001I'll have to run call the meeting to order, review the agenda, approval of the agenda, and then ask you to do chairman comment. You have the motion >> you make to return >> the motion to reconvene. Right. So the motion should be remand disciplinary. >> Remand disciplinary action. Okay. >> Huh? >> Yeah. What's that? >> I've seen those before. >> Huh? >> I've seen those cases before. >> You knew what it was? >> Yeah. Go ahead and do that. Just I can open call the meeting to order public. >> All right. All right. Could we have a motion to reconvene into open session? >> I move to reconvene into open session. >> Second. We'll need a certification. This weird I >> Mr. >> Hi, >> Mr. >> Hi, Mr. >> Hi. >> I motion passes.
002Do we have a motion for action from the closed meeting? I I make a motion to remand disciplinary action back to staff. >> Second. >> All those in favor? >> Any opposed? >> There. Therefore, I adjourn the closed meeting. So, now we'll be ready for the open when we're ready. Okay. I don't know. I'd like to call the January 12th, 2026 uh regular schedule meeting of the school board to order. Um do we have an approval of the agenda? >> I move to approve tonight's agenda. >> All in favor? >> Any opposed? We'll move on to chairman's comments. So, I'll try to make these as quickly as I can, but I did want to um just say a few things as we close out the school year. Um I want to take a moment to
003reflect on the progress that we've made together as a board, but then also as a school division. Um this year has included a lot of transitions, um including the resignation of Monica Singh Smith as our board chair and a longtime school board member. And then this is also our first full year um with you, Dr. Bowling as our superintendent and your leadership and focus on students and staff has been instrumental throughout this past year. We've also welcomed several new leaders who play important roles in our school division. So, we have a new transportation director, a new finance director, and a new maintenance department head, as well as other positions that I'm sure I'm leaving out. Um, and each one has strengthened our operations and supported the daily work of our schools. And then this year
004we're also welcoming a new newly elected school board member, Mr. Site. Um and we appreciate your willingness to serve um and the perspective that you bring to the board. And then um we've also a few highlights from the past year. Um we've made the important decision to move the preschool programs back to their home schools. Um which I think reinforces school communities. And then um our jump start program in partnership with the Blige Community College received a VSBA showcase award. Um our students have excelled in the as widget cut champions and we celebrated our Lego robotics in our elementary schools. And then we also have this year as our first year um with students being involved in the EMT program at the innovation center in Winchester. We're grateful for the positive relationships that we maintain
005with our community partners, especially the board of supervisors and the education foundation. And most importantly, um all three of our or all three schools are academically our school three of our schools are accredited with distinction, right? Full distinction. Um we have um all four schools accredited but three of our schools boyce um and Kulie and Johnson Williams middle are on track but the high school is >> distinguished. Okay, thank you. And our graduation rem rate remains high which reflects the hard work of our students and our staff and our families. And so as I conclude this year as chair, I want to thank my fellow board members, our staff and our community for their comm community for the continued commitment to our students. So thank you. >> Thank you, Miss Ker Hobert. Thank you for
006everything you've done in those uh remarks are greatly appreciated. At this time uh time is set aside on the agenda for the superintendent to conduct the nomination process and subsequent voting for the position of chairman of the Clark County School Board. So, at this time, do we have any motions um for nomination for board chair? >> I'll nominate Katie Kher. >> Second. >> We have a motion and a second. All in favor? >> Any opposed? Um, congratulations to Miss Kob and now I can uh give the meeting back over to her. >> Thank you. >> Okay, next item on our on our agenda is the election of the vice chairman. Um, so time is set aside on the agenda for the chairman of the school board to conduct the nomination process and voting for the
007position of vice chairman of the Clark County School Board. Um, is there a motion for our vice chairman? >> I nominate Clay Brck. >> Second. >> All in favor? >> I. All opposed. Okay. And consent agenda. So, are there any questions or comments regarding the consent agenda for tonight? >> I move to approve the consent agenda. >> All in favor? >> I. All opposed. Okay. The initial FY27 budget presentation. Dr. Bowling. >> And to be timely tonight, I did remove this uh superintendent's comments because we don't have a lot that you know has occurred. We've been out on break since our last meeting and we'll use the majority of the night for our initial budget presentation. I didn't have any updates, but one thing that did happen after lunch today that I saw, um, Governor
008Yncan has declared this week as Virginia School Principal Appreciation Week. So, it happened noon today. Um, but I did want to go ahead and thank our principles for all they do. So, that would have made the remarks, but it was a little bit later in the afternoon. At this uh time, if we'll go ahead, Miss Weir, if you'll pull up the uh budget presentation, we'll go through it first. and I'll take questions along the way and at the end as well, but we'll move as quickly as we can. But I do know that this is one of the import really important pieces that we do as a school board um together. Um the first part there is just the code as to why we bring forward the budget and the process that has stayed the
009same for several years. So we'll move on to the next slide. And when we look at our budget, some things that we look um to and I think when you see our survey that's going to speak to this, which uh bullet point one there is taking care of our people and they're our most important resource. You know, I think everything else is important, but I've always said, you know, although they're important, curriculum, text, um extra things, they don't teach kids, people teach kids, and that's the most important part of what we do. We also look to having our budget align with our strategic plan goals. We do have a community stakeholder survey that you'll see here in a little bit. And we have been meeting and we've already met with principles and department supervisors. So
010that's where a lot of this budget's been built from. We take into account the needs of our student body. Something that's still being um fully developed is a Virginia Literacy Act. That's been ongoing for several years now. And then we also have this um last year being the first year of full implementation of the Virginia accountability framework. We are in year two of accounting this year, but it does continue to be revised and it looks like revisions are going forward and those do have impacts. We move on to the next slide there. That are just some of our primary goals from our strategic plan and you can see how the budget presentation will align with those as we continue on. All right. Now, this is the first point there, which is our survey. And the
011reason I say that that um part there about taking care of our people, it does not shock me, but when we looked at our um community survey related to our budget, we had 15 community members take it, 97 employees to take the survey, 92 parents, and four students. Overwhelmingly, the number one priority that they felt like that we should take into consideration in developing a budget is employee compensation. And you can see that was priority one. And when you look there, the number is the number of people putting it as priority one. And the next one is the percentage ranking of that being priority one. And that follows down throughout the priorities. Priority two was on there last year, but it actually moved up, which is career and technical education programming. Really excited that that
012moved up because I think that there are many different pathways of being a successful citizen and what's important in the workforce. And many people go through our our career and technical programs, either continuing a career and technical program after college or enter the workforce, and they're very important to our society. Priority three to maintain small teacher student ratios. Uh priority four um was not in the top five last year but it with the trends and concerned around health insurance costs that moving up into the top five is no surprise to me this year. And I think as the budget develops we are going to have to be trying to also be cognizant of salary compensation if we were to see an increase in health insurance. the impact is diminished if the cost of health insurance
013were to go up to our employees. So, that does not surprise me that it's in the top five. And priority um five are advanced academic offerings and we offer a wide variety of courses that our students are able to take here. So, that rounds out our top five priority pieces in developing the budget. the process so far. Um, in early December, budget requests are put into our system. Our new director of finance has done a great job working with our staff on that. And in December, the um requests were heard. Um, you know, Dr. S, myself met with every principal in every department trying to justify and tried to reach what were a reasonable budget request. Early in January, we had the central office leadership team meeting with JAS to review the budget line by
014line. That has already happened. We did spend the majority of the day actually going through our entire budget line item by line item, which does take a lot of time. I think we had like uh the neighborhood of 375ish line items to review just in the operating budget. So, I appreciate their dedication in going through that. Um and at this point we're ready to do um uh presentation one of the budget because after deliberations we have developed draft one. The next one there you all recently approved the organizational chart. Um so we won't necessarily spend any time with that piece. Um student needs um English language learners. Um we're so thankful to have those students in our schools and community, but we do need to make sure that we service them and take care of
015them. Um and with the new accountability framework, it's always been important to do what's right, but I think it's even more important now when you look at results. Under the old system, they were given up to 11 semesters in the country before they had to start taking testing that counted. Under the new accountability framework, it's three semesters. So that's a really quick turnaround time. So we want to make sure we're taking care of their needs. Now we do have students who are free and reduced lunch eligible. One thing I always say is we speak from facts and to be honest overall we have a low free and reduced lunch population but that population is someone a group that we still have to serve and take care of. We also have our special education 504 students
016and schools continue to see trends of needing more intensive behavior support. Also, we do have a McKenna Vento homeless population. Albe it pretty small in Clark County. That population is still part of our student body. All right, the next slides we'll go through quickly. I just wanted to have those available for the public, but you can kind of see the trends there. The first is a chart of our EL students or our English language learner students. And you can see that that is down a little bit over last year 2425. But um still when you look at either ELLL all services or just getting services, you can see that both of those bars are between 100 and 150. So it still represents a significant chunk of our student body. When I spoke to free and
017reduced lunch and the percentages there, um you can see that the percent bar there about halfway up to the 100 on the orange would be 100% of our students being eligible for free and reduced lunch. Although that's nearly impossible. Um now there are divisions where a lot of kids there are a lot of divisions where kids receive lunch and breakfast at no cost because they're community eligible, but you would never have 100% free and reduced lunch. But there are divisions that exist that are above 80%. You can see we're probably in the 20 to 30% range. And we have less than 600 of our kids getting free or reduced lunch. Our special edge population pretty consistent with last year. If you look at that bar graph there and our homeless is down probably not down
018as much as you look because if you look at the vertical axis there they're in units of 10. So estimating looking at that I would assume that's probably 32 or 33 kids last year and we're probably more around 25 this year. So a slight decrease in our homeless population. Um, some facts about Clark County Public Schools. Um, we have a h we have 1,849 kids in grades PK through 12. That does get a little bit confusing because PK does not or preK does not count on average daily membership in Virginia, but we are servicing those kids. And as of the date of this presentation, we had exactly 100 250 employees, of which 172 were teachers. And of course, we have our four schools, plus our alternative education program, which is housed here in this building.
