Albemarle County School Board Meeting - 8/13/2020

001now 6 30 and i called to order this session of the albemarle county school board mrs carlson do you have a motion i do chair i i move that the board certified by recorded vote that to the best of each board member's knowledge only public business matters lawfully exempted from the open meeting requirements of the virginia freedom of information act and identified in the motion authorizing the closed meeting where heard discussed are considered in the closed meeting second okay it has been moved in second uh that we vote saying that the only thing that was discussed during the public session i mean during the closed session was what the um order had called for mrs johnson could you give us a rule call miss lee yes ms osborne yes ms carlson yes dr acuff yes

002mr o'carro yes mr oberg yes mr page yes all right so the motion varies we will now have a moment of silence so okay and we have this statement that should be read into the minutes the minutes of this meeting should reflect that one this meeting is being held electronically cursing under virginia state law and albemarle county ordinance because the covet 19 pandemic makes it impracticable and unsafe to assemble a quorum physically in a single location and two the meeting is being communicated to the public electronically through zoom and stream live live stream lines 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 protocol or by written submission all right with that said uh could we have

003a motion to approve the agenda for tonight's meeting i move that we approve the agenda second okay move uh mr alcaro second by ms lee that we approve the agenda uh miss johnston ms osborne yes miss carlson we lost miss carlson oh excuse me dr eekoff mr alcaro yes mr oberg yes miss lee yes mr page yes all right moving along the approval of the consent agenda i move that we approve the consent agenda is there a second all right moved by mr alcaro second by doctor akaf that we approve the consent agenda um did you want to pull something before we yeah i don't know if it's that came during discussion or what but i'd like to call item 3.5 for discussion okay all right any other items to be um pulled for discussion

004from consent okay all right so we'll have that discussion now so okay ms lee um yeah i i had a question about policy jfca it's the long-term teacher removal of students from class and i notice that the changes remove the possibility of either the teacher or the parents appealing the decision to the school board and makes the superintendent and designee decision final and i just wanted to hear the reasoning behind that change before we vote on that i suggest holding that out for approval and i asked that um i could consult with uh ross and with our staff on the source of those changes so that we could answer that question so i suggest since it's not urgent but thank you for pulling that and we will either be able to respond to it later

005on in the meeting door during uh board superintendent business or we'll just research it and come back with it okay number was that jfc fca okay so i moved that we approved the consent magento with the exception of jfca second all right we've heard that motion any discussion all right miss johnston um miss dr acuff yes mr alcaro yes mr oberg yes miss lee yes ms osborne yes miss carlson yes mr page yes okay and we have not introduced the members of the board and sort of had our official mic check so the members of the board introduced alphabetically dr kate akov alphabetically kate aycoff jack jewett district thank you great all right mr giano el carro jono alcaro at large miss milani burkhardt i'm melanie burkhart student representative thank you melanie miss katrina carlson

006katrina carlson raya district miss judy lee judy lee rivanna district mr dave oberg dave oberg whitehall magisterial district and ms ellen osborne scottsville district okay and i'm graham page samuel miller district so with all of the preliminaries out of the way we are now ready to move into our main items for tonight all right first air public comment this is carlson we have two people signed up for public comment and i will start by reading the public comment guidelines i apologize i'm operating off of an older one that i have but it's all i can pull up on this computer so the school board invites and actively seeks the public's input in the matters relevant to school board governance and provides for time during its business meetings to hear from albemarle county residents and community

007members during public comment we expect respectful and on-topic comments as authorized by ordinance of the county of albemarle the school board will hold its meetings electronically during coven 19 the kova 19 endemic the school board is nevertheless committed to encouraging public comment despite its need to meet on a virtual basis for this reason there will be two ways for the public to provide comment first as always written comments may be submitted to the school board clerk prior to the start of the meeting and they'll be disseminated to all of the school board members for review and as long as the school board holds its meetings electronically members of the public wishing to provide public comment during the school board meeting may also sign up online by 4 pm the day before the meeting the clerk

008will email zoom links to the speakers on the day the meeting so that they can log into the meeting to provide comment before electronic public comments commences this is long sorry guys the vice chair will announce order which is speakers will comment i'll do that after this um you'll be able to hear the meeting in progress and we'll announce when it's your turn speakers during the meeting or those submitting written comments should state their name address or their magisterial district simply stating albemarle county is not adequate further speakers should limit their comments to those matters that are relevant to school board governance and although the school board will not respond to comments made during the public comment period school board members may address comments at the end of the meeting agenda under other business with

009that let me switch screens uh our first speaker will be william hughes he is going to be followed by sean johnson uh thank you members of the board my name is william hughes i am a resident in the whitehall district i'm also an english teacher at western albemarle high school where i'm part of the student safety committee i'm also a parent of three rising ninth graders at western i'm here today to ask you to make student screenings mandatory at all of our schools in a recent meeting the head of my safety committee learned that we are planning to do daily employee health screenings but not student screenings apparently it's because the cdc says that we don't have to i have four reasons why i would like you to reconsider this plan first the cdc's guidance

010the cdc proposed guidelines in april that told schools to quote implement screenings safely respectfully as well as in accordance with any applicable privacy laws or regulations in may however under white house pressure looser standards were issued standards that warn against quote the consequences of excluding students from essential educational and developmental experiences now i admit that that is a crucial concern however my point is this that concern doesn't really apply to acps at the moment because we are developing a robust online curriculum that at present is actually going to be the typical experience for 95 of our student body thus there's really no risk of exclusion my second point addresses the cdc's argument that screenings are not 100 effective again in part i agree however under the circumstances i would argue that even catching one person

011who would have spread the disease decreases everyone's overall risk my third reason is that screening staff but not screening students is just a logical inconsistency if we're screening employees then why not screen students the concerns for one population are not really that different than the other and then my final reason is my most important we are in the business of teaching and screening students creates a teachable moment not only teaches our students what symptoms to look out for it also reminds our families to do their own self-screening at home more diligently before sending their child to school above all it is a statement to our whole educational community that acps takes safety and mitigation seriously screenings will help to decrease anxiety among students and staff because they will signal that we're doing everything that we

012can to mitigate the dangers that we're facing as we go into our buildings they tell everyone on a daily basis how much we care for everyone's health that is a good lesson to teach and that's why i'm asking you to demand student screenings as part of our mitigation strategy thank you thank you mr hughes our next speaker that has signed up is mr sean johnson but i don't believe he has joined into the meeting and so with that i think our public comment period concludes okay thank you very much mrs carlson and also thanks to mr hughes for the public comment we are now ready for our spotlight on education and mr alcaro i think you are in charge of this thank you mr chair one of the most discouraging noises around my house and

013maybe this happens around your houses too is when it's quiet except for the sound of a slow water drip the only noise that tops out is the answer on the other end of the phone when i'm trying to find a plumber who can come out to the house anytime in the next week as bad as that seems imagine what it must be like when you're responsible for faucets and a great many other devices not in a home but across two point million 2.3 million square feet of schools let me give you some insight something like this happened at sutherland middle school a few years ago and as is often the case it occurred late at night some members of the current board may remember when this happened our maintenance team was notified by the fire

014department and within an hour 14 of our professionals were on site confronting four classrooms filled with water that flowed into the hallways this crew worked through the night and by 7 am they had repaired the leak cleaned and dried out the classrooms and furniture removed the water from the hall and had the school ready for learning not one minute of class time was lost while this response certainly was not routine the support service and seriousness of person of purpose certainly was our assistant director of operations jeff rahm leads an outstanding group of maintenance employees and custodial staff every day uh and uh that they care for those 2.3 million square feet of space that more than 600 acres of land and 880 classrooms they repair boilers keep the air conditioning and heating on troubleshoot plumbing

015electrical and mechanical problems mow a heck of a lot of grass monitor water treatment septic and sewer systems and assist contractors who are on site the average years of service among our custodial staff is more than 10 years while the average service of a maintenance trades foreman is 13 years for anyone tuning in to the evening news on cbs 19th cbs cbs19 on july 31st they saw a pretty familiar face in an unfamiliar place it was our superintendent dr haas manning one of the lawn mowers on western albemarle's athletic field i'm sorry that i missed that that had to be a sight to behold asked by the reporter how dr haas was doing negotiating all the intricate twists and turns foreman carl carl roach said we could use another hand i guess we'd hire him

016that emphasis was mine as dr haas well knows having been a high school principal at one time few people are more important to our ability to provide a safe healthy clean and fully operational learning environment than the unsung heroes who serve all of us so proudly and so well literally around the clock and of course their responsibilities and impact only has become greater and more urgent in this era of covid19 in honor and recognition of this invaluable work i'd like to ask jeff rom to join us and to tell us a little bit more about this incredibly dedicated and talented team mr rahm it's a pleasure to have you with us welcome great thank you and uh thank you board and dr haas for uh allowing us to come on and speak a little bit

017about uh building services um but you know i want to go into what this department really does and just in short brief um and the recognition that they're giving building services it's not it's our dedicated employees to see that our buildings are ready for the return of students teachers and administration from summer break as well as the normal day throughout the school year our employees deserve this spotlight and we appreciate it yes we have many talented trades people but it is the dedication that our staff that is most impressive not only do they perform their respective duties throughout the year they are prepared to do the unexpected whenever their circumstances arise whether it be during the school day or in the middle of the night to see that the school day resumes as normal this

018could be weather related snow storms power outages or failure from one of the many pieces of operating equipment chillers boilers kitchen equipment etc our staff understands how important it is to keep the school day operating as normal it is those employees that made me understand how important it is when i began working for building services just over 12 years ago i like to mention a few of those employees excuse me lenny catastic 15 years of service john apperson 15 years jason watts 15 years norma pace 15 years ricky howard 17 years j.r breden 15 years david vaya 28 years and randall marshall 32 years and the list goes on our people do many tasks behind the scenes and most of them because of who they are prefer to keep it that way so we want

