School Board Meeting - November 12, 2020

001hello miss early how are you hello everyone i am well thank you that's good okay it is now 6 30 p.m and i called this uh session of the albemarle county school board to order ms carlson do you have a motion coming out of the um closed session i would do chair page i move that the board certified by recorded vote that do the best of each board member's knowledge only public business matters lawfully exempt 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 in the closed meeting is there a second second second okay um move by ms carlson second first by ms lee that um we certified that nothing was discussed that wasn't in the motion uh

002for the closed meeting ms johnston could you call the role please miss lee yes dr acuff yes apparel yes ms osborne yes mr berg yes miss carlson yes mr page yes all right so the motion care is since this meeting is being done electronically the following will have to appear now minutes the minutes of this meeting should should reflect that this meeting is being held electronically pressing unto virginia state law and albemarle county coordinate ordinance because the covet 19 pandemic makes it impractical and unsafe to assemble a quorum physically in a single location number two the meeting is being communicated to the public electronically through zoom and stream live on the albemarle county public schools website and three public comment may be offered through the zoom waiting room feature in accordance with the school board's

003protocol or by written submission we will now have a moment of our silence hello good evening all right um a mic check or intro for our members dr kate akov all right katie of jack jewett district giano el carro giano alcaro at large vice chair katrina carlson katrina carlson rio district judy lee judy lee bravana district dave oberg dave oberg whitehall district eleanor osborne ellen osborne scottsville district and uh student reps tonight we have both our regular rep along with an alternate that had not had a chance to sit in on any of our meetings so first we'll trout will trout student representative okay and tell us again where your your school will yes manchelle okay and elijah witt elijah alternation representative and uh western art model okay thank you and elijah we are very

004pleased to have you with us tonight and you'll also be appearing at our december meetings so thanks so much we'll now entertain a moment i mean uh emotion rather but the approval of the agenda i move that we approve the agenda second second okay moved by mr alcaro second by dr acuff that we approve the agenda this is johnston miss osborne yes miss carlson yes dr acuff yes mr alcaro yes mr oberg yes miss lee yes mr paint yes the motion care is we need a motion for the approval of the consent agenda i move that we approve the consent agenda second moved by mr alcaro second by ms dolberg that we approve the consent agenda no discussion mrs johnston miss carlson yes [Music] dr aytov yes mr alcaro yes mr oberg yes miss lee

005yes ms osborne yes mr page yes i think at our last count there was no we did not have anyone signed up for public comment so that still stands right all right so we will be moving to the spotlight on education and this will be introduced by board member judy lee mrs lee thank you chairpage last month we had the wonderful opportunity to hear from baker butler educators about the nationally recognized gains they have made in closing the achievement gap at their school tonight we're focusing on yet another opportunity gap in our schools and in schools across our nation the percentage of students of color who enter stem-related fields forty-five years ago an organization was established to address this issue the national society of black engineers its mission was ambitious and vital to the collective

006prosperity of every community in the united states the society was organized to promote academic excellence provide scholarships train leaders and expand access to professional careers a few years ago the society broadened its charter to include high school chapters and one of the first chapters in central virginia was established at albemarle high school membership is open to students from all of our middle school and high schools regardless of race or ethnicity students from greer burley and soon walton are members and students our members and students from uva serve as mentors there currently are 25 students in our local chapter and more than 100 students have had their lives changed by this extraordinary program many have gone on to earn engineering degrees at the university level the driving guiding determined like for these young people continues to

007be miss pearl early albemarle high school student support specialist a characteristic of this program is its strong emphasis on project-based learning students learn how to research design experiment with and refine solutions that can improve our lives a natural topic this year is coven 19 and true to form students have come up with an ingenious approach to protecting public health i understand that the nature of this development process is that it can take up to two years but our students have field tested their invention within seven months i'd like to ask ms earley to tell us a little more about the journey of her students over these past seven years and to introduce us to today's superstars who will tell us about their new discovery ms early hi i am not able to see you all

008because it says you cannot start your video because the host has stopped you had stopped it so if you are not able to see me it's because i'm not able to show myself through the video so i don't know why that is happening can jennifer jennifer jennifer can anything be done to rectify that what's the issue mr early is saying that she can't turn on i'm not yeah i'm not able to um it says here you cannot start your video because the host has stopped it um i can just go on though and um okay let's see what happens here okay okay there we are thank you jennifer okay thank you for that wonderful introduction i want to say first thank you almar county school board and dr hollis and his cabinet members it is

009an honor to come before you all tonight and to be asked it is a pleasure i am so excited that you will get the opportunity uh all the board members and also anyone who's listening tonight you will have the experience to learn and to witness what these outstanding students your students have accomplished over the several months we have had a very exciting time in doing this project dr haas he has followed us throughout the summer months and and mr barnum and others i will say that we strive to excite edu to excite uh and educate and empower students to acquire skills and confidence in technology through the interactive projects we recognize the importance and the value of bringing together individuals in their different perspective real innovation comes when all voices and cultural backgrounds are included

010and that is what nsbe junior chapter uh has been designed to do and i will say i'm very successful in getting a number of students across the globe who are in our school division to be a part of what we do tonight i would like for uh the screen to be shared with elisa lane and mrs uh barnes and this is where i'm going to quickly move through um to the second slide please here i would like to introduce our students and instructors uh you see their last name but i'm going to go through it and our students is luke price he's from walter middle school vanessa and dante she's almost high school julia dorte she is walton middle school clifford ayres brown western albemarle high school john son sanders elmore high school young young

011lee albert high school and of course we have mr william cole's instructor retired corporate man mrs lanika barnes our science and biology teacher at albemarle high school alicia lane instructor and a student at the university of virginia in engineering we have three new people uh that have joined us just a couple of months ago they are um they are graduates in the field of of um software engineering we have mr bendor he is a parent uh his children they go to brownsville elementary school and henley i believe then we have mrs kellyanne smith scott um she is a software engineer she's out of richmond and then we have mr eric smith who's in palmyra and he is also a software engineer these people have worked really hard working with the students and you will see

012tonight as i turn it over to vanessa and dante and she will take it from there and the students will proudly show what they have created for this school division and also the uh governor of virginia his director of technology is also interested in this project vanessa thank you mr lee we saw how rapidly copen 19 was spreading and how it heavily impact our next school year so we wanted to do something that kept our students and communities safe so we created a contact tracing application in this presentation you will see what we have developed and learned over this summer and school year including introduction to mobile software in mit app inventor mobile software with development with react native engaging science through literature and lastly a presentation of our final project and i'll pass it

013off to mrs barnes good evening everybody so um my role in supporting the nsbee junior summer academy and through the school year is i'm providing students with experiences not only through stem but their interdisciplinary partners of arts and literature so this year this summer we started to discuss the engagement of science for women in stem and so one of the techs that we used um was women in science 50 pioneers who changed the world and so um what we do every summer and through the school year is we ask students to put themselves in the shoes of their community members and also their community members in their classroom and we've learned from this summer that quite often by the time women or girls get to middle school they sometimes are discouraged from pursuing not necessarily

014on purpose but just from the nature of stem itself oftentimes they lose interest or aren't encouraged as much as their male counterparts to pursue science engineering and math and technology fields and so our goal is to help students to see how one they can lead the charge to support their fellow students and in continuing to pursue fields such as engineering and so we will continue to use the text that ms early purchase for us throughout the rest of the school year um we've also practiced as you can see putting together a virtual presentation um using virtual communication tools such as zoom and grid and so on you'll see from these wonderful students and just their um brilliance and intelligence just some of the wonderful things that they have been developing since this summer thank you

015and now pass it on to alicia are we having some technical issues here can everyone hear me all right no we can for a little while there was a lap so yes please proceed anybody can hear me okay let's yes we can hear you now [Music] no can everyone did that change anything okay we hear you awesome thank you sorry for the technical difficulties so i'll talk a bit about mit app inventor really quick my name is alicia land i'm a computer science student at the university of virginia and i'm the pre-college initiative chair for nsbe so how i got involved this summer was kind of giving the students a look at on a simple level the different components of an application and what it takes to build that and we use mit app inventor

016which is an online block based coding environment that allows students to get that introduction we were able to create a basic mobile application that had all the functionalities of logging in signing up and qr code scanning which was our ultimate goal for the app we're going to show you today so now pass it off to vanessa to give you a little look at what they did this summer here is the block coding for the home page using mit app inventor the top left blocks are for the log out button and when the scan button is pressed which are the blocks in the middle it'll call and activate the barcode scanner after the qr code is scanned it'll take the data to a google script which instructs it to put the data into google sheets which

017are shown in the blocks on the bottom it's important to the application because we have to make sure we have the time stamps and everything else in an easy to access place and now pass it off to john our team noticed a predominant public health challenge of facilitating contact tracing inside of buildings such as schools and offices there is a lack of readily available affordable technology to perform contact using within public indoor spaces in the event individuals in a particular location become ill or in contact with an individual who has become ill our team pursued the development of a user-friendly software qr code with using qr codes access to your user's camera and the user's location on a mobile device by tracking the use positioning of a user throughout a building in order to facilitate

018accurate and effective contact tracing in indoor buildings now we'll pass it on to clifford qr codes also known as quick response codes are machine readable codes consisting of an array of black and white squares typically used for storing urls or other information for reading by the camera on the smartphone architects will scan qr codes located outside of each room within a building before entering an algorithm is responsible for verifying the location of the phone the user and the timestamp which are subsequently uploaded into a database and now i will pass it on to vanessa the first requirement of our software was that it must use qr codes and gps to track the location of a device within a building at a specific time given that users are scanning qr codes each time they enter a

019location in a building the second requirement was that each user must have their own account and the third requirement was a desktop client software capable of running search operations on the database to determine who a user was in contact with the constraints included compatibility with all devices using ios and android operating systems and compatibility to fit multiple screen sizes including iphone ipad android phones and android tablets and now pass it off to julia the team chose a design of an easy to use user interface that could still meet the requirements and constraints we considered a careful layout of the user authentication and the plan the planning of user navigation through individual accounts the blueprint of the appearance for each user's personal information and the process for editing personal information within the app custom logos fields

020icons labels buttons links have feedback and color schemes were all elements used to present a reliable user interface we ended up making the user interface have a simple yet modern look along with multiple screens for each step now we'll show you the final functional interface we designed the main idea for the name was for it to have the word trace in it whether it be at the beginning and or by itself after narrowing the choices down to qr choice and qr log we settled on qr trace qr for the obvious fact that the app involves the use of qr codes and trades for how the app traces your steps as in it keeps a log of where you've been as for the actual logo we ended up with a few rough sketches but settled for

