Roanoke County School Board Work Session - September 4, 2025

001[Music] Hey. [Music] Hey, hey, hey. [Music] You do. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. I'd like to call our September 4th, 2025 Reno County School Board work session to order. Madame Clerk, will you please call the role? Yes, ma'am. Mr. Yes, ma'am. Mr. Johnson? Yes, ma'am. Mr. Hudson? Yes, ma'am. Item 2.01, 01 major construction project updates, Mr. Todd Kaggels, Mr. West Mitchell, and Mr. Kamal Khalil. Madam Chair, members of the board, we have uh with us again today West Mitchell and Kamal Khil, who will do our major construction project updates. Uh and as you guys know, there was Scans Sky, our third party consultants. Good afternoon, everybody. Glad to be back. It's been a little bit. So, there's been a ton of progress on the CTE project. Um, I'm going to try to keep it

002short and sweet because if there's a type of construction going on that you can do, they're basically doing it out there right now. We've got about 150 people on site and they're doing just about everything you can do in construction. So, we'll start with site work. Um, it is it's winding down as far as the big earthmoving operations. Um, if you drive by, what you see is almost what you're going to get as far as the way the site's going to look. We're still working some on some rock in the east where that parking lot in the east is going to be. Um, just getting through some rock to to lay our um, storm structure still, but that's about it um for any grading. Um, the last pole there on Peters Creek was taken out

003and they did some grading on that. the last one that had the big chunk of dirt still standing. So they got that out this week and had it graded out as well. Um so that's about it. Um paving on Alpine Drive in Peters Creek in the last two months. They put in a turn lane on Alpine Drive. Um that's the road that goes into the neighborhood directly across from the school. Um and then they also got the left turn lane in on Peters Creek um to go turn into the school. So, as soon as we get the last utility pole out um down there on the road, we'll put in the right turn lane as well. So, um it it's already prepped. It just like I said, there's a there's a utility pole in the

004way. We got to get out before we can pave it. Um like I said, that um still putting in storm structures all along the east. Some of those in area A and D have already been tied in. Um so around the front of the school, um all those storm structures are in. We're working on around the east and then to the south. Once we get through all that rock in the east, it'll be easy. It's all fill. Um so all those storm structures will go in real quick. Um they're also installing the 8 in water line, which is a fire line that goes in front of the school. They got that in in the last two weeks. That's it for site work. Um, moving into area D, construction. That's the area we started first. Um,

005towards the back of the school, this is where our building trades and HVAC shops and all that is. They continued with brick and stack stone in those areas. So, on the back of the building where the canopies are, um, by the end of the week, that'll be fully bricked. Um, so when you come into the site where y'all been visiting, that one side has been, they've wrapped the corner and gone all the way down that elevation as well. And on that other side of where the brick has been, the stack stone has been installed. I've got a picture of that. You can see it with the dark brick and the light brick together. Um, inside they've continued with insulation and mechanical piping and duct work. Um, and then also began painting um, walls. So, it

006says CMU walls and shop ceilings. They actually painted in the uh law enforcement area and the RTC area those drywall walls as well. So, it's coming along. It's kind of will throw people off because one side of the building you're still putting steel up and we're painting on the far end of the building. So, um and then also indeed that we've been started pulling wire for electrical devices as well. Uh area A construction um began roofing the area A high roof last week. Um the area A high roof is basically done. They popped down to the low roof this week. Um and as of this afternoon before the storm hit, they had about half of it done. So I'm sure they were scrambling when that storm was coming in to get it all watertight because

007it it wouldn't have been done today. Um exterior metal framing and sheathing is complete in area A as well. So they're putting on zgurts for our metal paneling and um spray foam in spray foam insulation so that we can put the skin up on the building in area A. It's ready to go. Um and then inside we're still doing our interior metal framing. U well well most of that's complete. There's some bulkheads and stuff that we're still doing but as far as walls and everything that's complete. Um, and then the interior CMU walls are ongoing, but they're about topped out on that as well. Um, and then still continuing with our overhead and inwall roughing for our mechanical, electrical, and plumbing traits. Um, area B construction, we wrapped up in the last couple weeks all

008of our CMU bearing walls in those areas. Um, so the huge block operation that's been going on for months is all but complete, less some interior walls that we're still working on, but those aren't bearing walls. Um, so that released all of our steel. Steel erection and welding are ongoing in area B and C, and we'll have a topping out with that coming up. Can I interrupt for a second? Earlier, did you say something about ziggurts? Yes. Everybody else in the room is like nodding their head like, "Oh yeah, zgurts." But I don't I don't So it's shaped like a Z. You put it stands off of your sheathing so that you can have something to secure your metal panel too. They're furring straps basically. Everybody knows that build out the wall. That's a good

009question. It's a cheaper stud. Okay. It's not a structural stud. It's just to secure your exterior seating to see or your skins. Um, so this is your building trades shop. As y'all can see, um, the ceilings are painted. These are all exposed ceilings in the, um, shop areas. So, this is kind of what it's going to look like in those areas as a finished product. Um, there's no windows or anything in yet, obviously. Um, and then I was saying earlier, this is a stack stone in area D. Um, you can see below the windows, it's the dark brick, and then on the other side, it's the light. So, there'll be some orange metal paneling in there as well, but that's what your skin on the building's going to look like. They've got pre-cast in now,

010too. That's not in that picture. Um, area A up on the low roof, you can see the brick and the daffis system. The daffis is like a stucco direct applied finish system. That's the white that you see. Um, the picture, it's a lot brighter than it is when you're out there. And then you can see also the area A high roof is down. So this low this picture on the left about half of that is finished with roofing. So area A is getting close to being somewhat dried in area B. Um you can see here on the left, this is all of our superructure for area B. This is the twotory section. Um and actually as of today 98% of the second story um joists are hung as well. So um the bar joist for

011the roof that are go on to the second level or up. Um and then here on your right is the area be decking uh is all tacked down and ready to keep installing um penetrations for mechanical equipment so we can get that roofed as well. um site progress. This is our 8 inch water line right in front of the building. Um 8 inch fire line for um the fire department support in case of anything. Um and then on the right is your future roadway that comes up into the um site. And you can see we have all of our light pole bases set with um conduit for electrical run to all those as well. In the distance, you might be able to see the paving that was done on Alpine Drive and Peters Creek. That's

012all I got. Does anybody have any questions? Lot going on. Tremendous progress. That's great. Come on. My turn. Um since we met last time, we we handed over a few uh phases like 1B on a cond um all the ceiling work uh the painting, the signage. I know it's redundant, but uh we have to go through the phases item by item. And we're doing the punch list. Uh we did that like a couple weeks ago, but they're fixing a bunch of stuff with paint and uh mainly painting scratches. Also, phase 2 a second floor. Uh we had all the stuff done, the ceiling, uh installation, the cabinets, uh all the inspection, um VCT flooring, tile, all the restrooms are done. This one we handed over also. There's a punch list items also. Uh they're quite

013a bit, but the scratches the small items that they can take care of right away. Um the admin and corridor, they're still working on that. Today they did the the new like the carpet on the on the flooring, but the sprinkler system, all the overhead is done. Uh painting 99.9 done. Uh duct system is done. Uh the flooring is done. I don't know if you can see, but can you I know it's small, but you can see the phases like the 1A on the bottom, the 1B, 1A. I know it's redundant and we've been doing that since we came here, but just to give you an idea of the area we're working in and which one we're turning over. I hope that helps. Um, continue with cond. Um, is that the second page? It's the

014first page. Um, the cafeteria and kitchen, they came a long way. Um, all the overhead is done. Ceiling, plumbing, all all the overhead is done. Painting, uh, signage. Um, we're doing a lot of work in the kitchen and installing a lot of u kitchen equipment, you know, for the food prepping stuff. Um, all the doors installed, but some of the hardware are missing, but we we're working on that. Uh, the 3B gym area, that's we handed over that one, and they're using I think the school is using it for storage for now. Uh, like I said, all the ceiling is done, all the painting is done. Uh as far as the site work, all the parking lot is done except maybe some I would say 19 20 uh uh the lights the parking lights but

015the asphalt sidewalks uh truncated domes for the for the for the handicap that's all done. I have a punch list that I started uh last week on that one. Um the second page please. Uh this one is Glen Cove uh right next door. We also turned this over uh 1B phase 1B. Um because all the all the like the ceiling is done, all the painting is done, the cabinets, the furniture. Um and we also cleared a punch list on the admin who also turned that in. they they're some of the features, you know, they they like it, but they're, you know, there's complaints about the punch list, but we're taking care of that now. Um, phase 2 A, the second floor, um, all the demo is done. Trenching like on the bottom for the sanitary,

016uh, piping is done, all the electrical is done. uh 99.9 of the wiring, even the data uh system that for the fax is machine, all that is done. Um in the cafeteria, they're working on it now. Um there's a lot of work going down there like from plumbing to to the ceiling to copper uh piping, all the electrical being done right now. Um what's the last page? Also the kitchen right next to the the cafeteria. Um, a lot of work going down there like the ceiling, piping, electrical work, HVAC system. And as far as the site, um, I just drove from there. They're doing a lot of tree planting. When you drive by, maybe later on or maybe tomorrow morning, you'll see what I'm talking about. Uh, we did all the asphalt, all the striping.

017Um uh the parking lot is is nearly complete and uh we're going to do also like a complete punch list items the stuff that's uh need to be corrected. I think that's pretty much it. But uh that the one on the left it shows kind of uh that it shows like the two windows that's the kitchen area. It's a lower ceiling. The one next to it is the dining area. I wish I could do more pictures, but you'll show it in the inside. But, uh, this one is like from a distance, the one on the right hand side. This is the admin area. As you walk in, they're installing the the main door and and this is the inside of the you could see the ceiling. This is the dining area. We're still work in

018progress, but you could see like from the beginning till now, like there's a lot of work being done. That's the hallway. Uh today they did the the carpet on that one for uh for cond. Um this is the outside transformer and they put this disconnect and they're going to switch the power maybe in 10 days. This is the promise we got from the power company. We hope it happens. So we'll see. Uh this is the admin from the outside. And I showed some pictures of uh uh furniture being delivered with cabinets being installed. Same thing. It's in this one we turned over, but this is an old picture, but I'd like to show progress. The cabinets are installed. The floor is done. The ceiling is done. Uh this is the new uh phase that they

019started in the in the like in the kitchen area and and the cafeteria. They're doing HVAC systems and now they're doing also framing and the masonry work. Wish we could have more pictures, but this is what you got. Any any questions? Anything? I mean, we made a I mean heads way like really crazy, but uh it's hard to show in in five 10 minutes. I drove up there last week. It looks really good. It's coming along. I see your banner like every morning when I when I'm driving you. As long as you don't wreck driving past it, that's a good thing. I mean, we're making good progress. We're making good scheduled work and they guys whenever they needed manpower, they they brought in and they they got the work done. They do all look very

020good. Maybe a quick question for Mr. Kegles with since they're being turned over in phases, is there a quality control check that's taking place? Is Scansa doing that? Is our staff doing that? Yes, sir. Scans and our staff are on site uh at all times. So, we have a project manager at Glen Cove, it's uh Mike Kaufman and at W Kundiff, it's uh Brian Dodson. And then combined with Kimal, they're doing all the quality control and going back and looking at uh the punch list items like you mentioned, but but also some other I mean, there's some structural things that they've caught along the way that they've worked with Branch to um, you know, to correct. And, uh, we should just say thank you to Branch because there was a tremendous amount of work that

021went on over the summer. And, uh, you know, they ultimately met all of their deadlines. Our guys were actually questioning whether they were going to be able to do that in the condition they were in a couple of weeks before school had to open, but they've met every single deadline that we needed them to uh, to meet. So, uh, just just a public thank you to to them for all their hard work this summer. That has been nice that they've made the I mean, not a thing goes by or gets installed and we don't know about. We we check it. We make sure that it's the right thing to be, you know what I mean? It's like we're there. The one thing to uh David's point is uh that we did talk about this in

022the very beginning stages of setting this up. Um the and I forget what you call it but on the heat and air systems you really can't what's that commissioning. Yes the commissioning you can't really do that I wouldn't think in stages until you you get the final product and it's all kind of we are doing certain items like u lighting controls like when you walk into the room and then the light shuts off or comes on. Mhm. We're commissioning that they had like 22 items to take care of on Gleno and they're doing that now. Well, I'm thinking more in the heat and air just because we do sections and then it's got to all kind of tie together. The roof, like the roof, we have the the heating and all the equipment that's being

023done now. Okay. And whatever commissioning issues they have, they take care of it. And we we have it, we have a system, it's called the facility grid, okay? You enter all the stuff that you're doing in there and they, you know what I mean? Like the foreman will take care of it or the workers. And we're keeping tabs on that. We keep track of it. The reason I asked that is because at Bird, as Mr. Kaggels knows, there's maybe more than one, but there's at least one room in that school that doesn't get heat or or cool. I can't remember which it is. Uh but I just, you know, once it's done, it comes together in hole. That's why I was wondering because we don't want to have that issue where there's a room or