019to thank you the board and dr haas for spending the day with our general maintenance foreman wade roach carl russell napper custodial supervisor for western alamo high school we thank you so much thank you mr rum thank you thank you jeff thank you matt mr page back to you okay are there any questions um for mr rahm i guess i just had a question mr rum about the preparations for people coming back into our buildings in this pandemic and how that has clearly changed but in increased your workload i would imagine yes our workload has increased incredibly but of course it's quite different than last summer um last summer we would be doing much different type of work to prepare for students coming back so this year it's been quite different and we've been uh

020we are working now diligently with the principals and administration staffs to work with the number of students that will be coming back so we can set up those classrooms and be prepared for september 8th it's a big job thank you thank you okay are there other questions no but jeff i would just say thank you very much and thank you for sharing the work that you're doing you guys are kind of on the front lines and i appreciate it and if you were in person i would shake your hand although it's probably gonna be a long time before that's allowed it will be okay thank you so much mr rahm for coming to us today and i'm explaining everything about building services absolutely thank you thank you so much keep up the great work thank

021you thank you all right now next item um announcements so mr page i uh have some staff that have a couple of announcements so i think uh dr hairston would like to go first thank you dr haas i like going first so what i'd like to do is offer to the board and staff and any community members who are listening um just a pr push for our 2020 virtual equity conference that's upcoming on august 28th it will be held from nine o'clock until one o'clock if you've not registered you can find a link on our website under the division compass and for board members you can also get to the a link that's under the announcements of the meeting agenda the conference this year will feature 62 micro credential and certification educators who will share

022their journey of transforming into culturally responsive educators they'll take this opportunity to share how the culturally responsive teaching professional development training transferred into their classrooms and how they validated the impact of their growth as educators on their students this year the chosen theme for the conference is no stopping us now we've selected a theme song that's appropriate for the momentum and the positive energy for the support that we've gained for this crt model i'm just gonna just share just a little bit of that theme song with you all for about a minute or so okay it's not coming through but i can tell by your dancing burner so you can tell you was gonna actually share the music i know that was gonna be super cool i so so i'm sorry that the sound didn't

023come through and i will not try to sing it for you all because that will be a big joke but um so what what from that theme song our presenters will be sharing why they are on a move to close achievement gaps how they got in the groove to be better teachers and why there is no stopping them now you will see how they have polished up their acts as culturally responsive educators to successfully reach to teach all students so board members and staff members who are listening to this this conference will give you an opportunity for a first-hand experience as to why culturally responsive teaching is the best practice for closing achievement gaps in admiral county public schools so we hope to see you at the conference on august 28th thank you for listening

024dr harrison was it starship no no uh mcfadden and whiteheads ain't no stopping us right okay thank you dr harrison thank you so much dr harriston you're sober we have just one other announcement and that's from dr christine diggs thank you dr haas good evening i'd like to actually introduce lorenzo dickerson who has an announcement to share about our new website so good evening everyone i'm lorenzo dickerson web content social media specialist acps has now launched our new website um this has been a collaboration for about a year now between the communication department and the technology department and our steering committee has been working diligently to bring this to life for a while um we've based our our design and functionality on feedback from the community analytics as well as survey results the purpose for

025this new website is for people to be able to more easily find information to give us a more modern look as well as to be ada compliant we know that uh 6.8 million we've gotten 6.8 million unique visitors to our site over the last year and about 73 of those have been new visitors so we've heard the community uh we understand the importance of our site and and our site for our overall communication um so this is why we've created this new site and this site will be community focused thank you lorenzo thank you thank you mr dickerson appreciate it it's good to see you ask could i answer the question either christine or lorenzo um is it necessary to have the school board link subsumed under division because if people don't know where to

026look it's sort of hard to get there and we are independent just a thought it's actually a good point because i had a tough time finding it to get the agenda earlier yeah i think we should i think we should be a separate line above division we could definitely um work on that and bring that to to our steering committee um [Laughter] lorenzo 6.8 million uniques wow that's an incredible number wow yeah definitely yeah our website is a very important piece to our communication and like i said 70 73 of those visits were from uh first-time users of our site wow that's incredible that's incredible and i i love the look i haven't spent enough time you know going into the into all the details but i sure love the look of it it seems

027so much easier to use thank you for sure to you and to dr diggs thank you yeah thank you very much lorenzo and dr diggs any other uh comments related to our announcements okay if not moving right along to the school superintendent school board superintendent business we we do not have anything other than what's on the agenda all right mr page i have an update chairman page all right um i just wanted to update the board on the communications uh committee meeting that dr acuff and i had with staff after the last meeting to talk about um public comment during these covid meetings through some changes and procedure we'll be closing our public comment sign up at 2 p.m the day of the meeting instead of the day before and we hope that this allows

028for more members of the public to comment and we'll be assessing how well it works in the next gosh i'm going to say next couple months but honestly we don't know for the duration um yes um i wrote that and then i got sad right when i said it uh the other thing that we discussed uh were the town halls for reopening which obviously have already happened and you know with hopes that there can be more on uh either topic related or just general so that is our update kate if you have any additions no i think we were going to add some more text in in the link to making public comment to so people understood better how to do it it would be nice if that was on the front page of the

029school board all right you know on the it would be nice if you went to the acps website and there was a public comment and it would also be nice if there was a writer write a note to the school board so would that be right below my picture under graham's picture with his home phone number yes write a note to graham all right so i think those are great okay thank you very much for that update communications committee and we are really pleased with the work that you are doing so thanks so very very much um the town halls and also for the um possible changes in uh the um public comments so thank you so much for both things if there is no other school board or superintendent of business we are ready

030to move into the school division business our first item the covet 19 status update by dr patrick mclaughlin good evening board members i'm pat mclaughlin chief of strategic planning and with me tonight are chris gilman our coordinator of research and eileen gomez who leads our school nurse team as you recall our return to school plan outlined multiple factors that we'll use to determine when we move from one stage to another as we weather as we weathered the coveted crisis these include such factors as cdc and health department guidance the status of local and state ordinances related to the crisis and our ability to implement our instructional and health plans the board has asked for regular updates in regard to one of these factors the current covet 19 conditions in the region in particular are community

031transmission and testing positivity rates we're receiving regular updates on these statistics from the virginia department of health and plan to update the board tonight and at future meetings it's important to note that the statistics and trend data that we bring you tonight are one piece of the puzzle that can be used as we make determinations about moving forward or back with our return to school stages we're not setting targets that would dictate the board move to a different stage and recommend that the board continue to look at all the factors collectively as those decisions are made the data we provide tonight is directly from the vdh and we're continuing to determine if other metrics should be included to make the most informed decisions we receive data updates weekly and have a standing weekly update on

032the agenda to the superintendent's cabinet in addition to our standing board updates and at this time i'll turn things over to eileen gomez to take you through the latest statistics eileen i was having some technical difficulties thank you dr mclaughlin uh thank you board for coming to this meeting tonight and hear this talk about our case incidents data as patrick was saying the virginia department of health monitors pandemic data and provides a weekly update of metrics to gauge community transmission two of the data points used to measure local community transmission are burden which is defined as case incidents per 000 and the testing positivity rate which is defined as the percent of reported covet tests that yield positive results could there be them and the i'll show you in this first graph that came directly

033from the virginia department of health they broke this into zones they have a low zone a medium zone and a high zoom and the goal is of course to go down to zero but the interim goal is to get into the low zone the first measure here that we have is the albemarle county incident rate and this is as of the 11th of august you can see this number in orange on the left is the case incident rate per 100 000 which is 7.6 new cases per 100 000 people per day shown as a seven day floating average which is in the moderate zone on this chart as you can see on the far right is the directionality or trend of the way this has this data has been going over time and you can

034see that it's been fluctuating in the moderate zone but this number reflects a two-day downward directionality now here we have the albemarle county percent positivity that's the test data you can see the yellow is showing that we had 4.2 positivity and i just heard dr falci say that the reason that we even report this is because it's very predictive of later uh surges so luckily we're down below the uh the demarcation which you can hardly see in this graph but down below five at 4.2 percent that also is a seven-day floating average and it's we're down here the directionality actually has been up but just slightly up in the last three days but we're still below the um demarcation for putting us in the low zone there we also have the charlottesville data because of

035course the two charlottesville and elm are so intermingled that this will actually have some impact on us as well you can see for them the 12.5 12.5 cases per 100 000 puts them into this higher zone here but they have been on a downward directionality and actually probably even call this a trend over the last 16 days they've been heading down although they're still in the higher zone above 10. then for the city of charlottesville the percent positivity as of the 11th was 5.6 which as i said you can't really see it so well here but it's a little bit above the line that separates medium moderate from low but it's going in the right direction because the directionality has been downward for the last 12 days so we hope this is the the first

036of a series of data presentations we'll do and we'll have more specific uh numbers to match with actual dates as we go along collecting this data yeah thanks eileen and um and like eileen said we are uh this is the first of our reports to the board we plan on bringing an update to you at each of your meetings for the foreseeable future we're also getting weekly updates in our cabinet meetings and we would be happy to try to answer any questions or receive any comments that you have about the information we presented tonight i have a suggestion for since this is the first one for a future presentation could we get that uh information aligned with the graph that rosalind showed you know so instead of um eileen instead of a slide for each

037if i can you know the do you all remember the one i'm talking about where it was like czech green red i think would be helpful to have that condensed okay it would also be helpful if you could do it i don't know that you can but if you can uh to have the dates of those points i'd like to yeah i'd like to see where the peaks were yes we'll try to get that okay any other questions i'm also a little bit unclear is there elmoral county data in there does the charlottesville city does that include the alamo county data the first two slides were albemarle county david we had a positivity rate and uh incidence rate for them and then the second two were charlottesville city what we don't have is a um