021the one shown on the screen with the help of my older sibling jose delta who is an art director in gray new york we created a digital version of the logo for the color schemes we ended up we decided that the logo should be a shade of blue saying that blue represents loyalty and health two things we want to show in our app there are three different options sapphire blue zero blue and the blue we chose which is just called blue there's a chart with the different options that we use to find the right shade we also needed to choose a few different colors like a red green orange and another blue thanks to a few opinions from the instructors and friends i chose the colors that are i chose colors that are light and

022but vibrant finalizing the logo was not a difficult task it was actually pretty easy we simply had to choose between three shades of blue we chose the blue that popped out the most and then sent it to the coding team to insert the logo into the app overall i'm very proud of the final product and i believe it it'll be easy to recognize among students and admit and administrators now you'll see the app in action with luke julia so on on this slide we're going to be showing you a video of young showing how the app would be used in the school this okay so this is not the only thing it can be used for teachers can also use it for keeping attendance it can also you know get to know when people leave

023leave your class and come back in so it could also be used as bathroom passes so now we're going on to our next slide which is going to show the qr trace from the point of view of the phone so you can see what each screen looks like as you're moving through the app yeah there we go you one moment there's supposed to be sound so i'm gonna try to reshare it to make sure everybody can hear should we just do a voiceover alicia uh yeah if that would be fine too yes because for some reason does not want to share the sound all right if you just hit play i can roll with the voice over okay so we we've seen um we're starting over again so we see here you can log in

024and register and young's gonna go ahead and register create an account this uses google firebase behind the scenes to do all the authentication and authorization he's logged in authorized you can update your profile um if you want to change your name for example uh removing his middle name here is updating it and saves and gets updated um you can change your password um like in most apps um young's updating his password now and logging out and logging in again with the updated password in addition we have the uh placeholders for additional information and the ability to ensure that your phone has the correct permissions so the camera permission and the location permission which are are things that mobile devices have to deal with home screen is here in the landing place and then you can

025get to where you scan the qr code press the scan button point your phone add a qr code scans it presents you with the location that that qr code is supposed to be in you can confirm or cancel that depending on if that's the correct thing or not and once you've confirmed it that data is then stored into the database and that is the qr trace app um next up we're gonna hand it over to john for our app we have decided to use three technologies to create authenticate and store user data and test our app to create the app we use the technology react nato react native is a cross-platform javascript library that can be used to develop both android and ios apps we learned javascript and react native through implementing features of the

026app react native has modules for scanning qr codes and getting the locations the app connects to our next technology called firebase firebase is a platform developed by google for creating mobile and web applications we use firebase for its authentication and cloud database products for registering and signing in users as well as storing user data to test all of our software we use the mobile application expo expo is a tool built around react native to simplifying quickly build and test apps this is the app we used to test this is the app we used to test our app in the previous videos now we'll pass it back to luke thanks john so what we want to do in the future with our app to make it better is we want to build an admin user interface

027that's just going to allow teachers or anybody to search through the database well and since our software is pretty secure and we have gps verification built in but what we really want to do if we want to add a feature that's going to prevent people from scanning a bunch of qr codes at one time we're also going to build in email verification so that people can't build an account on an email that isn't theirs now we're gonna go to the next slide okay so what makes qrtrace so important why should you choose it well what's so important about it is it's made by students for students we know what makes an app good and we've been using devices a lot so we've tried to include that in it it's very user friendly you don't need

028to have any technical expertise to use it you just have to tap a couple of buttons it's effective it does the job and it does the job well it keeps accurate logs and it's good at it it's private you have passcodes you don't just log in with your email like i've done on a bunch of apps before it's made for schools specifically it's not just like made for stuff it's made so that it'll work in schools and it's really easy to change profiles you can change any of the data on your profile like you can change your name you can change your passcode well that's what makes qr3 special now i'm going to hand it over to miss pearl thank you luke i want to thank all the students now we would like some questions

029and so that we give the students some time opportunity to answer your questions you have questions are there any questions for many of our board members i know we've seen this great product so do we have any questions i i have a question and that is where does this go from here i i'm just i'm i'm so pleasantly amazed by by what you've accomplished with this project and what's the next level that that you're going to take it to so at the moment we are working on getting the requirements to put it on both the apple store and um the google play store i believe is what is used for androids and um like luke mentioned in the future directions slide we're working on getting a admin page so that administrate administ administrator admin can

030like see the um the data well and get that to see who the person was in contact with thank you vanessa you yeah go ahead yes any other questions yeah other questions have you done i'm sorry go katrina do you feel like you're well equipped to make other apps after this because i know that's i feel like a hot market you know you can come up with something you have the skills to do it and then i just paid like seven dollars a day to have an app where you literally are just matching things so um money to be made do you feel like you can make a new app after this and does anyone have any ideas about apps i'm curious well let me say this um at the very beginning the students early

031back in uh april when this coveted 19 hit our community in the country were basically our schools uh the students were very concerned about how they were going to get back into school and be safe and so that's when mrs barnes started to brainstorm with me and i would mr kohl's um before alicia came on and we were looking at with students what type of app at first we were looking at the how we could literally create an app that would talk to us in distance you know making sure we six feet or whatever but that is something that we are still going to be looking at to answer your question uh but then we wanted something that we know that the school division could use and not only use but assure the community as

032a whole that they were doing something to um make sure that everyone is safe and this is one um project or this app can do that as you all saw uh at witness is is tracing and so it's the beginning but yes that's what nsbe does over these seven years or more we have been working on projects from the university of virginia into our schools from the high school to the middle school and we're very excited to be in greer elementary school um and so yes it that's what you do you constantly create and you move forward i think i saw julia put her hand up as well did you have something to add yeah as for the social distance thing we had the idea before we had the idea for the qr codes in

033school was to create an app that used bluetooth and pretty much detect other people's phones to see if they were closer than six feet apart so i feel like that could be useful not only in school but in the general public um see so much more noble-minded than the magic games that i'm envisioning the candy crush version 5.0 a follow-up question miss early is do you feel supported by the school system what else can we do for you well honestly they're your children and our job as educators school board members part of dr haas cabinet is to make sure things like this continue to move forward that's our job and so um our job is to educate all children and to answer your question uh for the first three years no i had to sell

034this to the school board but dr haas down through the years as a deputy superintendent and now superintendent he's always been there for all the all of the students mr page has been there for us for the past several several years so it is what you can do for the students and so um we constantly struggle for funding but somehow dr haas have found found a way to support that as well and i'm just so thankful to him you you hear me dr haws yes i mean you don't need to thank me miss early i i i thank i thank you every day because you are making um our equity mission statement come to life our equity mission statement is that we would erase the predictive value of race class gender and special capacities on

035student achievement and opportunities through working with families in the community and if you look at what you've presented here tonight that's you the work you're doing absolutely fits that definition you are accomplishing so much and um what what i won't take a long time but i've watched these children and now they're young adults just growing up through your program each summer doing more um difficult work more challenging work i'm just so impressed with it and i can't thank you enough and i look forward to receiving your proposal for next summer and i can't wait to see what the kids do next thank you so much for your work thank you well this is ongoing we still have some things we need to do but we want to try to test this throughout the schools and

036so i will be getting i will i will put something together and get with someone in your cabinet or somewhere we can move this forward we will be uh informing your school board the school board as well and so we're just excited and and i just would like to anyone else have a question before we clap and applaud and we will move out your hair just one ms early um i think this is a very elegant project both the software and the creative design of the of the site um have you talked with ross or anybody else in terms of about copyright or or anything along those lines before you start shopping it to the apple store go ahead no that's that's all i was going to say okay uh yes we have um an

037attorney heirs to uh clifford air's mother she's been working with us um but here again um we will be talking with our team and we will be talking with dr haas and his uh folks and we will look at um where that's going to move uh but we want i personally want to see this um in our schools and and helping our schools especially the principals as soon as we can i can speak a bit on that as well uh so i've been working with the students on creating just to be able to get the app on the app store and the google play store as vanessa had spoken on uh we have to have different uh terms and conditions and the copyright so we have been working on that and working with attorney heirs

038to look over that but yes lots of progress on that side okay okay all right go ahead and please other questions uh it's not question but i do have a question i just had a quick comment um this is wendell green i'm principal of orange county high school um as a former uh colleague of miss early you know i've seen how this program has kind of come to fruition over the years and my children have participated in nsbe as well so i've seen firsthand the commitment and dedication that has gone into this so i just want to give major kudos to her for kind of just sort of bringing a different spirit a different belief to these students that um has been very inspiring to me she's mentored me over the years to help support

039some of the visions that i've carried on in my principalship at orange county high school so i just want to just say thank you to her for what she's done for all the kids that come through albemarle high school and what she's done over the years so major kudos to you ms early thank you thank you mr green any other uh questions from board members uh it's not quite a question just a comment uh i i'm just super impressed uh coding is like my thing like i every night you can you'll find me on my computer coding stuff and so i'm super impressed i think that this is a really uh important and and uh effective step towards like uh dr haas was saying uh towards uh sort of more inclusion in in the field

040of stem because it really is a polarized field but i just want to say i'm super impressed wonderful elijah you at monticello i'm at west normal high school actually you're at western alberta what grade are you in i'm a sophomore you're a sophomore you then you need to join us right yeah yeah actually uh i computer science with clifford last year yeah so if you're that intrigued you need to enjoy need to join us and clifford why have you not recruited him uh-huh that's right right okay thank you uh chairman paige thank you so much ms early before you leave uh i think we've all seen an example of how tenacious miserly can be and uh probably about two weeks ago there was a parent special training session and in order to get one of

041the panelists for that training session miss early was on her way to her beauticians and i think she stopped in the parking lot found the phone number for this person that was either in virginia beach or yan illinois and she called the person introduced herself to that person and said that she wanted them to be on her panel so once ms early is on your trail it's really hard to sort of say no to her so we really thank you so very much for everything that you've done for our students we thank you instructors and i think some of the parents like mr green might have been online tonight too so we also thank them so thank you so very very much early for what you've done for our students and vanessa please give the

042students applause yes thank you have a good week and um dr haas i'll be talking to you soon and thank you again yes ma'am nice to meet you all thank you again all right uh moving along announcements and school board business superintendent business so i think dr haas has some announcements uh to make for us thank you mr page i just have a few announcements um first is uh just veterans day it was 101 years ago on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month that the armistice that brought world war one to an end was signed that moment led to an annual celebration of what in 1954 was formally established as veterans day we were reminded last week of just how precious is the gift our veterans bequeathed to our nation