024two that doesn't get I keep that in mind. Yeah. Yeah. It's been a challenge with those for the commissioning for sure. There's a lot of meetings and discussions on how we were going to do it because some of the equipment's being reused too, right? So, kind of hard to commission that conjunction with the new stuff. So, they're doing bits and pieces of it at a time right now. Okay. Any other questions, gentlemen? Thank you. I appreciate it. Great. Thank you. You're welcome to stay and take the heat on the rest of these like knock each other over heading to the door beat. Thank you. Thank you. That was for That wasn't for Jason, too, was it? He's like, item 2.02. 02 minor capital projects discussion. Mr. Todd Kegels. Yes, ma'am. I just have some updates

025on uh as everybody knows you guys approved a number of uh minor capital projects all at the same time. So, I just wanted you to, you know, kind of let you know that we are working on all of those and kind of see the progress we've uh been making on them. There's a couple of things we need to discuss on specific projects, but we we'll get to that. Out at um Bonsack, um we've got the carpet ordered out there. uh working with the school just to determine a convenient time for installation. Uh the good news on that one is it's about eight about $8,000 under budget. Um and then out at Herman El Horn, we've actually finished installing the car, but we have some pictures of that uh here at the end. And it was

026about $9,000 under budget out there. Don't get too excited because uh I have to ask for some of that back here at the at the end. We'll we'll get to that. um out at North Side High School uh in in uh transitioning those fax rooms. Um we've got our carpenters working out there and our electricians. Uh they've actually made quite a bit of progress. They've ordered casework now. Uh and we're waiting on that to come in and get it installed. So, we're hoping to have all of that done by late September. They worked with the schools and the instructor out there to make sure everything they're doing, they're kind of working around each other, but it's but it's going well. um Hidden Valley Middle. Uh that's all being done by uh a contractor for us

027and they're uh working with the school to try to come up with different sections that they can do throughout the year. So the first one I think is going to be done over the um uh election day is going to be the first section of the building that we'll get done. And then uh from there we see how much um disruption it creates and how much the school is willing to tolerate us. and we'll try to continue to go through and do that u hopefully during the school year. If not, that'll be uh next summer. The elementary media center aotment, we've already discussed that with the principal and the media specialist. They're aware that that's available and I think they're starting to look into exactly what they want to do with that. Uh out at

028Fort Lewis, we're just waiting on a third quote. Uh we do plan to start construction on that here in September um with extending the the brick up above the cooling tower and redoing the back wall. Um right now it looks like that one's right on right on budget, so we should be okay there. Uh North Side High School. I've got some pictures of this one here. This is the softball um restrooms in in that building there. I've got some pictures there at the end. Our guys have pretty much completed the demo. I actually heard them call in the painters today and they were going to start uh painting some walls in there. They've still got some plumbing and electrical to do, but um they've got all the old flooring up and like I said, you'll

029see some pictures of that here in a minute, but that's that's coming along pretty pretty quickly, faster than we thought actually. And so we are hoping to get that done uh early October. Uh Kring Middle School in the softball field, we've contracted with the engineers out there. That is typically about an 8 to 12 week process to get the construction documents and the engineering work done. Uh there are some challenges out there. Uh we had talked about possibly moving um a utility pole out there on the edge to give us more room. That utility pole is not actually on our property. That's right in the uh right on the property line. So there's no opportunity to uh expand in that direction. And the other thing we discovered is that that softball field is uh on

030a geothermal uh field. So, it it has uh I 250 wells uh under the surface there, and that's going to limit the grade work that we're going to be able to do there because you can't obviously grade down below the tops of the wells there. So, uh our engineer is aware of that and uh you know, we're we're working around that, but um and until we get the engineering documents, we won't know exactly how that's going to uh look, but that was a little disappointing. that's going to make it much more of a challenge to to get that the way we'd really like it to be in the end. Out at Kpring High School, uh the risers have been delivered uh and installed and assembled. That was actually quite a process, but uh they're all

031in there and they're they're usable now. Some photos of those uh towards the end. Uh Hidden Valley High School and the tennis courts, we have the engineering firm under contract and they've begun work. That's again an 8 to 12 week process. So, we're just waiting on the construction documents back from the um uh from the engineers and then we can uh you know make grant applications and those sorts of things. I'd like to actually skip North Side High School and come back to that at the end because that's going to be a little bit of a lengthier discussion. Uh Hidden Valley High School, the artificial turf field. I'd hope to be able to tell you that that was fully under contract today. Uh we were working on it right up through, you know, the time

032I came down to this meeting. We didn't quite get there, but we do have our contractor in place. He has verbally agreed to our uh timelines, which is is why it's taken this long because it was difficult to get people to uh commit to the March 1st uh timeline. What I want to make the board aware of on this one is that um we had some discussions with the school as to whether or not they'd rather wait till the summer or go ahead and try to get it in and get it done before uh spring sports. They had initially told us they'd prefer to wait because if we couldn't guarantee uh March 1st, they wanted to uh wait on that. Uh after some further discussions and then Mr. Shnie sort of rallying the troops over

033there, talking to the soccer coach and talking with the administrators up there. They decided it was uh okay to go ahead and uh try to press forward and and get done by the March 1st deadline is is the sort of deadline that sort of drop dead date. The absolute last day we can possibly not inconvenience the soccer team over there is March 1st. Uh I just want the board to understand though that there's no guarantees. the um there are uh financial penalties built into the contract starting on March 1st and that guarantees you that you can start getting paid on March 1st, but it doesn't really guarantee you that the field is going to be ready. I mean, if it if there's a, you know, a blizzard or, you know, unreasonable weather, uh you know,

034this is all about working the ground. When it's frozen, you can't work it. When it's wet, you can't work it. You know, winter's a really tough time to be doing this. So, uh, I just want to make everybody aware before we sign and and, uh, press forward that I I think the consensus is now to press forward and have it done by March 1st. And our contractor says he can do that. It's the same fellow who did uh, North Side for us, and we have a good relationship, and I trust him that he'll be able to. But I just want everybody to understand there's no guarantees. And if that field's not ready on March 1st, you know, it will inconvenience some somebody. I mean, some team somewhere. Well, that's a that's a great question and

035and I've asked the school to start thinking outside the box in terms of where they might be able to do that. But you could be, you know, some of the ideas that have been tossed around is you'd have to find a way to get them in at Bogle and and if you do that, one of the other teams is probably have to be relocated. So, I think the most obvious choice is probably the the varsity teams take precedent and you have to move the middle school uh somewhere else to to play their games. So, um, again, if it's not ready by March 1st, it's going to inconvenience somebody somewhere. There's just no way to to avoid that, even with, uh, paying penalties. And I should make it clear on the penalties. The, uh, we would

036only apply the penalties if we felt like the contractor wasn't making a good faith effort to get it done. If if, you know, if it's a weather related issue for a month of, you know, snow or whatever on the ground over there, we would not hold the contractor responsible for that. you know, nobody would take that guarantee to to do that during the winter. So, um, if you had to ask me to bet, he'll have it done by March 1st. I I trust those guys and I know they'll do they'll do everything possible, but there are no guarantees and I just want to make you aware of that now before we actually break uh ground. So, I think if anybody objects to that, you know, now is the time to have that discussion. Was there

037a cost differential if is it will be more expensive if they waited till the summertime? I don't think so. Yeah. So, we'll just have to get a little creative if that's the case. Yeah. With rescheduling games or just having because right now the middle school is using Bogle, right? So, we'd have to shift off the middle school. You may have you may have to, you know, play a game on a Saturday or, you know, that sort of thing. I mean, there there will be inconveniences if the field is not ready, longer times or something. But, yeah, because it's used by four teams. It's used by that that field is used by JV and varsity boys and girls. So there, you know, four teams worth of games there. You mean for soccer? Yes. But what about

038lacrosse? Is that also there? They don't currently play their games there. They play at uh at Bogle. Well, that's what I was thinking. I'm just thinking about Bogle being overly committed is what I was asking. Oh, it's full. I mean, I I think we looked at the schedule actually um you know, what the spring schedule looked like back when we first started talking about this and it's uh it's full. You'd have to, like I say, you somebody has to give up something, you know, that to to Hidden Valley to move the soccer games into into Bogle. And so, you've discussed that with them. They know that they would have to get creative as you said, so they're all aware of that. Yeah. And the soccer coach said, you know, if we have to play even

039a home game somewhere else, we'll have to do that. We're okay with that. You know, we call Bird for a schedule because we do it except it's a high school and a middle school. Oh, right. Right. The practices start before the 1 of March. They do, but the school can use uh they start in the middle of February. And so for those two weeks, the school can use the inside of the track because the PRA track practice doesn't start until March 1st. So the soccer team can go and practice inside the track for those those two weeks from February 15th to to March 1st. So that's why March 1st is our our drop dead date even though spring sports start on the February 15th. So all four teams could use inside the track. Uh well

040that's they do that's what they do now. They they use that one field. So they're just sharing the same I assume they do uh an early practice and a late practice. Split the field in half and and practice two at a time. We we do that bird. That's what I mean. Yeah. They can get that schedule because that's what it ours is. We It's two schools. Just happens to be a middle school and a high school instead of two high schools. Yeah. They have to use this. We only have the one field for everything. Yes. Anything else on on that? So, the plan is to go forward and fingers crossed try to get it done by March 1st. What does the Farmers Elman act say? It says good. I have no idea actually. Does it?

041Yeah. Let's not talk about that then. Okay. What one last What's the disadvantage? I guess I mean I I I get they wouldn't be able to play on it, I guess, this spring. Is it So another season? I'm just wondering if you get a better product if you give just a little bit more time. That's all I was wondering. Is there any chance we don't get a good product if we rush it? Uh, I don't think so. And we have guarantees on um, you know, if you look at the length of time it took to do North Side and the length of time that we have between now and spring sports. There's plenty of time. Uh, but we have some engineering considerations that we didn't have at uh, North Side because it was already set

042up. It already had the concrete curbs in place and uh, you know, was artificial turf ready to an extent. So there, this field isn't. It's just a you know a field there. There is no surrounding structure. So all that has to be built this time. Uh but I I don't I'm not concerned about the quality of the product at the end. And we have uh I think there's an 8-year warranty on the seams. So uh which is really what you you know concerned about with artificial turf. So um I'm not concerned that it'll be a a lesser quality product only whether or not it's going to be ready on March 1st. If I recall correctly, they were a little bit delayed on North Side and that was a summertime project. That's right. And but they

043met their they met their you know we their drop dead date there was the start of football season and they met that deadline and got it done and we're ready to go at the at the start of football season. So um it was a little bit later than they originally said, but the date that they had given us was a month or two before football season. So it um you know ultimately it met our needs. That that contract did not have financial penalties. That had something to do with some drainage, didn't it? A pipe or something under there they weren't aware of and they had to replace. That's right. The the existing drainage was not sufficient. It had to be uh dug up and uh additional drainage had to be installed. So, with this being

044where it's at, probably no pipes or anything under it, I wouldn't think. That's right. Yep. Also, you got to worry about freezing. I wonder if they can lay it while it's freezing. I mean, if that's something the board needs to discuss, then uh you know, if you feel like you need don't need to take action on it. Now's the time to do that because we're we're signing the contract. Uh tomorrow probably your school sheriff. Yeah, I want to get it done. That's why I called the meeting with Mr. Whit Low and Mr. Weaver and the coach said just want to make sure you guys are aware this is what's possibly happened and the coach was just fine with it. You know, there's no no issue with quality and and they can work out the schedule.

