001i think mcmurray i know um [Music] i want to welcome everyone who's here tonight appreciate the attendance um sir would you leave us some reference please thank okay we do not have anyone for citizens forum tonight all right uh the consent agenda tonight we have the uh friends listed there volunteers extracurricular trip requests uh payment of the bills we do have a policy we're putting out the berkeley county commission school counseling program we'll be going out for review and public comment we have discussion on the motion in discussion all this favor of the emergency environment saying all right all right but his name is transmission about action items um yes tonight um we hope to bring culmination to the last couple of work sessions and hopefully get a finalized number so that we can move
002forward with things this week we have arranged to have a meeting with mr road in sva next week we do have some paperwork that has to be completed this week which involves having the the finalized number uh for the uh for the bond call we can still negotiate some of those items that are underneath there but we need to get that top number established so that we can complete the paperwork and get that to them this week okay um you received some yellow pages in your mailbox thank you mr burton for taking care of that um i need a motion to uh put the issue before us so i have a motion one student come in his power has moved second uh amendments to the motion before we discuss are there any amendments to the
003motion okay let's go into discussion first question i have how many hours in work sessions should be making this film that's about five sins uh just in july just with the group that's here at the table now yes but this has been a working item for two years i know joe's been a part of it for the last year so there have been numerous support sessions okay and uh in your packet uh 124 938 315 the promotion before us is putting on the ballot for the november election a school bond for 124 i mean 124 million 938 350 dollars i figure uh this league of committee uh started out of one favorite mr burton yeah the terrible scope was around 350 million and the phase one was uh proposed at honor okay so this working
004group compared that down 25 million to the present number okay any discussion points that many of us members wish to bring in a question about the sprinkler system um for inwood do we have an existing spring we have an existing sprinkler system in input we do not i believe that we add that in fire that is a safety issue yes [Laughter] so it certainly is a safety issue one of the projects that's in this this phase of the bond is a pre-k center on that site so once that precept pre-k center was built then the existing english primary school issued to be moved to the venue elementary school that will be in southwest okay so that that would be a huge safety issue to consider if we're going to continue in the coming years to
005use that school right right now it's not fun right we're not starting construction on the inwood pre-k center until 2024 with completion of 2026. that's a lot of time between now and then for us to gamble in my opinion with children's lives as well as staff for you know i i i would be horrified if we lost someone and and after years of not losing anybody in a fire there is a fire alarm system yes but that doesn't necessarily mean every single person is going to get out and then we can't stop it sprinkler system guess it gets everybody out but a sprinkler system can also mitigate further damage and spread so for many years that's all our school have far away living out sprinkler systems so we're getting rid of that building i mean
006i understand what we're saying um i'm looking for the cost of that was it now we might use it for something else or will we i mean that would be up to us and the board to determine that once that once that system was installed in that building it would not be used somewhere else no i don't mean the system i mean the school the school itself the building itself it's possible it was possible it was more likely that it would be removed okay that's what i'm more likely to do before we go any further we have a motion to include 588 thousand dollars per second do i have a second to the motion okay mr wright's second motion okay now we go back to the discussion and i'll let this power begin and then
007we'll go around that way okay i i personally look at what our current code standards are as far as you know commercial buildings and such and while we're not necessarily doing anything that would open that door to this particular building um my concern is is kids getting out you you you can have a child in there that might be hard of hearing that might be that might it could potentially be deaf not going to hear a thing and if they're focused on something else they might not understand what's going on that relies on teachers and and other staff but as we all know things can get crazy when we're all trying to get out of the building so just want to make sure that we are doing our due diligence and providing safe measures for
008our kids and several years down the road i know that this pre-k center could absolutely get built and done but what if there's a lot of what-ifs there and i'd rather play it safe well i think if if it comes to the what if then we install the sprinkler system and it's in the sea of the pig so it's not a question of is it a need it's it's in there as a need this is just talking about this particular funding what it's going to be designated for so if for some reason that school was not replaced if it was you know decided that was going to be repurposed and work was going to be done to it any major work done correct so uh it would remain in ceo until it's uh it would
009only be the oldest ones that there i believe if it doesn't right now okay uh we could run a 588 thousand dollar item to a major improvement request correct and today it would be not on the bond keep the bond of less than 125 and still do that uh would would the maker of the motion agree to change emotion a distinct part which is that the next mip request for this amount plus whatever else when is that completed mr bird it would be faster than a month the needs application is september and i believe that m.i.p is in spring so it would be spring 23 okay i moved to amend okay that we add that to the spring um the next availability next year is to put this request down as the next major nib
010request from the county having precedence over anything else uh further discussion on the amended merchant reporting bonus dennis power you have closing closing comment would be in the event that what for whatever reason construction is delayed we can do the best planning that we want working in the construction industry it can be delayed and delayed and delayed and especially with their current electrical supply issue that's currently plaguing our country i don't want to bank on a 2026 delivery of a pre-k center that would eliminate this so i just want to make sure that this is um taken care of should anything happen whether we don't even build it all or we use the building for something else amendment signify by saying hi thursday the spirit have another student and i think we're all finished there
011i'm correct okay so the motion is adopted we will have the inwood primary sprinkler system included into the mip we're now back on the major uh primary motion of adoption of the bond submittal to the voters in event and further discussion on the main regime [Music] excel was all of our notes from the work session so uh with the adjustments for inflation to the new construction remodeling projects and the cefp repairs and upgrades that we all spoke about into that 37 million 948 350 number i went over that several times always added up as you can see when you're fighting my sheets and the major thrust of this bond is more classrooms we're safe correct yeah okay on favor of the motion to submit the 124 million 138 350 uh issued before the voters in
012november uh foreign all right yes it's unanimous all right excited on the agenda so i have put forth a um change to our proposed uh policy for a moment of silence after um the pledge of allegiance was said in our schools um and i i know that um there was some some small discussion previously but wanted to bring that up and propose that we have that policy i am well we had we had one thing done and what i wanted to do was utilize what had been suggested to us by the by our attorneys and i am trying to pull that up there we go do we have this over there it should be a response that was given to us um in our emails it was very quiet right i suggested that we use
