Stafford School Board Meeting 1 18 24

001and the first order of business that the school board is going to be tackling is selecting a chair to lead uh the board throughout the next year and then a vice chair and then they'll begin their normal business uh for the meeting but it is an exciting day for a number of reasons one we finally got this meeting on the books uh we had rescheduled it a couple of times and we're glad that everybody could uh join us uh for this special event we're also glad to announce and seat um two new student Representatives our student uh representative to the school board Jolan and our alternate student representative Jennifer who are joining us this evening for the very first time in their roles so we are thrilled that they're here let's give them a round

002of applause so as with everything that starts with a new year it is a happy New Year and an opportunity for us to start a new uh to tackle the challenges that lay ahead and we are just so thrilled that you uh stuck around to join us uh we know that a lot of the folks in the audience this evening our Schoolboard uh committee appointees you are not obligated to stay throughout the entire meeting but we're thrilled that you're here um uh to celebrate with us and uh and to make your appointments official thank you for coming to our training in our reception before so with that jrtc please come forward I would like to call the school board's annual organizational meeting to order uh board members can you please state your name and maerial

003District at this time not yet Dr Sarah Chase fouth Dr Elizabeth Warner griffus Widewater Moran Sigman Garrisonville Susan Randall George Washington Patricia Healey Rock Hill Maya guy the Aquia District Alysa hallad Harwood District go ahead Jo Jolene duer from Stafford County thank you very much and if you would all please rise and join me in the Pledge of Allegiance uh as the jrtc progresses I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you you may be seated tonight's national colors were presented by the North Stafford High School jrc from the uh air force jrtc that is uh and they were led by Maya Dunn team leader Madison Johns William Burnley and Quinn

004Roderick the instructors of the North Stafford Air Force jrc program are Juan Mendoza and Mark Allen let's give them a hearty Round of Applause thank you Madame clerk will you please call the role yes sir Dr Chase here m here miss guy here miss holstead here miss Healey here Mr jigan here Miss Randall here miss Sigman here and Dr Warner here superintendent you have a quum thank you uh Madam clerk uh no members are participating electronically and so we're going to skip that agenda item at this time I'd like to call for nominations for chair of the school board as you know no second is required I nominate Dr Warner okay do this one at a time Dr Chase we're going to start with you I nominate Dr Warner thank you Dr Warner do you

005accept the nomination yes okay I nominate Miss Sigman okay we're going to do this we'll do this one at a time um so all those in favor of uh Dr Warner uh would you please cast your votes and tally the votes oh we still got a couple more votes to cast one more and please tally the votes okay there's two in favor um uh Chase and Warner and uh five against uh so the motion uh does fail uh and there is no election uh Miss uh Healey you had a nomination I nominate Miss Sigman Miss Sigman you've been nominated for chair of the school board do you accept the nomination yes thank you all those in favor of Miss Sigman please cast your votes okay we have um an election Miss Sigman has been elected

006chair of the school board by a vote of five to2 uh dos uh Chase and Warner uh in the opposition uh congratulations uh Dr Warner I mean excuse me congratulations Miss Sigman Let's uh give her a round of applause it could also mean congratulations Dr Warner you dodged a bullet too thank you at this time I will ask for nominations for vice chair of the school board I would like to nominate Dr Chase wow okay um I Heard Miss guy Miss Randall is nominating Miss guy Miss guy do you accept the nomination yes everybody cast your votes okay there are six votes in favor of Miss sky as Vice chair and one vote against Dr Chase dissenting congratulations congratulations Miss guy we will rearrange seats later at a later time next meeting meeting uh so

007we will move on to item 2.03 which is adopting our Schoolboard meeting [Music] schedule is there a motion motion to approve do you need me to say what oh mo motion to improve this H second okay is there any discussion um yeah I have some some concerns that I'd like to bring up so um we continue continue to um only meet uh have only one scheduled meeting a month and I think we should really seriously go back to two meetings a month um I watched the most recent Board of Supervisors meeting um and they brought up that everything we send over there of late is time sensitive so for example the requests for the salary increase um the all-in Virginia funds um the modular classrooms um and some of this may be because we're meeting

008only once a week um I have some concerns for example that the change to the CIP that we didn't have a lot of time to discuss that um we did not allow uh the community from brookpoint to weigh in on that decision um I I just feel like we um have these Marathon work sessions once a month and I feel like there's a lot of discussion between some board members and we really miss the opportunity for all of us to hear what everybody has to say on an issue and so um I really think we need to meet uh more often and not just once a month anybody else Miss H yeah I certainly would be willing to consider more meetings but on this proposed uh meeting schedule we are actually meeting at least twice

009a month January February March and April so I didn't get any further than that just now but um I think our uh meeting schedule is fairly packed for the next few months so perhaps that's something we could talk about um sometime after we get through the budget Madam chair Miss Randall for the comments that the supervisors make I would like to just note that um the one meeting a month that we had in in November and December they did too and so that's when we brought them time sensitive information so I we would not have met twice in November and twice in December when those things went over early to them anyway so the one meeting a month for the situation that they were calling us out on was um what would have been whether

010we were at a two meeting a month or not at that time do you have something Dr Warner I I think that one of the problems is that we get information in a and we have to make a decision immediately we don't really have time to process it or discuss it and I think that's the challenge I can note in this particular schedule we do have more meet more monthly meetings where there are two two meetings more months where there are two meetings um I think it's just that uh especially when we're trying to work cohesively with the board across the street I think that some of this information would be better received in a more timely way anybody else sure um and I I just want to say I understand that we have additional

011meetings um in the first couple of months but there is no opportunity to my knowledge for public comment during those meetings and I feel like since we went to one meeting a month we really have not been hearing from anywhere near the number of people that we heard from during my first four years on the board do you have something Miss guy yeah I'll just say um the reason why I support one meeting a month I've said it before you guys know but I'll say it so that the public understands is as a constituent sitting and watching the meetings I was very frustrated listening to oh we can't make a decision we'll have to wait till next meeting and we kick the can down the road often it seemed like to me now sitting here

012I understand the why I didn't understand it when I was out in the audience and it was because staff does not have ample time to get the information together to present it in a in a particular way that can be disseminated so that's why I like the idea of one meeting a month because it allows our staff an opportunity to give us the information and we should not have to change our schedule or you know delay a vote which we've done a few times but we've done it far less than previous boards and as someone who watched the meetings consistently it made the school board look ineffective and and so I I just feel like I'm not I wouldn't support changing Miss Randall um I would also like to note we discussed this at a

013retreat and I think um when we were suggesting the meetings when we wanted two meetings a month and um Dr Chase even acknowledged since supervisors had offered July that it would be um a nice gift to our staff and S to take off in July as well um um but I would also like to REM remind that we did say that we would leave open the second meeting of a month option um should we feel the need that you know if we feel like we need to slow the pace down and make sure you know that we're good with all the information we can have that second meeting so I like that we have um a schedule that works for what we need to do but as also a schedule that's flexible enough to add

014another meeting if we feel like like um we have more business to conduct so miss holon so unless I misunderstood our request on time sensitive trailers um we were actually making that request time sensitive because we have so much work to do once it's approved which is now permitting and getting all the right things so there are going to be times when we are acting expediently and we are requesting that the Board of Supervisors help us to have a more concrete approach moving forward the other time sensitive information was teachers and money and I find that to be something that doesn't need a ton of um Fanfare around it it should actually if that money came to us from the state or wherever however it was allocated whatever time some of those things are out

015of our control and whether we have one meeting a month or one meeting a week for a month um there still will be time sensitive issues to address sure y so I I I want to remind everybody that we recently had a meeting where we had to vote on the CIP and very few of us seem to be aware of a $7 million parking lot and very few of us seem to be aware that the elementary schools that were brought to us were going to cost $44 million more than what we had thought the year before and we all voted on it that night we did not take the time to do due diligence to figure out exactly what all of that might mean um and so I do feel like um we're missing and

016then on the second meeting a month are we saying that we will allow public comment on those meetings are you talking about that information wasn't didn't we go over that and that was in the email that so the meetings has nothing to do with us not opening up our own email and not reading it Madam chairman I'd like to call for the question on the calendar I think we've got a long agenda tonight we've got the superintendent's budget and we need to move forward okay everybody uh so we are voting on The Schoolboard meeting schedule as presented in the attachment um please cast your votes motion passes six in favor one one no Dr Chase voting no moving on to uh administrative authorizations we are voting here to authorize the superintendent's designes to attend school

017board meetings in the absence of the superintendent in accordance with the Virginia code also the um bunch of superintendent authorizations to assign and transfer teachers principles assistance in accord assistant principles in accordance with code um employment con accept issue signed employment contracts and accept resignations um examine all claims approved payments appoint Deputy agents in accordance with code authorization of petty cash funds and payment of claims from petty cash also in accordance with Virginia code can I have a motion please motion to approve second any discussion cast your votes motion passes 70 item 2.05 appointment of board members to serve on committees can I have uh a motion please motion to approve second any any discussion Madam chair we need to put together the um joint schools working committee do we not oh it's how many

018members of this committee have already been on there two years isn't there a two-year limit no there is not for this one that's ours that has that yeah if there's no discussion we can cast our votes motion passes motion passes 70 item 2.06 appointment of the school board Clerk and Deputy Clerk and the adoption of the resolution bonding both the clerk and the deputy clerk is there motion motion to approve second second any discussion all right cast your votes motion passes 70 item 2.07 appointment of Schoolboard advisory committee members motion to approve second any discussion miss m chair I'd just like to thank all the members of the public who volunteered to be on the Committees um appreciate those who are willing to serve and I I wish we could have some more appointments because