045I mean, I guess just let's go with it. Okay. Uh let's see. That was the turf. Uh okay. So here's here's the the bad news. Uh there's good news on the carpet projects earlier on the other slide. This is the bad news on this one. Uh North Side High School, we are done putting carpet in the band room over there. That one was about $10,000 over budget. So, we're going to return about 17,000 on the other two carpet projects that were under budget and then ask that uh 10,000 of that be uh reallocated back to the project at North Side Middle just to cover the uh over budget. So, still net on the carpet projects were 7,000 under budget, but that one uh was over budget. And I will say we probably could have gotten

046that uh less expensive had we been willing to wait, but we needed to get that one done before um before school started. So it was a little more expensive to Why' you go over budget on that and not Why would you go over budget on that and not the others? Why would we go over budget? Yeah. What caused that one to go over budget where the other ones? Well, this one I the we based that budget on what it costs to carpet the band room at uh North Side High School. Uh the structure is a little bit different at North Side Middle. So, the installation cost was significantly higher and that's why that one was, you know, over what we thought it would cost. And then we probably could have bid it out and got

047a little bit of a better price, but we wanted to get it done before uh school opened up. And you remember when these projects were approved in order to get it done before school opened up, we had to take our our contract price was just typically a little more expensive. You don't have a problem with that, do you? Going over budget on something. Not ideal, but uh just want to make sure. I tried to get it done. You certainly bring it up a lot, so I just want to make sure. Yeah, we're good. Well, like I said, we're there's an offset there. We're under 17 on the other and 10 over all that. So, you know, net we're we're still good. uh for now. Uh Kring High School, the the snack bar, that's all being

048done after football season. So, we haven't actually done anything with that one other than go over there and uh look, we do need to meet with uh stakeholders at sometime in the near future so we can start getting some things ordered. Glenn Middle School, we've got the 250 chairs in. They were actually less expensive than we uh thought they were going to be, so we're a little under budget on that one as well. Uh, Glenber Elementary School is um, let's see, I just talked to him about that one today. We have the I think we're waiting on the third quote there. But even with the most expense or the least expensive of the two quotes that we have, we're going to be significantly under budget on that one. I think about $15,000 under uh the

049budget there. So, um, they've picked out their flooring and we're just waiting on that third quote so we can uh get it ordered and then and then get it installed. Uh the staff restrooms we are um planning to contract I talked to actually Michael Masher with RRMM. They did our current major construction projects that are doing the plans for uh the bathrooms out there at Glender that we're going to add. And so they're 8 to 12 weeks out on the uh architecture and engineering work and then we'll get uh started on on that one. So if we could come back to North Side High School and the stadium lights there. Uh we based the budget for that one on William Bird Hop. We're putting in exactly the same system that we did out there, a

05050ft candle LED system. That system cost us about $250,000. So we set the budget at 300 to allow for some um contingency. Well, North Side has some unique uh electrical challenges. So that project is minimum going to cost about 317,000. And really what I would recommend is going to be the $370,000 option. And and here's the difference. They could go in and install um new LED stadium lighting and leave the current poles and uh fixtures in place and they can do that for $317,000. And that's just the result of the increase in the cost of copper and the um uh escalation in price for the for the LED systems in the last uh year and a half, two years since we since we installed uh out at Bird. Now, North Sid's electrical is a complete

051mess in terms of the uh stadium lights out there. It's where it's been uh for the last 25 years. They've just gone and fed everything that's out there. It's the press boxes, the baseball buildings, all all of the irrigation system that was out there. Everything's fed off those light poles. So, if you take down the current poles, you have to rewire all that stuff. And that's where the extra uh you know, 50 or $60,000 comes in between the the the 317 to the 3 uh70. Uh our philosophy since, you know, I took this role three years ago has been to leave the school system in better shape than we than we found it. So that when we retire in a few years, uh we don't leave long-term problems and those sorts of things for the

052people that that come behind us. The $317,000 would leave a lot of uh things in place that would still need to be fixed at some point in the future in addition to not looking very good because you're going to have the new light poles set off from the existing light poles with, you know, the old poles still in place, the old rusty poles in the fixture still in place. Now, it won't affect the new LED lights. are not going in exactly the same place anyway and you'll still get the same field lighting if you do the cheaper option but you won't have corrected any uh of the existing problems out there. So my recommendation to the board would be to um you know bite the bullet spend the extra $70,000 now and um and do

053keep in mind that that does not include any contingency. Our contingency was from the 250 to the 300. So that's already well beyond you know what we had planned uh for contingency. Uh but that would still be my recommendation to the boards knowing the big picture and the and the you know financial position that that we're in. Uh still my recommendation that we uh do the $370,000 option. All ears on this one. Well, I think with the age of the wiring, I mean, that could be an issue down the road, right? And then that and obviously it's going to cost more five years from now than it is today. We see that with just a couple years and the difference in the materials now with copper. So my recommendation would be to go ahead if

054we can do it. I mean I know that you've got some savings in some of these projects even though we don't have everything complete, but do you have a figure on what we have in savings thus far? Uh under in terms of being under budget? Uh no, I didn't add them all together. I mean I'd have to do mental math real quick, but it's not anywhere near enough to address the 70,000. Even if we took um we might have $30,000 net so far that that we're under. What do you think, Mr. Linda? I'd agree with Mr. Hudson, and that uh it's not going to get any cheaper in 3 years or 5 years or eight years or whenever we may need to make those other repairs. $53,000 difference between 317 and and 370. No big

055deal. We get one opportunity to do it right. Let's do it right. Yeah. There you go. You all did leave some money in minor capital so you can cover the uh $70,000 cost there. What did we leave? 250 something like that. It was really 250. Yeah. I problem spending that on these lights, huh? From 250 to 370. You're you're okay with that? Well, the original was 300, right? No, 250. The original budget was 300. Okay. Yeah, we 250 is what we spent on it, but how long did you do that to But we budget But you did have a budget 300. I mean, that's what we thought it was going to cost. The budget was Lindon on the other hand. Yeah. I just can't see going to all that extent and leaving the old wiring

056and then we have a problem a year from now, two years from now. And I don't I'm not an electrician, but what happens if you know faulty wiring causes some damage to the new lighting that we put in? makes no sense at all. It's absolutely The right thing to do and maybe uh since it's in Lyndon's backyard, he'll be okay with it. So, let's move forward with it and do it right. A lot of choice is the 317 or the 370. And it just doesn't make any sense to not fix all that stuff now. Contingency and everything. That's why I'm good with it. Yeah, me too. I think you have to get it done. I didn't hear you. Was that from me? I said, "No, we have to get it done." Oh, yes, ma'am. Yeah.

057Yes, ma'am. Now, we are working with a couple of other contractors as well to see if we can get a better price, but these folks were so much less expensive than the other two vendors. Uh when we did bird, it's not likely that it will be any less than this. But we are exploring those options. Just so just so you know, it won't be more than 370. So, uh, what I would recommend then if if there's general consensus that we're going to do that is that we put that on the, uh, the 70 the additional $70,000, uh, on the consent agenda for the next meeting. I'm good with it. Even though you didn't support anything at Bird, I'm good with that. So, with the additional savings, like you were saying 30 or 40,000, I mean,

058we just hold on to that for these other projects until we're finished. And yeah, it doesn't get returned until the projects are finished and the bill's paid. And then once the bill is bill is paid, we close the project and then it'll automatically go back into minor to where we're taking it out of. Okay. It's absolutely the right thing to do. Okay. Uh Okay. So, we just have some photos we want to look at. Uh that's the carpet out at Horn in the uh that's the library. We've got the music room. Looks fantastic out there. I think they're they're super excited about the way it came out. This out at North Side. The guys, like I said, this is I don't know, just a week or so ago, but they had done the demo. The

059fixtures are still in there at this point. They'll all be new. The hand drives will be new. The walls will be new. They'll look everything in here will look brand new. I just wanted you to see that they've been over there working and they've made quite a bit of progress over there. Uh the forum chairs out at Glenber, Miss has all her new chairs and she's super excited about the way it looks and how everything turned out and they've um you know, they're already using those. You've got the choir risers out at Kring High School and again those are installed and uh ready for use. So um progress on all your projects and that's the um the new carpet out at um out at North Side Middle. That brings us to our next agenda item

060unless you have questions about any of those projects. Anybody have questions? Thank you Todd. Thank you. You're always on top of it. Thank you. Item 2.03, surplus property discussion, Mr. Todd Kaggles. Uh if you recall, we had a uh presentation from uh a gentleman who was working on behalf of a developer. Uh and they would like to purchase these two uh pieces of property that we own off of uh Ranch Pass Drive over there at Kring Middle School. They total about4 acres. uh if there is no objection to um the sale of that property and I don't believe there was when we discussed this before then the first step of that would be to designate the property as surplus. So I would recommend that the board put this on the consent agenda for the next

061meeting. Uh once they're designated as surplus then we can move forward with the public hearing gathering an offer. We actually already have an appraisal and an offer um matching the appraisal on these on these two parcels. So um if there was an in agreement, it's just a matter of formality. We have to designate them as surplus as the first step. Any objections? Nope. That's all I have. Thank you. They'll have to approve that at the next meeting as consent. Yes, sir. I mean, I guess you could take action on it now if you wanted to do that, but we can wait, too. We can. Will they actually be put on the market or would they be those properties? Will we have that option later? Uh, just like we did with the um piece of property

062over at Penn Forest, that wasn't the plan. This is where a you know, a citizen has come to us to make that purchase. Uh, that certainly could be an option if you wanted. It just extends the process. But certainly if you wanted to uh list it and then see if we could get uh you know maybe more money for it. Um that would certainly be a pro uh uh you know an opportunity to do that if you want. That is not the current plan though. So if we if if that's what we want to do, you guys just need to tell me we want to do that and we'll certainly make that happen. Can we discuss that in closed? Yes. To just refresh our memory on that. I don't know if I I mean, I

063remember us discussing it, but I don't remember us getting to the Yes, sir. And and I believe I uploaded the appraisal and the um the appraisal and the offer, the letter of intent on those two in the administrative content that you have access to on board docs. If I didn't, I can certainly send you all a copy of that and we can discuss those in close session. Either way, the first step would be to go ahead and declare a surplus. You still have time later to decide whether or not to accept the offer or to put on the market. Yep. Yeah. So, it still goes on consent for that piece. For this piece, right? And then you could uh let's say at your September 18th meeting and close discuss the as under real estate. That's

064right. I'd like to just remember exactly where we're at with that because Yes. So, we're not accepting the offer right now. We're just designating it a surplus. Okay. Thank you. [Music] Item 2.04, request approval of CTE textbook adoption. Mr. Mark Jones. Good afternoon, Madam Chair, members of the board. Thank you. Now I don't need this. Um over the past several months, the CTE department has established um several textbook adoption committees to uh look at some of our aging um instructional resources and uh the committees have come together and recommended the following textbooks for adoption that you'll see here. I'm happy to answer any questions you have about those. Um, and if there are no questions, then um, if you approve that, we would we would request that they be placed on the consent agenda at

065the next schoolboard meeting for approval. Did the did the instructors, the teachers look at those books? Yes. Yeah, they were part of the committee for all of them. Good. All right. Item 2.05, request approval to surplus instructional materials. Mr. Mark Jones. And a related topic, uh, the instructional department has used instructional resources that are out of adoption and no longer will be used by the school system. They include miscellaneous instructional resources that need to be designated as surplus. Uh, these instructional resources will be sold, donated, or disposed, and that order is needed. Uh, the proceeds from any sales will go back to the instructional resources fund. I'd like to request that that be also placed on consent agenda that these items be surplused and we can help JJ clear out the warehouse. Sounds good. All

066right. Thank you so much. Thank you. Item 2.06, request approval of long-term use of facilities contract. Miss Tammy Nukem. Good evening, Madam Chair, members of the board. Um today we bring forward a request for approval of a long-term facility application for the Renick Valley Community Band. This group is made up of members of our own music department as well as other community members. Their concerts are open to the public at no charge, creating a wonderful opportunity to connect our schools with the wider community through music. In accordance with policy 8.01, this activity falls under class B. Facility rental fees are waved. However, charges for utilities, site supervisors, and custodians will be um apply as required. So, we request respectfully the board's approval of this long-term facility application. And I did put it in um information,

067I think, for you to see it under administration. These are all our kids, right? It's not kids. It's actually adults and some alumni that have been in the band. So, they're none of none of our kids. It's just um I at times I think there could be a possibility. I can't say forever, but they've done this for years and it came across my desk and we looked at it and um the utilities we wanted to make sure were on there and then I wanted to make sure that you had seen it. And let me rephrase it. It's all Reno County citizens. I believe not necessarily. I mean it's it's run county it's a runup valley community bands. This is a facility use request just like we you know do for churches and so forth. The

068reason I was but a lot of them are our music directors who participate. Well, the reason I was suggesting is so you're saying we would charge for the electricity and some of utilities and that what we that's what we would do for any class B that came that comes through under our policy. So if it were Ron County citizens I was going to say let's you know they pay taxes let's cut them a break but well in in in class B we sort of are because we're not charging for the um auditorium facility so it's just utilities that they're paying. And which facility is that? Pin Valley High School. Okay. Mhm. It has been at Case Ring High School before, but the past few years it's been at Valley the school. Works. So, I just

069um I believe it has to be on consent agenda next time. Everybody good with it? Yes. Yeah. Thank you, Tammy. Item 2.07 2024 2025 preliminary year end results. Miss Susan Peterson I can't. Sorry. It's taking me a second to get ready. Good afternoon, Madam Chair, members of the board. Um the next several items I do have a PowerPoint that I'll have uploaded uh to board docs after the meeting. I've been working on it uh up until now. Um so I do want to go ahead and give you uh preliminary look at what the general fund surplus is expected to look like um at year end. Uh keep in mind it is only September 4th. Our auditors won't come in until November. We've taken care of most of our audit entries. Um I would say 99.9%

070of them we're just doing some clean up for um annual school reporting at this point. Um and then if there are any um invoices that come in uh that are significant, we will acrew them back and so that would affect our uh bottom line. But for right now on the left hand side of the screen, you'll see the preliminary activity. We have revenue listed first and then the expenditure savings and then the total carryover amount. Under revenue, uh we do have uh a negative 662 195 and that's directly related to less ADM than what we budgeted. Uh we have a little more in federal funds from Medicaid and -ate. Um local revenue the 812869 that is an additional amount the county transferred to us. Uh they received a premium on the bonds uh for RCCTC.