013some of the terminology in that we should have in writing so we're all in agreement i can't be down a daily observance of one minute of silence shall be observed in each public school in berkeley county during this one-minute period of silence the teacher or adult president is to take care that the students remain uh seated and silent so that each person can exercise his or her choice of meditation reflection or silent activity yes make a copy of this please thank you i just like to have things from learning reports while we're doing that uh all that is power open debate um it was brought to my attention that some schools observe a moment of silence but some do not and in speaking with several students during our campaign season prior to it was expressed
014by several students that they actually would prefer to have a moment of silence we didn't go into any depth of you know length of time but they did express the desire to do that because and one student made the comment that um they would appreciate a moment of silence to help kind of get their minds together for the day because they come from a troubled home and it helps them get forget focused and to kind of get into a better place um another student said that they would like to use that to just it's very loud uh on the bus and then very loud in the school prior to class starting and they would appreciate um some silence right before they start their day to help get them get them focused other uses for a
015moment of silence of course can be used for any um belief that one has but also a meditation um time for just to use to to get them in the mindset of learning i purposely made a violation of the rules i didn't ask for a second because i wanted to make sure you had a chance to speak and i didn't want to silence you simply because the technicality was on the second but i i acknowledged my intentional mistake and i appreciate the other members started calling me out of the water uh we're gonna wait for the uh the language to come before us because further but uh uh do we have a second conversion for debate second thank you mr rick okay um anyone wishing to speak for or against the proposal okay well we
016didn't wait too but i guess i did have a question though are we allowed to discuss the concerns that were brought by legal counsel yes i didn't know what's protecting them but we can cannot yeah i wasn't sure i think the legal counsel there their concern um is potential lawsuits because um groups such as freedom from religion they think that we are trying to circumvent things to try to push prayer to school regardless of what your faithfulness is um and that but if we would do this of course then we would not also not be covered um if we were shooting individually so that was my concern i think it's well written i think it's very basic and i agree with it i think that students do need a time when this just to just
017just relax there get the mind together it's okay i'm here to learn i'm here to learn focus on learning rather than everything else that's going on that just occurred you know five minutes before class so my only concern is that potential potential legal action because people think we're trying to get around uh the fair and school thing uh there's no mention it's just silence center your mind and that's it i agree with damon that was my sense because i can see um legal action been being taken against us for this and it's not that i don't want to stand up to what i think is right but um trust me in my [Music] experience and other [Music] another organization and i guess and i was still enrolled by the board i've been sued personally that
018lasted eight years that i had to put up with that and i'm not willing to go through that again that i could not do anything with my home um everything was more less frozen and i'm almost done again as much as i feel that this is right mr stevens do you have any comments uh advice from the administration um i believe where this request comes from is a good place i i think that any any time that we get an opportunity to allow our students to center themselves and and be focused on their education which is i think is what the initial intent of this whole thing is i think it's a very good thing i have been doing a lot of research and contacting people and do believe um that that a a policy
019that would look like we're forcing a moment of silence would um no matter the intent would bring some additional scrutiny so i liked the idea and i would like to find out a way to be able to do something like this maybe um but i'm not sure i'm you know some of the other things that were brought up is you know a minute believe it or not is a long time [Music] and the policy as written would force employees to [Music] into possible confrontational situations with students who don't want that minute or refuse to take that minute and then that's gonna force a confrontational conversation with the parent of those students which i think would just expound on the on the on the issue so there there are a few things that there that honestly
020concern me while i initially thought i really like where this is coming from i'm concerned with that with having a policy that mandates among the silence so that's that's my take on it mr martin um so i was one to with uh miss long i was one to um second dimension to put on agenda because i thought again it's a great idea what legal counsel said and just hearing discussion it's it personal liability does does scare me um and the just any action that could be distracted i guess outside inside the classroom um with that is also it's concerning um first anyone else wish to speak a second time because oh yeah on face and so other than oh it isn't a constitution but then finding out that it was a legal case that uh
021get that which i didn't know but i don't think i know well it says in the constitution but then i didn't know that further long years later that was sort of struck down um so that i just wanted to make sure the public knew that they may look it up and see yes it's in the constitution but then there were cases that went after that um sort of went against it so i don't want people to think we're going against the state constitution because we're not well not and that's the way i feel and also um i'm not not talking about any plus personal legitimacy but if the board gets sued and we uh border risk does not cover us so then we're spending hundreds of thousands of dollars of our own money that could
022go into a billing project or whatever uh and i think it's a it's an okay thing i don't i don't see anything wrong with it but i think it's just there were times during during the past 20 years where we've had you know silent reading at different levels um you know during bus dismissal we're preparing for bus dismissal there was time where people had to be seated and doing certain things i think i think we may be able to structure some type of something that we can look at um and you know the one thing that me as a father former you know everybody who was a former student who was a former teacher also um backing it up to you know the pledge i'm thinking we might be able to use that that time
023at a different time during the day too might not have to be first thing in the morning so those are just some thoughts that i have the uh first i really have gained a lot of respect from this power serving on this board because of the research you did because you told me i always send them sin alone back in the 80s back in the 80s or this very idiot and i i thought that made it to them silence any time i could get kids to be silent were that simple but i also respected the the separation church and state and the effect of following the establishment clause when you look at the constitution of west virginia this section passed by voters 511 000 for the ratification and 145 almost 146 again so it was
024a 365 thousand majority so when you you look at the democracy ruled by the majority but all of us took a note to deny the state of west virginia's constitution that the united states constitution and in that constitution is there's this wall put up establishment against religion and the art in paragraph 15 15 and 15 of our constitution says no man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship place or ministry whatsoever nor shall any may be enforced restrain the lesser or burden uh in his body or goods basically it's saying we're not going to establish religion in one section of our constitution and in another section we have the meditation clause here i uh i agree with miss power and wisely picking what council suggested as a cleaner version of what you