043when close to 150 million people all across our nation participated in an election to choose a president for the united states it is an honor for our school division to join hundreds of millions of americans across our country to say thank you to the heroes who down through history have risked their lives to protect the freedom and liberty in the very lives of us all we are reminded of the importance of values for our school division it's young people community respect and excellence when one thinks about those who serve our country we're reminded of these same four values in all of the cities towns and small villages where members of our armed forces live our veterans serve as an outstanding role model for our young people for strong communities for respect for diversity and teamwork

044and for uncommon excellence we join in saying thank you to our veterans for what has been stated as the purpose of veterans day a celebration to honor americans or america's veterans for their patriotism love of country and willingness to serve and sacrifice for the common good i also have an announcement about um this saturday uh if in case you were not aware this saturday marks the big beginning of diwali the hindu festival it's a five-day cultural celebration of a return to prosperity including among other things the triumph of knowledge or i would like to thank the triumph of education over ignorance i want to say something to all of our teachers our support staff and our administrators you all really did amazing work yesterday i had the opportunity to visit agner hurt in woodbrook on

045monday and brownsville in crozet wednesday morning and i think i'm going to get out to holly mead tomorrow morning first thing and i'm so impressed and proud of the level of detailed safety oriented and caring organization you all pulled off arriving at brownsville wednesday morning and seeing all those beautiful yellow buses lined up to deliver students and of course lots of cars with parents and families in them it was a wonderful site for me and i know what i saw at those schools has been accomplished at all 25 of our schools thanks to you i've heard great reviews of all of your work and i personally enjoyed checking in with teachers and classes at your schools all of our schools are as clean and as safe as can be and students on site we're very

046happy to be there thank you teachers and teaching assistants for those of you who continue to work in virtual school thank goodness for you you had some you have had some serious rearranging and shifting to do just when you were hitting your stride with your classes you are very accommodating for the benefit of your children and families i know it was hard thank you every day i'm grateful to work with all of you all of us are employees of albemarle county public schools yesterday and this evening i'm especially so because you have shown once again that when a challenge is presented and we work together we can overcome it for our students and families you are modeling resilience for the community and one more time thank you and one final announcement is i i want

047everyone to be aware that we actually now have a covid 19 hotline and um you may have seen it that we launched this hotline yesterday with a telephone number and an email link as a public school division we are here to serve our community we encourage any students families and employees who are facing hardship due to covet 19 to reach out for assistance you can learn more about this service on our covet 19 hotline web page i really want to thank helen dunn and carol carolyn herget for creating and also monitoring this hotline since it was set up yesterday a message and messages have gone out we've had nine um families that have contacted us all their communications were through email and they were in in spanish and they asked for a variety of uh

048assistance from the school system which we are able to accommodate by by uh sometimes connecting uh the families directly to their school counselor at the school level so that they can then follow through but also we were received a generous donation from our public education foundation to kick off areas where we might have added expenditures so really any need that you have please uh use those um methods for connecting us and we're here to help thank you very much mr page thank you dr haas for those announcements um moving to our business we will now have a covet 19 update by dr mclaughlin and mrs allen gomez all right good evening board members i'm patrick mclaughlin chief of strategic planning for the school division and tonight i'll be sharing with you the latest local statistics

049about the coven 19 crisis along with eileen gomez in addition we'll be sharing some updates about our stage four planning process so as you recall we've identified six factors to determine our progression between stages of return and at the board's request we reply we provide updates at each meeting on the current covert 19 conditions in albemarle county and at this time i'll turn things over to eileen thank you good evening everybody uh this is eileen gomez i'm serving as the kobe coordinator for this year and you can see from this slide about albemarle county on the seven-day floating average our numbers have continued to go down this has a number of cases has declined for more than 14 days so that is considered a decreasing trend next slide please and you can see that our

050percent positivity that is of all those who are tested what percent tests positive that has been declining as well although if you look at a graph over time there's been a little bit of up and down so this trend is considered fluctuating in the city of charlottesville you can see that the it's been a um well it's showing here that we have a decreasing trend but you can see that it's a little it's been fluctuating somewhat but overall it's lower now than it had been last month and the percent positivity for the city of charlottesville is 1.8 um that it we've been low for about a month now and that trend is considered fluctuating but we're fluctuating in a very low zone there yeah thanks eileen go ahead i was just saying we we there's

051a couple ways to look at this data one is the floating average which were the other slides the other is the cumulative total of the last 14 days and that is what this slide is i'll turn it back over to you patrick yeah thanks eileen and this also and the cdc also looks at the percent positivity in a slightly different way too where they look at the um uh the average over the past 14 days instead of the past uh seven as the vdh does and you can see that um based on our current numbers our case incidence rate places it places us at the higher risk of transmission and our percent positivity places us in the lowest risk of transmission and as we've uh told the board before it's important to note that that

052there's a third factor that's been identified as the cdc to consider is schools reopen and that's perhaps the most important one and that's the ability of the school district to implement five key migrations mitigation strategies which include consistent and correct use of masks social distancing to the largest extent possible hand hygiene and respiratory etiquette cleaning and disinfection and contact tracing in collaboration with the local health department and when schools implement all of these practices correctly and consistently it lowers the overall risk of transmission in our schools even when other factors are elevated we thought we currently have all five mitigation strategies in place and feel we're implementing them correctly and consistently and we'll continue to monitor these numbers and our mitigation strategies now that we've moved into stage three of our return to school plan

053this week with the move to stage three we had over 2 700 students scheduled to attend in-person classes this week although a few were sidetracked a bit today by the weather in addition we've got 140 buses on the road each day bringing kids to school and delivering meals which are being served to about 3 500 students every day stage three also brought the return of high school athletics and conditioning programs began this week with 75 to 150 students attending conditioning activities at each of our high schools each day this week with the exception of today with the weather cancellation and while stage three has just begun i wanted to let the board know about our work to plan for stage four of returning to school and first and foremost we are making no assumptions that

054there will be either a recommendation or board approval to move to stage four in the second semester that will be driven again by the factors we shared at the beginning of this presentation however since there's a possibility that a move could occur as early as february we are developing our stage four plan i'll share with you tonight a shift to our decision-making timeline as well as how we're developing a more detailed plan for stage four so based on stakeholder feedback we're shifting the timeline for making a decision about which stage we'll be in as we enter our third marking period on december 10th we'll present to the board a detailed report of our from our stage 4 planning team describing the instructional and operational plans for that stage on january 14th dr haas will make

055a recommendation to the board and then we'll hold a special board meeting on january 21st for the board discussion and decision should the board decide that conditions allow for a move to stage four will likely need to move the start date for that stage from february first to a date a week or two later in order to have adequate time to prepare but a detailed timeline for that will be presented on december 10. some of the most consistent feedback that we heard from our community and from our staff when we moved to stage three was that our operational and instructional plans weren't quite detailed enough for families and staff members to make informed decisions about returning to school our stage 4 planning team is now up and running with four key teams our operational team

056is looking at key questions around school capacity transportation capacity food service needs and after school programs the human resources team is reviewing their accommodation request process and timeline to adapt that for a potential move to stage four and our policy team will be developing needed standard operating procedures our instruction team is developing detailed plans for both our secondary and elementary instructional models for the next stage the instructional team is by far our largest with 10 lead coaches and 10 assistant principals paired together to lead conversations by subject area in the secondary level and it will have a separate elementary instructional team as well teacher voice and the instructional plan is crucial for its success and this week we've invited secondary teachers to be a part of the planning process so far we have 65 teachers

057who have signed up to participate early next week we'll invite elementary teachers to be a part of the process as well and the work these teams of these teams will be shared with the board in our community on december 10th so that our stakeholders can make an informed decision about returning to school in stage four whenever that decision uh in that time may be and finally i'd just like to reiterate uh what dr haas mentioned uh just a moment ago that our covert 19 support hotline is up and running as you can see we've got uh both a phone number and an email address for uh for our community to uh to call us if they are in need and we can connect them with resources uh both in the school division and with our

058community partners so that concludes tonight's update i really appreciate the time to speak with you and i'll be happy to take any questions or hear any comments that you may have patrick i have a quick question yes how does this compare um to charlottesville's plan i guess what i'm asking with the february date i'm just i'm wondering because i just read in the newspaper last week about how charlottesville is voting next week to open in january or something along those lines i could be misinformed so i would say i am uh i'm not i saw that charlottesville had made some decisions but i'm not familiar with the details of those so i can research that a little bit and um and get back to you uh with some information about that okay um i just

059i have a comment and a request i guess uh i do really appreciate the shift in timeline so that people have more uh information and i appreciate the stakeholders being a part of the process so i know that we're all you know design and plane as we fly it so i do really appreciate that um in terms of the information that we get at each meeting i would like to request given how fluid the situation is and i know we're all following the news with like exponential um increase in cases if we could get the most recent data at our meetings um just just because like three days can mean a difference yes so so we we would we get an update on the um on the vdh data each monday we can check with

060um with ryan mckay to see if he can provide us you know maybe a thursday morning update as well the cdc data is um is available by day uh they update that daily on the site we tend to use the same day so it's consistent uh you know with uh we don't see a difference there but i would be happy to uh to check in with ryan and see if he can update those numbers for us um to get him a little bit closer to the board meeting dates great thank you are there any other questions from the board when is the third quarter start date i can look at a calendar budget third quarter starts february 1. okay thank you okay uh are there other questions then in this section from i just want

061to clarify for the patrick for the high schools that's effectively second semester right that is second semester that's no you know it's like it the start of their new classes that's right they would they would switch uh you know our classes on a four by four this year and february first would be the first day of new classes in the second semester uh that affects some uh middle schools to have a have a few classes on a 4x4 that would be switching at that time as well so is that our target just said beginning of february i'm wondering if that's the target that that was the original target when we had when we were using december 10th as a decision point um with the shift to january 21st as a decision point it's going to

062take uh we're not quite sure we can get things turned around by february 1st to uh to have things ready to go if we got the green light to go back so if that's if there's feedback from the board about that timeline please send it my way and we can we can discuss that in cabinet as well yeah i guess my little piece of feedback is just i guess maybe i should talk with you because i'm just kind of curious not curious but i'm kind of concerned i guess about backing off of our timeline i get the rationale but then to say that it's not even going to line up to when we're having a semester shift in the high school is i guess a little and then to hear that the city is is

063pushing for earlier decisions not that we need to do that or that's right and they haven't even voted on it but i guess i just have some concerns about why we would try to be aiming to switch things in mid february like why is that the date that we're um shooting for it seems like february 1st at the very least would be the date that we needed to have a decision but i could be alone in that thinking just following what katrina has just said i mean i know that the 14th of january is our organizational meeting but is there a reason that we couldn't like if that were a decision meeting then the february first date would be more feasible perhaps just a thought so again we can we can take feedback on that