019there are more people that you know had had offered than we had the spots available but please you know stay engaged and um there's lots of opportunities to help the schools I was going to say the same thing so thank you very much you cast your votes motion passes 70 okay moving on to our consent agenda motion to approve second any discussion okay we can cast our votes motion passes 70 announcements of administrative Personnel appointments thank you madam chair uh first I'd like to Echo our congratulations to our newly appointed uh School Board advisory committee members it's official now thank you so much for uh joining the Stafford uh schools family and serving in this capacity I know that the school board uh counts on your advice uh heavily and uh we look forward to

020uh hearing from you in during reports throughout the year uh this evening we we have one uh administrative appointment who I'm I'm thrilled to introduce this evening and at this time I would like uh Jessica Sigler to please come forward uh Miss Sigler will move into the assistant principal role at Mountain View High School where she has taught special education for the last 14 years since 2011 Miss Sigler has served as a special education department chair where she supported peer learning legal compliance and coordination between special Educators and their general education peers prior to joining team Stafford Miss Sigler was a special educator for Fairfax County Public Schools for eight years Miss Sigler earned her Bachelor of Science and psychology from Virginia Commonwealth University her master of education uh from Mary Washington and uh her

021graduate certificate in school leadership from the College of William and Mary welcome Miss [Applause] Sigler Madam chair board members Dr Taylor thank you so much for the opportunity to be able to continue working with the students family and staff and community at Mountain View High School I'm very excited to continue my journey at Mountain View my family is also very excited unfortunately we all love snow days but things had to be rescheduled so they couldn't be here with us tonight uh but they are watching from the link so but thank you so much thank you also point out that Miss Sigler also brought her principal with her this evening so than thank you for joining us Miss Sullivan as wellas thank you thank you madam chair this concludes administrative Personnel appointments for this evening great

022so we're moving on to Awards and recognitions and I would like to uh take the opportunity if you were uh just appointed to one of our advisory committees if you could please stand for recognition thank you all very much Miss paleo join us at the podium good evening school board members and Dr Taylor this evening we recognize the staff member who epitomizes our values of students integrity respect Community opportunity and Excellence tonight we recognize the contributions of our esteemed school counselors proudly sponsored by the ASCA the school board has designated February 5th through 9th as National School counseling week 2024 this week serves as an essential opportunity to Spotlight and Express gratitude for the exceptional contributions of our school counselors within the US school system specifically here in Stafford County National School counseling week extend

023U Ates the profound impact our counselors have on students steering them toward academic success and aiding in the meticulous planning of their career trajectories this annual observance steadfastly celebrated during the first full week of February stands as a testament to our Collective appreciation for their tireless dedication and unwavering commitment demonstrated by these invaluable professionals accepting the proclamation on behalf of all school counselors is Miss Katrina poo the current Stafford schools counselor of the year Miss paleo your dedication has illuminated the path for students fostered wellness and Amplified their voices we extend our gratitude not only to you but also to the collective impact of all our school counselors who create enduring positive change thank you for all you do to support our learning [Applause] community okay we have presentation next so we have to go

024back down just gonna take a second to say um annually uh Stafford schools participates in a drive uh to support the United Way and this year we are thrilled to make a donation check to the United Way the rapid hanic United Way in the amount of 36,00 , 72253 thank you so much for your [Applause] Partnership if you want to say a few words please sure this is tough to take to the bank yeah I don't know if it'll fit in the car to be honest we we have a smaller version if you want to stand the Pod you address thank you board for having me come out today thank you uh Dr Taylor and the administration and especially the entire faculty and the staff that gave this year um the money is going to

025go a long way to support the community of uh Stafford County and the surrounding areas uh it's going to support the Alice population Alice being asset limited income constrained and employed being the hardworking people that that work hard to make our community keep running um that are just one broken down car or medical um medical disaster away from being in poverty so um with this amount of money we're expecting maybe 100 to 120 families being able to C out of poverty in our community so that's what that's what your staff and your faculty and the Stafford County Public Schools have done for the community so thank you everybody thank you [Applause] Dr next item on our agenda is the superintendent's presentation of the fy2 funding request so thank you madam chair and members of the

026board it's an honor to address you this evening um I should note for the public that I'm on time even though this meeting is not on time but I'm glad we could make that work and that we could all come together and get both of these done uh this evening um um this is a great opportunity for us to talk about who we are as an organization and where we're going uh to talk about our goals and how we are set about to achieve those goals uh to talk about what's important to us and what we believe in and I'm so proud of the work of this board in the past two years in articulating those goals in the form of its Elevate Stafford Strate iic plan articulating its values its vision and its Mission

027all to make Stafford County not just its school system a great place to live work and learn this board also set apart uh some pretty significant budget priorities uh and Set uh myself and my team on a path uh to achieving those uh budget priorities and fulfilling that within this year's uh budget request and our 5year plan extended uh you tasked us to uh to create a budget that would attract and retain highquality staff that would improve performance throughout the county in multiple domains to provide a safe and welcoming environment for our children our staff and our visitors and to differentiate funding for all schools based on the student population and the school's needs and so I'm going to take our presentation one piece at a time and talk about each goals and uh each

028of each of your goals that you set out for us and how we are uh trying to achieve them and I'm going to frontload this by saying that there will be mixed success uh because I think we hit the mark in a number of places based on our Revenue projection and we fell short in some places and I want to bring that to light this evening uh we believe very firmly that teacher quality is the most important thing in our school system in terms of improving performance in terms of creating a highquality learning environment if you have great teachers great things are going to happen uh oftentimes I interact with a lot of families and and a lot of uh even students and and parents and when they ask me what's the most important thing

029I need to pay attention to in my child's education the answer is always the same you need to make sure that that you have a great relationship with a great educator in your child's classroom and that is definitely the case so one of the things that we look very hard at is our teacher turnover rate and we've made some progress in terms of uh reducing our attrition and reducing our turnover it's healthy to have some turnover every year but uh we've had some pretty high numbers of turnover in the past decade and we've made progress um uh over the last couple of years and even before uh I came in a superintendent made some progress in how how we can uh make that a a little bit better uh for our classrooms and have a

030little bit more sustainable uh learning environment for our kids and what this is proof of is that some of our strategies are working and I want to articulate what those strategies are and also Echo some areas where there's room for improvement I would be remiss if I didn't point out that uh Stafford County Public Schools like all uh Public School Systems uh are are organization made up of people um salary and benefits um are the big part of our operating budget um this this constitutes 85% of our budget which is very high even by public education standards um because we invest in our people because we believe that that great teaching matters a little bit of an irregularity for us is that we have a high percentage of our staff that live in Stafford County

031now that's great that's a huge asset for our community that nearly three4 of our staff actually live in our community pay taxes in our community and are members of our community uh but that's irregular and uh and partly due to the fact that in Northern Virginia communities it becomes increasingly more difficult to afford to live in in the communities that they serve at the wages that uh teachers are paid and and other educators are paid only about uh 43% of our students have excuse me our teachers have more than 10 years of experience this is a troubling Trend when uh the board you may recall when you were in school uh that the average age of your teachers was much higher than the average age and average experience of our teachers today um our teachers

032work very hard uh they definitely uh put their all into their work uh but they don't have the same level of experience that two Generations ago or even a couple of decades ago had in the in the average and uh that has consequences in terms of overall quality uh we value our highly experienced teachers just like we value all of our staff but that extra experience does count for something and uh we need to incentivize staying in the school system as a a viable career option for the long term another troubling Trend uh that continues to to grow in Stafford County and really throughout uh the country is uh the percentage of provisionally certified teachers and um I will say that compared against the state we don't do very well um about 10% of uh

033teachers in the state are provisionally certified we are above that average we are 12 a half% against the state's 9 and a. half% uh that's a very high percentage of provisionally certified teachers that's not to say that they are not working hard that's not to say that they're not doing great things in the classroom but it is to say that they do not have uh the same credentials and qualifications that a fully certified teacher does have even if they're working towards that full certification it is uh something that is lacking and something that needs Improvement so let's talk a little bit about our teachers uh this is a picture taken of uh some of our teachers at our new teacher orientation event um uh hosted by our mentor program Mentor 360 um and we are

034very proud of our new folks they're very excited when they come to team Stafford but a first year teacher uh only makes about $50,000 a year as uh coming in in terms of salary and so I put together this chart uh with our team to talk about what that looks like in Stafford County since 72% of our staff live here that usually tracks to about a $4,100 monthly salary um uh and then after that you take out uh your mandatory vrs deduction uh a health insurance deduction for uh your employee only taxes and then only 80% of the average rent not even the average rent 80% of the average rent in Stafford plus utilities and a car payment and you're only left with about $500 to live on for an entire month for an average

035teacher you do a little bit better than that for a par professional you're in the hole and for a bus driver you're in the hole which means that you have to have another source of income as a par professional a bus driver or a firste teacher in order to survive whether that is a spouse a life partner or whether that's a second job or a third job it's very difficult to live in Stafford County and also work for the school system at at the same time um for those of you who are viewing at home I've also linked in a study that you can click on into the presentation to show from the national Center of teacher quality how this is a very real issue in the northern Virginia area and in particular Stafford County

036is highlighted it's a very big barrier for us um it's uh great that our friends from the United Way uh were here this evening uh because uh they are very laser focused on targeting the Alice population in Stafford County which is about 40% of its residents and those are are asset limited income constrained but yet employed residents also known as Educators all of them and they fit into this bucket uh because they are in the lowincome or very lowincome category and that's the overwhelming majority of our 4500 staff members uh this is a real barrier for for us because uh as was articulated earlier this evening they are one car accident one medical emergency uh one family issue away from poverty and there are some very real struggles that our families are having and these

037are our families that work for us so we set about a very aggressive plan um to uh fix our salary scale and to decompress our salary scale over a five-year period uh to try to catch up with our competitor to the north Prince William a little bit better uh than where we were and uh just so that we we're all following the same sheet of music here the dotted yellow line at the top is uh what is projected uh for Prince William County's teacher scale if they do a 3% salary increase I can tell you right now that they are likely not going to propose a 3% salary in increase it's going to be much higher probably 5% or higher so that Gap will actually be wider where we started uh two years ago was