038is a combined metric uh for them the health department uh separates those out individually okay thank you okay other comments i i have a question for eileen it's outside this data but one of our public commenters queried about routine screening of students and i guess i was wondering what your take on that is i mean i know that we have you know one nurse per school that would be an extraordinary i mean it would take an hour at least to get all the kids in but just wanting some of your thoughts on that well the logistics of that especially at the larger schools do seem kind of hard to to comprehend how that could happen uh the other reservation i have about that is asking children these screening questions might not yield us the same

039kind of effect as it would be asking adults you know with children i think you tend to have more maybe minimizers and maximizers and i think especially with the young children that could take quite a long time if we're asking them those questions um the temperature checks however can go really quickly so if we were to do a temperature screening i i think we could we could achieve that when we had everybody back in in person i just i i don't know about the logistics of getting all the students in through a screening process thank you okay thank you any other questions i guess oh i have one question in regards to that then um could we start with these smaller groups since we have fewer students in now that's what i was thinking we

040could do that as a pilot to see how that goes yes we've been working on a protocol for as people come into the school where they'll do a temperature check and also this is for the adults coming in but because we'll have small numbers of students we ought to be able to develop a protocol for temperature checks for children as well i think that was a really good suggestion that uh mr hughes made and that um to the extent that we can it certainly makes sense to attempt to uh screen and look for symptoms in children just like just like the adults so this starting out in stage two does give us a chance to tackle that on a smaller scale okay thank you uh dr mclaughlin and ms gomez for that excellent report moving

041on next division business superintendent's recommend recommendation regarding the renaming of sutherland that's all right thank you mr page at this time i'm going to turn things over to jasmine miss jasmine fernandez to provide background on my recommendation thank you miss fernandez everyone as dr haas mentioned my name is miss fernandez i currently serve as the project advisor but my role on the committee was serving as the committee leader this evening i will be talking about the process and the activities that the sutherland advisory committee engaged in and principal wood will be talking about the name recommendation and what went into that decision as a reminder in 2018 you all test dr haas in the school division with reviewing the names of all the schools in the division named after an individual so excluding melton view

042that just participated in the process and sutherland there are 12 other remaining schools that would need to undergo this process as you are very much aware you approved the name for mountain view in january twenty on third and the name one and two effective on july first i just want to take a moment to acknowledge that when the sutherland name is approved that name won't go into effect until july 1st of next summer and later on in the presentation i will explain further as to why that is a reminder of the purpose of this process in part it's to really allow an opportunity for the school communities to reflect on the history of the school name and this is also an opportunity as dr haas talks a lot about just in terms of reimagining what

043do we want our school community to look like in the future how are we ensuring that we are aligning our name to those goals to those aspirations and obviously ensuring that it's aligned with our division's values accessibility is a key component of this process we've talked a lot about the need to continue to amplify opportunities to be to gather input and so that includes whether through a community survey the community meetings ensuring that we have interpretation services recordings press releases and i just wanted to know with the new website our web page is currently in the process of transferring over and so that will be up and running if it's not already and on that web page we have all of the access to all of our survey results as well as our press releases

044and we will continue to update the web page as we continue to go with the other schools along along the way then we have the inclusion of all voices and as you know in the name in the naming policy it was really important that we included representation from school staff from parents um but also ensuring that we are uplifting student voice if you are high school you're required to have a student as part of the process i'm going to talk about this in a second but for sutherland we made an intentional choice to have an eighth grader serve on the advisory committee and we also had additional opportunities for student outreach and so that's a big part of this process and making sure that we are hearing from the community and that also includes community

045members who may not have children who attend that particular school but still would like to be a part of this process this is just a quick reminder of the different components of the procedure so we start off with the advisory committee notifying the relatives i just want to note that we have been in contact with um sutherland's great niece who reached out and then we've been in communication and then having meetings obviously coming to you all with the final recommendation which is where we are this evening for those who are tuning in our families and just the greater public just wanted to clarify that the reason why we chose to proceed with sutherland is because sutherland was the contemporary of paul kale and since they served during the certain time we thought that it would

046make sense to have sutherland participate next in this process so the sutherland advisory committee first i just want to take a second to acknowledge all of the work and thoughtfulness that went into this process our committee was incredibly energetic and even throughout covet they were very flexible with their time so i just wanted to take a moment to publicly acknowledge their hard work in terms of the makeup of our committee it included myself principal wood a teacher school counselor and a librarian we had two community members who don't have children who attend sutherland but have been very connected to the school and in the neighborhood and then we had parents three parents who have children who attend sutherland and then we also were intentional about having three parents who are who have children who currently

047attend those feeder schools and then students as i mentioned we had a eighth grader who joined our advisory committee unfortunately with coe he had to step down halfway through to prioritize his schoolwork but we were super excited that we were able to have him from the beginning i'm going to turn it over to principal wood who's going to talk just briefly about the student informational sessions thank you miss fernandez we were able before the school shut down with covid to host both an informational session and a feedback session by grade level so i was able to meet with two groups of students at different times uh the informational session we had about 60 students attend in total out of those 60 students we had about 30 return to provide feedback to the to the committee

048overwhelmingly the trend of feedback that we received from the students was to make the name as inclusive as possible i was able to share that with the committee before we uh entered into the the survey phase thank you so in terms of the process we are required per the policy to circulate two surveys as you can see here um the numbers weren't as high as we would have liked the first go round and then during the second we were really impressed that we were able to get more um input from the community given the timeline we circulated our our second um survey around april so just given the circumstances we were really grateful to receive more input but it was during our second community meeting where we had a student a pto member and a

049teacher speak and there was a consensus that they felt they didn't have enough information on um upfront to make an informed decision they felt that it would be helpful to have more information about sutherland in his past and so based off of that feedback we created a third survey and that third survey had a link to the research that we gathered about sutherland and as you can see we had the highest responded rate for that third survey we were super excited and part of it was also that the highest group that completed the survey was our students principal would you mind talking a little bit about what we did around the third survey to get student input sure we benefited from the fact that we were able to allow students to come back and clean

050out their lockers at the end of june and this was when we had decided to to go ahead and send out another survey so as we had over 300 students sign up to come and clean out their lockers and as they went through the locker cleanup process we created paper ballots and students voted as they were exiting the building on the on the name um which was you know a benefit because we had always planned to have students vote at school and so it was nice that we were able to incorporate that into the process under the circumstances thank you i also want to acknowledge that we were also intentional about getting feedback from the other parents um who attend the feeder schools so we circulated the survey as well through blackboard connect to make

051sure that incoming parents had an opportunity to weigh in so in terms of timeline i alluded to this earlier there are a lot of different items that have to be completed on the back end in order for a name to officially move obviously you all voting and approving the name but then there are operationally different tasks that need to happen so just a quick example would be updating the signage making sure that we um have updated um you know um like anything administratively so whether that be updated letterheads updating the school web webpage and so with that um if if when approved the new name for sutherland won't go into effect until this upcoming summer or next summer july 1st of 2021 and with that i'm going to turn it back over to principal wood

052who's going to walk us through the name recommendation thank you miss fernandez i would just like to reiterate my appreciation for the committee as ms fernandez already said the committee was really dedicated to honoring our community voice and our students voices based on their dedication to that the recommendation um that we would like to make to dr haas is that the school's name be changed to lakeside lakeside was both the the parent and the student number one choice great and at this point we'll open it up for any questions that you may have questions from the board it sounds as though this is a very thorough work very well thought out and very well executed plan and uh strategy and process thank you to everybody involved jasmine to megan and and to all the committee

053members uh i had just a quick question about the survey so um was the survey brought out to students so was the survey asking if they wanted the name to be changed or just what options like lakeside like what options they wanted sutherland to be named that's a great question melanie so um the process is a little different this time around compared to when we did it with mountain view so from the beginning what we did was we included um sutherland as a name that could be a part of the pool and then we narrowed it down to 10 names and then from 10 names we narrowed it down to three names and as principal would mention for lakeside it was the students number one choice and so we wanted to honor student voice and

054that's why we prioritize lakeside so they had to answer your question they had the option of selecting an existing name and then along the way they had the option to weigh in on the final name i had a question about the process since this is the first time we're going through it with the policy do you have any feedback or are things that we should be looking at that need to be changed or anything along that line absolutely so um you know we're learning as we go and um it was definitely for us really important feedback that we heard from the community about sharing research beforehand so um we didn't share a link to sutherland's past until that third survey and many of the feedback that we received from parents as well as just emails

055from different community members was they would have liked to have that information beforehand before even taking that first survey i guess i just have a thank you for all the work on this and i i think that name lakeside is great just broadly in terms of our policy and what i thought we had perhaps learned from the kale mountain view example was that i thought broadly the school board wanted to look at all the named schools named for individuals and generally find substitutions for those names because a name any individual shouldn't necessarily have a building named after themselves in perpetuity one of the things that i know that was quite hurtful for the kale family who wrote gazillions of letters to us um was essentially it was sort of set up as an indictment of

056mr kale um and that's not and so i thought we were i had hoped we were going to get away from doing a forensic you know deep dive into everybody's past and and therefore that's the justification for changing the name rather than a preference for looking at school names just to see broadly i guess i guess well i guess the issue though of aligning the names with the um goals of the school division sort of undermines my argument but i'm not 100 comfortable with that aspect of this process i just so that you you gain some solidarity i would agree i i also um in some ways feel uncomfortable sending out biographical information i'm presuming it's generally negative is what we're taking issue with when we send those things out and i kate you said

057it much more eloquently than i did i would just say that i agree with what you said well in line with our current policies and our policy of wanting to make sure that all names reflect the goals and the expectations that we have now i think in some cases we need to know that information and uh well i think that would be enough to say right now but i think that sometimes we do need to know that information because that might be a really deciding factor in some cases to know what how this person may not reflect what we now believe as a county and what we would expect our school system to be showing to our students and to our community i i agree simply because our history is our history yeah if we