064timeline if if it's the board's uh request to receive the superintendent's um recommendation and have discussion and decision the same evening we could potentially make that alignment i guess i'm confused i thought the recommendation was in december no ma'am the uh in december we're going to present the the detailed plan so everyone knows what stage four would look like whenever we go there my confusion sorry okay are there other comments or um remarks at this time on this item and miss carlson we will i guess be considering what you're saying but uh thinking about that i guess as we move along yeah i mean i don't know if this is an appropriate time to have that discussion or not i don't know how other people are feeling that just it seems i mean that's kind

065of a big shift that we're being presented with in some ways to say that we're moving off of the model we had proposed and we're operating i think that's sort of to make sure that we are doing the very best job that we can i think that's why um the timetable has changed a little but i understand your point though yeah if it's a two-week difference between like mid-february february i'll stop talking i guess and he's ready for that break so i'm going to take it as he agrees with me i mean i mean given that now the 14th the first meeting of the year uh is when the recommendation will be presented rather than waiting two weeks till our normally scheduled meeting it's also possible isn't it to have a special meeting that's what

066we would do we would have a special meeting on the 21st week that's right this is a special meeting january 21st is a special meeting to vote on the proposal from january right but okay never mind okay matt you look like you had something to say um i would just offer that part of our consideration for slowing down the process was that um out of consideration for teachers because they are just now like a lot of the feedback we received on the last time that we made a recommendation and and move forward on it was that the teachers had just been starting to hit their stride uh with virtual and that it was very disruptive and so we were just trying to be sensitive in not all of a sudden ramping things up again to

067make possibly another recommendation and so we we decided to take our foot off the gas with that respect i do understand however the sense that it may be might be too long you know another alternative could be to front load and have um a special meeting to make the recommendation the week before the 14th um they would still give a considerable considerably large amount of time to pass between yesterday and when we would firm things up for recommendation to the board it would also allow for dr mclaughlin and his team to put together a very concrete um explanation of what stage four would look like for the december meeting so be really clear to everyone we could then address questions and get feedback to continue to improve it if we had a meeting on january

0687th with that being the only agenda item it would be after you know the winter break so people would be back in town to attend to it and then we could um do that and then the next week the board could act on it that's another alternative that's a compromise between the two concerns because if we were able to to have a decision on the 14th and all this is supposing that we would recommend stage four i want to reiterate what dr mclaughlin said is that that's not a foregone conclusion um if we did do that it would give us still a fair amount of time to get things in order uh to start on the the semester break my concern with that everybody is that in order to make that analysis the analysis is

069going to have to be made really over the holiday break and some people have raised concerns and i hear it i don't necessarily know that i agree with it i hear it that there may be a real issue as people come back and so i wonder if we make a recommendation on the 7th and we vote on the 14th that's not giving you know a 10-day 14-day window from the time people return i think that might be that just seems tight to me okay um we could take a straw vote maybe on those two proposals that would be one way to sort of settle this i think so our two options would be to have the plan on january the 7th vote on the 14th that would be option one option two would be to

070have the plan on the 14th vote on the 21st so is there any objections to taking a straw poll on that hearing none mrs johnston could you call the roll for us and option one january 7th 14th option two january 14th 21st ms johnston chairman paige miss johnston um i believe she had to step you're there okay i'm here okay um dr a cup oh put me first um option one um mr alcaro i believe it's option two fourteenth and twenty first um mr oberg option two um miss lee option two miss osborne option two miss carlson i'll say option one because it's inconsequential at this point and i wanna uh emphasize i don't know if i'd necessarily have as much information that i was like so i guess i need to have meeting with

071you patrick at some point i mean i'm curious what teachers think about starting a semester and switching two weeks after they start the semester i mean that might be more disruptive to their plans than i mean i don't know and then mr page absolutely i'm sorry did you say option two two two so option two it is right so we will proceed then with um the recommendation on the 14th and our vote on it on the 21st would you mind if i said one more thing no okay um so another thing to consider because we this is just time to be flexible i think we all can agree on that i think the key is that involving the teachers in the planning and i think that having the secondary teachers really heavily involved will help

072us with the second semester and i again i don't want to um add another wrinkle to this however keeping in mind that we can move the start date for the second semester we can have another we can have an additional week or two in the first semester of classes so that we do start the second semester classes they would be a little shorter but keeping in mind these things that we do are often arbitrary um we are we i know we have concerns about uh class time and students getting their carnegie credit uh however all those all those aspects have been waived by the virginia board of education long and even before covet 19. so if that becomes a um a real issue something of great concern to the school board we can make that

073adjustment so that the new classes don't form until there's a change or if if there's if the board votes to not change or we recommend to not change then it just won't be an issue because they'll be going into the same stage with the beginning anyway so i think um i just i guess the reason i'm bringing that up is because i just want everyone to feel like that our primary consideration and i know this is and i know that i'm i'm preaching to the choir will be the safety and well-being of the students and we can adjust everything else around that we can start a semester when we want to start it um we can make other kinds of adjustments that you want to make as a school board to accommodate those concerns so

074thank you okay thank you doug toss and i i too agree with what ms lee said and what you said about making sure that we have a lot of teacher input um both from high secondary and from elementary to make sure that everybody is on board with um the plans that we have moving forward are there any other comments or questions related to item uh 8-1 covet update okay if not for approval the new boys and girls club design presented to us by ms lisa walker mrs walker thank you hello i'm lisa walker i'm a project manager and planner with acps building services and this evening the boys and girls club design team will present the revised schematic design for their new facility the design team presenters are jeff bushman of bd architects james pierce

075with the boys and girls club and lj lopez with milestone partners as a bit of background in june of 2019 the school board agreed to lease land adjacent to jewett middle school to the boys and girls club of central virginia for a new facility the original lease was approved by the school board in december of 2019 and amended this july to change the location to the driver training range to the front left of duet middle school according to the terms of the lease design and construction drawings for the facility and grounds will be approved by the school board prior to the start of construction which is slated for mid-2021 the boys and girls club will be responsible for all construction maintenance capital and operating costs of the facility with the exception of mowing and snow

076removal which will be done by the county or acps this is this item was on the consent agenda for information at the october 22nd meeting and tonight acps staff is recommending that the revised schematic design be approved so without further ado i will introduce our presenters jeff bushman james pierce and lj lopez thanks thank you lisa mr chairman board members superintendent haas and staff members uh it's my pleasure to be here tonight in 2017 the boys and girls club learned of a report of a need for additional out of school time slots in the county we responded then to a an rfp that the county presented and we have proposed a center that would accommodate 300 members per day and increase our membership at the jewett club to over 500 kids per year so that's

077an increase of 200 for what we're doing now every day in school or after school in the summer with input from albemarle county chief of police and partners in the school system we're proud to bring you a design tonight to look at two key points on this slide that i wanted to point out are that may 21 we're looking at breaking ground and we're hoping to open uh with the opening of school in 2022 i just want to share a couple key features of the building design we oh here are our um our list of partners that that um are at the very top albemarle school alabama county schools and boys and girls clubs work closely on this together you can see the partners that have been consulted in the design including some of the

078partners you work with in your schools wild rock a pb j fund etc all right this is just a brief outline to show where in time and space we are this is the most populated campus of the in the county schools and we think will also allow for expanded instructional space during the day and we hope you are as excited as we are about that here's a quick comparison of the two sites although the former site was larger the current site the 4.94 acre site is a lot more flat and will also require fewer uh trees to be pulled down so we're very excited about that here's a slide just showing a quick access how kids are going to be arriving to to the site you'll see an outline in light blue of the building

079and you'll see that we've got members arriving from two two sides there's a two-sided lobby so the orange and red lines are the greer and jewett lines are going to be crossing over a raised crosswalk and then arriving to the left side of the lobby and albemarle's albemarle high school students will be arriving the blue lines some of the safe routes to school routes are i believe painted in over there on the right side showing how students from albemarle would be accessing the facility here's just a little bit of a parking plan and showing how buses will be accessing this facility as well the red line that goes deepest to the left is showing how our staff members will be accessing their parking lot uh the the blue parking lot in the front with the

080double entry is for uh parents visitors volunteers and the yellow dotted line shows the route of buses from from woodbrook and agner hurt from members that will be attending by bus um very excited uh the the outdoor environment really plays well into our our building plan on our program plan on this site fits perfectly there's a u10 size soccer field that's contemplated there's a track that surrounds that and a network of trails that are connected to through the the southern side of this uh of this slide you can see again the light blue building uh there's a feature called the bowl which is a terrific adaptation of what the current landscape allows it's a hard court at the bottom and it's about a 30 foot in incline up to the very top of that ball

081i'll show you some pictures a little bit later exterior to the teen side of the building on the right is a sport court a full-size basketball court outside and sports field with seating also a teen hangout area on the right side and the arrival plaza you can see on the top so any member who is not driving age basically it's going to be dr is going to be entering from the left side of the entry uh here's a little bit of the building a character showing the the adjacent woods we're so excited to have such a beautiful area behind this facility and we will take advantage of that certainly with large windows that face face those woods here's what's currently in place and then very quickly after that you can see a rendering of what

082the new facility will look like on that space we are contemplating a net zero impact here energy goal and that will be achieved through solar on the rooftop here's a view from the other side again focusing on the the sports facility the outdoor field will not just be soccer obviously a flat space for kids to run and play another feature that we hope will be utilized by the schools during the daytime and the track the surrounding areas and then the link down into the wooded spaces will provide us many many program opportunities and you can start to see the bowl emerge right next to the youth wing on on the exterior of this side there's a view from the back again you can see the bowl to the left the field to to the further

083left and then we've got um we've got some of the features on top i think it's a good time for me now to bring in i get so excited about this plan i could just talk for days but really the creative uh inspiration for for the rest of the character of this is uh from jeff bushman from bushman dreyfus architects and i'm pleased to have jeff here today to um to tell us a little bit more about the character of the uh the building thank you thanks james um yeah so happy to be here and be showing you the beginnings of this project um yeah that south view shows one of our main drivers and thinking about the design is relating the building to the woods to the trees to the sun on the south

084side so here's a good example of the little sport court on the west end of the building opening up to the sun and the trees with some slope seating for all kinds of different activities sports gatherings lessons small group meetings teachings classes and things like that and you know an inspiration from our landscape architect driving the our thinking about the bowl is this beautiful um amphitheater swarthmore college which has mature trees grown in but we're really interested in providing a shaded uh beautiful hangout for for everybody uh and here's a cross section showing the uh 20 foot drop from the upper level and then there's another four or five feet down to the lowest level of the building but this is a nice view looking into the woods from from the bowl and here's an

