School Board Meeting - June 10, 2021

001yep i have it um let me pull it up real quick i move that the albemarle county public school board going to a closed meeting is authorized by the virginia freedom of information act section 2.2-3711a at the code of virginia under subsection 1 for the discussion consideration in our interviews of prospective candidates for employment and the assignment appointment promotion performance demotion salaries disciplining a resignation of specific public officers appointees or employees of any public body second okay move by miss carlson second by ms lee that we go into closed session um miss johnston could you give us a quick roll call vote on that draw caro yes miss lee yes miss osborne yes miss clawson yes mr oberg yes dr akov yes mr page yes all right so we will convene in the closed session

002see you there there's got to be an easier way to toggle in and out of meetings i mean i just don't know what it is but it has to be i actually kind of like it because i was in a different meeting this past weekend and accidentally was in someone else's closed session and they had to kick me out and so i i really prefer this method i've intentionally having to figure it out each time right yes okay it is about 6 32 so i called this um january i mean in january june 10th meeting of the alamo county school board to order um miss carlson do you have a motion from the closed session yes sir i move that the board certified by reported vote that to the best of each board member's knowledge

003only 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 were heard discussed are considered during the closed meeting second he moved miss carlson second by mr alcaro that everything that was discussed in the closed session was what the motion had identified that would be discussed uh miss johnston could you call the role please on that motion miss lee yes ms osborne yes miss carlson yes mr oberg yes dr acuff yes mr alcaro yes mr page yes motion carried motion carries all right so we'll have our moment of silence hmm okay thank you um now for um since we are still under some restrictions according to the state um our minutes must include this each time the minutes of

004this meeting should reflect that this meeting is being held electronically prescient to virginia state law and albemarle 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 to live on the albemarle county public schools website and public comment may be offered through the zoom waiting room feature in accordance with the school board's protocol or by written submission and now to introduce our board members dr kate akov kate aycoff representing the jack jewett district mr genoa el carro giano alcaro at large miss katrina carlson trina carlson rio district ms julia lee junior lee ryan district mr dave oberg dave oberg whitehall magisterial district ms ellen osborne ellen osborne scottsville district all right

005i'm graham page samuel miller district and our uh student reps i don't see them but i hope they're both here leila bonds she's running a little late she'll be here shortly okay and mario shana this is maria's first meeting and so maya are you here yes i'm here yeah could you give us a brief um rundown on who you are and your school etc um i was a student at murray um i recently graduated um yeah it's nice to be here we are glad to have you and um i think did you have a pretty great honor that you received upon graduation last week uh yes i received the i was one of the recipients of the uh emily quirk scholarship okay congratulations mia congratulations mia right all right moving right along we need now

006a motion for the approval of our gender uh for tonight i move that we approve the agenda second second moved by mr alcaro second by ms lee that the agenda be approved any discussion on that motion if not ms johnston osborne yes miss carlson yes mr oberg yes dr acuff yes mr alcaro yes miss lee yes mr page yes motion carried okay and we also need a motion on the approval of the consent agenda i move that we approve the consent agenda is there a second i second okay move by mr al carro second by dr acuff did we approve this consent agenda that's outlined any discussion on that motion i just have one one point that i'd like to uh ask a question on a donor that needs to be pulled and it has

007to do with the fees i don't have the the agenda right in front of me graduation fees i just want to make sure that those are covered if somebody is not able to afford them yes those are covered okay that's all i needed thank you i actually had that question on um other fees as well um i know the ap fee is covered correct that's correct if it needs to be um are there any others that are covered possibly all all fees are covered um there's actually by code we cannot require a child to pay for you know to pay for something if they in order to participate so for example with the athletic fees those were adopted many years ago to essentially subsidize athletic programs during when the recession started and it's still in

008place um but if if a child or their family cannot afford the fee or if they qualify for free lunch or free reduced lunch then those fees are adjusted i do want to say too that um those the the discussions around fees like the athletic fees are are open to discussion at any time for the board to take a look at those we've done a lot to eliminate fees over the years and if there's more work the board wants to do in that area please let us know i actually want to clarify that the version that i looked at had an ap fee but now um this the newest version does not so i see that that's a part of it i asked our staff to remove the ap fee as one of our fees

009because the students are are not required to pay a fee to be in an ap class and we also cover expenses for exams as well the thing the reason i asked staff to pull that was because the fee is not paid to alma county schools for the student to take the exam it's paid directly to the college board so i didn't think it was appropriate to keep that on there thank you thank you all right if there's no other discussion we do have the motion on the floor to approve the consent agenda so ms johnston ms carlson yes mr oberg yes dr a cuff yes mr alcaro yes miss lee yes ms osborne yes mr page yes mission carried thank you all right moving next to our spotlight on education i don't have in my

010notes who is introduce the spotlight tonight i'm i'm going to be doing this thank you chair paige i'm delighted to introduce tonight's spotlight on education because i'm the daughter of a public school science teacher who reached out to broaden his experiences in science and creatively engage students so spotlighting one of albemarle county's own is a real treat in 1994 the u.s congress signed into law the albert einstein distinguished educator fellowship act which provided a unique opportunity for highly accomplished k-12 teachers to serve in a national setting one of which is a smithsonian institute teachers are given access to and will leave with a national network of leaders and programs to consult not only will this invigorate their professional development around stem but it will enhance their contributions to their school division when they return home

011yes this highly prestigious national competition reached into albemarle county this year for its newest recruit she's kate kogi who teaches science at our charter middle school kate will be working with the smithsonian's famed air and space museum one of the most iconic engaging and heavily visited museums in our nation's capital the timing is ideal for kate in addition to not having coba to deal with the museum is in the process of re-image reimagining all 23 of its galleries and presentation spaces to as a museum says to inspire a new generation of pioneers and explorers the work kate says will fit perfectly into her next year's lessons in physics it's a dream come true for a teacher who is passionate about break the mold learning as exciting as the einstein fellowship is it is not the

012first national selection process that tapped kate's talents a few years ago she joined a cohort of influencers which included a best-selling author a movie star i want to know who an astronaut and leading business executives and scientists in the nasa outreach program as the only educator chosen kate visited vandenberg air force base for the launch of an environmental satellite she participated in briefings on the mission pre-launch activities news conferences and was a vip for the satellite launch itself to capture her experiences for her students kate set up a youtube channel she returned to acps with an impressive lesson plan that ignited her students interest to build their own launch pad and rockets she also strengthened their engagement to nasa's goddard space flight center where her students met talked with and learned about space flight from

013the laboratory's principal scientists as kate prepares to begin her einstein fellowship she's with us this evening to share her plans for what her goals will be and how the opening of these new frontiers of learning have and will continue to impact kate and her students so kate welcome tonight and if you'd like to say a few words i'm sure all after that all of my colleagues will have questions for you but you have the floor oh thank you that was a really kind introduction i really appreciate it um it's so nice to see you all tonight and just thank you for the opportunity to be here um it has been just a dream come true to work with community lab school these past three years it has been such an engaging and inspiring environment and

014i am so excited to share everything with the smithsonian and bring back everything i learned in this next year to have mall county uh so thank you for every like for creating this program for us these past years have been awesome um i'll be working uh as you said with the air and space museum for the next year working specifically on their teacher innovator institute and what that program is is it brings each year 30 stem educators from across the country for free to uh the air and space museum they get to stay there for two weeks and work with each other and build these amazing projects that they get to take back home to their schools and i would love to have a cohort of admiral county educators out there too it's an incredible

015program um i also would love to build projects with average county students certainly with our school but any school in the division there are so many great resources there and i'm still learning quite a bit about them this fellowship is quite i'm learning something new every day but uh yeah thank you so much for this opportunity and for um yeah for inviting me here today and i'm happy to answer any questions or anything you said i mean congratulations go ahead oh i was just ready kate congratulations uh you know i mean what an honor and and we are truly honored to have you here with us when you were just talking about bringing the program back after working with the other 30 educators so that you can show it to your students somehow i'd love

016it if we could figure out a way to see that too i know that's going to be really really interesting and i sure would be interested to see it i'm sure everybody else would too absolutely yeah and those educators so those uh the educators in the teacher innovator institute are specifically middle uh middle school teachers from around the country and they build these projects and it's very similar to what we've been doing at our school with doing interdisciplinary projects and kind of taking um these non-traditional approaches and lending that to authentic learning and so we'd love to share that as well there's a cohort of uh so we're 18 fellows within the fellowship program and i certainly will be learning a lot about the department of energy and library of congress so there will be

017a lot a lot of fun things to bring back here that i'm excited to learn about too how did you how did you and your students interact with the goddard space flight center um so gosh we so that rocket launch was the iceset 2 satellite it is a satellite that tracked sea ice levels and really just any sort of elevation change on the earth's surface um it's a really awesome program um and so after the launch well prior to the lunch i reached out to the principal scientist burst of marcus who uh helped build that whole pro or put that whole project together and um so we reached out and we actually brought all of the students to meet all of the scientists and engineers on that mission we got to check out the clean

018rooms where they put together parts of the satellite we also got to connect with folks from the globe program which is nasa's educational outreach program specifically for citizen science and we learned about ways in which students in our school and students in other schools can actually track um we can actually like measure from the ground the height of certain things and it can compare to the icesat-2 satellite to see if those measurements are accurate so we did a lot of work as along the lines of citizen science and how kids can participate in that too wow are there other questions which movie star was in your group oh gosh i am forgetting his name now he's a voice actor i know when he said that i was like i forget um i can check my

019journal but uh he's a voice actor the program nasa social i highly encourage anyone to check it out it's just a really great way to connect folks with what's happening at nasa um it i was i was just so fortunate to do that uh but really truly it is such a cool program but yeah just all walks of life uh in one place and yeah i felt very fortunate to be there right and we're very proud of you we really are okay so kate when can uh when will you know so that we could have it on our calendar um for the presentation that would be presented um to people in the county or other places so that we could have it also for us oh for the teacher innovators oh gosh like just with

020as far as the institute with the smithsonian or oh gosh i still have to learn i haven't even started my job there yet so um i'll be so this uh not this weekend but next weekend i'm actually going to be kind of taking on a volunteer role with the smithsonian and um taking part in this year's teacher innovator institute um so that will involve this current cohort of teachers but my hope is as i gain a little bit more background in this program and how folks can apply is to get a team of abraham county teachers out there for next year because it'll be in person next year so all the museums all of the projects and connections it should be really fun okay that is really cool and do you think you could get

