris hunty ericle or urkel so stacy williams if you are on it's your turn to speak nope he was just the one okay i will put a little note and i will try again a minute speaker okay let's give her a second miss johnston while we're waiting chardon is still in the meeting right now and unmuted and i'm not sure what's going on it might be worth um sending him a message or i'm putting him back in the waiting room and then

058see if we can reintroduce when we when we call him i can move him to the bottom of the list as miss williams is still connecting to audio and it's taking a bit um mr looney ryan looney if you were on or miss looney if you were on hi there yes i am ryan looney i'm in the white hole magisterial district um thanks for hearing my comments tonight um like some of the previous speakers i was motivated to speak up by an email from an organization called care i don't know who's behind them they hide behind anonymous leadership dog whistles misinformation and a call to be nice when speaking i fully support the uh short not 35 page draft of the trans transgender policy and i believe it is a moral imperative to protect trans

059and gender expansive students as student speaker andrew syme said earlier in the meeting put empathy first these simple policies provide the support and protection trans kids need the 2017 school climate survey tells us that 83 percent of trans kids felt unsafe at school every day and 85 percent had been harassed or assaulted the american academy of pediatrics states that policies exclusionary to trans kids have detrimental effects on their physical and mental health trans kids aren't something theoretical they are our living breathing friends and neighbors and they deserve to be treated with respect and given the promise of a safe inclusion inclusive education school schools with policies similar to the draft uh that we've been seeing prior to this meeting do not have problems with bathrooms locker rooms or athletics this policy threatens no one and

060benefits many thank you for those comments um miss looney the next speaker actually i will check real quick is stacy williams back in and that's our audio connected no so we will move on to um chris hanthia urkel where i see miss circle when you're ready hope you're muted hi sorry about that um i have four children in the public in the public school district in the samuel miller district and um i want to say that i agree wholeheartedly with daniel mays and his objections to the crt and the courageous conversation for a variety of reasons that two minutes doesn't enable me to address but you know obviously i am against racism in every in every form equality is is is yes but equity is not what it's talking about equity is about a socio

061socio-economic ideology and that's really what um this is shrouded in is a socio-economic ideology so we say yes to equality everybody is equal in value but if crt is pushing a socio-economic ideology that is very contentious i i disagree with that i disagree with the public uh money the funds our tax dollars being used to push such an ideology because it is highly contentious we do not all as parents agree with it and my my question is what happened to the separation of church and state i believe the crt being pushed is a violation of the understanding of the separation of church and state which says um you know you you cannot impose your beliefs on others these are our children that we're sending to the public school system every day and i believe that

062the school system is trying to utilize this platform this position of power to push a belief system that people do not believe in and i do not have spoken to many many parents who do not believe in this it is highly contentious it is ideological and it is not the place for the public school system to push this um the metoo movement we don't like it why because people use their platform and their position of power to push something on those that are weaker i have evidences of screenshots of blm flags on the screens of teachers um that's okay for you to push that but that is a political ideological movement that a lot of people disagree with but children have been blocked when they have chosen to put conservative paraphernalia on and that circle

063yeah miss erica your time is up so i just wanted to conclude your time is up your your time is up their conclusion is over miss williams i saw that you were on and that you're um we're moving around i thought i heard you for a bit so if you're ready to speak now we will go ahead and get your comment yeah i just wanted to speak to lgbtq and um inclusion policy i think it's imperative that that this is pushed forward with uh transgender um suicide rates of 50 it's um it is it is um absolutely imperative that that they feel that the place that they were in for 40 hours a week um is a safe space for them um you know as as far as some of the nuances i mean if

064if they are living in a home that does not support them if they can have some people that they can discuss it with when they are in school obviously those people are not ones who are making medical decisions for them medical choices um and and not going to be pushing any sort of agenda forward but they need to be able uh the lgbtq um kids need to be able to feel that they are in a safe space when they are at school thank you miss williams for those comments the next speaker will be mary nacey who i see on and just as a heads up to the one that's coming up next will be laura breeden and then jason c so miss macy whenever you're ready okay excellent thank you um i'm mary neesey i

065am the parent of four students in the white hall district um i would like to add my voice in support of the policy on the treatment of trans gender and gender expansive students and i'd like to express my gratitude for the work done by the administration and staff to create this policy people in the lgbtq community aren't faceless theories there are people in our community they're our neighbors our colleagues our teachers and the families of our children and of our children's friends and they're our friends as well they're people we interact with every day and notable to this form they are our children they are the friends of our children they are the schoolmates of our children and the teammates of our children they are the children that we have known since elementary school or

066preschool or in some cases even from birth they are children that we have babies at that we have taken to play groups and we have read to on rainy afternoons they are children we have prayed with and laughed with and cried with and they are children that we have watched grow up they are children that we would guard with our own lives at least it seems until they start to develop their own identities and question where they fit which is exactly when they need us the most we need to do better than that so thank you school board members for recognizing that the comfort of some should never come at the cost of the lives of others especially the lives of our children thank you for your time thank you very much for those comments

067ms macy the next speaker will be laura breden hi thank you i'm in the white hall district um according to the acps policy the role of the school board is to approve the curriculum and learning resources used in the school division and to communicate with various constituencies to receive input and gather support for public education these criteria have not been met regarding the ccar curriculum several school board members stated at last month's meeting they did not know much about the curriculum the way this has been handled was seemingly little care for all voices to be heard make so many of us skeptical and lacking trust this curriculum will segregate and divide our children and community it puts race over the value of the individual with a focus on outward identity instead of an individual's characteristics

068we teach our children that god cares about our hearts not the color of our skin this curriculum will teach children and encourage them to be victims and emotionally fragile giving them an excuse to look for reasons to be offended instead of assuming the good intentions of others more importantly this curriculum is built to become between parent and child giving school administrators teachers and counselors power and control over very sensitive aspects of our children's lives this is just unethical and wrong romans 16 17 says i urge you brothers and sisters to watch out for those who cause divisions keep away from them i'm asking you to please educate yourselves more broadly on the subjects you're addressing and voting on pause the rollout of the curriculum and strategic plan and hold town hall meetings to address the

069concerns of your constituents please do not ignore the concerns of the citizens who elected you thank you very much for those comments miss breedon the next speaker is jason cic is already unmuted mr c when you're ready thank you good evening i'm jason c and i have three kids attending schools in the whitehall district and i'm speaking tonight in support of the proposed transgender policy the purpose of baltimore county schools is to provide education to students that live within the district there are no exceptions based on race gender sexual orientation orientation or gender expression the policy on the treatment of transgender students exists to protect these students that are already in our schools and students who have been in our schools for generations now finally a policy has been produced to provide these students with

070the respect and protection that they deserve we know that the rate of suicide among transgender use is really high more than half have seriously considered it adults especially our educators who are accepting make a huge difference trans youth with supportive families experience a 52 percent decrease in suicidal thoughts and a 46 drop in suicide attempts transgender students in schools with supportive policies are less likely to miss school due to feeling unsafe and they are more likely to feel belonging to their school's communities nationwide only nine percent of transgender students say that their communities are accepting we know that transgenders kids who have experienced acceptance in this community that we live in i like to think that albemarle is capable of being different of showing students respect of committing to a safe and nurturing educational environment

071in which all our kids can learn and succeed i support this policy with my whole heart and i hope the entire board will too thank you so much for those comments mr richard i mean excuse me mr c i didn't realize i was unmuted during that so i hope i wasn't providing any interruption um the next speaker will be mr richardson who i see on he's floating in space right now um with his background mr richardson we're ready for your comments when you are and as a heads up for the next speak yep as a heads up for the next speakers it will be ollie macy and ayana carter mr richardson you may start thank you very much she says my name is warren richardson i have a new son of only four months old

072so i have some time before he ends up in school but i have become concerned about some of the teaching that i see that's being taught in elmore county school and in particular dr kennedy's doctrine of anti-racism which is a complete reversal of conventional morality it has no basis in reality yet it's being taught as if it were factual i believe that racism is a bad thing always but the doctrine of anti-racism teaches that properly directed racism is not only permissible but it's essential in order to right the wrongs of the past this so-called anti-racism is a revolutionary doctrine turning the very definition of racism on its head i don't believe it is appropriate for school officials to teach as truth a concept upon which society has not reached anything like a consensus indeed the

073doctrines of systemic racism preached by dr candy are oversimplified and easily disproven by statistical theta his racial theories represent a secular religion more than they do science and i will not have religion shoved down my child's throat anti-racism is racism racism is evil and i will not have my children taught to commit evil i have the ability to homeschool my son but many people do not and rely on public education the mission of public education itself is threatened by the teaching of radical leftist political doctrine as if it were factual our children needed education based on facts not an indoctrination based on dr candy's racist fantasies finally i would like to thank the organizers of citizen care for organizing the parents of el morrow county against this misguided and radical political campaign imposed upon our