085example um sharing with you our intentions for improvements for the campus along uh lamb's lane and mostly in the form of landscaping a low hedge to hide some of the cars some canopy trees to provide shade and enhance the safe routes to school sidewalk that's being built uh separately and independently of this project but uh we'll come in with some both wayfinding enhancements in the form of monument signs and we'll clean up and plant the edges of that sidewalk um james do you want to talk about program or shall i keep going oh i got it let me um do this part and then i'll hand it back to you for the um more of the exterior character and pictures so we have in in pink here uh the multi-um multi-age spaces so again the

086double entries then you most members will arrive right down this hallway pick up a snack and head into the cafe space we have a instructional kitchen and an associated classroom next to that we have a little gym here a larger gym to the right over by the um by the teen side the green area to the right is the teen center specifically the blue area light light blue to the left is the youth wing and you can see each of them interacts with the exterior of the facility to extend our programmatic space so to the right of this facility the teen side opens out onto that porch and then athletics area with a associated seating area to the right of the court similarly on the left of the building you've got one two three four

087five um closed door rooms and then again a large games room uh on the far left and then you exit right out to that bowl with to multiple exterior fitness spaces also notable is the exterior porch to the south that's on the lower floor and that will be an a great outdoor space for eating in the summertime and on nice days for meals i also want to point out the stem and art rooms which have a porch right out to the outside so a lot of our stem and art programs are get kind of messy and we love that we also want to provide some outside space because we know the projects many of the projects we're going to be doing will involve some outside space so we like the interaction between the indoor and

088the outdoor in every part of this facility i believe the next part shows the lower level we love the squash courts squash courts can do so much we're looking forward to introducing a generation of kids to this fantastic sport we've already had a three year long partnership with boars head where members from this club already are attending learning learning squash the top 10 squash players in the world are international players and we think that the background of students and members especially at elementary school with such such an international sport will be a welcome addition to to their background and repertoire so in the top offices this is the third floor the administrative offices will be moved to this facility and there's nothing really much to say about the administrative offices jeff is this good for

089you yeah so this uh we've started to develop the building in three dimensions and uh this just shows uh in three dimensional form how the rooms relate to one another and and what it really shows is although the site is flat there is some topography on the site and that is bossing around the plan a little bit but in challenges come opportunities and what we have really is a long and skinny building where all the rooms have great natural light and the shape of the building is generally following the shape of the topography but this shows how the southern wall addresses the trees you can see connections to trails in the woods you can see the outdoor terrace in front of the squash courts which is directly connected to the cafe upstairs it's a great

090place for lunch gathering or lessons and any other activity that is going on that day and here's the flip view on the north side showing the single lane bus drop off on that side and our arrival plaza which is also a gathering place and it shows some of the improvements along this leg of lamb's lane as well this cross section through the structure shows how we're using the squash courts to help navigate around the change in levels from high to low works very well connects nicely with the terrace outside that's our linking space to the woods as i've said the headquarters offices are up on the third floor and all the program spaces are on a single ground floor level uh here we see a conceptual rendering of the cafe which is whose design is

091is driven by a relationship with the trees out the big windows we are beginning to think about solar shading devices on that south side you can see the stair going down to the squash center and you can see through and beyond to the wing of the building dedicated to youth and this is a quick rendition of the game room which is just a bustling hub of activity and fun again open to the south light and the trees and then on the lowest level you can see uh the stairway coming up or coming down from the cafe uh with a door directly onto the terrace for lunch on those picnic tables uh a gallery big enough to do stuff in and coach's office right in front of us and behind which are four squash courts facing

092the windows [Music] finally the big gym uh i think it's fair to say that light and visibility are the themes here for both our big gym and our little gym uh again it is uh just another bustling activity on the street side of the building should be very attractive space for the whole community and that concludes our 27 slides showing you the schematic design level of development of our project so far so now um lisa i don't want to steal your thunder but we're open for questions and answers i have one question uh regarding safety and security it's not something i'm alarmed about or really seriously concerned about because i know the boys and girls club attention to detail especially on subjects like this is is is top-notch um when the kids are out in

093the bowl or when they're looking out in the woods area you know and then uh because i think that i think the woods is is a really great aspect of this um what kind of safety what kind of security will there be we saw the the the people in the staff shirt i'm looking at the one on the screen right now will there be staff people outside pretty much at all times when there are children outside uh jono thanks a great question i love that you noted that there are two staff members in this depicted in this shot here anytime there are we have a rule of three first of all so there's never any one person alone with any other one person in any activity in the club and then we also have a

094ratio of one to 18 and so there will always be one staff member leader for every 18 members very very often it's it's even a lower ratio than that in our summer programs we have about two two staff members for about every 22 kids and so um we will always have a eyes on eyes uh supervising adults that have been background checked and certified um safe leaders of our clubs inside the building outside the building field trips any any club activity and i guess i i know you said it but i guess i missed it what what's your total number of staff uh estimated to be for the for this property uh we'll have probably 25 member staff on hand at any one time during the after school program i'll probably go up in the

095summertime super thank you i have a question i think perhaps for james is the is the rave walkway part of the cac sidewalk project or is that something that you all will be constructing it's a great question i believe that is ours exclusively but i know that we've had very recent conversations with the safe routes to school group so i'm going to say that that's our project that's that's correct thanks lj there are other questions from the board i would just say it looks awesome one of the best ones i've seen wish i was a kid again thank you so much ms kelson yeah the plans are really beautiful and um what you said that the bowl was uh like a natural depression already in that area yep um jeff would be good to talk

096about this yeah that's correct there is a uh as currently measured about 16 to 18 feet of drop to to the lowest existing part of the driver's ed site to basically right up at the jewett crosswalk and so we're using that 16 feet the squash level goes down about three or three and a half feet below that so we have a ramp coming up out of the squash level to the little sport court um and then stairs um connecting back up the hill to the to the crosswalk and in a similar fashion um lj if you go back to the west view the the field the big sports field is healed into the topography just a little bit and we get a nice opportunity for some seating on a slope looking down over that field

097um below the uh that one row of parking and then there's a there's a kind of running track a walking track a nice circuit that goes around that field which is good for all kinds of different uses both physical fitness and just taking a walk with somebody there are other questions i also like the solo panels on the roof there and um that roof deck is nice too so the plants are really beautiful we're really pleased with them thank you mr page yes i just want to say that i can't wait to play there that looks just like i'm a you know i'm a big kid and i acknowledge that and that that looks like it could be a lot of fun it really does great as james said he raised the bar really really

098high for us he said that the club needs to be the highlight of any kid's day when they walk in the front door so that's what we're shooting for and you did say that the enrollment would be 500 students per day roughly right sorry 300 members capacity and 300 members daily and then certainly not every member arrives at the club every day so we have a membership that would be larger than that so we're anticipating an increase in membership to 500 to 600 okay so some members are spring break only some members are summer only some members are every day after school only and at any given time we'll have a membership regularly attending of about 450 certainly not every member comes to the club every day okay other questions just one um i guess

099i i guess well our kids aren't in school well our kids are in back in school slowly slowly um with a mid 2021 opening when do you anticipate the first shovel in the dirt great question i think our timeline shows that uh may 21 is the shovel in the ground we would love for you all to be there okay um and then opening we're trying to coincide with the opening of school 2022 so the best time for any boys and girls club to open is the beginning of school uh we've done this enough times where you know we we know that there are beginnings january 1st is a good beginning because people have made new plans or at the beginning of a semester as you were talking about before you know that has a big

100impact on families and so we're really shooting for the first day of school 2022 which means taking possession of the facility a month or so ahead of that really testing out all of the uh corners and crevices making sure we know um everything about the facility and then and then opening for members um shortly thereafter with the opening of school okay thank you very much are there other questions okay thank you mr pierce and mr bushman and uh the rest of the team there beautiful presentation do we need we need to approve this we can see that it's for approval on the agenda so um could i have a motion i move that we approve the new boys and girls club design to go in on the lams lane campus then that we approve it

101tonight second it's removed by mr el carro second by mr oberg that we approve the um lamb's road location for the boys and girls club mrs johnston could you call the role for us please mr alcaro yes mr oberg yes miss lee yes ms osborne yes miss paulson yes dr akov yes mr paige yes what's your past okay so the plan has passed unanimously congratulations everybody this is this is going to be so exciting for all of the kids and and mr oberg so we'll make great use of it thank you yeah it's really often fantastic thank you so much everyone appreciate your partnership uh we now have a break it's about 805 no 807 so we'll break until 8 17. okay hi mr page hey there dr aston how are you well good good

102okay it is now 8 17 and we will proceed with our next item on our uh on our gender anti-racism policy update uh dr bernard harrison dr harrison ms johnson shall i share my screen yes thank you ma'am you see a full screen yeah okay so are we seeing a full screen all right sorry you see a full screen yep yes yes okay so good evening board members uh dr haas as well and the community i am bernard hairston your assistant superintendent of school and community empowerment i will be joined by jasmine fernandez this evening the project manager of the anti-racism sterling committee and policy implementation team we will present an overview and update to the anti-racism policy implementation plan since our last presentation to the board on february 13 2020. we will share how

103the policy regulations were strategically outlined into a logic model design that had the built-in key activities key strategies and progressive outline measurable designs built in in february we present examples of startup initiatives such as kicking off a student advisory group launching a review of equity survey interviews from teachers of color and steps to identify equity needs assessment tools today what we would like to do is to provide you with some updates on those action steps to these startup initiatives that we presented back in february as well some other initiatives sorry about that the anti-racism policy statement is being promoted as part of our division level staff meetings it is presented with equal value to our mission and vision statement our equity mission statement and the strategic priorities value values and goals of our school division

104and it's presented as a top priority message to staff and the community it reads albemarle county public schools is committed to establishing and sustaining an equitable community that achieves the school division's equity mission to end the predictive value of race and ensure each individual students and staff success yes that's not appearing the slides are a little bit off okay there it is it's there now okay the albemarle county school board and the school division rejects all forms of racism as destructive to their their mission vision values and goals so if do you see it moving now is the screen moving now no okay good so we have expanded our committee from 17 to 24 members um the expansion of the team members are highlighted we have added a learning technology integrator we have added a

105student support program manager instructional lead coaches we have added department heads from the division a research and program evaluator a director of guidance and counseling and building level administrators this expansion uh requires us to expand our diversity as a team simply because of a greater need for implementing of the 22 plus regulations within the policy as you all well know uh the pus the policy is organized around five broad categories policy communication leadership and administration curriculum and instruction and professional learning slash training and policy enforcement these uh 24 uh members of the strategic committee are responsible for um creating um strategies to ensure that these policies are these uh categories the 24 20 plus i'm sorry the 20 plus regulations are carried out through the policy we have developed a report a comprehensive report for