038the dotted Blue Line before uh at the very bottom um and that dotted blue line You'll see like a sag kind of in the middle and that sag is salary compression from adding percentages every year versus adding steps and uh a cola and and adjusting your salary scale each year so we set on a task to bend that salary scale and to reinsert a step scale system that could be adjusted each year um over a fiveyear period of time um and by bending that slope to a 3% slope mirroring that in Prince William County even though their percentage may be higher their slope for each step is 3% and that is what we were targeting and we've made great progress um we were were a little dicey there uh at the end of uh the

039budget process last year uh but but through the state's amended budget we're able to make some repairs uh that set us up for Success going into this next year and we are proposing the third phase of uh our five- phased uh plan and very excited that this is something that we are making progress towards we are holding to our commitment to the Board of Supervisors to take an iterative process in chapters to deal with this very complex expensive and challenging problem but this is not a problem that will go away when we are done with our five steps because our five phases because we will be still very far away in terms of compensation to our neighbor to the north how far away you say well let me tell you um a starting teacher can

040uh can make as much as $9,000 difference for doing the exact same job for just a few miles away and as I've said before I'm not a advertising for Prince William County but really just wanting to State the reality of our situation and what we're competing against this is a fairly significant uh competition that we are in for um high quality High talented uh teaching and uh and and and educational resources here um our staff are very dedicated um they are committed to Stafford County very clearly because they are giving up very big paychecks uh to the north um for 15 years worth of experience it's a $20,000 pay Gap and um for a career's worth of experience it's nearly $60,000 um you cannot become a six figure uh teacher in uh Stafford County on

041our teaching scale but you can do that with 18 years of experience in Prince William County this is a very real and significant challenge that we are facing in terms of our regional competitiveness in the marketplace and I will say that I need to give a huge shout out to our service employees this is everybody from our par professionals our bus drivers our nutrition workers our clerical staff everybody who works behind the scenes to make the teaching happen for our teacher Educators they also need a similar phased in approach now we proposed this last year but weren't able to get this into the budget budget and this is going to have to be something that we discuss and and try to move forward um as soon as humanly possible because our our clerical staff and

042our service employees desperately need uh this support and need structure put back into their salary system the second goal um that uh the board set me on uh was to create a budget that would improve performance and it wouldn't be a budget presentation without a picture of Chris Fulmer uh he is our Deputy superintendent U who supervises a lot of our finance and operations and I have to give him a huge shout out uh to him and his team uh who were instrumental in putting together uh this budget proposal and uh all of the fine details in it but the first rule of holes is stop digging we are in a hole a pretty substantial one and there's a lot of work that we need to do to stop digging and I want to highlight

043some of the areas where we have stopped digging ourselves a giant hole but then also show you where there's still work to be done I'm very proud of the fact um that this board has gone out on a Ledge with me on a number of different initiatives to put some structure to uh the operations of Stafford County Public Schools um systems structures and processes lead to high performance it is just that simple um and we've established some great processes that are starting to show fruit and we're all very proud of that work because it's been a heavy lift um having a school improvement process an employee appraisal system um transparent and deep politicized processes for requesting support an actual salary plan for every Employee Staffing standards that are followed when we have resources when we

044have resources um actual POS position control mechanisms for two-way communication clear expectations and for roles and responsibilities um these are all things that we are working towards and have set a great foundation for for the Future these are things that we should really be proud of and there are some other things that we should be proud of um we have been the recipient of a number of hardfought and well-earned recognitions we have uh been a part of a number of nationally recognized uh consortia as well as putting ourselves out there for some Innovative work in everything from stem to how we serve military families to even policy that the board uh has taken on to how we deal with food insecurity in our community we've taken a very aggressive look at how we can prepare

045our kids for postsecondary outcomes these are things that we should all be really proud of but there are some things that are still some really significant challenges the Top Line in red is our relative position for our composite so scores um for the county measured against the state and if you are wondering in 2012 Stafford County had the fif uh 15th best so scores in the entire Commonwealth that that's great now I'm going to caveat this by saying that so scores are just one measure of our performance and that there's lots of different ways to measure our performance and it's tough to get wrapped up into test scores but I will say that it is a measure of performance that's very publicly available and measured against the rest of the communities in the state and

046there's 132 localities in the state we were 15th in the state in 2012 today we're 68th in the bottom half so we went from the top 15 to the bottom half what pray tell was happening during that time well I know that uh this is a Savvy board and this Savvy board will tell me that uh uh correlation is not causation and that is absolutely true but our funding per pupil has also precipitously dropped during this same period of time where we went from the middle of the pth back at 79th in uh the state to 111th we're up from last year where we were 112th but we're at 111th at the bottom in terms of per pupil funding now we're a Northern Virginia Community with Northern Virginia cost of living and we are at

047the bottom now I fully recognize that there may not be causation but I think that the correlation is pretty strong and I think that there is a connectedness here that is worth exploring on a great de DET uh level of detail for us to be at the average and I want you to keep this number in the back of your mind for us to be at the average per pupil expenditure would mean that our budget would grow by an additional $73 million tonight your budget proposal has a $62 million gap so not even funding us at the state average we would be able to accomplish a great deal more than we are accomplishing today I would say that for us to improve it is going to require investment and we are going to need that

048investment in short order so what happens if this trend continues what happens if um our performance continues to drop and our funding continues to drop which seems to be very connected well I can tell you that it will be more costly for us to recover the deeper we sink into this hole and now imagine if we were actually funded appropriately I have tremendous faith in the phenomenal Educators that are in our classrooms the leaders that are leading our schools and the dedicated staff that are working behind the scenes to make great things happen for kids in Stafford County but they need help they need help paying their bills they need help in their classrooms they need additional bodies and they can't do it all by themselves they need additional assistance and I think that we

049can provide that with some additional planning um another strategy that we're all too well accustom in uh Stafford County is how we treat our facilities and providing a safe and welcoming environment um you cannot tell the story of Stafford without telling the story of growth um we are the fastest growing School Division in Virginia uh one of the reasons that we are receiving an increase in the governor's proposed budget on our state revenue side is because of our growth not because the state is being generous so it is noteworthy for us to point out that there is a correlation too with our state revenue growth and our size growth not necessarily because there is an effort to improve our standing the two images on uh the left are no surprise to this board um this

050is a picture of a hallway at Hartwood Elementary School and this is where pullout tutoring sessions are are regularly occurring in our schools because they are crowded and uh we need additional space uh this was taken a year ago we've added trailers to this campus since then to alleviate some of this pressure but it's very real any guesses on where the bottom image is from oh you're right Dr Chase it is Drew Middle School good guess I could see it in your eyes um you're absolutely right uh these this is some of the piping infrastructure from Drew Middle School uh the infrastructure of our buildings desperately needs attention and it is difficult for us to balance the ongoing growth with our ongoing need to maintain our buildings to to make sure that they are safe

051and healthy um it is not sustainable at the pace that we are going right now without a substantial investment in um our our buildings so what does it look like right now in Stafford County well it looks like growth equals trailers and people um we cannot continue down the path that we are on uh where we are introducing new students by the hundreds and not adding additional staff to teach those children we've got a couple years of catchup uh in our state bud in in our budget that's presented this evening um in our non-discretionary line for Staffing it is all the students that uh we plan for next year and the ones we didn't plan for last year accounted for in that very large number as well as uh something that the board approved at

052its a December meeting and forwarded to the supervisors for consideration was to get the ball rolling on 34 additional uh classroom trailers and I fully empathize with the supervisors not wanting to see things that that get tagged as emergent but one of the reasons that it is emergent is because of County permitting processes and how slow it is to operate uh with County government in that space so um there're a little bit of uh authors in that in that same uh um crisis as well so we have a lot of challenges that we know we need to address and um a lot of this uh definitely comes down to the number of seats that we can uh that we can make available unfortunately you'll see here that large scale redistricting to solve the growth crisis

053is no longer an option um packing uh our schools at the at the um uh distant locations of uh Rock Hill and fery farm um and even Widewater and Heartwood are not optional anymore uh as those schools uh have a forecast in the next couple years of being overcrowded themselves so we have significant issues that uh continue to to persist and the number at the bottom of this slide continues to grow each year that I present it um our five-year outlook for unfunded projects uh for for Capital maintenance is uh $131 million that's the unfunded uh number of and not the the total project number over the next five years it's it's closer to 200 million in terms of just regular major maintenance that needs to be performed and then over 10 years it's uh

054close to 236 million it's pretty significant number but when you kick the can down the road and you um defer maintenance projects year over year over year uh for nearly two decades um this is this is where we where we end up and so it kind of brings us back to our kids and and the level of service that we want to provide our kids and what do we want our kids to take away from their experience how do we want to prepare them and fully acknowledging that each one of our school communities is unique and is different and needs different things but we've noticed some common Trends and we kind of wanted to point out some of those commonalities and um I I put this together with the hopes that we can unpack this

055during budget work sessions but I do want to umate a couple of these things is that it does cost money to solve problems so I I made a menu for you um and so when you're selecting off of this menu of options uh we have some concrete suggestions for you if you want to improve student academic performance we recommend that you could invest in uh Specialists and there's a price tag for that we recommend that you could invest in some 504 supports because that is a number of of um students that continues to grow substantially and annually um we spend a lot of time talking about College and Career preparation but giving our kids uh real life uh work experience and to have work uh based uh learning experiences uh does take adults to coordinate