021us any special um behind-the-scenes passes to the space and science museum oh man if i find out i will certainly let you know i'm so just so you know with the air and space museum um the udvar has so the air and space museum has two locations um the udvar has the center which is over by dulles and that is um the big airplane hangar where they have space shuttle and planes and uh the blackbird like all the big stuff and then they have the one on the national mall which is the one that most people think about and that's uh typically holds some of the smaller historic pieces of air and space history but udvarahazi has been open for the past couple months and the one on the national mall is opening up the

022end of july so very soon we shall be going there but um i've got ideas for how to get our kids over there too and other folks here much more important getting our kids there i think we can all figure out how to get there right thank you so much are there any other comments or questions okay if not well kate again we really are pleased and so happy that you have um this opportunity to sort of showcase our model county public schools so thanks so much for the presentation to us and we do look forward to hearing more from you once your um tenure shift there started so thanks again thank you so much thank you okay dr acuff is at the end of spotlight it is okay all right um announcements i think

023we do have at least two from the cabinet so yes sir yes service for paige yep okay so i think first we have uh an announcement from dr mclaughlin yeah thanks dr haas and good evening board members i'm pat mclaughlin chief of strategic planning uh and i just wanted to take a minute to let you know how excited i am to have the chance to share with you and hear your feedback on our draft strategic plan at the board retreat tomorrow uh as you'll recall it was just over a year ago that we introduced you to our planning partners at battelle for kids and it's great to see that this project is uh finally coming to conclusion so after retreat tomorrow uh mike nicholson and shannon king from battelle will take you through a discussion

024of each major section of the plan to hear your affirmations your concerns questions and suggestions and we hope to use your feedback to bring you a final plan for adoption at our next uh business meeting on july 8th so i'm looking forward to seeing you all again tomorrow morning and getting to hear your feedback uh then thank you thank you very much dr mclaughlin then we also have an announcement from dr harrison thank you dr haas good evening um school board numbers the office of community engagement will host the division's sixth annual equity conference on friday june 17th from 8 30 a.m through 12 30 p.m the conference theme is purpose passion and progress keep rising to the top the purpose is to celebrate the continuation of a transit transformative journey of 69 educators who

025met the criteria for credentialing in culturally responsive teaching by earning a micro credential or certification the conference is about acknowledging passion by showcasing the unwavering commitment to albemarle county public schools evidence-based culturally responsive teaching home-grown best practice model for addressing achievement gaps the p of practice is about highlighting the impact culturally responsive teaching is having on teacher and student learning the featured educators will share how they have begun to shift their teaching practice to teaching to and through their students strengths from a cultural lens these 69 educators are examples of our desire as a school division to keep rising to the top this featured group of educators represent our largest to date we have grown from a cohort of four candidates in 2016 to 36 in 2018 to a total of 139 in 2020 and

026to a total of 2008 educators completing the culturally responsive teaching process over our six-year history i believe you have received a link to register for this conference we currently have over 220 participants registered and we hope that you will be able to join us thank you for allowing me to make this announcement thank you very much dr harrison and so if when the board members register are they eligible for a t-shirt uh yes uh there is a delay in getting those printed but they will receive one absolutely and so will you dr haas thank you thank you thank you bernard um i have one announcement for the board uh when you look at the consent agenda for tonight there is uh under information for information there is uh there are some minor edits while uh

027not minor but a few edits to the uh policy on masks and uh face coverings it's policy eba and with summer programming imminent we are seeking to make some changes to it around math squaring outdoors ross has worked on the policy we did run by the the changes we're looking at making with our local pediatricians as well as the health district they're they are in agreement with them we put them on the consent agenda tonight but it was added uh today and so we wanted to make draw your attention to it in case you had looked at the agenda earlier and then came back to it again tonight it's um won't be up for action until july the 8th so there's plenty of time to look at it but i wanted to be sure you

028could see it there that's all i have mr page okay thank you doctors and dr mclaughlin and dr harrison uh is there any school board business at this time you know when on the board within your page yes um i just wanted to ask a clarifying question about the um dr harrison's announcement it's thursday right yeah june he said friday june the 17th but um it is thursday yes okay okay i just want to be sure about that thank you still wearing my t-shirt from last year right all right so it is thursday june 17th all right any other questions or comments from the board i did have one um piece of business just that i matt attended it but the vision keepers i don't know if y'all remember but post pandemic we had started

029to put a board member on this vision keepers group which is a group dedicated to expanding preschool access for kids and implementing a way to kind of track how kids are doing to make sure that they continue whatever progress they gain during preschool in our schools it's a really good partnership and they just had a meeting i have a slide where they've kind of summarized the work that they've done and i'm happy to share it with the rest of you and then come january maybe we can get another board member to attend those meetings as well and matt is a part of them and is contributing as well they're doing good things that's the update okay all right thanks ms carlson any other school board uh members with business at this time okay if not

030moving to our public comment this carlson vice chair yep i'm going to start 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 and 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 covert 19 pandemic the school board is still committed to encouraging public comment despite its need to meet on a virtual basis for this reason there will be two ways for the public to provide comment first as always written comments can be submitted to the school board clerk prior to the meeting and will be given to all the school board members for review and

031second so long as the school board holds its meetings electronically members of the public wishing to provide public comment during the meeting may sign up online by 2 pm the day of the meeting we have a lot of speakers tonight i think the last time i checked there was 41 and for that reason each speaker's time instead of the regular three minutes it will be two minutes and you should have all received that notification via email um before electronic public comment commences what i'm a few things i think we should go over based on last time when we had a lot of things one i'm gonna just try to do an on-deck thing so i'll say the speaker and i'll tell the next speaker to kind of get lined up that they're gonna be next

032um two please make sure you're muted until it is your time to speak and then three and this is a really big one please follow the zoom meeting to determine when you need to speak don't look at the live stream because there is a delay and it it creates it can create confusion but i think there's someone that already yep it's great um so speakers during the meeting should state their name and address our magisterial district our school um that they attend further speakers should limit comments to those matters that are relevant to school board governance are the operations of the school division and my last bit is although the school board will not respond directly to comments made during the public comment period school school board members may address comments at the end of

033the meeting agenda under other business so with that oh and one last uh little piece of advice we don't have a timer i time things on my phone it's a little hard for you to see when there's one minute left i really strongly encourage you to time yourself so you have a kind of an understanding of when your time is coming up so the first speaker is going to be fontina bums followed by nikki so fontina i'm not sure if you're on i'm here thank you so much you can start okay good evening everyone i strongly support every parent's liberty to direct the upbringing education and care of their children as they see fit i also feel that it is critically important that the school fosters a respectful inclusive learning environment hopefully these are common

034goals amongst everyone in this meeting and as such i would encourage parents to one examine the courageous conversations curriculum and slides and two to read gerald singleton's book courageous conversation about race that this that is the basis of for this curriculum after reviewing the resources i have found that they are directly opposed to creating an environment where every child is respected instead of teaching our kids to judge people based on their actions and character this curriculum strips them of their individual identity and lumps them into categories based on the color of their skin gender sexual orientation etc as an example the eighth grade curriculum slide specifically states that it is wrong to say things like we all belong to the human race and there are two sides to every story this curriculum actually says that

035these logical and uniting statements are racist and building blocks towards genocide as a society we have to work to achieve unity and mutual respect a curriculum that divides children into groups and places primary importance on attributes that they cannot control will not achieve this goal thank you so much for your attention thank you for those comments miss bombs the next speaker is going to be nikki athy and following that will be tim henson good evening i'm nikki athy from samuel miller i will submit a letter detailing why i oppose the foundation principles behind the anti-racist policy the overhaul of the strategic plan the continuation of the courageous conversations program the ill conceived use of funds supplied to equity trainers and outside policy makers and my strong objections to the changes to the sex offender notification

036policy i will also detail concerns about the subjective standards for introducing and reviewing new curriculum the equity review cycle for updates to policy and evaluation criteria of success in the new paradigm set forth by the strategic plan i asked tonight for board members to commit to listening hearing and responding in earnest to the concerns of the community some of the feedback that concerned parents are receiving from the school board or acps staff has ranged from disinterested to patronizing to flatly arrogant what is being presented to you is genuine concern well thought through and well-researched physicians and hopefulness for achieving a solution agreeable to all and all with the best interest of children at heart what citizens who disagree with acps positions and its agenda have received in response is mockery closed doors and desires to

037strip them of the ability to choose what is best for their children citizens have entrusted this board with a grave responsibility to provide a foundational education for albemarle children commensurate with 193 million dollar budget this trust has been either misdirected at best or abused at worst acps is not a place for activism or social experimentation it is a place for sober deliberation of how to deliver the very best we have to offer children and it is a place to set an example of how to balance priorities and work together when we have wildly different opinions without encouraging and stoking us versus them mentalities i offer i respectfully off uh i ask you to respectfully consistent recommendations of those who are seeing the fruits of these policies for the first time thank you for those comments

038miss athe the next speaker will be tim henson followed by sarah harris hi um i'd like to thank you all for the work that went into the courageous conversations program i grew up in a nice suburb of a college town i attended a catholic school with nuns as teachers but despite that when i was young much younger than middle school i heard some ignorant things some racist things hurtful things and repeated some of them not really understanding the deeper meaning and at that point i don't really remember anyone saying whoa hold on so i'm happy to have my kids get an open honest educational forum to learn about these issues and help my kids understand and know better i know there are people who don't support this program but please remember the 700 people who

039signed a letter supporting courageous conversations don't give up we're all with you thank you thank you for those comments mr hinson the next speaker will be sarah harris followed by heidi bennett heidi gilman bennett oh miss harris i think your sound is and you're not doesn't show you as muted but i can't hear you okay we'll come back to you um and let you figure it out so we'll go to heidi gilman bennett followed by madeline benedict and then i'll loop back to you ms harris hi my name is heidi gilman bennett i'm a parent of two kids at henley first of all i want to speak in support of the henley middle school student journalists who have been quoted in national conservative publications recently i congratulate these students for their fine writing on the

0401619 project and lgbtq identity and i thank their teacher who has led outstanding real world lessons on both facts and free speech along with over 700 other people i urge the school board to continue to support the approved acps anti-racism policy with professional development and instructional materials i am so personally grateful to the henley diversity resource teachers for creating lessons that are so age-appropriate and engaging and also to their classroom teachers who are leading the courageous conversation lessons so thoughtfully these lessons have sparked great conversation in my home my sixth grader mama i have a bias towards cheeseburgers and my eighth grader is so ready for the uncomfortable questions about skin color and economic and social disparities that he sees around him in the world i am also glad that teachers are affirming and fully