106your review we hope that you will take the time to read that report in detail we hope that uh as members of the school board uh you will consider the potential impact of this anti-racism policy as a means of shifting our culture as you all well know writing the policy was the first step but the most important work to occur with the implementation is what we do next so i'd like to uh next turn this over to jasmine fernandez to walk us through some of the highlights of the report that you have received thank you so much dr harriston as mentioned my name is jasmine fernandez i serve as a project advisor and the program manager for the anti-racism policy steering committee our presentation could not be more timely but as i shared with you

107all during our february update and as many of the staff have heard me say this work is not about the moment it's about the movement we are engaging in legacy work and while we know that the role ahead is long we are very proud of the infrastructure that we've created over the last nine months as dr harrison shared i trust also that you all have already read the report which includes comprehensive status updates for all of our key projects for this evening in an honor to uh in an effort to honor the time allotted to us today but also bring your attention to new items that we haven't had the chance to discuss with you in the past i will focus this presentation on a few particular projects next slide as it pertains to policy

108communications when we presented to you in february we shared that the student equity advisory team seat was in the process of being formed since then the group has been up and running the group includes representatives from all of our high schools their role is to present to promote equity and anti-racism and serve as leaders and spokespersons within their schools and the division one highlight of their efforts this year included educating the community on the concept of structural racism in may c organized a student-led town hall called 2020 vision seeing covet through an anti-racist lens to examine the disproportionate impact of covet 19 on black and latinx communities the conversation brought health care and government officials together to talk about covet 19 and its community impact following the town hall members of seat were invited to

109join the governor for one of his dearly covet 19 press briefings next slide as you know per the policy and report there are a number of deliverables under leadership administration particular this evening we would like to highlight the work of piloting a department-based equity needs assessment for the human resources department per the charge in the policy and the school board's directive to increase minority representation the hr team formed a department-based equity team as part of assessing the team's individual racial consciousness and how their views influence and interact with the department's culture the team utilized a transforming organizational culture assessment toca tool the tool allowed the team to reflect on their perception of race racism and white privilege and how it manifested in the organization's policies and practices in an effort to examine the experiences of

110educators of color the team learned more broadly about the experiences of teachers of color through articles podcasts data and research and to learn more specifically about why acps educators of color have resigned the team examined letters of resignation and exit interviews and what we found was the need to rework our exit survey to allow for more racialized feedback additionally rather than waiting until after our educators of color leave a next step will be to convene a focus group with current educators of color to better understand the barriers that prevent them from staying with us next slide in regards to curriculum and instruction as we explain in the report we know that there are a number of teachers across the country who want to implement anti-racist curriculum but they don't know how or don't have the

111resources to do so in an effort to ensure our teachers can effectively assess their lesson plans for racial bias and teach lessons rooted in anti-racism the department of instruction developed the anti-racist vetting tool we also adopted a culturally responsive and anti-racist curriculum assessment tool we've started curriculum assessment and resource reviews for english language arts and social studies the report outlines the different ongoing efforts but i just want to quickly highlight two points as it pertains to english language arts a number of secondary teachers media specialists and instructional coaches participated recently in an eight-week discussion group called letting go of literary whiteness in order to build specific practices for implementing anti-racist literature instruction as for social studies through the work of reframing the narrative we continue to engage in ongoing professional development related to developing anti-racist

112cultural responsive history curriculum and curricular design experiences for teachers 25 teachers attended the facing history in ourselves workshop race and membership the eugenics movement and 70 teachers came together from across the state to study teaching tolerance hard history and social justice framework and as you know thanks to your approval we recently purchased copies of stant racism anti-racism nu for every 11th grade student next slide next two slides are about key projects from the training subcommittee as we explain in the report building the racial consciousness and ability to address acts of racism of individuals and the division as a whole takes time in an effort to build a basic foundation about race we've implemented a division-wide book study and the train the trainer model based on glenn singleton's courageous conversations about race a field guide for

113achieving equity in schools so the same way that you all have been engaging in school board pd sessions around this book all of our school administrators and department leaders have been tasked with facilitating the book study and training their staff we are offering ongoing support for division leaders as they implement the protocols including a facilitator's guide as for the anti-racism policy orientation it's important for the public to know that this orientation was not created as a result of recent events this orientation has been in the works for months the orientation includes a review of the policies purpose guiding principles definitions and videos to support understanding of key concepts to ensure accessibility the orientation includes a voice over and will be translated all staff are required to complete the orientation to this end we understand that

114this orientation is not the end-all be-all we will continue to provide ongoing professional development to all of our divisional staff around race and anti-racism next slide one of policy enforcement's deliverables includes producing this report because this is our first full year of implementation the report takes more of a qualitative approach but as highlighted we've already started identifying key metrics for the various projects and we've developed an evaluation plan that can be found in the appendix next year's report will include more metrics and a review of our progression on their respective logic models and in the spirit of transparency we thought it was important to share some of our lessons learned from this past year first strengthening the committee and divisions proficiency regarding race so this past spring many of our administrators and departmental leaders reached

115out to us and we thought rather than be reactive we wanted to build on the internal proficiency of our division which included moving beyond using coded language and using explicit terminology about race as well as engaging in interracial dialogues that centered race as it pertains to expanding the internal capacity as dr harrison mentioned we were really intentional about expanding our committee this summer and part of it was we realized that many of the people on the committee were the same people involved in other division-wide efforts but even more detrimental to the work our committee did not fully represent the division as dr harrison mentioned in addition to adding more people of color we added more principles and members from our support teams including departmental leaders from building services transportation counseling services and in january a

116librarian and teacher will be joining us as for student voice in addition to seat we thought it was important to have two student interns sit on the actual steering committee and we are in the process of backfilling these positions as the two student interns from last year has since graduated but they are still involved with c also we intend to develop a recruitment plan to include middle school students next slide and so again we know that we have a long way to go and as we've said in the report and you know the reality is even when the social hashtags are no longer in use or the media has move on to the next hot topic we know that now more than ever we must persist we must continue to do this work we must

117all show up and we cannot afford to lose momentum and so quickly some of the key next steps that i would like to highlight this evening include our public awareness campaign c and the policy communications subcommittee will co-create a social media public awareness campaign that educates the public on the types of racism that exists and the ways that one can become anti-racist the public awareness campaign will kick off in february of 2021 in honor of the two-year anniversary of the school board's approval of the acps anti-racism policy as it pertains to anti-racism curriculum we will continue to make progress in refining our english language arts and social studies curricula while developing our plans to begin assessing other curricula including science and math as for the teacher appraisal performance the human resources department is taking the

118lead on this effort of updating the tpa we will have members of the anti-racism committee join the tpa working group and the ultimate goal is to embed culturally responsive teaching into the appraisal process and use an anti-racist lens to delete edit and add new look fors while ensuring that we're in alignment with acps other priorities and so before we open it up for questions i would like to formally just take a moment to thank our steering committee i know many of them are tuning in this evening as well as our student equity advisory team for their flexibility for their leadership for their persistency around this work and i know that dr harrison and dr haas share the sentiment and we look forward to continuing to build alongside them and you our school board in hopes

119of one day becoming an anti-racist school district thank you at this time i will entertain any questions or comments that you all may have i have a question about you excuse me your community forum and uh just curious to see what kind of engagement you did get for that are you referring to the student equity advisory town hall that they put yes right exactly sorry no it's okay no worries there were um roughly over 70 people that showed up and i have to tell you it was a saturday morning so that was very impressive and it was completely led and facilitated by the young people they started off with just a general overall presentation explaining what is anti-racism the different types of racism and then spent more time specifically on structural racism and then the

120students themselves were actually the moderators for the presentation um and then afterwards it was an opportunity for q a where the students got to ask the government and health care professionals just more questions related to what are the trends what are the next steps what's the impact what's going on specifically in charlottesville i hope that answers your question thank you other questions from the board i would just like to ask uh because i sat in on the seat meeting last spring and i thought it was absolutely terrific and uh it and and i thought the three speakers uh from the community uh were were outstanding um have there been other i mean i know you're talking about and their involvement moving forward have they been involved with the with the team and uh in the

121meantime in the last four or five months so um the seat took a break over the summer um and we allowed them some time to readjust to schedules and so they picked up their meetings this fall since then they continue to meet regularly and they're already just kind of at this point they're working towards their plans for the spring so that's really been their attention um and where they've been focusing their attention this fall has been on the plans for the spring and so that includes for the public awareness campaign but also one thing that came up over the summer was back in june they had some ideas about how they can support their peers in uh making reporting acts of racism and how to use social media or rather our anonymous our anonymous alert

122app and so that is one thing that they will be working on with dr king is thinking about how to create some tutorials so that's really where um some of their work was been has been from june and and where they are now terrific thank you very much are there other questions yeah just just to follow up on that um about the anonymous alerts app what would you say the status is now of usage of that i would have to um check in with with dr king um just to see what has been reported this fall but um one thing that we learned from the young people was just that you know not everyone knows how to use the app the one thing i would just caution us is that um you know the app

123even then when you report it there are different um layers right in terms of like the detail the level of detail and so we wouldn't necessarily want to solely rely on this app to report acts of racism and to follow up but one thing that the students did talk about was um it's one thing when they're learning about this from their peers and so how did they make the app more accessible for their counterparts and i also just wanted to thank you for your work on all this the whole team has it's i really appreciate the thoughtfulness and work gone into it thank you so much we have uh arranged for dr king to provide a training session with the students on the app so that they can assist with also sharing with their peers

124how to use the app to its maximum capacity thank you i have a question on the um exit interviews that you're using uh how how is that information being used now who has access to it and how is it used to sort of benefit us yeah absolutely i really appreciate your question so the group that has access to that is the human resources equity team um and more broadly the human resources department um and and how they're using that information right now i would tell you is even in thinking about um recruitment and in interviews how are we um really being intentional about the questions that we're asking who we're recruiting um and then also just starting to think about next step related to practices and policies um and thinking about just more how their

125own biases may be impacting on the screening process and so there are there are a lot of conversations right now about what are the next steps in that regard and in particular doing some more um you know qualitative assessments with current educators of color so that we can better understand what are some of the barriers and i kind of alluded to this a little bit but even in the exit survey thinking about how we are re-working some of that language to allow for more feedback so just an example would be what more could we do to better affirm your race and ethnicity in our in our schools right um those types of questions that would allow for more feedback but um you know i i would also just put this out there uh chair page