025intended to do but i still think that that we are crossing the line of trying to establish violate the establishment clause whether it's said or implied and thought about or whatever i in my service in the military stationed on okinawa and the young 20 year old military guy is always looking for a point when he's not only and i see one of my fellow veterans there smiling at that common and i was in my rack one night somebody said hey gi outside the window you want to go to a party and i was well it's the sound of a woman to me and it sounds like the right atmosphere so sure so i went out the gate got the liberty card without the gate and i was taken to a private home where there were
026american husbands and their native wives they're beautiful people and they were trying to recruit me into becoming a buddhist a buddhist revivals what this was basically and in one corner it was a shrine and and i saw people at peace i mean i saw people deeply in their belief and i've never felt stronger as a christian than in that moment when my faith was being challenged but in the one corner with somebody in meditation before a shrine and in their hands they had beasts and they were rolling these beasts and the beads sounded like a craft candle and a thing i thought about is well what if you have a buddhist in a classroom and we have 46 languages in this school system so i'm sure we have buddhists why don't they bring their needs
027in the room and they're breaking the sounds do you punish them do you put the teacher there i'm not trying to kill this idea but we have a clausius constitution which does not establish a religion and how are we going to encourage ourselves if somebody's religion has a different approach to meditation and and i i just remember them and i remember seeing people who were oriented on the pictures but i saw in their faces people at peace with their religion just like i saw in my church as a christian and i went back to the barracks i had great faith i went back to birds and told my buddies what i had experienced so they said take us to it perfect and start to two or three one of them converted there very smoothly but
028the people that i posted there they said buddha is working on you i said no christ is working for me i'm sticking to my religion but i saw i experienced something that's one of the nice things about the military you get to go out and see the world and you get to see and experience other people both internally on base but also in the local culture but we took a note to hold the constitution and i think that the majority of people this state agreed he was down and it's it is interesting and i respect what you're trying to do but i think that we also have to respect the earth to the united states constitution we took and our cross alive as much as i believe that we need a sixth day of school
029like when we went to school where we went to sunday school a lot of kids aren't doing them sports their families are not taking but i as a board member can't say parents take your children to church on sunday that's beyond my responsibility i wish they would because we were trying to teach in our counseling classes some of the things without the religious signatures that our children are not getting them home i i i can see that there's a need for beliefs but i but i also think that we have to abide by those we take and that's and that prohibits us from establishing any form of religion there but i am i'm as i serve here with miss power i'm seeing her do her homework i respect them and i respect the dialogues that
030this board has we continue them but i i want to recognize this parent for closing comments um due respect sure so one of the things i think um many individuals throughout this time period have seen is you know i i am a christian and i do oh jesus is my my lord and savior so i don't buy into nor do i advocate for what is currently the interpretation of separation of church and state it is a legal jargon that is quote unquote um not in our constitution um it is not worded in such a way as such um that is my first my why my first statement second statement is we do have a duty to uphold the west virginia state constitution the states formed to create the united states therefore the state's constitution is
031to be upheld first before the u.s constitution contrary to some individual's opinion however i understand that there are some individuals who are not comfortable with the idea of voting for this because of a potential personal lawsuit i personally say i'm not here to please everybody else i'm here to do a job that i was assigned by god's do and if that means supporting the constitution in such a way that i vote or somebody doesn't like it i don't i i don't apologize for it um i think there's a way that we can work around this by utilizing some of the terminology that um exists in our school system such as social emotional learning i know we used silence and used other tools that can that can be done during silence with with students who had
032um have some behavioral challenges and it benefited them greatly there's ways that you can navigate this moment of silence and maybe we need to reframe it maybe it's not considered a quote moment of silence because that has connotations of forcing religion and maybe it needs to be something else because i'm not advocating for forcing of religion i'm advocating for just quiet whether that person wants to lay their head down wants to read a book wants to color a page wants to do homework wants to pray wants to meditate wants to you know do whatever it is that there that they feel they can do to help calm themselves center themselves whatever language you want to do i think it would satisfy our constitutional duty um that is that is in our our west virginia state
033constitution so that would be my closing argument i think that i am in agreement with um with mr stevens that there's a way to to work with this um but i do not i do not see this as a separation of church and state issue this is completely different we're not forcing a religion on anybody we're not bringing religion into it at all if you look at the wording there isn't prayer is not in there whatsoever meditation is but meditation can be um reflective of many different religions reflection is something that we encourage our students to do anyway to reflect on their activities reflect on their attitudes and their behaviors and their school assignments to to be better uh you know silent activity we do that all the time when we promote tests we just
034got done voting on tests if we can't do one minute of silence or how to get to a one minute of silence are we really teaching our kids anything about real life we're really teaching them anything about real life even if we worked towards that maybe it's not a minute for kindergartners maybe it's 10 seconds maybe it's a minute for for our students that are in high school but what are we doing if we feel obligated to fill every single minute of a child's day with something to do i i'm going to draw back on my psychology degree one of the biggest things i learned in my psychology degree for child development was that you need to allow a child to be bored if you don't allow a child to be bored they will never
035uh be able to do interactive play to have an imagination to to be creative to think outside the box to be to be engineers because they create things they become little mini engineers you give them a box and say no tv no no playstation and let me tell you you've got to train in two seconds and then you can't take away that box that box ends up becoming the thing and then they get upset that they lost their box not the playstation but the box the empty box so i guess what i said is are we doing our kids any favors i didn't say pray i thought that the rewarding of it took that religiosity out of it to satisfy not only the west virginia constitution but the desire to not enforce any sort of
036religion but it allows for a child to do that or a staff member to do that should they choose to do so silently without anybody else necessarily i think it's the way we should uh conduct the date and um for a call all in favor of motion by miss power as presented before you even know the paper sing the prophet saying i closed nay nays appear to have it denise do have it uh failed okay next item on the uh agenda is 6.3 the high school supplemental reading list uh staff ms burkhart and are you all presenting this you're going to present the high school reading and something else and then we'll have a motion after this so let me start off by saying that um we needed to backtrack a little bit when i
