001now come to order it is so nice to see you standing on the walls and all the seats are filled and and I am just so happy to see you as all the board members and our superintendent this evening so we're going to get started with our meeting now with um Madam chair I move that we uh return to open session and adopt certification of closed session second it has been motion and moved in second that we adjourn to close session and um open session adopt certification of closed session all those in favor use the usual sign I I hearing no hearing no nay we are now in Open Session certification of closed session whereas the Dey County school board has convened a closed session on this date pursuant to an affirmative recorded vote and
002in accordance with the provisions of the Virginia Freedom of Information Act and whereas paragraph 2.2 3712 of the code of Virginia requires a certification by this school board that such closed meeting was conducted in Conformity with Virginia law n therefore be it resolved that the Dey County School Board hereby certifies that to the best of each member's knowledge only such business matters as were identified in the motion convening the closed meeting were heard discussed or considered by the school board Dr Elaine Pearson District 1 I certifi Dwayne Walker District Two I certify Barbara Pitman District three I certify Mary Benjamin District Four I certified Jason Brown the Second District 5 I certified Madam chair all certified thank you I will now invite you to participate in the Pledge of Allegiance with three outstanding students from
003Southerland States of America and to the for it stands one nation God indivisible andice all thank you Madam Secretary are there any any amendments to the agenda Madame chair we need to amend the agenda to include under agenda item 2.02 real estate so we adjourn to close session for personnel and real estate I believe it's 1. 1.02 I'm sorry madam chair I move that we accept no excuse me I move that we amend the agenda as presented second it has been moved and second that we um follow the agenda as amended all of those in favor use the usual sign I I have it so we're now ready for our recognitions do we need to do an adoption of the agenda now that we've amended it I think I do okay okay just be a
004little patience with us this is technology in action s got it right here if you go back out you can find it on meeting was down there okay so we'll have um Dr Brandy Walker's gonna the principal of Southerland Elementary School um who will come to us this evening and Sh and Miss Bartlet and Miss Bartlett assistant principal who will come to us tonight and share some highlights of southernland elementary school right so I'm Dr Walker and this is Miss Bartlett and we're the admin team at Southerland and we are so excited we have some students tonight that are going to stand up and tell you why they're lucky to be a Scotty and they wrote it on their own we typed it but they came up with it so [Music] my name is Alani
005Henderson why are you I'm luy to be a Scotty because my teacher helps me do my site work where do you like to go to gym awesome my name is Cody K and I'm lucky to be a Scotty because the teachers are nice and most of the students are nice and kind they want to be friends with everybody I also love the special stuff we do at Southerland like planting trades student concerts and family events every student gets a free book out of the book machine for their birthday also when you make good grades you get to do fun stuff for your hard work we get to do lots of things that make learning fun I am also lucky because my mom teaches at southernland and I get to see her a lot there are
006lots of reasons why I'm lucky to be a Scotty I'm so happy to be a Scott to be at [Applause] Southerland my name is Nala andaba and I am lucky to be a Scotty because I like my teachers and my friends I like to read and I like to work hard um on my computers and I like the Gen my name is Kendall Payne and I am lucky to be a Scotty because all the teachers boost our confidence and they they help us when we're [Applause] emotional thank you darl my name is Josiah Hirsch and I'm lucky to be a Scotty because I can get an opportunity to win a bike or get cool stuff from the fundraiser think of a school with it own money you're lucky because you can buy stuff with this
007fake money if you're lucky you can say the Pledge of Allegiance you can even become a member of the National Honor Society I'm waiting for my decision on my application now is so awesome my name is jayen bald and I'm lucky to a Scotty because I am nice to people and people are nice to me I love my school and my teacher my name is Noah Miller and I'm lucky to be a Scotty because I'm a student at southernland I have been able to perfect my writing and become a published author and learn cool stuff like box multiplication and division and I also have my book with me right now [Applause] my name is Sheamus Barnes I am and I am lucky to be a Scotty because I have a sharp mind because I keep
008learning for my teachers and I keep reading books I have been able to learn so much and I get smarter every year my name is Gab and I'm luy to be a Scotty because everybody there is sweet and kind I love southernland Elementary every morning you'll hear a good morning and you'll see a smile on everybody's face no matter what kind of day you're having all the teachers are caring supportive when I first started coming to s in second grade I struggled a lot especially in reading but they kept encouraging me and helping me I've come a long way not only in my grades but they've also helped me gain confidence in myself they also make learning fun and I've never had so much fun learning this will be my last year at cin and
009I will miss it very much that's why I have been so lucky to be a Scotty my name is Scarlet Samuels and I'm lucky to be a Scotty because of all the teachers and my friends the teachers help me learn new skills and my friends make me laugh and are fun to be around my name is Savannah parau and I'm lucky to be a Scotty because I get to learn new things like multiplying decimals and I get to meet new people and make lots of friends and I have a great principal counselors and teachers [Applause] thank you all I hope you enjoyed hearing from some of our students and Noah is actually going to participate in our career day since he now has a career oh my go hello everyone hello today we would like
010to recognize coach Rogerson and the DHS girls wrestling team the team had a great season and what a great way to celebrate women's History Month than none other than to have Coach Rogerson to come up and share with us most recently what these young ladies have been accomplishing coach Rogerson right all right and while they all get up here um it's a really good problem for a coach to have uh a lot of good stuff to cram down and it takes full amount of time so uh if it goes too long one of yall just throw something at me and I think I'll I'll do it then um but good afternoon everyone uh we're pleased be back even bigger stronger even closer team than we were here last year uh first we'd like to thank
011each and every one of you um all of you all of you uh who supported our girls in our wrestling program uh the way that you have every like comment share donation ticket sale um good word and praise has all led to not only our continued growth as a team and interest in what we do but also the outstanding success that they've had so uh as a team this year our girls have made a habit of uh finishing in the top three of everything we've done at the very least um including the two that we went to outside of Virginia winning four total including two in the largest in the state Orange County girls open which is that one right there um in our Zone Regional Tournament our state state qualifier we won that one
012as well uh every possible individual metric of scoring in our sport um against our competition we've come out on top for every point that our competition scored we scored another point in a half um it's a special year for a lot of reasons for us uh one of the first first ones is we graduated our first group of seniors um from the original team Langston paron Sydney Ogburn and Amanda Walker and we had a first year wrestler senior uh NAA trailer um she uh came to us all they ad thought it looked fun and Ken went and qualify for the state tournament uh so um but two ladies behind me here consistently been at the top of that winning for us um both Sydney aurn and Amanda Walker uh when we started this girls team
013Sydney Ogburn was coming off for freshman year wrestling boys in the varsity lineup and um very understandably was considering leaving the sport at the conclusion of that season as most girls in that position did at the time uh but when it was announced that girls wrestling was an emerging sport I went to her telling her we're making a team and it needs you to lead it will you come back and still to this day I don't think I've had a kid say yes to something as quickly as that question um um and uh without her it is very difficult to say where this team would be here today um she finishes her career as a three-year Captain holding four school records um girls wins in a career with 88 wins in a season with 29
014pens in a career with 60 and pens in a season with 26 um she's a three-time state Placer a onetime finalist and a onetime runner up she has a 3.6 GPA and we couldn't be more proud of her [Applause] um and to explain more of the wrestling terms pins is kind of the ultimate win in our sport so think of a pin as a home run uh yeah that her on her back Sydney is pinning that girl there that's what we're trying to do if you're on top we're in a good place um uh next is uh Amanda Walker and uh she joined our team as a unique member being the only um one of the original group who I actively did not recruit not meaning I saw her didn't want her but uh she
015wasn't one of my students um and she again quite literally like n she saw the ad thought it looked fun and um then she showed up on time every day and ready every day for three years um for the next three years she'd continue do doing all those things as a first year wrestler she placed fourth in the state as a state finalist in a runner up or junior year this year she did something no other wrestler and did what history has done and that is she pinned her way through the state tournament um of the 32 total possible minutes of wrestling for her in that tournament it only took her 11 minutes of wrestling to become our girl's first vhsl state champion and again pinning someone in like pinning everyone in the tournament that's
016the equivalent of a perfect game in baseball or a perfect passer ra in uh in football it doesn't happen a lot um and it's and it's never happened for us either until now uh she's a school of second state wrestling title uh third individual girls State title in any sport and um she has a 4.6 7 GPA I get that right okay than and uh she'll continue her education and wrestling in the fall and I'll let her tell you guys when she's feels the appropriate time where that's going to be at but uh she has not an argu set a standard for our team on the mat in the classroom and in character and she'll be sorely missed along with Sydney again we're truly blessed to have all of you because after three years of
