001put out a new one that said we would be abiding by house bill 1303 that was outlined that included that we must follow the cdc recommendations and we are currently in that high range which would which the recommendation would be that all staff and students indoors in k-12 would wear masks so ms powell and i we went back through and part of the bulletins that we were putting out included the mitigation strategies that we currently have in place that were going to take place when school started um we had these in place over the summer for summer school so we went back through those and instead of just the bulletin that we had last year we had this elaborate document that was required from the state for mitigation plan but we did go back through
002and we have put together a document that we will be posting to the website a much more condensed version of the highlights of the mitigation that will be put in place and that's what we're going to share we're going to provide an overview of that right now so certainly we will as with anything and all the documents that we will follow the recommendations and the and the suggestions from the vdh the department of health the cdc and anything that comes out of the department of ed and the governor's office we do remain committed to having these health and safety measures in place we are hoping that they can be temporary that it will not have to be for long we'd rather start tight than to have to get into school have some situations with cases
003that could be avoided and have to backtrack now we already were saying that students were going to have to wear a mask when riding the school bus because that school buses is a form of public transportation that falls under the federal mass mandate that is currently still in place so that was already going to have to happen so that will remain we will still continue to ask parents and staff to monitor their self self health using that checklist and we will provide that again to our staff and to our students so the face coverings will need to be worn inside the buildings there are some exceptions when students are exercising for recess if they're outdoors for you know for any period of time we're hoping for masks breaks things of that nature if they are
004in music class if they are singing in music or playing an instrument if they can be distanced they that is an exception to having the mask and certainly while eating um sick leave and those types of things so part of that daily self health check is if you don't feel well we need you to stay home whether you're a student or a staff member if you don't feel well please stay home that's the best way that we can prevent any illness not just coveted but any illnesses if you're sick stay home when we will continue as we if there is a case um and we know in the history of last year we have had positive cases we had staff and students that in every single school and building that had coveted so this year
005the communication for that will be if there's a positive case then any the contact tracing will happen with our nursing staff or ms powell and staff will take the lead on the contact racing so if there's a positive case and we determine that there is an exposure those people who have been exposed will be notified um and the quarantine will be provided we will be using and i'll show you the we will be using the virginia department of health that when it is safe to come out of quarantine we will be using this document that talks about when it is appropriate when isolation needs to happen if you're positive or if you're in exposure so we will do that as well we will continue mr davis and his team school facilities um once again we
006will continue to maintain our facilities to be clean um just as they were last year so the specif the cleaning protocols will remain the same and we will also continue with teachers having availability of the supplies to clean in their classrooms like we did last year so we still have a supply of that and each school can request those things if they still whatever they need from maintenance many of the things that we have also included are the basic things related to ventilation so part of maintenance the school facilities they check those ventilation systems on a regular basis that's part of the routine water systems so the water fountain the basic water fountains will still remain closed just as they were last year but we were able to retrofit many of those to become bottle
007fillers um the high school already had a bottle filler in the cafeteria area but but there were some retrofits that we had a company come in and were able to do that so we encourage people you know use your water bottles you can fill up water that way but just the basic water fountain still we're just not going to open those uh continue to have messaging and high traffic areas so when you come to the buildings you'll still see the sign on the door that says if you're sick you know please don't come in you know things like that um with the signs and symptoms of that nature so cafeteria so we were really hoping to start the year um using the cafeterias but we're going to pause that just briefly in some instances that
008meals will be served in the classrooms or a staggered approach in the cafeterias so for example if you're in an elementary school and kindergarten i'm just using that great it doesn't have to be kindergarten so a grade could go in there's ample space to spread out um to be able to use the cafeteria so it could be on a rotation basis for the time being until we can have more kids in there um we still do not encourage anyone to share food certainly um [Music] and then field trips so field trips um they will be a case-by-case basis depending on the trip the location and we'll just monitor those things but we do hope that kids can go on the field trips that is the plan for to allow them to go athletics is already
009going for the fall so that will continue so that will not change um we will continue we have some educational partnerships like we have some student nurses that will come in student teachers we had those last year um so that can happen again um so as long as currently we are in the high transmission range so as long as we're in high or substantial range the recommendation is visitors will be like last year we we will not allow visitors or volunteers until we can get into a better place so so we'll just start off that way and hopefully as that transmission level changes we can allow visitors and volunteers to come back in okay you want to do the next part could i ask a question yes please uh the 13.33 was that tri-city or
010didn't would he the percentage the percentage oh that was that was yes that was today okay yeah so our county yes so just about every county in virginia is in the red and the red now right now i saw i did see a few yellows um but most everyone everyone here in this region everybody in our region is pretty high okay what what is the cut off not to be high but is there a it matches usually is anything above 10 uh is where it starts to i think turn that red um so we need it to be in the single digits okay is where it would that's why that three percent was so encouraging when we saw that too it was so that's not the only number to look at i'm glad you asked
011that question um because i certainly asked that question number two that is the easiest number to look at um but in communicating with the department of health because i had a lot of questions you know how do you go from three percent yeah and now we're way up here or we had questions where we would look at the vdh number and the cdc number were two entirely different things so um and now right now we don't see a number from vdh they've taken that information down for the time being they they're updating their site but another number to look at when we are looking at the averages that we see on the cdc site is yes we see the 13.33 positivity rate today but the number that is telling is the number of cases so
012it says the number of cases is they do it based on the number per 100 000 because that number also factors into putting us in that high range is 161.15 per 100 000. so that's the number of cases that they look at to help that that factors into this positivity rate um and this number on the cdc is a seven day average so some the vdh you could look at a seven day or a fourteen um and we would you know back when we were high before we were tracking that number and we could see it every day this number it says this is the seven day average through august 8th is what the site says today okay all right does that answer does that mean yes okay all right michelle okay thanks good afternoon
013everyone um we are going to for this moment in time continue to handle all non-emergency first aid in the classroom for now the clinic though will be used to provide medication emergency first aid that can't be provided in the classroom and health services as required kind of keep that area open for you know children who may be exhibiting uh symptoms we do have um two new social workers so we're going to use our school social workers school psychologists and counselors for consultation regarding access to school and community mental health resources for any children you know who have been at home and now they're coming back and they may need some support along those areas we will continue to educate the school community about infection control strategies ppe equipment and all of the um information we