019Some facts about Clark County Public Schools. 66.9% of Clark County High School graduates earn the advanced diploma. That's compared to 50.1% of the Commonwealth of Virginia's graduates earning the advanced diploma. So, we're substantially higher than the Commonwealth of Virginia on the number of kids getting the advanced diploma. Also, a high statistic is about 73% of Clark County High School graduates enroll in a two or a four-year postsecary institution after graduation. Also really proud that we have a consistently one of the highest ontime graduation rates in the Commonwealth of Virginia. Last year was 99.41%. the year before we were a hundred but that's still outstanding. We have a lot of programs including dual enrollment, advanced placement, international balorate honors governor school career and technical opportunities whether those are with Laurel Ridge or with Blue Ridge through
020our jumpstart program or how we're doing the EMT and the firefighter program alongside the innovation center in Winchester. And that's just a bar graph of our on-time graduation rate. And you can see how consistently close to 100% that is for Clark County High School. And that is our enrollment um projection by school. Um if Miss Weaver would go ahead and look at the um link there for our enrollment projection. This is the first part that um requires a little bit of judgment. If we look down there um toward the end on the 2526 right now as a snapshot we're at 1823. Um now that can always go up because funding is based off of the end of March ADM. So we could bounce back closer to our target, but we went in with a very
021conservative number on enrollment estimates this year, which were substantially less than the BDOE estimate for Clark County and the Weldon Cooper Institute inst um estimate for Clark County, which is a demography institute branch at the University of Virginia. Um, we felt really good about it at day 10 because at day 10 we had 1851 kids in our uh kindergarten through 12th grade which would have meant that we were just slightly above projection. Now we're at 1823 which means currently we are 27 kids down on enrollment of what we need to be to make our ADM projection. Now no reason to panic because ADM and enrollment does fluctuate. people moving in and out and those are realities as parents jobs and locations change but just to note that we are down a little bit now which
022will mean making up money but we could be back above 1850 by March 30th and that's when the money pieces decided or funding but having said that we're at 1823 now I did revise our formula that we use to project enrollment for Clark County slightly typically what we had done is done the average of the last three years to get the kindergarten class size and then um we added four to each preceding grade level. Meaning like first grade when it went to second grade we added four and then we added more um eighth grade going into ninth grade to make up for Palatan. Some things that I did was I subtracted um kids from the 11th to 12th grade last year in case we had um kids who graduate early and trying to get a
023better estimate, we went with the five-year average of kindergarten versus a three. When you do that, you get to 1819. But something I didn't anticipate on December 18th after the CAL tool came out, which is our calculation tool for how much state funding we would get, BDOE um did their updates of enrollment estimates. And because of growing trends in the state of Virginia of there being less kids in public school and I believe the percent of decrease the BDOE estimated across the whole Commonwealth was 2 to 3% reduction that affected everybody in our recent conference about the budget. They said if your ADM file showed a reduction, feel comfort that you're probably among a lot of peers if you showed an increase. And it's probably a hyperbole, but that you're probably the lone one in
024the audience. Um, I will say I have us at 18/19 though. I believe the initial BDOE file was $17.99, which is 20 different. I feel better about us using the local because if we go in lower and we have less kids and we can't make that up either. But I think it's something we need to monitor and continue throughout this budget process is where we're going to be on ADM. The next part there are a number of kids um who are um under religious exemption or homeschooling in Clark County. And we won't go through all these, but these are all the um career and technical opportunities that we have for our high school students. We have an abundant amount of offerings for them. So we can move to the next slide there, which is just
025further of our CTE offerings. And that finishes up. So it took three slides to get our CTE offerings in. Um so that should be something to be proud of. Now we'll move into the FY27 budget proposal. Our budget comes from four buckets um being school operating, school food service, school capital projects, and school debt service. And then the revenue sources came come from four different locations. Local revenue and that's from our uh kids and families paying fees and tuition. That makes up 1% of the budget. Now, as we make tweaks, this may vary a percent or so throughout the budget season. So, do keep in mind, but on a a trend line, that's about where we're at. And state revenue makes up about 41%. The federal government revenues about 2% and the county of Clark
026makes up about uh 56%. And then we are very fortunate to also have the Clark County Education Foundation which is able to do projects above and beyond that are not in our traditional budget. Uh um factors that impact the 27year state budget include local composite index. That is probably the single largest factor impacting our budget. Um and local composite index is the state's formula that was developed in 1974 that measures the locality's wealth or ability to pay. And that is a factor that's extremely important. Probably secondary is average daily membership which is the number of kids that we have funded by the end of March in grades K through 12. And whatever gets put into the state budget there would be um the next part to that piece. All right. Now, local composite index is
027the state's formula of the locality's ability to pay. Um, it's continued to be the formula since 1974 with no changes to it. The only thing was in 74 it did have a minimum of a 0.2 being your LCI. And what that meant was that at the very minimum, the locality had to provide 20% of the educational funing. and the county could provide as much as 80% if it was perceived to be wealthy. Along the line since 1974 that bottom threshold has been removed that now districts can actually go below.20 and with the latest LCIS we now have five. We'd had four in the previous that actually get more than 80% of their funding directly from the state. That's why those districts typically start their budget processes later because they're much more dependent on what comes
028out in the state budget than what happens at the locality. Um what goes in and by the way the highest LCI it still is capped there. The highest your LCI can be is 0.80 and what that means is the locality is expected to pay 80% of the funding for education and the state only pays 20%. Things that go into the formula are the true value of property that's weighted at 50% on both sides of the formula. Adjusted gross income in the locality is weighted at 40% on both sides of the formula. And then taxable retail sales that are met in the locality is 10%. So you can see by far the value of property has the abundant effect on local composite index. Now, local composite index is a formula has two sides. Um, twothirds of
029it or 67 divides it by your average daily membership. So, the lower your student population, the easier it is for your LCI to go higher. And then the other side, onethird of it divided by your uh census population for the uh locality. And that's at one. So you're kind of doubly hit if you have a low membership and you don't have a very high population for your locality that you serve. It's easier for your LCI to get higher. That's why a JARK study did find that LCI was still a pretty good estimate of county wealth or city wealth and the ability to pay, but there were some abnormalities noted with smaller districts. And that's where you I don't think there's a lot, but when you look at it, there are some smaller locations. I think
030that are adversely affected by the local composite index and I would certainly argue that Clark is one of those. Um especially now we're slightly below Lden, but you know Lden being what is typically cited as the wealthiest county in the country and certainly the wealthiest in the state. During the last two years prior to this one, we were perceived as having more wealth than them by the formula. So, I do believe when you have a small population that you can see some adverse effects from the LCI formula. There is they're hoping for someone to pick it up. Um, a bill that would champion what's called an economies of scale adjustment for localities, which would be additional funding for districts that are small, rural, and have small populations. That comes from the JARK study, which cited
031that any division smaller than 2,000 has no hope of reaching economy of scale. And what that means is when schools are smaller, you still have overhead of needing a front office receptionist, needing a bookkeeper, needing a principal regardless of size. So, I'm hopeful for that for the future. All right. This right here highlights um prior to our most recent LCI. That's where I was talking about. You can see Clark was6032 for fiscal years 24 through 26. Um, and when you look at that, Frederick and Winchester were both 4151 and you, um, that's a coincidence that they're the same, by the way. But during that time, Ldon was 0.5518, meaning we were based on the formula to be perceived as having more wealth and ability to pay for our school system. when our LCI was 632,
032that means that uh Clark County um as a county was expected to pay slightly more than 60% of the school systems operation and the state paid slightly less than 40% of the operation. It's important to notice that this happens every two years and you can have huge swings to the good or the bad. And in fiscal year uh 25 when the LCI went up to60 32. We lost $66,55 in state funding, which is, you know, and I think that we only increased there. Yeah. About 3000s of a point. So 300ths of a decimal point has a massive effect on funding. As we look at what we got some good news, and we've got to be happy with our good news. The next slide shows our fiscal year 26 to 28 composite index. And you can
033see that we went down to 0.5542 and that equated to, you know, probably 900,000 to a million and it did flesh out an additional state funding according to the governor's budget. That is a big help to us, but there's no guarantee in two years that it may not swing back the other way. And little changes in that have such a big impact on us. And you can see now that we're no longer the highest Virginia LCI of any contiguous county to us at this point. So that's good news for our budget. It looks like this slide's old, but I want to show this slide to you because when you think about LCI, a lot of times you only think about state funding, but it does not stop there. LCI as a percentage touches almost every
034component of the budget which is concerning. All of our federal grants, all of our title grants, we get the LCI percentage of it. That's why when you look at a lot of counties that may be in poverty and I will say that, you know, some of them do have low staffing ratios and or not as much on the SOQ side. Um, and a lot of that comes in leadership or positions like that. But where they do make up a lot of those positions are if you have a title one and it's going through a7 LCI, you're going to have a whole lot more title one funds that are not SOQ funded, but you're going to be able to hire additional coaches, title one teachers, and things of that nature. So, a lot of counties in
035poverty pick up a lot of money in federal programming. And it's important to realize that our federal programs also run through that. And almost every time that the state gives a grant, guess what? It goes through LCI. So, if you remember the all-in funding, which ends this year, but it was money for three years for attendance, um, literacy tutoring and academic tutoring in grades three through eight that are touched by the standards of learning. That ran through the LCI as well. And if you look, um, when we were awarded that money, we had $1,93 kids and we got 321,000 in fiscal year 24 for that. Um, the one that stands out to me there close, look at Dickinson County. Dickinson County is a.2301 and their ADM is actually less than Clark County and they got
0361.1 million, actually more than it. and that's more that they can do with and that's actually how it works throughout all of our federal grants. So when you look at LCI it's not just touching the state budget it's almost touching every single arm of our budget. That's why it's so important there are and there are a few occasions that LCI doesn't touch the budget and it's so rare that I normally mention it. If you'll recall last year's budget, um that was the thousand dollar budget. It was a $1,000 plus FICA for every SOQ position as a nonLCI budget. That's actually the last thing that I remember that LCI didn't touch. So, it it's a rarity that that happens. We'll move on to the next slide there. The next one, um are the new personnel positions
037recommended? Um, I really tried to work with because I believe our staff are our most important resource and I think we need to be reasonable to try to give them a good cost, you know, a good salary increase that reflects the cost of living and increases. So, we tried to keep this minimal. And if you look there at Boyce, the only request that Boyce had was for a math interventionist. And they only asked for a $10,000 aotment of somebody hourly to come in and do math tutoring. And we kind of already have that through our all-in funding, but the all-in funding is going away this year. So if you look at that, it's just the cost of the salary and the FICA. And together that's $10,765. Um, moving on to Kulie. Kulie asked for the
038same math interventionist at the same amount. That total comes to $10,765. Kulie also did ask for an additional 10-month instructional assistant. Something I do think that they would benefit from. And when you look at that one, that is a full-time position and the benefits that would come in at an estimated $32,690 and some change. Johnson Williams Middle School. I think that one was the bulk of the new position request because it does include a new history science teacher. And when you look at the salary and the benefits, that comes in at $81,593 and some change. And then there was a stipen for two additional periods of history and science. That would just be the salary and the FICA. So that comes in at $20,398. Clark County High School continues to see um increased behaviors at
039the high school and kids needing intervention with behavior. And we got to remember that kids don't get instantly necessarily behaviors don't go away when they enter a high school. And they've asked for a full-time behavior analyst and with a salary and benefits that would be $32,690 and some change. Their other addition was to increase the workbased learning coordinator position from 11 to 12 months. The cost to that would be an additional month salary and um FA on that. So you can see that would come in at 88 $8,122 and some change. Under the instruction office um we are asking for four Lego League coach stipens which are just stipens at 750 each. that would be $3,000 for the four of them. And with FICA, that comes in at $3,229 plus um you know 50 cents
040there. We also did ask for a part-time algebra readiness tutor that would be located at the middle school of $18,000 part-time and the FICA on that would be 1,377. So, when you look at the total um requests for new staff positions, that comes in at $219,633. Um, one thing that I would point out, only two of those positions are full-time, which would require benefits. The only two time only full-time position actually um three are full-time being the IA at Kulie, the history science teacher at Johnson Williams and the behavior analyst at the high school. So three would be full-time positions with benefits. So if this were to pass, we would be going up um three full-time staff members. Now, one thing that could be noted is with our ADM and enrollment right now being on
041a decrease, why are we going up in positions, I will say it's only, you know, three. And just because we have less doesn't mean that they're not coming with needs that are additional and that we can do better. But I will say that we do need to have a commitment that each time somebody retires or a position comes vacant that we assess is that an essential position to us. Um, and also if you'll note, that's 219,000 and some change. I think that's far less than the initial over a million that we talked about the last two years with new positions. All right, the next one is the um teacher salary scale comparison. And I knew that was going to be really small up there. Even to get on a page of paper, it's really small.
042So, I did bring a copy for the media or anybody else out there that wants it. And I brought the board members a copy each that way we won't have to be reading it off there. So, this is the uh comparison of current salary scales of where we stand. And I brought a few extra if anybody wants them. But basically, we do compare ourselves to everybody around us. And where we stand currently is I would say that we are competitive with all the counties that surround us immediately up until about um step 16 or 17 as it is except for Louden and of course you know we do all that we can but there is a big gap there but we don't know um where other school districts are going to go with salary increases
043but we need to be thinking about that and considering it because This table here does not reflect where other school districts are going with salary increases and we will not have that for a while but we need to make a best guess and estimate and think about where we need to be to remain competitively. I think we have a lot to be proud of on our salary scale. Um but the cost of living here is higher you know than most jurisdictions in the Commonwealth of Virginia. Currently, a 200 day bachelor um teacher with the bachelor's salary in Clark County starts out at 54,312 and then they um can move up to by year 338 $83, um $872. When you compare us to um Frederick County Public Schools on step zero, we are $312 ahead of
044them. Um, but it's only on the first year. We do fall behind them by $1,500 by step three, but I think we remain relatively competitive to them, definitely up to about step 17 to 19. And it becomes a significant concern on their current scale because by step 24, they're currently $6,540 ahead of us on teacher pay. And by step 33, Frederick County is $9,553 ahead of us in pay. And when you look at us compared to Winchester um city schools, currently we're ahead of Winchester City Schools from step zero up to step 14, but it's not by much. It's around a thousand or less. Even one step, it's $19 ahead. Winchester does pull ahead of us by step 15, but the highest that Winchester gets ahead of us currently is around $2,000 at step 30.