017traveling competing across five different states you can ask all these girls um there aren't many places that support their girls wrestling program like like here and um thank you uh we have a place for all girls we have cheerleaders softball players volleyball players soccer players FFA FBA uh list keeps going um but we turn away no one and we built this together with girls who have no experience at all and we're proud to keep doing that um together thank you [Applause] before we end recognitions um we would be remiss if we didn't remind everyone to come out to support the Early Learning fair that will take place this Saturday at 9:00 a.m. at deny High School this is a perfect time for our community to register um students for kindergarten for prek to meet um
018our school officials as well there will be plenty of community vendors out a lot of fun and excitement and it will be perfect weather on Saturday so we hope the community will come out and support our early learning Fair thank you thank [Applause] you are there any parents and other teachers from southernland or din withy High School who are here to support their children as students will you please stand up stand up [Applause] we we are so glad to have you and so proud that you trust your children with us each day and um you are important and your children are very important to us and we just thank you and we appreciate you Dr Wes would you have something you would like to say no I would Echo what um Miss Benjamin just said
019that we know you have a lot of choices when it comes to education and we appreciate the fact that you choose to to send your children here and um and share them with us because they're they're they're quite unique so thank you all so very much now we're going to take a break and you may go out and may take some pictures and do some fun things with your children thank you again for coming they're so cute e e e meeting how cool was that to have a celebrity Among Us yes that was really great we're going to continue with our meeting now close session report um chair I move to approve the Personnel list as presented second it has been moved in second that the Personnel list be approved as presented all those in
020favor use the usual sign I the Personnel list has been approved expenditure reports Madam chair I move that we approve the expenditure reports as presented second it has been moved in second that the expenditure reports will be accepted as presented all of those in favor use the usual sign I I have it Madam chair I move that we approve the minutes from February 25th 2025 that's second it has been moved in second that the minutes from febru feary 25th 2025 meeting be accepted all of those in favor use the usual sign as have it all right board matters Mr good afternoon good afternoon I have three trips today the first one is the Scholastic pole team would like to take a trip to Washington DC uh date of the trip will be April 19th Miss
021Ministry has set tours exhibit it's uh you know full day in Washington 7:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. uh we'll take our bus about 16 to 17 kids two to eight adults going depending on parent participation are there any question any questions about this Galax Gala Bowl trip I move that we approve the Scholastic Bowl field trip second it has been moved in second that we accept approve the Scholastic bow Team field trip all of those in favor I I I it's approved all right our second trip is our FBLA trip to Reston Virginia uh is an overnight trip um and we have a few kids competing in this leadership conference uh the sponsors are going miss Roselle and Miss niens we're working out Transportation I'm not sure if it's going to be Bost or car
022um Mr Roselle requested a bus but we're it's in the talks put it that way um and it's overnight fourth and fifth over spring break so no classes missed anything like that any questions about this trip and they have taken this trip before yes they anytime that there's a competition we it's a qualifier we do qualifiers this is I believe this is a state uh conference or a state conf competition so we're higher up in the U end of the division here Madam chair I move that we approve the F field trip second it has been moved in second that the FBLA field trip be approved all those in favor use the usual sign eyes eyes have it all right and our last one is the FFA spring Leadership Conference uh being held near Smith
023Mountain Lake there's also the teachers conference going on at the same time with uh Miss bishop and Mr Davis attending that we have right now I believe two students that can possibly go uh one is definitely going it's an overnight trip um and looking for approval there miss miss Bishop Mr Davis they'll be there with the conference so they'll be there with to take care of the kids along with uh FFA from the state of Virginia Mr Davis will will drive a uh activity bus or car van are there any questions about the FFA trip Madam chair I we approve thep second it has been moved in second that we approve the FFA field trip for the spring Leadership Conference all of those in favor use the usual sign eyes have it all right thank
024you I hope you feel better Miss Pitman thank you she's smiling thank you Mr to I appreciate that now Dr Clay is going to come forward and talk to us about the calendars for the upcoming school year and Beyond thank you always pleasure um to stand before you and so this uh this afternoon I am presenting the drafts of the 2526 and 2627 academic calendars so first I would just like to say you there there's a committee that comes together for this and I would like to thank our committee members um so natana Robinson Williams Chris Wells Jen MCM Chelsea Meredith Jenny Walters Meredith Torres Kristen buus Karissa Mahorn Leanne Adams Dr Tory Walker Stephanie Bailey and Anna Ferrar it's not easy always to do committee work and it's something kind of after school when
025you're tired that you have to come and do and so we do appreciate their help with this um so just an overview uh first the 2425 weather makeup days um I will speak to that in just a moment uh I've already spoken to the calendar committee and that we're going to be showing you two academic years worth of calendars uh and then we're going to talk about considerations of the committee so with weather makeup days I don't have a slide for this but I know it's been a question um this year as you if you remember we only built in five days worth of hours so we count six instructional hours in each day so 30 hours are built in and um snow liked us this year right so we had several um snow days
026where we had to miss for weather and because of that we went over our bank time and when you do that because of the Virginia code that says you have to either go 180 days or 990 instructional hours we did have to make up some time um so we have um made February 17th March 3rd March 21st and April 21st um makeup days that has been communicated to staff and families and again that is because we went over our bank time the middle school was in a a unique situation because on top of the hours that we missed for weather because of their boiler fire they actually missed three additional days so 18 extra hours and so for the Middle School specifically uh we have not made up those 18 hours so that is where
027we have submitted what the state calls a weather waiver there are very specific guidelines around a weather waiver one of those being you must exhaust is what their wording is all means of making up time uh and you have to be able to prove that and so we have shown where we're making up time with the weather days so we have submitted that waiver in our waiting a response okay so the calendar committee met beginning in October there's a representative from each school plus division level Representatives uh the representatives acquire feedback from the school staff and ensure that we're meeting instructional time again that's 140 clock hours for credit classes and 990 hours for all non credit classes so there were several iterations of each Year's calendar and with the members do take the draft
028back to the school get feedback answer any questions those staff uh may have bring feedback back to the committee for consideration so a breakdown of the 2526 school year calendar and basically you can see how the nine weeks are broken down how many days are in each nine weeks weeks and at the bottom you can see our total number of days technically is 175 when you look at the calendar we have added two early dismissal days which we're counting in the 175 but because we go with hours we cannot count six hours for those days so we can only count three instructional hours for those days so the total number of instructional hours in this first calendar is 1044 and that gives us 54 Bank hours which is the equivalent of nine days and remember
029when we have um when we come to school late those 2hour delay days or leave early we have to subtract those hours um from our instructional hours and uh board members you have an actual physical copy of of this but this is just kind of a snapshot of that first draft uh where you can see um there's a Code or a key at the bottom where the yellow pieces are actual holidays where all offices are closed purple are professional development days and there's just different symbols there that can help you tell kind of different um pieces of the calendar the breakdown for the 26 27 school year again you can see where the nine weeks fall beginning and ending how many days and for a total again this calendar also has two early release days
030and I I can speak to that in just a moment where we're counting those in the total days but we can only count three hours for that time but this 2627 calendar does give us 1,50 hours which I will say historically is the norm okay that we Tred to build in 60 Bank hours which is 10 days um of Bank time and again you have that draft in front of you um so one thing I will speak to on the on both drafts as you can see there are two half days that are built in and I would like to talk about why uh we decided to do that you know Transportation on those early release days can be a struggle but there was a member of Transportation on our committee uh one of the
031considerations of the team was you know teachers asked for extra time like the one thing we hear from staff is we just need more time um time for planning time for work days and with a calendar like everybody can't have everything right so the committee had to decide you know how can we build a little extra time in um because to build time in you've got to take away from something right so one of the things we talked about was Thanksgiving break we could take the Monday and Tuesday away to build extra work dayss in but the committee did not want to do that because you know that's kind of one of the perks is we we like our teachers like staff like having that week off um so what we were able to do
032is take away a professional development day in both calendars and build an early release day in um so you will see one of the early release days is in January um on the 9th which is also the end of the nine weeks so it gives teachers a half day workday and then they have a full work day that following Monday so it bu we're able to build a little extra time in there we did the same thing at the end of the N at the end of the year um in May you will see another one of those days on both calendars um which is also the end of the nine weeks it's the last day of school it will be early release and it builds some hours of teacher work time that should be