014used last year as far as hand hygiene awareness that kind of thing um the the last part are two uh appendix appendix a is the daily health screening checklist for students and staff we're asking every morning that they kind of complete this and determine if they are safe to come to school and appendix b is our school clinic procedures that we pretty much had in our plan last year as well so those two have not changed at this time so that completes our presentation any questions i just pulled up the cdc the data the 13 and um so what i noticed on here too that i think is very encouraging in addition to seeing the positivity rate going down um of course we're seeing the testing going up which is interesting but zero hospitalization zero
015beds right now that are covered related for dimwitty county um which that that's what virginia department health did they did report that to us as well um and so we are seeing positive elsewhere which is you know even though people are contracting the virus we're not seeing those more severe types of cases that we've seen previously so that's very encouraging um i would say to the board about the mass mandate that um i mean this has been something we've been wrestling with all summer i mean we you know we started the summer really believing that you know this school year we were to have a new normal um but of course you know um and i'll be the first person to say that i was very optimistic that we would not have to that mass
016would be optional because i do think you know personally i think the vaccine is a personal choice between you and your doctor it's not for me to decide and the mask is as well but you know i'm willing to do whatever i need to do to protect the children and families that we serve and um and um to make this a safe place for kids and i think i think this is a smart move to start more restrictive um and then monitor what's happening in our schools i think you know we heard from our parents last week on the call um just really spoke very highly about how well we handled things last year and i think that was really a testament to the strong mitigation plan that we had in place and so if
017we start that way and we're able to watch the data and as the positivity rate goes down i'm very hopeful that we can get to the optional status we did survey our staff last week we did send out the survey to um hr sent out a survey to staff um surveying if any your vaccination status so out of 600 plus employees we heard back the uh from about 60 responded to the survey so of that 60 we're sitting at 80 percent that have been vaccinated yes um 14 have not and then the remainder so what is that eighty so six yeah we need to do how many six percent yes six six percent are currently in process so they have started the process they're just not fully vaccinated that means they could have had one
018dose or they could have received the vaccine it's just not in that two week um window to be able to be fully vaccinated yeah so we are in a good spot with that i don't know that was a question but i don't want people to misunderstand the lack of response we do have employees that we do encourage them to continue to use their summer and they have not returned to work yet um and so they may have not had access and some don't use and that's okay that's okay so we will continue that number uh we'll continue to continue so we'll continue to monitor that number um and we can give reports to that because i know people within a couple weeks we should have the firm number of all employees the other thing about
019the mask is that i do think that it's unreasonable to ask someone um adult or our student to wear a mask for you know an entire day and so we are encouraging uh this teachers to find opportunities throughout the day so that students and themselves can take off the mask and so there we've given them a number of suggestions for how we can do that in this interim time until we can get to a more safe time and be you know without them or we can be an optional place for them so normally we just ask the board support and approval of this if um if you're in agreement with this or if you have other suggestions you would like us to look at and we're happy to do that as well but this is
020an update to the current mitigation plan that we've had in place what do we think would possibly be when we would review it or when we could look again i mean would we be looking for a couple of weeks or we could um certainly every time we come together every because we're here together twice a month and we could come every every time we come together with the most recent update as far as the where we are but then we'll also have data relative to what's happening in our schools to provide that so i think for me i would prefer if we do it more than once a month so maybe at each one of the meetings we provide the community with an update as to where we are relative to the positivity and then
021a recommendation especially especially as it relates to the mask i think that would be very good yeah but it's not going to change the federal government has to change the one for the buses sorry mr tucker we don't have any control over that one but um you know the that's the one um you know we can't control the um the proximity of kids on the buses either so um the the the thing about the mass that i know chrissy didn't really go into this a lot but if you have um two students that are both wearing masks and one test positive for covet and the other one as long as they both have masks on and the student is not exhibiting any symptoms the student does not need to quarantine so that's different than it
022was before so that's another benefit of both the students wearing mask at all times and so we are going to stand firm on the bus and wear a mask because it does protect all the students on the bus that will really help in the business it's going to help because that is cleaning it's going to happen so that is one of the items on that new it was just updated on july 15th so we will keep a link to this within this plan so that link so if this gets changed today it will still go to this page to the newest one so this one is based on july 15 and it does spell out this new exception so that new exception but now the key to that new exception only applies to k-12 students
023in this indoors in k-12 it's in that three to six feet range not adults not adults it does not apply to adults just the children um it's what this exception states so um they really did do some updates to this so we will stick um to this right these recommendations from bdh for this um for the quarantine periods so i do i do have a question about summer school where is did we continue with the plan that we left off with for summer school yes yes were there any cases i i don't think i asked that yes were there any cases of positivity it was yes and did they keep the mask on or they we don't know what they did when we turned you back no well they had to wear masks they were
024their masks in school so they still had to that was still part of that original mask mandate that while the things ended that the governor's executive order ended june 30th the very next day the health director came out with the health order that applied to k-12 that was was extended through july 25th so the mass mandate for the children still had to continue and so at that point we only had a week left in summer school so they did continue so we didn't and students that contracted it they didn't contract it based on what we can tell that they did not contracted here at school it was you know they contracted somewhere else outside of school and um so it was very contained and very minimal very minimal very yeah very very so the reason
025for my question is if we if that is it when they wear the mask the cases are minimal if we start off with the program that we ended with in in june maybe we can have a smoother year you know we won't have as many um adults out and less contact oh i was in contact with her and now i gotta stay out she's out and and all the other people so that's my reason for asking this question because i do believe that we're in a better place now than we were last year this time and we have some proof this year that we didn't have last year as to what would work now and because last year we didn't know and we were just trial and error but um so i think it's a
026good idea we do stay in that place to sort of strongly urge that the students wear masks as well as the adults so the year can go i do believe the year will be smoother less interruptions i'm going to put it that way we're optimistic so we are asking you to approve this um as you have been doing with all of our mitigation plans um moving forward but we would like to also bring it back to eric monitor it every two weeks and bring that information back to you too okay madam chair i move that we accept the health and safety plan that they have presented to us tonight second you've heard the um the motion and emotion has been second all those in favor aye um we now have um additional report we're going