071This freed up other cash that they were able to set aside for the CSA. uh CSA is in uh a negative position right now and so they're trying to do everything they can to build up the fund balance in CSA. Uh so they gave us an additional 812869 and then they took it back out of our coffers and so um it's a wash at the end of the day. Uh but it is a transaction that does show up through our books and then some other local revenue uh went down. Uh so revenue ended up negative6,577 um a little bit to the to the not so good on the expenditure side. So one thing I will say um probably during the budget time I was reviewing the 25 payroll laps and taking a look at what

072it would need to cover, right? uh most of that we did estimate perilotss to be about uh 3 million at the time but we and we estimated a revenue def deficit to be 660 so we were very close to the the law shown up here uh we estimated the maximum amount for PTO payouts and that was over 700,000 we also estimated over 800,000 for electricity um and then the AED legislature that came down the pike and so we were estimating about 2.2 million of cost overruns that we were going to have to cover with payroll laps. Um so the the personnel savings is about what we expected it to be. It's 3.3 million there. When we knew we were having an issue with the health insurance fund and all these other costs, Dr. nicely put

073us on the departments on a spending freeze. And so, uh, they did a very nice job of, uh, covering these overages and leaving it leaving 369,000 on the table. So, that's why, you know, maybe six months ago, I was showing we might be at a much worse position, why we are at um, a better position than than what I was planning. Um and then we have the emergency contingencies 2 million that just gets carried over. We built that up many years ago uh using surplus and we just carry it over year after year. So overall our uh general fund carryover will be 5.6 million. Um on the right hand side is how we would um request for it to be reappropriated back to us because we do have to take that to the board of

074supervisors. Per our policy 2 million comes off the top for the emergency contingency. The incumbrances that are on the books at June 30th equate to 214,168. They would come off the the next amount. Then the policy says 50% of what is left over goes into major capital. The other 50% can go to major capital, minor capital, CSA, CMP, fleet or technology. So bigger onetime spending. I have been made aware that the county may ask for additional funding from surplus for CSA. Um the maximum amount of that they have thrown out there is 850. They're thinking up to that amount. Um and so whatever is left over would go to that and then we would drop the remaining 861 into the minor capital fund. So that's kind of the summary of what our general fund carryover

075would look like. And um and I and I'll warn you what Dr. Nicely just handed out is not what I'm showing you right now. Um I've made additional changes to the PowerPoint. Okay. Just edit as you need to do. That's what I had before the meeting. So that's why I haven't sent it out yet or printed it. Is there anything different on this page? The numbers match up. They're the same. I reordered them. Okay. I got a couple questions just and you may not be able to answer them today in this time you can get back with me. Um, one I'd like to put out point out the personnel savings. I know that we made some hard decisions earlier and that attributes to the personnel savings. So, I'd like to give credit to the board

076for that. Um, that was tough, but obviously it's paying off here. Um, one thing, insurance, because that's still on the back of my mind, right? Like I don't want that hitting us again and I don't want our employees to have to foot that bill. Um, so how are we looking? Maybe you can give us a report here. I know we're kind of early in. Do you want me to jump to that slide or do you want Okay, you've already questions. Okay, that was one question. And then also, and this is a total separate one. Um, bonds, you know, I know with new projects and stuff like that, I would love to know how much we're paying in bonds currently every year and then, you know, how that would be added later on. And you don't

077have to answer that. Our portion or the county portion? Our portion itself. So, we pay 4.1 million to the county for debt service every year. 4.1 million. And is that going to change with the new projects or is that already No, that's already built in. That's already built in. What is going to change is we have we fund future capital. That amount that goes into future capital will be increasing a half million every year. So, I think that's at maybe 3.8 right now. And it'll go up a half million. will be an ad on every budget request for the foreseeable future. So theoretically, the more surplus, the more money that can be put county side and our side would reduce the amount that we would have to pay on the bonds every year if we're

078paying off debt quicker than we're not pay we're paying it off in accordance with the is there a way to pay it off quicker? I don't think so. That's really a question for the county and uh right now I think they're doing everything they can to build up the TSA fund. They're in such a negative position with that. I don't think they have the opportunity to pay additional debt early. That's something I'll reach out to our counterparts on the board of supervisors and ask. Yeah. Because that does concern me over time it it grows, right? And that affects our budget because we're having to pay again $4.1 million every year. Certainly. And that was part of theou that we signed. Right. And I'm fine with it. I'm just saying that, you know, that's something that

079we got to look at in the future if we can maybe together work together to try to pay that down quicker. Sure. With with less spending in other areas. Definitely. The emergency contingency fund you said was established how long ago? I would say more than 12 years ago. And was it at 2 million then? We we put in an amount each year. We built up to it. We didn't put in two million at one time. I'm just curious. I mean, we saw the effects of of staying at the 1010 with the county and that revenue sharing agreement. Just wondering whether or not 2 million is enough in that contingency fund when we see the prices of everything going up, whether it's healthcare or construction or everything else. Do we don't want to get coffee behind

080the eightball spending at a an amount that may not cover what we need to. Well, we can look at that. that's actually in the county's financial policy at 2 million. Um, but we I can speak with them and see if they're interested in in changing that little amount as well. Just upon we know what the 1010 did to us when we made our adjustments uh Dr. Nicely in uh for personnel was that correct me about like positions that were eliminated and so forth last year. Was that one million? 900,000 million. 900,000 was 900. I thought it was 1.9. No. All right. And when was that? That was for July 1. It was effective for this coming current fiscal year, budget year. Right. So really none of that savings was in the number you're giving us

081here other than the hiring freeze, right? Yeah. I mean, as far as like departmental savings and so forth, I mean, some of that, you know, we did kind of, you know, cut off some major spending there while the health insurance reserves were in jeopardy and all that kind of stuff. So, you know, the the like some of the savings might be a little higher than normal because of those kinds of things, but I don't think it's dramatically different. So, I guess Yeah. So, I guess to my point, um, we were at a 5.6 surplus. Is that that correct? in including the 2 million. Yeah. Well, that's always included, right? Right. Right. So, 5.6 and then we put two million during the year into the emergency fund, right? Well, it just kind of sits there. Yeah.

082Yeah. No, I'm not talking about I'm not talking about that emergency. I'm talking about He's about the health reserves. Health insurance. Oh, correct. So, we took 2 million during the year and threw that in there. And then we uh calculated another 900,000 for this current year. Right. And we don't even know what we lost in the estimated actual revenue for the year, right? Where we we don't get that piece. You've got estimated the 6,577. That's the true revenue for general. No, no, no. I'm sorry. Not your Yeah, I'm sorry. Not your actual. I'm talking about county where we estimate to begin the year. They they estimate the revenue. Oh. they're going to give us to the actual what it actually ended up being for the year. We never get that made up. So, if you

083added that in, so we're at like $8.5 million surplus this year. That's essentially what where we were at. Um, so I just just wanted to point that out. So, going into the planning for the new budget year that that we recognize that. So if you wanted to throw another half million into emergency contingency, my feeling is we're there's nothing changed. We've actually tightened our belts going into the next year. So there should be some some revenue there that we should be able to use or or calculate into certain items. Well, and to your point, you know, there's been some accusations from some folks that, you know, we spend too much money, right? But if you look at the results of the education, like Dr. Nicely, you just put something out the other day in an

084email. Was it sixth and seventh or Yeah, Mr. Williams is actually going to go over that. We actually improved in our SLO scores results for this past year in terms of our state ranking. Sixth and seventh in the state, right? Not just in the valley, but in the state and then here we are with, like you said, you add 2 million to that that we had to add to insurance for unforeseen reasons. That's nobody's fault. That's right. You know, that we couldn't foresee that to come. I don't like bragging on our, you know, myself or anybody else, but at the end of the day, I feel like we've done a pretty good job. So, anybody that wants to make a comment that we spend too much money, they need to come in here and really

085look at the numbers and see the results before they make outlandish statements like that. And I would bring that to the person I'm talking about and tell them face to face, hey, come here and let me show you. Yeah. You know, this is good work from our staff. Thank you, Susan. Thank you to all the department directors for your part because I feel like a lot of times we don't, you know, we don't get what we deserve. You're exactly right. And to your point before, like you had spoke many times before and it's taken a little while to understand all of this because obviously there's a lot of moving parts to the budget. We get our share from the county based off of their projected revenue, right? But if they go way over in revenue,

086we don't get anything from that. So that's a whole lot of money sitting there. And I think some people are under the illusion that we get a Was it 50? What was the percentage that we get from county revenue? 40. It's about 41%. 41. It used to be 42. Right. So then some people would make a statement that oh, you know, there's people concerned about how much money the schools are getting. Well, that's a false statement because it's not 41% of the entire county revenue. It's 41% of the projected revenue. Now granted, some people would say, "Oh, well, if we overp project, we're not going to ask you for the money back." I would ask, "When is the last time it has ever been overprotected?" To my knowledge, it hasn't. Right? So, this is just

087to me proof that we're doing a lot of good things here. And the results, you can't take it away from us because again, sixth and seventh, if you want to judge us based off of education, we're doing a great job. And I just want to thank everybody in the room for that. And that's a good a good point. we used to have and we may have updated that a year or two ago but I I don't think I don't think we promote that enough how I mean again it's kind of like thumping your chest but how good you know first in the region in the Nico rate you know we're first in the region 11th in the state uh so scores you know just mentioned about that I don't know uh Chuck you're the public

088public relations guy that's the lead story on the website right now well our website needs to be getting into the mainstream media and and not that they're going to run with it a whole lot, but I think that's who needs to hear this. Uh it needs to be we need to we need to promote that. We need to thump our chest. And uh to to Mr. Hudson's point, I think we do it with less dollars than most of our our friends in the state. And that's, you know, that's what people need to understand is that, you know, we'll hear something about, well, you spent this on a field, you know, but look at what we're doing with the dollars we have and the results we're obtaining. uh that that bubble chart we had, again, it's

089been eight or nine years ago since we we did that particular one, but we were getting more out of our students with less dollars spent per student. And it's still the same way. It's nothing different. We just I don't think we promote that enough and and explain that to our citizens, explain that to our counterparts on the board of supervisors, uh our or citizens in general. Uh that is an accomplishment that is worth being proud of. I'm proud, you know, I'm more proud of being on the Rono County School Board, not not because of anything I've done or but the staff and and what this group accomplishes year in and year out and the results we get from our students, it's amazing. I think if anybody looks into it, it's amazing. So, um, you know,

090I just bring that up because we we should have some dollars going into this budget season that, you know, uh, again, I think we left some dollars on the table to to give teachers another percent maybe. Uh, and, you know, we don't want to run the well dry, but I'm just saying, you know, there's positive energy going into this year that, um, we've done a really good job, and I think we do. We're very conservative and we and we do a good job. I think uh with our finances and and a lot of that's due to Miss Peterson and and the group and I know we give you a hard time in a lot of instances, but it's not giving you a hard time. It's just trying to get everything we can out of the

091budget. So, thank you and and and as Mr. Hudson said, I think the board has done a nice job and and staff is absolutely phenomenal. So, you know, we're getting the results. You know, uh, you can be proud when you send your kids to a Renault County public school that they're getting I don't even know if bang for your buck is the right word, but you're getting everything you can get out of a public school, I think. And we're doing a fabulous job. And it's a reason to tout public schools and promote public schools. I'm tired of preaching. Somebody else jump. Well, you know, Tim, if you did an analysis of how much they spend in NOVA compared to what we spend and the results that they get, we don't come close to spending the

092amount of money that they get and they don't get the results that we get. It's an inverse relationship indication. So, I do have a question for Susan. The CSA contribution, um, have we been making contributions to that in the past or is this the first time that we're doing that? So, we've done it one other time from yearly surplus. So, this is not unprecedented. uh every year during the the budgeting process part of the revenue sharing agreement they have the CSA amount in there they always give us that and they always take it back and so we built that into the budget as part of the process is it a percentage or is it just a raw number it's a hard number it's an amount that they it's equal to their contribution so they basically

093take the total contribution that goes in the CSA and split it in half so in essence we contribute to it every year as part of the budget process you know this will be and as actually said this has happened maybe like once before. This is above and beyond what we normally contribute. So just because of the the deficits that they're running. Okay. Because I remember we put twice as much in our budget as we did before. Is that what that number is reflecting? So this this will be over and above that's above that what we already put in the budget. Yeah. Cuz what did we put in the budget to start? Was it like I'm not sure the do you remember what the number was? Remember off the top of my head it was pretty