074children now that concerned parents have been awakened to this campaign of misinformation i'm confident that we will be able to restore sanity to public education thank you very much the next speaker will be olly nacey who i did see hello hi when you're ready you can go ahead and search your comments hello my name is olly natesey i'm a ninth grader in the whitehall district and i'm speaking in favor of the transgender and gender expansion protection policy i am cisgender i will never experience the hardships the trans people go through i will never be bullied for being trans i will never be asked are you really a girl or what's your real name because i am seen as who i am a girl but trans people don't have that privilege they won't always get to

075be who they are and for that reason cisgender people have no right to decide what trans people can and cannot do cisgender people cannot decide whether or not trans people are real cisgender people cannot claim that transphobia doesn't exist in a space because they wouldn't know but that doesn't mean that we cannot support transgender people as a cisgender person it's my job to support and stand up for trans people and help them in every way that i can back in early last year i wrote an article in my newspaper class this article explained various sexual orientations and more relevantly various gender identities i wrote this article not only to educate students who are unaware of certain terms but also to educate students who were taught false definitions and false false stereotypes of those terms recently

076that article was discovered by adults who disagreed with it and what i was saying the article was spread around and eventually mentioned on a national conservative news outlet this shows that it's not just students that we have to protect trans students from but also adults bias false ideas and stereotypes all lead to bullying and harassment and it's more common than people realize more than half of surveyed transgender youth said that they at some point seriously considered killing themselves not because of being transgender but because of how they were treated because of it this policy could lower those numbers and save the lives of trans youth and acps those who are cisgender and against the policy shouldn't get to determine the outcome because it doesn't affect them they are posing out of hate trans students have

077as much of a right to a safe education as anyone else and measures should be taken to assure that that is how it stays thank you for those comments miss macy and i always take a second to say thank you so much for coming to speak as a student we appreciate hearing your voice the next speaker will be ayanna carter and as a heads up after that will be holly duke and then seth oldham so ayanna i saw on yes i'm here great we can go ahead and start when you're ready okay um so first off i want to say that i appreciate the responsibilities you all have agreed to take on and i truly believe that most of you really just want what's best for our kids um but the policy as it stands

078i don't believe is going to accomplish that number one it's incredibly troubling to read that the school is giving itself the power to assist children with hiding things from parents based on their own interpretations of situations if the school believes their abuse issues at home cps should be called and someone with the knowledge and authority to handle this situation should be allowed to do so we pay taxes and give our trust to enable our schools to educate our kids in a safe environment but we do not agree to sign over our rights as parents the moment kids enter school grounds secondly in the hearing for the court case that you all list as being part of the basis for these policies it clearly states the statistical fact that 0.7 of teenagers identify as transgender or

079gender expansive that means that for me personally as a parent of students at henley western and brownsville that means less than 10 10 students at henley and approximately 10 students at western may identify as the group that this policy is being created for so we're saying that those eight to ten individuals are more deserving of our whole consideration than the other nine to twelve hundred students whose feelings won't matter as much if the given policy is put forth as it stands the primary issues from myself and my children who attend these schools the rules involving the bathroom locker room overnights and sports as it stands the policy states that students may use the bathroom locker room they want to based on the gender they consistently assert at school even if it changes from day to

080day what makes it consistently inserted asserted where are those guidelines i don't see this anywhere else in the policy and really those places are segregated based on sex not gender and that's how they should be how are the feelings of the male students being forced to undress in front of a person with female body parts dealing with said person walking in as they are exposed to the urinal or girls being forced to undress in front of persons with male body parts being taken into consideration i also feel the fear that faculty will be made to feel powerless for fear of being fired for hurting someone's feelings and will stand by as kids who are not mature enough to make good conscious conscientious decisions take advantage ms carter i'm sorry your time is up um thank

081you so much for providing comment um the next speaker will be holly duke who i see on and unmuted ready to go hi uh thank you i'm holly duke i am the mother of a seventh grader in elmoral county in the ravana district and i wanted to speak in support of the strategic plan especially as it values equity and promotes anti-racism in education i am convinced that my own lack of an accurate education in american history um left me diminished and it was shrouded in white supremacy and it not only left me diminished it left my community diminished and we must do better for our children we can do better um the inequities addressed in a report should be a wake-up call for all of us the racial disparities in graduation rates and access to

082gifted education and in school suspension are not up for debate they're real they are not an ideology um and it's past time to take action so as the plan continues to take shape um i hope to see more detailed information on the financial investment and the resources that will be provided to families who we have failed in this community i'll be eager to see how families and students will be informed clearly on their rights and supported as they navigate the systems of enforcement for these policies um and i see that as unique from the effort of educating white folks about racism um so i think this only works if we see real financial investment in helping students especially bipoc students and their families access their rights so again i want to say thank you i'm

083excited to join with you on this work it is beyond time um let's make more opportunities go around and invest in the future of all children to make our whole community a better place to live thank you thank you so much for those comments miss dukes perfectly timed um the next speaker will be seth oldham and for the courtesy of everyone listening and other school board members we are halfway done with public comment at this point so the next speaker will be seth oldham followed by rebecca templeman and then chad cecil hi my name is thank you my name is seth oldham i'm in the samuel miller district and i am the father of a non-binary rising 12th grader and a transgender rising 10th grader um like so many people who've spoken before me i'm

084also not a racist or a bigot or for discrimination in any kind um and so i'm encouraged by the fact that the uh education policymakers in virginia are trying to come up with ways to make the my kids learning experience a safe and comfortable one and i hope that you all will do what you can to support and implement that policy um like everybody here all of you all the people that have spoken for this and the people that have spoken against it i'm sure i love my children very very much when each of them separately told me that their gender identities were not what i had thought i was scared and sad because i knew that that was going to put them on a path to life that was a lot harder than the

085one that i had imagined for them and since this started three years ago um things have not been easy but my kids have delighted me as they have become their authentic selves and as they work through the challenges of adolescence those challenges are enormous even for kids whose biology is not at odds with their gender identities having a safe place at school can make a huge difference in whether or not they rise to those challenges and the policy that we're looking at and talking about here can go a long way to help make that happen um i hope that you all will support it with all of the energy that you have um and know that this really will make a really big difference in the lives of real people thank you thank you for

086those comments mr oldham the next people will be rebecca templeman who i see on hi thank you there's no greater pleasure than to come into the public forum with our deeply held beliefs and to express them we live in crozet and we moved to albemarle county in 1993. i'm a college graduate the author of seven books and grandmother to eight children as a local real estate broker i have proudly testified since 2000 to the above average education my children have received in the western district schools but tonight i come before you as a jack jewett called to tell everybody about something dangerous that i think will harm our schools the policy you're being asked to consider leaves no doubt that socialism has found a home in the central office we know that the henley pilot

087curriculum is authorized by a zealous change agent who does not live here it advances a racially charged hypothesis i've read the curriculum the ccar blames the oppressors singling out a race of people and or a particular religious group while claiming victim status for others history tells us why socialism fails when the goal is to pit one group of people against another human beings will always rebel the seventh grade syllabus attempts to persuade with subjective cultural biases that only confuse or further divide adolescence by the end of the eighth grade the homeroom resembles a laboratory where crt fails to resolve even its own racist questions instead unvetted youtube voices redefine the english language anthropology civics and more i oppose the curriculum and your policy as overreach i object because it assumes erroneously that one race wishes

088to dominate another nothing is further from the truth and neither is opting out an acceptable response if ccar is a used euphemism for conformity we must honestly re-examine inspire your comments are over thank you you're welcome the next speaker will be the next speaker will be chad cecil followed by rebecca kendall and then omar garriott so [Music] chad yep i see him when you're ready hi my name is chad cecil and i'm the parent of a rising fourth and sixth grader in the white hall district our children have loved their experience at brownsville elementary all the teachers administrators and staff there are amazing however as a result of the school board's continuing actions and inaction over the past year i've lost confidence in the leadership of acps and sadly we are pulling our children from

089acps this coming school year i believe the overwhelming majority of people on both sides of these issues have the best interests of our children in mind as a result it must be possible for residents parents and teachers and administrators to freely express their opinions without threats personal attacks or fear of losing their jobs i am absolutely anti-racist and against any form of discrimination wherever racism or discrimination exists in our country it needs to be rooted out i am also absolutely heartbroken for any child that feels unwelcome or unsafe anywhere in our community and particularly at school it is our responsibility as parents and leaders to do everything possible to make all children welcome and safe these are goals and objectives i hope we all agree on the hard work is getting there unfortunately this is