037came into this position the reading list had not been considered for up to four years and that's what we know about so we did take a look at the reading list we created a committee of high school teachers and also um an administrator and mrs klutner organized that and they considered um the uh reading list that would be recommended based on our current uh new instructional adoption which was the mcgraw hill and with that came stun sync when that adoption took place that was also approved by members of our teachers approved that adoption it was a process that took place with that adoption uh came a reading list that reading list was considered and reviewed and um [Music] that's how we came up with the list then the next phase of that after the teachers
038reviewed it and came up with a list based on the reading levels our next phase was for our lsacs and the high schools to take a look at that reading list that was recommended by the teachers and the lsic committees looked at that and um they approved or disapproved of the list all of our lsics and the high schools did approve the recommended reading list that you have in front um with that all pay to all high school students we also um something that was not enforced that we had in place but we are enforcing is that all high school teachers have to have a syllabus within that syllabus um the recommended reading is on there if the parent is not happy with that recommended reading there's an alternative book to go along with that
039theme that is expected to be taught during that standard we did find if i could refer to the lewis eye that was a book that was suspended last year and there was a mistake it was um on the 10th grade reading list and it should not have been and um it it was also in the ninth grade reading list so we have corrected that uh that book is still suspended uh but it was a 12th grade recommended book so that was a mistake that was made and that has been cleaned up so we are now at the point that the superintendent has the reading list and um it's ready to present that list you uh for recommendation to move forward i don't know colleen did you want to add anything um you have the reading
040list the stars beside it are the if they have a mature content just so you're aware of what that okay let's yes okay i ma'am to say something but okay well let's have a motion to get it for us and then we'll go into the discussion okay okay the merchandise long second but miss power to uh remove the uh recommended reading this um miss law i um started going through the books to ask [Music] and i don't want to vote on this tonight because it has not given me enough time to do that i got to do like 10 or 12 books and that's not enough time for me i mean i i don't know if there's a problem wait until next week but so your mission is to take it to the next four
041meetings or i have a second for the motion second segment by ms uh time that this debate went up let's just go ahead and put it on put it up anybody else we should say anything i have a question about something else on this on the va list okay go ahead and so you since you mentioned the bluestack controversy regarding that um you say it's going to be it's it's former 12th grade level book it is a 12th right yes sir therefore the possibility that it will come back forward or that is up to the superintendent and this board and could i follow that up by saying the reason it was where it was it was it went by lexile back when when these books were recommended years ago um they were by lexile and
042not by maturity level so the teachers were very thorough in moving the books to where the appropriate level and they knew them immediately you know many of the teachers on the committee said they were misplaced and this is where they need to be flexible meeting um level of difficulty when you read so you could have a 9th grader reading on the 12th grade level absolutely but maturity they should have been at the 12th grade level mr mr wright may address your question about the one book they brought up um it has been suspended it was recommended to be suspended pending investigation to what we found out it was actually being brought up at the wrong maturity level um i intend to uh keep it on the suspension list for this year uh and i would
043i will most likely be recommending things things change at the end of the year depending on it may not be a book that is recommended uh college board or the group that sends us the list to evaluate um but i would personally since this this group of sophomores last year um were the ones that were affected by the book i would at least my opinion would be that it should not be um [Music] possible for that group to have to see it again now once that group graduates we may find that it gets relocated to its appropriate level and if this board is is on board at that time but i think by hearing me talk you can understand that i i am going to maintain the suspension for this year my intention would be
044to review it and make sure that it's not brought before the same group of students during their senior year so we're probably looking at two years out and by that time it may not be on the reading list slang did you have another comment i want to make sure i can make it and i can make another yes ma'am okay well i want to say that i i respect the individuals that are on this committee and the decision that they've made it's not about that i think all the books are wrong i just wanted more time to be able to as a board that's a lot of books and then just to say well do you approve it i want to know what these books so they're they're quite a list and it's because english
045we want them to pull from all different facets so the students can get a choice to read you know when i was an english teacher 20 years ago there were two required books and those were the books you read and you had to drag students through those books that had no interest whatsoever so now we're able to pull you know it could be one theme that there could be four different books that you can choose from in that theme and i don't know if you want to mention oh also um our advanced placement courses that we have they oppose the censorship so if we start censoring certain textbooks or reading books or recommended reading lists they could pull our ap status from those students so we have to be extremely careful with that as well
046right and i'm not about someone's one of the books i just wanted to share that yes i just want to i want to make sure that i mean i i saw a page interview with them this is just startling it should not been in that particular grade level at all and i want to make sure that i'm making a decision and i don't want to see that again that you agree something i believe something like that that i didn't have a knowledge that was in that book if i prove something and i know it's in there that's a different story further discussion i have a question um the what's with the asterisks um beside it i see one there's for the ninth and tenth grade books uh approved reading less um that's legally language more
047than and that that was going to be my that was going to be my next my next comment was it was going to be this um for some of this i even the language for ninth grade it's like oh golly i know they hear all the time but to read it is completely different um so my my first comment would be if we were to and if let's say we kick the can down the road and we approve it next meeting um and involved in this is the the syllabus given out to parents man um is there a way that we can also attach on and i understand that the first year doing this is gonna be people aren't gonna like me and that's okay i'm not here to be liked um can we add
048on something like um it's having to do with sexual nature language violence something so that if there is a student in that class that we have no clue about that has been raped and they see that there's an s by that book they have the choice at that point before because seeing an asterisk doesn't tell them anything doesn't it doesn't say it doesn't say that there is that in the book and it doesn't say that the teacher is going to absolutely do that so my my question would be can we add that in some form or fashion to to to the to the book whether that's an s or an r whatever and we have this is one of you on every syllabus in the county that goes out and kind of disclaimer by our