045Um, when you compare us to uh Warren County Public Schools, we are ahead of Warren County Public Schools consistently, but we're normally talking about between a,000 and $2,000. So, we're right in line with Warren County Public Schools. Um when you look at us compared to Shannondoa, we are ahead of Shannondoa and we actually open up a pretty significant um that we pay significantly more than Shannondoa by step 23, but they are farther away from us. Um the Louden one is hard for us to compete with, but it's always a point of reference. Currently, Louden is ahead of us $6,241 by step one or step zero of new teacher. What that means is a brand new teacher in Louden would make $6,241 more than in Clark. On step 30, a step 30 or a teacher with
04630 years of experience in Clouden would make $35,47 more in 10 months than they would in Clark County. And if we don't match, you know, salaries and think about what we're doing, that widens up even more. And I will say that um it's not all about money. A lot of it's about job satisfaction pieces, too. One thing though that is important to think about with our veteran teachers. right now. Um, uh, BRS plan one is 16 years old, which means people who have more than 16 years of experience in the Commonwealth of Virginia are more than likely on plan one. And what that works out is roughly your take-home pay the rest of your life when you retire is somewhere between about 53 55 58% of your gross salary. Um, and that's the rest of
047your life at the average of your three years. So, something we do need to be aware of is at $35,000, if you do that for three years, that means a person who does 27 years with us and goes to LA for three is going to bring home probably 17 or 18,000 more a month the rest of their life when they retire. So, that's more than $1,000 extra on a VRS check each month. And even when we look at the current gap there with Frederick County, which about $10,000. They're going to bring home about a $5,000 additional BRS retirement if they do their last three years there. Um I think we just do the best we can. We have to be good, you know, stewards of locality money, but we need to keep this in the
048back of our mind. And it's an important factor. And the other important factor is this either stays equivalent or we do better if we do a better salary increase or we get further behind if they do a better one. Right now, we're talking about a lot of hypotheticals, but we need to keep that in mind. One thing that I will tell you um about the current budget is in the governor's budget that was released on December the 17th, it includes a minimum of a 2% salary increase in fiscal year and um fiscal year 28, which would be our next two years. Now, that's a minimum and that's starting point. Governor Spansburgger could edit that and it could go higher. To me, if we can at all do it, I think that a 2% in my
049mind would be out of the question because the cost of living index for Virginia, the cost of living adjustment is 2.8%. So, if we go in with the two in effect, it's less money than it is this year. So, we need to be aware of that. Um, one thing that we need to be really aware of, and it's far from being passed, but I think it's always to get the facts out, talk about it as it comes instead of dealing, you know, with it as it goes on. Um, there is a 2% of salary bonus that's a boost bill fiscal year 26 that Governor Ynan put out. Um, and that's for all public school employees. And what it would be is a 2% of salary, which is to be the first percent of salary bonus
050that's been proposed for educators in Virginia. In the past, they've always been set amounts of every getting the same thing. This one is a 2% of salary bonus to and I think it's either paid before or on June 1st, 2026 if it passes. It would still have to get final passing. So, we're off from that. That is concerning because I don't know where we'll make up the match to that money. And that's a budget that was a a caboose bill, which means when we passed the FY26 budget, we had no indication of that happening. Last year, we hadn't had nearly much breaking with Hback and stuff like that. So, we were in a good position. Last year's budget or bonus was a $1,000 for everybody and it was they paid the full 1,000 and the
051FA meaning it didn't go through the LCI. This one is a 2% of salary which is more costly because it is of their actual base income and it runs through LCI. So, basically what it means is we would and it's on our old LCI which higher. So we would get 39 something% of um 2% of our SOQ positions, which roughly means we would get about $115,000 from the state and it's going to cost many times that to pay that bonus out. Um right now I think all we can do is be monitoring and thinking about it and listening. It may not be a part of the final effect. I would be very happy for our staff that happened and we got it to them. But onetime bonuses are very tricky because if they're added as
052a caboose bill, you don't have time to plan for them. You don't have time to budget for them. And also onetime bonuses don't have the long-term effects that a a salary increase has which ends up going into your BRS. On that same note though, if it was put in as a salary increase, then we would have that as an ongoing cost. So that's why a lot of times they look at budgets and stuff like that. Last year's bonus, by the time it did finally pass, there was some language that if you couldn't pay by the the date last year, that you could actually request that money the next year and pay up through December. So districts that were struggling last year, there was some leeway. We were in a better position to pay last year,
053so we did. But right now, there is no language to that. So, this is just something we need to continue to monitor. It's far from a done deal, but it's something that we're going to have to, you know, keep in the back of our mind. We can move on to the next slide there. This is a slide that Mr. Brunach had asked us to add last year and I thought it was a great idea and I think it's something that we need to keep in the back of our mind and continue to think about and you can kind of see there this goes back as far as fiscal year 17 and you can see some of the salary increases for um everybody along the way. You can see in fiscal year 22 we did a
0545% salary increase. Fiscal year 23 we did 10. Fiscal year 24, we did seven. Fiscal year 25, we did five. And then last year, this current year, we did a 4% salary increase. And we're still looking at what we'll do for next year. Something that tremendously helped our budget last year, if you recall, our health insurance cost was neutral. So, we had 0% increase to employee or employer, which was a wonderful thing that provided a lot of relief to our budget last year. And last year we asked for an additional $694,573 in county funding. Um, typically we asked um, if you look at an average up there, it's between about 56 700,000 in additional county funding each year. There was more than that in fiscal years uh, 24 and 25. Fiscal year 24, the county
055extra request that passed was 896,000. And for fiscal year 25 it was $1.232 million. And I do think that's important historical information to consider. All right. The capital funds budgets and things that we are um looking to increase. Um I'm big on the county board of supervisors is a wonderful partner with us and the county administration. We have a great working relationship with them and I was thankful with the carryover funing. They gave a lot of that back to capital. I was hoping we'd make a lot more headway by doing a whole wing at and stuff like that. Unfortunately, a significant part of the Hback tore up at Johnson Williams that was not anticipated and ate up most of the carry for money, unfortunately. So, um, we're still going to try to get through a
056year without buying a bus. I'm trying to be as cost effective and Mr. Kendrick thinks that we can get through one year like that if we need to. Some things that have been requested in the capital budget are bowlards for the front playground at Kulie. That project and I I think that project's important. It would come in at safety. And those are things if you like go through a a um fast food restaurant drive-thru, you may see them near the drive-through windows to prevent a car from hitting in the building and stuff. Um, probably up there, what is the most important capital project to me are the uh breezeways at Boyce Elementary. That's something that we've been talking about for a while when I came on board and I've been wanting to find the funding
057for it all along. That's a safety issue. Um, now people can get in the courtyard where kids go out and play and also kids are coming going inside to outside multiple times a day and re-entering the building. And I don't think that's the best for safety protocols and also a lot of people park in the side parking lot and actually think the main entrance of the school is in that courtyard which it's not. It's at the front. So I do think uh building the breezeway would take two of them would totally enclose the courtyard and make it a secure um campus within the school envelope which is extremely important to me and that's the most expensive uh project up there for capital. You'll see that our most significant request is for Voice Elementary for capital
058and I stand behind that request 100%. We've also because it's kind of yellowing on the floor and the colors aren't staying to the true school colors requesting at Johnson Williams to take the gym floor down to the wood 12,000 new auditorium risers because they are getting a little bit unstable. So that one also becomes a little bit of a safety. So when you look at one, two, and four, they're related to safety at 13,000. We have had, even though it's a newer building, some concerns with humidity and HBAC in the athletic wing of the high school. So, we put 20,000 in there to try to work to make that better. Also, we've not repainted office area since the school was built. So, we put in some money to paint the office area. Um, we have
059two I mean, we have four cars that we transport kids in that now have over 200,000 miles. So, we're looking trying to replace two of those and trying to do a reasonable car at around 30,000 each. And then the other is just our ongoing furniture. Really, that's nothing new. That's something that's always in our capital budget. And we do have a capital budget executive summary and things that are not in there that are every year. Our single biggest capital budget request is HVAC repairs. And when you look at the attachment of the capital budget, you'll see what that is in there. All right, the next one we want to open, but it's our uh we work with the county to do a five-year um capital improvement plan. And that's just a link to our five-year
060capital improvement plan. Um factors that are um affecting the 27 physical budget. I think in my mindset it's the most important part of that budget which is salary increases to retain and recruit um high quality teachers and other staff members for our kids. And we can do a lot of things too once we have people to retain them in addition to salary. But still salary is what puts groceries on the table and allows them to pay rent or mortgages. But especially when it comes to recruiting a lot of kids right out of college are paying back loans, trying to get a place to live, and um salary is a huge factor when it comes to getting new members. We also have the 219,000 new personnel requests, which would take the board's approval if we went
061forward with those. Probably the biggest unknown right now is the cost of health insurance of where it will go. One thing I will tell you too, this whole budget is based on the governor's proposed December 17th budget. One assumption we're making is that's a baseline and historically in Virginia budgets get better. They don't get worse on appropriations. There's no guarantee that state funding may not come down. I think it's unlikely, but this is assuming that the c fall from the initial 20 December 17th budget as a baseline too. Probably the single largest increasing factor to our budget is the cost of ENREP, which is our um shared school with Frederick, Winchester, and us for some behavioral cons, you know, high need behavior students um there in Frederick County. Frederick County is the physical agent. It's
062based off of their salary scales. That's projected, I believe, to go up between 26 and 27,000 per seat next year. Um, and we're paying for an N value of five there. And you may say, why would he say an NV value instead of saying three students? The reason is we've got three students there right now. But it's paid on a five-year rolling average. And currently, our five-year rolling average is five. So, we're paying for five seats. Um, even though we just have three kids there at ENREP. And it's going up between 26 and 27,000 each seat. So that impact alone is between 150 125 and $150,000 in our budget. Um and the others are smaller impacts to our budget there. Like I'd said earlier, the cost of living adjustment is 2.8% for this year. So
063think about it this way. Any salary increase less than 2.8% % is an is not truly a raise when you look at what stuff is costing. All right, the next slide there um are the rounded to the nearest whole dollar amounts of salary increases. Um each 1% of salary increase for our staff would cost $211,952. Currently in the governor's budget, the minimum that we could do is a 2% that would cost $423,94. I personally don't think that 2% is sufficient considering um where we're at on cost of living. A 3% salary increase would be $635,000. A 4% salary increase would be just north of 847,000. 5% would be 1,ion59,000 and a 7% salary increase would be 1.483 million there. Um, we've been using SIDEXO for our food service fund since 2010. And um, we still
064have some debt balances on our debt service fund from Johnson Williams Middle School, Clark County High School, and the Kulie Lower Campus. I believe one of those projects is set to come off the books maybe in like four or five years or so. So, we're getting a little bit closer on one of those. And the next one is the executive summary of where we're at with the budget. Um, and this kind of gives a summary of everything that we have to date. And if you look at the executive summary there, um, I think the main part there that everybody would be interested in is currently our budget request on executive summary one is 34,598,000. Um, with that though, um, even though that would be an increase of $760,000 in our budget of 2.2%, currently that's
065656,000 less than we asked the locality or the county for this year. Now, um, with that in mind, how we were able, we did try to be really conservative and be good stewards of money and look at things that we could cut along the way, and we'll continue to look at that, but a big impact of that had came from our state file because of our reduction in LCI. So, the reduction in LCI really set us off on a good trend with this year's budget. Um but basically when you look at that executive summary that is the cost of operating no differently than we are this year. So that's the status quo of just doing what we're doing currently. The only thing that really is in that that's additional is the extra INREP cost and
066that's really kind of the cost of operating too because in staying in inREP if that's the choice then that is the cost that it is. So basically that's the cost of keeping everything the same. But the only three factors that would go into that unless the board has other things they're interested in that would increase the cost. The first one is health insurance increase. And that's really not a board vote decision. That's whatever comes back. And you know we're in a local choice and right now no one's got their local choice rates back. Um, we anticipate getting those back anytime from end of January to middle of February. And that is probably the biggest missing piece in this budget is where our health insurance renewal will come in at. Um, if our health insurance renewal
067comes in at a 10% increase, that will add $324,124 to the budget. Um, I'm very hopeful that it's less than that and that allows us to have more money to put to salary. If it's higher than 10% then the problems of this budget magnify significantly on where we're going. The other part there um are the additional personnel request would add 219,000 if we approve all of them. Of course, this is your first seeing of the first presentation of the budget. You all have time to be digesting that and eventually we'd have to have, you know, a motion on what new positions to fund and which ones not to fun. So that's at your discretion. It's either all of them, none of them, or part of them. I do recognize that we do have not a
068significant amount, but a few less kids than we had last year, but it does not mean that the needs are any less. And those are more direct student positions up there. Um, so you have the health insurance can affect the budget that's not included in that executive summary. One, you have the new positions. And the final thing is the salary increase. And basically each 1% of salary increase is going to cost about $212,000. And we need to eventually throughout this budget process determine what we want to do as a salary increase. So we can move on to the next slide there. And our next steps will simply be to continue to monitor general assembly bills, legislation, review state revenue. Typically, um, we get a general assembly budget by middle of February. I'm very hopeful for