090where i lose confidence in this school board it seems unwilling to find common ground with a large percentage of those in the county that share the same goals but see big problems with the actual policy and curriculum recommendations it seems unwilling to ensure that it is creating a school environment that doesn't discriminate against children who believe in god it seems unwilling to stop the teaching of unproven assumptions and opinions as facts it seems unwilling to ensure that all acps employees feel safe to express their opinions it seems unwilling to critically evaluate the potential unintended consequences resulting from the intersectionality of their own policies there has to be a better way to ensure that all children are welcome safe and free from discrimination and bias thanks thank you so much for those comments mr cecil the

091next week sorry the next speaker will be rebecca kindle who i see on miss kendall whenever you're ready hi thank you my name is rebecca kendall i'm a parent in the white hall magistrate or district and i have two kids in henley and western um i want to thank the board for taking its proactive stance to adopt a comprehensive policy for affirming transgender non-binary students i'm a mental health practitioner and cannot be overstated the importance of a safe and welcoming climate for trans gender and gender expansive students the policy itself states that 84 percent of trans students and 70 percent of non-binary students experience bullying in school on a regular basis i think if any of us can think back about our own schooling and education despite parents saying oh i'm not biased i'm not

092racist we all know that kids who are different are bullied in our schools and trans and non-binary students need our protection and support as a mental health practitioner it is deeply concerning that 42 of trans and gender expansive students have seriously contemplated suicide this policy will save lives so i thank you very much for your support i also think it's really critical that our students who are not trans or non-binary who may be cisgender that they learn the humility of reflection and self-awareness and self-reflection this is a 21st century skill that we're teaching our kids every single business private sector public sector are needing to start diversity equity and inclusion initiatives because we are not learning these things in traditional education so thanks for your support of this policy miss kendall thank you for those

093comments the next speaker will be omar garriott hey y'all y'all means all i'm omar uh whitehall i'm just an old acps parent now but i started my career as a third grade public school teacher and i was woefully unprepared when a transgender student showed up in my class on the first day and i wish my district would have had my back with an explicit policy so i stand in support of the transgender and gender expansive policy being introduced tonight i've read it it's 11 pages not 35 and i do trust y'all i do trust the schools for me this is simple and it's and it's the same thing as the courageous conversations what creates the best environment for every student like ali who we heard from earlier to thrive academically and socially emotionally we grown-ups

094we have a responsibility to ensure that we have a responsibility to ali we have a responsibility to do everything we can to make school as non-hostile a place as possible we heard earlier that north of 80 percent of transgender kids are bullied harassed even assaulted at school school must also be as welcoming a place as possible and here's the beauty of inclusivity it is by definition not zero sum it is not binary and guess what neither is the world that we live in it expands the pie it makes room for every young person every family at no cost to others and it is a posture that schools and we grown-ups around them must maintain we must show our kiddos what it actually means to love thy neighbor as thyself kids can check out a school

095for a number of reasons let's lock arms as their caretakers and role models and try our level best to take one reason off the table i strongly support the acps policy on the treatment of transgender and gender expansive students anything less amounts to the school system endorsing bullying thanks you all and don't forget y'all means all nothing wrong with saying y'all thank you for those comments mr garriott um the next speaker will be willian william robinson followed by david wallace and then nancy koenig mr robinson i see you on hello my name is william robinson i'm a parent of a student in the white house school district and i'm so excited for her to start first grade and think about what i want for her an environment that affirms her that loves her that grants

096her opportunity to grow and be cared for so she can help care for others and i think also about how difficult life can be for a child um even if they have those things i had all those things i had privilege i have identity schools that have burned me and i still in fourth grade um when i was not feeling part of a community when i was feeling left out had an incredibly dark thought and i'm so grateful that i was it had an identity had people that have burned me um because i can't imagine what it would have been like if that wasn't true like wasn't true for someone i'll call for purposes of this meeting david another person in my fourth grade class whose identity as a transgender student was not affirmed and

097who did commit suicide when he was in high school and i'm just so grateful for a school to be in a community with a school board that will stand up and do the bare minimum to say we're going to affirm the identity of this of students cut suicide rates in half and ensure that we are creating a community uh where every student can be loved and who they need to be so thank you school board for standing up to affirm the identities for standing up for against bullying and preventing and intervening in that for ensuring that students have access to facilities that they choose when we have reams of research and experience saying that that is only helpful those students and hurtful to no one and also if anything tonight should show the support of

098your anti-racism policy that promotes interracial dialogue and courageous conversation so that we can bridge the type of debates we're talking about understand one another and create a more holistic and beautiful community thank you school board for your courage for your love it's deeply appreciated thank you so much for those comments mr robinson um the next speaker will be david wallace i see him in the room but he's muted up nope still muted um the following speaker will be nancy koenig so nancy if you're in here do not see in the meeting okay let me note that i'll call the list at the end of the people that were not here um sam parks who i do see here yes hello hi hi i'm sam parks from white okay i'm sam parks i'm from the whitehall

099district uh board i wanted to convey a recent experience i had without morrow county schools we engaged a school psychologist and educational specialist to do a learning access assessment for our child they spent several attentive hours with our child in the end produced an incredible 12-page analysis it was this beautiful vision of what public education can and should be staff joyfully bringing their expertise to bear to support educational achievement at full consent of the parents in such a way that empowers parents and child alike at the other end of the spectrum is a corrupted vision of public education like any institution it drifts towards an inflated view of its own role in mission rather than seeing itself as embedded within a web of community and family ties and instead begins to see its role as

100engineering cultural and social outcomes nothing entices it like the idea of progress in the name of progress acps indoctrinates children into dogmas of racial grievance and power jockey it teaches radical ideas of sexual autonomy and gender fluidity alienating students from their own bodies far exceeding the limits of parental consent it goes so far as to suggest punitive action against parents who resist their gender revolution it effectively declares itself the parents of this generation the engineers of the future equity will produce at whatever the cost it deems fitting for this district has lost the plot my message to the board is this you have moral agency whatever cultural pressure is bearing down on you you can do the right thing reject c car reject this overreaching transgender policy and reject a strategic plan that seeks to

101codify this institutional corruption and to this teachers out there who object to this radical new direction know that you have community support and cover be bold and be of good courage yes you may end up on someone's list yes you may end up drawing the ire of a certain administrator but you have been entrusted with our children and you were born for such a time as this thank you thank you for those comments mr parks so the next speaker technically would be looping back to mr wallace i sent him a message he has not replied i do not know if he's on even though he's in the room following that will be susan reed who i can see is still connecting to audio and i'm assuming having issues miss reed can you hear me okay

102so i'm going to make note to go back to her and then following that will be claire ruday who i just saw come in and is connected miss ruday you'll be next i know it's kind of short notice since you just got in here and i'd like to announce to the people that are still in the waiting room that you need to change or rename your zoom icon so that we know who you are if it's just the phone number um or no identifying name we don't we don't know who you are and we don't know when to admit you so if you can click on your name on the three little dots in the corner you can rename yourself so we can identify you so with that notification and giving that game this every

103day a little time it is your turn hi so i'm claridae i'm the mother of three children in the samuel miller district i'm also a recently retired public health nurse and a former teacher and social worker so i have a little bit of history with the topics that are on discussion tonight um i wanted to speak in support of the new policy for transgender and gender expansive students um i think i really wanted to applaud elmore county schools i've been really impressed with these strong anti-bullying stamps and i think this aligns with that extremely well um at the health department i worked with the um hiv pre-exposure prophylaxis program worked a lot with this community um and i i think the speakers before me have done a wonderful job of explaining the statistics and why

104it's important to provide an inclusive environment for children the suicide rates just it's about empathy as one's person said um and this policy threatens no one and benefits many students and these are our children they are our children's friends they are actual real children um and so i wanted to applaud el morrow county schools for for this new policy i think it's exceptional i also wanted to applaud it for the courageous conversations i'm actually looking forward to when that spread to other schools because um it's conversations that we have with our children and i think it's really important that the children get an education that i didn't get in virginia schools growing up that i really wish i had um and i don't think that i got accurate education um and that's what i really

105want for my children and i think that's what we all want for our children it's just to grow up to be really strong wonderful humans that accept others um and make the world a better place so i wanted to thank you all thank you for those comments ms ruday um the next speaker i believe i might have said ann jordan but for the sake of my record keeping miss i'm going to go back to miss susan reed because i believe she is connected to audio at this point so miss reed yes there um i'm susan reed i'm in the rayo district and i am so thankful that my kids are already out of school instead of concentrating on the basics of reading writing arithmetic the board and superintendents seem determined to be social justice warriors