058just sort of like if we say hey look we're going to rename it but we're not going to say why we're not giving the the acknowledgement of why i mean there is there is a why that certain people should not be the names of schools and if we just sort of rename it and don't acknowledge the reason it seems like it just i think that's a mistake i think we should own we should own who we are i that it's just my opinion i just i i know it's painful to revisit history but pain can be a healthy thing and dave that's that is convincing so thank you for bringing that up i guess what comes to mind is i remember when the kale thing happened and i think it became a little bit of

059a media storm that that family didn't necessarily deserve because it's you know he seems dead and it's his family that's having to live through all this and i remember someone coming up to me and said if you want to rename this one that's fine do it please just take the name off i would rather you just take it and don't even offer it because i don't need so i don't know i don't have the answer i respect what you say dave i also want to respect that it's we're not like fact finder biographers who are going to be able to find out all the information adequately and that's not really a role um when we're researching like these local people but maybe it's a future conversation because i continue to think about it yeah but

060i think the committee did do a good job in um researching information information related to uh mr sutherland and so again like dave is saying i think that we need to make sure that we always are cognizant of all of the facts that might be leading to a name change even though it may not be pleasant at all times still to have those facts known would be something that we have to make sure we do have available are there any other questions i had one last question okay um are there any like statistics or survey responses for students or parents who don't want a name change um i mean we we definitely had some are you asking generally speaking like about the changing i'm participating in the name process in general uh or i guess

061specific to sutherland we go ahead oh no just like i don't know like any numbers or survey responses yeah we have the survey results on the web page for all three for the first go around um we definitely did have some people who wanted to keep it sutherland but there was a general consensus that if the name was changed they wanted to prioritize geography and we saw those results um during the first survey and then when we started narrowing it down we saw um you know miranda was one of them lakeside was one of them we thought that there was a preference even in the names that were recommended that they were focused around geography okay thank you i also had one other question um and also thank you very much for all the thoughtful

062work i really appreciate it and this is to that point also um was there a number that you were looking for in terms of survey results or a certain kind of um like mix between community and student or like what made you what was the real deciding factor of like okay well let's put out a third one yeah it's a great question um if i'm being transparent and principal would please feel free to jump in we from the beginning said one of our values when we had our first meeting we said what will make this process successful what are the values that we want to prioritize um in in our as our our roles as committee members and everyone had to go around and and give one value and there was a consensus that we

063wanted to honor and center student voice um and so we always brought it back to that we would look at our when we were narrowing the survey or sorry the names we would look at which names that students um select when we were looking at the final survey results majority of the students it was their number one choice um was lakeside and so to answer your question um student voice was definitely something that we prioritized um as well as we wanted to make sure that we were having a i guess you could say like a well balanced um responded groups and so thinking about parents employees um community members but we definitely did center student voice so um mr page i just want to uh as we discussed in the rehearsal uh that we had

064this week i just want to make it official that um this is my recommendation as a superintendent to change uh sutherland middle school's name to lakeside middle school i really want to thank jasmine and megan all of the committee members i had the opportunity to meet with the committee twice to give them their charge and have conversations with them and i was really impressed with the composition of the committee and also their dedication to this task they took it very seriously and in the end it is the committee's decision and recommendation and it needs to be unanimous to move forward so while we do surveys that's just a gauge and it helps us kind of narrow down the decision making process for the committee i really appreciate the comments from board members because it reminds

065me that we are working to strike a balance uh between what ms carlson mentioned as you know we we want to be really careful to not turn the process into a referendum about an individual who lived during their own time and and oftentimes none of us know personally or have ever gotten to know that person balancing that between doing that but also as as um dave pointed out and that really there is a reason for why we are doing this work to begin with and it really is around reframing the historical narrative that part of our history as albemarle county is to hold up individuals who in many ways held back the school system and many um community members within the school system that didn't get to be part of um the overall educational program

066in a way that was that was that was equal and and fair and so we we do want to balance that you know we talk about reframing the historical narrative with our students and our history curriculum and it's also i think important to reframe it through how we decide how we're going to name our name our facilities so it is it is a tough balance and in going back and revising the policy uh we we swung in the complete opposite direction from the policy that we had used the first time because the first time we did it it really was a referendum and it and you could understand why uh the kale family and also many residents of albemarle county were quite upset at the first decision being should we rename the school but then

067in in in looking at the policy and revising it we moved to a process where we felt that that wouldn't be necessary and then we had conversations among committee members because they received feedback from the sutherland committee that they really would have liked to know more about the person for whom the school was named to help them make the decision the good news is is that um we were able to provide that and it did not in so far as i can tell and i know um things can change tomorrow but so far i don't feel that this turned into um the same kind of process where the person was then dragged out through through the media there we've simply stated very i think in a way that um substantiates the need for change but

068at the same time doesn't uh go too far i hope um but i really appreciate all the comments from the board before we move on to one of the next schools that we look at we're going to take those under advisement and continue to try to refine the process so that the overall purpose of reframing the historical narrative can be maintained while we still are sensitive to members of our to all the members of our our community so thank you okay thank you dr haas ms fernandez and ms wood for your outstanding work and coming up with the recommendation this is the first time so uh tonight this is for information only if there are no objections we can put this on the consent the renaming of the school on to the consent agenda for

069um our august 27th meeting so i know you're able to have it as a consent item on uh the 27th board meeting minutes sounds good okay any other questions related to this all right thanks again to that committee for doing such an outstanding job all right our third item in the division business uh the strategic plan update dr mclaughlin so good evening again board members i'm pat mclaughlin chief of strategic planning and i'm here tonight to give you a brief update on the coming work to develop our portrait of an albemarle graduate and our new albemarle county public schools strategic plan as you may recall we've partnered with patel for kids and ed leader 21 to develop our new plan the plan development consists of three distinct phases the creation of a portrait of a

070graduate the completion of a division needs assessment and finally the development and adoption of a multi-year strategic plan for the school division our first step in this process has been the formation of our design team this team will meet five times beginning next month to create a portrait of a graduate our strategic plan leadership team which consists of jamie gelner jasmine fernandez and helen dunn has done incredible community outreach to recruit staff students and community members to support this work currently we have commitments from 113 individuals to be a part of this process the team has been striving to create a diverse cadre of voices to inform the process and preliminary numbers indicate that we've achieved that goal we're also striving for strong student voice in the process and are happy to report that we

071have 20 middle and high school students who will be a part of our team the design team will begin meeting on september 3rd and will wrap up their work on october 29th all of our meetings will be virtual and as we discussed in our work session we welcome up to two school board members to attend each session i'll be asking jennifer johnson johnston to reach out to the board in the near future to help with scheduling for these meetings we anticipate the stage one work being complete at the end of october and hope to bring the board a presentation of our portrait of a graduate in november or december so i'm excited to get this work started and i'd be happy to take any questions or comments that you may have questions the only thing

072i noticed um you know the committee i really liked the diversity but i noticed that it was what 68 or 62 female 38 male um any explanation of that we we did we did see that uh you know that's something that kind of stood out to us as well um i don't know that i've got an explanation for it uh other than we uh we sort of live in a in a female-dominated profession and when we look for staff members were oftentimes more heavily weighted uh with uh with women than with men on that end to that end also um was there um an effort to align it to representation of our student body um in terms of racial demographics yes that was one of our goals and while it's not perfect it's it's close

073and one thing i'll also say about these numbers is that we've put some assumptions particularly into the community members about their demographics we've got an anonymous survey out to them now uh where we're asking specific questions about those demographics so if anything shifts dramatically um with their reported demographics instead of the uh you know a lot of the folks that we've um that we've tapped are folks that somebody on the design team has or the leadership team has known um so we're gonna we can report back on that once we have the survey results in by next week i hope any other comments or questions for dr mclaughlin's work okay thank you so much for that update and we'll be looking forward to uh in future presentations thank you we're now scheduled for a break

074so according to the computer the time is 40 we'll reconvene at 7 50 eastern daylight time so we'll take a 10 minute break thank you bye melanie from okay it is now 7 50 and time to resume our meeting we will now move to our professional learning update ms jennifer sublett good evening thank you i'm jennifer sublette i'm the director of professional learning here in alberta county and it's my pleasure to give you an update of a very busy summer that we've had in professional learning so usually i would have a powerpoint with slides of many of our teachers collaborating in our instructional spaces and working together just wanted to give you a quick sense of what a virtual summer professional learning experience looks like this is a day when we had several workshops going

075the exciting piece though is that we had a hundred percent of our program move pivot to a virtual environment we were able to maintain and even add to our professional learning menu for the summer and a real focus for us was realizing that while we are so grateful for the energy that was put into our spring and the work that was done by learning tech integrators instructional coaches and all of our teachers to do what we could in such an incredibly difficult time we also knew that we needed to be prepared for whatever this fall would bring so this summer has been a time for us to strategically think about the lessons we learned from the spring the research around best practices for hybrid or virtual learning and to develop a comprehensive professional learning plan

076that would help us be able to meet the needs of the coming school year so we started with our required sessions all acps teachers elementary and secondary have engaged in the series of asynchronous virtual professional learning sessions for our k5 educators we focused here on seesaw and a quick reminder seesaw was a new tool for many of our educators in the spring when we suddenly went to a full adoption of it in addition seesaw was a program originally designed to be a student portfolio and family engagement tool it was not a conference of learning management system we did a great job of piecing together we could but we've learned a lot about how to use seesaw we've harnessed the experts within our division and we've been working with seesaw who themselves have bringing on more

077features in order to be a more robust program to meet the needs of the nation right now so our teachers were able to choose from a menu that helped give them the foundation tools of how to use the program a focus on family engagement and building partnerships because we know especially for our k5 learners that connection to home is so important tools for effective feedback so families would know exactly where their students were and students would know where they were in terms of working towards their learning targets organizing instruction again based on feedback from families knowing that that became a challenge for us this spring and then also equity tools we wanted to make sure that teachers knew that they could have tools to help them track access and achievement by all of their students