033uninterrupted by meetings and all those things true teacher work time okay uh other considerations as the norm has been new teachers return two days prior um to other teachers to participate in the DCPS new teacher Academy which is Led um by Miss spers and many of her team members uh 10mon teachers return two weeks prior to students and you can kind of see a breakdown we have ID CPS we do a lot of professional learning on those days it provides time for building based professional development or principles to have meetings uh with their staff common planning should be built into that that teachers have time to work in classrooms both calendars do have one Flex day built in which was an Ask of some teachers and what that means is that Monday when they should
034return like for the 25 26 school year it's August 4th uh if they work through their principal and the building is ready and they come in one day in July to work on their rooms which a lot of teachers do that they want to get in those rooms and get it ready for students get it decorated get it organized um so teachers many of them will come in July regardless of a flex day but if they work with principles and do that they wouldn't have to come on the 4th they would come back for opening meetings on the 5th and then both calendars have two professional development days built in again our goal is just a continuous cycle of professional development we had more this year because of new standards Virginia literacy act next year
035we just have two days built in any um questions on the calendars the recommendation this afternoon is that they are approved um both years and I will say other uh localities have not put out the 26 27 calendar draft yet as far as 2526 we've seen uh Chesterfields Colonial Heights Prince George we are in alignment with those with all the big breaks so Thanksgiving Spring Break um winter break things of that nature we are in alignment with that there may be a few single days that we don't align but overall we do align uh with many of the region one calendars any questions no I guess um Dr uh clay we have enough time built in for our snow that's unpredictable we do this year yes ma'am we we we went back to the committee
036just to say we we need to build in some more Bank time you know it's easier to give people a day than to take a day back was the lesson learned this year and this year was just unique with Virginia literacy act new standards in English new standards in math we just wanted to make sure we were giving staff the professional learning time they needed they're doing letters we're providing time on professional development days for them to do their letters training canvas modules it was a unique year but we have built in more time for the next two years yes ma'am Dr I have I have a question yes um so could you ask could we ask the committee to kind of look ahead and perhaps if we don't use that extra time what should
037our Focus be or on you know how to to give back any of that time down spring what Target days or things that we might be looking at and then again we might have just as much snow but just in case we don't right you never know it's so unpredictable yes Miss Pitman so I will say the committee talked about that a little bit um you know what we said was we don't always get back all the bank hours right we have not historically done that remember 990 is the minimum okay but things that we talked about that staff normally ask uh the Monday after Easter the Friday before Memorial Day president stay where we can those were the three the main ones that we talked about especially the Monday after Easter Friday before Memorial
038Day um this year we had those things built in then we had to kind of pull back so absolutely um as we did two year the two years prior to this year um I did come before the board when we were not using Bank time to just say we would like to provide a wellness day for staff and students and so we will certainly do that um if we do not have weather that causes us to close next year yes thank you thank you Pitman yes ma'am and I think that's um that's a good way to use those hours again it's easier to give than to take away absolutely yes are there any other questions for Dr Clay just have one small question sure remind us of the number of people that are on the
039calendar committee sure let me look at my notes again Mr Brown so I believe it's 13 of us it's one representative from each school so every Elementary School Middle and High uh Miss Robinson Williams and I serve on that committee as leads then we have central office staff Mr Wells serves to represent Human Resources just to make sure we're going by contracted time we're not you know making anyone work over their contracted days Miss MCM serves on that to just think about testing and making sure that we're breaking down nine weeks and semesters and and that testing is possible uh and then this year we added um an extra like a principal an elementary principal Miss Adams is an exra member we added Miss Mahorn from Transportation because we just wanted to make sure if
040we considered early release dayses and things of that nature um that she was a part of that as well Dr Walker served as a secondary principal when you said this a representative for each school um I'm not sure if you mentioned it already are they teachers are they administrative staff they are teachers the only um School this year that did not have a teacher was the middle school so Dr Walker served as the representative for the Middle School this year but yes the other six schools they are teachers MH and the way that works just to kind of explain is we kind of start with a a draft you know based on we looked at other counties for the 25 26 and then for 26 27 kind of model that off of what we saw
041other counties doing for 25 26 we start with that we talk about the requirements of code we talk about questions that like Dr Weston gets and superintendent advisory how do we build in um you know more time for teachers is a 4-day work week possible we came up with that it was not um but if anyone has feedback on how to do that and get in 990 hours we're we're open to that feedback and then we asked the the teachers or the committee members to go back to their school we asked them to get in front of staff at a faculty meeting talk about the considerations present the draft and then ask for feed back from teachers the feedback doesn't have to have a name with it right uh Miss Robinson Williams makes a Google
042form for the committee members to put that feedback in and then we look at that feedback at the next meeting right and we say okay what kinds of things can we change what makes sense and we we change a few things and then they go back and do the same thing again take this back to your school get more feed back and that's um kind of how we get to the final drafts thank you yes sir are there any other questions Madam chair I move that we approve 2025 2026 and 2026 2027 calendars as presented second it has been moved and second that we approve the academic calendars um coming from Dr Clay um all those in favor as I thank you sir so much thank you Madam Secretary is there any new business no
043new business so now we're going to move um around a little bit superintendent matters we come um we're going to do six move 603 to 601 the Improvement Association yeah good evening good even Madam chair Vice chair and to the board members I am Kesha Kelly has start director with the Improvement Association I would like to thank you for your continuous dedication and support on behalf of our board and our policy counsel and our executive director and staff thank you for your continuous uh dedication and support thank you for allowing us to reschedule for this month I truly do appreciate it um I am not going to do the report on this uh month uh we have Miss Tracy maholic our program manager that is going to do uh the report but we do know
044that we missed appreciation month but we dare not come showing our appreciation so I am going to give you some uh small tokens of appreciation and then miss mahalik will come back up uh to give you our report for fall thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you good evening I'm Tracy mahalik program manager for the Improvement Association Head Start um in Den wiy this year we are serving 49 students in four classrooms we have four teachers four teaching assistants and six support staff so far we have conducted 119 home visits 49 parent teacher conferences two field trips and we've held one Community event um I will mention we do have another Community event um that will be happening in May um we have assistant families with Comprehensive Services some of those being
045food um utility and rental assistance for our fall outcomes we use teaching strategies gold which aligns with our curriculum that we use creative curriculum in social emotional excuse me because the writing is super small we have 42.9 % of our students that came in in the fall below um we have I believe that says 57.6 students in the me that were Meeting those goals in social emotional support and we had 61% of our students that exceeded those goals in physical we had Benchmark we had 57.06 that were meeting The Benchmark and 9.2 students that exceed it in language 38.6 5 below 58.9 meeting and 2.45 exceeding in our cognitive we had 5031 students that were below 49.8 in meeting and 61 that exceed it literacy 63.8% of our students were below 34.97 meaning and 1.23
046that exceeded and then in math we had 75% about 75% that were below about 24% that met and 61 that exceeded we will will continue um we um report our outcomes during the fall the winter and again in the spring for class we obser have an external and an internal Observer to come in and observe our classrooms and things that they're looking for are that emotional support classroom organization instructional support they're looking for positive interactions between our teachers and the students in emotional support we scored in the 5.69 range classroom organization 4.88 and an instructional support 2.67 and then we also use the um Virginia literacy and language excuse me language and literacy screener also known as vows formerly Pals um and so these are um the screener that we use some of you may
047be familiar um for like alphabet knowledge letter sounds the ability to play with those letters and those sounds in the fall our four-year-olds scored in the 46.5 n% were in the beginning range 44.3 2 in the growing range and 9.09% in the strong range and SE syllable segmenting we had 5.68 in the beginning range 23.8% in the growing range and 70. 45% in the strong range letter sounds 84.9% we in the growing range 12.5% in the growing excuse me beginning range 85 4% 12.5 in growing and 3.41 in strong in our Beginning Sounds 67.0 5 in beginning 11.36 in the growing range and 21.59 per in the strong range with letter names we had 58.4 4% in the beginning range 27.27% in the beginning range 6.41 and growing and 5.13 in the strong range still
048our threes in syllable SE segmenting we had 32.0 5 and beginning we had 12.82% in the strong range in Beginning Sounds matching we had 64.1% in the beginning range about 29 a 12% in the growing range and a little over 6% the strong some of the activities that um we have participated in that encourage our family and child engagement is the home visits that's where our family service staff meet with the parents to set up family goals um and then our teachers also meet with the families to set up goals for their child um we encourage our parents to attend parent Center activities some of those have been this year financial literacy um getting phys physically fit and focusing on those physicals and dental exams um we encourage parents to help at the school to