094high. Yeah. It was almost double. Which is why of course we're doing that feasibility study to look at, you know, maybe be able to start our own public day school to try to offset those costs that we're currently, you know, spending for the private day schools, which is big chunk of that. It's astronomical. I want to say is for the public's information, the CSA is an alternative education program for kids that need that. It's it's that and a lot more stuff, but yeah, that's a lot of that is the private day schools. Sure. Yeah. And one thing I think you have to look at with that $850,000 is that's also a way to control our our minor capital spending. I'm not saying that we don't need to contribute to that. That's a big piece. I

095think you're right. But that half is basically if you look at what we break down between our usually it's 50% major capital minor capital. That's a piece that they're pulling out to control uh minor capital spending. So make no bones about it. That's part of and whatever. But that's I just want you to understand that's that's what's happening. It's a big chunk of money. Yeah. I mean, it's coming and we've already budgeted for it. So, it's kind of surprising to me, but um I wish we have that school built now. We could control for that, but we don't. If I may just add on to what you were saying earlier about, um you know, the great job that Ren County Public Schools does. uh that you know our theme this year as we celebrated during

096convocation is all that teamwork right and it really does take everybody all of our teachers our nutrition staff you know custodians uh bus drivers all of our instructional staff our teachers our counselors everybody up here um it really is everybody doing that together and um I appreciate when you know board members uh you know celebrate that because there is so much to be proud of this is one of the you know best school divisions out of 131 in Virginia and and you ought to be proud of it. So, I I appreciate that. It's the staff. It's the staff. I mean, it's a direct reflection of our staff. Yeah. We we we know what we're doing and they know what they're doing. Yeah. And I just want to add on though, it's not only the staff,

097the teachers, it's the parents who put in the work also and the students and the students are putting in the work. So, that's right. So, it it's It all ties together. You can't have one without the other. Would it be a possibility to to take that 850 and cut it in half? 425 from minor, 425 for major capital, or is that not an option? Um, our policy specifically says 50% to major capital, but it also says 50% to minor capital, right? No, sir. It says I'll read it word for word. Um, I brought that. Please do. Yeah. Well, you can you can use minor for major, but not major for minor. Correct. It says it says move on their part. It talks about the emergency contingency and then it talks about incumbrances. And number three,

09850% will be allocated to major capital. Number four, 50% will be allocated for one or more of the following purposes. Major capital, minor capital, capital maintenance program, safety and security, fleet replacements, technology replacements, or comprehensive services act. I get credit. That's where we're at our policy. That's a slick move. That's in our policy. That is in our policy. It is also mirrored in the county's financial policies. When did we make that particular part of the policy? Because CSA wasn't a part originally. It was not. It was probably back when they asked us to donate the additional this year. Um it was probably five or six years ago. Okay. Slick move, I'm telling you. Um, I will say so the CSA contribution of 850, if we have to do that, the county will give up part

099of theirs as well of the same equal amount. So they're not going to ask us to do something that they're not going to do as well. And it may not even be that much. It all depends on how their books fall out. They do have certain reserve balances that they have to keep in each of their funds per their own financial policy. and all of those balances are reflected in their bonding um bond ratings. Uh so they try and keep the highest bond ratings that they can. So that's kind of the purpose of of trying to uh shore up their CSA fund because it the last time um I saw a report from them, it was in the negative and it was going to close the year. When will we know what that number will

100be? Um I think uh Miss Ghart is taking uh her prelim preliminary number is September 23rd to her board. Um so probably after that date. So you get with them to kind of see how they want us to maneuver that money and then uh is this the first year we've had I don't remember us putting in the CSA out of minor capital. So um we have contributed to CSA once before. Okay. I I can give you I'll have to go back and do research to let you know. And what year was that? Like I'll have to let you know what year. Yeah, if you go back and look. Yeah, thank you. It's been several years. Yeah. And it might have been during 2020. It might have been around the co-ish time, which might be why

101my brain's not a lot was going on then. I didn't understand this stuff. Sorry for asking questions before you get to the slide. Right. Got to get it out while it's on my mind. Right. Are y'all? Yeah. Good with your then. All right. So then, um, you want to Okay. Item 2.08 2025 20226 budget update. Miss Susan Peterson. All right. Um, so we'll do two things in here. First, I'm going to take a look at net peril lapse and then we're going to get to Dr. Dr. Hudson's Mr. Hudson's um question and health insurance. So, first, um, I do want to let you know, so this is kind of what I showed you, uh, for the 25 year about six months ago, where we're sitting with net payroll laps. I'm not looking at departmental expenditures

102or anything else at this point. Um, right now when we run uh payroll, we do look to have a $2.9 million overall payroll labs. This is only 1.74% of the total payroll budget. Um, this is probably about where I'm comfortable. Uh, to go much lower than this makes us uncomfortable. uh the the need for the payroll laps to be about this level is we as a school division are required to uh fill certain positions. If we get a a student with high special needs that needs to have a one-on-one aid, we have to hire that person. And so we have the lap so that we can hire that aid for that student. This is a mandate that is nonnegotiable. Um and and Dr. Dr. Harmon knows all about that very well. And so this is

103kind of uh just to ensure that we can cover any new students that come into um our school regardless of the situation, right? Um so out of this uh right now we are looking at having a revenue deficit. Um, the ADM was I think down by a little bit. The enrollment was down a little bit this year. I think this is going to go up. I don't think we're going to have a problem because CSA isn't included in the numbers and SIS is not included numbers. And so once you add and subtract all of those out, I think our enrollment is going to be closer. We may still miss the mark a little bit, but I don't think it's going to be as much as we did this current year. Um and so I I

104do see uh enrollment maybe a little bit lower. Um at the last work session um Dr. Sulttus asked to have a position back uh that he removed from the budget and after having additional um consideration and discussions with the operations team um I think they are really wanting to add back a carpenter position. And so I do think the carpenter position would be about $70,000. Um, and I think that if the school board uh would want to go ahead and do that, um, I think that would be coverable through payroll laps. Just as a reminder, if when Todd went over all the or Mr. Taggles went all over all the projects, our carpenters are doing a lot of the work. So, in order to get the project done in a timely manner and keep up

105with everything else, I really do feel like he needs a carpenter. I I think isn't it they had four carpenters. We took them down to three. And so now they don't have two teams of two. They have Yes, ma'am. Team of three or one team of one and one team of two. Right. Sold. Yeah, it was I apologize. Poor budgeting on my part. So, so can you I don't understand is this two months of payroll lapse is that what I don't understand exactly. So the payroll lapse realized to 829 the 1.2 million and the negative that's just a mathematical number because the open positions the 829 the 4.2 2 million. That is the if we add up every open position, that's how much laps we have in the open positions. But when we run the

106budget numbers, we actually have 2.9 million. So it has to do um just with the timing of the contract with teachers coming on, right? Because July the teachers aren't here at all. And so I think it's just timing with that. And so I think the negative is going to go away. Um I'm not worried about that at all. At the end of the day, the 2.9 is what we really need to focus on. Okay. So, I'm not sure if at this point if you want to So, you need you'll need them to take action to be able to add the carpenter position back into the budget. Is that right? Yeah, I think so. I'm not sure. Do you want to do that under consent or under action at the next Well, if it's okay to

107put it in consent if our body's okay with it. Yeah. if we're doing that and do we have an so our ADM you still feel like and I've watched the numbers that get sent to us you still feel that those are a little lower than we're actually I mean with the projection we've made right should we should we make that adjustment in there as well um I always like to be more conservative than um well your your you know your ADM that we budgeted on I that's what you budgeted Right. So when we get to look at next year's budget, if you want to be more conservative, you can't move the or correct the budget if we see that happening. We just have to you'd have to reduce the budget the revenue. Yeah. But and

108then the biggest second part of that is why what what do we I realize we're not bringing in business. We're not bringing in people. We're not you know it we're not I don't think we're growing as a population. Um, so do do we have I mean are we losing them to private schools? Are we not promoting the fact how how great our our county public schools are? Why why are we continuing and I know kids you know everybody say oh kids you know people don't have kids anymore but why are we losing the these numbers? Yeah, we could come back and give that report. I think you'd have to look at uh we can look at withdrawal codes which usually tells you where somebody went to like if somebody withdrew to a private school or

109to another state. We can look at those codes and we can also look at for example you know was kindergarten enrollment down more than anticipated those kinds of things. We can bring that I'll refer back to chair but um you know to to talk about that but I just think that's would be nice for us to know. Well, and how long ago was the study that we did? Demographic study. The one that was that about two years ago. It was last year. Yeah, that was last year. They presented it last July, I think. And that was kind of reported that it didn't seem like it was going to decline too much if I recall. Yeah, definitely a steady decline, but not dramatic, right? And that we were maximizing all of our facilities. Yes. I was

110just at Virginia High School down in that Bristol, Tennessee area. It's a beautiful school. Beautiful facilities. You should see the gym. It's like a college gym. They their population I asked what their number was. Their students they've cut they've been cut in half. So they used to have over 2,000 students here under a thousand now in just a matter of years. It's crazy. Do they know what where are these kids? People aren't having babies. That's what I was going to say is I think it's more of a societal. It's a societal thing. People just aren't having babies. Have your babies believe that. But if he can if we can see where people are going that might help. It's not that they're not going. They didn't stop having babies last year. Well, 2007 2007 was the

111number. Yeah. All of a sudden we're going to stop having babies this year. There's demographic data out there on it, but 2007 was the magic number during the crash. People just started and I get that part of it, but you know why so many this year, you know, or last year I think we had the same. We had a big number. You just showed us $680 some thousand dollars we lost off ADM. It's going to keep dropping. And when you're projecting your ADM, you get like what is it? Three data sources and we you have to kind of pick where you are. So you choose your different philosophies, right? If you if you pick too low, then you leave potential money on the table for raises and things of that natur nature. But if you

112pick too high, you end up Well, but if we pick low, we still get the actual at the end of the year, right? We get that. you do, but when you're budgeting in to to build the budget in like you want to give a 5% raise, it's kind of a gamble. So, you just have to determine what your philosophy is going to be. Are you going to be more conservative in projecting your ADM? Are you going to go in the middle or are you going to go on the high end? Yeah. Okay. I just it' be nice to know where these kids are going. Yeah. I've also said in the past that we should look at putting Hidden Valley Middle School over at Hidden Valley High School. You got land over there and it's just

113there's lots of land over at Hidden Valley High School. Hidden Valley Middle School is getting smaller and smaller. So, that needs to be something we look at in the future combining those campuses. It'll save them money in transportation, bus routes, makes it more convenient for parents in terms of pickup and everything else, too. But having two separate campuses we know is never ideal, right? So then moving into the health insurance fund, these are the numbers at the end of 2025. Um I've got our budget, our actual and our difference on here. So our revenues were 24.8 million and our expenditures were 26.5 million. So we did have a negative uh negative balance of 1.6 million. Um you can see we transferred 2.8 million in. Uh we we transfer the 2 million you already approved, but

114then there was still money left in insurance budget and different accounts in the general fund. Um and we requested permission to go ahead and move that um as well. This is the same practice that the county does to try and shore up their health insurance. So if they have budget set aside that's not used. Uh the unused insurance budget would have come from when when I transferred the million dollars the two million the two $1 million transfers. I just took that from salaries. I did not take it from the insurance budget. Uh so that left the insurance budget. Any of the payroll laps that occurred, any of those employees that we didn't hire, that's where that extra 819,000 would have come from. And so I think that um doing everything I can to get more

115money into our health insurance fund. And so at the end of uh 2025 we will have 2.2 million the 2,188,281 in health insurance reserves. Um so moving forward and kind of thinking about what's going on in the current year. um running the numbers through August, our insurance reserves are 4.6 million. So because we we infused a a little over $2 million transfer um in the budget as per was approved when we adopted the budget. So that helped put a big chunk of money into it. Um we received a letter from the insurance company every year in August and they make a recommendation. Uh typically they give us a range but this year they gave us a minimum recommendation. Uh their minimum recommendation is 5.2 million to hold into in reserves. Um I went ahead and

116did a very rough quick estimate of where we'll land at the end of this year and we're still looking at at having reserves of only 2.7 million. Um the first two months, how I came about this number, the revenues, I looked at payroll and just estimated out the total withholdings from um our payroll projection and then uh the employee benefit share of them. So that number I feel pretty comfortable about. And then on the expenditure side for the claims, um this is never an easy estimate to to guess how much we're going to have to pay in claims, right? So just for the purposes of today, I took 14 months. So I took all of last year plus the two months of this year and averaged them and said that's what for the next 10