078in order to maintain our priorities and to maintain our focus on success for all students for our secondary teachers a quick reminder that we were in the first year of our implementation of schoology again there we had a three-year strategic plan for bringing schoology on focused on consistent use and use that would build teachers in their confidence and competence on how to use the program that changed in spring as we found that we were beginning to use it not only at a greater rate but also with greater levels of complexity so this summer was a time for us to really think about what were the best practices design elements and instructional focus for use of schoology schoology is a robust learning management system has a great deal of capabilities it also allows us to partner

079with other tools such as our k-12 google suite but it's a more complex tool so we focused our professional learning modules here to make sure that teachers first got to experience and explore exemplar units to see how instruction could be laid out clearly for students how they could have a variety of interactive synchronous and asynchronous learning experience for students and that they could actually see an exemplary unit and experience it as a student and then learn how to build it as a teacher we were careful to make sure that we had exemplary units in all content areas we did not want to leave it a chance that a social studies teacher might have to look at an english unit and then translate how to make that work within their own history or government class the

080second part of the secondary professional development was what i like to call taking apart the legos what were the different tools the individual tools and techniques that were used to build those units again we're asking our teachers to become quite proficient but we have found that rather than making sure they can use 20 tools pick six really effective tools get very comfortable with them use them well help students learn how to use them well so we emphasize that within the second module of the pd and then our third module we wanted to pull back up to quality learning and instruction one of the guiding principles for professional development this summer has been that we want to maintain our focus on what quality teaching and learning are and how we then translate that to a virtual

081environment so we don't want to lose any ground on the work that we're doing to guarantee those rich experiences for our students in addition to that required pd that all of our teachers are working through we've had a robust menu of optional sessions and we've had incredible participation and actually this is my third summer working with our professional development menu and i really am seeing higher levels of participation i think in part from the urgency that teachers know we're preparing for a challenging fall but also because there's some flexibility in virtual professional development and i would actually um expect that some of what we have been able to put together this summer will become a remaining permanent part of our professional development suite teachers have been very receptive and actually much more able to attend

082and be a part of our professional development so we had over 450 teachers attend these workshops you'll see a focus here social emotional learning many of our teachers want to make sure that they feel capable of developing close relationships with their students and strong classroom communities even in a virtual learning environment that i think will be very important for our families as well as our students and definitely speaks to the heart of the teaching soul that we have within our teaching cadre we also had a focus on collaboration and plc work we know that that is going to be really important that our teachers will have to collaborate share lean on each other they'll be more effective and they'll they'll be feeling more competent and competent as they move into the year and finally we

083wanted to make sure we created a network of support for technology ongoing technology learning throughout the year so seesaw schoology champion strategically identified by administrators in each of our buildings are teachers who took a deeper dive into those two programs learned even more intermediate tools and now will be available as resources within their buildings for each of their their colleagues one of the things i found interesting it's always great in summer pd i get to see teachers from around the division it's a wonderful energetic time and there's always the casual hey thanks jen that was great we really appreciated it this summer i got unsolicited feedback from teachers who went out of their way to email we maintained an email summer pd for anybody who needed help we had helped us running um with several

084of us manning that as much as we could didn't have a lot of issues but it was a great way for teachers to know they had support even as people would ask a question they would often tag in by the way this is great this is exactly what i needed so it was really great to be able to see that teachers recognize the alignment of the professional development we had this summer to the challenges that we know we're going to face this fall for me that is always an indicator of alignment on our program we of course will also have a more formal process of looking at our exit tickets our feedback forms and we'll see information from teachers about what next finally i just wanted to bring up the best part of summer professional

085development which every year is our new teacher academy this week we welcomed our new teachers here they were kind enough this is one screen of the four uh when we were all together waving and saying hello to you we had a great two days we kick off with two division level days and then the last two days of the week they're in their buildings again while we are preparing for a challenging fall we wanted to also make sure that this was an induction program for bringing these educators into our division for their career this is not simply getting ready for 2020 2021 so we did maintain our focus on our ethos as a division our mission our vision our equity work helping them understand what it means to be an educator in amarillo county and

086then we gave them tools that we did make sure allow them to meet the ethos within this fall that's coming up so focusing on our technology tools our development development of clear learning targets for students designing learning environments and again building learning communities so we've had a busy summer it's been a great summer it's been wonderful to see our teachers dig in take a breath and then get ready for the coming year and now we're beginning to build our plans out for 2021. i think it's important to remember that while many of us are continuing to virtually connect we do have a strong network of support for our teachers our instructional coaches our learning learning tech integrators and our school-based champions will be very important for that tech integration piece as we move forward we'll

087also have division-level professional learning communities that allow for a more formal structure of collaborating and sharing across the division we think that's going to really help we saw high degrees of variance and we know that that's something that is frustrating for families we'll also continue to support those new educators that you just saw an image of with our novice teacher network and an ongoing induction for teachers new to acps especially having met them virtually although we feel like they are part of the fold now and part of our own it will be important i think for them to feel connected and to have a very focused induction program this year and we'll continue to have ongoing sessions for all teachers teacher wellness because we know that the stress and the weight of what we are

088all facing and the challenges of what is ahead weigh on teachers and they tend to take everything on their shoulders both the instructional piece and the child piece increasingly look at accessibility tools ongoing focus on schoology and seesaw and combining those with accessibility for our students with learning needs as well as students with access and building classroom community and seo is learning partnerships the cultural responsive teaching partnering with our equity specialists and partnering with responsive classroom developmental designs to make sure we're attending to the whole program i think one of the areas of emphasis for us is that while we are in a new learning environment we want to stay true to what we believe about teaching and learning we want to make sure our teachers have the tools that they need but also the

089philosophical underpinnings that help bring take those tools and make them a successful learning environment for all of our students and i'm open to questions or thank you ms sublet any questions related to a professional development i have one i just was curious about the um on the i think it was maybe the first slide there were was a lot of information but um there was a class in the uh equity audit tools to plan for monitoring student progress and i just want to know more about that equity honor uh we have both introduction and a deep done and it allows teachers to if we think about our own equity dashboard and how is a division we look at metrics that's a great 30 000 view piece but an equity audit within a classroom it gives

090a teacher a chance to do their own action research and to carefully look at the demographics and the performance of their students and then watch it very carefully that allows them to make instructional adjustments it can allow them to make resource adjustments and they can track anything from here it can be your traditional academic data but also think about a teacher in a classroom being able to track peer-to-peer interactions family interactions am i calling home for example with the city ortlins am i calling home families that may have a different cultural context than my own how do i hold myself accountable to my own measures within a locus of control that i have so we find the equity on a great way for teachers to be able to take the larger focus on equity than

091our division and translate it into a very actionable space within their own classroom and is that a type of pd that has been available before it has been um it is one that we introduced last summer um equity audits as well as at making connections and we want to be able to do some ongoing work where a teacher can have their focus and then work with our equity specialist to kind of process through it's very it's a reflective type of process for a teacher they learn a lot about their own planning and attending to and meeting the needs of all of their students thank you yeah any other questions for board members uh yes i got one uh we get a lot of well i get a lot of questions about what kind of professional

092development our teachers are getting to be prepared for the fall and it would be helpful if this was posted somewhere um i know this is the first time i've seen it but if we could get things like this either in the board packet or emailed ahead of time um it would just be really helpful sure i'd be happy to and phil did work um put two spots on local news this week and i think we have a piece coming out the daily progress as well um and we have four or five teachers participate in that as well jennifer my question is could you elaborate on what the plc looks like and specifically i'm wondering since we're rethinking or we're having to rethink a lot of this um are we making teachers kind of reinvent the

093wheel and what isn't there like an opportunity to kind of have a continuity of uh curriculum across the board is every teacher having to go and take their material and transport transport or could like there be a kindergarten a kindergarten team that um you know is i don't know i'm do you get what i'm saying like why are they sharing resources are all our teachers at home right now personally putting their worksheets and trying to translate their material in how are they able to collaborate and share that so they're not doubling down on their work exactly and i think that's so we'll be coordinating with the lead coach team um who will help with each of the content areas to facilitate the division level plc's it is always a sweet spot where we want to

094support and we have want to have a greater level of continuity so we can share so you start with pacing we start with learning targets and the more similar those are the easier it is to share resources and even assessment tools there is a level then of not wanting to take away the creativity that makes teaching wonderful um it's definitely why i left corporate america to come into an educational environment at the same time like you said we don't need to reinvent the wheel if someone's got something great this allows us the ability to facilitate the sharing of that and actually within both schoology and within seesaw we're able to do that resource sharing much more easily but having formalizing division level plcs gives us the structure where the people connect so they know they

095want to borrow or they know that something's been posted that's a model when we built the model units for the summer pd we started with what is typically a first unit so in each of our content areas biology you know world history one it's a first unit that was exa was the exemplar that we think is also important so that people are starting with something that gives them that foundation so the teachers have access to kind of a robust platform to share the stuff and they can add on exactly other questions i had another one um is part of uh what we're looking at now obviously is going to involve a lot of um at-home help right parents guardians um older siblings often um and this may have been as part of these slides again

096i apologize for there's a lot of information are we um helping teachers work with families in that way and will parents have any sort of training to do the help that there's you know to help their students that's definitely at the sort of the next layer uh so there are both within seesaw and schoology there are resources that can be posted within courses so that teachers can have a how-to guide that parents can use but then also working with the department of technology on resources that will be posted for parents so that overview one of the challenges is you don't want to bury in that type of parent support within the actual program we want to have it outside of the program so they can click on it within our website so that's something that