041including the transgender and gender expansive students who are at headline that's in acps policy and state law plus it's consistent with my family values and my church values i especially want to thank dr costa for her bold leadership all of the henley educators are helping us raise a generation of humans who will try to make the us and especially our local community more just and equitable thank you thank you for those comments mrs gilman bennett the next speaker will be madeline benedict and then we will try you again miss harris um hi everyone my name is madeline benedict i'm an 8th grader at headley middle school and i live in the samuel miller district i'm going to be talking about the anti-racism policy and creators conversations and why i support them as a young white

042girl going to an almost all-white school i've seen subtle and blatant racist views displayed by my fellow classmates on multiple occasions and i'm not proud of it but in most of those situations i didn't say anything because i didn't know what to do because i wasn't educated on the topics of racism and anti-racism there are two specific lessons i want to touch on when it comes to courageous conversations one was a video we watched about police brutality for people of color and one talked about white privilege the video showed issues that are very serious in our community and are the kinds of productive conversations and topics that we really need to delve into people with white privilege myself included should be held to the standard of acknowledging white privilege racism and trying to dismantle both

043acknowledge acknowledging white privilege is not enforcing the idea that white people are better than black people white privilege is prevail in our society because of the discriminatory laws and oppression that black people faced and are still facing ignoring white privilege or claiming that it isn't real is ignoring systemic racism and depression to make you feel more comfortable i want to make it very clear that the school is in no way teaching us that white people are bad the only purpose is to bring awareness to these kinds of issues those of you who think that the county is pushing a political agenda or narrative the idea that being anti-racist is somehow an attack on your political or religious views because it promotes being against bigotry is disgusting if being racist is considered a political view to

044you and you agree with that political view then you're just racist using politics or religion to excuse and offend bigotry is hindering our efforts as a community to make black and lgbtq people feel safe and accepted the responsibility of advocating for black people for black lives should fall into everyone including white people and we should use our privilege to speak up about such issues the one-sided viewpoint some of you have referred to is the viewpoint that empathy and acceptance are important and i personally think that that is a pretty good view to be teaching the students having these kinds of conversations in our school is so important because it shows our students how to combat and recognize racism within and out of our school environment black people do not get to opt out of being

045black or being discriminated against because of their skin color so white people should not be allowed to opt out of acknowledging it thank you perfect time thank you for those comments miss benedict and i always take a second to say thank you so much for coming to speak i know it's hard and i love when we have students come and share their experiences so thank you the next speaker we will miss harris if you want to try and see if your audio is working can you hear me now yes yay thank you members of the school board my name is sarah harris and i'm here again tonight to voice my strong support for courageous conversations in particular and anti-racism and lgbtq inclusion in acps in general several of us drafted an open letter in support

046of the board's commitment to equity and inclusion in acps which you've already heard about more than 700 members of our community including parents educators and administrators have signed it in just the last week the letters in your inbox we're grateful for the work that educators students county leadership and the school board have already done such as creating a strategic plan that centers on equity implementing the anti-racism policy through lessons and classroom practices and materials and providing professional development for teachers and staff in crt which we all know means culturally responsive teaching and we're proud of where the county is heading with the forthcoming approval and implementation of the policy on the treatment of transgender and gender expansive students in schools which is required prior to the start of the next school year acps is sending

047a clear message of acceptance and celebration of our lgbtq students as for the opinion that it should be the parents not the students having these conversations we have been for years we've been listening and learning and making important progress it's why these policies are in place and it's how these laws have been passed the list of signatures includes over 125 students indicating their eagerness to have these conversations but they too have been doing this work for years students were instrumental in the development of the anti-racism policy so don't underestimate them or what they can handle none of this is new none of this should be controversial albemarle county public schools is firmly and categorically on the right side of history with this adoption of these policies and the implementation of these um this curriculum and

048the vast majority of the community supports this critical work so st stay strong stay focused and thank you thank you for those comments miss harris i did not announce the next speaker we have nancy from whitehall i do not know the last name and that will be followed by marsh patty so nancy i do see a nancy um moir i am going to give my time to marsh patty please okay thank you so marsh patty will be next um followed by john bryce and just so we're clear um it doesn't double the time i don't believe you you can't give your time to someone to double their time but you can you can yield the floor if you don't want to provide comment so marsh patty um you're up great um thank you very much

049um good evening my name is marsh patty and i'm a parent of two children in the white hole district tonight i want to present a letter or petition to the school board i want to be clear that i did not personally author this petition but i am a signatory i was asked by a collection of parents to present it to the board and i do so tonight with great respect for the diverse viewpoints of many caring parents on monday june 7th this petition was created to request transparency discussion and community engagement regarding the courageous conversations piloted henley it also asked that this pilot be paused until there is an opportunity for transparency and discussion in just three days the petition is now nearing 300 signatures the signatories are over 18 years of age they do

050not include children the petition was translated into spanish to advance the important goal of being inclusive as possible for our albemarle county residents i ask us all to keep in mind and respect that the signatories no doubt have their own reasons for signing the petition we come from different political and religious views and from a variety of life experiences though our differences may be many there is in fact one strong voice with respect to this pilot i would like to read a portion of our petition as diverse members of the albemarle county community we join our neighbors in supporting a learning environment for our children that is free from discrimination hate exclusion and bullying of any kind we are concerned about the new courageous conversations program being piloted at henley and whether it is the

051right way to achieve the above goals we are all united in supporting we the undersigned members of the albemarle county public school community are writing to request a pause on any future and broader implementation of the program to allow adequate time for one a comprehensive fact-driven and balanced analysis and review of program content by key stakeholders including parents open number two open public conversations and forums to discuss the materials as a first step we ask the board to hold a town hall where the components of the pilot can be presented to the public in questions asked we also request that quantitative feedback from the pilot be shared including the performance metrics for the program its original goals and how success is being measured mr freddy yes i am so sorry please for that to us

052we will read it i promise and in the future if you're speaking on behalf of a group of people um you can let us know we can extend your time in the future so you know i'm sorry the next speaker will be um john bryce followed by christy commons hi i'm john bryce from samuel miller and i have two simple requests for the board regarding the rollout of its courageous conversations program based on what i've heard from other parents i have some major concerns however like most parents i need a lot more information from you you've failed to communicate your intentions and process to us now i hope it's not the case but it seems like you're attempting to implement a controversial unproven program as quickly and quietly as possible without the required due diligence

053and without including the parents and taxpayers where is the transparency the communication where is the inclusive community discussion where the town halls the surveys and comment periods how could you possibly think it might be acceptable to roll out something like this without a minimum of one town hall per district why are you excluding the very community you're supposed to serve and where's the data from the pilot program which conveniently was implemented at the 11th hour during a pandemic while parents were distracted and juggling more balls than ever what were the target outcomes were they achieved how were they measured as a parent i want what's best for my children but your lack of due diligence has excluded me from a top secret process was that your intent i'm requesting that you take a time out

054on the rushed rollout of this program to communicate with us transparently give us a chance to review the data to ask questions and provide feedback give us a chance to weigh in on what's best for our children i'm also requesting that you invite us parents to have some courageous conversations during town halls before introducing content from your controversial pilot program to any additional classrooms thank you for your kind attention thank you for those comments mr bryce the next speaker will be christy corman's correctness correction followed by christine koenig good evening i'm a mother of two acps elementary students when i first heard rumblings of the courageous conversation pilot program at henley the information was hearsay i began to ask parents who had students at henley and they knew very little which was even more concerning

055as i began to dig in and ultimately saw the slides of the curriculum i was shocked to say the least my concern is the apparent deceit or at a minimum lack of transparency between the school and parents it made me question what high schoolers and elementary schools our students are being taught behind our backs regardless of the content of the curriculum the big red flag here is the process and the lack of transparency why is this being hidden why does a slide presented to our eighth graders say and quote what is said in our classroom must stay in our class community surely we all agree that these are minors and parents have legal and moral rights to the care and control of their underage children i implore all parents to consider this what happens when

056the day comes and it will that you're on the other side of agreeing with the curriculum in schools won't you want to know that the precedent has been set for a methodical process where materials are shared feedback is received and a respectful conversation and decision is reached don't you want to know that your children's safety comes first to our school leaders what's the rush on this program what's the big secret nothing is gained by rushing slow down press pause and be transparent with parents thank you very much for those comments miss cormans and since you didn't state it i'll just say further record from the samuel miller district um next up will be christine koenig followed by nathan moore hi can you hear me i can hi thank you um hello i'm christine koenig a

057brownsville parent i'm confused and frustrated i watched the last school board meeting i was confused by all the parent comments about a pilot program at a school my child will attend in a few years i am familiar with the culturally responsive teaching at ecps and from what i have personally seen and heard i believe it is a good and valuable program critical race theory is a new term for me and i had to google it um honestly i'm still not sure i understand it uh courageous conversations is apparently a new pilot program at henley but i couldn't find anything about it on the acps website so i googled it and links to local news articles and websites i've never visited before came up there i found what was referred to as leaked materials were they

058truly leaked if so why were they not meant to be shared with parents i reviewed the quote leaked powerpoints and it seemed to have some good slides about bias and others that may stimulate really powerful conversations there are also slides that i'm not quite sure what they're trying to get at so i want to know more so i can understand so my questions are will all materials in this new curriculum be shared with parents were there and will there be opportunities for parent feedback across all of acps and has acps engaged in accumulating feedback from diverse parent populations across the county and not just henley parents how is this pilot program being evaluated and what are the measurable success criteria both for the pilot and the program moving forward when and how will the decision

059be made to roll it out to other schools i'm frustrated that i don't have direct and detailed information from acps on anything related to this program and all i have is google i'm sure other parents like me are waiting for this communication from acps especially since this new curriculum has made national news and is creating controversy finally what kind of trading were teachers given to implement courageous conversations is it true that teachers were given the materials just 10 days before they were being required to teach it were teachers given any training and how to guide the discussion so it doesn't go in a harmful direction our teachers being given the support they need to make this a positive learning experience for all we were supposed to be creating safe spaces for our children and to