106something that doesn't belong in school and will not help test scores in addition you are dividing kids and robbing them of their innocence there's no time to go over all the crazy things going on in schools these days so let's just take an issue that's likely to come up with your policy since you said they that genders should be able to do clubs or sports the gender they think they are so men and women are biologically different that but it's science my friends try comparing the records in male sports and female sports they are not the same if they were why would we even have male and female sports instead of just sports even if a male goes through some hormone treatments and surgery it will not change all the biology caitlyn jenner i will

107remind you as a transgender woman who also won a gold medal in the olympic decathlon as a male that's a set of credentials that i will wager that none of you have and caitlyn does not think it's fair to allow transgender women to compete against biological men would you deprive females of records honors etc by allowing competition with a bio male would you do that to your daughter this is likely to come up if you don't have a daughter i'd like you to imagine you do what if your biologically female daughter lost a state competition to a trans woman and asked why that was allowed will you look her in the eye and say sorry honey even though we taught you to resist peer pressure when something was wrong we didn't have the guts to

108do that ourselves and that goes for a lot of things going on in the school system these days thank you thank you for those comments miss reed the let me pause this the next speaker will be anne jordan who i see can you hear me i miss jordan hi um i feel like i'm being pushed into having to respond to this because it's so concerning to me but you're not giving the community adequate time to respond to these massive changes equity to me does not mean equality it means racism it's racism towards kids like my daughter because it holds them back to ensure that the outcome is favorable to others not based on any marriage but because of the color of the skin they were born with that is the definition of racism that martin

109luther king fought against what you now are pushing is freudian marxist dictatorship experimenting with our children and going against thousands of years of human experience this new agenda you are pushing encourages men to abuse women by competing competing in their female sports and entering their bathrooms men in prisons are already identifying as women as they can be transferred to women's prisons you are creating a society that will be exploiting our young women and girls you've been this is a huge criticism of western civilization but what you're criticizing is exactly what you're doing you're creating racism sexism child abuse and you're sowing the seeds of hatred between the sexes races and ethnicities and undermining the family unit this generation agenda will be looked on history as one of the most vile episodes in western civilization you

110are doing this knowing this against the will of the parents now i can assure you i care more about my daughter than you do when and if not when not if but when a girl gets assaulted in a bathroom or playing a sport you will be held accountable there should be no limitations on what you should be held accountable for suicide self-mutilation bullying and harassment you're taking away our authority for our children of our children you're undermining us with this hateful agenda and shame on you the school board of albemarle county virginia for pushing this evil and harmful agenda and grooming children to me exploited yes i know i'm over my time because i'm a conservative i got it thanks thank you for those comments miss jordan the next speaker will be laura brunk who

111i see on hi um i just wanted to say i support this bill i think it's really positive i think all students should be protected and um i obviously disagree with what the woman before me was stating um i was a student in the alberon county schools and i had some friends who were trans and um obviously this was a couple of years ago well not obviously but it was a couple of years ago and they definitely had difficulties so i think that was just an issue of the county not being prepared to deal with trans students so i think it's really positive that they're making decisions now to become fully prepared to support trans students i think it's just the county's responsibility to protect its students and to support its students in their personal

112choices so um yeah this is for me more about supporting students making sure that they can stay in the school that they're not being harassed or bullied and that they have the freedom to express themselves and make the decisions for themselves that they need to make um so i definitely support this bill thank you guys thank you so much for those comments miss bronk the next speaker will be another bronc lydia bronk right also lydia when you're ready thank you my name is lydia brunk i use she her pronouns i'm a resident of the samuel miller district who attended monticello high school i think we all understand the student cannot learn effectively if their basic needs are not met if they do not feel sick safe and secure in their learning environment it is for

113this reason that we offer free breakfast and lunch programs for example a student cannot learn if they are focused on struggling to endure hunger pangs and they cannot learn if they are focused on struggling to endure a transphobic environment to say nothing of the fact they should not have to do so i concur with the statement that schools have a unique and powerful opportunities to support gender extensive students i am strongly in favor of the policy that protects the rights of trans students and maps the ways that educators can support them i know there has been opposition to this measure but i frankly cannot bring myself to engage with these arguments there is a vast difference between asking for control and respect in the way that you and your gender is spoken about and addressed

114and asking for control of the way that others genders are spoken about and addressed i cannot summon an iota of respect for parents who would ask schools to further marginalize trans and gender expansive students in order to protect their children from engaging with ideas that they find challenging thank you for your time thank you so much for those comments miss broom let me make a note here so the next speakers we have three more on the initial list before we loop through and see if we caught it can catch anybody that missed their slot so the next three speakers will be margaret um go turk who i see on followed by robert mathis and then victoria mccullough spoken about an address and asking for all the weight i i think that was coming from david

115wallace's um and mr wallace if you're on we looped back a few times and we were having trouble connecting with you so i will look back to you um as soon as we get to these three so um miss go turk if you're ready good evening i'm margaret doctor i'm a resident of the samuel miller district i'd like to recommend a revision to the draft policy for the treatment of transgender and gender expansive students the policy correctly cites ferpa when it defines a student's gender expansive status as an education record protected by ferpa assuming that the student or the you know has or the parent has shared that information it's important to note that ferpa gives parents certain rights with respect to their minor child's education records first ferpa mandates that parents have the right

116to access the content within their child's education records second under ferpa a school may not disclose personally identifiable information from a student's educational record to a third party without written consent the draft policy seeks to revoke these parental rights in at least the following ways in instances where albemarle county school officials conclude that parents will not be supportive of a child's gender transition number one the policy would allow the school to keep a student's gender expansive status from their parents two the policy would also allow the school to disclose personally identifiable information of a minor to a third party a health professional acting in support of a gender transition without informed consent from parents federal privacy rights that protect education records are legal requirements whether or not parents will or won't be receptive to information

117in educational records does not absolve albemarle county public schools of these requirements so my ask tonight is that you all consider amending the transgender policy to include the required consent and involvement from parents consistent with burpa thank you very much for your time and consideration thank you so much for those comments the next speaker will be robert mathis is not in the meeting okay so i'll put a little mark victoria mccullough if you're on there is one person in the waiting room that has the name ipad if you would change your name we can hopefully get you admitted i'm assuming you're on the list if you have the link but perhaps not um and so right now i'm going to go ahead and cycle through we'll start with actually to oh yeah we'll start with

118mr wallace because he's actually been in the room i think he was having audio issues so mr wallace if you are on now and you can unmute and give your comment that would be appreciated okay so now i'm just going to go to the top of the list and move my way down so tony bruno do not see um john smith again do not see shardon jenks i see your name we can hopefully get you admitted i'm assuming you're on the list is there a mail yep mr wallace i i can hear you now but i just um i just called another speaker please keep it keep paying attention keep your audio on and i'll call you after the next speaker so sure don if you're ready to speak and you can unmute now would

119be a great time you're muted if you're speaking to me okay now i can hear you all right i'm ready go ahead yep all right my name is shardon jenks and i live in the ravana district i'm asking you to stand strong to protect every child in this district by not adopting the department of education's transgender issue policy that directly threatens our children's physical safety and privacy rights this policy forces every k-12 school to allow boys identifying as girls for instance to use the girls bathrooms or change in female locker rooms and this can be done without ever notifying parents we need to say yes to protecting our kids and no to being forced into adopting sexualized political agendas i am deeply concerned about a child's right to expect physical safety and privacy and vulnerable

120areas such as locker rooms restrooms and overnight trip sleeping quarters we hear a lot about transgender rights and we can all agree that every child should be protected from harm but no one ever talks about the harm done to very young girls who feel powerless to expect physical privacy in the presence of biological males not to mention young men who don't want to change in front of biological girls the bottom line is we need to protect children we need to be proactive in protecting our children's safety and privacy as well as the rights of our county parents to safeguard them safeguard the minds hearts and bodies of their children it is possible to find compassionate ways to protect every child including kids struggling with gender without sacrificing some children's safety on the altar of political

121agendas if you enact this you may be enabling predators and creating victims on a massive scale and you will bear the you may bear the responsibility for that thank you thank you for those comments miss jinx thank you see you next speaker mr wallace if you're there you need to you need to unmute and speak now and forever hold your peace until the next public comment can you hear me now yes i am alive and well thank you ma'am okay you can go ahead and begin sir okay great i love zoom calls uh in my third life as a teacher in private school i understand the technical uh problems that come with it and also delays and you guys those these meetings i appreciate you doing this um i was never going to speak in

122public i spent 22 years as a cop in albemarle county 22 years in the army and what i see now really truly scares me what's going on my tax supported schools here in elmore county crt is a marxist program that is hell-bent on isolating dividing and diminishing our ability to work together as a community and if you bring forth this policy it will destroy our community even more and fragment it even more than it is right now i don't hate anybody i spent my time defending my constitution my citizens and my community i love people of all colors all religions all backgrounds so to adopt policies that are going to be detrimental to our young women our young men we cannot let that stand we must work together as a community i just ask and