049school lawyers before right that very thing yes ma'am but we can be more specific guys just to the book and what specifically because if it's if it's you know an s or or r for you know specifically we won't want to say rape um or a v for violence i mean we've got to take care of that just having an asterisk there or that there could be doesn't mean that there is in every single one so that would be my desire to do that yeah april okay make sure if you give one member a copy i'll make a copy for everybody yes i'm sorry i shouldn't put that in there was there go ahead i went through and i looked up every single one that had an answer i was like okay what's controversial um
050and i can understand why some of them are conversation but then explain some of these are going to mature levels so what i don't want to see is a 12th grader or even 11th grade that's taking 12 or even college classes then well you saw you can't read this book same book they're going to read it's a college level class or something like that i would hate for our students then to be treated that oh suddenly you're not mature you're mature enough to take off classes and do the college work but you're not sure enough to read the college materials or jesus that's that's my concern is that we're going to go down the road of let's start banning fanning a bunch of books because it's something that i find objectionable rather than whether something
051that may have helped a child critically think for instance well i think that's why um that we have a syllabus and that we have an alternative for that parent that child or student we have that alternative so yes if the parent agrees that yes this is a book that it's okay for my student to read that we're going to allow that but if it's not here's the alternative that may uh teach the same concept or thing that we're asking to be taught i think the other thing we do need to keep in mind though too is that there is a code in our west virginia code that says that we're not to be dispensing pornographic material to minors um and the unfortunate part is no matter how you slice it a 16 and 17 year
052old child is still considered under the law as a minor and i don't want to be i understand we need to keep our ap status i get that and i absolutely am not a person who wants to restrict um students in in getting a well-rounded diverse um reading material and and experience and exposure however there is such um a thing with with intellectual um level that is that can be considered higher that allows them to be in the ap course but they're emotionally they're they're not there they're not emotionally able to process it i'm thinking of some autistic students autistic students who are high functioning who have the ability to be in those eq classes but they don't understand relationships they don't understand how to do that interpersonal skills so what do we do with
053that but if what are our avenues if because i know teachers know this about their students going going into reading some of these materials are there avenues that teachers can pursue that give them the option of saying hey look you know what for this particular class i would love to do this book but i've got two or three students that emotionally might not be ready for this book yet and we can choose this book from the same reading list that doesn't violate our ap status that's what this yeah and that's that's my that's my desire is for us to be able to choose from that list so that we are not um dispensing pornographic material to minors as well as not banning books is not my desire i don't want to be in books but
054i also believe that at this point we gotta also look at the fact that some kids are just they're not ready possible okay well also that's where the parent you know parents have to get involved in this they they can't always blame the school system for some decisions that should fall on them i mean that's why they get the list they get the syllabus and that they make a decision also for their student i think parents apologize well i i guess here's one thing that we need to understand so you need to understand definition it's not pornographic unless it's to promote some of the hypererosis so for example with the book of the blue style people were saying that's quarter if there was a child or a parent that read that and were aroused they
055need to be reported to police but how do you know what i'm saying is if that was the intent if the book was intended which is what that's the definition by definition that's the intent so if somebody thinks that thinks that somebody writing about something that horrific their intent was to excite someone and then and they were excited that's what i'm saying that we need to be very careful about the words we use because it can be very dangerous because if i say something's photographic or racist or whatever it is i need to understand what those words mean i can't just throw them out and then just to get people upset and angry that like i said somebody's getting angry because they think that that's erraticism they they have a problem and of course we
056do have people in our community that have a problem um and they need help so um i just don't like that word to be used when that's actually not what it is if you look on the mobile health one that you received that has each grade level it'll show the theme and then there's three to four books to choose from for that thing so that's exactly you know you can forget as a parent you can choose or a student you can say i don't want to read the blue style read frankenstein instead and it's the same type of parent the only thing i would say is parents and the community investor i mean their tax dollars are given to the school and they are expecting us to be responsible with the money in which they
057have that's in our hands their money we're just we're supposed to dispense of it the best way we know how in order to provide a a good and well-rounded education so that's to that end while i understand i i agree definitions are very important i think i said that i don't know how many times during the debates um our definitions are very important i'm not i i want to first say i don't believe it was i don't know that it was tony morrison's idea when um she wrote the book the bluest eye to to do that however i also don't necessarily know every single english teacher's intent in utilizing that particular book either in our county our state or our country i don't know that what i do know is that our constitution and our
058code specifically states we are not to dispense of it and to get into a gray area of allowing it into our schools allows for some people to in their definition or in their mind say that there is the intent to and unfortunately my perspective and mr wright's perspective can be absolutely on the same page and the same thing that might not be the same thing for mr smith down the street so my desire is to not even entertain that as a possibility in our school system we don't even give our teachers that we're not setting up our teachers i don't want to set up our teachers to be accused of that intent so so the rebuttal to that would be that we can't have romeo and juliet we can't have any book that has any
059reference to sex uh suicide um anything like that because then the teacher can reach promoting suicide or for pushing sex on students just because the book mentions it we can go down that rabbit hole and then all that we'll be left with is our seniors reading books uh that by five year old views but mike but the code doesn't talk about that it talks about sex it talks about pornographic talks it doesn't talk about it they have to get down to definitions in terms of what pornography and what is not already the the uh version before us is the table for two weeks and contemplate uh list before us uh are there further questions of the staff mr stevens okay mr martin would table in two weeks delay and you order another book for this
060no but um the syllabus has to go out like the the high schools have orientation that wednesday night and they have to get the syllabus out and everything prepared for those kids on wednesday my uh concern was not that i think that i'm going to be in any of the books my concern was to have a deeper knowledge of what we're actually putting out there i want to know what i'm but i'll vote it on not just this list that looks good but i i will only say to that that there's a committee of um very knowledgeable people that have reviewed that and would i would ask if you did the same scrutiny to uh some math books the the language books that we've adopted if you know i'm i know that this because of