056that not children and uh that takes people and so investing in that space uh does cost money it costs $353,000 actually uh to be precise um overall um investing in technology uh that continues to work um it's great that we have uh some technology in our schools um we are certainly preparing our kids for today not for tomorrow uh with the technology that we have uh we do need to think about how um our technology can be used to the highest and best value uh but it is noteworthy to point out that that it does cost money to replace those things to service the need needs of our students with disabilities a little bit better we have some suggestions on how we could reduce some case loads and what that would cost the best part

057about all of these suggestions is that um they've been articulated pretty well and you've already spent some time with them and you've put them in our Five-Year Plan and so you have scoped these suggestions out as things that we might invest in in fisal 25 uh but we also want to prepare kids who are not just academically strong but socially strong as well um there's a big focus and a challenge um in getting our kids to come back uh from pandemic life uh with a set of uh social constructs that make them a little bit better to prepared to uh engage in in society and in the real world and uh to conduct themselves uh meeting a certain set of expectations well it it does take some enforcement behind that and so uh that takes

058an investment in social workers psychologists counselors even treny officers and deans of students to make that sort of thing happen uh focusing on developing those executive functioning skills well it doesn't happen overnight it does take a curriculum it does take training it does take investment it does take time to do those things and it has a price tag um everything from learning loss um uh to our substitute fill rate all of those things would improve with different levels of investment even staff retention um we only pay our staff uh once a month mainly because that's what we can afford to do because it costs money to have payroll twice a month and it is a choice and it does have a cost and that cost is personnel and time and energy and coordination and those

059things do have a cost now we've worked hard because this number was a lot bigger last year and we've actually Whitted this down a little bit but it it is one of those things that does have a significant impact things like staff retention through mentoring huge impact that we can have uh by investing more in our mentors who do a great job and finally I I'll touch on this is is school safety um I am very genuinely concerned uh about the maintenance of our schools as we continue to press forward um we have had this issue for some time where the the board has done all of the right things in adopting a three R list that is well prioritized and uh is has safety at at the top of its list every single year

060um but not all of the items on your 3r list get funded and that's a very real Challenge and so making sure that we pay our bills without debt financing needs to be a priority for not just the school board for the entire County moving forward and that's going to come at a huge price tag that price tag is 2 and a half% of the insurance value of our assets or $19.5 million a year overcrowding in our schools also comes at a cost um to reduce class size by one is going to cost $2.1 million to do something like that um if we were to move our custodians from an Outsource custodial service to an insource custodial service it's a million and a half dollars some big things um I know that that was something

061that we talked about a couple of years ago we seem to be satisfied with how things are going right now but it is something that you need to think about at all times and keep in the back of your mind even cyber security the things that uh we don't see but that we have to pay attention to are always in the back of our minds so with that I'm going to bring you to a financial summary of what we're looking at um I do have our base budget from last year which was just short of um uh $415 Million last year uh we did have uh some adjustments uh to state basic Aid uh that we are s that we are seeing uh come in from the state in the governor's proposed budget we do

062anticipate this to change uh with the legislature and uh hopefully for that number to go up uh the estimated uh revenue from our County Administrator uh and and the budget that he is working from is around $15 million and that's our placeholder number uh for the county which brings our proposed Revenue to $453 .4 million for fiscal 25 on our proposed expenditure side uh we have our budget from the previous year we're reconciled with that our adjustments to the base that we had to make in the middle of the year with the state budget reconciliation and moving some things over from Esser um into our operating budget um we are uh moving forward with 16.6 million in non-discretionary expense that does not cover all of our needs um we have done a a very good

063job we think think of whittling this number down quite substantially to about 50% of where we started to our discretionary expense which is entirely compensation um and uh that is at uh$ 13.6 million which brings us to a balanced budget but it also leaves $ 62.9 million of unfunded needs that uh uh were proposed in your Five-Year Plan but are going to be unfunded as this budget progresses forward without additional revenue from the state or the locality um breaking this out in and I'll be very quick with this um we did receive a little bit of a reduction uh in our vrs employer rate contribution that's very positive but we have huge numbers in terms of staffing needs um and uh we are going to increasing increasingly invest in uh School site allocations with an

064inflationary investment and uh um some of our academic programs we have three um new state standards adoptions thank you Richmond um where uh science mathematics and uh um English language arts were all adopted with brand new standards this year it's kind of unprecedented normally the state spaces those out into very logical um annual adoptions uh on a on a very predictable cycle very rarely do they Jam them all into one year where we're forced to then respond and that of course comes with a price tag an unfunded mandate if you will um so we will definitely have to respond to that and uh uh we are growing so we are going to need more bus drivers and um fortunately we did Leverage some of those all-in Stafford dollars to to purchase some buses so we're

065going to put some drivers behind the wheel it's part of that our biggest discretionary changes of course our salary uh we're going to invest heavily into phase three of five for our our licensed uh scale uh this will be an average of a 5.2% increase for our staff but no less than a 3% increase uh for our um uh supplements we're doing a flat uh 3% increase for our supplements and for our service staff this is going to be the area that we are going to recommend uh investment if if there is additional Revenue either from the state or the locality because we would like to start that phased in approach to a step scale for for our service staff um we're very uh thrilled um that we have included our instructional support uh scale

066correction which would bring our pair of professionals up to at least a minimum of 50% of the teacher scale that was a big initiative that got sidelined last year and we're putting that back in and uh it looks at this point that the revenue would cover and fund that fully uh so that's a big win for sure uh but deferring elements of uh the license scale and deferring elements of the uh non-li scale is is far less than what we would expect um we are also recommending um several enumerated items to be um reduced out of the Staffing standards until funding allows for their full implementation so I'm going to close by uh bringing up an oldie but a goodie from last year um and that's to show our growth measured against our proportional uh

067contribution from the county and it continues to go down um our percentage of the budget from County funds continues to shrink where as the portion of our budget from the state continues to grow well this should be relatively flat each year because our state funds are formulaic there is a number that is punched in based on our local revenues whether they be property values income tax and sales tax measured against um our local ability to pay and our local Composite Index and it generates a number and it's a very predictable number that we can uh have some Assurance of on a pretty regular basis reasonably so when we grow we receive more money from the state if we were ever to shrink not likely in Stafford County um our revenues would also likely go down

068because it is uh largely based on the number of students in our average daily membership as well on the other hand our local revenues are discretionary it is a choice of our County government as long as they meet the minimum threshold um which they do and and every locality in the Commonwealth does uh the question is not whether or not you meet the local the the minimum threshold but how much of the minimum threshold do you meet and uh and Stafford County is at the bottom so we often hear this from our counterparts uh um in County government we made the largest transfer to the schools in history to which we say thank you and duh we're growing every year and so it should be the largest transfer in County History every year as long

069as we're growing that number should go up and it should be the largest transfer so I I got to tell you this is a a tired phrase that that we hear that very much frustrates us and frustrates the teachers and Educators in our community because we are far from meeting the needs of um the Educators and the students in our community with the amount of money that's invested at the local level uh our community definitely deserves Great Schools um we do our our level best to provide the best that we can with what we have we use our resources very well um I would say that we are probably uh one of the best school systems in the Commonwealth at at resource allocation and how we use our resources but we're not going to continue

070to be able to provide the same level of high quality service that we have done in the past without a significant investment in the future so what happens next there's a bunch of more meetings to talk about this uh next week uh the school board has a budget work session and is also followed by a uh joint meeting with Board of Supervisors uh where the supervisors and the school board will talk about capital projects uh but this is going to be definitely on your mind as well as what happens in our operating budget we do have uh magisterial Town Halls uh where we've got a couple of of magisterial districts that are paired up um and Miss heale is all by herself uh this time um but uh but I'm sure invited to Rock Hill

071everybody's invited but uh uh you don't have to live in a magisterial District to participate but they are geographically located um at different parts of the County uh for folks convenience um we'll have another uh budget work session uh to unpack uh compensation and discretionary as well as uh fiveyear uh budget projections and also have a public uh hearing at that time and then uh bring to conclusion the budget process unless of course the board wants to continue to have the discussion and carry on with an additional meeting in February on the state and County side our general assembly is now in session um our County government has also begun uh some of its preliminary budget work leading into its budget season which kicks into high gear as soon as the school board finishes its

072process so as soon as the school board has concluded its process the county then shifts into its process and uh there's a couple of joint meetings uh listed throughout and uh we encourage uh the public to particip participate in all of these um meetings as well um hopefully concluding uh at the first meeting in April of the supervisors and what to do so how can you help uh I know that everybody in the audience and at home is wondering these questions well this is my recommendation and and this is coming from the superintendent this is not necessarily school board's endorsement but it is my endorsement and hopefully uh something that the school board will carry on uh these are things that we can ask for from our state legislators to fully fund the findings of

073the 2023 jar study on school funding and also uh on on teacher uh um uh the teaching shortage uh give full cost of compete adjustment for Stafford County in the meantime um that has a big impact on our funding as well and allow uh Stafford County the ability to level Levy at least 1% sales tax for school construction those are three really concrete recommendations that our legislators can take and that we can measure their success against uh based on how well they perform in the general assembly carrying our agenda forward for our Board of Supervisors it becomes a little bit more complex um we would recommend that the Board of Supervisors have some sort of plan that would bring Stafford County Public Schools to the middle of per pupil expenditure not the bottom and that

074they find a way to get us to the middle and that they do so on a timeline that that they can be held accountable and that they endorse a plan that uh supports this in perpetuity now a lot of communities have a plan like this it's called a revenue sharing agreement where they can endorse some sort of support and perpetuity we would recommend that uh that we explore that and that that be a discussion um for for the Board of Supervisors in the future we would also Rec uh recommend that they amend uh the county Five-Year Plan to align with the school systems uh Five-Year Plan as well because right now uh The Five-Year Plan and uh the planned expenditures that uh that we've discussed and laid out over the next several years um does