123plead as somebody that cares about this community that's worked and put my heart and soul in this community for 22 years to please put the brakes on this and look at it a little bit more closely there are a lot of political agendas coming into the mix and things that are here to destroy us as a community ronald reagan said there's nothing wrong with america that can't be fixed with what's right with america we need to get back to that instead of dividing to camps sexualities religions colors races oppressors oppressees whatever you want to put it in we need to come together as a community and love our kids love our community and do the very best we give them a first class education that's going to put us on top academically scientifically in every

124aspect of society to move our culture move our people forward and if we adopt crud excuse me stuff like crt and make that part of our curriculum western elmer or henley they said you can't opt out yes mr wallace i'm sorry to cut you short but your time's up all right thank you thank you thank you for providing comments the um next speaker cycling through is going to be nancy koenig who i do not see on carol thorpe i don't know why i'm talking louder it makes no difference the people that are on their computer screen they're not hiding in the back of the room um robert mathis and victoria mccullough there is one person in the waiting room i'm sorry you didn't get in i we didn't know who you were and with that

125that concludes public comment i would like to just remind everyone that you can always send comments to the school board i know that there were just a handful of people that didn't get in on this lottery system two of them already sent an email which we were able to read before the meeting so please feel free to send your comments if you weren't able to finish them during the public comment period with that i hand it back over to you mr page thank you very much miss carlson for conducting a public comment looking at our gender um we are at about 8 25 and uh we are sort of a little bit behind schedule so if there is no objection we'll take a 10-minute break now and then resume the agenda any objections to that

126okay 10-minute break we'll reconvene at 8 35 thank you okay it's 8 35 roughly and we are ready to resume our agenda uh item 8-1 the new transgender policy mr holden good evening board members i'm here to introduce to you the acps draft policy on the treatment of transgender and gender expansive students this policy has been developed in compliance with virginia statutory and federal case law to ensure a positive safe and nurturing learning environment for all students free from discrimination and harassment in 19 2020 the general assembly enacted virginia code section 22.1-23.3 and requires two things first it uh mandated that the virginia department of education develop a model policy and guidance that all local school boards in virginia could follow in creating their own policies second the the law requires that every local school

127board have before the beginning of the 2021-22 school year a policy no less comprehensive than the guidance published by the virginia department of education so both the guidance of the vdoe and our policy are aligned and contain guidance on various issues regarding transgender and gender expansive students issues including compliance with applicable non-discrimination laws prevention of bullying and harassment maintenance of school records protection of student privacy and student participation in school activities and events and the use of school facilities in addition there is recent federal case law in the fourth circuit u.s court of appeals for the fourth circuit and the grimm versus gloucester county school board case which addresses the use of restrooms and other facilities by transgender and gender expansive students just last week the united states supreme court uh declined to take the

128case on appeal which means that the decision of the fourth circuit in the grim case is the law of the land at this time so we wanted to make sure that our policy conforms to the grim case as well as the new statute in virginia requiring all school boards to develop their own school board policy uh we are going to provide an information session on wednesday july 28th where we will address the with the community the policy in greater detail the specific issues addresses and respond we get questions in the chat respond to them thereafter so that everyone can have a full and fair understanding of what the policy is intended to accomplish then at the school board's first meeting in august on august 12th we'll bring the final draft policy to you for approval

129with that i thank you thank you miss dalton uh you said the information session was on july 28th right yes okay are there any questions or comments uh from any board members but mr halden mr chair i the only thing that causes me a certain level of concern is the paragraph on under privacy and confidentiality in some cases gender expansive students may not want their parents to know about their gender expansive and transitioning status these situations must be addressed in a case-by-case basis and will require schools to balance the goals supporting the student requirement the parents be kept informed about their children the most important consideration in such solutions is the physical and mental health and safety of the student that just seems very very vague to me and the vagueness just concerns me i

130mean on a case-by-case basis i just wish we could we could look at that language a little bit and see if we can't get a a better because i think that they're they're and i'll just be honest if if i mean this is something that i would think a parent should know about because it is a fairly fundamental issue and if if there's a reason for the for the specific reason for the parents not to know i get that but i think it should be it should be clear so that so that we don't have we don't have employees put in the position of making a very tough call themselves that's just and that's just my opinion i just i think we could use better language mr holden could you address that concern the uh

131the issue mr oberg is that uh there are lots of potential factors and what we are trying to do is balance the uh right of a student to privacy with the parents right to know um i'd like to be able to suggest to you that there are ways that we can say if this particular event happened and we'll you know tell the parents if this event happened we may not be able to it's really going to be an assessment of many different factors let me just give you an example if a child wanted to be called a different name and the teacher says that's fine and we do that with children now who want to be called by a nickname we would do that um and we would not disclose that particular confidence necessarily at

132the start because it doesn't require any uh any particular medical or mental health guidance or or anything of that nature so we would do that however if a parent then came to the school and said did this happen and we would certainly say yes and if the parents said well that's fine we would go forth but the parents said you know what i'm not comfortable that i direct you not to do that we would take a different position if there is a an accommodation that a child may want that may be medical in nature or require the assistance of a nurse i i don't know exactly what that would be but let's assume that's the case under the policy what we would do is we would try to preserve the student's confidence but we would

133tell the student that we would not be able to provide that accommodation without parental permission we're not going to go and just disclose confidence it's because the child may not be comfortable that maybe coming to the teacher or the school because they don't feel that their support at home but that said uh we would not uh then just take it upon ourselves to make a decision um to tell the the student that we will be happy to do what the student has asked us to do uh whether we have parental permission or not so in that situation uh we would we would it would be the compromise we would keep the confidence however we would let the student know that until we had parental permission we cannot grant the request again each request could be

134different it's going to have to be evaluated we struggled hard with both internally and with counselors and the gay straight alliances and all of the high school that try to come up with something that would be more specific but because there was such a wide array of issues that could arise we felt for purposes of policy uh that we would be general and then try to address things as we get more experience with the issues that could arise under the policy so so let me let me let me ask you this for us it the policy doesn't say it says these situations must be addressed on a case-by-case basis okay but by whom is it the principal is it the counselor is it the nurse is it the teacher i i think i i think

135i think we should have greater clarity because i don't i don't want to have a teacher make it well this and read this policy and think okay well i'm supposed to do this and then find out well wow that wasn't your call i just i i just think it'd be it i think it would i think we would head off some potential problems if that language was a little bit tighter i don't know how to make it tighter and so i apologize i wish i could come in and say well i think this language i don't have language that does it i just i it just the the language just concerns me a lot mr robert we can take a look and and to see whether we can better address who in the school should

136be involved again we try to limit the those who know to those who must know but that said we certainly could look at the types of individuals within the school whether it's up to the principles level a nurse the the counselor where the teacher feels that their support and would not have to make a decision without reaching out to whoever else may have been put into this situation okay thanks any other questions or comments i had a quick comment just in response to um i think some misinformation or not not misinformation necessarily but i would just encourage parents to please go on and read through the policy if you have concerns because um it's not always the way it's set out so like one thing that i do think it's worth calling attention to is

137that we don't regulate um sports within the state that's actually the virginia high school league and so our transgender policy is going to allow people to play intramural sports which a lot of times are co-ed to begin with they were when i was in college so we would follow the guidelines whatever the state guidelines are for the virginia high school league another thing that's worth noting is that although we're encouraging the policies encouraging people to be able to use restroom facilities and locker room facilities that are gender affirming there is a cavity you know there's a carve out that any student and that means any student that is uncomfortable um with whatever setup should have access to uh an individual locker room or restroom that they can use and i think that's worth noting it's

138worth reading through the policy i appreciated all the people who who provided comment and i just want to make sure that people are looking at the document and not just going off of what they're hearing because it's kind of interesting to read through it and my information may be a couple years late but miss carlson i mean to your point with those carve-outs you mentioned at the end when the board discussed this a few years ago uh at that point in time those carve-outs existed and so to your point they are there to be used okay thank you miss carlson and mr alcaro and so mr holden you will be um looking at ways of trying to clarify the positions responsible for doing certain things that mr moberger addressed right we'll take a look at

139that mr page okay graham i actually just had one more comment if you were just closing up i mr old and i just really wanted to thank you for your work on this i think it's a really really thoughtful and good policy and and i always uh appreciate um both your legal work and then also you know working with students um to craft it and i just i wanted to thank you for that thank you very much it's appreciated yeah thank you so much mr houlton thank you all right um next uh covet update dr mclaughlin and ms gomez is alain gomez hey good evening board members pat mclaughlin chief of strategic planning for the school division and mr page actually i'll be flying solo on this one tonight so bear with me as i