060have these important and sensitive conversations and without the proper tools and training to support our teachers you could end up traumatizing and re-traumatizing some of our most vulnerable and at-risk students these conversations are so important so let's take the time to do it right slow down involve parents in the community set metrics for success and actually give teachers the support and training they need to make it successful we can't afford to get this wrong and destroy any progress that has already been made thank you for listening thank you for those comments miss koenig the next speaker will be nathan moore followed by samuel thanks katrina my name is nathan moore from ryo district and my kids had some very good years at woodbrook elementary a year ago i would have said my two girls instead

061of my two kids because my two kids were both born biologically female my older child who's now 12 years old came out to me as a trans boy in december that was an adjustment for sure but i am so proud to have charlie as my son and so proud of his courage because what really matters in all this is that all of our kids in elemental county feel loved and that they feel supported not just by their dads and their moms but by their community what matters is for all of our kids to be able to lead free and flourishing lives as they grow into adolescence and then young adulthood they need to be physically safe they need to be economically secure they need to feel heard and understood and feel a sense of belonging

062and it's our job to tear down the structural walls that exclude some people from living those free and flourishing lives that's why i support initiatives like courageous conversations that curriculum as well as al morrow county's overall efforts to engage in culturally responsive teaching and i just want to comment for a minute there are people on the right who don't like this model and they're egged on by media outlets that are literally fascist these people think it's perfectly fine for some kids to feel unsafe just not theirs for some kids to experience discrimination just not theirs for some kids to be pushed out of the resources that our society offers just not theirs but they know they can't say those things here in polite society so instead they go on and on and on about process

063right they're wrong as a school system please continue to support culturally responsive teaching and please keep making that courageous conversations pilot program better and better thank you for your time thank you for those comments mr moore the next speaker will be samuel parks followed by rebecca elliott hello my name is sam parks from the white hall district and i bring the perspective tonight of a homeschooling parent so the past year a number of families have confided in us that they're pulling their children out of albemarle county schools often after witnessing what their children were taught virtually for example one family witnessed their second grader being taught that people are sometimes not the gender they were assigned at birth and that if they have a funny feeling in their belly right now maybe they are one

064of those people finding these and other lessons to be manipulative psychologically destabilizing and certainly usurping of their parental role these parents remove their children from their schools quietly lest they be labeled bigots lord i've reviewed the courageous conversations curriculum and rather than make pronouncements i want to ask you to consider a few questions one will students formed by this curriculum be more likely to treat others as unique individuals or instead see others as stand-ins for an identity group two are students likely to emerge more emotionally resilient more graceful with others or will they be less so more likely to find trauma or grievance in everyday conflicts and disappointments three will students emerge with more of a sense of belonging a shared common identity or will they feel further fractured into identity groups groups almost designed

065to be antagonistic four will our minority students emerge more ennobled and enabled to participate in american civic life or will they have had the expectation reinforced that the odds are stacked against them five we'll teaching our white students that their skin corresponds with privilege and oppression make them less or more vulnerable to the seductions of white nationalism members of the board search your heart and be honest with yourselves you have been entrusted with the molding of young minds do not be cowed by a cultural zeitgeist but know that history will not look kindly on this it is not too late for you to do the right thing open this curriculum up to transparent community review and know that to fear doing so is the surest sign that something is very a mess thank you thank

066you very much for those comments mr perks the next speaker will be rebecca elliott followed by luca schroer for rear so rebecca um or miss elliott if you are on now is your go time let me see if i see you i do not see her okay um i will put her a note and try her at the end if she comes on so next up then will be luca schroer followed by sean johnson all right i would like to start off by telling you all a story i have two lesbian mothers i first experienced homophobia when i was in kindergarten we were talking about our families and i mentioned that i have two mothers i was told by another child that i couldn't have two mothers and that i must have a mother and

067father all throughout my elementary school years i was ostracized always asked who my quote unquote real dad was uh or who was like the dad in my parents relationship it got worse in middle school and all the way up to high school where i have been called slurs so here is what i have to say if your child is old enough to say hurtful and hateful things they are old enough to learn that what they are saying is not okay and people trying to prevent that from being taught are enabling and supporting bullying and hate i was going to speak my mind um i was going to speak on my support of the anti-racism policies but i believe madeleine benedict has said what i wanted to say so i'm just going to second that i

068would however like to say that if a person has a problem with their child being learning how to not be racist they might be racist themselves thank you thank you for those comments um luca the next speaker will be sean johnson followed by sophia hirano hello uh sean johnson whitehall district um i want to talk about the critical race theory instruction that's being proposed we have three kids with one currently at henley our kids are not racist never have been they've never told us that they feel racism or lack of inclusion our issues in their schools they're not confused about racism religion or their gender they are well aware that racism does exist in many shapes and forms i've reviewed the materials that you intend on sharing with the students at henley and do not

069approve this material contains many false assumptions and that's many important facts and will lead kids to many wrong conclusions your student presentation material for 8th graders for example was designed to create reactions from students to fit your social engineering goals on slide of the 8th grade material you point out that black men are more likely to be in prison than white men also that black men are more likely to be killed by police what is missing are important facts that put these stats into real context according to the fbi in 2019 black men accounted for 56 of all homicides while the whole black population was only 14 of the us the fbi also reported that an overall per capita offending rates for black men was six times higher than white men there's much more data

070available that really shows the whole picture yet in developing your program you have cherry-picked convenient statistics to perpetuate a radical false narrative on slide 38 a biracial couple answers questions about white privilege one of the questions asked if you've ever had to teach your children how to not get killed by police any common sense parent knows that children need to be caught to obey laws and respect law enforcement i have forwarded that material to both police chief ron lance and sheriff chan bailey just recently this week so waiting for comment from them finally i do want to thank the citizens advocating responsible education of baltimore county in only a few days this group has grown dramatically and has become very well organized your time is over okay thank you thank you for providing your comments

071the next speaker will be sophia hirano followed by levy duncan so sophia hirano i will see if i see her real quick uh hi um my name is sophia hirono i'm a 10th grader at community lab school in my opinion i think it's great for teachers to talk about anti-racism in school because learning our history is important it's not as hard as one might think one way it would be helpful is being taught the history of how people came up with the vocabulary for racial slurs and how not to and and why not to use them there are many people who aren't educated about slurs and their history so allowing the teachers teach the history of slur words is important the teacher can show a documentary about how people came up with the slurs and

072why they are used i know slur words are offensive but why do people use them so much to hurt other people why can't this be a knowledge and not acknowledge thank you thank you for this time for your time thank you so much for those comments and again i will call out thank you as a student for coming and sharing your perspective we always appreciate it hearing from our students you're welcome the next speaker will be levy duncan followed by scott guggenheimer so i do not see levy duncan in here so hearing nothing i will move to scott guggenheimer followed by mary govind and levi duncan i'll move to the bottom of the list thanks uh my name is scott guggenheimer i'm a parent of two students at henley middle school both my students are

073white i i don't think they have a ton of first-hand experience with feeling excluded because of their identity they show up at henley middle school and they are loved and valued and affirmed and challenged and they're having a wonderful academic experience i cherish it i'm grateful for it i think they'll build on that academic experience whatever sort of life they want to live and when i reflect on that three things occur to me first not all kids in our schools are having that same type of experience secondly we can't really have a fair democracy if not all of our young people are having an academic experience on which they can build whatever sort of life they want to live we can't have a just society without an inclusive school system and third the aspirations that

074the school board has articulated in the anti-racism policy the work that educators have been doing for years to become more culturally responsive in their teaching and the work being done at headley middle school to start having conversations about race and identity these efforts don't take anything away from my kids being more inclusive having more affirmation and more love for some young people does not mean less of anything for other young people in fact it's more of everything for all young people more opportunities to relate to other people more skill building for navigating complex problems from diverse perspective a deeper appreciation of our skills and strengths both individually and collectively so i continue to support the school board's anti-racism policy it's so exciting to hear that over 700 people feel the same way and i'm so

075glad that henley middle school has started to have courageous conversations in their classrooms thanks [Music] thank you very much for providing those comments mr griffinheimer next speaker will be mary govind followed by heath forbes my name is mary govan and i am a student at albemarle high school growing up in the western feeder pattern most of my friends and most of my fellow students and many of my teachers were white unlike me i learned that sometimes even a really friendly and caring school doesn't feel friendly and welcoming when your race sets you apart for example it's hard to feel like a recognizable individual when teachers regularly get you mixed up with the only other asian kid in your grade i go to albemarle now and one big change that i liked was that there are

076so many different types of people with different types of names and backgrounds i don't think western and henley are responsible for changing the population of the schools and i don't think they should but i support the albemarle county public schools anti-racism policies and lgbtqia inclusion work because these policies might help make schools really welcoming for people who don't match the majority of people at that school the way i didn't one last thing tonight i am listening to a lot of adults who are scared of having students and teachers talk about racing identity but as an america asian-american i can't escape these topics and i need my teachers and peers to know how to have those conversations with me and when i'm around and feel safe having them i want to thank acps for continuing to

077recognize and support curriculum like courageous conversations thank you thank you very much for those comments miss govan and again thank you for coming to speak as a student we appreciate it thank you the next speaker will be heath forbes followed by jay jennings mr forbes if you're on now is your time i do not see him okay so we'll have jay jennings followed by um matthew mirza juwiski juski hi thank you i'm jay jennings i'm the father of a rising fifth grader at mountain view and a resident of the scottsville district first i applaud the creation of the community working group that began meeting last night to work on the mountain view overcrowding issue i want to bring forward data to help you as you work to decide where our children will spend their first

078full school year since the middle of third grade it's not easy to find studies on fifth graders in middle school however the 2008 paper the negative impacts of starting middle school in sixth grade is telling the authors found that students who attend middle school in sixth grade are twice as likely to be disciplined and perform worse on standardized test scores than their counterparts in elementary school according to the study the results suggest that exposing sixth graders to older peers has persistent negative consequences on their academic academic outcomes this is important because no matter how the day would be structured for fifth graders at walton many of the children would spend nearly two hours a day on a bus with eighth graders this study was based on sixth graders it's not a stretch to extrapolate the

079effect on fifth graders would be at least as negative according to the vde offense for frequency report over the past five years walton had nearly two times as many offenders per capita as any other middle school in the county primarily substance and behavioral offenses over one student in 10 is disciplined each year meanwhile mountain view elementary school has reported no offenders over the same five-year period if we combine the existing disciplinary situation at walton with the findings of the cited study we must conclude that sending our rising fifth graders who have spent nearly a year and a half outside of school to walton is setting them up for failure and trauma that will likely follow them for the rest of their academic careers overcrowding in the building at mountain view cannot be the only factor