075not remotely align with what uh the county has in store for uh planned expenditures for schools as a matter of fact um if we were to follow the County's 5year plan for school funding uh our position for per pupil expenditure would actually drop and we would actually be lower than 101th in the state we would be much lower than that um we recognize that none of this is overnight and that all of this requires a lot of investment in a lot of time uh so to continue to invest in our phased in approach uh we feel like we've taken great care uh to bite the Apple uh to eat the apple one bite at a time and to recognize that that we can't do everything all in one year and to map things out over

076multiple years uh but we do need a partner a funding partner in that process um and so with that um we we do offer uh some contact information for our local decision makers uh who have influence in places um with Financial Resources so we'd like to thank our funding partners and uh uh Madam chair members of the board I'd like to thank you uh for this opportunity to share my funding requ W and uh I seek uh your direction in the meetings to come thank you I have questions I'm sure we all have questions um so I do know we will be talking about this probably not much else for for the near future but I would like to open the floor to questions uh to keep it organized do you mind do you have

077any questions Dr Chase tonight Dr Warner today if we were to get the 1% uh tax for School construction those funds could be used for 3our projects would they free up any money in our operational budgets so um that's a great question um they would have to actually be committed to actual School construction projects but you have school construction going on right now which would um actually uh reduce the County's Debt Service which would create funds that could be used for 3r and would fund three projects so in a sense the revenues line up that you could you could fund your 3r in full and all of your major maintenance projects and have additional revenues uh to support School construction above and beyond that based on uh the sales tax uh Revenue projection if if

078you had that 1% so it's a it's a great thing to Lobby the general assembly for Mr Randle uh no I'm good right now thank you Miss Hy yeah I'll I'll hold my question questions but I think the um this the sales tax was something that the supervisors were uh supporting is that not the case act actually our top three um uh funding requests align directly with our our uh County Board of Supervisors they were very supportive of uh all three of the recommendations that we have for our state legislators thank you Miss guy yes I've got two but I'll I'll make them quick on slide number 35 um I think you're fine needs to be bigger for the 7% drop in 12 years it's hard to read and I think that should just be

079a little bit bigger so that is at seveno font okay okay sounds good all right all right and then um I'm not sure if this is a Dr Taylor question or or someone else um we talked about trying to move quickly with permitting and I we always hear small business owners say like it takes forever to get a permit in Stafford County but I would assume and maybe it's unethical which is why we don't do it that we would get like an expedited ability to go quicker than is that not something that happens or I mean we definitely would never want to position the county in any way in an unethical way but but this this is an issue um and and uh it's a little affirming to hear that you're hearing that same issue

080elsewhere in the community um I know I've heard it elsewhere in the community that that seems to be an ongoing issue issue um I have great trepidation uh about the permitting process as we're beginning um many school construction projects and how that can escalate costs um when when you are waiting for a permit and you have people that you're paying to wait um that is certainly the case uh with um our modular classroom installation uh the the Hoops are unnecessary and uh timely and time is money I mean I'm not suggesting anything that is unethical but to me it doesn't sound unethical that a county would give its school system a little bit of Grace or not even Grace Just Expediting our request in order to have seats for their children's behinds to go in

081school so but I don't know if that's something that other counties do I mean question that we could explore you know as we're all on the same team Stafford County right you know you think think um that we would all be trying to work to the same end to save the taxpayer a few dollars I mean we're certainly trying to save the taxpayer a few dollars so I will talk to Miss Gary yeah let's get to miss holon so I I guess mine's maybe more of a comment or a question just because this is so much to process and reviewing and looking at it and I wrote some questions down but I'm not sure that I'm ready to articulate them right just yet um but so this information is available to the public clearly on

082our our site how do we help the public sort of I mean this is my third year of looking at this stuff and it's still overwhelming and it still can be very confusing and you can get stuck in a lot of like hey does this mean we're not going to be able to hire this many teachers do we have to get rid of teachers is there any way to guide the public in being able to actually kind of ABS because this will change right as we go through um so is there any way to guide them or any advice you have for them so they can begin to process what we're being presented with oh thank you so much Miss Hallstead or or maybe not after I make this comment um my email address is

083Taylor tww staffordschools.net and there's an attachment on um this particular board meeting uh item which is a summary and it's a pamphlet that looks like this and inside the pamphlet it has a couple of uh bullet points a few of the slides from today's presentation a full line by line accounting of our budget that's proposed a list of unfunded priorities uh that we're asking the board to consider deeply as well as our funding partners and uh also a checklist of how well we're doing against our own strategic plan in the proposals that we're making some demographic information about our school system and uh to realize how significant of a problem this really is um I do have Prince William County's um salary scale proposed with a 3% adjustment uh granted it's probably going to be

084more uh measured against our current salary scale and our proposed salary scale so that the public can see the difference uh between the two I also highlighted um the 16th step and the reason I highlighted the 16th step and last year I highlighted the 15th step and two years ago I highlighted the 14th step uh these are our teachers that were dramatically affected by changes in the salary scale and compression after the housing bubble burst in 2008 so the fiscal 09 budget where there were several years of stalled salaries freezes even a reduction um in salaries um this was the group of folks that have been the most disproportionately affected them and everybody after them so it it really is a line of demarcation of how significantly that group of people has been um in

085hardship as a result of really the past 15 plus years of trying to come back from that financial crisis which we still haven't fully recovered from so um so for folks listening or or you know there is something if you're going through our board dos right online you can get to the agendas and the meeting and stuff it does specifically say pamphlet so there's a lot of other information there I just direct you to kind of find the thing that that Dr Taylor is talking about um but also I'm going to ask that the public pay very particular attention to these these unfunded needs um because this is a very telling picture for how far behind Stafford County schools are um in terms of us trying to present a wants versus needs situation um these

086are not as you start to look at them for me um this is what keeps me up at night that we have this level of of growth but also this amount of money that um you know we've got our our hats out and our guitars playing to raise money on the streets um to raise so so those are the things that that that truly stand out for me because we are an evolved school system we should be an evolved school system and and we shouldn't have I don't even know how many line items of deductions and things we can't meet um are on this page so that's all I have to say Jolene do you have any questions Missy did you I I just wanted to to make a um point about working with the

087county historically when we have been in a position where we have needed assistance they have stepped up um when we opened uh I think Stafford High was a good example um inspections were taking place on the weekends on outside work hours um we almost had a direct line you know for for getting working with them on permits and inspection so it's um it it is a tedious process for everyone you know whether you're a a homeowner or a business owner or or a school system but where we have um gone to the county and you know expressed the the the need for the support um we we have traditionally gotten it and I I think it's been through our our superintendent and working with the County Administrator um you know the boards of of course

088are the ones with the request but but that's how these things get get worked out and this this was um you know prior to your time Dr Taylor but there there have been many times when we have needed to get things uh through to open the school and and they've they really have have stepped up to to help us out and I think the trailers are an example as well when we needed to you know get things done with the trailers did we not get support from the county um we we think the support could be uh a little bit better I think in the end they they definitely have uh came through um in uh when we were rushed to get things done at the end but uh the timeline is longer than it

089should be doesn't need to be as long as it is that costs more money it's not on us of course that's our perspective we don't have all those details so I'm I'm reluctant to um you know throw a stone at that glass house you know without knowing what's there and I I think it's incumbent upon us as the board members to work with our counterparts to impress upon them the need and then they in turn can um go through their County Administrator and and and work their way down thank you manair um yes I actually did speak with Miss bomy at our last um 7 with s um about the permitting process being a problem um in getting our trailers uh completed on time and let her know that with this next batch that we

090needed to see if we could do something better and different and she was going to look into it and she did get back to me and said um the that they actually had made a comment that the trailers that we're using are more cottage style Now versus like the ones that we have at Rocky Run which are like separate ones and so yes it was a different permitting process but she did impress upon them that we we were going to be needing um a little bit more help not it doesn't help the fact that they've um Extended their vote until February on these trailers that really you know knocks on our timeline again um but she do she is aware and she has impressed upon them to um work with us but I I would

091also re Echo what you're saying and make sure that all of the supervisors are made aware that um permitting is not expedited but um you know in a way that's not helpful or or legal or whatever ethical um but just to make sure that it is um understood that there's time sensitivity to these permits not only for these trailers but for the new builds and even a lot of our major 3r projects too so thank you so anyone else Echo what you said and I agree and I will be speaking with my counterpart but we were told today by staff that they were a little bit nervous about the trailers um right now that we're trying to do because if if we don't hurry up with getting our permits it'll knock us out of the

092queue which will then make us be forced to purchase more expensive trailers than the ones we have on reserve so I'm not throwing any stones but I am going to be calling them in to help us because that's going to affect our budget if we if we have to spend more money because it's taking longer because of the permitting I had just one question about the County's proportional contribution because you illustrate that our population has increased and the County's share of the um Financial contribution to the schools has decreased is there any does the amount the state increases compare it all to what the county is decreasing are they supplanting County like if the county gives us 10 million more are they reducing by 10 million or is it just random or um fortunately not

093they seem to be independent of one another wi- which is good in one regard but I I will say that that when the state formulaically increases say 20 million and the locality only increases by 10 that Gap is going to continue to widen that has been the trend consistently as Illustrated uh for the past several years and the the tough part is is that whereas other localities count on their local government to actually step up and increase above what the state contributes the share is disproportionate so the the the state average right now is uh around 55% of school uh revenue is made up by state revenue across the state for for us that's that's clearly not the case it's not even close to that um so we're we're very disproportionately even off the statement

094uh average in that regard okay thank you very much thank you madam chair uh we'll move into our student representative comments um we put these in the middle of our agenda so that these uh young people can get home to their school um to do their school workor and family obligations at a decent hour uh since it's both their first meeting with us I would like to have them both give comments tonight would like to start with Jenny as our alternate rep if you come up to the podium please all right good evening Stafford County my name is Jennifer odan and I will be your student alterate representative from the year of 2024 through 20125 my role in Stafford County School Board as student alternate representative is to work very closely with Jolene doku to