097we're definitely looking to have as we get into the back-to-school season but both of the platforms do help provide us with a starting point for that and we can tailor it to our community other questions all right so jennifer i guess one main takeaway we can take is that virtual learning this fall will be vastly different from what it was in the spring that is our goal and believe me that is not just because our parents and our students would like to be vastly different our teachers were exhausted um and they are excited to have a fresh start we know it's going to be challenging um i keep being excited about the fact that we are beginning to feel that back-to-school sense right where schools are going to open and we're going to get our

098kids back and we're ready for them and so it's been great to be able to to meet their needs in terms of professional learning for that thank you thank you so much all right our next item uh policy review and revision on mask and face coverings um ross halogen was told thank you mr page let me uh see if i can share my screen here did i do that successfully yes okay um good evening board members and uh thank you for your time uh this is a policy that we drafted with respect to masks and acceptable face coverings for those who are in our schools it will apply to all students staff and visitors to all albemarle county public school schools facilities campuses and on school transportation the most important point is in the second

099paragraph and that is the default is to wear a mask or acceptable face covering at all times regardless of physical distancing the really the only uh arrows we have in our quiver to uh combat uh the pandemic is physical distancing wearing a mask washing your hands and you've heard all of that so uh this is um our effort uh to have uh both students and staff and visitors be in our facilities as safely as we can provide it under the circumstances there will be certain exceptions uh for instance eating and drinking uh physical education activities uh so long as the whether in physical education or playing a game or at least five ten feet apart uh students are not participating at that moment or they're on their sidelines or in a dugout uh they will

100be required to uh wear masks regardless of the distance apart they may be it could uh mass could also be uh removed for specific instructional needs and activities and for a brief risk but um this policy is one of general application uh there will likely be regulations or standard operating procedures that may vary with either a classroom the developmental level of the student or even the school itself do we have for instance a classroom with a door outside maybe in good weather if a student needs uh just to take a break a younger student in particular from wearing a mask could go outside for a minute or two maybe there is a place in the classroom where away from the teacher and other students where the mask could be taken off for a very very

101short period of time in addition um if there are students with documented medical conditions or disabilities or other special individualized needs that could be an exemption as well and that was a decision that will be made both by the school administration teachers school administration as well with respect to violations we didn't want to in first instance we didn't want to make this something that uh would require discipline if a student either continues coming into school without a mess for getting a mask and by the way they'll be if a student just forgets the mass they'll be extra masks on at school and on the buses um because people will forget from time to time but if it's a continuing problem or if the student just refuses outright to wear a mask our plan is to

102meet with student and parents discuss the reason why we have this policy the importance of it to protect the safety and well-being of all those in our facilities and hopefully that will uh suffice if not that student will be offered a virtual learning program and not remain in our schools the uh you know we know that maybe just like students wear different clothes with respect to masks that will we want them to be appropriate we want them to follow the code of student conduct and the dress code so that there could be violations based upon uh what they're wearing we certainly don't want anything that's uh lewd or lascivious and things of that nature profane so the masks and the displays that may they may have them on them will also be governed by our

103dress code policy um you should know as well an important point this policy has gone through a checklist of equity checklist and changes were made to incorporate those comments in particular violations will be eval evaluated for biased disparities on a on a periodic basis basis in all of the schools staff will also be required to wear uh mass there are similar exemptions for them for eating and drinking um and when those exemptions apply social distancing or physical distancing as we prefer to call it uh will also uh be in place violations will be dealt with in accordance with school board policy gbc uh last we are requiring visitors to wear a mask and anyone else who may be in the school from age 2 and above if for instance the schools decide to have a

104[Music] program for staff for children or any other children or any other program that may be part and parcel of or using the space that will require the um those students those children that staff to wear um a mask as well with respect to those student uh those teachers who may be with children who are unable to wear a mask we will have to determine on a case by case a school by school basis where those children will be located but those uh teachers that's those staff will have enhanced ppe um for uh for those students and with that um happy to answer any questions i can questions from mr holden on our mass policy is there guidance um about the gym exception the the guidance that we have from the thomas jefferson health district

105[Music] and other sources cdc the state is that especially now because things have been evolving is to wear a mask during um physical education activities so if they're going to be within 10 feet if if not and they're running or they're doing another activity they won't need to wear a mask but as i said if they're on the sideline the guidance is that they should wear a mask regardless of physical distancing this has been evolving over time we've heard over the last several months mass but not necessary if you're six feet apart and they're not necessary if you're three feet apart but the most recent guidance from the thomas jefferson health district is mass are required or should be required at all times regardless of how far apart students may be but so i guess

106to me then that that gym exception doesn't quite fit in with that um so that's i was just asking if that particular exception has guidance on the 10 feet i mean i should check ms lee further but the health information that i've received is that um so long as they are um 10 feet apart on a field of play that would be acceptable um but if they're standing uh on the sidelines regardless of how far apart they are that we need to wear a mask okay thank you one of the questions on the mass policy yes uh mr holden what's the plan to train um in-person staff on the policy because i'm assuming teachers are going to be the ones and bus drivers and be the one enforcing it we will um you know make

107that part of our return to school program um let them know what the policy is we'll certainly um make it available as soon as possible and provide instruction as to what it means because i do know the teachers have expressed some concern families as well we want to make sure that it is [Music] as much as possible and as early and as often as possible surprise people of what the requirements are so that people are clear that math is going to be required as i said the most important when in doubt in default you're wearing a mask are there any other questions on our mass policy all right last call all right thanks uh mr holden for presenting the policy to us our next item the new security paradigm um by dr nicholas king dr

108king all right so before um dr king starts mr page will we'll bring the um the mass policy back on the consent agenda at our next meeting okay yes thank you thank you all right am i sharing yeah yes yes good evening board members and uh again my name is nicholas king i'm the director of student services thank you for your time this evening um board members my my purpose tonight is to share with you some information um that would really reflect uh our current thinking um in terms of moving forward with our security program in schools specifically mission will provide a response to the board's directive to the superintendent to begin looking at and making recommendations for a new paradigm for school safety to replace the previous program which was characterized by the daily

109presence of school resource officers in some of our schools particularly our high schools [Music] uh at the outset of these discussions uh some survey surveying was done to speak to students and parents about their thoughts about our existing uh school safety and school security program and so we thought as we began thinking through this work that that might be a good place to uh for us to start to do some thinking about what what we might do going forward specifically from the perspective of identifying what parents and students saw is important in a school security program and having that be part part of what guided us i'm going forward and so there were three um data points that kind of jumped out that i think might underpin some of the work that we're doing going

110forward the first one was that when asked in that survey in the survey to rank the importance of safety related tasks our parents reported that monitoring school grounds was the most important task as they saw it and i should note that that response of monitoring school grounds as is most important was the response of virtually all parents um and was the number one response of all parents regardless of race or ethnicity on the second point was that 65 of our parents responded to the survey responded to the survey that they felt like having some security personnel in our schools contributed to a safer learning environment however african american african american parents uh were 10 percent saw that responded were 10 percent less likely to agree with this statement so therein lies a point where we

111feel like we might be able to to do some improvement in terms of our our program and then finally 53 percent of our students responding to the survey um reported that having security personnel made them feel safe at school yet 60 of african american students either disagreed or were neutral um on that particular question so as we go forward we we would like to propose or suggests um the the new paradigm that we're going to uh design for our schools will be characterized by by three prongs if you will the first is the creation of an in-house acps school security program and i'll speak more specifically to each of these in just a moment the second is hiring or identifying additional mental health counselors or professionals who would work in our schools with our students

112and the final of the three prongs is the negotiation and execution of an interim statement of relationship between the acps and the albemarle county police department that would be in effect for the 2021 school year to address security measures as we continue to move forward with our own acps program so the first prong of the paradigm would be around creating an astps uh security staff and please remember about what this staff would would do and who they would be is that first of all they would it would be staffed exclusively by acps employees everyone involved in this process in that process or in that role would report directly to the school division those folks would be trained to provide for the safety needs of our schools and the primary role would be to provide schools

113with additional resources that they could use before or even in lieu of reaching out to police for assistance as well as to support various other needs of the school that might um um kind of spring up or that might you know be in existence at this point it's important to note that um this program and these staff members would not be managed by the acpd or it would not or they would not be police officers and that no police officers would be a part of this particular program another thing that's important to note is that these folks would not have any involvement with the school discipline process we would continue with our um way of operation that suggested school discipline as a matter for for the educators in the building and so those folks would

114not have any involvement in the school disciplinary process with with the possible exception of monitoring halls um you know between classes before and after school the program would be supervised all those staff members will be supervised by the director of student services and we feel at this point like we we should be able to have this program um with the board's agreement um operational by the start of the 2021-2022 school year so as we begin to think about how we might staff um you know a program of this of this sort you know we really feel like there's a specific direction out there that we really should go in the first thing that would be uh clear is that what we have in schools right now based on the fact that that we we are

115moving uh police off out of our schools what we have right now are school safety teacher assistants these are acps employees that currently operate in several of our schools these folks have not traditionally held safety related responsibilities other than monitoring halls and escorting students and it's important to note that there is no local or state certification for these staff members they are indeed teacher assistants they monitor halls and move students up and down the halls and so since they while they do do it we think they do a good job we don't think that that particular those particular folks would necessarily be would suffice and would meet all of our needs what we do see is a viable option um and what we feel like is the appropriate way for us to move forward is

116to identify and hire a team of school security officers school security officers will be employees of acps and they would help to ensure the safety security and welfare of students faculty staff and visitors in their assigned schools they would be certified by the state after specialized training in school security matters uh including active shooter training emergency response emergency evacuation procedures and threat assessments um it's important to note that one the primary reason we feel like this is the appropriate way to move forward is because the school security officer program is well established in the commonwealth of virginia uh many many of the school divisions um around the commonwealth already have school security officer programs in place it would meet the board's mandate and that these folks would not be police officers but the other thing