117months we will have in claims. It it may be higher or lower. I mean this is a rough rough rough estimate. Um but I felt like you needed to see something. The first two months our claims were around 1.7 million and that's higher than what we started out last year. And so I just want you aware that we still are having we still have sick people. We have claims that are out there. Um I don't think it's a time for an alarm, but I do think we want to keep our pulse on this number. Um, don't most people get their extra things that they need taken care of before the school year starts though. Maybe, but she's saying it's higher this year. I know you're saying it's higher than last year. Something happens. It's, you

118know, unforeseen. Just the 5 million 247 the recommended. Did that go up this year? It did. It was around 4 million last year. Yeah. And is that recommended what we should have at year end or is that recommended what we should have currently because it's not that far off what we have now but it's $2.5 million off of your projection for June. The letter just says you should hold that in reserves. So they don't say year end. They just say that's the recommended level. So theoretically at the beginning of the year we should have that much in there. So what about 600,000 shot? Yeah. And at the end of the year should we have that much in there too? uh probably now like I said these are very rough numbers and and they are going

119to change and like you've seen we were uh providing estimates on a weekly basis and and the insurance just goes up and down. It also depends on the lag, right? And so to your question about do most people have work done in the summer? There's usually a lag by the time the medical expense hits our bumps, right? Because you go to the doctor, the doctor bills insurance, and then insurance will bill less. And it's couple months in there. Uh so that's probably why we're seeing the 1.7 million as a claim level at the beginning. I'm hoping maybe that'll it it will come down a little bit with the change in plans that had to take place. That should save some money based off of what your averages were last year. Correct. Because I know that

120was part of some of the issue of changing the plans was to save some money. So hopefully the average will be less than what you're projecting based off of last year's plans versus this year's. It definitely should be. Yes. And where are we at with that timing of things that you had wanted to look at? Remember that discussion with HSA in regard to the to the flex spending card timing versus instead of doing it in January doing it when the in July, right? Basically the where your deductibles start. We had some advice because what we don't want to do is harm existing employees, right? Um, and so that's what if we made that change, we would either harm existing employees or the recommendation to us would be we could use health insurance reserves to cover

121that six months for our employees and it wouldn't be too costly because it's their out of pocket. But once that one-time adjustment would be made, then it would be fine because then we would be moving forward. Yes. You just have to be in a good spot to do it, right? Do you you don't have a figure on what that would cost you? No, we we we do not not yet, but we'll work on that for the budget season. And what I'm hoping is we'll like the 2.7 million, like I said, this is very rough. I mean, just to get a number in front of you to let you know that the claims are still high, right? Well, and the 900,000 because I think it was going to go to 900,000 with the health care provider

122that we're no longer going to use in house to save that money. Is that that's going towards the reserves as well? Well, we didn't budget for the for the clinic this year at all. Right. That's what I mean. So, the money that we were putting towards that that we were going to put towards it, we're now shifting that into the health reserves. Yes. Which is almost it would be 900,000 I believe this year because it was going up. Yes. It was going up. So, it was going to be around $900,000 going towards the health insurance. Yes. At 925 or something, but that's already been factored in. It has been. Yeah. Right. I'm just saying that if we didn't do that, we'd be short almost a million dollars. That's right. So then this is just a

123visual of the revenue, the expenditures, and the fund balances on the line of kind of where we've been from 2020 up into uh you can see where we are at August and then the very rough estimate for June. I think this goes to your point of taking is that in here? We're working on it. No, this is one of the It's not in last ones I was updating. You added that. I was working on that in the corner. Yeah, these were my work. They kind of moved. Okay. And you probably don't have August. I don't, but that's okay. I do on there. I added that sitting in. You know, I'm a big pen fan of pen and paper and I do apologize for not having No, that's okay. So, any other questions on this? Okay,

124we'll put on consent agenda this topic, but then the approval for the carpenter position. All right. Next meeting. Okay. Item 2.09, 09 request to accept $200,000 donation from Alro Steel Foundation and appropriate $200,000 for minor capital project fund special project funds. Miss Susan Peterson. Um so we did receive a $20,000 check uh from our road still which is a wonderful donation. It was announced I guess at the last time y'all met. Um we we are bound by government law so we can't spend it until we appropriate it. and staff uh has some specific items that they would like to uh purchase for the program already. Uh the the money is designated for Burton Center and it is for uh to purchase tools and supplies for the welding and motorsports programs. Uh we do have exactly

125$200,000 in the project fund, the minor capital project fund um in undesated grants uh and special projects. And so my recommendation is to go ahead and just allocate this out by having that amount out there. We do not have to take this to the school board. But if we have another grant in the minor capital fund, we would have to take that to the to the I said school board to the board of supervisors for the appropriation. And so we can roll this on to uh your meeting at the the next regular meeting for consent and then the money will be free and clear. Sounds good. And speaking of minor capital, I we I had talked to this with some board members. I still want to bring forward the uh softball field that we had

126tabled for uh for Bird and not sure when we want to walk that on to get it approved, but we can talk about that later if everybody's okay with that. Mhm. Yep. Anything else? All right. Item 2.10. Request to accept $300,000 as part of the Go Virginia region 2 GOEK launch project and appropriate appropriate $300,000 from grant fund special funds special project funds. Miss Susan Peterson. All right. Um, so and Mr. I'm sure could probably do a much better job of explaining this. Uh, but the go to Virginia is a a nonprofit company and they are broken up into regions. They have received a state grant, state monies that they have distributed for this goatee launch project. Uh Montgomery County Public Schools is managing the entire project for our region and they have designated 150,000

127for each of our two middle schools, Hidden Valley and William Bird Middle School, uh to put in place um a career lab. Uh so the money is a little more complicated. We've got $300,000 uh for both of the labs, so 150 each. and that amount. We do have undesated grants in the grant fund that we can appropriate to this uh without going to the board of supervisors. Uh so that's not a problem in the grant fund. Um the unique thing with this grant is it does have a very specific match. Um there's 150,000 of cash and in kind. Uh and this is going to be covered by existing teachers that are going to be teaching the the two classes, right? Uh, so we'll just allocate their percentage of time um that they spend teaching these

128blocks as opposed to other blocks that are not part of the lab. Um, and that'll take care of the 150,000 cash. Uh, we also have $16,000 for admin fees that we pay back. Um, and that'll be in two iterations, $8,000 this year and 8,000 next year. And Mr. Sur is building that into the Perkins grant. and he did verify that we could use the federal money to match. We just could not use state money to match since it is a state grant. Um there are a couple other uh items uh related to it. There is anou that is very large. We have sent theou to the to our lawyers to review and ensure everything is wonderful. um within theou we are required to purchase the 75% of the equipment by uh December 31st and the

129rest by March 30th. Um I think they're chomping at the bit to get the equipment. So I don't think that's going to be a problem. I think they're going to have it spent well before these deadlines. Um they'll host an open house for the labs to show off uh the wonderful things they're doing in them. um they'll have quarterly reporting um on the expense expenditures, the spending, the match on the student engagement uh with the lab and then under the admin uh regulations they'll have um the teacher will be trained in goateech teacher training academy and they'll use that curriculum. Uh they'll have to follow all the regular federal and state laws and then they'll have ongoing evaluations through surveys and data reporting as well. Um, and theou is attached in board docs if you

130want to read through it. Um, our plan is to if the lawyer comes back and says no changes to thatou, we can roll this to consent. If the lawyer brings changes, we can roll it to action. Um, just to let you know what changed in theou. How was that? Those two middle schools were selected. Those were the two schools with the most active teachers with the most active um students in those areas that will be affected by a goatee grant. We're we're planning to um iterate this out in future years to the other schools as well. Mr. Shir, can you give us the 92nd version of what the goatee lab is all about? Sure. The goatee lab is designed and um uh orchestrated to help our middle school students um explore at the middle school

131level the career pathways in a better fashion than we're able to provide currently. um has uh a lot of manufacturing uh modules involved, some health science involved, and as you know at Burton Center and in our county CTE offerings, we have those career pathway programs at the high school level. We want our students and and the state sees through this go Virginia funding the u opportunity to fund these labs to help students explore those earlier. Oftentimes we hear about uh you know we've got to get to the students earlier you know middle school some you know even elementary but at this case we'll be able to do some significant um equipment purchases that will help we'll have a a welding simulator for the students. We've never had one of those for the middle school students.

132that would be great for our students to be presented with prior to entering ninth grade when they have the opportunity to look at the the welding program over at Burton Center. Uh robotics will be involved, some health science. Um I think we have some mannequins coming in. Um so it'll be an opportunity for those students to explore those career pathways earlier, much like we've been saying needs to happen. So I hope that helps. It's an exciting opportunity. I mean, out of the five school divisions, uh, we got two, uh, labs for Rono County. Um, and and each of the other divisions got one this go round. So, the next iteration, my hope would be to get at least one more for another one of our middle schools and then proceed from there. The next year,

133hope hopefully be able to flesh it out. You know, it might not be a bad idea to have you come and present because I serve on that committee and it's fascinating. You can look at the map of Virginia and see where the schools are and the piloting programs and how they've added schools as they've gone along and the evolution of the programming. It would be really great for our stakeholders to hear about this exciting program. So I don't know if we can add that onto one of our work sessions in the future. And Mr. Ren, Mr. Sir, myself, Mr. Jones as well went and visited the goatee lab in Franklin County last year prior to him uh pursuing the grant and it's amazing the program the professional development the teachers get uh and how it

134aligns with what we offer at the high school level. It seems like a great opportunity. I'd love to see it in all five of our middle schools. Us too. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. So, so you'll need to appropriate as well as approve theou either we'll put it either put on action for next time depending upon what the attorney say or consent. Yeah, one or the other. We won't know that. I've got three recommendations. One is to appropriate, one is to approve the matching and the matching. Okay. It's all written in there recommendations. Okay. Action item 2.11 review of 2024 2025 so results and accountability updates Mr. Ben Williams. Thank you. All right. Um, Madam Chair, members of the board, um, I'm here today to talk about, uh, our standards of learning results from spring

135of 2025, as well as give you a preview of some accountability changes that are coming down the pike that are going to definitely uh, move our cheese a little bit. So, uh, I'm looking forward to, uh, to explaining what what those look like. Uh before I uh go into it in detail, I want to let you know uh in the interest of transparency, we've put in uh three different files into the board report as well. One's the raw state data uh for the for the division. One is the uh the longitudinal results from uh you know all going all the way back to 2011 for Renert County and um and the other one is a file that uh shows the results of all the other school divisions in the state of Virginia and that uses

136the the raw state data. Um the reason why you have some different ones is that the raw state data that the state provides is about two to you know maybe two percentage points different than the data that we've got on our longitudinal results. Um the reason why you see the that difference is basically who's counted. Um typically when we run our results we remove uh kids that transferred like right before the test and things like that. We remove um students who uh uh at least who had the parent refusals, that sort of thing. Um so they don't show up as as zeros, they didn't take the test, you know, that's that sort of thing. Um so those are typically removed, whereas the state uh published results are actually almost completely raw. So um so just

137just so that you're aware of that. So, um, so if you want to see your individual schools, um, the tabs at the bottom of this sheet have, uh, the individual elementary, middle, and high schools as a tab for each and from, uh, from this sheet, this attachment, um, the PES are frozen on the left columns. So, you run Countyy's the first one, and you can just scroll over and see all the other, um, divisions in the state of Virginia. You're looking for divisions that have lots of green. And uh thankfully you can see on the first row or the first column that um that we are uh that we've got some green there. A pretty good uh good amount. So I I am pleased there. So in terms of how we did overall um um

138you know you you've previewed this well for me already. So, uh, so, um, you know, if you look, if you just combine the test by subject, which, you know, is an odd way to do it, but if you just combine them all, generally we're up about a point in, uh, a percentage point in reading, uh, one percentage point in math, two in science, and about flat in uh, in social studies. Uh, obviously, we'd want to get a little more in the weeds than that. Um, one thing that we are going to have to watch a little more closely is state rank. Um, the um the the tests next year are going to use different cut scores. So, we're not going to necessarily be able to say, "Oh, well, we went up or down from last

139year. The cut scores will be so different that uh we'll really need to look at state rank to see how we did." Um, so we'll have to wait until the uh you know, until that comes in. But in terms of last year's rank, last year's rank was good. Uh eighth uh in reading, seventh in math. Um this year's rank uh seventh in reading, uh sixth in math out of 131. Um science and social studies uh are not, you know, where our reading and math is, but it's, you know, it's it's what you focus on. Um 18th and 19th. Now, you might wonder where should Reno County be? Like if we were operating at uh essentially uh normal, you know, for a school division with our demographics, with our uh community educational attainment, with our um

140you know, our our you know, rate of uh poverty, uh if we took those for Reno County, we would be about 25th in out of 131. So, so if we were at 25th up here in state rank, I would be telling you we're kind of right where we would normally be. So, uh, so if we're you're seeing seventh and sixth, um, there's a lot of wealthier divisions with, you know, more educated parents and families that are doing worse than we are. So, that's that's uh, you know, hate hate it for them, good for us. Um, in terms of uh relative strength, uh, you know, I do want to to to to point out some things that we're we're really doing well. Um, fifth grade math was up seven uh, and was fourth in the state.