095act as a liaison between Stafford County schools and the school board all in hopes of creating a better education system for not only our current students but the future students as well this is an honor that I do not take lightly outside of my role in the school board I am currently an international borite diploma candidate as well as a jotc Cadet at Mount View High School going into my term I have a multitude of goals goals in which I can describe you using three umbrella terms diversity equity and inclusion since I was appointed for this role I have spoken with parents as well as my peers younger siblings other family members and friends in Middle Elementary and high school to better gauge their objective on things they believe should be implemented in our school

096board additionally I spoke to a very good friend of mine named vikna Kawa who is a 2023 graduate from Mountain View High School as a prior student vikna had a lot of insight together we discussed numerous things that we believe are significant to improve in Stafford County with all this knowledge I acquired I was able to come up with my umbrella terms to close I would like to give you guys a brief description of each of my terms and what they mean to me diversity to give every student in Stafford County no matter the age disability socioeconomic background or status race and gender a say in what goes on in this County Equity making sure that every decision made in Stafford County School is just and impartial taking into account every single student's needs ideas

097and opinions last but certainly not least inclusion making sure that every student in Stafford County feels as though they are a part of the decision-making process giving a voice to the ones who don't have a voice or the means or resources strength to be able to speak up as I stated before this is an honor that I do not take lightly thank you so much for giving me this opportunity and I look forward to serving you this year thank you thank you so much Jenny we look forward to working with you Jolene all right hello stord County um I just want to start by saying that my name was Jolene Dooku and I'm a junior currently attending brickpoint High School um I have pursued passions in music literature art and diplomacy hence my um interest

098in this role and I'm not only honored but excited to work alongside jenero Deen he's my alternate representative and all the school bird Administration and thank you guys so much for giving us this wonderful opportunity in order to create a more United Community for everybody this term me and Jennifer have both discuss things that we want to focus on and she's highlighted them in her speech and we've come to consensus that we will um focus both on what a CPS has and what it lacks in order to fill in the gaps as needed we will be actively working on Creative creating researches for the county all across schools and Jennifer has expanded on those ideas as well acting as a leon between scps students administrators teachers parents children and the school board I will work

099my hardest to voice the thoughts and concerns of the community to create a stronger and more united environment than it ever has been before it's empowering to know that all of our voices are heard and I hope you guys are all excited as I am furthermore I would like to give my deepest gratitude to both Katherine Buckman and moroi Solomon both the student representative and alter representative respectively you guys set such a great Center for me and Jennifer and I'm so grateful that we were able to go in that Retreat and work for this period that we were able to do Katherine you will forever be an inspiration moroi I love you so much thank you you guys for everything that you guys done and I've been both AED and moved by your by your

100Pursuits I'm excited to see what both of you guys will do in the future and I wish you nothing but the best of luck as for the rest of saffer County I know that we were able to achieve great things together and I look forward to working with everybody thank you guys all for having me as your student representative and finally before I close I would like to take a moment to commemorate a recent event that has hurt the hearts of many people in safer County I have respect for those involved I'm not disclose nor do I encourage anybody to try and prior details but I do want to reinstate the idea that mental health is very important to always check up on your loved ones encourage open conversations and spread compassion and understanding to

101those all around us thank you thank you [Applause] julan moving on to Citizen comments three minutes are allowed to each speaker or group speakers are encouraged to provide a copy of the comments to the board clerk speakers shall identify themselves by name and organizational affiliation if there is one speakers shall also to announce the purpose of their topic or their comments citizen comments which is profane abusive or which threatens imminent fiscal harm shall be ruled out of order by the chair although the board provides the opportunity for citizen comment individuals Desiring to register complaints against the division employees division program services or activities may also UTI utilize the procedures outl in our policy let see Madam chair we sorry we have one speaker signed up Madam chair her name is Jessica Pierce does this count

102as part of my three minutes okay good evening my name is Jessica Pierce I am a member of the Embry Mill neighborhood um where I live with my husband and our five children three of whom will soon start Elementary School um I believe students should attend their neighborhood school and 228 residents of emry Mill who signed up petition that I created believe the same I will be emailing all of you a copy of the petition so that you can see the comments that they provided in it as well because I think it's important that you I think you get a capture picture of all that um we need school 19 in our neighborhood as a former elementary school counselor I've witnessed the positive emotional and social impact attending their neighborhood school has on young students

103and when kids are doing well in those areas academically they Excel I grew up three blocks away from my elementary school schol Michigan and I have fond memories of Walking With Friends to and from school experiencing social interaction and building my educational support system something my husband and I want for our children and one of the reasons we chose to build a home in Embry Mill following our military retirements after over 20 years of serving our country we settled here and were promised a school we built in our neighborhood and just in time for our Littles to be in elementary amazing but where is it it's disheartening and currently my kids will have to commute to a school outside their neighborhood spending way more time on a bus than they should and less time with

104friends I feel like I failed them so I've done a lot of research and it seems some of our school board reps failed them too Miss Sigman voted against her District having a school not once but twice her reasoning quote first and foremost is where we actually need the school end quote how can you argue the need is not in Garrisonville it's the largest district with the most number of students Miss Sigman also said quote Garrisonville residents are bus to three elementary schools outside our district at taxpayer expense because we no longer have space here for them end quote so why not vote to make space developers proferred land in Embry Mill for an elementary school that land sits ready for you to build on it it has all the infrastructure water sewer roads not

105using every remot is fiscally irresponsible and will cost the district way more money not to mention time you need to tear up perfectly good assets at brookpoint such as tennis courts bus loops and parking lots costing Millions more in tax dollars not to mention as Dr Chase pointed out in a meeting recently the bus ride for those students in aqua would still be the same school 18 was slated to go in emry Mill then it was 19 now you're saying 20 we promised and at the rate our district is growing there won't be enough seats for all of our kids mine included as Dr Taylor just mentioned Elementary School's 18 and 19 need to open in 2026 building at brookpoint is not going to get you there Landon Ember Mill is ready for an elementary

106school and its construction is supported by the Board of Supervisors as George Bernard Shaw once said those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything please put this back on the agenda and vote for school 19 in emry mail thank you thank you moving on to our action items item 9.01 approval of the purchase of security cameras and tablets for school buses motion to approve second Madam chair I would like this item to be divided um so that we would vote on each separately the cameras separately from the tablets does anyone have any problem with that I second that that's fine division doesn't need okay all right um discussion we're going to need the uh dollars amounts for those division at least I would I think it's in yeah it's it should be in the

107uh in the item but um Mr cook will come forward and and also answer questions if the board has any at this time could we start with the cameras the the relative amounts are listed um in each section under security cameras and um under I'm sorry under procurement it's a um for the security camera systems and then 145 for the tablets 145,000 okay so uh let's start with the security cameras is there any discussion on that item none okay so we'll vote on just the approval to purchase and install the security cameras that motion passes unanimously moving on to the purchase and installation for tablets on our buses so um I believe tablets came to us about a year ago and I voted against them because of the ongoing cost of the software every year

108for every tablet it used to be $350 I don't know what it is now um but in addition to that um I have had many many um calls this past fall with people stating that the app shows that their bus is one place and their bus is not that place and so I'm not really sure um I I just don't feel like I can support um continuing with this software thank you can I ask a question um was there not something done with tablets over the Christmas holiday that was going to help with that problem I thought there was something that was going to be done over the Christmas holiday thank you good evening so um we did the installation of the tablets that Dr Chase is referencing um from the end of last year

109so that installation was done over the winter holiday because it could not be completed over the summer so the winter holiday was the first time we could get all the buses off the road um and now we are um at the next professional day we'll follow up on some training with the bus drivers but those are are looking to be operational the second semester okay so the problems that she's referring to in the fall was because tablets were not installed or what was the what's the problem for the tablets versus the problem and she wasn't the only one we all got yeah information that they was not sinking the the the timing of the buses with coordination with parents yeah so there's a couple issues one of the main issues that we run into is

110whenever we have we have a substitute bus there has to be a manual override done in the central office transportation office um and when we're overloaded with um outages and they're trying to keep up with that sometimes they get behind the benefit of the tablet is as soon as the bus driver logs in and enters the route that they're starting for that day that does that override automatically and they don't have to do the manual override okay um so it's more realtime updates for that information okay so what parents thought they were getting or had access to in the fall was not accurate but what the parents wished they had available in the fall will now be available is what you're saying yes when they were fully active okay yes okay thank you than sure

111Dr War can we um get an update on how these tablets are working maybe in a month or so just so that because school just started back so I would just assume that we only just started this process again and two weeks ago so and without three days so maybe in March get an update on how they're functioning and and how re responsive the company is to updating software and fixing glitches yep we can do that are there any other questions I just want sorry you D okay um the bus drivers how do they feel about the tablets do they think it's helping them or slowing them down yeah so we haven't they're not actually live and functional right now because we were setting up right so they're going to start rolling out the second

112semester um so we have some of the bus drivers received training as we did a pilot program um the year before last but the majority of our drivers didn't have the tablets in hand didn't have them on their buses so to do that training uh with them was delayed until we had the tablets installed so we'll do that at a professional day and then roll it out when we did the pilot a few years back um you know some of our more experienced drivers don't feel the need for the tablet because they know the roads they know where they're going uh but the newer drivers were definitely Reet so it's kind of um explaining and and teaching with all the drivers of what the overall purpose of the tablet is it's not just to provide

113them those voice directions of where the stops are but it's also to provide that um support for the parents and the app as well did you have another question I was just wondering if we could maybe delay this purchase for additional tablets until we know whether the system is working the way it's supposed to um or is that delay going to cause a difficulty in acquiring them in time for the summer installation um it'll it'll probably definitely cause delays on the installation but I know um Mr cook can probably speak a little bit better to the timeline of the grant because we have to um submit you know we have to have the work done we have to expend the money um and I know he's a little bit more can I ask while you're