126that one thing we have talked a lot about very candidly is being cognizant that for educators of color they often feel the pressure um and sometimes even the fear of that there may be retaliation if they are too honest right and or that they may be boxed out out of opportunities to advance and you know that's not on them right it's not on them to have to feel like they need to speak out it's on us as as an organization and so we're really spending more time thinking about what does that look like for every step of the way right what does it look like when we're onboarding them what does it look like um once they are in the buildings and and how can we better support them um not just to come to

127to work at acps but to retain them over time thank you very much thanks are there other questions well thank you dr harrison and miss fernandez for your excellent report and uh what i see that the next update is what september was that right may okay right so we'll have an opportunity to share um progress from this fall in the spring and then a look ahead of our summer plans sounds good thank you so much thank you both again thank you dr harrison miss fernando okay next item um our state of the division report led by dr haas thank you thank you mr page uh good evening again members of the school board and chair page and vice chair carlson um i i too want to thank dr harrison and ms fernandez for that outstanding

128uh report um it was not only quite informative and authentic with the work that's taken place but also it was a really a pleasure to read it was so well done um it's my pleasure uh to share with the board tonight for information uh with you uh via the copy attached to your agenda item the 2020 acps state of the division report this report is shared with you in light of school board policy af our commitment to accomplishment to share data relative to our strategic plan horizon 2020 i hope you will take time to read it especially the information provided regarding our schools and departments strategic improvement plans we've titled the state of the division 2020 report a time like unlike any other for good reason when the 2019-20 school year dawned on august 21st

1292019 it opened the window on what was widely anticipated to be an exciting and influential year for the divisions more than 14 000 students and their families our many community partners and nearly 3 000 employees then march 13 2020 happened in a matter of days schools across the commonwealth closed and while the education process didn't stop school divisions were compelled to readjust their operations to fit within strict public health and safety boundaries while we have not found perfect solutions for our current challenges our employees have been truly inspiring in their efforts i see them doing the best they can to tackle online learning and virus mitigation with a level of bravery and enthusiasm that is truly reassuring there's a lot going right thanks to our teachers and support staff i'm deeply grateful for and proud

130of all of our employees for accepting the great challenges before us and taking actions to surmount them in the face of diversity they are working to make our facilities and buses safer and to provide high quality teaching and learning our employees are amazing and courageous share my screen oops press the wrong button present not sure thank you sorry about that all right the state of the division report for albemarle county public schools has seen many iterations over the past decade or so since its inception in 2010. especially during the past two years we have tried very hard to not simply gloss over or shine the spotlight away from the areas we are striving to improve we have become more detailed with student demographic information and we are and we share the results we have the

131positives and the negatives so that our students staff families and our board can see where we are doing well and falling short and can provide feedback and pitch in to improve alma county public schools in order to produce this report it takes a team effort i want to thank pat mclaughlin jamie gelner chris gilman india han phil jeremiah jennifer butler lindsay snotty christina pitzenberger bernard harrison kelvin reed maya kumazawa daphne kaiser michelle kastner emily elliott jen sublet kevin cursed rosalind schmidt nick king anita collier and jim foley i suggest that over the next week or so or two weeks that as you review the report that you keep a copy of our vision mission and values close at hand and use it as a rubric to assess whether we are keeping up to these commitments

132are we striving to establish a community of learners and learning through relationships relevance and rigor one student at a time do we act to support all learners in believing in their power to embrace learning to excel and to own their future is it apparent that we value our community young people and excellence and give our school community its due respect are we working hard to provide staff and resources and professional development to produce high quality teaching and learning for all are we taking steps to end the predictive value of race class gender and special capacities on student success by working together with families and communities to ensure each individual student's success when i read the report i'm proud of some of the results we are getting and not so proud of others however i am

133very proud of all of our students employees and families for the work they are doing to keep us moving in the right direction and sometimes just stopping us from continuing in the wrong direction with efforts i see and hear about every day i know we are getting better and the data will show it all across the board one day as well and how are we doing when it comes to our students graduation are we advancing in our efforts to support all of albemarle county public schools students graduates graduating to having actively mastered the lifelong learning skills they need to succeed as 21st century learners workers and citizens i note that soon this student goal and the associated strategies will sunset they have served as guideposts for our school system for a little more than seven

134years now and it is time to become more current with an improvement plan with a greater focus on responsibility for specified plans and actions to see the changes that we desire beginning in 2021 our school board will have your own strategic plan that is vetted and approved by you and i look forward to that now at least for my part i do think these strategic priorities i think of them as our board's priorities as you have examined and revised them as you have seen fit and frankly these priorities have been very powerful in guiding our work recently when i read the state of the division report i see these priorities as truly reflected as important they are your flag and your colors and they show in our work the question is are we striving to

135create a culture of high expectations for all are we identifying and removing practices that perpetuate the achievement gap are we working to maximize opportunities for students at all levels to identify and develop personal interests i know that it is important to focus on the what the numbers and the outcomes it is also important to focus on the how in terms of the plans strategies and actions we are actually taking to provide a quality education system for our students families and communities that's why i really think it's important when you review the report to go to the last section and look closely at the school improvement plans and also the departmental improvement plans because it really gets into the details of how we are doing what we are doing and why we are doing it turning

136our priorities into questions helps us to do that and when the questions are not answered to your satisfaction a new question stem helps how might we how might we create a culture of high expectations for all i recently asked dr mclaughlin to add a section to the report at the beginning to include overall information about our division i understand that when we strive for continuous improvement it is often hard to say that what we are doing and the results that we are getting are good enough i do want to say to our board and community of educators and learners however that your day-to-day hard work is not taken for granted all of you our staff students and community and families run an enviable organization in terms of quality and you do it on a tax

137rate for albemarle that is an effective tax rate of about 65 cents sometimes when things are going very well run by our teachers support staff administrators students and families it is easy to take all of it for granted acps is a very large and efficient organization that provides super high quality services to our customers employees and community i mean we even offer flu shots and shingles vaccinations for our employees for as part of their plan we serve 8 000 meals to students daily everything our educators support staff and administrators do is extremely well organized and safe during normal times quote unquote normal times in the neighborhood of seventeen thousand people ranging in age from three to approximately 70 years old and speaking close to 100 languages at home occupy more than 30 building sites and

13814 384 miles driven on our roads and it all goes extremely well in fact it's so unusual when it doesn't we hear about it pretty loud and clear we are able to hire and retain highly qualified experienced and talented teachers and provide excellent professional development and our building services staff are amazing at maintaining and improving our facilities some of them approaching a century old our organization works extremely well and we rank highly in virginia on many measures when we survey our community annually responding families mostly tell us they are satisfied i know we still need to hear from families we often do not hear from and continue to do better we run a safe organized and beneficial community organization and as the person responsible for it submit in gratitude to all of our amazing teachers

139support staff and administrators thank you i'm proud to be part of alma county public schools and yet i have work to do and we all have work to do to keep getting better we need to keep rising up recently i have been reading a wonderful leadership book by author and lecturer on business and social work leadership the author's name is brene brown and the title of the book is dare to lead brown's three steps toward rising up and rising strong really resonate with me so i felt like i would share them this evening all throughout the state of the division report we find opportunities to rise to improve and it is clear to be open in accepting the facts and truth about our performance when we do this we are reckoning when we own the

140facts and own our true story we are able to talk with our other stakeholders about it honestly we are rumbling and when we make improvements and follow through to write an improved story we are in revolution i want to offer an example last year let's see if i can move this last year i shared three strategic goals with the board in october that resulted from data points in the 2019 state of the division report this was a reckoning for me and i shared it with the school board and the alba county schools leadership team rumbling ensued as we worked with principals instructional staff lead and instructional coaches and teachers to put strategies in place to accomplish the goals towards seeing a revolution and you may remember these goals um later on if you want to

141click up here on the date um the full report is is there was in response to the uh it was an update on the state of the division report and also the equity report that we looked at last year what the first one was to reduce suspension of black students the second was to increase by two percent or more representation of black hispanic economically disadvantaged and students with disabilities among passing students on the third grade reading sol at the end of this this coming at the end of this school year increased by one percent or more the representation of the same groups of students in um students taking high school math in middle school during the 2021-22 school year all of the actions uh with regard to this particular goal were taken um i i

142used this goal and actions and outcomes and reflections as part of my case study for my culturally responsive teaching micro credential we just about achieved the goal the goal was to reduce it to 20 percent and we landed on 21 and we in comparing the number of suspensions when you look at the table in the um in the state of the division report that's one way we look at it we're comparing from um on another table when you compare from march to march we we are we were on track to have reduced overall suspensions for all students that year we just about achieved the goal i found too that in my research for my micro credential that secondary principles shifted their thinking and actions as part of this process in fact um i was talking

143with dr king about it the other day and he said in going through the protocol that we developed with a principal that had called about suspending a student the principal finished the conversation and said you know i just realized i do not need and i don't need to suspend this student and that was the goal was to to rethink that process now we realize we need to go deeper however into elementary school and into our classrooms across the county so the next thing we're looking at is developing uh we a school-level dashboard we do have one now that's uh that has real-time suspension data but we also want to have office referral data so that we can see where the referrals are coming from and support uh teachers to make improvements dr king also overhauled

144our student manual and that's part of the anti-racist project report that you read tonight so all these things dovetail i also want to say that all of the actions that were uh outlined here for this goal were also taken the real hitch though is that uh we do not have uh sol results from this past spring to see how we were doing in making our way and um having said that we will have uh standards of learning assessment results this spring so that we can see where students are and that that will be very important as we think about recovering and remediation coming from the kovid 19 closures one note on the division level plc for third grade reading i know now that all across the division at every grade level and across subject areas

145there are division level professional learning community meetings taking place often they are taking place on the friday asynchronous day and that's a big step forward and it's facilitated by using zoom for these meetings because the teachers do not need to travel to do that and will be continuing that practice moving forward to facilitate their meetings on this third goal um we do have uh all the middle schools have launched programs uh for their current students um i would say they're not as robust as as they could have been in an in-person environment if without the kova 19 closures that took place um the the middle school principals meet as a group to discuss this increasing these numbers of students our goal will be to have a more unified approach among the principals when we talk

146about attending a summer math program each each school does their their program and one hitch in this process is that students rising up from elementary school from fifth grade and going into sixth grade in the middle school often there's not enough a large enough number of students at the elementary school level for a particular elementary school so one of the solutions to that is to have the middle school own that program in the summer for their for their own rising sixth graders and that was uncovered through um [Music] discussing the the procedures that that the different schools use so it's been very productive conversation there's a lot of rumbling take place around taking place around this and i i think that we're going to be in good shape moving forward with it it's it's one