027to talk to you i have dr gurley coming to talk to us about how we're going to ensure the success of our young people this fall we've talked about their health and safety and now we're going to talk about that relative to academics absolutely good evening um um so this evening i do want to speak with you regarding our um student success plan as we um open up schools um because we've been open and so as a part of our requirements for the virginia department of education we do we are required to post what we plan to do in terms of supporting our students and their academic learning needs and so i want to begin by speaking to just our instructional delivery so for the 21 22 school year all of our students will have
028a in-person option and that is an in-person five day a week option we did have um so we did put out to our families to see those students who those families that were interested in a virtual option and that virtual option is through virtual virginia the window for that was july the 12th i'm sorry july the 15th and so as many of you know mr moss charles moss is our director for our virtual learning program and so for that we did have an application process and students did have to meet a criteria and we did have some outlier situations where we have work with some families that they may not have met all the criteria for the virtual learning program but we did we did make those allowances and so just as a reminder we
029did students were required to have access to high-speed internet maybe there was some type of documented medical need or even a household medical need we did look at some previous performance data from the last couple years and then also we did take into consideration some of the social emotional support needs of our students and then we did take into consideration their attendance so since such time we do know that there have been we have been contacted by several families because again the window for the virtual program closed on the 15th and so we did not have a lot of control over that day because we are partnering with the virginia department of education and virtual virginia and so just as a one of the commitments one of the commitments from our superintendent was that our
030teachers would not have to teach virtual and face-to-face and i know that as a school board you all also were committed to that as well that our teachers would not have to teach both face-to-face and virtually and so by us partnering with virtual virginia they had a cut off date of the 15th because they had to secure they had to secure uh teachers and so we did end up with um right around 100 students mr moss uh yes [Music] right so we're right at right around 90 students but since that time so those are the things that we can control so since that time we know we have had some families who have been concerned with the um just where we are in this in terms of the the health um the state of the
031um the covet pandemic and and some upticks and um the upticks and the cases and i know there's been some concerns with regards to whether my child should or should not wear masks and so i just want to since we do have this moment and we have a captive audience to say to our families we have been as i've been getting those phone calls i have been directing those phone calls to mr moss and we have been creating um a wait list for students and i will say that that wait list is not for virtual virginia that wait list is that we are exploring some type of alternative virtual option because we do feel that there are some families who since the cut off day that you know they want to know what's the other
032option but they don't want to just keep their child at home or they don't want to explore they don't want to explore private school they want to keep their children connected to dinwiddie county public schools so what we are doing and what we hope to i met with miss fleming to discuss some finance to discuss the financial implications of us trying to create something for those students and so hopefully by time we come back for the next board meeting we can talk aloud about some other options that we can provide to our to our families who are in need of a virtual option since the window has closed and so it most certainly if you have any questions as i'm talking you can feel free to stop me um but that's kind of where we
033are and the alternative to um our virtual learning at this at this point because virtual virginia is not an option for us that's a that's a drop dead cut off they won't take any more students and we do want to we do want to hold with our commitment but if it needs to look different we want to talk about what's the best way we can provide those virtual services to our families but the in person is always an option for our families which leads me to we in the development of our in the development of our learning recovery components we have addressed four essential areas and so one thing that i want to use in this moment is to talk to our families that we have made many adjustments to our curriculum i will tell
034you that our elementary director and the school school-based teams have been working very diligently this summer to um connect and spiral and all those things to ensure that our students i mean they're bridging at every at every gap they're bridging to ensure that we our students are much smarter and have attend fill their buckets with so many of those essential skills this school year because they will have five days to spend with us this school year we are also still committed to making the adjustments to the um tested and taught curriculum there will be some additional testing from the virginia department of education this school year and so we will govern ourselves accordingly with that and we also are making um some modifications to our um to how we um implement our reading curriculum and
035so we are that's being spearheaded by mrs brooks who is our um who is in charge of our literacy and so our we are still committed to having our students read on grade level by grade three and then we are also having the supports um for our students with disabilities dr joyner is working with our teams and we're just ensuring that at every turn our students are getting what they need from students with disabilities to our l students to our gifted students we're going to ensure that all i think that's the kind of the theme for tonight that all students get exactly those things that they need which leads me to the second component which is our multi-tiered systems of support and simply simply put this is just our problem and decision making system where
036we will support students we have a three-tiered system where we will support students where we need to provide those tiered um levels of support and so we will be very intentional about doing that and making sure that we are inclusive of our families and our student success meetings this school year the third component to our um learning recovery plan is our the social emotional needs of our students we have and will continue to be committed to our students and to our families to address the social and emotional needs we have brought on more school social workers to support our students and we just know that when our students are able to get the things that they need socially and emotionally that we know that they will thrive academically we have made adjustments to our character
037education program i know that um miss hannan worked with dr joyner and we got a character education program and now miss powell is leading the charge with our school social i'm with our school counselors and so we have freed up their schedules um more so that they can push into our classrooms at the elementary level and we will also see some of those same things replicate themselves at this secondary level and then lastly we are focusing on the whole child when it comes to school nutrition um every student pre-k through 12 will have access to free meals free hot meals and i think that's just wonderful because it's just one less thing that our families have to concern themselves about they just bring they send their child to school and we will feed them we
038will ensure that they get taught and we will make sure that we send them home better than we receive them and um lastly the last thing is you will just um as it relates to all of our essential components and anything that takes place we will be working with our director of school and community relations to push out information so that parents will have more information than they need and you will always get your facts from us so with regards to anything that i presented i know that the virtual piece i know that many of you as board members have received phone calls and so um with res uh with regards to our virtual options so if there are any questions most certainly i challenge you to try to stomp me at this time i