141U, that's a big jump. Uh, seventh, you know, and for a whole grade level, thousand kids, that's a big jump. Um, fourth grade reading was up two, which is a moderate increase. But if you look at the group, the same group in third grade reading, in third, they actually went up six from where they were in third grade reading. So that's a big big jump there. Um, sixth grade reading was up five. Um, that was an area of focus for us. U seventh grade math was uh tied for fourth in the state. Seventh grade math has been our shining star in Reno County for years. It's like, you know, we that is where we, you know, where we shine the high the brightest and we've been up among the the top in the state for

142a long time there. Um, I want to brag on our girls. Um, you know, you hear stories about uh, you know, about research and math and about how, you know, maybe teachers favor boys and STEM and all the things like that and you know, so uh, but actually um, if you look at our girls, our girls in math are fourth in the state. So, if you've got a female, if you got a daughter, send your daughter to Reno County Public Schools and she will do, you know, probably better in math than she would have done somewhere else and maybe get a good STEM job. So, uh, so, you know, that's a, uh, you know, that's kind of a cool thing. Um, so, uh, the other thing is that, uh, we do look at divisions that

143are similar in demographics to us. Um and uh and we are first relative to those divisions that we look at. Divisions like Williamsburg, James City, Albam Marl. Uh we used to look at some divisions like Hannover and York, but they've actually gotten far wealthier than we are now. Um but uh you know, we uh we continue to try to monitor divisions that are that are like us and and see how we do relative to them. Now, um, you know, I don't like saying areas of, uh, weakness, so I use growth opportunities. Uh, but eighth grade science, we actually went up, but, um, but I'm still, uh, I'd still like to see that go up more. We're we're on a journey with eighth grade science, and we're not at our conclusion. Um, world history 1, uh,

144we're moving world geography into world history 1 over time. and uh that basically we need to adjust better to the changing demographics there. I'd like to see the pass rates higher there. Um third grade reading's been flat for a few years and that is a that's a big area. So I'd like to see third grade reading move up a little bit. I think that we're building that we've got the building blocks in place. Um uh we need to come around to uh the comprehension side. I think we've been spending a lot of time on the access side, meaning teaching kids to read so that they can access the test. But the test doesn't actually assess whether you can read. It assesses things like figurative language and main idea, you know, English concepts. So, uh, so

145you know, those are probably the areas we need to to focus on. We're still punching well above our weight, though. Absolutely. We are tied for 12th in the state. So, uh, so you got to understand if we're not first in the state, I'm I'm not happy. I'm I'm kind of well, you know, false church. To clarify for the public, I believe there's 132 school districts. So, when we're talking these numbers, we're talking about out of 132 school districts. That's huge. Yeah. And and like I said, if we're not first, then we need to work on that. Um, so um no, actually, you mentioned false church. Uh yeah, false church is no is is typically number one every year, but false church is a tiny little super rich enclave in Northern Virginia. And it has no,

146you know, it has no poverty essentially. I think it's the wealthiest. It's one of the wealthiest in the country. No excuses being if we're not number one, you're not. That's right. I mean, I'm sorry, but uh you know, our kids our kids can do well. Um, and uh, the other one that's actually doing really well right now is uh, second and actually ahead of False Church in one test is um, Lexington City. Now, you wouldn't think Lexington City, but they're they're a two school division. They uh, they only have 700 kids and they don't have a high school. Their kids go to Rockbridge County for high school. So, it's like an asterisk sort of division. So, I don't count that. I'm sure they love that you say that. They can. Yeah, you I'm sure they're

147listening. No, they should be proud of their of their elementary and middle school results. Um they uh but anyway, uh biology now biology is a weird test. Um biology we we went down a couple. Um it's not at the the pass rate I'd like to see. The issue we're running into is that almost all the kids that take the biology test have already met their verified credit requirements. meaning the only reason they're taking the biology test is to make the feds happy uh because it's a federally required test. And so you're they're basing, you know, basically you're you're doing it because federal law says you have to do it and there's no there's nothing for the kids, right? And so u that's basically the issue with biology. I think we've got a motivation issue, but

148it's not just a student motivation issue. I think sometimes the teachers get a little bit of, you know, oh well this is just, you know, something you have to do. You know, I'd like to see the the teachers a little motivated. I don't necessarily agree with that. Is there a way to change that motivation now? I'm wondering. Well, I will tell you what some other school divisions are doing across the state. They've eliminated earth science as the ninth grade test. So, some school divisions, even ones around us, have earth science, which we we do in ninth grade, do it in eighth grade. Eth grade, right? or they've gone to there there's no set sequence for science classes. Yeah. So they've gone to doing like bio one bio2 environmental is a lot of times you use

149so either they're taking the biology test as their high school verified credit right which does put more skin in the game or they're actually doing it is environmental and then biology but the two kind of the standards overlap so they're basically getting Yeah. I like this to see the bio. The difficulty with that with a division our size compared to smaller divisions is in sciences for high school, you have to have a specific endorsement for that science. Yes. So it's not like like you're a math teacher, you have a secondary math endorsement. You can teach any math in in high school. Whereas in the sciences, you have to have an earth science endorsement, a biology endorsement, a chemistry endorsement. So as far as finding the teachers to do that, to make that switch, you it's

150not that you can't do it. That's an extra challenge for a district with five high schools. My my my general thought on this always has been that if you put high earth science in ninth grade, earth science, in my opinion, is is maybe a little easier a test. But um if you put earth science in ninth grade, you can knock out your verified credit requirements in ninth grade. And if you don't get them in nth grade, then you have that biology as your backup, right? I agree. Yeah. So having that biology as your backup is kind of nice. I like checking the box as early as possible rather than putting all your eggs in one basket. But you could try to check the box for biology as a freshman first year and then check the

151box again later. And actually the earth science is probably easier than the biology. Yeah. And another option that uh that the the state is pushing right now and some divisions do this is move earth to uh eighth grade, right? And do bio and ninth. Uh it that's where you get into your endorsement challenge with that. I'm not recommending that because um you're going to run into you know having to tell your you know your favorite coach and you know you're going to have to move schools and things like that and that's no it could be quite disruptive if we did that. Um did that change you discussed was that coincide with COVID because I noticed the eight or nine years before CO it was about a 90% so rate and on that last slide you

152had and since co it's 79% average. So the difference was that uh it's the way that it's working for um you know accountability as well. Um but uh but yeah, I mean it's gotten to the point where um the the test itself has gotten a little harder. I think that we've had a challenge in, you know, in getting, you know, really, you know, hiring the absolute best in terms of, uh, you know, STEM fields. You know, there's competition out there and, you know, and when we've got a biomed center and, you know, there's a lot of other opportunities out there for folks in bio, you know, in that area, a lot of folks are choosing to go elsewhere. So, uh, so I think, you know, getting the right people is is a big challenge in

153bio. Ben, what year did it change to where biology wasn't a test everyone had to take it except for it was the fed test? Like when I taught it, you had to pass the biology or Yeah. Yeah. So, um, yeah, you uh you used to have to have multiple verified credits. And that was about that time. It was about like eight or nine years ago. Um, so, uh, so yeah. Yeah, it, um, isn't it amazing when you lower expectations, that's exactly what happens. We've got, right? I mean, that's how I look at it is when you raise expectations, our students rise to meet them. When you lower them, you don't have that extra verified credit. Then then that happens. And it does sometimes happen. And uh and we're going to talk about expectations in a

154bit and trying to figure out where where you get that, you know, where you find the the sweet spot. Um in terms of special highlights, I don't like going too much into individual schools in this meeting because, you know, if we talk about individual schools, inevitably we're talking about people. You and you know, when you're talking about people, there's personnel issues and things like that involved. But in terms of special highlights, uh Green Valley's fifth grade, um they went up in the high teens in every one of their fifth grade um tests. And that's not just a good cohort coming in. That's a uh uh they they that cohort improved as well over where they were in fourth grade. Uh but big big point point increases there. Um, every student in fourth grade at Bonsack

155passed all three of their so tests. Wow. Which is pretty cool, you know. I mean, a whole grade level just wiped the table clean there. Uh, so that that's pretty neat. Um, we had a giant 29 point increase in Virginia studies at Mountain View. Um, and uh, Glenn High was the our only school that uh that absolutely, you know, held steady or went up in every single test. um which isn't easy to do because you know groups come in and out and they have relative strengths and weaknesses but uh but you know that was uh that was strong. Um, in terms of Renault County relative to the state, um, you can see that, uh, we're in the green all the way down to BIO and like we've said before, um, you know, there's maybe a

156third to half of the divisions in the state where BIO is their verified credit test. So, it is, you know, I mean, that that could be part of the uh, what you're looking at there, but I still think we can improve that. Um, so looking at uh looking at bio, I want to see that flipped uh at least flipped. Um, but uh but Earth, the one that we do get verified credits in, we're over, you know, we're ninth up. So, um, so, you know, we're good there. And you can see our grade seven. I was telling you that's our sort of the the lynch pin there. That seems to be um our our area of greatest strength. One thing that we haven't talked about a lot and I haven't shown you this on u previous

157uh uh previous board reports is how do we do with our stu our student learning groups? How do we do with um our disadvantaged students, our our racial groups, our um yeah, our students with disabilities, our L's, and we're well ahead of the state average um you know in in all of those. Um, our English learners are doing, you know, beautifully. Our Hispanic students are doing great. Our disadvantaged students are doing great. So, um, pretty significant increases, uh, across the board, um, above the, uh, above the state. So, um, in terms of SOS, um, you know, I think that, uh, you know, we're making incremental gains. The big changes we're making right now are in terms of yeah of providing teachers with common assessment resources um and really trying to to help align uh instruction

158and and make sure we're at the right level of rigor um so that uh so that we're challenging kids and we're meeting the level that the the test is expecting. whereas um that that uh those levels are going to be changing a little bit. Um in terms of accountability, uh we previewed with you several months ago um the new accountability system that's going to be announced and you know the the results of which are going to be announced in the next month or so. And um just to remind you um this is this we're every school in the state of Virginia is going to be put in a bucket. Uh it's going to be distinguished on track offtrack needs intensive support and um so we do not know you know we're we're what a month

159into school now or not a month maybe uh two or three weeks uh into school now but we do not know where we're going to fall yet with our schools. And the reason why is we don't have the state growth numbers yet. That's a big chunk. and the state growth numbers. The way they do that, they compare our kids against cohorts of kids in other divisions. So, I can't I don't have that that data from the kids from other divisions in order to run it. So, um so I'm waiting on the state to do that and that's what's holding them back uh right now. But anyway, the real question for most of our our you know, schools is distinguished or on track. Um, you know, we're we're going to have a couple that are going

160to be, you know, going going to be close that are going to, you know, they're going to give us some nail nailbiting, but we'll see. Um, but uh but like I said, somewhere in the neighborhood of uh of end of September, early October, we should have a a good idea where we uh where we fall. Um, just to remind you, the system components are here in terms of the so mastery and how much that weighs. um the growth piece. Uh high school doesn't have growth. They have the federal graduation indicator and 3E which is another kind of tricky piece to run. Um and then there's the readiness including chronic absenteeism etc. Our absenteeism rates have improved. So uh so we're we're doing well on chronic absenteeism right now. Where are we compared to the rest

161of the state? I don't have the state data for every division. Um but um but you know the the last time I did see state data on that um we were significantly ahead like we were well outpacing them in terms of getting kids back. Um the um one thing that I'm watching really closely and this is going to be particularly significant for schools that have high L populations like Burlington, Mountain View, um you know those those schools. The way that the the 10point category works for LG growth, we want our students to learn English. Like that's their primary goal when they come here. If they can't if they don't know English, we have to teach them English first before they can learn anything. Okay? Or you know, at least before they can learn to their

162their potential. And so um so 10 points of this new system is how quickly are they learning English. And um the state goal is to have uh 58% of your students uh meeting their level of proficiency. But the issue is if you meet the state goal and hit 58% you actually lose 4.2 points out of your 10. So it's not like if you meet the state goal you get all your points. If you meet the state goal you get you know you're you're uh you're actually down 4.2. The issue with being down 4.2 is that those categories, distinguished, on track, and all that, there's only 10 points between them. And so you're dropping down halfway out of distinguished, you know, pretty much right off the bat with your L group. And so um so we're

163doing some things to uh to to elevate our numbers this year in particular in L. Um but um but we're particularly watching um schools with high el populations because uh um the one in particular uh Mountain View um you know they they took kind of a hit uh in this in these 10 points uh almost dropped a full category. So um so that was uh that's one that we're uh you know we're watching closely there. The reason I bring that up is that in every one of our schools that uh has 15 L students, in every one of those schools, we lose more points in the 10point category than we do in the 50 or 55 point category for SOS. Meaning those few L kids, you we might have 20 L kids at a school.