049participate in their parent teacher conferences and to attend um the classroom to volunteer help teachers lead activities um some of those examples have been um kite day and then we'd just like to thank everyone here at the school board Dr Weston our parents volunte other community leaders for your continued support I will also like to announce that headart will be celebrating 60 years of existence uh as you know headart began in uh 1965 up under President Lyon B Johnson uh to help fight the war on poverty I know that y'all have been helping us fight that War uh despite what may be happening in politics we are still still going to fight that war for another 60 years to come especially if I have anything to do as a head start director with it uh
050but we will be doing uh different activities to celebrate 60 years of course one of which would be our transition ceremony we're going to do it a little different this year so we will be in uh constant communication through email and we will send an invite to that um transition ceremony and it's Mr Tyler so he may ask for one of y'all to be on the agenda so be on the lookout for that uh also I would like to say that we are um currently accepting applications for the upcoming school year for our three and four year olds and we will be meeting with you all to discuss next school year again thank you all for everything that you do for us it is truly appreciated thank you thank you thank you um so you
051know that we went through the transportation study some time ago um which uncovered a it was an effort to for us to figure out a way to work more efficiently and our transportation department I really applaud Mr Walters for um really disaggregating that information and trying to tackle some of our biggest challenges when it comes to Transportation so tonight he's going to come and talk to you about a proposal about one way that we might be able to address our late bus situation U thank you good afternoon board um I wanted to come before you this uh this afternoon to talk to you a little bit about um some issues that we're having operationally Dy County I don't think it's any surprise uh these issues won't come to as any surprise to anyone um I
052do want to uh make sure that everybody understands that it's very clear that this is a um informational session that I'm I'm looking for discussion I wanted to bring it before you so we can I can present this publicly but also so you can discuss it publicly should the need be there uh there my recommendation today is just to uh take this as an informational session and use it as uh Catalyst to improve the operations of D County schools which is what our ultimate goal is um am I doing this Bonnie okay which button do I push to do it thank you me every time okay um I think U again these shouldn't come as a surprise but we have uh some identified operational problems at Dy County Schools um right now uh our on
053average uh we have 15% of our buses are late each day um that's approximately 77 secondary students uh about 3.5% of our population at the secondary schools that's Middle School and High School uh and approximately 98 elementary students which is is about 4.9% across the board um that obviously leads to community frustration it would lead to frustration in my household when my children were small um but also um it's important to note that this is not it's it's it's out there in in the in the public that this that we have a bus driver shortage that's not actually necessarily 100% true we have 100% of our contracted drivers right now are filled so every contract that we offer is filled the problem is it's very difficult to get substitute bus drivers um when you know
054everybody has life going on as Dr Weston always says and people miss work it's it's part of life um and because of that we have when drivers are out it's very difficult to fill those slots um most people who are driving buses are looking to be contracted you know and for benefits and you know full-time pay and things of that nature so it's difficult to have people fill in we do have some fill-ins and I'm we're very grateful for them but unfortunately most days we have uh less fill-ins than we do absences so um it's also important uh to know that on average we're missing 40 minutes of instructional time per day that's 9.52% of our day that we're missing uh these students above that we talked about um it also limits these late buses
055limit extracurricular and field trip transportation right now uh we have to elementary schools cannot leave till 9:00 a.m. because they have to finish all the routes and get everybody to school before they can leave on a field trip and then in order to not have late buses because these these same drivers are driving secondary routes they have to be back by 2:00 so you can imagine if we're trying to take a one of our required field trips to Jamestown leaving at 9: and being backed by two is very difficult um it's difficult to do that to go to Pamplin Park much less out of town so um I wanted to make make sure that we understand the other problem that I that I see that I hear a lot about is the AM and PM
056congestion on Courthouse Road between the Middle School and the high school um I think we work very hard to do that but honestly the schools were built in different times different errors and the egress Ingress patterns between the two schools are just different uh one school the E Ingress and egress was built in 1965 the other school 2008 things have changed dramatically in those times so those are our problems operationally I don't think that was a secret I think it's very clear um so I came up with and and I worked with uh cesso which is the uh Center for Effective School operations who did our transportation study and we came up with some potential fixes to our problems uh the first um the f I forgot to sorry the first is to hire 5
057to 10 additional contracted drivers now that sounds great and it it may work perfectly uh it's it's a bit cost prohibitive um when you look at the the amount that would cost you know up to $290,000 for 10 additional drivers I mean that that's just an average it could be more it could be a little less based on the drivers we hire their experience rate um the other is to further consolidate our special Transportation routes right now we consolidate a lot of our routes that go out of out a district uh like for instance we'll drop off at one school then take the kids to another school and drop off and take you know to a third school and then when we pick them up we'll pick them up at all three schools what that
058does is it makes those routes very long so we have some students who are on the bus a long time just based on sheer uh distance and routes that's also a bit C cost prohibitive to combine those because we'd have to buy three additional 14 passenger buses and hire three additional staff so we'd be looking at approximately $384,000 to do that um the last uh thing that ceso recommended was uh considering restructuring the Bell schedules um this would did I do that okay this would optimize current staff and deployment bus utilization one thing that that that cesso did a study on was our bus utilization right now we hover around 50 to 60% utilization range now for rural County it's not awful but it can be much better what that means is if you have
059a 55 passenger bus some buses have 25 kids on it for a route now you think about some of these areas in dewoody County where it's not practical to put 55 kids on a bus because there's not 55 kids out there in that area but we can do better on the bus utilization um we also are looking to minimize instructional time and decrease route lengths and times uh our longest route right now is over hour it's about an hour and 10 minutes our goal is to get our routes to 45 minutes that's about the max amount of time we'd like for for children to be on the bus and that's a long time but I think that's that's doable our current bell schedule at deny County Schools you know deny High School 735 to 2:15
060the Middle School 735 to 215 and if you've ever been there at the changeover you know they get out at the same time because they do one school and they drive across through the other school and then Elementary 8:35 to 3:30 so we have 40 secondary routes that drop off at the high school as early in the middle school as early as 710 and then they have to turn around and also drop off after doing their Elementry route by 8:15 that becomes very difficult for some of our drive for some of our routes and our drivers especially our longer ones in mcken uh and the Church Road area with Midway and Sunnyside so pros and cons of our current schedule um the pros are standard start times that that's helpful to parents that's helpful to
061the community uh DHS and DMS follow the same block schedule that's very helpful for scheduling so that eighth graders can take classes across the street uh Community fil familiarity with our schedules and child care Arrangements all of those things are Pros because right now they're in place and people are adjusted to that some cons is we we it's very difficult for us to uh to uh adjust when we have absent drivers um we have lot significant loss of instructional time as you saw in the previous slide but also and this is you know something that's kind of near dear to me coming from the activities athletic background is we're limiting what these extracurricular and athletic trips can do um unfortunately just based on drivers and based on getting kids to school sometimes that's about all
062we can do and we're having to to sacrifice some of the enrichment activities that these students deserve um but also the traffic congestion I hear a lot about that and um we want to make sure that we can we can try to fix that if we can so with all that said why should we consider and again I want to emphasize the word consider because obviously I'm bringing this to you for consideration uh at a later date but I wanted that you to have this information so that you can talk about this to uh your constituents and so that we can talk about this as a community um reduction of late buses each day um I've talked to several schools that have gone to staggered bus times sever school systems uh some like us some
063not like us some City some rural um and most of them went from in excess of 15 we're at 15 but most are at 25 to 30 to less than 1% of their buses late each day um increased instructional time for students which obviously we're all interested in that we want to get these kids in school for as long as we possibly can each day especially given the weather patterns and other things that come up uh reduced AM and PM traffic on Courthouse Road a response to an enrollment study okay we've done an enrollment study so we have a good idea of what areas of our our County are growing and what areas are not growing and and we want to respond to that we want to make sure that we can uh successfully utilize