140uh as i go through our covid update uh as you all remember uh we have a multi-tiered approach to um to opening or reopening our schools during the covert pandemic and one of the things that the board has asked us to consistently give them updates on is the level of community transmission and so tonight i can share with you uh the latest numbers that we have uh these are the albemarle county figures for the past four weeks and this is our case incidence rate which is the number of cases per 100 000 people in uh albemarle county uh you can see that that has um has gotten really to this week uh has zeroed out for us uh it's remained pretty consistently low since june 17th uh although the numbers are not uh have neither

141hit a threshold of 14 or more consecutive days increasing or decreasing so the uh the health department considers this to be fluctuating one of the other things that we look at is the floating seven day uh percent positivity that's the number of cases uh that are coming back positive from the tests that we are giving and you can again see that that is staying uh below one percent um for the past month and that has in fact been decreasing for uh for more than 14 days so that meets the threshold for a decreasing trend there we also look at the city of charlottesville their numbers are similarly low but but not quite as low as albemarle they're fluctuating between about 14 and 20 for the case incidence rate and that number has been going up

142a bit since july 1st and their case incidence rate is also slightly higher than ours but again still below uh two percent at one of the lower thresholds that we've seen since the start of the pandemic that's here and then finally i'll share with you uh we look also at um our cdc core indicators which takes just a slightly different look at um at those numbers uh and you can see here that our core indicator for percent for case incidence rather for the county is it 9.2 and our percent positivity for the county is it um 0.5 percent those are both in the lowest level of community transmission rates and you can see it the um in this graph up at the top that for the past uh four weeks now we've been at the

143lowest levels of community transmission so uh so that is really positive news for us around the state of the pandemic uh we use these numbers to determine the level of um of school impact uh right now we've got we continue to have zero or very sporadic cases uh uh in our schools that with with the folks that are there right now for summer school it's not impacting student absenteeism nor is it impacting staff capacity uh when we combine these figures with our uh transmission rates which are actually here in the in the low uh we see that we're at the lowest level of impact to the schools and and we have been there uh thankfully for the last couple of board meetings that we've presented the covet update uh to everyone and so that is

144the the latest on where we are with uh with our coveted numbers and i'll be happy to take any questions or hear any comments from the board any questions comments okay if not thank you guys okay that's my comment yeah let's go over i just said thank god oh okay right all right thank you dr mclaughlin we will now move to um item 83 our strategic plan and dr haas is going to introduce this segment of the agenda thank you mr page i want to say good evening again to the school board members i also want to extend my welcome to aj johnson for joining the school board aj if there's anything you need uh please let me know it's a pleasure to work for you um it's also my pleasure to introduce dr mclaughlin

145tonight to share with you our strategic plan entitled learning for all before doing so i really want to thank dr mclaughlin for leading the strategic plan development process this process has been more than a year in duration as well as thorough and comprehensive in scope including an in-depth current state analysis of acps conducted by patel for kids dr mclaughlin and his team jamie gellner helen dunn jasmine fernandez and leatherwood have worked with and heard input from thousands of families through the surveys that we're doing and also during meetings employees and community members with diversity of demographics and relationships to the school system the street the strategic plan before you this evening emphasizes that our school system exists to provide high quality teaching and learning for all students and all means all so at this point

146i'll turn things over to dr mclaughlin so good evening again board members and uh thank you dr haas for that wonderful introduction and as dr haas said i'm here tonight to ask you to take action on our new strategic plan for albemarle county public schools learning for all as you recall uh in partnership with patel for kids we began the process of developing our strategic plan at the beginning of this school year and we worked through the envision phase of the portrait we worked through the envision phase with our portrait design team and presented our portrait of an albemarle learner to you earlier this school year following that we received our current state analysis from battelle who convened our strategic plan designing and design and writing teams who just wrapped up their work a few

147weeks ago all told we've had around 200 staff students and community members join us as part of the design and writing teams in addition we've held community meetings throughout the school year that have been attended by hundreds of stakeholders and have surveyed the community at large about our portrait competencies in our draft plan and receive thousands of responses as you can tell a great deal of work and community input has gone into this draft and strategic plan that we present to you now and we believe that it's a strong reflection of what our school community feels is most important work for us to undertake over the next several years just yesterday this is hot off the presses we received a draft version of the final layout of the plan from battelle and a copy of

148that has been included in tonight's board packet you'll likely see that there are still a few tweaks that need to be made with some of the aesthetics and we'll complete a final proofread as well but we wanted you to have an idea of what the final product would uh would look like well there may be just a couple changes to the layout in the materials over the next couple weeks the heart of the plan that's our vision our mission our values our goals objectives strategies and metrics that's been finalized uh and that um is included in the draft that you have with you tonight so as we ask for adoption of the plan i believe it's important to recall the work that's gone into the development of this plan we started our work in earnest

149by convening our portrait of a learner development team that team met five times in september and october and the work was informed through community forums and surveys in december you provided us with your approval for our portrait and the portrait included eight competencies that are adaptability anti-racism communication critical thinking creativity empathy learners mindset and social justice and inclusion during the course of the competency development we conducted a community survey in the survey we asked our community how useful the development of each competency would be to our students the results were on a seven point scale so any score of four or higher indicated a positive response for that competency as you can see here each competency scored at least a 5.6 on the scale affirming that these competencies are indeed valued by our community members

150following the development of our portrait we convened a strategic plan design team and a strategic plan writing team they met several times from december through april and the team built our plan based on our portrait and our current state analysis we follow this work with more community meetings and surveys which were completed in may and we shared draft surveys we shared the draft and the survey results with you at your june retreat so this work has been a genuine collaborative effort involving a wide range of staff students and community members and as we said before uh really thousands of people have either been a part of this process or have commented on the work through our survey tools as dr haas mentioned earlier i would also like to thank all of those participants but in

151particularly recognize jamie gelner jasmine fernandez leatherwood and helen dunn who have worked tirelessly on the planned steering team throughout this entire process we simply couldn't have gotten to where we are today without all of them so as we ask you to take action on the plan tonight i'd like to remind you of its highlights so the plan outlines our vision that all learners are engaged in authentic challenging and relevant learning experiences becoming lifelong contributors and leaders in our dynamic and diverse society and also our mission 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 and we will know

152every student it also identifies our core values of equity we will provide every student with the level of support necessary to thrive excellence means we will mitigate barriers and provide opportunities for every student to be academically successful we value family and community which means we'll engage with and share the responsibility for student success with families and community partners and we value wellness that will support the physical and emotional health of our students and our staff and the plan sets goals and objects and it sets the plan also sets goals and objectives for meeting what we've outlined in the vision mission and values and we have three goals the first of which is thriving students that we will facilitate learning experiences grounded in high expectations networks of care and student curiosity to ensure academic and social

153emotional development for all students while eliminating opportunity access and achievement gaps that goal has three objectives that are associated with it and that's to ensure that each student is supported to achieve their best to develop structures that support students academic mental health for both proactive and intervention purposes and to increase student engagement in their own learning in the school culture and in student governance in a community survey we asked member community members to indicate how well they believed the stated goals and objectives would help us to meet our mission responses were on a five point scale so any response with an average of three or higher indicated a positive response for that objective and as you can see all the objectives for this goal received a positive response our second goal is affirming and empowering

154communities and in that we state that acps commits to developing a culturally responsive environment that will respect and champion the diversity of life experiences of all stakeholders and supports the physical and mental health of our students staff and families so they're actively empowered to engage in our school community as with the first goal that contains three objectives that we commit to developing a culturally responsive environment that will respect and champion the diversity of life experiences of all stakeholders and supports the physical and mental health of our students staff and families so they're actively empowered to engage in our school community our second objective is to support the physical and mental health of our student staff and families and finally we will actively empower all stakeholders to engage in our school community through effective communications and

155community engagement strategies again you can see that all of these received positive responses from our community survey and finally our third goal is equitable and transformative resources in that we state that acps will attract develop and retain the highest quality staff develop sustainable and modern facilities infrastructure and equipment and distribute all resources in an equitable manner to transform learning experiences and opportunities the three objectives under this goal include attracting developing and retaining the highest quality staff that will develop modern and environmentally sustainable facilities infrastructure and equipment and that will provide resources in an equitable manner again all of which receive positive responses from our community finally as community members reviewed our goals and objectives we wanted to know how well they saw themselves reflected in the plan and 83 of our respondents rated this question