061the year that we've had because of the the attention that was brought to the reading list this year that is is tempting to want to have to go through each of these books and if you feel the need to do that then i'm going to go through the books that have asterisks i don't want to rush through this we kind of rushed a little bit more than i wanted to with the bond thing and i don't want to rush through this this is important i want to take my time um i'm not going to go through every book on the list but i want to i want to go through the books don't have the answers by them further questions how many um so on average how many um alternatives say teacher has one book
062how many alternatives would maybe potential parents have to choose maybe one or two other books or at least one maybe more depending on the teacher in the access they have the other books it's usually three to four but not all the like one high school might not have ordered the same novels as another right yeah at least one offer the other thing i wanted to tell you both ladies i wanted to thank you for sitting down with me and talking with me that day you gave me a lot of information i've read through probably about 90 of it so i haven't read through everything but you've given me a lot to look at and and research and i i greatly appreciate that you have opened your doors to questions and stuff so um i really
063do appreciate that and that you guys are trying to take something that wasn't necessarily the best when it came in your hat in your hands and fell in your lap and you're trying to make it better i i really appreciate that yeah i have a question to you when to wait to everyone else um this policy would not impair college classes that our students are taking for good credit we can't tell college professors you can't use that's an option our student that's a wonderful option our students have but they don't have to take a college class right correct and we save them a lot of money i think it's 25 an hour it's amazing yes yeah it's 25 an hour they can have their freshman and so forth years if they take that many classes
064or it's just a freshman year i my son's going in as a sophomore at wvu this year because of the west but yes sir i just want to make sure that policy we're happy for us will not impact our students and you can go into the dual credit as a junior currently so junior's going into the college class for dual credit are not covered on response so the 11th grader is taking a college class and they have a book that's listed for 12th graders in this policy there the professor is not impacted by that required reading the students understand that correct okay and all the trouble we're going to if we have all these stars a fifth grader can get an e-book and read any of these books we're not foreign children from books beyond
065beyond the school here that their children can go and read anything and everything on the internet and it's up to the parents not the school system for this board to decide what they have access to uh here the merchant before us and we'll get back here thank you again forced to tangle this to the next meeting and further discussion um just there's a couple rounds of there's a couple rounds of interviews for the committees um for it um i always go in the motion of trusting people in their field um this is what they do every day and that's what they've been doing for probably decades everyone's minds combined for them to they know the books deeply the thoughts behind the author and everything like that and subjecting our teachers to a two-day window before
066giving the syllabus to the students and having them change their whole syllabus for that i think it's a little bit unfair but again i trust um the committee um the superintendent's recommendation for um the reading lists for the high schools so especially with the ap college board as well okay so the motion of course is the table to the next new uh meeting all those in favor of tabling this policy until the next meeting sign obama is saying aye hi there's a purge um i'm going to vote all right motion passes to table the list three to two thank you all for a good healthy potatoes item on the agenda is the waste management review mistake good evening board members and superintendent stephens i'm happy to be here this evening to present to you the
067waste disposal bill um every we last built this out in financial year 20 which is 2018 20. uh it's time for us to talk about how to beat events again we also get this out in a one year bed and then they have an addition we can review for two two more years incrementally depending on service etc price just so that you know the intent of the bid is to establish contract for the refuse removal services for all schools and facilities within the berkeley county school system successful bitter shall be responsible for providing all materials labor equipment tools insurance and services required for the refuse removal services to include solid waste single stream recyclables waste consisting of cardboard mixed paper and other recyclable products and all schools and facilities within the berkeley county school system
068this includes the ability to run a composting program separately and this was something we needed to do in order to possibly start that program um at this time the financial year for financial year 23 it's our recommendation that the waste disposal service be awarded to republic for allied services for 210 875 dollars and fifty-three cents questions we're missing yes thank you i'm sorry sorry for him let me show you guys yes uh this is about this is how you say this has to be without recycling and things like that so has there been any looking have any thought into like um composting program like they have in frederick county things like that is would that be part of that well what this does is allow us to do the initial bid for all waste removal
069okay um our current bid that we had prior did not allow us to do composting other than a small activity within a school etc so we when we when we basically put this bid back together we included the ability to do a composting program all over the account so we're starting down the track for the questions for song do you know a reason why maybe waste management i listen uh they came in about an hour and ten minutes or so late for the bed opening and unfortunately well um so actually uh alad was just called the public service they are the same kind of management and what was our cost last year do you know well i know the last bid was 156 thousand we are closing the current financial year and i i can
070send that to you okay but uh there's been a significant increase as well yes and part of it's due to coping i'll tell you that much uh our students over the years we've had to increase of course if you know our state fee to achieve low our students eat in classrooms to meet the state law which is a great thing um and with that comes more veggies etc so we've had an increase and with a population increase like everything else um all of those on the operations side seems that we hold it up holding it up and joan is this as well population increase causes more dumping cycling is this a flat a flat fee like this is okay yes so this could have the potential of going up and going down and going down
071okay so i think it will what makes you think it will uh when we with schools going back into session um there are some schools that will be eating in the cafeteria more versus out in the classroom so that's less okay um because we won't be using disposable trees all of that okay okay in elementary to middle schools we'll go back to using real silverware so we're going backwards to where we were before march 13th 2020. thank um what can we expect i guess because some of this i would assume also has fuel prices in there because i mean you know we cannot when their truck is horrible a federal program cannot pay for fuels right i would assume that they would have rolled it in they would roll it in um everything in my
072program depends on the person sure sure um i guess my concern is that with like as fuel prices continue to increase with their number that they give to you without you knowing necessarily how the breakdown is do you or do you get the breakdown i have a breakdown okay and also actually it's not included in here but there are sheets for example um the compactor at which is a 34 yard contractor works for high school which is a hallway so once it's built we pull it out it's locked in at a certain haul rate of certain tonnage rates and the rental unit itself nice okay all right and each uh individual pickup so let's i'm i'm going to make something up off the top of my head if rosemont elementary had two a day pickups