064our buses in the more crowded areas and in the more rural areas but also we have less limitations on the extracurricular and activities and field trips so that we can provide these enrichment uh activities to our students so they can go to Jamestown and spend the whole day there eat lunch and not have to worry about being back by 2 o'clock things of that nature you know that that right now we're sacrificing and also and and obviously we want to optimize our resource utiliz a we want to make sure that we are using our buses and our drivers as as well as we can possibly use them to transport these students and and I do want to add our bus drivers work very hard um it this is not from lack of effort on anybody's
065part this is just lack of resources um we have some drivers that do three routes a day so you think about that that's three routes in the morning three routes in the afternoon and we have some that drive their routes and then work all day doing the inner routes and then do a route in the afternoon so it's it's it's a tough job and if you can imagine how how tough being a bus driver is I I went and I looked at some of our surrounding localities and I looked at their belt schedules and I just put this for informational um it's I realize now looking at it it looks like a rainbow but um what I did was I did each School Chesterfield in blue Handover and red hrio and green Caroline and purple
066I use Caroline County because believe it or not they're very similar to us they're a rural County that's kind of an outlier uh with about the same amount of students with about the same amount of schools um and I don't I I won't read it to you you can see their their tardy bells and their dismissal times um and you can see that Chesterfield does stagger uh Hanover staggers their Elementary a little bit hrio staggers and um Caroline does not stagger they have five elementary schools and they keep them all on the same similar to what we do secondary and this is where the money's made when you're talking about um trying to make sure that you can get kids to school on time because secondary you have high school and middle school that have
067to complete a route before they get back for Elementary so if you look Chesterfield County Schools they have an hour stagger between their middle schools and high schools now they have some specialty schools that are a little different but they're much larger County uh Handover does not stagger they're 845 to 345 no matter what uh hrio staggers about 25 minutes little smaller a lot of City routes so not as big of stagger needed in Caroline County Schools does not stagger now the reason I put Handover and Caroline because you would say Well Mr Walters they're doing exactly what you're doing they also have a huge late bus problem uh on March 7th uh Handover high school or Handover County had uh 31 late buses on the middle school high school level they they post it
068on their website I spoke to some people who used to work with me here that work in Carolina now they have four to five high school late buses per day so they're having the same issues we are which obviously that um that contributes to it is they don't stagger um so I wanted to to present this to you as a discussion this is certainly not anything in stone this is the starting off point as I said we're we're trying to get going with fixing a problem um if we have a problem and we don't do anything different we're going to have the same problem um so this is a start off point and and there may be a thousand other things and that's why we want to talk to the community and see what these
069what what are some other options what are some other things um you know I say it a lot and it doesn't really mean much but it resonates with me you know we we want it to be right I don't have to be right we just want the situation to be right um so I propose in that we have that hour stagger between high school and middle school um that gives them a chance to do the high school route get back and do the longer Elementary routes and then the Elementary uh the excuse me the Middle School can do their route and get back and do the shorter Elementary routes so Elementary a which is Midway Southside and sunyside which is a much higher square mileage uh they would be able to have a little more
070time to do those routes Elementary B which is Southerland inity Elementary which is a much lower square mileage they wouldn't need quite as much time time um and then I put there at the bottom uh the 20 DHS and DMS and the routes what time they' be dropping off at the earliest and the time that they would have to get back pros and cons obviously there's both um Pros we'd increased the time between secondary and Elementary which seems to be the difference when you talk about uh staggered and you talk about late buses um DHS and DMS would split their routes therefore making them smaller and less crowded uh also you don't have such a wide variance between age groups on the bus at the same time um there would be more filling flexibility for
071our absent drivers and our abs and Driver coverage would go up and again we're anticipating 99% of our our late buses being filled uh we did take the Stagger uh schedule and apply it to 20 of our days where we had late buses last this year so far and we would not have had a late bus e any of those days um earlier extracurricular trip departure time so now when we when our cross team needs to be in Chesterfield at 3:30 they can be there at 3:30 because we don't have to we're not limited to them leaving at 4: um and then later field trip times which means they can spend the a proper amount of time on these field trips and make sure they get the full enrichment the cons obviously the biggest con
072is the community adjustment anytime you change things on parents I'm a parent myself I know it throws people's world into a scatter so we wanted to talk about this early so that we can get other options and we can make sure that we can give people plenty of time to make adjustment should that be necessary uh 25 to 40 minutes later start and dismissal for some elementary schools okay um varsity practice start times and JV practice start times may need to be adjusted for eighth graders who participate in some high school sports um and I put under there and I put in a different because I wanted to make sure that it's not considered a con it just wouldn't fit under the other column uh we are sending out a survey in the next couple
073weeks I believe Dr Clay will be sending out a survey uh to discuss uh before and after school care at some of these elementary schools in the school um there's a lot of programs that do that but basically the parents able to drop off earlier the student gets enrichment and then they go to class and then after school they can do the same so there are companies that come in and do that and we would only go with a accredited company we wouldn't just go with you know a mom and pop type shop because we our our most precious resource will be with them our students so um the last thing I want to share with you is we have talked to this about at some levels um we have talked to the secondary principles
074and the uh secondary staff that's here at the division level um we've met with the elementary principles and the division staff on the elementary level and now I'm talking to the school board I thought it was important to speak to all those because we're trying what I'm we're trying to do as we weigh out into this slowly is we're trying to make sure that we can that there aren't hurdles we can't navigate because if there's a hurdle we can't navigate we say look that's a stopper then there's no reason to keep going further because this obviously didn't work so we've been through these three processes we've been through these three steps and I wanted to make sure that uh we we can put that out there um The Next Step would be March 18th uh
075for us to meet with community and any DH DCPS staff that can't make any other meetings uh that will be at Midway Elementary which is in elementary a according to this plan but again this meeting can go any direction you know we're looking for all input and then to the mar the 19th D Elementary which is Elementary B School same thing and then March 27th at Dy High School to talk about the secondary plan again same thing staff or Community uh we're also going to plan to make and I got to get with the directors to see the good time because I want to make sure these staff that don't work the normal school hours I want to make sure they can also have their voice heard and so we'll be meeting with any secondary
076elementary or support staff that has questions and would like to to do that now that will probably be during the middle of the school day because their hours aren't typically during the school day um but I think it's important that that we note that uh I do want Community feedback we want Comm I say I we we want Community feedback I know you want Community feedback I think it's important that we we can uh come up with something that we think is uh will help our school system get better operationally because I think we need to so the next steps just for clarification uh gather feedback from the stakeholders those are those meetings we just talked about apply pertinent information from these March sessions and I'll be doing that through March as we take notes
077um I know I'll be there there'll be representatives from Transportation I hope that uh Dr Clay Dr Weston or any of the other cabinet members that would like to join us will be there um and then third proposal including community and staff feedback to the school board if appropriate and for approval um as you know and I put April 15th I apologize obviously that's not the next School Board date it's April 8th that's a a tiple on my my part but um obviously as you know um anything that we do of this nature would be approved by the school board so I'm not asking for your approval tonight but I am asking for any comments or opinions you have on it so that we can uh keep moving forward Mr Walters I have a couple
078of questions yes sir um obviously you already touched on the child care element of this um and I think that will likely be one of the biggest I agree obstacles to this and so um I would love for us to look for some kind of way to invite some of the child care providers into the process absolutely um because and I can't person I don't know all the ins and outs but for a hypothetical if we have a child care provider in our County that Services southernland Elementary School and Midway Elementary School if we stagger those times that could present challenges to them for example if they go pick up these kids can they leave those kids to go pick up another group of kids an hour later so I would be curious if we
079could uh maybe meet with them and see what challenges it presents to them as a part of that process absolutely um I I think I understand the advantage to the Stagger system um in the sense that but I'm going to ask you to clarify just so that I uh okay my my understanding of the way that this helps us is because you're creating kind of a callback system so a driver completes their route and then calls back and says do you need me for a second route is that right yeah in most cases it won't be a call back it'll be theyve already been assigned a second route um but this allows them they're doing the double routes already this allows them to do that double route without making the second route late so for