039think i have an answer for almost anything that you can ask me and if not i'll try to have you one in 48 hours dr girl that was um with the parent last evening yes ma'am and he was very concerned that his child may not be able to wear a mask so i think he got that straight this afternoon yes ma'am and then his next thing was he said he didn't think there was a plan for his his children hit more than one if he wanted to to keep them at home in a virtual situation there wasn't a plan for that yes ma'am and he was very concerned about that so yes ma'am and i will say that um between mr moss and i we tallied the other day we do have quite a few
040parents since the deadline that they do have that concern and so if the parent is watching or if you want to just share with the parents to give mr moss a call we are uh we are recording the family's name the parents names we're recording the children's names we are placing them on a wait list and you know we are very hopeful that we will come up with some type of alternative plan to service our to service our students i can't make any guarantees but one thing that i will say is one thing we've learned is the answers never know it's always yes so we're going to make a way because you know on both sides of however you feel about it people have genuine concerns and we just want to be able to meet
041people exactly where they are during summer school did you have any students to attend who had been virtual all year and now they came to summer school yes ma'am i will say at the at the elementary level we did see quite a few we saw dozens of students who had not attended school because parents wanted to try to transition them specifically at those lower grades we did see families who the child had been virtual and they wanted to attempt to transition to children and i think we did rather well i mean i know we had some some cases where we had to quarantine and things of that nature but i think overall we did exceptionally well this summer in terms of keeping our children safe are there any other questions for dr marilyn all righty
042thank you thank you all thank you thank you um and now we're going to have miss fleming that'll come forward and uh she's going to provide an enrollment update and then i guess she'll move right into the cares funding update so good afternoon once again good afternoon so as of august the 9th um we have 4136 students enrolled um at this time in our schools so right um as compared to last year that's about exactly where we ended school last year at 4138 so our budget is built on 4150 students so we're a little shy of that however we're not worried about that at this time because we do know that august tends to be a high enrollment month you know people that um have just moved or you know have waited till the last
043moment um we do have a lot of families that um seem to do that so um we know that there will be enrollments in the month of august so we are um at this time we're not concerned about that and you know we know we'll um take you know we'll be constantly looking at this and watching the numbers as we go through the month and as um school starts so um does anyone have any questions about that 4 138 and our adm that we received payment for students was 4134 so you know we were close yeah so all of those numbers are right there our kindergarten numbers are not really normal yet this is the month where we start to see yeah 279. okay we're getting close okay that's good you say it's 4136 you
044always want your financial person to feel good that's yes yes okay okay okay oh we get christie it is c squared c oh c cubed okay so we would like to talk with you today about the covet all the pandemic funding that has funneled into us um over the last i guess year um as we proceed so we just want to give we're gonna some of this is a review so we're gonna highlight like where we are and we also are getting ready to submit our next application okay all right so back in october of last year we shared what we had already been awarded um and so we have gotten additional funds since then so these are all the funding sources that we've had available so cares also easter so all these have acronyms
045just like all the other federal grants that we've had do as well but we had part one in part two in the county cares act the county shared some of their cares money with us twice part one and two and then we had some set-aside funds so we'll talk about those different because those are multiple areas and then we had crf the coronavirus relief funds then there's arfa easter three that's the newest one we're currently working on that application is due soon and then we have arp idea another fund that we received notification of that we got another award so we're figuring that one out because that one's fresh and new all right so easter one so this one was six dollars we're using round numbers but there probably are some sense with these as
046well that yeah because we always get hung up on those cents when we're doing the applications this was our first award this was the very first one so we could do anything that related to pandemic relief and response that could go back to march of based on march 13 2020 when school shut down and this one we have through september of 22 to expend all the money so when we first did this application they gave us the amount of money and it was allotted based on a formula and we at that point when we did this one we put a whole host of things that we thought we needed so our original grant that when we had submitted for this was we had some positions we knew we were going to have some school nutrition
047costs we knew we were going to need all kinds of ppe and cleaning supplies so the 658 000 was listed of all those well we quickly found out you saw those other pots of money that came along too some of that needed to be spent first so like the county we we had we needed to extend that first so we quickly started shifting so if you walk down the hall and went to christie's office it looks like post-it notes everywhere where we just we shifted expenses constantly to make things work or we would get a new pot of money and go oh we could put that there that's more appropriate in that fund than this one okay so we still have some money sitting in this one so we just recently did an amendment to
048this one because when this started we weren't real sure um we knew an amendment was going to have to happen so this is more true to what we really needed okay so this amendment is in process um to happen now so for this one these are actual true charges so school nutrition we needed to do july and august of last summer for some payroll expenses because we were doing all the meal distributions that were happening at that time for this current school year we were able to put in some new positions that we could attribute to the pandemic and how we need to respond to that so the director of innovation position and an additional technology help desk position because we found out real quickly you know we had to have all those chromebooks for
049the kids so we needed more help so chromebooks so we we purchased we needed to purchase additional chromebooks so a thousand new chromebooks came out of this and then last summer we needed to repair refresh and sanitize them to get them ready for the past last school year and then you know when people use things accidents can happen wear and tear can happen so we also needed insurance for that as well okay so the next another fun we had are the set-asides so this one um these were this was competitive base that we had to apply for and it was a whole list of items we could apply for depending on what our needs were okay so this was competitive we could put in we didn't necessarily some of them had a cap some was
050based on certain formulas so the areas that we had for this we the ones we applied for were under special education services and supports we got seventeen thousand seven eighty four sixty one so special education is using this for some specialized software needs that they have school nutrition 33 000 and some change there so freezer rental and then this also helped pay for some of the food distribution for last summer the vision we actually got this in two different installments the original grant only had a portion of this that we had requested a lot more than this and only got a fraction of it but then they came back and we allocated additional money and our amount got to be 165 186. so we you will see a lot of this one also to additional
051chromebooks and to all the to a portion of the mafia services and khajiits which was some an additional type of internet service for our kids that we need some additional data so as you'll see we use we had to use lots of pots of money to pay for a lot of these things to piece it all together okay so this is still in the set-asides the cleaning and sanitizing for schools and buses was a different an additional one so twenty thousand thirty six dollars some of this we still have sitting there um and then facilities upgrade so this was interesting that they put these two together facilities upgrade and protective equipment so this could be anything from if you needed face shields masks all that stuff but for this one this is where we are