069that. Um, what that means is the House and the Senate have to be close enough on agreeing on a budget that they have to come together and pass a budget together. If that happens, then we will get a general assembly budget by I mean a general assembly calculation tool of state funding by middle of February. I'm very hopeful and maybe that'll get us hopefully it'll be more than the governor's budget and that'll give us a trend of where we're going. I do have to say a caveat that if the house and senate don't agree that that could stretch out to June which makes this process become a lot more difficult. And um one of the things are we want to allow localities to um announce what they're proposing for a salary increase independent of us
070and allow them the autonomy to have those discussions with their board. But it's important for us to continue to look in newspapers as other localities speak about what they're thinking about for a salary increase and that we need to continue those conversations because um right now we're best competitive you know with all of them but Louden and quite a bit upside down with freighers by the upper end and we certainly don't want to do a lower percentage drastically than they do. So, we need to keep watching budgets and I need to I think we've done a great first step and I'm thankful for my staff and us working together as a team on this budget, but I think we need to continue to look for ways that we can save money if possible because the
071more money that we can save, the more we can put in the pocket of our uh staff and I think that needs to be our initiative. Now, one thing that we do have is we do have a grant out to help cover some of the academic materials. Not sure when we'll know be notified of how much and what we could get or any, but if we do that, then we can remove that as a cost to the county, which would then allow us to put more toward our personnel. But the single most important piece to this is if we and it's not what you're hearing, but you know, until you see the facts, it's not the case. But if we were to get a 0% health insurance again, we may think we've hit the lottery
072considering, but it's going to make budgeting with salary increase a lot more simplistic. I think that the big thing that we're waiting on is to see where we're at with health insurance. I'm not going to take a lot of time because I know that this first presentation is our longest budget presentation, but the school capital you can see the executive summary attached and the total school capital budgets a,000 I mean a,90,000. uh the single biggest item is uh 281,500 for HVAC repairs and stuff. So you all can look through that on your own. I did in um attached the um executive summary and we also attached the cost of of different percentages of salary increase. And we also attached the um teacher comparison of salary and the final attachment was for um requested additional personnel.
073So I think that we've done a pretty thorough um presentation of budget draft one and I feel good about it. At this time it could go one of two ways. It's just a presentation. you all could speak to your priorities or what you're thinking about salary increase or we could wait for next time. You know, right now it's just a presentation. So, if anybody wants to speak to anything they're thinking about related to the budget, feel free to do so at this time. Or if you want to wait till the next presentation, that would be fine as well. >> Okay. Questions or comments? >> I do have one question. Do we know what our average years of experience of our current teachers are? >> No, I don't. It'd be interesting to see. We would just
074have to take everybody and take a mean of it and see >> see how many below that 15year and above that 15 year range. >> If you'd like to, we can bring that back next time. >> I'd like to see that. >> Okay, good. >> That would be out of Dr. Seal's office and I'm sure that Miss Holmes and her be glad to do that. We'll get that to you next time. >> Thank you. >> You're welcome. Any other comments or questions or thoughts from the board? >> I'd like to see our history. I think showing history of what we what we've spent, what we've asked for is kind of nice to know. But with our capital challenges, I think I'd like to see where we we've been the last 10 years >> for a
075capital >> Yeah. capital expenses and what we've been able to to give back to the to the county or just just just some of that history. >> I think we could do that. We could work on it with the finance office, but also Mr. Kendrick could work on that to get a like a three to five year window of that for you all. Um, last year was great. Almost nothing broke. Um, this year's not been so good. >> But I do to add to what he was saying. Um, because that includes co years that was there much impact during that time that would we would have not been in the capital or we would have earmarked it. So we can separate that out because that's money that's kind of a specific purpose. >> Okay. >>
076And different divisions spent more of it on capital where others spent more on personnel and stuff, but we can make sure to exclude that because it we'd want it to be kind of apples to apples comparison. And and back to what I asked earlier about the years of experience, it kind of would be nice if we could I don't know we could figure it out or not, but to see um in the years teachers are leaving. Are they leaving within that first 15 years or after that 15 years? >> That's something we can try to include in that too. I would think much more of a likely than the last um especially toward the end because I really appreciate selflessness and people being great. Um not a tremendous impact right now with plan one until
07727, but there is some logic that you have to appreciate the impact after that point. >> Definitely. >> Anyone else? >> Thank you. I I feel like we're kind of in a just a hold and wait pattern right now until we know more about health insurance because I could just throw this all out the window. >> Actually, >> hopefully not. But >> where do we sit with the emergency capitals? Do we have an a tally of what happened over break? >> No, we've not paid the bill yet. There were things that we absolutely had to do. We definitely have, you know, money for that. The question will be how much. So, I've talked to Mr. Kendrick that once all the bills come in, we got to do a capital meeting and see where we're at.
078>> Where are we at with our contract with the um the mechanical contractor? >> Um you talking about with the repairing Johnson Williams? >> Well, and just who we have an ongoing maintenance contract. I'm assuming >> we do. Um our maintenance track contract is ongoing. Now, Mr. didn't oversee that because we share maintenance with the county. So, we'd almost have to have them, you know, our maintenance director presenting that contract. As far as the repairs, I think that they've staged and they're starting to turn on new units over there and I think we're down within a week or two of seeing that complete, but Mr. Kendrick is our leaison to the maintenance department. So, if you'd like to come up and share any updates on Johnson Williams, >> I'm just curious on that. We see
079them there every single day and they've been there for 10 years now and nothing seems to be getting fixed. So, >> I would like to see a an evaluation of that contractor. I'll be honest. >> I I totally understand what you're saying. >> Stepping into this news. So, >> um so as for Johnson Williams, um we're replacing seven total units. Uh the if you know the units, they're the head units that go in individual rooms. The units are in the rooms. The outside components are placed. Now, they're doing the wiring. Uh, three of them should be up and ready to go by the end of the week. They're going then downstairs to get one ready and then back up to the sixth grade hall. So, honestly, it's probably going to be about three weeks before
080I have the numbers. As for that contract with Riddleberger, our uh um HVAC maintenance crew, that is a touchy subject. I'm I'm not going to lie to you. Um but I can get with Mike Le tomorrow and see if I can get that information and and try to get it to you and see, >> you know, >> and one contract for HBAC between the county and the school system. It's the same and it does go out for bid is how that works. And my colleague is the one >> Yeah. >> that oversees the bidding process. >> Yeah. I'll I'll get with him tomorrow and see what information I can get. Uh he usually has it all together. Um also I not going to lie, I have talked to him about that. Uh we've had when
081the contract goes out for bid, we've had some other companies that have come in. Um, a lot of them are very similar and his true feeling with Riddleberger um is that we've had a relationship with them for 15 plus years. They know our buildings. Um, I don't know who agrees or says yes to the clown bid, but they've won it for a lot of years. Is it is the sealed bid process? Is that how >> it's not been done since I've been here? I would assume so. >> Mike oversees that Mike too because I'd be interested in seeing that and knowing as I been on the board and hearing the continual historical trend. I mean, they built that building and there's a lot of stuff that we're seeing now that should have been caught during
082the inspection process, quite frankly. So, um, and now we're paying them to fix their mistakes from 10 years ago. So, that's that's the concerns I have. >> Understood. >> Totally. They I believe they were part of the install installation of a lot of our HVAC equipment issues. Yeah. >> Okay. >> Absolutely. >> Anybody have any other thoughts toward the budget or salary increases or health insurance or anything? Now, one thing I will say is we're in a lot better position, executive summary one, than we were last year. Um, I think we're in a lot better place >> with health insurance being a big variable which could swing us to a worse position, but aside from health insurance, we're starting off in a good track. >> Any idea on maybe I missed it on the timing
083when the health insurance numbers? >> Um, typically it's the end of January to middle of February. >> Last year, wasn't that a lot later? >> It was. So, we'll be checking every day and hoping. >> One thing that we have talked about in the past um relates to bus drivers and changing the rate of pay related to um field trips and and that type of thing. Has that been discussed and is that included in this budget? >> It's in I'm sorry. >> No, go ahead. I I just want it's included already and thank you for reminding me that Mr. Hobber. I should have done it during the presentation. It's not a new position. So, it's one of the few things that we did because it's just an hourly rate for extra work. The current budget
084executive summary includes moving bus drivers um from 15 to 20 for driving athletics and field trips both sitting and driving time. >> Okay. >> Which makes us comparable to a lot of our localities. We were >> minimum $5 short and Dr. Bowling and Steve and I worked pretty hard and Nancy worked pretty hard to get that in the budget. So, yes, it's already >> Thank you. Thank you. >> Any Did you have any other questions, Mr. Sykes? >> No. >> Okay, Mr. Wilson. >> All right. >> Thank you. >> Okay. Thank you. Um, moving on to audience comments. So, student, staff, and community participation is encouraged at all schoolboard meetings and work sessions. Audience comments are limited to three minutes per person in order to allow ample time for all who wish to speak. Patrons
085speaking on behalf of a group are also allowed three minutes and should identify the group they're representing prior to speaking. Those wishing to speak should fill out a speaker card and present it to the clerk. Miss, weird, do we have anyone? Okay. Does anyone want to speak? Okay. New business. Consideration of appointment of clerk, deputy clerk, and fiscal agent. So, at the organizational meeting each year, the school board appoints a clerk, deputy clerk, and fiscal agent. It's recommended that Renee Weir be appointed as the clerk and Dr. Rick Bowling as deputy clerk and fiscal agent as per policy BBC and 2.21. 21-76 and 2.2 or 22.1-77 of the code of Virginia. Is there a motion? >> So move. >> Is there a second? >> Second. >> All in favor? >> I. All opposed. >> Thank
086you. Consideration of 2026 meeting dates. So below is a list of meeting dates for the 2026 school year. A full list for the finance and policy committee meetings will be presented at the February meeting. Is there a motion? >> I move to approve the 2026 meeting schedules as presented. >> Is there a second? >> Second. >> All in favor? >> I. All opposed. Uh consideration of appointment of budget and finance committee. It's requested at this time that the school board consider the appointment of two of its members to the budget and finance committee for calendar year 2026. As per past practice, these two appointments have traditionally been chairman and vice chairman of the school board. Per pol or policy BCE is silent. However, on which two members of the board might serve on the budget
087and finance committee. Is there a motion for the budget and finance committee? >> I'm not reading it over there. >> I move that the Clar County School Board appoint the following individuals to the budget and finance committee for calendar year 2026. Clay Brunach and Katie Ker Holbert, Steve Nucci, Nancy Doc, Dr. Rick Bowling, Dr. Kathy Seal or Nayear. >> Okay. Is there are there any uh comments or questions on this? We had while it typically is chair and vice >> Yeah. We had um there's a ch there. We could change it. doesn't have to be chair and vice chair and in talking about the different committees and that kind of thing. Um we had we had talked about Mr. Sight being involved in that committee. >> If you'd like to where you have that motion,
088you probably do a no vote or something and then do a second. Okay. Okay. >> So, is there a a second motion? >> A second to the motion. Thank you. There's no second. >> There's no second. There's no second. The motion dies. >> Motion dies. >> Okay. >> Thanks for >> Let's try it again. Um, is there a motion for the budget and finance committee appointees? >> Right. Okay. Thanks. I move that the Clark County School Board appoint the following individuals to the budget and finance committee for calendar year 2026. Mike Cip, Katie Khalbert, Steve Nucci, Nancy or Glawa. Is that I'm going to go for that. Dr. Rick Bowling, Dr. Kathy Seal, and Renee Weir. >> Is there a second? >> Second. >> All in favor? I. All those opposed. >> Okay. Consideration of
089appointment of superintendent designate at The school board appoints a superintendent's designate to act on behalf of the superintendent in his absence. It's recommended that Dr. Kathy Seal, assistant superintendent, be appointed as the superintendent's designate for 2026. >> Was there a motion? Thank you. So moved. >> Second. All in favor? >> I. All opposed. >> Before you all go to the next motion, I did want to point out the budget and finance almost right away. You all have we'll have a meeting later this week. So that's the only that's almost going to meet right away. >> Wednesday. >> I just want to let you know. Okay. >> Yeah, it's Wednesday. >> It's Wednesday. >> Yes. >> Which I am glad you're on right now because I got a I got a bunch of cattle I got
090to work on Wednesday meeting. >> Okay. Consideration of appointment of superintendent designate for Omega. Um the school divisions select a superintendent's designate for Omega, the online management of education grant awards. This system is used by VDOE and school divisions to upload applications and funding requests for federal programs. It's re requested that Dr. Jessica Nail be the superintendent's designate for Omega for 2026. Is there a motion? >> So move. >> Is there a second? >> Second. >> All in favor? I. All opposed. Okay. Consideration of petty cash fund designigny. Pursuant to policy DJB, petty cash funds, the school board will appoint an agent who shall be authorized to approve payment of claims arising from commitments made pursuant to provisions of law from petty cash funds. It's recommended that Steve Nucci, director of joint of the joint
091finance department, be appointed as the petty cash agent. Is there a motion? So move. >> Is there a second? >> Second. >> All in favor? I. All opposed. >> Okay. Consideration of appointment to the policy committee. >> It's requested at this time the school board considers the appointment of two of its members to the policy committee for calendar year 2026. Policy BCE is silent on which two members of the board might serve on the policy committee. Uh recommendations for staff members are Dr. Rick Bowling and Renee Weir. Is there a motion for this for the policy committee? I move that the clerk county school board appoint the following individuals to the policy committee for the calendar year 2026. Um Katie Khber, Casey Kennedy, Dr. Rick Bowling, and Renee Wear. >> Second. >> All in favor?