080nor should it be the primary driver in determining where our children spend their final year of elementary school based on this data the school system should consider every other possibility including learning cottages in the bus loop and or using the boys and girls club offered space to reduce overcrowding before putting nine and ten-year-olds on a bus unsupervised for up to two hours a day with 13 and 14 year olds thank you for your time thank you very much for those comments mr jennings the next speaker will be um matthew i see you smiling because this can't be that uncommon matthew marzu giustiski followed by um laurie tambourino yes matthew marziaski great job uh whitehall district um acps policies state that children and youth function best when there is clear and cooperative communication between the home

081and the school and i'm here tonight to say this has not occurred with the henley courageous conversations pilot indeed just yesterday a survey was emailed to the henley students to gather feedback on the 8th grade program not only were parents not surveyed they were not even made aware that the survey was being sent and for the majority of this year's pilot the website has read that the eighth grade units are forthcoming for the c car program as of today those slides have been uploaded so thank you for that but these are not the same slides that my child was actually presented in units one and two in the classroom so my question is where is the cooperation trust and transparency the pattern seems to be to err on the side of secrecy instead of transparency

082you've heard that theme a bit if i'm wrong please prove it to the community that holding multiple town halls will expose and dispel that that statement over and hold them over the next few months please second quantitative evidence uh of success and failures must be presented in this forum i request the pilot was rushed to implement in secret but worse without key performance indicators why do i say that a parent recently asked the henley administration in a public forum how does the teacher know that they've met daily weekly and big vision goals to which the administration responded i quote we don't have a very good measure for advisory we give the kids surveys they give us feedback and so that's really going to be some of it and it will almost be all qualitative in

083what the kids say and they've been saying all along it's not like a unit test or something that we plan to give so the majority of our measure of success is going to be qualitative feedback in the form of writing for kids that check in but one of the things we could have done better we didn't do is a pre-test so that we could have something that we uh that might have been a stronger element end quote so i urge the pause of these rollouts host multiple town halls please over the next few months parents in other districts you've heard from some of them are severely unaware of the program and transparency should reach them too and personally i have a lot of positive ideas productive ideas that i think can help these kids and

084meet all the goals that you're hearing from both sides honestly on this topic it can't fit into two minutes we should come together and share those ideas brainstorm build on them as a community so that's my urge to you thank you very much thank you very much for those comments the next speaker will be laurie tamborino followed by marie marzidski hi good evening my name is laurie tamborino and i'm the parent of a rising fifth grader at mountain view elementary school i'm here tonight to once again ring the alarm regarding the proposed move of fifth graders to walton for the 2021-2022 school year when i spoke at the meeting on may 27 i begged the administration to put together a working group to address the urgent issue so an alternate plan could be put in

085place a work group was in fact organized and i hopefully watched the live stream last night as the meeting progressed however it became painfully obvious that the administration's goal with this work group is not to solve the problem but instead to run out the clock on making a different plan for the fifth graders at mountain view for the upcoming school year then they could say that they tried but it's too late to implement a different plan for the 2021-2022 school year and shipped the fifth graders off to walton as originally planned and the people that would bear the brunt of that decision would be the rising fifth graders one of which is my child but i'm not here to advocate for my child tonight the painful fact is that my white middle-class child will be

086fine regardless of what decision is made for the 21-22 school year she's not battling things that some of her classmates are having to such as food insecurity and housing and security the families that will be most negatively affected by this proposed change are not being heard by the county's administration the school members and the community at large so i'd like to read some of the comments that came out of last night's work group regarding what is important to them about being at mountain view for the 21 22 school year one parent said many families in my community are unable to be with kids in the morning to get the bus we need the schedule to work for families with single parents or for families that have issues with transportation another parent said we need our

087kids to have good experiences with the teachers the teachers in mountain view are supportive they understand our community they are great at communicating with me in spanish when i need them to and finally one of the most heartbreaking comments my family needs to not fight this hard to keep our kids from suffering more than they already have i once again implore the albemarle county public school administration to treat this with the urgency that it deserves and develop a strong working plan to keep the rising fifth graders in their school home at mountain view for the 21 22 school year thank you thank you for those comments miss tamborino next up will be um marie hi can you hear me okay i can okay hi um thank you for having me i'm pleading with you to

088hear the feedback regarding courageous conversations and to halt this program this was a pilot program and it did not work i want to be honest i support better protection for lgbtq students from discrimination we must always work to protect the dignity and worth of every human person especially our youth however acps outright endorsing gender fluidity as the one correct view is not the same thing as protecting one against discrimination if this curriculum continues it has two possibilities for my children one stay quiet keep their head down or two change their beliefs the message sent from their very own tax-funded school and staff is clear there is only one set of correct beliefs and what your christian religion teaches is wrong for everyone speaking out like i am today there's another 50 who are too afraid

089that they will be fired from their jobs ostracized from their community all this from the very curriculum that is geared towards fighting discrimination as published research has shown anti-racism training often causes divisiveness and does not authentically meet the goal set before it rather studies show missions unite i'd like to give you a concrete example my child had the delight of presenting a multi-week group project at school the students one place together worked hard in trying to present a cohesive argument it was mock trial in this small group of students i couldn't be more proud of how well they work together on a common goal what is noteworthy about this is that these students have incredibly different health values identities and beliefs they all completely respected one another and we're kind to one another this is

090what we need not more conversations led by the school with a magnifying glass on their differences courageous conversations is not a common mission it is a forced mission from a particular set of beliefs our kids are not to be experimented on i hope the school board will correct course and learn from these courageous conflicts thank you thank you very much for those comments the next speaker and just so we have an update for school board members and those we have about 15 speakers left with a few people that miss so i'll cycle through them um at the end the next speaker is going to be matt anderson followed by carlos um ibanez mr anderson hi i'm matt anderson i have two daughters at hinley middle school at the last board meeting i asked whether acps

091was introducing curricula that is based in whole or in part on critical race theory i would like to be clear i was not talking about culturally responsive teaching i'm asking about critical race theory is the basis or underpinnings of your anti-racism initiatives i've been performing further analysis of acs acps materials i believe i've probably answered my own question but i'm still interested in a publicly available statement from acps to me it seems clear that acps is introducing curricula that is based at least in part on critical race theory it is also clear to me that you're working at foundational levels with materials that include some unhealthy indoctrination this may not be as apparent to you but it is to me as an ex-cult member when you combine bad forms of us versus them social identity

092teachings with some additional unhealthy indoctrination you have a recipe that can produce bad outcomes in the lives of children you can also lay the foundation for new kinds of racism between american social groups under initiatives labeled anti-racism equity diversity and inclusion labels like these do not mean a lot to ex-cult members like me we know how to look past the labels towards the substance and to consider the side effects of people's good intentions in the end it is not just about good intention it is the overall effect which can nullify good intentions i believe fair and open discourse will help demonstrate that my concerns have merit please do not misconstrue my my concerns i am not invalidating the problems you're trying to solve or the goals you're setting to create a fair inclusive environment without

093racism i also know you desire to improve the educational performance for key groups that have consistently underperformed for years i'm with you for these goals however i'm calling attention to problems in your methodology and approach in other words i see and understand your intentions i do believe your intentions are good but today i am cautioning you as someone with knowledge and experience from cult environments that your best intentions are not enough thank you for your time and i appreciate the opportunity to share thank you so much for those comments mr anderson the next speaker and i was perfectly timed the next speaker will be um carlos ebeneze followed by michelle miles and i'm jody harrison i have a child at henley and i'm reading on behalf of dr carlos evans who cannot be here tonight

094and here's his letter dear members of the abramow county school board my name is dr carlos arbeniz and i'm writing you out a concern the addition of the courageous conversations to the school curriculum my wife tatyana and i legally immigrated to this country many years ago in hopes providing our children a brighter future and freedoms we were not allowed having grown up in a socialist military dictatorship in central america we have experienced first-hand what government indoctrination is like and the helplessness of not being allowed to disagree or have an individual opinion other than the official version our children have been enrolled in acps since we moved here 13 years ago our oldest son is a product of acps was in all ap classes and has successfully completed his first year at johns hopkins university our

095second son is a freshman at western is taking multiple av classes and is a straight a student our daughter is currently a student at henley middle school will be in eighth grade next year and is also doing well in class none of us have ever had any incident or issue with discrimination or racial bias of any kind in the time that we have been here so the courageous conversations wanting to label my children as victims or subservient to a more privileged or dominant race is not accurate in our experience asking my children to label themselves as such would be in our case racist in nature the entire concept of placing fault or blame or the need to feel guilty simply because of rice the color of skin sex or gender identity would violate the premises

096of indus individual rights equal opportunity and individual merit that my wife and i so highly coveted when we came to this country and have instilled in our children at home tatyana and i have seen the modules that will be presented during eighth grade and we strongly disagree with several points that are mentioned forcing those on our child without allowing us to opt out is an overreach by the school system would amount to indoctrination as we know it and at least an open and transparent discussion on the matter is foreign your time is up but if you could um if you have a electronic copy of that you can email it to us or feel free to um send the paper copy i can do that thank you the next speaker will be michelle miles followed

097by jared gogan so do you not hear anything from us here in the meeting the smiles so we will move on to jared and i believe you must have had another one speak because i wrote down how to pronounce it i think yep go van thank you father of three students in the system and two districts and two more coming the modern pace of social change how it's changed in my lifetime alone is almost dizzying i think it's fair and honest and in fact necessary to acknowledge that this can be challenging messy scary even but we're faced here with a moral decision a civil decision one where we either address our complicated feelings about race gender sexuality and religion for the good of our whole community or accept the status quo at the expense of

098those who are just gaining a voice or those who have always struggled to be heard to have a true cultural representation so i see as a moral imperative a civil rights imperative the need to re-examine our country's complicated past with regards to race to acknowledge the scientific community's modern understanding of gender and sexuality to celebrate diversity as a source for greater strength in our community this conversation of course begins in our homes with our families but that's not enough it must continue in our schools indeed it will in some form or another whether we want it to or not so it's our responsibility to frame this conversation in a way that doesn't perpetuate discrimination neglect margin of marginalization the conversation must continue with our educators and how they're empowered as advocates for all members of