052funding retrofitting the water fountains we talked about earlier and any table dividers in that section all right so the next pot was the county cares one and two and this one the county had different guidelines of when they could have to have the money spent so this one was only from march to december so this one was really we had to be ready to go um so for this one these are some things we actually bought some school buses out of that electrostatic sprayers that have been used to clean the buildings and buses we had put hot spots those are the khajiits they go onto the school buses and those were placed at various churches and day cares and things throughout the community um this is where a thousand math eyes came from and then
053a lot of our cleaning products of the sanitation supplies and things we needed and ppe gloves hand sanitizer um all of those things face masks um the live streaming board room we were able to fund out of this as well that we're watching today all right crf the coronavirus relief fund so this was another one that we had to spend by december of 20. and this one so you'll see we found out on october 8th 2020 and we had to spend it by the end of december 2020. we had to move very quickly on this so we're going to talk about the post-it notes we're moving post-it notes rapidly at this point to figure out how we were going to spend money because if they want to give us money we're going to spend it
054and and i think you know that that kind of goes back to why the money that we rewarded at the very beginning we had a plan for but we had to revisit our plan as additional funding has become available and really kind of revisit that and so um you know because at that point in time we weren't sure we weren't aware that all of these things were gonna um come you know come to us but um we we're very um gracious for the funding because it has provided us with great opportunities and you'll if you could we have binders a binder for each one of these we have a binder of recommendations and suggestions of ideas and you'll see this is where a lot of these things came from things that teachers needed so this
055helped to set us up very well for virtual so you'll see um we were able to replace the elementary teacher laptops learning kits were purchased for preschool and bright stars the headsets lapel microphones and lamps reach teacher so when teachers were virtual they were outfitted with a kit um a stealing machine for school nutrition this um helped mr athe and his department so as they were doing those meals so if you went to publix or you remember the you crops meals they would have the sealer and you would have the meals that are ready to go that's essentially what this is so that has so these things will help us long beyond the pandemic and then long-term substitute cost for 21. it's certainly another area because we know we we had to utilize substitutes quite
056a bit okay so these are all the things we've just talked about were all things that we um had in our presentation in october even though we weren't sure at that point in time how we were spending all of those but every one of those awards has had some funds expended out of them during the last school year if not all i mean the part one uh the county award part one and part two has been totally expended the coronavirus relief funds um that were awarded by the department of ed have been totally expended we but we still have some um the sr1 and some set asides um still left to to be spent and since that time we have now been we are we have now been awarded two new funding um sources for
057the pandemic and the first one came out um in january or so um and it is called um the cares act esser ii we were awarded 2.6 million dollars um under that and our plans right now are to fund new positions um as we mentioned we've we've hired a director of innovation technology help desk we've also had um three administrative interns and an ell paraprofessional now we have included at this point in time these positions through 2024 which you know um is the end of the um grant period so that um we can cover these now some of these positions we may absorb in our regular budget or we may find that after the you know pandemic um leaves us hopefully um we may no longer need some of these positions um with this money
058is a little different than some of the other funds that we've received construction and renovations are allowed for this for this money and but they must be approved by virginia department of ed so we listened to a webinar and filled out the paperwork um to request to use this funding to do some things at southside elementary school and i mentioned some of these earlier today in our board advance and they are the electrical upgrades the kitchen exhaust hood replacement the restroom upgrades the water heater flooring and window replacements and you know these are really the um deferred maintenance those are the words i'm looking for thank you dr weston um the deferred maintenance projects that are part of the whole south side renovation um as you know we are currently replacing the air conditioning units
059on top of the school and with this um it would allow us to do these things now all of this funding must meet um pandemic um allowable costs so we have you know we have been able to um allocate each one of these with um you know how it relates to the pandemic you know the electrical upgrades as miss culberth will tell you right now we do not have enough electrical outlets at that school to be able to use all of the technology equipment prior to the pandemic i mean you know so the pandemic has only enhanced that um the kitchen exhaust hood replacement that goes to air quality restroom upgrades certainly i mean we want um touchless um um faucets yeah thank y'all um the water heater we need hot water you know to
060go into the restroom upgrades for a washing of hands and cleanliness and of course flooring and window replacements the window is to air quality and the flooring is you know right now there's a lot of carpet over there and so we are possibly looking at towel replacement which is much easier to keep clean than the carpet so you know while we've been awarded this money we really have to you know keep it focused on the pandemic but it does allow us an opportunity to do some of these things that have needed to be to be done as well we did receive preliminary approval for this project and um we would have to do a amended application to doe um for this if this is the direction that you know we need to we decide to
061move into um the last funding award is part of the american rescue plan act all right so we've shifted from cares to arpa um and it's it's still considered it's like the s or three one two and three and we've been awarded five point nine million dollars you know close to six million dollars for this um there is an application due on september 1st 2021 this funding is a little bit different than the previous fundings that we have received it does have a learning loss requirement of 20 um it requires a return to in-person instruction plan posted on the website which we've got that we must seek public comment on the plan and seek stakeholder input so back in the spring we solicited input and ideas from all of our staff and stakeholders um about
062you know ideas on what to do with some of this money and we we actually were able to do a lot of those things that were requested or put in various funding sources um we have been given monthly updates at you know every one of the school board meetings on our return to learn plan throughout um the spring all summer long and we've been having excuse me community conversations um dr weston started those um several weeks ago we've had some with staff we've had some with parents and i think they um are due to continue um as well so we certainly think we have um you know tried to um um seek you know public comment and you know we've been communicating the plan very well um the learning loss requirement of 20 is about
0631.1 million dollars so we are going to fund some of the new positions out of um the 20 percent the administrative interns for one year the student support specialist and some elementary teachers in addition to that the summer learning programs that we did this summer we had a very extensive summer program as dr gurley talked about earlier today the virtual learning platform that we referenced which is virtual virginia and apex for our virtual students for next year um is going to be funded out of this and certainly any remediation programs that we may have in the upcoming years um you know we have you know after school remediation programs or we may find um that we need during the school remediation programs we can certainly use this funding to help um pay for those and