080example I guess I guess the reason I'm asking for clarification on this is because if substitute drivers is a problem if a particular driver has already been assigned those two routes and that driver is out yeah how does this stagger solve that problem there's somebody else will get that call back yes sir so if a high school driver calls out under this system a middle school driver and a pinch can do their route and still get back and do the middle school route in time but more importantly the elementary driver especially the uh the elementary a driver can go and do a high school route okay then get back in time to do elementary drive and then do their middle school route or their high school route what would that process look like at what
081point does that driver get notification that hey you're running an extra route today usually what happens is when it's calling our preferences the night before but that's not always the case you know just like any of us a bus driver wakes up wake wakes up sick you know they call in then we have to scramble a little bit to make that happen um but this happens twice a day because we have two we have a and pm. so that that call back can happen the night before the morning of or the afternoon of the PM routes okay okay we because people also get sick during the middle of the day you know so um so the process is is a little bit chaotic uh transport Transportation does a great job of making sure that they
082have routes covered um but this just allows us more flexibility to cover those with without making late buses so one last question and and I apologize because you may not be it may not be fair to ask you this question because this might not be in your wheelhouse but you raised a point that I hadn't heard before today and that it's makes sense though that the problem is not a shortage of drivers that's correct it's a shortage of substitute drivers so the question I have is how does our substitute driver pay compared to other areas and and and similarly how how do our substitute driver uh our other divisions are they filling those positions better than we are like is is Chesterville County do they have a full list of substitute drivers or are they
083struggling in that area as well I don't know I imagine they struggle with substitute drivers I I don't know that for a fact I know they do their bus transportation a little different um uh the schools and the extracurriculars uh they they call drivers and they make that agreement um but but I don't really I don't want to speak too too much on it because I don't know the details I imagine um I know Caroline and Hanover are struggling with substitute drivers I've spoken to them those two I put a lot of stake in because they're they're very similar to us Caroline more so the easy answer for Citizens and all this because obviously it seems that a lot of our citizens believe that we have a shortage of bus drivers and you're clarifying that's
084not the case but their easy answer to that was pay the drivers more I agree so if it's not a shortage of drivers but as short as of substitute drivers the suggestion may be then that the easy answer is we'll just pay our substitute drivers better but if we're already paying a fair rate then that takes that off the table that's why I asked the question I understand um I do not know off the top of my head The Substitute rate I know that again uh because we have 100% fill of our contract I I believe you know we're competitive um but we everybody wants more obviously and and I think the job they do could possibly you know warrant more because it's a very difficult job okay um I just will say that um
085with regards to whether it's the bus driver substitute or a classroom substitute we are very challenged now and that has to do with as the minimum wage continues to increase we're kind of chasing that Target as well and so places like Target and Chick-fil-A and other places like that they can go and they're making a lot more money than driving a school bus 30 or 40 kids on it yeah very large uh corporations in our County that pay a lot more and we can't compete with Amazon and Walmart distribution so this the competition that we were in able to keep up with not the educational competition yeah and so these these hearings um are published somewhere for they're going to be published uh on Facebook which seems to be a popular spot to get information
086so um we are going to publish it on Facebook uh we're going to send it out to uh you know via our student information okay um but we want to make sure people know it because it doesn't do us any good to stand there and talk to I mean the five people would do great but I'd like to have as many people as we can so we can get as many opinions and option as we can well I thank you for answering my question sir I appreciate the presentation thank you and thank you for your work for contacting the other districts and working with other people in surrounding areas to to bring us this information yes ma'am and I'll keep you um I'll keep everybody updated on the childcare meetings because I think that's a
087great idea thank you yes look forward to that is there any other questions I can answer about that any other question for Mr Walter I think you up next also to say before we ask Mr Walters to speak um just a little bit about um how we as a school system generate funds so you know we are funded mostly by the state and mostly by the locality um we do not have authority to generate funds you know or carry funds over in the school system um so there are a lot of different ways that we can do that typically for our small capital projects which we have a long list of capital projects that um every year seems to get larger and larger with the um our outdated facilities um so sometimes we Surplus our
088things that we own in an effort to generate funds for our school system to tackle some of these ongoing capital projects um you know as a board that we've surplused some of um I know some of our vehicles so we do that in an effort to put money back in the transportation department to purchase additional vehicles um so times it's about you know they've outlived their usefulness there's too many miles on them they're not they're not safe for us to drive um the other things that we own happen to be property um and so um we sometimes uh we'll take a look at all the property that we own um and say you know this is an area that we might be able to Surplus if we don't have a use uh for the property
089um we would only typically do that in rare situations there have been times over the years where people have come to us to say hey you you know we know that you own this property or you have this property behind a school or you have this property that I noticed there's not been anything on in 20 or 30 years um would that be something you would have an interest in selling and so um in times like that we do a lot of research to determine whether or not it is in the best interest of the school system um to move forward um with that you know do we have the need on our end and certainly would that not prohibit us in the future because we're not only making decisions for today we're making decisions
090for our school system forward because there will will be a time when we're not the people sitting at the table and we want to make certain first that we're being very good stewards of the resources and the monies that we have and also that we're putting the school system in a good place for the people that will come behind us and the students and the families that we will serve down the road so Mr um Walters is going to come and talk to you about a recommendation um a discussion if you will about a propert piece of property that we own uh that we would like to recommend becoming a a surplus piece of property yeah so um just again I want to clarify this is a discussion um there's there's no action required tonight
091um the recommendation is just to hear me out and if you so desire to continue to talk about this uh schedule a hearing if you don't then you can also just drop it I mean you have option here um the process as as it stands is when someone comes and and offers uh or or asks about a piece of land um I go through a a rubric if you would um of of how is this a a property that we would be considering to to sell um an offer is made uh we determine whether or not we anticipate using that land um we discuss access to that land and would it affect any operations of that school cuz if it does then it's off the table um we have an appraisal done by an independent
092appraiser uh we compare the appraisal amount to the offer amount which we have the benefit of getting that if someone offers they're going to give an amount so we have the benefit of comparing the two and then we present the offer to the board at that point it's at the board's discretion it's at the board's pleasure what they do with that um I I do want to say I am obligated to present that to you because I'm not the decision maker in this situation I'm the presenter of the information the conduit if you would so I want to make that clear that this is simply the presentation publicly to give you the opportunity to ask me questions publicly and also to give comments publicly so um we did we were approached by Baylor construction and
093they did give an offer a written offer for the uh the 18.43 N which is uh TP number 1878 behind Midway Elementary it's actually behind the the buffer of Midway Elementary um and the offer was $115,000 um we did an appraisal and the appraisal came back at the same um it actually was I think there was a $600 difference between the two um so that's what I'm here to speak to you about I'm here to speak to you about this uh this offer and uh hopefully offer you some recommendations and some suggestions on how to proceed um I I I did get some questions um that I know have been asked uh maybe of you but you know some questions that I came prepared to answer so that we can clarify some things um first
094of all I I I went through how we discussed Surplus um I can tell you that one of the things that we're getting ready to do as I brought to you last meeting is we're going to put fencing around our playground so that our students are safe regardless of whether we sell land or not we're doing it at every school every Elementary School um so I know that's important and you know that's important to me as security of our students um another question that was asked is can can we guarantee the sell of the land after the use well unfortunately we can't if you sell the land then that that that land becomes the usage of that becomes the the the the County's issues so to speak uh the zoning issues the uh what it's
095used for how it's used and all that goes through the zoning and planning department um so we don't control that anymore afterwards um can we how can we guarantee that the money for the sale of the land will not be retained by the county and will actually go to the school well any any offer that I bring to you will come with as this one did with a resolution this resolution states that we're selling the land and also that the money will will be retained by the school if that's not agreed to by the county then we're not interested in selling the land you know because again this is our one way that we can try to offset some of the cost that we have for Capital fund capital projects um Can the addition of