099the community it seems now that social justice and religious freedom are sometimes strangely at odds but i ask how are the issues we're discussing today morally distinct from those faced by my parents generation when debating school desegregation for all this which for me simply amounts to matters of justice and equality i support along with the other 700 signatures planned initiatives to make our schools more inclusive and equitable for all thank you so much for those comments mr govind the next speaker will be peter buckingham followed by laura breeden so mr buckingham is not in the meeting okay i'll skip him laura breeden i saw earlier miss frieden you're ready yes i'm here thank you um i am in the white hall district um as parents our greatest responsibility is our children we want to guide

100them and raise them according to our family principles and values we do not all share the same vision for our children but we do share a common bond which is the love we have for our children we all strive to do what we believe is best for them that is our job as parents my husband and i know what subject matter and material is appropriate for our children no one else can or should determine that for them we're not demanding the school board adopt our family's principles it is a responsibility of the school board to ensure our children are given a solid education being taught academics reading writing math science history without a hidden agenda nothing should be woven into the curriculum without parental consent our children are our children they do not belong to

101the school board they do not belong to the schools they attend they do not belong to their principals they do not belong to their teachers and they do not belong to other parents in our community please focus your energy on academic excellence and leave the parenting in our hands i'm a husband and i would appreciate the school board's kind consideration to pause the rollout of the courageous conversations curriculum or similar programs until a public survey or multiple town halls can be held thank you for your time thank you for those comments ms breden the next speaker will be karen hill followed by amanda mockson so karen hill let's see if i see her i do not so hearing nothing i will skip her for now and move to amanda who i'd be seen on great

102thank you um the fact that parents are rising up against equity and anti-racism is a direct result of acps's inability to effectively engage the community with a clear operationalized anti-racism strategy for over two years this administration and some of the current board members continually pushed back on anti-racist efforts to ban confederate imagery and struggled to clearly declare acps as an anti-racist school system you reap what you sow because of ineffective community engagement and dysfunctional communication strategies acps and anti-racist educators and community members are now being doxed and targeted by a global right-wing audience that was invited into this community through many of the speakers that spoke earlier this evening against the courageous conversations program you reap what you sow because acps is not fully and authentically grounded in intersectional anti-racist work the rights of black

103indigenous and people of color as well as lgbtq plus students and educators is at risk it's time to reckon with the ongoing coddling of racist white families in this school system why is it easier to coordinate brutal police attacks on anti-racist parents than to shut down the destructive racist attitudes of bigoted white parents if you replace the words courageous conversation or anti-racism with desegregation when you listen to each of those speakers speak you will hear exactly the same messages that have been around since the dawn of time as well as specifically 60 years ago during the civil rights and uh desegregation movement i don't know how long you expect us to beg to keep our children safe in the words of larone bennett jr an educator in a system of oppression is either a revolutionary

104or an oppressor please choose a side thank you thank you for those comments miss moxon the next speaker will be allison miller followed by emily maithan hi you didn't give me a warning but i'm ready oh i'm sorry that's okay i'm gonna just go for it i'm a parent in the white hall district i've got two kids in acps schools um and i'm thrilled to have been able to sign on to the letter submitted tonight in support of ccar it was especially meaningful to me that those who have signed onto the letter include not just parents but teachers administrators doctors mental health providers counselors adults who run programs for kids in our community and most importantly students there are more of us out there and we are 100 committed to supporting the school division and

105the board in this work i also wanted to speak to a misconception floating around on social media recently uh culturally relevant teaching is not critical race theory and i feel i can speak to this because i sat in on culturally relevant teacher training modules and a book study put on by acps this spring i learned a ton and i would strongly encourage anyone who has concerns or questions to reach out to acps to find out how to get involved at its essence culturally responsive teaching is about investing and learning and understanding who students are and what they bring to the table and how best to support them in becoming independent learners i think that if parents who are concerned take time to really understand what acps is doing they'll see that it's not what national

106media outlets or people outside our county say it is and i think what they'll see is that our teachers are doing an amazing work i also want to address the idea that henley is acting as like a renegade um with this ccar curriculum it's just false this curriculum was developed with input from around the county and these um this curriculum was discussed at every monthly meeting that dr costa had for us since january i also just want to take a moment to shout out to the student equity advisory team these students have hosted two amazing panels that show how much agency empowerment empathy and passion they are bringing to the work that they are doing and i was so grateful to be a part of those and finally to the parents who are asking why

107we can't just wait and slow things down i would just refer them back to james baldwin who in the 1980s asked how much time must we wait for your progress thanks thank you for those comments miss miller the next speaker speaker will be emily mathen hi uh so that i don't um so that i don't mess up for the next person the speaker after that will be sally williamson sorry emily no problem uh so my name is emily mathon and i am in the ryo district and i have two children in county schools last month i had the opportunity to attend a two-day training with dr kenneth hardy that was organized by the counseling alliance of virginia called race matters he facilitated what you might call a courageous conversation with a range of local professionals

108working with children and families i would like to share one concept that he highlighted in relation to the recent backlash that we're hearing tonight to the county's efforts to serve all students in particular those at the margins with dignity and respect it's the distinction between safety and comfort dr hardy stated everyone is entitled to safety no one is entitled to comfort the courageous conversations about identity and understanding and celebrating differences might have some people feeling uncomfortable does that mean we shouldn't be having those conversations when our child is struggling to understand a concept or complete an assignment do we prioritize their comfort over what we know they need to learn for too long the safety of marginalized students in acps has been compromised because of the priority of comfort of for white cisgendered able-bodied straight

109students and community members acps is on the right track with the anti-racism policies professional development curriculum and hiring decisions we must prioritize the safety of the most marginalized not the comfort of the privileged thank you thank you for those comments miss nathan the next speaker will be alison miller oops sorry um sally williamson followed by linda dukes hi good evening my name is sally williamson i'm a parent in the rybana district i'm a queer parent i was previously a queer student in schools in this area um i'm commenting this evening in support of the courageous conversation program acps's anti-racism policy full intersectional support of lgbtq youth and culturally responsive teaching within the acps district the concerned group of citizens and parents from albemarle county who are organizing as citizens advocating for responsible education or care

110do not represent me or hundreds of others who had signed on to the petition mentioned before and that group of citizens should not be allowed to act as the arbiters of what constitutes responsible or education discomfort as mentioned just in the comment before mine is different than harm your family's opinions do not negate the existence or the lived reality of students and families in albemarle county and the harm that racism and bigotry has caused them within this school system pausing the implementation of anti-racist goals in order to placate a portion of the community who benefit from the status quo is not a neutral action a lack of anti-racist action is not neutral there's a reason this is a contentious issue because whether benevolent or overt our culture is deeply rooted in white supremacy we need

111to pull it out by the roots i would like to uphold the students who previously spoke who are ready and willing and and want to engage in these conversations and i would like to uphold the staff and teachers who are leading them in these conversations thanks thank you very much for those comments miss williamson the next speaker will be linda dukes who i see followed by burden burkholder hi my name is linda dukes and i live in the ohio district i'm a retired elementary school reading specialist most importantly though i'm a parent of two adults who attended albemarle county schools k through 12. i strongly support the board's anti-racism policy and the plan to implement an anti-racism anti-racism curriculum for all students both of our adult children are upset at how little they learned in

112school with a couple of exceptions about the history of black latinx native and asian americans and about the omissions and outright falsehoods they learned about how white americans interacted with these groups of people most white citizens of albemarle county do not routinely interact with people of color except possibly in the workplace and rarely in in situations of equality and yet they they do not even realize how much richer their lives would be if they did even though our schools are not segregated many classes pretty much are we need to give all our kids the knowledge and skills they need to interact with all of their peers valuing the the inherent worth and dignity of each other we need the courageous conversations program for all students and this is from my husband frank dukes he works

113with leaders from all around the state these are cooperative extension agents directors of nonprofit organizations business executives and local and state agency staff he hears over and over again how their schools fail to teach them how to foster effective conversations about race gender identity and other equity issues within their organizations please let us not raise yet another generation of citizens who are so unprepared to enter the workplace or to live in peace with their neighbors thanks thank you for those comments miss dukes and that was perfectly timed the next speaker will be burden burkholder followed by scott townsend yeah hi whitehall district my wife and i have been residents of alamo county for 20 years and raised three children here first to those responsible for the recently circulated letter that calls for the barring of

114an opt-out option for the lgbtqia plus curricula your letter serves to highlight an important truth that there are some issues so foundational to health and well-being of our children that the appropriate course of action is not compromised but to fight for what we know to be true not only for our own children but for all of the children in our community and on this point i agree wholeheartedly with the signers of this petition and their allies however it is here that my agreement ends i firmly believe as many other parents and teachers in this county that a true and therefore healthy understanding of human gender and sexuality is founded on the laws of nature and nature's god that we are created male and female that as such our biological sex and gender are inextricably bound

115and therefore any attempt to divide them does not bring health and well-being to our children but rather deep psychological and physical harm and harm that is often irreparable so i say to those parents of like mind it's not enough to come to the table begging for scraps it's not enough to merely ask for the preservation of your opt-out it's time to fight for our children with the same clarity and determination as those who brought forward this petition it's time to demand that our schools promote in their curriculum policies the understanding that we are all born male and female and that gender cannot be separated from this binary reality without causing lasting harm if you care about the children of this county and commonwealth do not stay on the sidelines it is time to understand what

116you believe why you believe it and then fight for it if albemarle county public schools choose to inculcate your children with theories of sexuality and gender that threaten their health and well-being then it's time to wake up and pull your children out of the public school system for this um for many this will require deep personal sacrifice but what treasure lays greater claim on our honor and sacred duty than the very hearts minds and souls of our children thank you thank you for those comments mr burkholder the next speaker will be scott townsend who i see and then it will be followed by aaron paulie farrow and then kate soderman thank you can you hear me i can perfect thank you i want to thank you for taking for allowing me to come and speak

117again um as a soldier with 21 years in the army i witnessed many many types of discrimination i was deployed around the world i've been to afghanistan multiple times i've been to ethiopia kuwait djibouti and multiple other nations where i have seen bigotry and racism on many levels i i abhor racism i abhor bigotry and i avoid discrimination however i am asking along with my other colleagues that albemarle county consider halting the rollout of courageous conversations about race in order to allow us to have the chance us as parents and community members to work together to develop a more academic and inclusive education and program for our children looking at the definitions within this system within this program bias is defined as unfairly showing favoritism towards something or someone that's a very reductionist definition of