147of those things where sometimes you don't know what you don't know until you set the goal and start asking questions about what's what's currently taking place so board members and central office staff i ask that we all read through this report and with the rubric of our mission vision values goals and priorities in mind i'm i'm understanding now that we have enough board members to have a work session on the december 17th meeting right after the legislator meeting and so we can do a similar work session to the one we did last year where board members had had time to read through the state of the division report prior to the work session and came ready to really rumble and discuss the results that are in it and revisit board priorities and also provide guidance

148to to us to your staff on budget development as we as we make our way moving forward i think that that was a very robust budget development process last year it really is too bad that um the original funding request went out with the advent of covid19 um and speaking of which in reading about recovery and remediation of student learning and social emotional well-being in the rising and i hope sometime soon to be the waning tide of covet 19 a few key points come to mind at a very high level we will need to plan on how and when to make up or when to make a summative assessment of our students learning from kindergarten through 11th grade to make plans for regaining lost ground the strategies for recovery and remediation fall into three broad

149categories as outlined on this slide right now probably the most pressing from a student employee and family standpoint is to think about time as you know there are several aspects of school time including the starting date for school summer programming the length of the school year and how it is broken up or extended and even class time for concentration on time on task i'm i'm currently going to focus on a start date for the 2021 22 school year and begin a round of community conversations about it to see what our educators families and community think next week i will be hosting teachers and building level administrators in a conversation on november 18th to facilitate input on a draft start date and other aspects of the calendar so that we have enough to make a draft

150uh one of the things that i am going to do as well is take uh take a fair amount of time in talking with uh the teachers that are assembled as well as uh their their principles that that come to the meeting and share with them our equity table while we at the school board level and also at the central office level and i think perhaps at the building administrator level have become pretty well versed on looking at the equity table and understanding uh what it means in terms of our equity mission i do not think we've done a good job at all of sharing out with teachers that equity table and one of the goals that i have moving forward in this year is to push down and have an equity table for each

151level of school so that we can increase the excitement and the the passion around closing those equity gaps that we have as a school system by doing it one school at a time as part of this board item i have attached the united nations educational scientific and cultural organization unesco report of covet 19 response remediation helping students catch up on lost learning with a focus on closing equity gaps ultimately once we have grappled with and defined the problems resulting from and exacerbating exacerbated by kova 19 we will need several teams to develop plans for 2021-22 rising strong from covet 19 will be a challenge however it will also be an amazing opportunity to apply a lot of what we're learning during this time a lot of the silver linings to improve our system to better

152support our students educators and families our first goal in this process would be to have multiple opportunities for input from our school community as i said earlier i am proud of alma county public schools and i'm proud to share this report with our school board and community uh we will be sending the report out to all of our families and employees via an email and blackboard connect next week we'll also be doing the same thing with our anti uh racism report so that all can read it um i will certain i am certain that you will find this report useful hopeful and true and that this annual report through our transparency will lead to priorities allocation of resources and actions that will help us get better and have improved opportunities and results for our students

153so the next step will be to unpack the report and um have a have a rumble at a work session on the december 17th like we did last year i do have all the cabinet members here um i think still and so if you have any questions that are right off the top of your mind or if there's a additional data that you would like to see you could ask now but also please feel free to email email me or email dr mclaughlin over the next several days and month for more information you would like to have thank you dr haas are there any questions or comments on our state of the division from dr haas i certainly haven't studied it to the depth that i need to but i thought it was very well

154put together and i also took a look at the mckenzie unesco report and that is very well laid out so i highly recommend that the most distressing thing that we've already talked about is how this year will exacerbate the achievement gaps and perhaps push more kids into the under achieving category so we have we we will have work to do but anyway we will discuss are there any other comments matt i just want to say that i think this is a terrific uh um report and uh i've gone through it you know from from front to back i like kate haven't uh studied it uh in in the kind of detail that i want to but i think for the meeting on december 17th that is is going to be one where i think we

155can have a lot of frank conversations and uh and and i'll be sending in some emails uh with with uh points with with additional questions and for your interpretations of some of the data points that uh that i'm seeing in the report so thank you very much to you and your entire team for all the hard work that went into this thank you yeah dr haas thank you for always calling our attention to um things that may not be easy for us to accept or to realize that's there to call it for calling our attention to problems that exist within our system because those problems really need to be tackled so i really appreciate the fact that you always call our attention to to those facts and those details that we need to be aware

156so thank you so much thank you okay our next item uh the bsb uh vsba policies and regulations from our delegate uh vice chair mrs cost everyone i know it's late so don't worry this is going to be under 25 minutes when i timed it it came in at 23 minutes so we should be good um uh in short just to uh keep new board members up to date on what we're doing the vsba puts together a packet of legislative proposals which are basically things that they go and lobby the legislature for the state legislature the proposals are submitted by various counties and localities and then they put together a list it's very brief this year um i welcome you to look over it if you have anything you want me to say when we

157vote on these i'm happy to do so um nothing seemed particularly contentious there was only one proposal that had one dissenting vote so they're all vetted they're all vetted before they come to us to look at there's only one dissenting vote in the whole packet and that was about having behavioral interventionist as a standard of quality position which would open up some funding sources for getting basically more mental health counselors and helpers into our schools um if i'm assuming we won't have any issue with this so then when i go to the vspa delegate assembly meeting which is occurring on monday i will just vote yes and then they will the vsba will use its lobbying arm to push these proposals and hopefully get some of them passed it usually is a long process that

158takes a little bit of time it usually kind of you propose something and then you propose the next year and eventually maybe something happens so yeah if we're all in agreement then that's all i need is the support of the board to vote yes for the vsba to lobby for these proposals yeah i will i will say real quick just one thing that and dave you did this last year right one thing that kind of shocked me the first go around was just that the positions don't all necessarily align exactly with what we want to do as a school board because mainly the vsba is just advocating for local autonomy so it's really just about the ability for school boards to make their own decisions so how do you guys feel about it you know

159i just have a question about one of them but maybe you and i can talk off off of outside of the meeting it's on number three with the affordability of dual enrollment and i think that we've got a lot of that covered and so this may be uh involving other other divisions more so than us that's interesting and i was curious about that one as well i'm certainly not an expert on these proposals i read through them um i'm i'm i was curious just because i thought dual enrollment was free for our students but i guess that's us covering the cost and i guess there is some kind of floor that they put on on what you you have to charge a minimum amount i guess we just covered that as a division i wasn't

160sure but i didn't figure it would affect us one way or another because it's just saying it should be as you should be able to decide you should have the autonomy as a local school division to decide how much you want to charge for dueling i agree thank you and and i vote yes katrina i didn't see it on there maybe i didn't read carefully what is the status of the hold harmless for enrollment in terms of school reimbursements i do not know i don't know if helen's on i would not be i didn't read it in there in my packet so i don't know when i saw um sally hudson at something a couple weeks ago she said it was in the governor's budget he just needed to sign it that would be a

161good thing would be i was kind of surprised how sparse this packet was i don't know why that is maybe people are busy putting out fires where they are um but there were i remember last year or two years ago it was a much more robust package of things we were going to be trying to propose maybe we realize there's not a lot of wiggle room in state government right now any other comments from miss carlson okay thank you you really held that under 25 minutes so it's well done it wasn't funny anybody does have any comments you can maybe contact ms carlson before that session but she really did do a good job in holding that down it's all about setting the bar and then you know making it easy to hit your goals

162right all right so we uh we are now ready for other business by board members or superintendent um i've got one thing um and and i i had intended to do it a little bit earlier in in the session um but i'd like to take a couple of minutes to to address an issue that's been an important this in my opinion an important potential solution to something we were all interested in when we were developing the student representative to the school board program and that's getting candid feedback from students initially in high schools and eventually getting it into middle schools and you know potentially you know on from there i early in the summer i i met not in person but i met a young woman who is a junior at albemarle high school her

163name is ella vasil and she started a club this school year uh she'd been uh uh talking to me about it uh and and hadn't gotten all the bylaws done and didn't and and was going into a school fair to try and get members to work with her on it and she's got 10 or 12 and so this is a real team and it's really now beautifully set up it's called albemarle's student voice and it um revolves around issues from county and school board division policies and how it affects students in their day-to-day experiences albemarle student voice uses instagram to poll local students about these policies and give students a voice to provide feedback and insights to both the the board of supervisors and the school board while all moral student voice is only active

164at ahs albemarle high school right now ella hopes to represent student voices at monticello and western albemarle before the end of the year uh it's her goal that albemarle student voice will be a reference a big partner resource for both students and our community leaders to better understand each other's strategies and positions and to create a more open community uh she's a very impressive young woman and uh you know this is this is along the lines of what we were looking at in terms of getting more feedback i know that milani has been working melania has been milani has been working with dr mclaughlin on some surveys and some other means to solicit [Music] information from students and a asv has currently pulled students online about the online school year and is looking to share

165their findings with us and with board of supervisors uh they're they're just in the uh process of compiling those data uh and getting it into a form that they could send to us present to us you know however that would work they would also and this is the the part where i think we we could actually help them is they would welcome receiving any suggestions from the board that we would like to ask students about you know in their surveys so the bottom line is and and i'm keeping mine under 25 minutes too but i sure didn't want to give a short shrift on this i applaud her and her team and look forward to hearing further from them so if you get an email uh or emails or you know some sort of communication

166from all the moral student voice um please open it and and check it out and uh she's one of these people who would really welcome a lot of feedback a lot of critiquing and uh and a lot of the wisdom that i think we could share with her so that's all i had thank you very much and you two held yourself under the 25 minute i you know it was a struggle okay but i was also thinking that maybe mr trout and mr whit might be able to contact ellar at i was gonna say that i was thinking the exact same thing uh i know that uh we've had a lot of at least a manchelot i know we've had a lot of um sort of the same kind of social media based uh uh

167student-run organizations and i think that especially with me being at monticello and with elijah being a westerner i think that can definitely um create for some for some opportunities across across all three high schools you know i i will uh email you gentlemen her contact information awesome i'll get that from her and uh and send it out to you thank you sounds good thank you awesome melania would be good to probably still be in on this too so yeah i actually had spoken to her about this in the earlier in the fall and so i i'm not sure if the two of them have spoken uh but i think they were going to try and get in touch with each other i think they i think they've actually met before okay thank you all right

168is there any other business from the superintendent or from our board members thank you mr page i just want to thank every all of our staff for for uh coming tonight and uh participating in the meeting and uh it's been a real pleasure to see elijah uh tonight and also will and i just love what i just heard uh for for whatever it's worth i just love um what jono talked about or mr alcaro talked about as well as uh the students i would love to hear more about this project so thank you yes thanks all right so again thanks as uh dr haas has said to all of our staff to our two student representatives and to all of our people who are listening so if there are is no no other items for

169our consideration our meeting is adjourned thank you thank you everybody