096houses increase the school's population and if so at what rate well obviously it can um there is formulas for every type of housing there's no standard formula uh usually the bigger and more expensive the house the less impact it has on elementary schools uh usually people with elementary schools students or younger students are starting out and they're not building bigger houses that's how the formula works on the on the the other side usually smaller houses uh that are less expensive have a little more impact um so it really depends on what type of house and how many houses um I can tell you and I I don't know much about building houses I've never built one in my life but I know that uh when I was building my own house um 18.4 39 does
097not allow you a lot of room for a lot of houses um how many I couldn't tell you I'm not an expert and I don't want to sit here and give you a number because I don't know but I know that it's very difficult you know I had a hard time squeezing mine on five acres so um and it's because of the wells and things of that nature but um why didn't we use a sealed bid again um this was not something we sought we didn't advertise hey we want to sell this land if anybody's interested offer was brought to us and when that offer was brought to us we responded to that offer so now that that offer is public it would be any kind of bid and any kind of bid is fine
098well if it's a public bid but it would be public just like this is any other offer brought to me I would bring to you the exact same way um and again I'll bring it until you say hey stop bringing us offers or we're going to vote on this and that's at your discretion um so those are some questions that I had I hope I explain them I know I talk quick sometimes but if I I can answer any other questions you may have I have a list yes sir so um forgive me for I just want to ask these publicly just make sure we have clarification um you spoke to the the idea of how we determin it Surplus um how much land do we have at Midway apart from this 18 Acres apart
099from this 18 Acres uh behind Midway and I this is how I measured in football fields we have two football fields from the back of the gym to the wood line and then on the right side of Midway where our where our pickup and drop off is it's approximately two football fields that way so it's a a two football field Square okay how many acres that is I don't know that land is adequate for any plans that we have for Midway yeah um see the thing is if we decided to we don't anticipate but if we ever decided to to expand Midway there's adequate room for that uh the land behind that um 18 is not enough to do any kind of a public building on okay so that that's how we determine that's one
100of the determiners for it being Surplus okay so back to the valuation of the property yes sir you you had an independent um I did um assessment or whatever the term it was an appraisal appraisal appraisal um just to be clear because I I did some looking into this and and from what I can see everything's done right it's done above board I think some of the uh confusion is about how that works um and valuing property for what it can be versus what it is and can you can you speak a little bit about like how that appraisal was developed what what was thought was put into that yeah I worked with Hallmark properties um because again this is public record um and and I don't know the first thing about a appraising property
101but I know that when I spoke to him uh I told him that I need the fair market value not just on what it is but anything it could potentially be and uh this this uh this uh property is zoned A2 agriculture which there's a list of about 50 things on the website it can be used for um the only housing it can be used for as it stands right now is is one house um and that's just to Zone and that could be changed I don't have any idea how that works but um so when he gave me that price that price is what it is now and the potential uses for it in the future and that's how that's how I was told the appraisal process works okay um so that being said
102we have a valuation now yes sir right and and we have a buyer that has offered to to pay that valuation yes sir um we chose not to use a seal bid my understanding is just because of the way the process was initiated and whatnot well because it was initiated by somebody offering us a bid so then it became public I can't take a bid and then seal it you know have to make that that makes perfect sense so this isn't a matter of um no one else has the option no not at all right so the question I'm asking publicly now is if someone wanted to walk in this room today and say I'll give you for it that's still there's still the option for other people to bid it's just not a sealed
103bid process what I would do is I would take that information uh get the exact same resolution get the exact same contract and present it to you okay again I don't have any authority to say yes or no okay um so someone walked in here today and said I'll give you $5,000 more per acre I would get it in a sales contract signed and brought to you signed by them not by us cuz I don't sign contract they would they would have to put a they would have to put a contract on the table before you would present that to us no no for them to do an official offer yes but if they just wanted to say hey I'm willing to talk about this and I'd like to think about offering you this amount
104but they don't give me a contract I would report that to you this is a verbal offer the reason I'm asking this is because the number of people number of Community member citizens are saying based on the numbers they've seen with published stuff on social media yeah they're saying oh that's grossly undervalued okay it's it's it's worth what somebody's willing to pay for it y so unless someone else is willing so I I I want it to be stated publicly that if someone really wants to pay that much more for it that's their prerogative they absolutely that offer and would quite honestly be a static because I have a lot of projects we need doing so if people are going to offer more we'll take it I mean obviously I'll take it and bring it
105to you no matter what but I'm a money spender Dr West can tell you I'm trying to spend money so as much as we can get that person though would then have to take on the risk of whether or not it could be res or whatever whatever they want to do with it to get that value out yes sir okay and that would be through the county not through the school system okay the only the other thing other thing that I would ask uh Mr Walters I appreciate your patience yeah all this and obviously we we kind of um hit the brakes pumped the brakes a little bit on this we're slowing down a little bit um and you you're making arrangements well I guess we are making arrangements I would like to ask that
106we do set up another public hearing absolutely a couple weeks out if we could um and then also I would like to ask I know I again I did some looking into this we satisfied the requirements of the law yes sir by by public this was published in the rest CRI dispatch on March 4 Okay so we did what we were required to unfortunately and I guess if I understand this right real estate people look at the Richmond Times Dispatch no one else does okay no one reads the newspaper anymore so people that may not want to buy this but have an interest in this are feeling like and I believe this is entirely a perception I don't believe anybody's done anything unethical or or immoral here but I think there's uh there's a perception
107issue here yeah because people that don't look at the Richmond Times Dispatch only found out about this on Friday Saturday Sunday of this past week so they're saying well I have an opinion on this and I already have plans for Monday or Tuesday night when the school board meeting is so we're pumping the break saying okay we'll give people a chance and if I could correct we're not pumping the brakes we're we're playing the system is is being the way it's supposed to act which is generate discussion generate BS generate all these things sure so what I would ask though is the Facebook does nothing to satisfy the law but it it uh it helps us to um and I say Facebook social media uh more modern platforms it doesn't satisfy the law with regards
108to this but it does help us to usurp the appearance of Absolut if we could publish something like this and just say okay there's going to be a meeting if you have an issue with it come to the meeting now at that point we can reasonably say I think we did everything we could to put this out there and let people speak um I understand why people feel like well the Richmond Times Dispatch isn't enough but I also understand that's what the law says you're supposed to do so if we could do that I would greatly appreciate that and then I don't know how we go about getting it making it an official date and time Madam chair is that something you we need to motion forward yeah I'm sorry can I also I know
109can I also just mention one more thing um you know Facebook is great obviously it's effective because um um and and as you know we know that you know Facebook obviously gets information out um so I I'd be more than happy to do that um so we make that happen I disagree with you I don't think Facebook is Facebook is effective I guess I use Facebook I I think uh it's it's all on how you use it um and I think we can use it to our benefit here but I'm not saying it has to be Facebook I just think some some other modern platform that we could use to get the information out if it is Facebook then great we have Facebook Twitter I don't know what else we have M Robinson Williams does
110all that we'll get it X yeah we'll get the information out on every social platform we have sure um yeah so I guess I don't know if I need to make a motion or or how do we do that you don't I don't think you need to make a motion we have a meeting that is already established you have a work session that's coming up in two weeks and you could aark that work session to be your hearing your public hearing on the 25th so we can uh publicize that as a as a hearing okay I'll work with uh Miss Robinson Williams to get that publicized um tomorrow morning a standing and then we'll she I think she can set it to where it goes out I don't really know how to use Facebook that
111well but okay I'm sure you can set it to where it goes out every once in a while and refreshes to the top of your feet or whatever yeah again I thank you I know that's two subjects in a row I just uh hey that's what I'm here for to hopefully answer questions for and I I want to say this I the the process is um frustrating I think for a lot of people involved on all sides of this but um I I also believe that this is how the process is supposed to work this is democracy and action um as a school board we don't deal with stuff like this a whole lot most of the time this happens on the county side but um I I think it's okay uh for us to
112invite voices to the table and and uh to hear those voices and then let the process work and so I'm not mad at anybody for being upset but I also um am not mad at anybody for being frustrated because I think that's how the process works and this is not what we do for a living I I don't I don't advertise and Work Land deals for a living I it's part of my job and I get that but I did the best I could and I'm going to continue to do the best I can by the by by y'all by the school board and by the superintendent and everybody that you know in the community so I I appreciate the work you've done do you have a specific project ear marked for the funds that