064and also you know we're not we may get to the spring and not and then realize exactly what it is we need so you know this is an opportunity to um you know be fluid um with what we're doing with this portion of those funds um construction and renovations are allowed with this funding as well it must be pre-approved by vdoe um you know back when we were looking at all the plans for construction and the recommendations by rrmm we were looking at replacing southside or renovating southside and one of the things that came out through that was a centralized preschool center and i know um preschool is near and dear to our superintendent's heart um you know getting children in a formalized preschool center we also have um our preschool is spread out at
065the moment we have students at sutherland students at southside and we're actually having a bright stars class will be at sunny sunny side in this upcoming year so the proposal was to renovate the historic southside high school education center annex to include 13 classrooms and this would include the hvac upgrades roof replacement ada and restrooms um so this is what we have been talking about this is not a done deal but this is what we are proposing and this is what we have talked about as you know a use of this fund use of these funds um this will allow um at these schools that i just mentioned it will it you know spacing is a problem and you know class sizes you know need to be smaller and especially at south side it will
066allow us to move the early childhood special ed center and all of our bright stars programs to a centralized center where all of those children can be together and be and be served this would allow you know us to space children out you know smaller class sizes those types of things um in addition we are proposing to replace the hvac system at sunnyside that upgrade which is was in our um capital improvement plan it's been in there for quite a few years um and this would allow us to use this funding for that and move it out of the county's capitalized um improvement plan could i ask you what the uh day would be like for the preschool is it a full day yes it would be a full day program a regular full-day program
067for them yeah it's currently a full day it is currently a full day and um yeah the curriculums are very different than a typical kindergarten curriculum but it would be a full-day program it would run just like any other school would have its own little principal at a principal and like so so this funding that we got awarded i i didn't mention this but this funding we have through september of 2024. so so far this is the the longest funding that we had to spend um so you know that's several that's several years out there there is right now they're trying to get that to be more in line with how the county has i think it's 2026 and so yeah all the funding that the county and localities received under this award they had
068until 2026. so certainly that would help us if you know we ended up moving forward with some construction um projects on that um yes okay all right so the latest um funding that we received is under the american rescue plan and it's under our idea program which serves our special population special education population and um this goes through september 30th of 2023 and we receive 238 000 um as best we can tell it it flows it's like the flow through act and our current funding under this program however we really haven't been given any guidance um dr joyner is here and our webinar is thursday yes it's thursday and so hopefully we will receive some additional guidance about what they expect us to do with this funding because we just got a soups memo that
069said oh here you go and it literally had no guidance so um we will report back to you on on you know um what that's going to look like and of course we'll make a plan for those funds as well um i'm sure it's you know something to assist these these children of this population and um be able to um provide any anything they need as well in relatives as it relates to the pandemic so um so oh jesus you cut it off okay we can see it on there yes but we'll have to yeah yeah the green as well yeah and our grandfather so the grand total of funding that we received um yeah the the 12 million oh yes 12. it's 12 million 68 935.46 that's a lot of money considering when we
070started out last summer we thought we were going to have 658 000 to address the needs of this pandemic at the beginning of the summer and so you know as i mentioned before some of this funding has been um exhausted you know we have to spend it by a certain time period but the majority of it is still out there we still have nine million dollars that has not been spent well so um you know we feel like we can address the needs of our students and our families um you know with whatever we may have you know whatever this year may bring um you know we we've been throwing a little bit of a curveball here in the last couple weeks as everybody has mentioned lately because we thought we were kind of headed
071back to a more normal instruction but um that you know may not be the case right away so i just wanted to give you an update to let you know what the what this looks like how much funding we have had um we certainly uh people can provide comment to any of the um to the info at dcps um email account you can send things directly to me um i'll be you know glad to you know call me i'll be glad to talk with anyone about it we will be bringing back you know additional information especially as it relates to the two construction projects we would definitely have to have board approval for that and you know right now we're just in the very preliminary stages oh and the the preschool center did get approved
072by the virginia department of education we did have to submit an application to them preliminarily and it didn't meet their you know their requirements and so we did get preliminary approval um and of course we there's some next steps we would have to take in order to make that a reality but at least um you know we've started that process so um we'd be glad to entertain any um questions you may have um and we will certainly continue to keep you updated when they um give you these dates that each one had different dates that you had to spend it by is that um in the case of us adapting a building would we just have to have the plan and the bids or would the building have to be complete it would have to
073be complete which um based on um preliminary information that we've received we we think that that can be done because this is a renovation of an existing area and it's already had a little bit of renovation so we we feel like that that can be done um there there are some other you know considerations there because there's gonna have to be things done that aren't part of the um cares money that's correct but i also you know they're very realistic and that we understand that right now um you know building people are building houses and built contractors are working hard and that it's hard to find contractors and it's also very expensive yes to do that work so yes my colleagues that i've talked to you know that have put anything out for bid things
074are coming back yes so much higher than what was what it really would have caused last year this time and just you know finding materials i mean as mr davis mentioned earlier the hvac units and south side i mean you know we're you know we're waiting for them to show up next week and right we ordered them back in february and i think there's going to be a russian matching yes because there's more um the general assembly just right yes and so we're we're waiting now because there could potentially be additional um things we can apply for related to air quality and ventilation specifically for that so i know there's some money set aside for that so we're just waiting in the other issue that's why i was asking that question because all schools got
075this money and they're all looking to replace that right hence the problem i mean because it really it's really becoming a uh um challenge yes that's correct all right anything else dr weston no question of questions lord thank you thank you very much thank you thank you it always sounds like a great you know when you have all this money it sounds a lot but it's difficult to be very thoughtful about the spending and i do appreciate all the work that's gone into it because in addition to just trying to figure out what are the right things to do we have to might be mindful of equity when we're spending and we have to be mindful that the schools that need it the most are where the money has to go first um so you
076can't just say oh all the schools are going to get this i mean that's that's not how it works so i they've done a really great job in in helping us to be thoughtful about spending our money so thank you both um the next um we have uh you we're given today um about i think 40 some new policies that for your pleasure to read over the next couple of weeks uh we won't we'll be coming back to you um but in my review of them most of them have to do which is code changes to reflect new law um and just language changes um but miss golson has provided you with the redline version um so for your reference um i don't believe there's anything where it's requiring us to put together any regulations