092I >> All opposed. Okay. Consideration of appointment of VSBA delegate and alternate at >> Oh, thank you. Okay. As per the JAS memorandum of agreement dated 1222 1999, one member of the school board and the superintendent of schools serve as representatives of the school division on the JAS board. Chairmanship of this board typically rotates between the elected representative from the school board and the elected representative from the board of supervisors. The JAS meeting is typically held on the fourth Monday of the month from 10:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m. in the joint government center. The memorandum of agreement states that the appointment to this board is made by the chairman. Recommendations from other other members of the school board are welcome. So I move. >> Okay. >> I nominate Clay Rumbach to serve as the joint
093administrative services committee. >> Is there a second? >> Second. >> All in favor? I >> I >> Okay. Mr. Wilson, are you I >> I >> Okay. All opposed. Um consideration of appointment of VSBA delegate and alter alternate. The school board appoints a VSBA delegate and alternate. The VSBA delegate and alternate represent the division at the annual VSBA conference in November of each year. Is there a motion? >> I nominate Katie Kharbert and Mike Psych to serve as the board's VBA delegates. >> Is there a second? >> All in favor? I. >> All opposed? Consideration of appointment to the special education advisory committee. Um it's requested the appointment of a board member to the special education advisory committee for the calendar year 2026. Is there a motion? >> I nominate Katie Kerhbert to serve as
094the special education advisory committee. >> Second. >> All in favor? I. All opposed. Consideration of appointment to the CTE advisory committee. Is there a motion to appoint two board members to the CTE advisory committee? >> I nominate Casey Kennedy and Mike Wilson to serve on the CTE committee. >> Second. >> All in favor? >> I. All opposed. Consideration of appointment to the gifted advisory committee. The uh gifted advisory committee includes school staff and parents in its membership. The committee is responsible for priv providing guidance on gifted programming throughout the school division. Is there a motion for appointment to the gifted advisory committee? >> I nominate Mike Wilson to serve as the gifted advis advisory committee. >> Second. >> All in favor? I. All opposed. >> Consideration of appointment to the Mountain Vista Governor's School Thank
095you. Um, the school health advisory committee includes school staff, parents, and comm community members and its membership. The committee is responsible for providing guidance on health, including nutrition. Is there a motion? >> I nominate Clay Bach to serve as board's representative to the MBGS. >> Save that for the next one. Mr. >> We went back one. health advisory. >> I nominate Mike to serve on school health advisory. >> Thank you. Is there a second? >> Second. >> All in favor? >> I. All opposed. All right. Consideration of appointment to the Mountain Vista Governor School Board. Yeah. Mountain Vista Governor School Board includes a schoolboard representative from each participating school division. Meetings are generally held the third Thursday of each month at the Warren County School Board office beginning at 8 a.m. Is there a motion
096for this one? >> Representative Valley. >> Second. >> Okay. Is there a second? >> All right. Um >> I did, Mr. Kennedy. >> All in favor? >> I. All opposed. >> Consideration of appointment to the strategic planning committee. It's requested that the school board considers the appointment of two of its board members to the strategic planning committee for calendar year 2026. Although the initial work of the committee has been completed, it's anticipated that additional meetings will occur in the future as the school division strategic plan is amended or andor revised. Is there a motion um for this appointment? >> I nominate Katie Kerbert and Clay Brunach to serve on the strategic planning committee. >> Second. >> All in favor? >> I. All opposed. Consideration of appointment to the school calendar committee. It's requested that the
097school board considers the appointment of two of its members to the school calendar committee for the calendar year 2026. This committee will prepare a draft of the upcoming school year or years to be presented to the school board for approval. Is there a motion for this committee? I nominate Katie Kerbert and Mike Sight to serve on the school calendar committee. >> Thank you. Is there a second? >> Second. >> All in favor? >> I. >> All opposed. Uh consideration of code of conduct for schoolboard members. So, the Virginia School Board School Boards Association BSBA recommends a code of conduct for schoolboard members on January 28th. TW 2014, the board adopted policy BCCPS and regulation BCCPSR. It's recommended that the board accept and sign regulation BCCPSR, code of conduct for the Clark County School Board. Um,
098is there a motion? >> I move to accept the code of conduct for schoolboard members. >> Thank you. >> Second. >> All in favor? >> I. All opposed. Consideration of policies for first and second reading. So policies EFB CCPS JH CF CCCPH CCPS there's a lot of letters. N JHCCPS are presented to include specific times when foods when competitive foods cannot be sold that competes with the school nutrition program per Virginia code requirements. Approval is recommended. Are there any questions, comments, or concerns about this? And if anybody wanted to speak, Miss Weir does a great job overseeing our food service program and this really just has a lot to do with our monitoring piece and I think they're pretty non-consequential changes to it, but it's some language changes that have to be to align with
099protocols. You have anything to add to it? >> Thank you. Does anyone else have any questions related to this? Okay. Is there >> to approve policies EFB-CPS JHCF- CCPS JHCH CCPS for first and second reading and adoption. >> Second. >> All in favor? I. All opposed. And lastly on new business uh the consideration of CCHS and Johnson Williams middle school scheduling mod modules models. >> And before we get to that I'll speak to some things and if you want to ask any questions or bring anybody else up you can. One of the uh two of the committees that I'll mention may have more active work this year than in previous years. the strategic planning committee. That is one that um the members of that will meet quite a bit this year just because as soon
100as we get the budget approved, we'll be writing a new strategic plan. So that will become a pretty active committee. Also, the calendar committee, we have not as a division had others do, but had board member representative on it in the past. But the reason we're going to do that is I'd like to try to mirror what some of our neighbors do, which is the past two calendar years at one time. That way people can plan ahead for the future. So I would like to have board member voice on that. That way we can go ahead and look at maybe passing two years at one time. All right, moving on to the high school and the middle school scheduling models and what brings us here. Um, basically I would say that I don't think that
101a scheduling model is the most important or even in the top many things that affects, you know, what happens in a building and student learning. Um, so it's not necessarily one of those things that I want to be dealing with, but at the same time, it is where we are and what brings us to this. And I don't think as far as any why we are here today, I don't know that hashing that out or anything has any point because we are here today. But this is our fourth year of running an 8 period day at Johnson Williams and at the high school. Um, and it would come up as concerns. I don't know how quickly in the process or where of us getting to it. But the problem with an eight period days, it's
102a really uncommon model in Virginia actually in the single digits and we might be the only remaining high school under that model or middle but it comes from Virginia code section 8 BAC 2132230. And what the code section says, and that's what I want you all to formulate as you make your decision tonight if we're able to do that on this is the secondary classroom teachers and secondary in Virginia code in this point means middle and high. The secondary classroom teacher standard load shall be based on teaching no more than the instructional day minus one planning period per day or the equivalent time thereof with no more than 150 students taught or 25 class periods per week. If a secondary class school classroom teacher teaches more than 150 students or 25 class periods per week,
103an appropriate contractual agreement and compensation shall be provided under subsection H. Each elementary classroom teacher shall be provided at least an average of 30 minutes per day during a student's school week as planning time. Each full-time middle and secondary classroom teacher shall be provided one planning period of or the equivalent of the period unequival unencumbered of teaching or supervisory duties. So um if you talk like logic and geometry an or means if you cross either one you have concern and what crosses concern is if you have more than 150 students um or you teach more than 25 periods per week and under the eight period day and I think that's why it's uncommon teachers teach six periods per day and six times 5 is 30. So that means there's question about are we compliant with
104this code section and as soon as you have you know concerns I think you try to rectify the situation and make it better. One thing that we did do entering into this school year is when I you became superintendent and saw that this could become a concern and it was too late to make a scheduling model change for this year even though we discussed it. I asked for a contractual agreement to be put into our contracts which said that the second planning period um would be used as compensation and would be the contractual agreement for this year. That was simply to get us through this year. I don't think it's right of our staff for a long-term fix. But I also do want to say that we didn't have a contractual agreement in year one,
105two, and three. We do have the contractual agreement in place for this year. um in looking at what we have and I could bring up the different survey results but we've looked at those before and you know that a seven period day I think was when you look at it was 10% or less of schools have that um the majority of school divisions do have kids you know getting eight choices have an eight opportunities to them the 4x4 block is the most common model in the commonwealth of Virginia followed by the AB. Um 4x4 is actually by far the most common model, but we don't necessarily have that much commonality of those districts that we get a lot of transfer with around us, if that makes sense. Now, some things that I will highlight and
106I want to leave the more important pieces to you um toward the end, but some things I think that are important is looking at region four, which are the counties that are our immediate region, but some are closer to us than others. When you look at it, of the region four, which is Northern Virginia districts, 10 districts are on a 4x4 block. That is the most common even in our region. Six districts are on an AB block, which is the one that meets every other day. two are on an AB with some schools in the district being on an AB and some others being on a 4x4. So they're running according to attendance regions even different ones within their own county. And of course we are the only one in Northern Virginia on a a
107period day. Um, so you would think that that would mean a 4x4 would make a lot of sense for us, but the problem being the only ones that are really close to us on a 4x4 block are Winchester and Warren and we don't get a tremendous amount of transfer kids from those districts. Um, when you look at Lowden and Frederick, they're on an AV. Um when you something that I was asked to look at are the top 10 dis uh top 10 performing districts and what type of scheduling model they have. Um and I do believe that success should have this should be focused on students and what's best for students. I think that's what we're in the business for doing. Um, every one of the top 10 performing districts were either on a 4x4
108or an AB with the majority of them being on 4x4. But I don't think that you could present that as statistically relevant because when you have such a high majority of districts on a 4x4 and I don't think that's the most important variable when you pull out the 10 most 10% highest performing, you're going to get a lot of 4x4 districts. Now, if I were to do the recommendation, and this is much more than a oneperson decision, if we had commonality of transfers around us that were 4x4, by far, my recommendation would be a 4x4 because a kid could potentially not pass English nine during their ninth grade year and then come back during their 10th grade year and take English nine during their fall and English 10 during their spring and be back on
109track. Um, also there's been some pe I don't think it's a big factor, but some people talked about student stress levels and only having four classes at a time being a good thing for them. And it also does mirror college schedules better. The problem is you can hand schedule and do a lot of singletons in there of like IB and AP running all year long and put two together as a paired offering. I think it would actually be advantageous and be our best except for we don't get transfers from districts very often that are 4x4 which is not going to be good for our kids. So unfortunately what I think would be the best option is probably one that's not on the table for us. Um the next part um we did start looking at
110a very innovative approach which was to look at doing kind of a hybrid model of of a AB block. And what that would be would be having kids go on an eight period day Monday, Tuesday, Friday. And of course on an eight period day teachers teach six classes. So that would be six times three which is 18. And on Wednesday and Thursday having them attend four 90 minute classes each. So in other words they would attend four of their classes for a longer period on Wednesday. The other of their classes for 90 minutes on Thursday. Um and then teachers would teach three classes each day and 3 plus 3 is six. So when you add 18 and six, you get to 24 which is under the 25 um cited in the code section. I do