156at a three or higher on a five point scale so as you can see the responses to our portrait competencies into our goals and objectives have been very positive we feel that this plan is indeed a reflection of what's important to our community and what they hope to see from our school system the next stage of the plan once adopted is our implementation phase we've identified key strategies and metrics uh for each set of goals and objectives the specifics of which can be found in the full plan we are currently working to assign each of our strategies and metrics to a specific cabinet department for implementation those departments will really work on the how of the strategy implementation at the same time we're developing a gantt chart to outline when we'll plan to implement and

157complete each of the strategies that are part of the plan over the next five years some strategies that you'll see may require funding and once the plan is adopted we'll be developing budget initiatives where appropriate for the board to consider in the next funding request and finally you can expect to see the first report in our progress toward the goals of the plan in the fall 2022 state of the division report so i'd like to close by reminding the board that this isn't our first strategic plan and it won't be our last we're recommending that this plan be adopted as a five-year strategic plan we feel that that time frame that's a timeframe that allows for significant progress and change for what is important to us now as a school community five years from now

158we hope to have met the goals outlined in the plan and be ready to take on whatever our next challenge may be i thank the board for their time tonight and hope that you'll take action on adopting our new strategic plan learning for all and i'd be happy to take any questions or hear any comments from the board questions or comments from the board if not could we have a motion to adopt this strategic plan i move that we adopt the five-year strategic plan as it's been laid out for us tonight and i'll leave it at that and come back with a comment later second okay moved by mr alcaro second by mrs osborne that we adopt um the strategic plan five-year strategic plan any uh discussion of the motion if not ms johnston could

159you please call the roll miss carlson yes miss osborne yes miss lee yes mr o'carro definitely yes mr oberg yes mr page yes mission carried okay thank you so much uh mr alcaro you said you had a comment well i just wanted to say that that uh this is the first time that i've been uh on the board when the time of a strategic plan uh was put together and while it's been and you know the previous one was adapted as time goes by because as we were talking about earlier things change you know changes need to be made but dr mclaughlin i'm so impressed with the level of intense work that went into this and the involvement of the community i know several of the people members of the community who said they came

160away from the the sessions inspired and exhausted and so uh you know congratulations to you and your entire team on a job about that thank you it really has been a great team effort any other comments i'd like to echo what mr alcaro said dr mclaughlin and also um even the timeline that you presented in your introductory statements about how long this process has been on the road was impressive so thanks to you and the entire committee for developing and implementing or preparing us to implement our strategic plan thank you so very very much for your work thank you very much moving to our next item on our agenda um our resource utilization to support learning recovery ms schmidt will introduce this segment thank you chair page uh roslyn schmidt i'm the chief operating officer

161i'm just going to provide a brief introduction as we enter um this next chapter of the pandemic we are fortunate to have multiple financial resources to support our work including local funding that this board adopted as a part of their operating budget in may and then multiple buckets of federal stimulus money so tonight dr haas will present an overview of a proposed plan of how these financial resources will be utilized together for targeted investments in support of learning recovery uh beginning this week with summer school so after he gives the overall plan i will provide more specifics and the largest source of funding which is the latest round of stimulus money from the american rescue plan act also referred to as arp so dr haas all right good evening again school board members thank you

162very much rosalind i appreciate it and uh so i want to just take a few minutes to provide a framework for how we allocate funding to create resources to provide our schools and educators with what they need to support students academically physically and socially as they return to school on august 23rd the first goal in our strategic plan is for our students to thrive we refer to this goal as thriving students and we say that we will facilitate learning experiences grounded in high expectations networks of care and student curiosity to ensure academic and social emotional development for all students while eliminating opportunity access and achievement gaps as we work toward recovery from the coven 19 pandemic i submit a framework that is grounded in our strategic plan to help our teachers to help our students

163to thrive this framework is a pyramid of interventions the pyramid has tears based on the level of support students need and receive based on formative assessments of their learning and it begins at the base with what we refer to as a guaranteed and viable curriculum guaranteed means that all students will be taught the same skills and concepts regardless of the teacher to whom they have been assigned viable means the curriculum is relevant and can be realistically attained within the constraints such as time for initial learning experiences our fiscal year 22 operating budget of 211 million dollars includes a commitment to a guaranteed and viable curriculum and social and emotional learning or what we call scl each student will receive a comprehensive equitable rigorous and standards-based education across all grade levels and subject areas sel strategies

164include responsive classroom the advisory period and the high school seminar in response to student and teacher success with the initial curriculum our schools have two ways or two overarching variables to adjust up or down the pyramid to provide extra time and support one is the size of the instructional group or setting the second is the intensity and frequency of progress monitoring and interventions as we enter the 2021-22 school year we are using supplemental one-time recovery resources provided by federal and local sources and revised recurring local revenues to build on our baseline budget in order to primarily address the size of instructional groups and progress monitoring and interventions as i click through this graphic i will share highlights from our supplemental spending plan for recovery the staffing and funding amounts provided are approximate and serve as

165general goals and guidelines ppe supplies equipment technology and other expenditures are not included this graphic is intended to illustrate how we intend to address economic or academic learning and social emotional well-being we often talk about professional learning communities or what we call plcs one might ask why is it important for teachers to form plcs the answer to put it concisely is so that schools can have a fully functional pyramid of interventions that supports learning at high levels for all students or what we call learning for all when educational researcher and author rick dufour talked about the pyramid of interventions in his 1998 landmark book professional learning communities at work he provided first three and then four a fourth key question to help achieve learning for all a plc should work collaboratively to determine what do

166we want our students to learn as a result of their experiences in school and classes this becomes that guaranteed and viable curriculum prior to instruction the plc should collaborate and select and or create frequent common formative assessments to determine whether students are learning the curriculum when common pre-assessments and formative assessments are used teachers in the plc can use the results to do two things one provide extra time and support for students who have not learned what was expected and two use the results as feedback to fine-tune their instructional strategies and curriculum alignment again when common pre and formative assessments are used teachers in a plc can work together to provide learning extension experiences for students who move at a faster pace with learning including dynamic skills-based grouping a practice that is growing in our middle

167schools as i return to the base just one more time i want to say that this coming school year the school board is providing dedicated time for acps to work as a whole school system on truly embedding the tenants of plc and the pyramid of interventions in our work toward learning for all with the one the series of one-half days that are provided in the school system's instructional calendar as i go through the levels of the pyramid again i will highlight resources we are putting in place for each school to support teachers students and families as our work we work our way through recovery at the base we're using one-time funding for our current summer school program a greater reduction in class size for all schools in the fall that will have us below even

168the pre-pandemic levels for our class sizes an added counseling position at each school designated for mental health and family support as well as a full-time virtual school among other base supports in terms of assessments for learning and social emotional well-being it is important to note that the virginia department of education is beginning a pre-sol assessment this coming year as part of what is called the virginia through testing program teachers will have access to that to study growth throughout the year with regard to sel our division recovery team selected the desa assessment which stands for the devereaux elementary student strength assessment as a universal screener for social emotional well-being we are increasing our response to intervention and extension of learning resources for schools by doubling intervention funding allocated to each school as well as increasing access

169to intervention and enrichment activities by providing a van for each elementary and middle school that will be housed on site we will also bring back the check and connect program to build stronger relationships with students and families in greater need of assistance and finally as we firm up the dollar amounts from one-time resources going into the fall we are planning to use unallocated funds to provide extra summer resources for intervention extension and enrichment going into the summer of 2022 much of what we planned for this summer was centralized in its development because of the the haste that we had to use to get it planned with more time to plan for next summer we will provide a budget to each school and have principals work together in teams to develop plans that they think would

170most benefit their schools they then will present their plans during a k-12 principal meeting so they can learn from each other and improve their 2022 summer programming in closing we built this graphic as a one-page reference for school board members and staff to use as a way to summarize and explain our use of one-time funds to provide resources for our teachers and schools to support students and families in alignment with our strategic plan learning for all at this time i will turn things back over to ms schmidt to share the larger framework of our budget moving forward great thank you dr haas as i mentioned in my introduction the recovery plan that he just went over included multiple funding sources but i'd like to specifically highlight the arp funding which is the largest portion as

171a stipulation of the that grant we must receive public input on our plan and while it was developed based on previous stakeholder engagement opportunities we will be seeking additional feedback prior to finalizing the grant application and this plan will also be posted to our website as required so i stated in the intro on the slide the fund was established to help safely reopen and sustain safe operations of schools and address the impacts of covenant 19 on our students by addressing students academic social emotional and mental health needs so here is our draft plan utilizing the category categories provided in the template of the grant so first to continue our mitigation efforts we will use the funding to make ventilation improvements provide ppe and purchase additional desks and provide storage for excess furniture to allow for