077none that i saw um so it's mainly just looking at this is that time of year we're just updating and reflecting general assembly so i'm just going to leave those with you for our first reading and we'll come back to you later for approval of those documents um i'm going to just i'm going to preface this by i'm going to ask dr girly to come forward and just you know want to remind you that you know genuinely county we're we are committed to ensuring that all of our students um have a positive safe and nurturing um place to learn and um so most recently um the general assembly enacted a new requirement for us to ensure that we have a policy in place uh to protect transgender students and so um dr gurley have asked
078him to come forward to provide you with an update as to where we are in the development of such um draft of such policy and where we're moving forward so dr gurley absolutely uh so back door and i think it was this late spring summer there was code of virginia that was adopted and that was 22.1-22.3 and it's the treatment of transgender students and so according to that according to the code the department of education will make available model guidance to school divisions regarding the treatment of transgender students and some of the things um that it asked that we addressed and the um in the code it asked us to address the non-discrimination which i will talk about the maintenance of a safe environment the prevention of bullying the maintenance of student records the identification
079of students it talks about privacy dress code the access to facilities and that and and activities and um lastly it just states that all schools should adopt this um should adopt these a policy uh at the start of this school year and so what i want to begin by saying is that then woody county public schools has always had a non-discrimination policy and so and that policy reads deanwood county public schools is committed to a non-discrimination is this committed to non-discrimination in regards to sex sexual orientation gender gender identity race color national origin disability religion religion ancestry age marital status pregnancy childbirth or related medical conditions a military status genetic information so we've always been committed to protecting all classes of individuals throughout our school division what i want to share with you um is
080some of the model some of the policy that has been drafted by our school board attorney for your consideration i want to preface by saying that i'm just going to highlight some of the policy and what we will do is um on the school board meeting i believe that's august the 22nd 24th 24th at the school board meeting on august the 24th we will work on with regards to some of the other areas with regards to bully hurrah bullying harassment and discrimination the draft policy reads that the school division prohibits any uh any and all discrimination harassment and bullying based on an individual's actual or perceived race color national origin religion sex sexual orientation gender identity disability and other characteristics protected by law and we were already doing those things we were doing those things
081for all students and so this is just the reassurance that we were already doing the right things with regards to student privacy and confidentiality before i read this we were already doing all of these things we were already protecting students in terms of their confidential information meaning that no one can call and ask about a student's grades they can't get a student's address and so further this just says that information about students that are transgendered whether it's their legal name their gender assigned at birth all these things should be remain private as they are protected by the family educational rights and privacy at ferpa so these were already things that we were doing for all students and it just further states that we have to protect the confidentiality of a transgendered student with regards to
082the student identification it says that the school division shall allow the student to assert a name gender pronoun that reflects the gender gender identity without any substantiated evidence um so in this area we've had we've had students who i mean they have come before they've come to their school counselor and they have um said that they identify as a transgendered student and so we have worked with the school counselors to support these students and so again this is just saying that we can't ask them to provide any substantiating information however i do think that previously we have gone a little bit above and beyond that we've met with the student and their families just so that we can make sure that we are servicing those providing the appropriate services to support the educational needs of
083the student with regards to student records this just says that we will we can call the student by their preferred name however we cannot and i say that we cannot change any students records if it has not been legally changed so if the student was born a female and now identifies as a male then we we cannot change the child's name on their diploma to john the student we can do some other things in terms of the program because those things aren't official documents but regarding transcripts and the transcripts in the diploma we must we must call the child by their legal their government name it does go on to say though however that after a student graduates if a student does have a legal change that this they can petition and ask us to
084make a change to their diploma and transcripts if they provide the documents that they have had a legal uh a legal name change regarding the dress code it just this these are things that we would be addressing for all students through the student code of conduct anyway that the gender would be consistent with whatever we prescribed in the student code of conduct in terms of length and you know not having body parts exposed and so all of these things we are already addressing for all students and so this is not anything that would be outside of what we are already doing access to activities the biggest thing here is that and we will do some more talking about this on august the 24th but the biggest thing in this area is that athletic participation will
085be regulated by the virginia by the virginia high school league and so that organ will be regulated by the virginia high school league or any other organization such as the virginia scholastic rowan's association as well as middle school athletics so all of those things will still be governed by the virginia high school league so we don't need to we can't develop any policy that's going to supersede anything that they would be putting in place um with regards to facilities i will not be um speaking and i will not be speaking at length about this what we will do is um i think as a school board we will use the work session at the end of the month to discuss what what access to facilities would will look like i will say that when it
086comes to facility our job is and it will always be the safety and security and welfare of all of our students and so one thing that in developing this policy what we will do is we will ensure that we are keeping all of our students safe and again as it relates to transgender students we have a lot of things that we already have in place such as our student success meetings and determining what things are appropriate for our students so again this area is about the safety of all students to include our transgender students and we will use the um august 24th meeting to just um to talk at length um again our overnight trips i think as a school board if you listen to our school board meetings i think that's always the first
087thing on our board's mind i think miss pittman is always the first one to say how many girls how many boys um how many rooms she wants to know chaperone she wants to know the chaperones and so i think we've already been addressing these things and i think again this is about the safety and welfare of our students and most certainly i think what the community will hear from us when we talk about this on the 24th is that these things will be at the paramount of your decision-making um and then lastly professional development and training and so our policy the draft policy just states that all stu all staff members will be trained on topics related to lg lgbtq plus students that will include safety and support measures division mental health professionals will also
088be receiving additional training so we know that and these are things that we are already doing things that we've already been um when we we always talk about we're bringing on more schools social workers and so it's just a lot of opportunities i know that a miss powell and dr john will they work very closely with our school social workers and this is just another thing you know it's job security for us all that you know ensuring that we are supporting our students all students is just at the forefront of everything we do and so that's just a little bit of the policy the policy includes definitions and i think that that's very important but i think what people will hear hopefully what they heard is that we've always had a non-discrimination policy which protects