118bias when you see on the university of minnesota psychological uh psychological school they list 12 different cognitive biases to include include anchoring bias which is the overwhelming reliance on the first piece of information obtained and using it as a baseline for comparison all the way to recency effect or recency bias in which recent events are easier to remember and therefore placed more heavily weighted than others i am again asking that the albemarle county public school board halt this rollout until we can have a series of workshops in which more parents are involved more parents are allowed to speak and hear and give their opinion on this thank you for your time [Music] thank you very much for those comments mr townsend the last two speakers on the list before we cycle through those who missed

119um is going to be first up is going to be aaron talley pharaoh followed by kate soderman hi good evening i wanted to speak tonight about the courageous conversations i actually have four children in the white hole district two at henley and two at brownsville i personally welcome conversations about race and identity within the henley community as well as the school itself however my experiences and perspective are usually unwelcome labeled as ignorant and unjustified and most often are met with hostility and aggressive rhetoric the third principle of the county's anti-racism policy states explicitly that the board commits to respecting and championing the diversity and life experiences of all community members the henley community is failing at this and the pervasive school of thought is robbing those of us with differing opinions and perspectives of feeling

120unwelcome in our own town robbing us of our freedom of speech and is attempting to rob us of the power to educate our children on the very sensitive topics of identity and race complex constructs that even adults have difficulty dissecting and analyzing despite this henley announced the courageous conversations on race curriculum on a thursday with expected implementation the following week omission of documentation left parents with no choice but to make a gut decision as to whether to opt in or opt out there was no time for educated decision making parents were simply expected to accept the decision that had been made on their behalf if the county feels so strongly that this curriculum is instrumental in quote eliminating racism in the division why not be completely transparent why not provide parents with all material prior

121to implementation so that we can more effectively help our children become citizens who quote practice identifying challenging and changing the values structures and behaviors that perpetuate systemic racism wouldn't such transparency help parents educate their children on how to as laid out in the county's anti-racist policy become a lifelong learner who actively seeks new information and opportunities to grow in one's understanding about race and racism how can we help our children to be upstanders challenging and disrupting practices that perpetuate racism and maintain power if we don't have access to the curriculum prior to implementation was there ever any intention to promote conversations about identity and race or was it simply an edict being imposed upon the parents of this company the next step um will be kate sauderman hi thank you my name is kate soderman

122i'm a parent of two students in the uh ryo district and i'm speaking today in support of an anti-racist curriculum in our schools our children are growing up in a community where we have confederate statues coming down thankfully and where we debate the role of police they're growing up in a community that is still recovering from the horrors of the unite the right rally and where they see black lives matter signs in their neighbor's yards i think it's critical that the schools provide a safe place for students to learn about and discuss these issues in our home we talk about systemic racism but in school my kids will be able to hear from other students and teachers who have different experiences than our white family so i applaud elmar county public schools for exploring this

123issue and i want to urge the school board to support an anti-racist curriculum for all students thank you thank you so much for those comments ms soderman the i will quickly cycle through those who missed rebecca elliott levi levi duncan keith forbes michelle miles peter buckingham or karen hill many of those people are on your chance hearing nothing i would say that public comment is done and i um turn the floor or the mic back over to you chair page okay thank you very much face chair carlson um if there is no objection we'll take a 10 minute break and then reassemble at 9 28. i'm sorry 8 28. so uh is there any opposition to taking a 10 minute break at this time okay k2 on mute oh i just said it sounds good

124okay all right so 10 minute break thank you let's go graham all right dave okay um i call our meeting back to order our next agenda item covet update dr mclaughlin and ms gomez hi good evening board members pat mclaughlin chief of strategic planning for the division and i'm here along with eileen gomez to give you our covert 19 status update for june 10th 2021. uh as the board recalls we have five stages that we look at in determining the level of community transmission as it relates to how we operate our schools and one of the levels that the board specifically has asked us to report on each week is the level of community transmission in the albemarle and charlottesville area and so i will turn things over to eileen at this point to take

125us through the latest updates on that thank you dr mclaughlin uh i'm happy to tell you that the uh the numbers over the last month or so have fallen and continuing are continuing to look good as of today alma county seven-day floating or moving average of number of new cases for 100 000 people is 1.4 the seven-day moving average of cases has been increasing for the past days which does not exceed the threshold of 14 days so this is considered a fluctuating trend however i believe these these are some of the lowest numbers we've reported the seven day moving average for the percent of covet cases that were positive is 1.8 this indicator has been decreasing for eight days which does not exceed that threshold so this is also considered a fluctuating trend for the

126city of charlottesville the uh seven day floating average as of today is as of yesterday is 1.2 and this indicator has been increasing although very slightly for the past 19 days so this is considered an increasing trend the seven day moving average of the percent of coba tests that were positive in the city of charlottesville was 1.1 this number has been increasing for the past 25 days so it's also considered increasing trend but these are also very low numbers compared to what we had throughout the pandemic we all we've in admiral county public schools have had very good numbers we've only had reported two cases in the last month so the cases have fallen a lot in um in albemarle county and then at uva they've had very few cases they've had two since the

127end of the spring semester our vaccine youth vaccination rates are continuing to climb we have an estimated 44.8 percent of all those in albemarle county in the 10 to 19 age group who are considered who have had at least one dose but if you take out the uh the 10 and 11 year olds that would be 57 of our students aged 12 to 19 have had at least one dose and 36 almost 37 of our students in that age group have had or are fully vaccinated at this point turn it back over to you dr mclaughlin yeah thanks eileen so so as you recall we um we look at the numbers one more way from the cdc core indicators which look at the total number of new cases per 100 000 people over the past

128seven days and the percent positivity uh over the past seven days and you can see that um those indicators are at the moderate level for the case incidence rate and at the low level for the percent positivity uh that's here and so that puts us into the moderate range this uh number what where what we're tending to see on a seven-day cumulative average is numbers really fluctuating around that um just going over and just going under that ten cumulative cases in albemarle county uh each week when they measure it on saturdays and so as you recall uh what the cdc and the virginia department of health recommend is that we use two figures our two sets of facts the level of impact on a school which we are considering low at this point because of

129the um the very low number of cases that we are seeing that aren't affecting student absenteeism or staff capacity and the moderate level of transmission puts us into the lowest level of school impact we are hoping that this is the the second board meeting in a row that we've been able to come to you with uh with the figures that show us in that lowest level of impact we are keeping our fingers crossed and cautiously optimistic that we will be able to continue to report uh that our impact remains low throughout the division and so that is um our update for tonight we'd be happy to take any questions that the board may have do we have any board members with questions just for miss gomez um are we continuing to have vaccination clinics at

130our schools yes we are we've had them in uh in all well in three of our high schools and all of our middle schools uh we have not gotten a large participation rate but we think well we know kids parents are taking their students to their physicians because they're administering the vaccine at pediatric associates and piedmont pediatrics thank you okay and ms gomez i have a question too you said the percentage of fully designated was what 36 percent yes estimated to be that yes right thank you are there any other questions from our board members on uh the covet update okay if not thanks dr mclaughlin and ms gomez thank you all thank you our next item on the agenda is a third quarter financial report and update mr zimmerman can't hear you uh is

131mr zimmerman with us he was talking but his fault yeah yeah thank you on youtube he's working on it no cannot hear you are you saying anything mr simon we can see that your screen is being shared but we don't hear any comments we can't hear if he's saying anything or not he said he's trying he's working on it okay all right all right technical difficulties we'll hold on a few seconds and we need to get sarah harris back on she had the same thing happen where it's like she's not muted he's not muted it's just the sound is he's not coming through right this is what we get for allowing zinn to go not last yeah i'm just saying well speaking of that should we move should we do the next agenda item okay

132we can do that all right um our next item on the agenda while we're waiting for mr zimmerman is uh pub are you here mr zimmerman can you be heard no i don't think so can you hear me now yeah okay yeah we can hear you now all right so i will uh i will be using my phone for uh sound and my computer for the report thank you i'm um my name is jackson zimmerman i'm your school finance officer and i'm here to present uh for your consideration the third quarter financial reports um one of the important things a number of important things to consider with this report in this particular section of report we do have march 31st adm which is the the count of students across the fiscal year that we've uh

133enrolled in alberta county schools and it is a 1033 less than was originally budgeted another very important consideration during this financial report is that that has not affected state revenues as it would normally have affected state revenues there is a whole harmless provision in state funding in addition to extremely strong state revenues that were not initially projected when our budget was adopted in the midst of the pandemic last year so if we take a look at our financials in terms of revenues our revenues are strong this year primarily due to a conservative estimate in state revenues and then also hold harmless funding that was passed by the general assembly just this past winter on terms of of expenses we do expect our expenses to be less than what was originally budgeted um that's not uh

134unusual during this time period uh that they're slightly less than originally anticipated so we will end up with um a fund balance at the end of this fiscal year and then i will i will move on to the final discussion regarding fund balance at the start of this fiscal year we had about a 9.5 million dollar initial starting fund balance we budgeted the use of just over a million dollars in that fund balance when we first started the year we have some lap savings we have additional revenues coming in from the state we have some operational savings that are budgeted we did use 2.6 million dollars for a one-time payment made to staff in april that was approved by the board and that has taken place we did transfer during the month of april four

135million dollars of our fund balance to cip to cover projects that are associated with that and then we did uh use five million dollars worth of fund balance in the adoption of the budget for fy 22. we do anticipate at the end of this year we will finish the year with approximately three million dollars a little bit less than three million dollars in available fund balance for next at the start of next fiscal year end of the current fiscal year so just wanted to report to the board that we are in a strong financial position and um we are following we are falling under the two percent requirement uh for uh fund balance by the board of supervisors and i'd be happy to field any questions that you may have are there any questions for

136mr uh zimmerman on the financial update it appears we're looking pretty good mr zimmerman right we are thank you okay mr zimmerman and do we need to take any um any actions on anything related to your report i think the only thing i would be looking for is for the board to receive the report okay all right so that we receive mr zimmerman's third quarter report back in okay move by mr alcaro second by mr oberg that we receive the third quarter report from mr zimmerman is there any discussion on the motion if not um miss johnston could you call the roll please mr oberg yes dr acuff yes mr alcaro yes miss lee yes ms osborne yes miss carlson yes mr page yes melissa terry okay thank you thank you may the numbers always