114transitioning then because I'm not sure which of you would get this so apart from the 16 buses that won't get them because the buses are exceeding their useful life what does this mean all of our buses will have tablets and then of course we will keep as we add buses I imagine we will add technology so if we don't approve this then the tap we would only have essentially we'd be moving forward with only some of our buses having tablets or correct correct yes ma'am and I and I just also want to add too one of the things that we're in the process of doing is is upgrading our um GPS software that we have right now so we're it's the company but upgrading to a kind of newer fresher model of that and that

115will be in place by next school year and some of the things that we hear from parents now will be um upgraded in there like um right now if you have two parents in the in the OR sorry two students in the division riding or attending two different schools two different buses you have to log out log back in um that's something we've disabled because of some security features but in the new uh software parents can set that up themselves and create a family link where when you log in they're all together um so so there are some more benefits coming and some upgrades where we think we're going to see improvements overall sure absolutely so you said that um we still don't really have everything up and running yet is that right I mean

116are they like if if you're coming back to us in March will you have actually had two months of this working so I'll I'll have to work with Mr Johnson on the timing so they've been installed and then now it's the training and then get them fully operational so they're we'll just have to have some kind of pilot period time there to to see how they're working okay and then um so I I see that most of this is coming from a grant um there wasn't anything else we could think of to spend the money for the grant other than this than the security cameras and the tablets the grant was preapproved by the state equipment Grant folks and so that's what we said we were going to buy if we need to buy something

117else there's another approval process for that and we have until June to get it the project completed so is there anything else we would that might be of more use than these tablets uh we have plenty of things we could spend money on um but this was what the uh the technology department the Safety and Security transportation we collaborated on what was the highest priority and when is that Professional Training Day because you said all the installation happened over the winter break but if we're looking for an update in March but you have to do the training of the drivers as a professional day when is that professional day um it might be our day in February the February 16th February 16th okay Madam Madam chair I would imagine that um this is not going

118to happen in one day day uh but but rather an ongoing training so um uh I would say that that the board could expect this to be over several weeks um as they kind of ease into it because it is a lot of drivers that would need to receive training so to miss Randall's question it there may be an intensive portion on one day but there's going to be ongoing training uh you already have a little bit of proof of concept uh from the pilot that was already done um see to be pretty successful the the benefit that I've observed uh firsthand is that the The Substitute buses that have the tablets don't have to request routing sheets um from uh inside of the schools for somebody to print them off and then bring them

119outside and then have to navigate based off of uh printed directions that don't have a map uh versus just following what the GPS tells them to do so there there there is some expedience there that that uh that does help us with Transportation efficiency in addition to some of the student safety features but remind me again how much is the software every year um for these 90 tablets it's about 25 to $27,000 annually Miss Hy my understanding was that these tablets are going to help solve the problem with misinformation being provided to parents so I'm very supportive of this I think it's unreasonable to ask for a report in March and we're practically you know through January now um I would suggest that at the end of the school year we get a report uh

120because I don't want to put an undue burden on transportation and I would expect that there you know there there's going to be a a process that we're working through and we'll have to you know work that out as we go along so you know I'd like to assuming that this is approved to move forward I would like to give it the sub the the time to work out and you know rather than you know ask for a rush report back and it's it's it's a u a so what you know they're working it out so I don't want to put a burden on um on Transportation or technology and and I I'm very grateful that 75% of this cost is being paid by a grant and that's not coming out of our operational fund

121so I would not want to take the risk of losing that Grant um you know because we may not think it's necessary I mean we've got you know a staff recommendation um they're on the ground you know they they work this out so I'm I'm going to I'm going to support this because you know I think it was thought out it was um certainly something that that is needed and it will benefit our families um as well as the drivers Miss Randall um so my son in process of waiting for his kindergarten teaching job was driving buses and I do recall him saying that it was hard when he had to wait for the sheets to come out and then you have the kids chirping in the ear saying no no you turn right here

122it was so I'm appreciative of this and I'm definitely understanding of the problems we had in the fall but I'm very relieved that we will have a better working solution thank you so I um I only have my concerns because I spoken to some of the bus drivers and some of them are not on board like they they're not comfortable with the tablets themselves um and I I don't know what that's from except from their time and experience served so you mentioned that if it didn't go to this there's some wiggle room in the grant to to apply the money somewhere else then is that the case you know do we have an idea of what some of those other things look like and I don't want to under mind what what you've decided I'm

123just trying to understand what else would the money go towards because I lose Mone we have to go through the approval process again um and it's competitive so they could give the money to another school division okay so it's not like it's guaranteed our money and we can play it as we want we have to go back through but any security equipment would can be used for this okay so but we currently have this grant right we currently have the Grant and we applied for these things specifically okay that thank you for that clarification so if if you found that come April that things are not as rosy with the tablets we've already purchased would we have time to rethink this or Would we not I it it takes a while to organize uh the

124company to come in and and put it on the buses um so the and and we do have a hard deadline of June 30th to have it completed in in invoiced and I I actually don't think that that was Dr Chase's question um oh okay uh I think what Dr Chase was was asking is if we go down this process and we outfit all of our buses with tablets and we're unsatisfied what do we do then well I I will say that that this is why we did the pilot program and this this is why we did the the pilot initiative was to to see if this was going to be a good solution um totally get some of our experienced bus drivers absolutely hating this as an option because it's so different from what

125they're used to after 20 plus years behind the wheel um but this is this is a pragmatic solution to solving some of the Safety and Security issues that the buses have had some solving some of the parent issues that they have had and where we've seen it in place it's worked pretty effectively so I feel like we're we're better positioned um than than some of the things that we've done even in the past uh to know that the outcome is is going to be positive but it's it's a question that's that's well well heard and I appreciate you asking it because and and does matter right and I just just want to reiterate that yes there's this one-time grant that will purchase these but then we will be spending 20 to $30,000 a year to

126keep the software going every year and that number will probably go up each year knowing that so I just that that's my you know that's that's what I'm kind of like okay thank you and if I could just add to Dr Chase's point that is an ongoing expense that is an Eyes Wide Open understanding that that is a software obligation that then we would take on as a responsibility it will likely have cost escalation every year as everything else has cost escalation every year and so we are we are still moving forward with that with that understanding because we we believe in that project okay Dr Warner has one last question I call I just have one one comment um I'm perfectly willing to wait till June for a final report on how this is

127working and how it's being integrated and this how the bus drivers are are are man if it's helping um I do like the added safety features I think especially with some of our our youngest writers I think that can be an opportunity to put notes and other special instructions in um but my experience with technology is sometimes it doesn't deliver as well as the brochure so I would like um I would like that report in June thank you all right so we're casting our votes in uh on the purchase of the tablets close your eyes and pick one say l than a kid I know that's totally fine motion passes six uh yes one no with Miss holstead dissenting moving on to item number 9.02 we're approving policies 1101 11104 11109 11112 1114 1117 111

12881201 1202 1203 1301 1401 1402 1404 and three excuse me 3402 motion to approve second any discussion am I correct in the notes that there are just no changes to these policies these are all our existing policies yes that's what I see please cast your votes motion passes unanimously uh item 9.03 this is the first reading and discussion of proposed new policy 2 point um sorry 2422 treatment of all students in Stafford County Public Schools motion to oh never mind discussion yeah anyone like to open discussion um I would just like to say that um in this proposed new policy there is no policy changes correct miss butri everything stays the same it's just in this location so we're not changing anything for the students and families of Stafford in this and I had a

129similar question because I I I'm not on governance but I wanted to confirm that there were no changes but I was also told that the portions of policy that are in proposed new policy still exist in their old locations as well is that correct they do and that's why at the end of this new proposed policy is a Schoolboard policy reference list it lists all of the ones that are referred to in here in in this one now you know specifically speaking could there be some um language that is added here um that may not specifically referenced somewhere probably you have to look at each one of them so for instance um like um A4 A4 at the request of parents each School shall designate an administrator or counselor to speak with the students parents

130regarding questions pertaining to um gender you don't see a policy referenced there specifically it's not currently in a policy or regulation it is our practice however so where there are specific policies and regulations existing that are referenced that's that's what you'll see here but there could be some spaces where it's not but it doesn't mean that it's not our practice this is our current practice which was to adhere to our existing policies in recs and we had practices in place but why are we making a policy saying that we're in compliance and this is the policy like if if we were just going to consolidate existing policies that we aren't changing why don't you just put them on a sheet of paper and say these are the policies that y'all voted for I don't understand

131that and then also treatment of all students but the only students that are called out in here are transgender students so it doesn't mean so treatment of all students but we're only going to talk about the transgender it just to me this just doesn't make sense the math ain't math in I don't I don't get it this was a request by the governance committee so I'll what I see Dr Dr Taylor I see you but do you want to say so the the idea is weird um we'll acknowledge that this is the only policy um that would be in your policy manual that is a conglomeration of other existing policies so that that is a a preference point for the board of how you want to articulate that um I I don't want to misrepresent

132the governance committee the governance committee when when we were directed to start drafting this draft policy um was to to try to condense and synthesize everything to put it all into one document this is for your consideration it's everything in one document so it's a it's a communication vehicle as it was presented to US versus anything else but it is it is different you don't have any other policies that look like this in your policy manual that are am I correct that are a conglomeration of other policies that you already have in place so so let me speak to this just for the record I I didn't see this as anything other than trying to minimize some of the confusion that the original document that was put out created because it referenced so many different

133policies and had so many different regulations in it now for folks who know the school system and know our policies and procedures it's not hard for them to read that one document and find what they were looking for for others it was difficult so I asked why we couldn't take what was presented to us make it a little bit easier for parents to understand so if they had a question they had one document to go to not seven different policies and five different regulations and whatever so whereas it may seem nuanced it is literally and to Lisa's credit she did have to go through the painstaking process of cutting and pasting all this information but it was designed as Thomas was saying as a vehicle for information for parents who don't navigate the system well