089all students our goal is to always ensure the safety of all of our students regardless of where they are interacting in our building and we will continue to ensure all of those things and i know that those things are very important for our school board so i will entertain questions at this time if you have any well we had a lot of discussions about this already today in in our workshop and yet and we have some more questions as we move forward yes um you know we're making progress and we're working very hard like you say to make sure whatever we come up with applies to all the students regardless of who they are in their facilities yes ma'am all right anything else i do have one other thing before i sit down i did
090forget what during my presentation that we will have piano this school year um we we purchased keyboards piano keyboards okay not typing we do have we will have piano this year and we will have strings um and so what i am excited about is hopefully what this means is that we will have so much work that we will need more encore elective teachers sign language and hopefully sign language so we know someone who wants to teach sign language in lieu of a foreign language we will also and we do have a job there which will be at the back to school bash on wednesday october the 1st at the historic south side september the 1st september the 1st for public record bus drivers mr tucker is doing on the job training for bus drivers you
091had mentioned the piano earlier but what level will the strings be where are the strings going um the strings elementary as well [Music] okay wow very nice awesome there's a lot of research about music like that learning the piano learning strings and academics there's a lot of positive correlation especially early on it's really smart we do we are hopeful that the demand of these programs will cause for an increase of those types of resource teachers at the elementary school one day we'll have foreign language for our students maybe some mandarin chinese all right thank you all thank you thank you thank you thank you miss golson are there any citizens report comments no citizens are comment citizens comments board members comment start with jay um i don't worry much say um but enjoyed the advance
092today um thank you dr weston your staff you did a wonderful job thank you i'm explaining that dummies like me so [Music] everybody involved in that um just looking forward to exciting upcoming school year um i know it's not how we wanted to start it but you know we're gonna progress through it and we're gonna make it happen so let's win person and hopefully we all stay healthy say and enjoy a wonderful school year um i want to also thank dr weston for the advance today uh for jay and i who are new it's it was very interesting and uh very informative with all the different people and to get to meet everybody and to be able to talk to them all and hear what they had to say about all the different parts of
093what y'all are doing here and um like jay said we didn't want to start this way but at least we are still going to start five days a week and pretty much back to normal so hopefully it will continue to get better uh i am thankful that we're um participating in the meal program it's um very beneficial to all our students to have to take off the uh the list of what was happening for lunch and uh it just makes it a lot simpler at school that everybody can just eat and that's a wonderful program to have um we are i'm very sorry that we have to open with the mask we wanted to be able to open more normal with options but obviously the positivity rate is keeping us from doing that but we
094will make changes as we can as we move forward and i do urge a community to if you have questions to contact someone at the school board office or one of us so we can route you to the right person about what what the regulations will be what will happen at each school each level what's different on the bus what's different school and just to get information from from a um a good source rather than facebook and community sites then things get started that aren't true and you need to get your information from a solid source and i also appreciate the advanced day we had a lot of information crammed in a small amount of time but it's uh it's exciting to we have all this to read [Music] i remember dr weston you you
095once said we're always on interview we've always been watched and i i although i was cold all day today but just the presentations made me warm inside and i recognize how blessed we are to have the staff and the various departments um in our division in our schools and i just want you all to know that i truly believe that we have the right people at the right time in our school system to lead and guide us to in the right direction and mr davis that includes the staff who came in they were being watched very polite i mean it was like hey it's just a pleasure to do this you know and i just want all of us to understand that we are in this together and we appreciate you thank you miss mir
096thank you board members what can i say after that but um mrs pittman said that we have all that to read in that book and then miss pitman you forgot we had two other books we had to take a look at you before that that's right but it was all for our good and we appreciate um the superintendent for allowing us and sharing those um books with us and i do appreciate everything that all of you do and summer staff you are the greatest you have put this great workshop on today i mean i mean what can i say was better than any other and as they say sometime in the gospel world one of the songs says it's been a good day yeah dr winston um well thank you for all this nice work
097it is really um a pleasure and a blessing to get to come to work every day um actually how you saw everyone interacted and that's how it is every single day up here it's it's just it is truly like a work family and um i really do appreciate the opportunity to work with these folks i'd like to just extend to our families that are home listening um our appreciation um for just allowing us the opportunity to serve their family and work with their young people i know the past 18 months has been very very difficult for families and i know some of them were sitting at home disappointed because they did not hear what they wanted to hear relative to the mask and i want them to know that they're heard and they're valued and
098um that we you know we don't take any of these decisions lightly um we're also parents and grandparents um and so we stay up at night thinking about what's the right thing to do and so we just appreciate their flexibility and working with us and just and their trust in bringing the children back because we are going to have back almost all of our kids with the exception of the 80 to 100 kids we talked about um in person and that really speaks volumes to what's happened over the last 18 months i'd also like to thank the staff you know we have started the community conversations and i was just really we had over a hundred staff members that participated last week and we had many family members show up the week before um and
099you know what i loved about it was that they felt comfortable to speak about what's worrying them you know like this is what's worrying me this is what i i want you to think about this is and i i think that that also is a tribute to the leadership in the buildings that they under they do understand and the leadership here at the administration office that they know that you know we're here to serve them and that they it's okay for them to say those things and i think that was really great because we are going to get better the more that they provide us with that feedback and i think that um and i also want uh people at home and people are in the office i know that we all talk about it
100here but i don't know that we say it to the school board enough that that um it is really a privilege to work with a school board that really truly a hundred percent seven days a week 24 hours a day cares about the kids in this community um and there's a lot of places that can't say that um that you know no matter what's being dictated to us from richmond no what matter what gets dictated to us by washington which they try to make the best of a not so great situation but they're very thoughtful about you know what is the best for this community with for all of our students for all of our staff members um and so i hope that each and every one of us takes a moment you know to
101say thank you to them because it really is what makes all of this work and i think that is what's the deal any difference so thank you that's it yes ma'am all right now i will entertain a motion to adjourn i move that we adjourn the second that we will meeting will adjourn all those in favor you do sign meeting is adjourned thank everyone for coming thank