073for i'm going to make something up because i don't have the pricing right in front of me sure 50 to pick up for those two days and the population increases then we would add another pickup for an additional fifty dollars okay i got you but you know all of that and i have a fabulous financial secretary that checks it line by line on each one awesome awesome that was going to be my next yeah and all principals know they cannot call this page themselves they go through us so that we can track it okay further questions um i just have one um every credit have you ever talked to cliff hoffman or mr borney the principal itself on recycling i work with mark quite often okay a lot about recycling they we have quite a
074few schools that do those programs okay so this would not inhibit any school implementing a recycling program the individual schools um there is a great area with contracts with that depending on how big the program is and we would have to the last time we approached that was with when the sun was here and she did something we'd have to look at that but um i'd have to check with this um i don't think it would shut that program down yeah i uh i would not want to see us discourage the school from initiating a recycling program because the contract said that i got on the trip we have recycling programs at hedgesville meadow hedgesville high school martinsburg high we we do these things work with the student leadership and governments etc some of our
075special needs classrooms do it as well and we work with them and we will provide an extra recycling container if needed to make this all work okay go ahead and smoke no that's great okay i just want to make sure if a school wants to recycle they are not prohibited by this they can recycle but they can use off the recycling container that is provided by l.a yes trash is money further discussion okay all those are let's have a motion before us and who moves the uh award move second second okay moved promise power second among this loan uh to award the uh item to al adwords all in favors signify by saying aye aye jose merced have a great evening thank you you'll have to have a sober sometime to your new dig as
076soon as the fire marshal clears us food um i'm looking at him because he's scheduled to yes we would love to have you all right it's beautiful personal actions talk to stuart good evening members of the board of superintendent stevens the action stated for monday august the 1st 2022 are as follows we have eight new coaching appointments and all of these are paid coaching assignments we have three renewals and coaching contracts we have four resignation of coaches we are requesting to extend one military leave of absence that is unpaid i do have one correction on line 19 or line 18 that is a pre-k teacher not a pre-k special needs teacher so we strike the word special mean down that line with those appointments there are 23 on the professional side of appointments for this
077coming school year we have one correction of a location from a previous board agenda we are have five people to rescind their appointments we have three change of assignments of professional personnel that we're rescinding rescinding can have a different the most of these are for the ability they chose not to join us as the new staff they were appointed and i've chosen not to come to murphy county after you've made the motion to approve it so this just cleared that contract down there are three change of assignments from uh within the building from one type of a job assignment to another we have nine resignations of professional personnel one retirement of a professional personnel and three transfers from one location to another location a professional personnel then these took place before the 20th day and
078we're just now getting those to you uh those postings when we go to the service personnel uh we have seven 27 new service personnel joining us for this coming school year different assignments uh we have two corrections there uh of class title days and the start date we have seven change of assignments and they're moving also within their buildings to different titles or job responsibilities nine resignations and servant personnel and one retirement that we received this morning we have nine or 18 excuse me transfers of service personnel from one location to another job duties responsibility and summary and class finals one correction of a service personnel with the correct aid title classification we're removing a individual from the transfer list and signing for next this year one person is choosing to rescind that transfer that
079was previously appointed we have three upgrades and service personnel and a lot of these are the classifications or they've achieved a different pay grade through college hours or additional credits that they've earned or specialized training these upgrades we have two substitute service personnel to add to the substitute list we have two renewals of those two contracts we have two resignations of two servants of individuals and 23 new substitute teachers the athletes coming in school year we have one new substitute teacher to remove and two contracts to substitute teachers uh to renew there and three resignations to teachers for a total of 166 professional personnel recommendations of the superintendent's recommendation yes okay a motion to move the personnel action before us long second and second mr martin discussion on the uh issues of course there's some
080good employees um question is there a way that you can also include um with these how many open positions remain in our county so i'm looking at you know the different appointments different uh rescindings and resignations and all that stuff i'm trying to follow how many professional personnel um positions are still open in service and substitute service substitute future um are quite our our biggest thing has been staffing and i i want to be more up to date on how many are open um when i'm just taking a look at this i see 23 appointments hopefully all of them will accept but at the same time i'm looking at the rescinding appointments and resignations and i'm going holy cow that only means we need out nine oh that's michael you're gonna say i understand what
081you're coming from mr kamalski and so they give me numbers all the time coming and going like you said they change also i don't want to stay here and quote something and i know this week the friday letter returns with mr stevens in his first edition so i will make sure he re includes some of those numbers in that letter miss bobo and we'll get you that on friday with the most up-to-date information great thank you yeah uh just just one comment not about the personnel but i attended the uh new principles appreciated those you could attend um and then the leaders in train one of them came up to me after this is something that we did years ago dr school one of them came up to me i don't know whether it was
082a principal or vice president but i when i used to get the accident interviews and they had their phone numbers i would call up a couple of land and one of them came up and said i caught her i didn't remember you know we had a conversation she left i think she left the state in return but she said it meant so much to her to have someone read or accidentally and and reach out to her and wish her well right because i'm not sitting there trying to burn them back here like a cattle driver but it meant a lot that she made the point to come up to me and talk i i think you and i talked about it and you saw the impact and i think that we the board should be
083looking at exit interviews the in the future and make reaching out to some of these people because uh as ms long said i know one of them was uh in my photography class um from your administrators leadings and it's just long said we're it's not a body that's working walking at the door it's a wealth of talent a wealth of investment that we've made into that person um it's it's uh it's not always one for one when one walks out another takes the place but sometimes it's not evil and i know you doctor still we are aware of that as much as anyone in this room so we need to start as a board reviewing those accidentally mr students and uh and seeing that and you have to keep it in confidence those extra interviews
084are in confidence but sometimes when you reach out to somebody walking out the door to see them come back in it's just it was because you reached out and she told me she said that meant a lot far more to her than when i that because i couldn't even remember the conversation but we got to use every chance we can to uh not bible alliance their departure they may come back we gotta make sure they feel welcome and wanted them to come back i do that quite frequently and they are very appreciative that you you thought about you know contacting them yeah you were attack story from that i remember standing beside you in in all when uh we had the retirees and they were hugging you looking at me i mean because she fought