111think that um idea is very innovative. If we go with that, the fear will be unknown because we will be the only school district in Virginia piloting that um which can be innovation but also you can run into some unknown problems. We've tried to anticipate all of those. But one thing that I always do when I'm looking at a schedule change model is to reach out both to council and bdoe and see if that would meet um muster. When we reach out to council basically the answer was it certainly meets the current code. So code could change and we know that all the time but the the hybrid of the AB schedule would meet Virginia code. The other one is I did reach out to uh BDOE staff and the response I got was thank
112you for sharing your proposed scheduling model and the accompanying sketch. It is clear that you've been innovative and put a great deal of thought into balancing instructional time planning period and compliance with Virginia code. I appreciate your division's proactive stance, commitment to student learning. By this model, it looks like you're both trying to support student learning and teacher planning time. So I think there tells us we're in pretty good shape as the hybrid model from those two pieces. The next step that we did is we started surveying staff. Um and at the Clark County High School um survey, we included a survey that included whether you'd be most interested in a seven period day, an AB block, a 4x4 block, or the modified at the high school. Um with 52 responses to the survey of
113our teaching staff and counseling and administration, we end up having 80.8% 8% um say that they preferred the modified which would be the three eight period days and the two block at the high school level. The second choice um would be debatable because we did a weighted average but the second choice would either fall with the um would either fall with the 4x4 block or the seven period day. And it's kind of questionable which one would be to the front of that. um with the John what happened then. So I thought that that would be a clear um choice but I didn't realize until we met more that we still had some teachers at the middle school who were teaching more than 25 class periods per week as well. You know although we did you
114know we added some positions there last year. So at that point in time, it was very important that we consider the middle school voice too. 31 staff members responded to the middle school and what I would hope happened did not happen which is um the middle school preferred the seven period day with 58.1% of the staff preferring the seven period day. One thing is the modified um hybrid the AB block did have 22.6% 6%. So it was choice two. Now as we look at that, there are some options here. I do think it's important for our registration that we get a decision and put this issue to rest. It's held us down a lot. But one option is to table it. One option would be to vote on different scheduling models for both buildings and
115the other is to go ahead and vote on one scheduling model for both buildings. One model thing that was considered was looking at putting the two schools faculty together and then the hybrid would come out on top, but I don't know that that's necessarily right and equitable because the high school would win out because they have more staff members than the middle school. Um, some considerations though, I would have to say that I honestly have a lot of concerns about running two different schedule models if after you talk to our staff and you feel like we could do that and not run into problems. That's certainly something I would embrace at that time. But I don't know of any school system that's run a different middle and a high with different time schedule. So we
116would have to make sure that that would work. The problems that we could run into um occur both on a regular day and a two-hour day. We worked as a staff to try to mitigate those, but you all can kind of assess and see if you think that we're there. But we do share staff and that is one of the bigger concerns there. We share choir branch and um those are our two share positions and we would need to consider those and I do think we have a plan that we could get probably through next year with choir. French would be a harder thing and we'd have to see if we feel like that we're making that commitment that we can make that work. And just because we can get through choir next year doesn't
117mean we're going to get through it each year. So eventually there is a potential that if we can't work out agreements to work run two different schedules, we may have to increase staff which would mean having a separate choir teacher both and do we really need that and is that cost effective to the division? Another consideration would be that the seven period day is the most expensive model to run and I think it's only fair that you all know that because teachers can only teach five sections a day. So that's instead of six, that's why we would need that additional history and science position in the budget. Additional things if they were teaching six class sizes, we could actually remove that from the new personnel request. Um, not saying that we don't need to give
118the middle school that consideration, but I want to let you know that that cost does relate to the five class period part. Um, the main thing would be can we the French and choir to work out now or long term. And if it doesn't work out long term, we would need to hire additional staff and to do the seven period initially next year, we would have to hire an additional science/history teacher at the middle school and pay for two a supplemental blocks to run that program. Now, I do believe um part of the reason the middle school has embraced the seven period is it's the least change, you know, and they've had a lot of change in recent years. One thing, too, that we would have to consider is advanced math pathways. Next year, we
119don't have any kids taking high school geometry at the um middle school. So, it wouldn't be a concern, but that's always a potential. And we typically bust those kids to the high school. We could potentially use a middle school teacher to an additional section of geometry but that does come at a cost of 1/8 of salary when that arises as well. Um the other piece um of all this which you know we live in a age where everybody's comparing and we want to take good care of our teachers. I think the final um concern about running two different models would be different planning times. And although all of them meet code section because you can see that we're well above 30 minutes a day for elementary school, we hear always a lot that high school
120and middle get more. Now elementary and middle are only required 30 minutes a day, but high school are required the standard one standard period. So when you look at a seven period day by code, they're required 17th of the day unencumbered as um instructional planning. And the same thing for the hospital. So if you go on the 90minute 4x4 block, they have to have 90 minutes of planning. Um if you go on a seven period day, it's 17th of the day. But because they can't teach more than 25 class sections, they would actually end up getting two planning periods under these models at the high school and at the middle. At the high school they I mean at the middle school if we did do two different uh scheduling models at the middle school they
121would get 58 minutes of planning each day. I mean 58 two 58 minutes a period two 58 minute periods of planning each day times five days. And when you multiply that out that's 580 minutes of planning per week at the middle school. at the high school. Um if they do, um an eagle block, they would get um 46 minutes times two or two 46 minute periods um Monday, Wednesday, Friday times three, which is 276 either way. If they do an eagle block, they would get 87* 2 for the two days, which is 174. If they don't do Eagle Block, they would get 96 minutes times two. And when you add that up, basically the high school planning with Eagle Block would be 450 minutes per week. Without Eagle Block, it'd be 468. With either one
122of those, the middle school teachers would either get 112 minutes more per week of planning or 130 minutes more per week of planning. Now, we have talked about that the middle school could do duty that equivalates it back. They get an equivalent amount of planning, but it would be kind of hard to come up with what's basically like 20ome minutes of duty every period over seven periods and make it worthwhile as something they would do. So, we're going to have to make that commitment that that's something that we're going to do. It's kind of like the impossible situation though that we've got to get out of this situation and put this to rest. If you need a month to think, I mean, we do like to register kids and do programs to study early, but
123there are a lot of districts that do it later. That is a self-imposed deadline. It's not a have to be. If you all want more time to digest this, but I think as soon as we're ready to make the decision, we can. Um, at the middle school, I don't worry as much about them having only seven choices because I think more time in core content is actually better. But actually, I would propose that I don't know that 17th to me is really sufficient either in English and mathematics. I really like to see a time period closer to 90 running all year long in English or math at a middle school. But the only way we're going to get that every day is with a 4x4. given what's around us. The only people really really close
124to us running that are Winchester and we don't get a lot of kids out of that. I actually think Winchester has the best model in my opinion. Um, but I'm not as concerned about limiting the middle school to seven periods. Now, we would see an increase in class size in core content classes at the middle school with less classes being taught unless we increase staff. It may have been an inadvertent effect that with seven choices versus um eight that we may see lower numbers in electives and that may have a long-term impact on electives. Also, you know, we'd need to clarify, are we doing six classes and an advisory being our seventh class or are we doing seven classes and an advisory every day would be something we would need to look at. Um, at
125the high school, I would be really concerned about dropping from 8 to seven options or um opportunities for kids each year. Um, I have heard from one or two staff members at the hospital that feel like seven and having to make hard choices is a good life skill for adult and be training them for it. But at the same time, we do have some really good programs like Mountain Vista Governor School, um, our um, Blue Ridge Jumpstart program, Laurel Ridge firefighter, and all those programs take up a lot of blocks, and it's going to limit the ability for kids to take those. as often. And when you look at like teachers that they're the only person endorsed in an area, if they can only offer five sections and not six, that means one of their
126classes is going to have to be cut, which is going to be an offering gone. Having said that, it seems like opportunity is really important to this district and this region. Now, I could argue that more time and core content would be better to prepare them for later life, but opportunity is something that we have that's really, really important here. And from parents, the most concern I've had is whatever you vote on, please don't vote on something that limits us down to seven choices. And if we did limit down to seven choices, we would be by far in the minority of high schools in the state of Virginia. Um, so I basically I can see wanting to value the input of both the middle and the high school, but the only way if I were
127you all that I would vote to do two different models is if you feel like the planning period discrepancy is fine and that we can adequately address that. And know we may be hearing that long term, but if you feel like we've got an adequate plan to that and we're just going to say it's what we voted on, it's what it is. But I want you all as a board to be informed of everything. It's something always commit that that is something with the planning period and we have to feel like the two schedules will sync with staff long term and we need to if we do two different ones know that it could potentially lead to a cost. But my goal would be if we do get a vote tonight on scheduling models that
128we don't address this again for a long time. So um I'd like to get an answer to it. um you know that's long term and if that takes an extra month I'd like to have one tonight but if it's what it takes what it takes but I think I've told you everything in my brain that I could tell you about this and give you as much guidance as I can if you have any questions you know for curriculum or our principles feel free to do that um if you want them to come up to mic talk to you or tell you what they want to say on behalf of their faculty I think that would be appropriate but at this be up to you if you want to ask any further questions of staff and
129then the decision >> first and foremost which model doesn't or limits getting rid of programs we currently have >> um at the high school the seven period day and at the middle school it could potentially long-term have that effect but it's not as big of a factor at the middle school but all the eight the AB block the 4x4 block and the modified AB they all have choices. So the only one that limits choices which could hurt programs is the seven period >> programs such as CTE >> Mountain Vista more honors more gifted more CTE type of programming can see an impact. So, I think maybe we should talk about are we okay with having two different scheduling models, one at the middle school, one at the high school, and if we are, then maybe
130make a decision that way. Or if we're not okay and we want them to be in sync, >> seems they need to be on the same >> program. And uh it seems that the high school has come up with something that does minimal harm and maximum good. And the problem here is the Johnson Williams teachers do not particularly like it for them. So I'd like to hear from both principles on this uh from Miss Wearing why they have voted for the mod, you know, the modified program. And I'd like to hear from Mr. White uh what the problem is at the middle school that uh the teachers don't want to go along with this because I think the priority particularly for the uh all these advanced things and uh things that require their going elsewhere.