137be this good mr zimmerman all right our next item is um they sell school board salary public hearing in action to vote on that salary ms johnston do we have anybody for public comment on school board salary yes sir okay if not you will recall that we are saying the proposed budget for the school board then was seven thousand one hundred and eighty three dollars per year with the chair stipend being one thousand eight hundred and the vice chair thirty five dollars per uh per meeting that is being chaired by the vice chair could i have a motion to accept uh that salary so moved second all right moved by dr cuff second by ms lee that we accept the salary of 7 000 183 per year share stipend 1 800 vice chair statement per

138meeting presided over is there any discussion on the motion if not miss johnston could you call the roll please dr acuff yes mr alcaro yes miss lee yes ms osborne yes miss carlson yes mr oberg i abstain mr page yes motion carried okay thank you all right is there uh any other business by board members or the superintendent at this time yes um i know when we do public comment we say that we might bring it up in the other business so i guess i would just want to open it up for discussion on on should we do anything about the fact that we've gotten quite a few public comments almost you know 30 something last time 40 this time um just what are other board members seating i don't want to leave that many

139comments without saying anything i don't know if we can do like a two two by two meeting mat to like find out more information and get a better understanding of what we're doing to deal with some of the concerns i don't know i'm open to what to hear what you'll have to say i i guess to me it feels um i don't know a lot about the program but i also feel like it's pretty operational uh that's just my view on it and it follows our anti-racism policy so that's just my view on that my my con my concern is more with the process um the the concern that was raised which i i i can sympathize with is the fact that the eighth grade curriculum was not on the website because i looked for

140it and couldn't find it and i only got it through the graces of mr alcaro um he got it from the from the school that was a mistake and i think we need to own that that was a mistake um i'm sure it was an oversight i i know for certain it was not some sort of conspiratorial secrecy attempt um but we need to own the fact that you know yeah if we're gonna do that if you're gonna put up the seventh sixth sixth and seventh grade curriculum and say the eighth grade curriculum is going to be put up that needs to get put up um because it does have an appearance of impropriety even though i don't believe for a minute that it is improper um i i welcome the conversations um i quite

141frankly am very proud of what henley did i think there are things that can be improved but that's why we have pilots that's why that's why we that's why we do this so that we can learn um but i'm i'm frankly a little disappointed by the by the apparent allegations that this board is somehow has some sort of malign intent um i i just i i think we deserve better than that and i know that our teachers and our administrators deserve better than that are there other comments i would like to echo judy miss lee's comments that we have crafted an anti-racism policy for a reason and the reason is that racism in our schools does directly interfere with our academic mission and that unless we are serious about it beyond you know training ourselves

142or educating our teachers i think we have to have a forum for our students to talk about these issues they are it's called courageous conversations because it's not easy but i i think you know i would like to know more from dr hawes and maybe miss costa at henley about how the pilot has gone uh and had more student feedback but i think that that is probably part of the plan but i would look forward to hearing a bit more about a bigger picture of whether or what criteria we use if we're going to roll it out more broadly and one thing about the in the rollout is and and is that i don't even really know when that happened i i don't recall hearing about it ahead of time or know exactly when it

143started um and so uh i'll be very interested to hear you know what the feedback was on it um you know once the school year is done i i guess i i since i don't i was one that brought it up i don't i don't haven't had enough time to think about it i think i echo what judy is saying um but with an emphasis being on i don't know a lot about it and i think given the amount of comment that we've had from the public it behooves us to try to find out more about it and so matt i would i can reach out to you personally but i would love to find out more information just because i don't really know i'll own that i don't know a lot about the program

144and i being on the board for a few years i know sometimes things can be presented in a way that's like it's people have different interpretations of things so because we've gotten so much comment it's a little hard to like weed out what's fact and what's not are you so like some things were said that were concerning and i'm like well i hope that's not what happened like i hope we didn't tell a parent on friday that their kid was going to be in an opt-in program on monday or she said thursday and then you know like you know i would like to find out obviously if that's happening that's not ideal but i am supportive of the the program just like kate said and judy said but i need to find out more information

145yeah i'm in support of the program too and i'm not sure how many board members have had a chance to look at the slide deck that goes along with the sixth seventh and eighth grade units but if not i would advise you to look at those slide decks and really evaluate them based on our anti-racism curriculum and and in the end in their entirety in their entirety what is frustrating is you can cherry-pick things and make them seem something that they're not and i think that that they're and that's the that's my criticism of the fact that it wasn't online in full that people saw the cherry-picked things and went wow that's terrible where is this and then couldn't find it right um i also wanted to just there have been allegations that this that

146the children were told not to talk to their parents and if you read all of the curriculum that's hogwash i'm sorry but that's just hogwash what it was indicating was that when people share their private things that you not spread that around the school and that's absolutely completely appropriate it should be expected of our children that they not share other children's personal information but nothing in the curriculum suggested that children should not share with their parents what took place right see that's helpful or oberg i feel sorry i i alter you i'm calling you dave and calling you open um that's helpful dave like that kind of clarity around i know we've talked in the past that when we have a lot of public comments sometimes it's helpful to get some clarity just around you

147know what is actually taking place and since if you look at the the sixth seventh and eighth grade curriculum they all say let's respect our privacy you know what what takes place here is for us but it's not to hide it from the parents it's to make sure that children who are talking about things that are sensitive keep those things sensitive otherwise kids might say things or be afraid to say things because they're afraid that it'll get around the school right and again if you haven't uh had a chance to look at that slide deck please do because they are very thought-provoking in quite a few areas that the parents mentioned tonight and see um the one question that i do have and this is sort of i guess difficult too but what's the opt-out

148policy in relationship to any of our programs dr haas or [Music] anybody thank you mr page i would uh let uh miss collins speak in more detail on this however um when it comes to curriculum parents can opt out from pretty much anything when they have a disagreement about a topic that's being presented to their children they can you know whether it's a language arts topic or history or a particular book that's being ran in a class they are entitled to have a meeting with the teacher discuss it and the teacher and the school administration are responsible for providing an alternative method for the instruction and then um you know it's really just a form of differentiation so that's our policy for all programming there are some programs though that are that the state mandates

149uh that we provide opt-outs for and so we also followed those guidelines did you have anything to add ms collins i did not dr haas that was exactly what i would have said and again quite uh really the entire slide deck of that program is very thought-provoking and again like ms lee mentioned it aligns almost it aligns perfectly with our anti-racism policy so um it would be good then as i think one of our board members mentioned um to have feedback on what the outcome has been from the program from doctors and staff and uh dr koster ed henley if possible so that would be i think something that would really help the board and perhaps an overview of the timeline as well like when we would roll it out other places just basic information

150right okay yeah good point ms asmr including going to uh parent what's going to be going to parents and when so that you know we have a better roll out at least people are more aware of it better communication yeah yeah that would be my takeaway i wrote down you know i like write down the summary like the the theme i saw kind of running throughout a lot of the comments was just a frustration with the um getting the information kind of a transparency type thing i don't you know so it's something we can learn from as we go through it's a fair criticism katrina i mean it was a very it it is a fair criticism but it's also needs to be placed in the context of we're in the pandemic we're at the

151end of the school year and we have placed a lot on our teachers and our administrators over the past year no i think i think that we need to to respect the public's right and especially the parents right to see the curriculum but i would also ask that the public grant a certain amount of grace to our administrators and our teachers to recognize that the pandemic has been a huge challenge and that there are obstacles to better communication that exist currently that in a normal environment would not exist true i would like to just also point out the majority of the speakers were strong supporters of the program a and we had some extraordinarily eloquent students who also strongly supported the program and i think that i mean to come out and as as ours

152i don't know katrina we had maybe half a dozen students i think that says a lot about the value that they see in it true that is true oh i think i'll i think i'll say a few things now because i was just waiting for all the board members to speak um so what i'm hearing is that um what the board would like is for us uh sometime in the in the future um keeping in mind that we have a meeting on the eighth of july uh we also have um then we go to uh our bi-monthly meetings again in august that we would uh provide an overview of this particular curriculum to the board um and and give background information on it as well as uh response from students on their experience with the

153pilot and then uh talk a little bit about what the plans are for uh for rolling it out um so is that is that accurate yes yeah that's true i i will say that uh we through the communications office we we really have scrutinized uh dr costa's rollout of what she did with the pilot and while i would say that i can only think of a handful of times over the time that i've worked in this school system where there's been absolutely flawless roll out of anything that dr costa and her team at the school really did do what we ask our principals to do and what we ask our our teachers to do and communicating to families around programming um so while uh you know we can always improve we can always get better

154at what we do i i want to be sure and make make sure that you know if again i always take responsibility if there's a flaw in how something's rolled out or if people felt left out of the process then that's not that's not dr costa's responsibility she used all the tools at hand she followed the policies that we have and um so i want to be sure that that i say that having said that we can always do better and there's always a way to try to reach families um another way and we're going to continue to try to do that dr haas just one more addition to your proposal um one or two people question the training or the backgrounds or the preparations of the instructors or the teachers that were doing this

155um so if you could include that i would be grateful and and just i and we'll be happy to provide that what i would say is that as as you know as a school board you went through several sessions of working with your way through uh glenn singleton's book courageous conversations about race and engaged in conversations on that topic and i'm you know i'm just going to say that i'm uh i'm proud to be part of a school board to work for you for a board that would engage in that kind of work and a lot of boards around around the state and nation run away from this kind of work and so you would you've rolled up your sleeves and engaged in it that is very similar to what our teachers and administrators have

156been doing in the schools throughout the school year some schools to a greater extent than others but what you experienced in in many cases is has is what has been experienced in terms of training uh with our educators and um i'm also proud to be part of a system that uh is enacting a policy that that we approve as some board members pointed out you know students worked on that policy they went around and shared that policy of different groups such as parent council uh student council all various advisory groups we had a seat team meeting last week that was publicly advertised for quite some time that any member of our albemarle county schools community could attend that talked specifically about the topics that that were brought up tonight and we had nine people in

157attendance at that meeting um so there are many many opportunities to engage our administration to engage our teachers to engage with our students around this work so um we're going to keep providing them and i hope that attendance of these opportunities that are already on the table without creating new ones the ones that are already planned to to share our work to get feedback on it are are there for people to partake thank you dr haas do we have any other school board business any other school board members with additional business if not remember our retreat is tomorrow beginning at nine o'clock and also um i'd like to think because this is the last night that layla will be our student rep she had to leave early i think but we do appreciate her serving

158on the board and also maya tonight tonight would also be mars last time so we'll end up with new student reps beginning in july so if there is no other business our meeting for tonight is adjourned and thanks good night everybody hi guys