085for her back when she was uh president of surgery and uh they were all hugging her and everything i was sitting there to say wow man okay let's get back to this all those in favor of the motion to approve the personnel of this signal saying hi but his name i spear to him but i just do have a presentation passed for the announcements anyone have any announcements all right mr right listen i'm going to recognize um the only announcement is just to remind everyone that the berkeley county 75th fair fairs going on and a lot of our youth are involved in that if we can go out and take part i think they would really appreciate that okay mr power i just wanted to say thank you um to several individuals who um this
086week had invited several of us board members out um one was for a math um event and i i don't think i will get out the you know thing uh that was that was fun um but but also with um the administration the the administrators those who are new as also as well as those who are aspiring um it was quite encouraging to see that auditorium filled um with so many smiling and excited faces um so encouraged by that other announcements by the board well i'm looking forward to the teacher orientation that's in the water side they're all excited they're all excited we appreciate all all the people um we are some of us are working at the fair absolutely i'm not i have to work check out the photography as always okay mr stevens
087while he's pulling this up i did want to uh to mention you know the youth fair i appreciate mr wright bringing that up tonight so um this is the week for the berkeley county youth fair and if you get an opportunity to go out and support the youth in berkeley county uh it is fantastic to go out there and and see that so it's it's a joy to to see go ahead and go to the next slap one well we're well we're giving you the chance here i want to congratulate you're about to be not lose a son again or daughter i understand thank you very much yes and he's geared for a wedding i'm geared up here just be honest um but i do have a few things here to uh to bring out
088as we as we close first of all i want to congratulate uh kari mahias uh she is an uh employee she's secretary at north middle school and she traveled to charleston for her interview she is the berkeley county school service personnel person of the year and she's a finalist for the west virginia service personnel person of the year so um want to give a shout out i knew that jackie would be excited about that but everyone should be she's fantastic um and we've got a lot of people that are out there under the radar and i am glad that uh car is going to represent berkeley county in in the west virginia service personnel of the year competition um we are wrapping up summer learning and some great pictures here it's always good to see
089smiling faces employees and kids had a great time we had over 1400 students that participated in three programs this summer 1400 and we employed over 400 staff people to do that so uh those people who come up and say oh you're in education so i hope you enjoy your summer they don't realize how you know and and it's totally different from the school year where they come in and you've got you've got to reorganize you're going to different schools you got to organize transportation you know the food service part of it um your child nutrition did a great job i just wanted to give a shout out to you know the teachers the aides secretaries child nutrition the nurses the admin the bus drivers student workers that came in the volunteers that helped law enforcement
090that showed up um you know it was uh it certainly takes a village to run a program like that but if you if you think about that that is larger than some other entire school districts in the state of west virginia and we pulled that together for summer activity it was uh it was something to be seen i know mrs burkhart is going to give a little bit more in-depth look uh at the next meeting so um i just wanted to give a shout out and we'll take a moment to recognize everybody and say thanks for the work uh to do that on the 28th and 29th we had a leadership academy and this was designed for current and aspiring um school administrators that's the group that miss power and and mr murphy were referring
091to and ms long um that they were referring to the thursday portion of that was really uh outside the box and i give the the team that that organized this a lot of credit for uh you know pulling these people back in getting them refocused from the summer getting them on board working as a team a ropes course trust activities um you know being led down a path where your footing is unsure and your eyes you're blindfolded and somebody else is leaving you um it build up a lot of trust in that plus there's a lot of conversation a lot of fun uh that came out of that and they culminated with the zip line so i would love to be involved i would have loved to put you on that zipline um so i
092also want to say then on friday we broke down uh the groups went into many sessions on friday a lot of great information um so kudos to the group that organized that whole thing the committee uh and everybody that delivered sessions they did a fantastic job with that and i know that you know miss power mentioned smiling faces and excitement in the crowd they they really um really jumped into that not to be outdone the uh foods class at musselman uh cafeteria group what really what's the name of that class culinary arts class they did a fantastic job and um you know it was great to see people that i worked there for a while see people that i used to work with but the students that were in kindergarten they were in kindergarten when
093i was last down there working as principal or now seniors at that school my my wife taught them uh in kindergarten and now they're seniors and it was great i had a great time being there as well so um i wanted to go to the next slide yeah this is it um ms long mentioned the new employee orientation and chamber breakfast it is a um you know it's it's a hit of the summer you know when the new employees come in and uh you know you get a goodie bag it's you know you feel like it's you know it's the end of halloween when you're a little kid you come home you got that bag of candy and you dump it on the floor and you try to trick your little sister and one of
094your closest friends to give you all kinds of their candy trade them in oh you don't want that you don't want that full-sized candy bar that's not good for you you know um those goodie bags are fantastic so that's the hit of the new employee orientation and that is going to be the 10th 11th and 12th um don't forget the chamber breakfast that's going to be on friday our activities this summer we're moving around to the different different schools and utilizing those facilities kind of grew out of one of the meeting rooms that we had used a lot and you know so far it's worked out very well to meet the schools yes you will get that information yes um opening day of school wow it seems like just the other day we were talking
095about closing things up my how things have changed since may when we were doing that um but um you know our k-12 group goes back to school on monday the 22nd pre-k group will have a staggered start going back on the 23rd and 24th our enrollments over the summer the pre-k through eighth grade um through middle school um those schools are not uh open so there's a summer enrollment for pre-k through eighth grade high schools are open so the registration for high schools continues year-round at those locations we closed our summer enrollment um for the pre-k to eight grades uh last week we're going to reopen this week that um i just want to let everybody know we'll reopen that this week on the third um let's see oh um our our back-to-school checklist and
096toolkits are all listed online over the next few weeks we're going to be sharing messages with families uh and staff to keep so uh keep watching looking for updates as we go through those i mentioned the youth bear thank you again to mr wright for bringing that up our next meeting is august the 15th we should have a lot of action taking place between now and then so hold on to your seats and let's uh let's let's stay on this thing okay thank you very much that's it for me motion to adjourn second second stay in the military all in favor of this question from the currency department saying hi happy thursday i think