117that we think is really critical is that the commonwealth through the department of criminal justice services uh has a well-designed and well-developed and long long-standing training and certification program for school security officers and so we feel like this is something that we could implement in our schools relatively quickly because we could look at what's being done in some other school divisions and of course we can take advantage of the services and support that the commonwealth of virginia offers for these particular physicians the next problem will be the hiring or identification of mental health providers and i do there are lots of determinations to be made regarding the qualifications and program design here we certainly could look at identifying certified mental health providers or the other idea is to look at individuals who could provide emotional

118support to our students who aren't necessarily certified mental health providers which would be sort of similar to the old therapeutic day treatment model if you know very much about that you know that the state made some adjustments to that program over the last year um and so if we decided to move in that particular direction there is a the result of those changes is that many of the agencies that provided that service are no longer able to provide it and so there is a a wide swath of folks who were practitioners in those particular programs who would be out and available in the community to be hired so that's one thing to think about um options for staffing obviously would also include you know as we said hiring individuals who would meet our expectations or

119who would be acps employees or we could also look at the idea of partnering or contracting with community-based mental health agencies that already have staff in place um and who could allow us to contract with them or reach agreements with them so that they would provide us with their existing staff to work in our schools on a contractual basis um one of the things that i do want to bring to to the board's attention is that i i do have some concern about you know the quickness with which we would be able to identify um you know a a significant cadre of certified mental health providers um one of the things that we know based on just our work with some of our partners around the community is is that um the kind of the

120availability of those folks who carry that kind of certification um is is not great um necessarily in this community we work with um our our partners at region 10 to provide sap counselors in our high school and i can tell you there have been times when they have had um you know positions for those times kind of laid open for two three four months until they could actually find people um who meet those certification needs um and are available to be hired so that's something that we'll certainly have to think of and that we may face as we move forward um with this approach um again we we would hope to be in a position to operate operationalize this program by the start of next school year from 2021-22 and then the final piece of

121our new paradigm would be the negotiation of a statement of relationship um between acpd and acps one of the things that um attorney holden wanted me to make sure to note is that a statement of relationship would be different than an mou this would not be an mou it would be though our mechanism for establishing channels of communication between our two agencies and specifically we would look to document a protocol by which acps can meet its responsibility to report um required reporting criminal required reports of criminal behavior um to the local law enforcement which um in many and will in several instances is required and mandated by virginia law um and it would lay out the the conditions under which police officers uh would come to school to meet with principals on a periodic basis

122to address matters that that fall within the scope of this agreement again though it is important to note that it would not establish or call for the regular police presence um in our schools all right so next steps uh obviously is first is continue the development and negotiation of the statement of relationship um attorney holden is working on that i think as we speak he is continuing to work with the acps's um leadership structure and the attorney that works with them through the county second will be to identify mental health position program specifics again as i stated there's a good deal of work that needs to be done with that um at this moment i'm not really aware of any school divisions who have similar programs of this kind and so we'll have to really

123kind of beat the bushes to find whether or not those exist someplace and hopefully be able to get some information from that and certainly if we can identify on a program that exists we'll certainly have to go to the drawing board and develop something that we feel like will work for us i feel certain that we have some we have some relationships within the community folks like ready kids region 10 who would be willing to come in and work with us and help us develop what would be an appropriate program around supporting the mental health of our students and then finally would be the development of a funding request which would include specific program program metrics for for each of those sets of um positions and specific developing specific job descriptions for school security officers

124here in baltimore county public schools as well as specific job descriptions for mental health providers at this point i'd be glad to answer any questions you have [Music] hi nick a couple one as you well know we had five um officers in our schools until now and so in terms of the school security and i think a lot of people in the community think we have had them at all of our schools we only had them at our high schools with a couple of floaters that you know so what is your your conception of the number of of school security officers that would come into this program you're mute you're mute okay i said i'm sorry i um i think my computer froze and i missed your entire question could you repeat it please as

125you know we have had only five sros uh at three of the high schools and then two sort of floating around so if we're reconceptualizing school security uh with 25 schools what are your thoughts about staffing for the school security officers and then second i agree i work in mental health in the community and one of the biggest uh vacancies essentially is a number of child psychologists or child therapists and it's a really difficult thing to get we have tried to beef up our mental health staffing across acps so are you talking about working across you know broadening that or would this be a totally separate stream within the security it seems to me that we should have a mental health staffing that went across issues so you know i i think that issue in

126that question is frankly wide open at this point because i don't think that we have any um real strong sense at this moment about what that approach will look like um so i think we're open to looking um looking at it from from every perspective as we as we move forward you know um i i think the the one piece that that that's in my mind about it is that we will be looking at um an approach that would be more clinical than what we have with traditional school counselors um but beyond that i i don't think we've we've moved very far in terms of our conceptualization of what we're going to do so i think we're going to be open to thinking about that and that's why i even threw out the idea of

127doing something similar to the tdt model which again tends to be more clinical but doesn't really require us to identify people who are you know certified mental health providers so i think that's wide open at this moment okay back to the first part about what are you thinking about the numbers of security officers are we talking about 25 schools worth or so i'd say at the beginning i'm willing to identify to identify and hire the the number that you are willing to fund um i think we're relying on your expertise to guide us in this though too i think i i've i've thought about it from frankly two perspectives at this point and one perspective would be that we would identify a cadre of four and that would find us um focusing our our structure

128in a way that would be similar to what the srl structure was like so there would be they would be kind of based in the high schools and and then they would be assigned to a number of additional schools that they would support the other the other way i've kind of thought about it and conceptualized it though would be uh that then there would there would be nine and if there were nine they would then be there would be one based in every high school and every middle school and then they would also be assigned to support um elementary schools as well um i honestly think and one of the things that i shared with um with matt is dr haas was that you know i think it really depends on kind of the quality

129of people that we're able to find and based on that quality you know frankly to you know break it down to brass tax what kind of the cost is going to be i think if we look at school security officers um we're going to be looking for folks who are a bit of a higher caliber and so that would suggest to me that we would probably need to consider paying them um you know a reasonable a reasonable amount of money um and certainly that will that will impact how many that we would be able to put into place dr king uh first of all uh welcome back it's good to see you back all right i hope you're doing well i am thank you good good good um you've answered a couple of my questions

130already in terms of as anybody else in the state doing a program like this and and we're not sure you know but but you know i think you were saying you beat the bushes and find out which which you know would be obviously a great thing um and i was going to ask about hiring security people and but you know how they come to be trained um you know and you mentioned that you would be finding out whether that kind of training exists um you know from the state and and i think that would be an important part uh uh because you know a lot of training was done locally uh through acpd uh as well as you know through our services so you know just going to two other quick things i mean one

131is is that uh and and i'm not being critical i'm still i'm going to try and digest this you know a lot once you see the or have the the presentation in hand is we obviously want our parents and our students to feel that and our staff our teachers our staff to feel safe in the schools and uh i mean i might so one question gets into what happens in emergency situations uh is this is this the next police man or woman who let's just say police person you know who gets the 911 call is it just the next person who's going to get that and come to the schools uh in the past it would have been you know somebody who's a security officer um and and then secondly you know just to make

132sure that that people are not feeling like we're doing mental health light or security light uh in terms of this uh uh to replace what is that that we we have in place uh and that gets back into the safety issue broad broad questions but i appreciate it so let me let me start by clarifying if i suggested that we would be looking to find out if there is training available secure security for school security officers let me correct that we know that that exists it is long-standing it's provided by dcjs um it's there um it's available and it's something that we could um provide to folks that we hire um immediately it's um in fact dcjs has moved their training they i was looking at the other day they've made it online so we

133could provide that training to staff members um immediately okay thank you for that yes sir um as to your second question um i hope attorney holden won't get me for this but i am hoping that part of what will be a part of his negotiation with the school with the police department that that negotiation will include um that that kind of issue in terms of who it is that will respond to our um to our calls and you know it is it is our hope i think that where possible um we will still be able to reach out directly um to the members of the division within the school within the police department um uh who have traditionally worked with us because i do think that's an important point mr ocaro that you know when

134we do make a call to the police and we have an issue that needs to be addressed i do think it's critical that to the extent possible the responding officer be someone who has some history of working with schools and has some understanding of how schools operate um as opposed to necessarily just the you know the next officer who's up so i'm i'm really hoping that we'll be able to address that as part of the that's part of the part of the statement of relationship with the police department yes sir thank you dr king and i would just know we we actually do already have one staff member in our division um who is a trained um school security officer and so we've already had some experience with that training in terms of um staff

135members in our school division so again we know that it's there available and it is high quality training are there other questions related to um security new parents i have a couple questions um first yet thank you dr king uh for all your work and this and also to reiterate what jonah said it's really great to have you back um i just i don't know a lot about school security officers and i would like to know more about that because um you know you mentioned that they are in several divisions in across the commonwealth and i'm curious what the relationship is um if if in those divisions they also use sros and if what the difference or relationship is or if they replace them in those divisions and i also appreciate that you gave the

136demographic data for the the survey data because i think for a lot of us anti-racism is a very important part of this move for me it's the key point uh and so i just want to know where anti-racism fits into school security officer roles um and how that will continue to help us move forward with that well so i i think the first response to that um if i could respond to you to the first question is um i know that many of the larger school divisions use the sso program and i think that the mixed bag across the commonwealth some that use the ssos in addition to sros because most school divisions aren't able to obviously offer an sro for every school so so usually there is kind of a mix of those things

137in terms of a mixed bag of both sros and ssos um and other kinds of security staff in larger school divisions to answer your second question and really to address the first question as well the important thing i think about our move to ssos um and what it brings um to the table for us is the fact that these folks will be our employees um and we can dictate um actually the answer to both questions that you just asked we'll be able to dictate what their relationship is to the police department if at some point the board believes and the division believes that it is appropriate for there to be a relationship between um our ssos um and the police department because they'll be our employees we'll be able to dictate that there be that