172social distancing to address unfinished learning we will make investments to expand summer offerings this summer and next summer we will also improve opportunities to after school activities by providing bands at schools to remove transportation as a barrier to participation and lastly to address students academic social emotional and mental health needs we will utilize these funds to continue to offer a fully virtual school option for those students who elect that increasing counseling staff at all schools and increasing staff to reduce class sizes and what's cut off on that slide is the note that some of these items will be partially funded by other sources and then other items mentioned in the previous slide not included here will be funded by other sources so with that we'll open up for feedback questions any questions for dr haas

173or ms schmidt all right a question has there been any update on how many people are interested in the virtual school i know there was some worry about the numbers dwindling as kobit became more of a thing in the rearview mirror see ms collins has joined us the the number i had this afternoon was 340 students what is that into relation to what it was a month or two ago similar going down uh it's gone up uh going up i want a point it was a little bit over a hundred but we still had a lot of students we had and parents we hadn't spoken to so as as the schools have done their their due diligence around contacting every parent the numbers have steadily increased we are i don't know um dr mclaughlin's on

174i'm not sure where we are with our percentages but the last i looked at those we were well above 90 percent at every school as far as getting um intense from parents that that number is correct i haven't looked in a couple days either miss collins but we were um we were really inching towards uh 100 percent miss collins um how are the 340 students spread across the grade levels uh that now you're expecting you're suggesting i can remember all that but my best memory around that is it's a it is distributed with our fewest at our lowest grade levels um so we had about if i remember right about 10 kindergartners was our lowest group but the rest were hovering grade level wise um 25 to 30 a little different first grades little lower

175than the three four and five but i we can get that information to you um thank you i guess as a comment i the reason i ask is just because that's a as i understand that's going to be a one-time expense right we're not going to continue the virtual school in the year and it's just a lot of money um to put aside but it sounds like we still have um robust participation and interest in doing the virtual schooling for this year so perhaps it's it's a worthwhile expenditure um and on that note i remember we had this conversation earlier and i think it's worth noting i guess for the people that might be watching the ventilation system was another one that i didn't know if it'd be necessary in the future but you guys

176um reassured me and i i agreed with your assessment that it's just a good thing to have in general um it's a good time to upgrade ventilation it reduces illnesses across the board and we we all know especially those of us with kids that winter time is kind of a rough time anyway so i do think that's a good expense can you tell us a little bit about the vans at every school and do we have drivers enough people to be drivers for those so the vans would be just a regular seven or eight passenger minivan and it would be dedicated to school but it would be up available for school staff to drive whether that's an after-school tutor i think we're being a little more flexible and creative who was able to drive students

177it wouldn't have dedicated band drivers it would be utilizing existing school staff any other questions or comments yeah i'm sorry i have one more i can't pull up the powerpoint so i can't go back and i apologize if i missed this but so we're allotting some money to each individual school to go over to come up with things targeted to their school i thought i saw that in passing and if is that true so what so right now that the plan is we're gonna we're gonna see how things shake out with uh remaining funds after after the expenditures because a lot of what we presented tonight was is still approximations and based on what's remaining then what we would do is allocate funds to the schools based on the differentiated formula but they would plan

178together so that they could really optimize their plans and work together as a team we felt that or at least part of my assessment this summer was that we did a lot of planning centrally and we didn't really give individual schools a whole lot of input about what we were going to be offering in terms of programming or necessarily how we were going to offer it because we just needed to move quickly i would really like to engage the principals and school staff more in the process going through the year this year thank you thank you any other questions or comments okay thank you miss schmidt and dr haas item 86 um update on our revenue and expenditure well amendments on those so mrs kumazawa good evening school board members i'm maya kumazawa director of

179budget and planning i'm here this evening to propose revenue and expenditure amendments to the current fiscal year 22's budget this evening's presentation is for information only and we would present the appropriation which is also attached to this item in esb for approval on the consent agenda in august as part of local government's framework for evaluating local revenues more frequently due to the uncertain impacts of cobit on our local economy i'm pleased to share that they have revised their fy 22 projections upward as part of recurring base revenues the upward revisions are based partly on stronger driven activity and actual data for business related taxes based on our shared formula the school division's revenue increase is 1.46 million dollars this slide presents a summary of the proposed corresponding expenditure increase in expense proposed corresponding expenditure increases

180they include a transfer to the bright stars fund which i will provide more details about an increase in the transfer to k-tec due to increased compensation assumptions an increase in the transfer to the technology replacement fund for voice over ip phone replacements two custodial ftes to provide service to the new mobile units increased overtime costs due to a change in state compensation regulations one special education administration fte one assessment and policy fte and funding for a one-time payroll consultant and other contingencies in special revenue funds the technology replacement fund will incur the cost for the voice over iphone replacements and in addition a new bryce stars virginia preschool initiative fund is proposed um this will include state revenues of about six hundred thousand dollars and the before mentioned transfer from the school fund of seven

181hundred thousand dollars corresponding expenditures of 1.3 million dollars are planned to maintain original levels of service so i want to share a little bit more detail with regards to the newly proposed special revenue fund that's the bright stars fund in the upcoming school year acps will assume the leadership role for this preschool program that was previously financially managed by the department of social services within local government the benefits of assuming this role include being fully responsible for decisions about programming and beginning to integrate this program within our other preschool programs like title 1 or early childhood special education here's a list of the current bright stars programs we currently have nine bright stars classrooms at six schools this slide shows the projected revenues for the bright stars fund we're anticipating revenues from the state through

182the virginia preschool initiative grant of 610 459 dollars we are required to provide a local match of this amount in addition we're transferring about ninety thousand dollars for a total local contribution of seven hundred thousand dollars as mentioned previously the source of this local contribution is from the revised local government transfer the revenues will support the costs of 18.5 teachers and tas half of a coordinator and half of a bookkeeper in addition the budget includes about fifty seven thousand dollars for services provided by community organizations and seventy five thousand dollars for other operational costs at this point i'll turn it over to you all for any questions and comments if if there are no questions or comments i'll um put this back on the agenda um on the og in on the august consent agenda

183for action thanks maya thank you all okay thank you my very much and thank you for all of the work that you've done all year in developing our budget and presenting everything related to the budget so thank you so very very much we're now ready for other business by board members and the superintendent and um aj i think would would like to make a comment at this time aj hi um so i didn't know an appropriate time to make a comment um but going back to this discussions i heard about the concerns with the transgender policy i just kind of wanted to i don't know i heard a lot of the same opinion about worrying when it came to locker rooms and bathrooms and i only kind of heard it being one-sided about people worrying

184about their cis children being around transgender children and i wanted to kind of make awareness that it kind of is on both sides of the coin that is kind of concerning to transgender individuals as well with possible like harassment um i knew a acquaintance that identified as a transgender man and he decided to hang out with a cisgendered man and was sexually harassed during like a sleepover that they had had and i just heard a lot of people kind of talking about how they were concerned about their cis children getting harassed um in locker rooms or bathrooms but not really realizing that it is kind of it can kind of go both ways about being a concern i just kind of wanted to make it aware that it's not just only um cisgender children being

185concerned about it it is also transgender children thank you so much aj for that comment and whenever you feel that you have something to say make sure that you let us know and that you express your comments so thanks again for what you just relayed to us thank you so much for that but aj my experience is that if you break into song you get in trouble i i just want to echo thank you so much for bringing that up aj one thing that's hard about i i think it's worth saying for any other students that are watching is that you know public comment people can express what whatever feelings they are but i hope that students when they listen in um this was something that was personal to me the week prior where we

186were hearing some comments that were a little bit rough like i remember one in particular that said that black people commit more crimes which you know that's tough to listen to um and so i just hope that all of our students know that they are supported and and welcome and when people speak why i appreciate being able to hear what they have to say it is certainly not um representative of our schools in all instances i think that's worth noting especially as we've had so much public comment right um i just i wanted to uh echo that too and i know that it's a little bit it feels like a little bit unusual because i know we're going to we're not going to further discuss and vote on the policy until the next meeting but

187i feel like four weeks of wondering might be a very long time in the life of a student or a family so i just i really want our you know anyone who's listening tonight our trans and gender expansive students and community members to know that you know we see you and that in my mind you know your humanity is not up for debate here and that you know as katrina said there has been an enormous amount of support that we've gotten from community members in our emails so i just want to make sure that people know that right thank you ms lee and thank you again aj for bringing this discussion up for us um at this point in our meeting are there any other uh comments or any other business by any other board

188members if not we thank all of our staff we thank the people who made public comment for us and uh we thank again aj for being our student rep on the board and we will stand adjourned i think until august the 12th is that the right am i in the right ballpark but they are next day okay thank you all right so have a good month bye everybody be well august 12. good night in wyoming it's still daylight over here i'm about to go outside right and maybe you'll see some other moose like you did the other day right i know i'm gonna