113would come in I I have a couple I have a list um we have I have about $1 million worth of work that needs to be done at our middle school so we're going to start there but I can promise you most of my work is going to revolve around security security yeah great and and again we we desperately need some security features at the middle school and believe it or not the high school and souland are becoming outdated that's right okay yeah so thank you Mr Walter I appreciate no thank you um I'd be happy to answer any other questions I know you probably got a bu just one small question or request for uh if we have a work session and this then becomes our our public session are we able to have
114that towards the end of the agenda that way it's a at least a little bit more of an accessible time for anyone from the public that's want to come and speak on that I'll be there whenever y'all tell me to be there yes sir because I'd hate for it to be at the very beginning of the agenda and then people are upset that oh I want to speak and supported this or what it can be anytime you want it to be a regular meeting date so this is typically when you don't come in here so you really can make the time whenever and I'll be there whenever you say whenever y'all make the time absolutely Mr Walters I want to thank you because of the phone calls that I had over the weekend you have
115cleared up any of the information that I need to impart to of the people in my district who are concerned absolutely yeah you're welcome and I would like to say something as well okay um yeah I did have questions just like the other board members uh I think it's very appropriate that people ask questions and um you know the like we say we don't sell land often we have had other issues about land people someone came to us wanting to buy some land behind a subt and we looked at it it wasn't accessible to that person you know that we so we declined to go through a process we've sold land uh and and other spots but you know on this one there are other people interested perhaps and Community people want to say yay
116or nay to to um perhaps having building or something in the area so I I appreciate the fact that you know we're going to have public hearing we we will'll listen to people and and um make a decision in that direction and I appreciate all the hard work that you've done Mr Walters yes ma'am okay are there any other questions or concerns of Mr Walters thank you thank you so now we have um some citizen comments um Mr Patrick Patrick Lloyd you have to read anything Bonnie on the back um Mr Lord before before you speak um do I have to read the whole thing read all this right here M the board just wait one minut we don't do this often as they said the board ensures that public participation at any specially called
117meeting of the school board is fair and respectful upon recommendation of the board chair public hearings and forums are typically designed to receive substantial Community input and individual comment sign of sheets will be available at each door for those attending who wish to address the board time limits will usually be set for each speaker to ensure everyone can address the board typically each speaker will be allocated five minutes during P public hearings and forums rather than three minutes during the public address portion of a regular meeting so today we're three minute we three minutes on the 25th it'll be five on the 25th it'll be five okay thank you for coming state your name and your address please yes [Applause] sir good afternoon my name is Patrick Lloyd I live at a 546 Midway Drive
118in southernland uh first I want to say uh something that I hadn't prepared um the girls wrestling team uh he did not me coach the coach uh Roger said did not mention that uh the vhsl is actually moving uh toward fully sanctioning girls wrestling so I strongly encourage all the board members to get a hold of athletic directors or who are the school administrators everybody to push for that these girls single-handedly have driven uh Virginia girls wrestling to a next a new the level that it's currently at uh so I just want to say that so uh what what I came to uh today to talk about is to actually mention what was uh just discussed in this the sale of uh of the land behind Midway Elementary so I live at 5406 Midway Drive
119as I mentioned uh my land uh the back my backyard through the woods is mid mid Midway is the side of uh Midway Elementary so um the land that is uh being proposed to be bought at 187a uh does not connect my land however the land uh that that plot of land 1878 does connect to 187 which does connect land which is also currently uh owned by Baylor construction um that that property was purchased I believe in 2021 uh and my my concerns and I believe the concerns of many people in the community are the potential of a neighborhood of any size of any development being uh in on this on these combined properties practically cornering an elementary school um uh the main my main or my my main concerns are the infrastructure required by
120the county such as roads utilities drainage traffic control uh all of these things that will inevitably inevitably place a burden um on the local taxpayers so uh as of now obviously that property belongs to the school system um as one Facebook commenter I mean I know we've been talking about Facebook right somebody uh mentioned why would a why would a construction company buy 18 and half acres of land combined to or connected to another 20 plus that that they already own without the intention of potentially building a neighborhood um and the response to that was they like recreational activities and it's the biggest investment to hold on to it's pretty simple so as school as the school board I strongly uh encourage you to lean on that comment that was made that it is uh
121one of the biggest inv best investments to hold on to if this if this is moved to be Surplus if this goes to a surplus status uh and it is sold once the land is sold you will not get it back you will not get it back for $115,000 I can guarantee you that um in every conversation I've had with the members of the surrounding Community I've not yet found one who supports the decision to sell this property and I've talked to everybody that lives on my road people that live on Midway Road not Midway Drive there's two separate roads um I can you can ask a person that has the same number as me on Midway Road they get my mail all the time um but cons our concerns about school safety transparency zoning
122infrastructure costs and fairness in the sale need to be heard and I urge you I urge you all uh to just rethink this sale and the move to make it Surplus and at the very least delay the decision as far as possible until the public has given given the full transparency which they will I know uh kind of prepared all this statement ahead of time but I appreciate your time and consideration thank you and thank you for coming okay Miss Christina Conway state your name and your address U my name is Christa Conway I live at 1 19114 Carson Road here in dwy um and I've come to kind of address the bell schedule thing going on um as a mom of two kids who currently go to Dy Elementary School with Miss Leanne Adams
123by the way best principal um I have a major concern because I have to be at work by 8:30 I work for deny County Social Services I'm already kind of struggling to make it through that line CU it's so long in the mornings I'm getting there right at 8:30 already I can't get there at 8:40 8:45 and not be in trouble with Kevin massingale okay that's just not going to work I know I'm one of many opinions I know you cannot help all the opinions that are going to be involved in situation I also live like one minute from the school but it's unreasonable to think that I should put my child on a bus when I live one minute from the school but I don't have anyone that is available to take my children
124to school for me when my husband has to be at work at 8 and I have no one else local to me that can take my children to school and it does not make sense for me to put them on a bus where they could possibly be on the bus for a long time or that bus now has to make a really quick stop to take them to the school which is like 02 miles down the road it just doesn't make sense to me the other issue is them getting out at 400 p.m. my children would then not get to DeWit where they're dropped off at for child care until probably 4:30 and that stresses me out very much because they're already like falling asleep on the bus now and that frustrates their bus driver
125to no end and I get it and I have mad respect for The Bu bus drivers I have so much respect for how much time and effort when into this study I just hope that y'all take into this the consideration that there's a frustration about this because our children are already exhausted and especially our elementary school kids are exhausted to have them in school till 400 p.m. is really just pushing it if that makes sense they're already so limited on the time they get outside of school so please just really think about that before you implement that bus schedule I get I get it there is a frustration there is so many factors that go into this but please think about those kids cuz it's not just us parents for after school care it's not
126just us being frustrated about after school care it's these children are already got so much going on and they're already so limited on time so please just take that into consideration and thank you so much for letting me speak today thank you I'm going to do I'm going to let okay um right now I'm going to for go um board member comments and I'm superintendent comment and superintendent comments and I'm going to allow the student representative to have her [Music] comments well first of all I want to start by saying I'm happy to be back it def definitely is true when people say that senior year is the busiest I've been very very busy but I'm happy to be back um as far as the Southerland Elementary School highlights I'm a little biased I am
127a Scotty Alum I will say so they definitely all did good and it was so excited exciting to see them present and congratulations again to the DHS girls wrestling team I know how hard they practice and how much they fight to make sure that girls wrestling something that is known and represented and they all do a great job doing that I also want to highlight at the high school there's so many good things going on as some of you may know I do announce daily at the high school so I definitely want to congratulate Deca fpla the DHS Player speech team they just got another win and it's just so good to see how successful our different clubs organizations and students are at the school and with the year coming to an end it's just
128really exciting to see everyone just grow you know from the start of the year to the end of the year so it's definitely something that I enjoy seeing every day and I just love these meetings because I enjoy seeing the students seeing the development for the upcoming Years cuz I know some of the students are going to be excited about that new schedule next year so it's definitely just something that I enjoy and I'm happy to be here thank you so we're going to journ in we're going to uh I need a motion to U adjourn to um ESAT join the regular meeting we need toce I need um a motion to adjourn a regular meeting so moved it has been moved in second that we adjourn our regular meeting although those in favor I
129all right I have it so now we we are jour