131I think the priority the priority has to go to the high school >> uh for the all the CTE courses. The >> I'd like to say the priority has to go to the kids first. >> Well, yeah, but I absolutely and uh but that's what we're talking about. What is the best for the kids and the requirements of the kids in the middle school are not quite as stringent as the requirements for the kids in the high school, I think. And it sounds to me as though they've come up with a pretty good plan at the high school. And I would like to know first of all from Miss Wearing how they came up with this. And uh then I'd like to hear from Mr. White why his teachers don't feel that they can accept
132the same thing. So we'll have continuity and all that between the two programs. I think what we probably could do um um is maybe start out and I think there'd be three players out there that are important which it touches three things which are high school, middle and curriculum and I think hearing those three voices you know and their input would be valuable to me and um if we could I think how we're in this situation is when you know better you do better. We just got to fix it and I appreciate the staff and all those trying to work through this and get through this piece. Um but um I think you put a student focus on however you all feel is the best for our students is the right decision here. Whatever that
133would be. But why don't we start with Miss Wearing and then go to Mr. White and then Miss Nail or Dr. N. >> Don't seem so happy. >> No, I appreciate the opportunity. So um when we came back and we had to to look at schedules um how we landed on the hybrid and I do have a a print out if you all would like to see it because I know imagining it in the air can be a difficult task. Um and a lot of it did come down to um providing 32 opportunities over the course of four years for kids to be able to take as many opportunities whether that's advanced programming, CTE, the combination thereof. Um so that really was the look. It could also, you know, see students um, you know, four
134times out of the week. The 90 minutes for each day for the Wednesday and Thursday, you know, you hear from science that would provide an additional opportunity for labs, uh, English, Socratic circles, um, writing labs, um, feedback to students, um, with history debates, uh, projects, things of that nature. So they felt that the combination thereof was unique and would provide that. Um but again a lot of it came down to um the choice the choices um and not eliminating and not overloading uh core classes. Do any other questions for the swearing? >> Does anyone want a template of the >> Yeah, >> I think I think I asked this before. >> So, a couple when we had looked at this and I think some other people had looked at it and they're like, "What about
135Thursday and Friday?" But we're off Friday a lot. So that's that was the rationale of moving it to Wednesday Thursday. Um and then what we ended up having to do with all of our outside programming such as Blue Ridge Governor School, uh the fire academy is to look at it kind of an AM PM split. How would that work? because originally we had uh the Wednesday Thursday schedule in a different um sequence and I had a math teacher look at it and said well if you do it 1357 that works. Um so that was the rationale of moving that direction. Um so every kid who leaves in the morning can come back and still get um the credits that they need in order for the rest of their diploma. Um, we kind of ran this
136through sample students that currently are in existing programs to see what would work because we had some students that uh might be attending a certain program. I don't want to get very specific because I don't want to identify certain students, but um attending a certain program and also wanting the advanced diploma. So, we kind of put that through the rigors um and did that with each schedule and each program. >> I think like I asked this before, but then in a snow day, there's no shifting, right? If you miss the day, >> there's not. So, we >> you miss the day, you miss the day, you >> and they were comfortable with that because the thought process is, okay, we're going to see them pretty soon right after that, but they can catch them up.
137It's also um students, you know, we had recognized previously with that AB kind of picking and choosing creating that sweet schedule that was great for one day and not so important on other days. So, this kind of alleviates that as well, too. And piggy back off that and what you mentioned earlier, you said calendarwise, you probably miss more Fridays than anything, right? And maybe Mondays. In fact, looking at a calendar, see how many Monday and Fridays we miss? If it's a significant amount, does that affect instructional time for these kids? >> You know, I think whatever calendar we have done in the in the past and we've done many if there needs to be an adjustment, then we'll do an adjustment. I mean, I think there was one January that we didn't come to school.
138>> Yeah. >> But one day, right? um or you used to have the um even odd days we talked about you had to do the correction. So I think that's something that we'll have to do. We're in the midst of doing CIP examination and we had to correct you know adjust the bell schedule. So it's always going to be something to look at. Um in a perfect scenario, yes, this would probably be that's that was the thought. >> I don't have any other questions. Anyone else comments? Thank you for I appreciate all the time that you guys have spent on this. >> Mr. White This is sort of what I'm what you're receiving is a summary of some key aspects that I noted over our discussions over the past couple weeks as our staff took
139the survey as they departed for winter break. Um Mr. Wilson, I think direct addressing your question directly, um it's not that the Johnson Williams staff is in opposition to the hybrid schedule. The Johnson Williams staff is looking for a way to fix the problem with the least amount of change. As you know, this is my fourth year. Every year since I've been there, we have undergone a significant amount of change. In my first year, I was tasked with implementing an eight period bell schedule and giving Johnson Williams what and my director was a reset. Um, and I think over the course of four years, we've shown that that reset has worked. And the basis of that reset is our advisory program and the PBIS program. to support students socially, emotionally, and academically. That is the
140function of Johnson Williams, our advisory program that is scheduled in the middle of the day, periods four, five, and six by grade level, which combines with their lunch shift to carry the Johnson Williams advisory program and PBIS program forward. That cannot be done under their hybrid schedule. The high school periods four, five, and six, if you note, on Wednesday and Thursday, do not meet during the lunch hours. They do not provide for a uniform transition. I see the high school is trying to keep as much as the schedule they have or eight periods and maintain those offerings of 32 periods. We're trying to maintain our offering of advis advisory program that is that supports developmental needs from a sixth grade student who is 10 years old to an eighth grade student who is ready to
141go in high school. We almost run three schools in one is how a middle school really has to operate to be a high functioning middle school. taking sixth graders who are basically toddlers out of fifth grade and transitioning them into young adults and ready to enter high school. Um, middle school is is middle school and is unique. That's why we are not part of elementary and that's why we're not part of high. It is an entirely different beast. Um, one key point I think is important under seven period day um in Mr. B Dr. Bowling's summary is the amount of instructional minutes. Johnson Wayne Middle School students will receive 290 minutes per week of instruction uh based off of a 58 minute period, seven period day. Uh I looked at all three models. I see
142the hybrid model as having a good output, seven period day as having a good output, and Dr. Bowling's proponent of a 4x4 block. There are three good schedules. Um, I've been in education for 25 years now, and there I've yet to find that one silver bullet that makes every kid learn. It doesn't exist. Every educator is chasing it. Every publisher of every textbook, every publisher of any education book ever written is always chasing the magic bullet. It's going to make every kid learn. A schedule does not. Relationship with kid does what students do. And that's what our advisory program provides our kids. relationship, a foundation in the middle of the day, a reset, and a positive behavior support that supports them socially, emotionally, and academically. That's sort of what I rested my head on for
143the last four years, and that's why we made the academic gains we've had. We've come out of accreditation. We are making significant gains with our benchmarks this year. My staff prefers to have the least amount of change to continue the programs and the manner in which we service students with the least impact moving forward. And correct me if I'm wrong, the hybrid schedule kind of offers the same to students and faculty at the high school level. Correct. Least amount of impact overall, right? There are concerns and they are noted math. Over the last uh four years, we've uh sent less than five math kids up to the high school for higher level math classes. We have four kids sitting in geometry right now. Next year we have one students who's projected to go into algebra
1442. It'll always be a geometry algebra 2. Um French, Mrs. wearing and I sat down on Friday with district admin and worked through most of the logistics with regarding the French scheduling that is going to be dictated yearbyear with regards to course request. The key thing that we have to pay attention to with regards to French is that there's always an entry point for seventh grade students and ninth grade students so they can get their language requirements and for seventh grade students who continue to take enough sections of French one. So Dylan is wearing at the high school can offer the French four and French five to continue that program from French one through French 5. Band is worked out at the end of the day for both of us. Our band students in eighth
145grade right now we have uh it's traditionally been right around 10 historically right around 10. Those kids go over for the last period a day. The last period ai day on the seven period schedule matches up with the last period a day minus the Thursday. But then again, every high school kid if the every high school kid in marching bands only getting marching band four days a week, the Johnson Williams students would as well. Um I try to go section or pardon me content area by content there for you as you get through the handout. And it was most importantly the last part the considerations there. Um, I've entered this discussion as this is this is, you know, I've throughout my entire admin career, the last 15 years, we've always discussed change and how to
146implement change. And this is not a level one change. Um, this is a level two change, level three change. It's not just your simple developmental change that you know like let's let's change uh study hall from being last period of the day to the middle of the day. That's an easy change. Uh we're looking at transitional change. transitional change technically should take upwards of one to two years to really make this decision. We've been at this one to two weeks. Um it's not quite a transformational change, but we're looking to adopt a new curriculum or a whole new a whole new way of implementing school. Um but a bell change and a structural change with regards to higher ro day is laid out is a is a transitional change. It's a it's a significant change.
147It's just not like an easy one. So I think through the meetings that we've had at the district level uh Dr. Bowling, Dr. Seal, Dr. Dale, myself, Dr. Mrs. Wearing, we tried to hit every one of the possibilities where these two schedules could go muck and off in two different patterns and really disrupt student learning. Um we feel as if we have I feel as if we have a good grasp on it. I don't want to speak for the group as a whole. Um but with that being said, any other questions? Thank you sir. >> We are running kind of late. I did want to mention for curriculum Dr. Neil but if you don't have any questions for I want to give you that opportunity related to curriculum if you do but does anybody have
148any questions that they would relate or you ready to just debate >> debate will debate decide >> I think it's safe to say the at the high school. >> Yeah. With the most impact students. I mean, >> I agree. >> We we've worked hard to build >> Yeah. >> our CT programs, our, you know, advanced diploma, I diplomas, and I don't want to limit that. >> I think we need to cater to that. priority that all these uh programs that have been developed over the last few years can be maintained and uh continue to improve uh I've been particularly impressed by what they've done with CTE and all that when I got here they think what I I really tend to lean toward the high school high school requirements as a priority and I understand
149the importance I think Mr. White made a very good point the importance of middle school and child's education I think is underrated. This is where you fix any deficiencies that they bring with them from grammar school and get them ready to go into high school and all that. But I think they're probably flexible enough you're actually if you had a similar schedule you'd be actually preparing them for the next level they go on. >> I do have one more question Mr. White. I'm sorry I should ask you while you were up here. You talked about the advisory program which I think is key as you mentioned. Um you said the hybrid model would eliminate advisory program for you. My my leadership team has sat down twice over the course of this process and cannot figure
150out how to have yet to determine a way. It doesn't mean it's not solvable. We would have from now until well whatever day we decide s to come back in voting in August to solve that problem. Um it's not a problem I'm opposed to trying to figure out how to fix. >> Yeah. >> Uh because I completely agree with you with that program and what it can do for kids at that level. >> We've made it the heart of who we are at Johnson Williams. It is why we are it's what is the reason that we have made the game if there's remove admin team counselors and teachers from the equation. Anybody could step in and run an advisory program of that nature and get the same results. >> Just brainstorming here a little bit.