138relationship if the board and the division decides that that's not a relationship that we want to um ever have exist again these will be our employees and we'll we'll be able to dictate that uh the second part of that issue is is that as those folks will be our employees um just as every other school division employee is going to be exposed to our work around anti-racism over the next year and a half these folks will be a part of that process as well as again they would be our employees and so just as we require all other employees to do the anti-racism work as just as all of our employees this year will be a part of courageous conversations around race these folks will be employees and they'll be expected to be involved in

139that work um as well and so i think that's one of the things that really benefits us from that perspective obviously while you know we felt like the acpd did a relatively good job in you know providing training for their um employees around you know some of these issues we weren't able to dictate exactly the way they trained their folks because they weren't our folks um so that's what i think that's how i think we'll be able to address that um and really kind of continue to move forward as a division in terms of the anti-racism work any other questions for dr king um uh one thing thank you probably said it but since that person would be our employee then also crt training would be involved too right as a part of the anti-racism

140policy i would i would i would imagine so yes sir and again just you know anything that we saw is necessary um i think would would be there and um we would we would frankly just have carp launch um to provide you know to provide and require training as we saw fit we um we would also be looking to have a diverse cadre of the resource of the school security officers that's another thing to take a look at and then one thing i would say is that um it would be good to know as we make our way through to what extent the board would like for dr king uh to come back with an update and you know give us an idea of what date you might like that because as we move into

141the funding request development season um we will right now we contribute uh roughly a quarter of a million dollars toward the school resource officer program so in moving into fiscal year 21 we would have access to that funding because we would not be contributing it so that could be a placeholder for us to use to fund a school security officer program and what we would do what we would ask dr king and his staff to do is to put together a funding request initiative around that so that we could flesh it out more for the board and tie a logic model to it along with metrics like we do our other initiatives that we do so that's that's um just an overview of of timeline so um it would be helpful to know when you

142would like another update or would you like us to do that when we're going into the funding request season so i i just have a question actually about that question then so does that mean that we will be paying that 256 000 while we have 10 of our students in schools for the foreseeable future we will uh that yes that that was already part of the budget adoption process so um for that to change the school board would need to request to the board of supervisors to reappropriate that funding and are they so what does september 8th look like in terms of sros there will not be sros as directed by the school board i have a question i don't know it's for nick or for matt back to the mental health subject matter in

143the last funding request before we had to cut it by 20 yeah there was a position for sort of a mental health director looking at mental health needs across the school division i'm wondering i don't feel comfortable in sort of populating the security initiative with mental health counselors unless we look at a broader overview of what our mental health infrastructure should look like or could look like or does look like so i think that for me would be in parallel to the school security officer work i don't know how we get there but no that's good input well of course so kate you're asking for uh more details on the mental health part of the program right yes what we have in place now what we had contemplated in the last funding request and approved

144before we had to unprove unapprove it and what you know yes it it we've had um it doesn't have to be you know a full program evaluation at all but i just want to know what's out there where are they deployed essentially yeah i think that would be a really good strategy moving forward we uh we're looking at alternative funding sources for um for a for mental health counseling uh because as you can imagine we are um not in a position necessarily to fund anything out of certainly not out of this year's spending plan um and having said that um in in looking at those alternative funding sources if we are able to acquire funding uh to use through grants or some other way of doing it right now we've kind of shifted our posture

145away from saying we want to have someone centrally directing um you know that kind of work because with the covet 19 pandemic and the recession we really want to look at boots on the ground um not that we students don't haven't always had mental health needs and that's a priority it's just um i think that if we can get staff closer to the students at this time out in the community and out with their families that that would be a better strategy and then continue to have some of our staff just wear two hats to do that kind of supervision like dr king does and um kevin kerst and jay thomas so they there is oversight of our school counselors so we feel like we can we can keep that in place but if we

146were able to get funding we just want to have the staff most directly contacted with the students okay so i think we need to um tell dr king and his team when we would expect another update also maybe what the details we might need in the funding request and any information probably on the mental health aspect of this so any guidelines for him related to any three of those any one of those three items date funding request and mental health picture well i guess part of that is a question for you matt when do you need that input i mean i would say we certainly would have to have some input by november yeah i think that would be good um if we could that's that will fall in alignment with our funding request development

147and so we're pretty detailed with what we provide and um i feel like given the fact that we would not be spending the funding on the school resource officers next year i'm not going to take it for granted or make a complete assumption that that's funding we could just convert into school resource or school security officers excuse me because we we still aren't too sure about what our funding forecasts and our revenue projections are going to be for next school year however that's just what i'm thinking that we would be able to provide that because there are several functions that school resource officers helped us with like threat assessments that were really strong in terms of anti-racist work and also equity work to help protect students from being suspended out of school by using that

148process so there are some pieces that i think we really want to have as part of our program um so we're gonna we're gonna make a pitch to have it in the funding request and then we'll work through with the board to prioritize um i did have a meeting today with um jeff richardson to talk a little bit about the funding request season coming up and we'll be we'll be meeting in the future as a steering team to start laying out that process which will be given the fact that our our revenue projections aren't aren't great you know it'll be a somewhat streamlined process i can imagine okay any other questions or comments related to this so um we are agreed on the november report okay any other comments related to dr king's report i

149i would like to ask the rest of the board i'm this is my first year dealing with the budget um so i just i'm curious of what the appetite is to reallocate that funding for this year i really can't i i don't think legally we can what we'd have to do is ask the board of supervisors to reallocate the money and the board of supervisors is going to take that wow we've already funded the the police based upon that allocation so yes we'll reallocate it we'll take it away from you we'll give it to them ourselves i i don't think it's a situation where we can say hey look we're going to take the 265 and we're going to use it the way we want to spend it i think the board of supervisors will

150not take that well right they would have to make up the difference yeah yeah it's already been transferred so that's you're correct uh mr oberg that we would it would be a it would be re requesting a reappropriation from the board of supervisors from their funding back to us okay so does that satisfy your question mrs lee it does thank you okay all right um thanks dr king for uh your report tonight and we'll be looking to hear from you at latest by november right yes sir good to have you back nick yeah good to see you back thank you all right any other business by board members or our superintendent uh i wanted to give dr mclaughlin a chance to respond to the policy question from ms lee from earlier yeah i just wanted

151to let you know that we will um be getting a written response out to the board uh by the first of next week and we can bring that back to the uh to the next board meeting on the consent agenda for uh for board approval at that time thank you i have a few minor things that i think are just worth repeating real quick one from the consent agenda i'm still looking to see a box of the equity checklist and knowing that it's checked for each policy and signed off on um two and i think it's just i mean maybe other board members i don't know how you feel but i feel like we need to get this stuff before the day of the meeting because it is really hard to get all this information

152i can't even go back on the slides to check anything because i don't have access to the the powerpoint even during the presentation um and then um so those are the two negative things sorry about that uh feedback constructive criticism um and then the last thing is for our meetings and i don't know to use judy's words what the board appetite is for at our next meeting i would really appreciate if we um did a walk through of what it's the days are going to look like for parents um you know we heard a lot today about the teachers that's a good idea katrina yeah and i know that charlottesville did a mock thing and matt i've talked with you on this and i just want to see if other board members are aligned with

153getting some kind of walk through about what is it going to look like um i think that's important as one who's going to have to start monitoring when my child gets up in the morning i agree and then it would be a good value and i would say that's what we'd actually heard from i think at pre-agenda so that's the direction we were moving and i already have staff uh working on that for the next work session and debbie yeah i feel awkward even bringing it up except that i don't want to operate it's kind of like a little bit this is my first you know i have only done like two pre-agenda so it feels a little weird because i'm just coming up with topics that seem interesting to me but i don't know

154if there's a lot of interest in them so i guess i just wanted to put that on people's radars um you elected you katrina okay just you wait dave i'm taking that as a blank check okay so you are the conscience of the school board right no no any other items i also wanted to second i just wanted a second what she said about having to process all the information really quickly and not being able to go back and also for the public to be able to see um the presentations and process that as well so i i second that i i would want to see it earlier in the week okay okay we will expect staff then to work toward meeting um those expectations for us any other items from the uh board or

155from the superintendent okay i do have one other thing than seeing no others but during the past two or three months the members of the board have received a huge volume of emails as a result of the effects of the covet pandemic we received emails expressing opinions on how we should reopen the schools we received emails expressing opinions on how our students should be taught during a pandemic crisis throughout this period of receiving tons of emails board members followed our usual protocol of individually answering emails addressed to that board member directly when responding to emails each board member aims to communicate in a timely professional and courteous way also board members who use social media aim to use that platform in a way that it exhibits professionalism when that communication might be linked to the

156board's activities during this period and which a vast amount of emails have been exchanged if any parent or community member received communications either directly or indirectly that failed to conform to expectations of professionalism on behalf of our board i sincerely apologize also on behalf of the board i express our regrets to any parent or family who were offended by any response that they may have received so any other comments from any other board members regarding anything graham i would like to publicly say that you have done an amazing job with emails um and i appreciate the personalized responses that you have provided people with you're doing a much better job than i'm doing responding to even just the ones addressed to me and matt that same um same thing goes for you matt i've really

157appreciated reading your responses to people they've been helpful to me so thank you guys it's incredibly difficult time and you are both doing a good job in your responsiveness thank you thank you very much katrina we uh we we've uh we will get the board uh information earlier um we i think we had tried to work really hard to get our presentations put up by monday evening it's been a struggle um this summer and uh but we will get back to that protocol and i'm sorry i do not like to disappoint the board members as far as having information that you need in a more timely fashion so we will work on that as a team and support each other and make that happen okay so if nothing else thanks to all of the staff

158who presented reports tonight thanks to our public you have listened in and good night to all of you and have a good night bye bye everyone bye nice job graham thank you very much matt