164they actually, you know, we we lose more points on them than we do on the 700 kids who take the SOS. Um it's just the way the math works and um so uh that's now that might change next year and you'll learn why in a little bit. All right. Uh the next thing is we've got a law that was passed that we're watching closely. Uh HB1957 is no longer a bill. It's a law. Um it does have a 2-year activation date. So, so, uh, so it doesn't go, it didn't go immediately into effect, but it does some interesting things. Um, some controversial things around the state. Uh, first off, it takes so testing in 7 through 12 and says they can you can only do that in the last 10 days of school. Now, sounds

165good. Okay? You know, I'm all for instructional time. The issue we run into is that that also includes expedited retakes. So if you're taking eighth grade, eighth grade has five tests. I can move one earlier, which I've already done. I've moved that to April. So now we're at four tests in eighth grade. But if we have a student who needs a retake on all four tests, and yeah, that does happen unfortunately. Um then basically you've got eight days of testing out of 10. Um so uh so and then there has to be remediation at some point in between the tests. You know, that kind of helps. So, um, so anyway, that's where we're running into logistical, you know, challenges with that, but I, you know, we'll see if that stays. The general assembly is going

166to meet again, talk about this some more at their next session. So, um, I'm curious about that, but I'm all for um, you know, reducing, you know, there are ways that we can make that happen. Um, we'll see if the general assembly can get there. um changing the so scoring to a 100 point system to make it easier for parents to understand. Um I don't have a problem with that. U that is a uh you know that makes sense. Um now the other reason why they want to change it to 100 point is number three where the so score would count as 10% of the student's final grade for the course in grades 7 through 12. Now, that's interesting because no SO has ever uh been part of a student's actual grade. Now, there are

167places in the country that do that. It's not unheard of to do that. Um, here's the challenge on so testing being part of the grade. I'm not saying we shouldn't do it, but I'm saying you got to take into account certain challenges. For example, let's uh we had a we've had an issue virtually every year somewhere with a teacher going out on leave and having trouble filling that teacher's position, you know. So, we'll rotate in long-term subs, long-term subs. So, if you get in that situation, that student's so score is probably going to be lower because they've had lower quality instruction because of the long-term subs. Okay? So through no fault of the student's own, the so score goes down. Uh which means their grade goes down there. Now your grade is being hurt by

168something that's outside of your control. For example, another example, there's two teachers. One's a brand new teacher and one's a veteran rockstar. Okay? They teach the same course. You get the veteran rockstar, you're more likely to get a high score on the so than if you get the brand new teacher. Um, so now which teacher you get actually has an impact on your grade, you know. So there's there's there's things that they might not have completely thought through here, but um but it is something that uh that again doesn't go into effect until um spring of 27. So we'll see whether you know where that goes. Hey Ben, just out of curiosity, what other states roll something like that into their assessments? You know, I um I need to go back and get a list

169for you. I'll do that. But um I want to say I got to go look at Florida. I was thinking Florida and I think some of the Arkansas maybe. Yeah, I've I've got to go get a list. Um but I I know with 100% certainty there are states that do it. I just don't recall the ones right off the top of my head. States that don't tie their state assessments to graduation. And that's going to be a big issue for the next topic. Okay. Yeah. So here um the biggest earth mover here and this is the one that's like shaking the foundation of education behind the scenes is this one. Um so uh so at the last state board meeting um they were presented with the new reading and math cut scores for first review.

170um they it's unlikely that they're going to adopt them at the next meeting. It sounds like they're going to do a little, you know, go around the state and to get some, you know, more input, but um but the cut scores are a dramatic departure from our current cut scores. Um and and when I say dramatic departure, it's it's you know, I'm not exaggerating. the um they're designed to and we've talked about this. They're designed to align to NAPE so that uh our so proficiency levels um go along with NAPE uh which is considered you know the nation's report card. It's a federal test that that's given. Um so essentially what what happens here is this I is that um the proficiency level for NAPE is uh theoretically higher than the proficiency level in Virginia.

171You could make an argument that Virginia has the easiest cut scores in the nation. And um and so basically what uh the governor promised to do um is not have the easiest cut scores in the nation but have the most challenging cut scores in the nation. And so that was one of the the big campaign promises all the way from even before the you know the beginning of the uh of the administration. So, uh, so if those, uh, those cut scores are adopted, um, we've actually been able to project out not just Ren County, but project out all the other schools and school divisions in the state and expect so pass rates to drop 30 to 50 uh, points. Um the primary concern in dropping 30 to 50 points isn't the drop itself as much

172as it is the uh kids who need them for verified credit who do need to graduate. And um and so something's going to have to be done if where this has been done you know in other places they don't have verified credits. You know in Virginia we've got verified credits. You got to pass SOS to graduate. Um, other states that have done this don't have that barrier. So, you can have a, you know, pass rate in the 50s and you're not really worried about the pass rate in the 50s. Uh, here in Virginia, if your high school has a pass rate in the 50s, uh that could be a challenge. Uh, I'll give you an example of what I'm looking at. Um, uh, we have a high school that had an algebra um, pass rate

173of 87% this year. That it's okay. 87% algebra 1. Okay. If the new cut scores were put into that, uh the new pass rate would be 29%. So, you have to have that to graduate. And realize we're sixth in the state. Yeah. We're sixth in the state, but they have to pass there. There are there are school divisions that would be almost at 0%. Yeah. What's interesting is this is all in an attempt to close the honesty gap, right? Because there's a gap between these two So, so the real Yeah. So, so it's we're going to see where the the proof is in the pudding because the so should be broader like the NAP test and that is the hope that it'll be more broader and not so much rigor but more application applied learning.

174what they've looked at is is primarily Tennessee. Tennessee what about 15 years ago um did that they were uh pretty low in NAPE and they realign they've realigned their cut scores and now their pass rates are in the 50s basically um and uh they did go up considerably in their NAPE rankings. Okay. Um so uh so you know theoretically uh you could move folks there's a there's a question as to whether NAPE you know proficiency should be the goal. You know there's there's in Virginia does our curricula match? You know there's there's things that we teach one year where NAPE expects it in a different year things like that. Um remember there's the whole idea about do kids take NATE seriously but that's an issue nationwide. um you know because they they're basically pulled they're

175chosen to be NAPE like we did it at NAPE at Hidden Valley and um you know you you you basically pick a 100 kids not pick it's there's a there's a sampling process 100 kids are picked they go into a room uh we have a lot of folks who then uh have their parents call and say no I'm not having my kid do that so if you don't if you're not lucky enough to have your parent get you out of it then you're given you're taking this national test that doesn't you don't even get a score back for. So, you know, there's a question as to whether, you know, NAPE should be the goal. I'm not that's a political question. That's not a Ben question. I'm not giving you an answer one way or the

176other. And believe me, that's a that's a place I don't want to tread. But, um, but I do think there are we what we have to look at here are our kids. you know, what is the what's the impact on our teachers, on our kids, on our student retention, on our teacher retention. When I say student retention, um, if you're looking at pass rates that are, you know, at what I'm looking at here, you got to wonder if somebody has the means, are they going to go to private? Are they going to, you know, look at other alternatives? Um, here's a a more detailed situation, a more detailed u uh look. Take a look at EOCC reading. That's high school reading and it's on the bottom right. So, it's passing it right now is 400.

177Um, for this spring, you'd need to get a 479 to pass it. Um, so I mean that's that's almost a pass advance uh right now. So, uh, pass advance you got to get a 543. That basically means you can miss a like two questions, maybe three. Um, so um, so anyway, yeah, in terms of proficiency, uh, most of them are moving into the mid uh, 400s. In the past, 400 was always the the the goal uh, was always the passing number. They've released these numbers. They may revert to 400, but it would it would still be scaled. So getting a 400 would be the equivalent of getting a 444 or a 449. They haven't made a decision. 100 point system. It'll be better. It'll still be scaled. So So you 100 points won't be hard

178to understand what this means. And and 100 points will actually be hard to explain too because it won't be I got, you know, I got 40 out of 60, I got a 67%. You know, it won't be that way. Um, it'll be I got 40 out of 60 and it scales in difficulty to this cut score and then the psychometricians got involved and then they've given you this number. Okay, that's really what it's going to be. Um, so 100 100 won't mean 100%. it'll just be out of a hundred. Um, so, uh, so anyway, like I said, uh, this is going to be a whole new world and we're we're still learning. This will I'm confident that there will be some changes between now and when this, you know, goes live in the spring. I

179don't know what those changes will be. Uh there will certainly be a lot of discussion behind the scenes on that, but um you know, if it does come to fruition, then uh we're going to have to do some you parent uh prep ahead of time so that folks are aware, you know, what might be coming because um you know, u my my my uh my pass rates might uh might not be looking to you, I might not be able to show you a whole lot of green uh next year if this is the case, but uh I hope to still see a good state rank. Um so, uh so actually I think state rankwise, you know, we could be competitive. Um some of those smaller divisions that uh some of the small rural divisions that

180are doing really well right now, I think they're going to they're going to get hurt pretty badly in this. But u but uh yeah, but for individual students that need to graduate, I mean I mean there's been a ranking in flux with that though, hasn't there? Like I mean not if this is what happens. If don't some teachers don't you have to pass it. You cannot graduate without passing it. If you're if that's what this looks like. I mean I'm thinking about individual students and high school right now. What what it'll do is and I've I've been around long enough to know that if you put an insurmountable barrier in front of graduation, people will rise up with pitchforks. So, I do believe that they will figure out a way to deal with the graduation

181issue. Um, however, um, you know, it I I think it will be more challenging, whatever that may be. Now, there's some things you can do. You could put substitute tests in place. We've got some um you could you could take verified credits out so that you don't have to pass the SOS anymore. Um, what some states do um is notice that fail basic. they let you have a certain number of fail basically so that uh they they move that verified credit to you know the the lower number there. Um so that could be an option but uh they didn't adopt a fail basic for the high school test. They'd have to go back and adopt some some numbers there. Um so there there are some different options that they have. Um but I think it'll

182be the last moment. The other thing too is keep in mind that um you're going to get a new administration between now and spring. Whether it be the Sears admin, you know, the the uh um the Sears administration or the Spanberger administration, you're going to get one or the other. And um and so uh they may have a different sort of opinion on the way this should go. Now, the state board does not turn over and they're, you know, they have to see out their terms. So, it's not like somebody's going to come in and take the whole state board out and replace the state board. So, uh, so it's Yncan's folks that stay on the state board who probably are the final determiners, but the general assembly probably will will stick their toes in.

183You'll probably see um, you know, the governor, whoever that may be, stick their toes in. Um, but this is going to be an interesting thing for the governor because, uh, you're going to have the fallout of this hit under their administration. um you rather than the Yncan administration. So uh so they're they're they're gonna have to they're gonna have a challenge on their hands. Uh regardless of whether it's an R or a D beside their name. Um all right. So I wanted you to know that ahead of time. Uh but I'll update you on, you know, later in the year in terms of where we are on that. But um you know, big picture, um you know, we made some decent gains. Our state rank is looking good. We could always be better and we

184strive to be that. Um, but we're going to have some challenges in front of us. So, where we are. Any questions? I think there's more questions than answers. Yeah. Um, that that's that is true. I've got my own questions uh as well, but um I I'm I think even the state can't answer some of those right now. It's a process. We're in the middle of a process and uh it'll um it'll flesh itself out through political and public means in the next few months. The most important thing is to raise expectations in our students. And the real question is where is the in other words is is the drop too big or is there a middle ground somewhere? And here's my my personal thought on it, you know, and again, you know, take it for

185what you will. There's a lot of research on hope that if you lower it too much, you get despair rather than hope. And despair, kids quit. But if you give them a challenge, they tend to rise to the challenge. And so if you're going to increase expectations, the w in my opinion, the wise way to do it is incrementally over time so that you keep that bar just in front. It's like the carrot that's if you put the carrot a mile away. That's right. You're going to give up. You're not going to go. But if you put the carrot right in front, you know, expectations. Exactly. So that that's my personal thought on it. I agree with that. That's a that's a good thought. Any other questions? No, ma'am. Thank you. Thank you, Ben. All

186right. So, item 3.01, close session. Mr. Lyn, will you please read us into closed? Yes, Madam Chair. I move that Toronto County School Board convene in close session for the following. To consider a confidential matter as authorized by section 2.2-3711A1 2-3711A1 of the code of Virginia for purposes of discussion of the performance of Pacific specific public officers, appointees or employees of the school board. Second, Madame Clerk. Yes, ma'am. [Music]