151You know, you said the uh 8 period day Monday, Tuesday and Friday it's easy to work it in, but the Wednesday and Thursday it would not. Is that correct? >> That's where I'm That's where we're struggling. Yes. Is it would it hurt the program or is there any way possible that it could still maintain on Monday, Tuesday, and Friday, but on Wednesday and Thursday it doesn't? It probably affects a lot of other things as well. I'm assuming. >> Oh, it's a fidelity of the program. It's a five-day program designed Monday through Friday. Okay. >> Students receive remediation support. Um well, a lesson on Monday, remediation support out of the four core Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. Friday is a typical reward earned or not ward. So, you're either getting it or you're punished. Okay. That's that positive
152charact that at the end of each week, every other week that we work back into the system. >> Remind me again what the challenges with having different curriculums would be, the different calendars, >> whether or not we're willing to work through them. they could um basically it revolves around two shared teachers and whether or not that would be fair to them on working in two different models and if we feel like that we are at 100% and I think we couldn't not make it work now. So, if we did do that, we'd have to feel from the leadership that we could make the shared French teacher and the shared um choir teacher work. And then for um I think the band would be a little bit easier to work out. >> But then we don't
153have a problem next year because we don't have any kids taking geometry next year. But down the line, if we have kids who get advanced in mathematics and have geometry or need algebra, too, um that's going to be an extra cost that we're either going to have to find a way to make it work or pay somebody extra at the middle school to teach it. And then the other piece would be if we work it out for next year that the choirs could work out. Is it going to work out every year or eventually we're going to have to have two French teachers and two choir teachers to work it out and that's something we would just have to take year by year. So there is a potential cost. Um it's if we feel like
154we're good for it next year, but I really don't want to revisit this really quickly, but if we do this, I'd like to stick with it, but realize that it eventually may have a cost to it. And even doing the seven period day has an immediate cost next year because it is um going to require us to add an extra history science teacher which is the bulk of our personnel request and then two extra class periods. So the bulk of our new personnel request revolve around keeping or having a seven period day at the middle school and then all those are logistical and financial. The other one is if you're um comfortable with it that the middle school may have as much as 30 extra minutes of planning every week, which is a little bit
155more than two hours a week and that's year long. So, it's a pretty substantial difference. Um, and there was mention that the middle school could give duties that equate to it, but it's do we feel like that could happen enough and be consistent and it would need to be basically it's shared staff and planning. to the other calendar that you laid out ahead of us revisiting this the one that's not on here. Um can you walk us through that one more time? >> Which one is that? The 4x4 or the >> AB I believe. >> Yeah. Um, an AB would just mean four clock >> I think right >> and we have the seven period. I think those are our two options because of where we're at. >> Okay. >> Yeah. I mean I would
156love >> in the sharing of the two teachers. Talk to me more the French level. You mentioned that you're offering French at >> they offer French one and two at the middle school and then they um kids may not start French. They can start French as early as seventh grade just like Spanish >> and that is to the reason why we're offering at the middle school so they can get to a French five level at the high school. Is that what I heard? >> Yeah. They'd have to start in eighth grade to get to five. >> How many typically how many kids are at the French five level in high school? Basically, when you do the French, they can take French one and two starting as early as seventh and eighth grade, but Not every
157kid fits that into their schedule at middle. So you have to offer a new entry point ninth grade when they get up there. So we offer French one and two both the middle and the high school. >> Maybe just my experience in high school with French wasn't very good. So maybe that's why I brought it up. >> Well, I don't want to propon propose one over another, but I I would argue for the applicability of Spanish, but I want to take care of everybody. Yeah. >> Um, so you spoke to the the question about planning the planning time and uh the middle school teachers having about 120 minutes a week more of planning than the high school teachers. That's really like 24 minutes a day, right? >> Yes. Basically, it's 20ome minutes a day. And
158everybody's always concerned and comparing when you go to BEA CA. It's never it's just not I mean it's not even close to being equal to what an elementary school teacher's planning periods look like, >> lack thereof. Um, so >> it just takes us from going from two different planning models, elementary versus middle high to then having to defend three. But I mean, if we feel like that the middle could do something that equated it, but I I would think that would be hard to have a something to do every day, 24 minutes a day, seven periods a day. Well, if we're going to be innovative and and have that reputation because we're going to start the uh the new scheduling future scheduling model for the state of Virginia, >> which I think is neat. Um
159>> maybe with a little more time we can get >> uh >> innovative in in doing the the advisory program somehow and and and within the middle school you know Mr. Right. Right. I mean, it's a good point. He's had two weeks to come up with solves problem. You know, maybe maybe we waited on things before and get the high school on, you know, set and they can start planning the schedules and then we table table the middle school. next month and see if see if we can be creative and come up with something >> to save that that program. I I'm just throwing that out there. >> I agree if that helps. Maybe >> I think we owe it to them. I feel like they've been >> they've been working on this a while
160>> to Johnson Williams or to the high school. >> Both of them. They've all been working on it. But I I agree with you there too that they've been working on it and you know >> they're always going to be working on something difficult, aren't you? Um well, it's the truth. You're an education. But um you know, I would like to give Mr. White an opportunity to see if he could maybe adjust the advisory or come up with something. I'd hate to see that leave that program. >> It has been transformational. I think seen it with >> and if we're talking about what's best for kids, you know, we talk about the opportunities in high school. >> That's important. >> Let's not take opportunities away from these kids in the middle or John Williams. >>
161I'd hate to do that. I'd like to see something if he could come up with something. I don't know. >> I wish I wish I had something for you, too. I I still don't see anything wrong with two different. >> So, you're okay with you would be okay with um >> it's going to cost a little bit more. >> It's a risk versus reward. It comes with a price tag, but we're not we're not taking that opportunity away from our students and our faculty and they get and our staff and what they >> appreciate and everything else. It is that the budget's always a challenge. We know that, right? So, >> and we did last year talk about hiring another teacher at the middle school and it it didn't pan out right because of timing.
162>> Well, that would need to be funding. We funded um an extra English and an extra math teacher at Johnson Williams last year. >> So, it was a lot of our personnel requests last year. We filled the math. We didn't find somebody for the English, right? So we were paying people to teach extra blocks which is cheaper than a teacher because nobody we didn't find anybody but that's also ongoing in the budget. So when you do look at the total effect on staffing a seven period day at Johnson Williams if you want to know the facts piece it's an extra math an extra English and one extra combined middle I mean one extra combined science and history. Hopefully we can find that in one person and two blocks. So the immediate additional staffing costs are
163three teaching positions and two blocks and then it's if we could work out the shared teachers long term. So it does come in at a you know a pretty big cost which could potentially mean a higher raise for everybody you know but if that's what we feel is the best we just need to look at it. Well, it okay. Uh, we obviously have some more work to do at the middle school. Can I suggest that we approach this thing the same way we approach the uh last issue we had where we take what we know we have, pass it, and then we'll move on to dealing with the problems have yet to be solved. Uh, I think we can all agree that the for the high school, the modified program or hybrid program or whatever
164is a good thing. We vote on that separately and table the issues with the middle school uh to give Mr. White a little more time to come up with a solution. >> That's fine with me. Is there >> I sold >> Okay. >> And I think I mean that's It all seems good. And I see your head. Is that >> is that acceptable, >> Mr. White? >> Is that would that is that going to work? Okay. >> Thank you, Mr. White. I appreciate that. >> Miss Wearing, what were you you were going to say something? I think and the additional staff high. >> Um, well, right now we already have two of them funded. Now, if we did go with the eight period hybrid, we wouldn't have to fill that English position. So, it's not
165in there as a new >> I would think we would repurpose a math position to be a math coach, which could help the building. But we would we would have and I I don't I think I want to do what's best for kids even if it means less raise. I would think as an immediate savings you'd be looking at the but it shouldn't all be done on savings but it would be the English position could go unfilled and go back into budget for um salary increases as could the um the two blocks of um science and history and the new science and history position. So, if I were to give you a real quick rough estimate of the savings, you would be looking at about 82,000* 2, so about 164,000 plus the two extra blocks.
166So, that's about 20. So, about 184,000 will be the next year. >> I still think we I'll make a motion on the hybrid for the high school. Okay. >> And we'll table Johnson Williams until the next meeting >> is without approving schedule for middle school. Is that hindering? and that's >> okay. >> Our next meeting is what? February 9th. No, 9th is the budget. >> 16th. Okay. >> Okay. Is there a motion? Um, >> I move that we accept the hybrid program for the high school at this time and table the situation at the the schedule at the middle school to give staff more time to uh work through the problems we have and come up with some solutions. >> Is there a second? >> Second. >> All in favor? >> I. >> All opposed.
167>> Right. Before we go on to the end, I do want to say thank you to Miss Wearing and Mr. White on this. >> This is not anything I think any of us will want to be dealing with, but it's a have to. So, I appreciate their flexibility and I wish we could give them both faculties what you know they want and maybe we can or not. I don't know. But I want you all to know all the facts about what would align, what wouldn't, the planning, the cost, and if we figure out that it's the best to do too different or if we want to do the same. But I just want to tell them I thank them for at least, you know, us thinking through this. >> And to piggyback on that, I
168don't want it to seem like we're choosing one school over over another or one, you know, group of students over another. It's that's not not our intention, I don't think, at all. Okay. Schoolboard member comments. Mr. state >> again. Thank you for both high school and John Williams middle school principles. Um back in the 90s I was teaching when we went through the change of traditional courses to the block scheduling. It was a nightmare. I know what you're going through. Um but u I will say you'll get through it. We will continue. It's going to cause some problems. We're probably going to have some issues, but we'll deal with them and we'll move on. It's what we always do. So you you'll do a good job and thank you for your time and commitment to
169everything. >> Mr. Wilson. >> Yeah, I'd like to just uh reiterate that uh thank you very much. These things are never easy. And one other thing, we have a uh shadow day coming up. If you know of anybody uh who would like to take a student, I believe we got a whole bunch of students wanting to do this. Uh we could use a few more businesses or uh entities, trades, crafts, anything like that. It'll take a a student or more for this shadow day. Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Yes. Thank you all very much for your hard work. I know it's been challenging. Um, I'm personally invested. I've got a student that is very concerned about this and has anxiety over what's going to happen. So, I can appreciate what you guys are going
170through and your due diligence and everything that goes into it. So, um, I look forward to talking with Andre, you know, more about the situation we're facing with the, you know, the capital improvements that we've seen and where we're at. And then I'll get with Mike at the county um to understand where we're at with that contract because there's there's definitely some issues there that I think need to be looked into. So, we'll go further with that, but That's all I have. >> Thank you. >> I would just say that reiterate all that. We all work. That's tremendous. Um I would just note that, you know, as far as the budget process, there's a lot of unknowns out there that we just don't know. And so, uh, you know, everybody be patient and we'll we'll
171try to come up with all the different scenarios and try to, you know, obviously do what's best for for the kids. staff. Anyway, but so anyway, just throwing that out there. >> Thank you. >> We're early. We're early in this process. >> I agree. I feel like it's the first wave to hit us and then then there are more to come um with more decisions to make. Thank you all. Thank you to the board tonight for working on collaborating and coming up with a plan for both the middle school and the high school. I appreciate that. Um and thank you all for staying so late tonight. I know that's been a long long night. Have a good evening. And is there a motion to move to convene? >> I move to convene a close session
172to discuss personnel matters including appointments pursuant to code of Virginia 2.2-3711 A1 and a request for release from compulsory attendance for religious reasons pursuant to code of Virginia 2.2-3711A2 3711 A2 for students 205 for students 2025 2026 R1. The estimated time required for the close session is 15 minutes and action is expected. >> Is there a second? >> Second. >> All in favor? >> All opposed. Yeah, I >> calendar that's that's just once or twice according to >> calendar is only once or twice strategic and financial policy are the three big >> Wednesday Tomorrow afternoon, >> but I see those shab meetings get cancelled. >> You're retired every day Saturday. >> I don't want to ask. >> All right. Is there a motion to reconvene in open session? >> So move. Second. All in favor?
173>> All opposed. >> I Is there a motion um regarding personnel from close session? I move to accept the personal matters as presented. >> Second. >> All in favor? >> I. >> All opposed. Is there a motion regarding religious exemption? >> I move to approve the religious exemption as presented. >> Second. >> All in favor? I. All oppose. >> All right. I will now adjourn the meeting. >> Oh boy. >> Done.