134who don't understand who have questions that could be easily answered if you go on each of the docu and not to say the first document that was created wasn't robust and wasn't informative but it was also very confusing and there are a lot of people that had questions remaining from it so I I mean look it was a simple request that we'd be open and transparent with we were telling everybody we were legally comping could we pleased just have a document that showed them how we were legally compliant and where in our everyday procedures we were legally compliant um it was a simple request so that parents could go in and be like okay this was an address what's over here hopefully it created less confusion less questions less problems that was the simple intention

135so I I mean I could be wrong and I'm happy to to to say that as well but but at but you have laws in here you've got like Virginia codes you've got whatever it's hard enough to go through our code of conduct to find things to do whatever so I asked for a simple click and point information processing so that we could show people transparently and openly that we were not only legally compliant here's how other questions I I just have a comment I won't be supporting this because I feel like it's a solution and want of a problem um the reality is that Governors come in and they make recommendations and model policies we didn't follow northam's um but we have always maintained our ability to be legally in compliance for the Safety

136and Security of our students and to make sure that all students are respected um I don't see a purpose for this document and I think that everything was clear in the list of policies that we have I am uncomfortable with the fact that the only students that seem to be called out in this policy are transgender students so so let's not I mean I think we use the term call out a little too liberally in this sense we're not calling anybody out we were acknowledging and addressing each of the points in the document which as far as I know and I'm and and I again I'm willing to be wrong but we did follow northam's you did follow northam's policy I that's that's not correct and all the research done how did so you were

137not legally compliant we were legally compliant but we did not imp transparent about your legal compliance we can certainly add new groups to this if you so choose but here's the problem you have a certain let's say finesse with the system that other people don't have why would you why would you not give parents access to information in what it it literally doesn't call out anything but the fact that we are legally compliant here is how we address each and every one of these issues there's not a single thing in here that takes anything away from transgender kids that I've read right it just points out a process for if they need our help and how we get it to them if you reread the document that's literally how we address it the non-discrimination policy

138is listed in here several times and they are literally listed in that non-discrimination policy as part of it so since not a single word in our policies was changed not a single word then nothing has changed except that there is one umbrella piece of paper now that parents can go to and can refer if they have specific questions I am but one vote there other Miss Hy I'm not on the governance Committee of course if I were I do see a will in there instead of a shall I know it wasn't intentional I'm sure it came out of the policy but but the problem that I see is that someone may take this and say this is the policy where really this is a reference to the policy because the policy is much more um

139broad it's more uh explicit and you know we'll give more information I I think it's a a good idea to have a Consolidated reference to policies such such as here the non-discrimination and and I I would I do not agree that this calls out any particular group I mean this talks about bullying it talks about you know other kinds of issues so I think the intention here is good and I think it's something that perhaps we need to to address but I would not address it in establishing a policy and giving it a a number um you know there may be a way that we can you know put this together to you know we can I don't even you know I mean we can certainly approve a and I I don't have a name

140a consolidated um reference you know for um the school board's non-discrimination policies and somehow you know have that you know in the policy handbook or you know that this is a reference for this and and and this may not be the only area that we need this for I mean there may be other areas that it would be helpful because I I agree miss holstead you know it's confusing I'm not a you know computer person so a paper person so I'm going to have all these books open you know look or Windows um you know looking these things up so I like the idea of it but I don't like the idea of having a policy explaining the policies because I think that takes away from the individual policies themselves and if you look at

141this there are quite a lot of policies here so you know I'd suggest that we you know go back to governance or you know ask um you know for a you know a a potential other way to include this in our policy um handbook but not as an individual policy because if this is an individual policy and someone goes and they look at one paragraph even if it says go back and look at this other policy they may take this and you know you can't possibly just take one paragraph and explain the whole the whole thing so that that would be my suggestion I think it's it's it's well- intended and I think it has a a great potential benefit um but I think it may cause some um confusion if we have a policy

142for it you know on itself and even though I'm not on the governance committee I would volunteer to to to work on something like this and maybe we could get some some maybe Dr Chase would be willing to work on this as well she's a another um word Smither um so thank you uh Miss hilly for saying that because I I don't think that sounds like a a un what do you call it undoable ask I feel like that's a good idea I just I and it had not been little words it had been not it had not been presented that way before so I do appreciate you um offering that and and clarifying where it could be confusion um but I I would like to to have you join us at our next governance

143meeting and and help employ language and words can I guess maybe and we'll remove discuss okay okay yeah I mean and I suggest this not come back at the next meeting if we are in fact going to um you know to to look at it can we go hold off on that I would like Dr Chase to to assist with this as well not not to volun tell her to do something or to add more to her plate but maybe just like email it to her or something and get her I I this particular I I don't like calling it a policy I'm just going to say that I I really don't because I think there's nuances in individual policies and I think parents if their child is being bullied they go to the bullying

144policy if they feel their child's being discriminated against they go to the non-discrimination policy I I just think that calling it a policy is I'm something I'm uncomfortable with especially since it's really modeled after the model policies and and I don't feel I want any Governor dictating what our model policies should be because we have to create policies that reflect the needs of our students okay um Madam chair um I thought amendment to policy 1108 was going to be on here for uh approval today and I thought I got an email saying that it was going to be on but I don't think it's ever been I don't think it's on there should be on hang on a second was it in consent was it in consent okay it was I think it was yes

145it was yes 11 perfect thank you okay so we will move on to the did did we decide this isn't going to come back at the next meeting this is going to come to back to governance then we will come up with a different terminology that um superintendent report and comment oh don't you think you've heard enough from me tonight I was just having that thought um no I just want to congratulate uh um Miss Sigman on uh your election to chair U Miss guy to her election as Vice chair and um to the board members who were reelected this year Dr Warner um Miss Randall and Miss Healey uh congratulations and thank you for your service uh to Stafford County it's no small thing to uh to jump into school board work it's heavy

146heavy stuff but uh important work um and clearly there are important decisions that need to be made on behalf of the entire Community I want to thank our teachers students and families uh for a great start to 2024 um we have high hopes of going to school next week for the whole week um starting with tomorrow fingers crossed um we uh we wish everybody a Happy New Year we have a lot of uh exciting things in store despite um all of our budget uh concerns and a lot of things that weigh heavy on our hearts and uh the things that we know that we need to address in the in the coming months um we we are keeping our kids front and center and we know that that is uh where our Focus will be

147uh for the remainder of the school year and uh we thank our parents for entrusting us with their most precious gift which is their children and uh thank you very much that's the balance of my comments this evening okay board member comments Dr Chase can we start with you we can um not not too much to report other than I'm glad we've gotten back to the the school year um we had the uh CGS governing board meeting right before this meeting um and I have uh been elected again to be chair of that committee but we got to see um it was over at Colonial Forge and we got to see how about $200,000 of veneer lab equipment that was purchased for the five CGS no six CGS sites is used and one of the

148really nice things about this equipment is that um CGS teachers in the school are using it but they also teach non- CGS classes and they also go into other classes and do demonstrations with this equipment so um it's wonderful to have that resource shared across the entire Community um and that's all I've got thank you Dr Warner um thank you madam chair congratulations on your election and Miss guy congratulations to you as well I'm sure that it will be a fun year for all of you um for all of us I would like to thank all the um committee members who came tonight to the orientation and to the Foya training and who are volunteering their time uh we do rely a lot on our volunteers our community members who give us a lot of

149insights into some issues that we don't have expertise in um I think all of us have changed committee assignments this year so we're all set to learn new things um I just want to tell youall I'm from Western New York and we didn't never close the schools but um I did talk to many students this morning who were very appreciative of the snow days and had a lot of fun sledding and doing things that they don't ordinarily get to do so and even some of our board members went sledding they just they didn't invite the rest of us though um so I I think that I would like to welcome our our student board members Jolan and Jennifer and I really look forward to working with them and I think that you found remarkable students

150for our board both times thank you Miss Randall thank you and congratulations and welcome to you as chair and Miss guy is vice chair I'd also want to Echo the welcoming for Jolene and Jenny yes I'm happy to have had my turn um in January I well Happy New Year welcome back uh I got to attend the graduation ceremony of 32 students from the Phoenix Center it was probably the largest one I've been to I don't know like how that normally Well normally it's not that many um for me but um I brought my husband and he's never been and he it's it was a level of excitement and energy in the room because there were so many but it was just exciting to have our first class for Stafford County Schools graduated um for

1512024 so that was very exciting to go to I also got to be the judge of a spelling be I am pretty good at it I didn't I've never oh maybe I no I didn't I think I had a kid that did but anyway um I would like to thank um Howard Owen from Stafford printing he um sponsored Ed and paid for our spelling be it's so nice that we can have business partners supporting such a an old tradition of the spelling bee um I also want to thank Kim Austin and Stacy Johnson um for being judges with me Michael bowling he did a great job doing the pronunciation even though that was the job when we came to the first meeting he said gosh I hope that's not my job and it was his

152job and Diane Fleming it was her first time doing it for Stafford County schools and she did a really great job despite not totally feeling well um it was every child was well cared for um in fact at round seven was the final two and they went to round 18 so they it was really something to go back and forth between the two and um afterwards it was such a buzz in the audience uh and from staff members about how they once um even miss Boatright was talking about how she used to enjoy reading dictionaries in World Book Encyclopedia calling you out sorry um but anyways I think we really do need to um try to get a spelling be and and I would certainly sit in as a judge again for the staff here

153in central office it's pretty or even in the schools I think it's pretty cool how many of the adults that were really kind of excited and silly about um their La the um um opportunity they had to be spelling be participants um other than that I am just very excited to be working on a new committee that I've never worked on before um I think it's kind of cool that everyone was up to changing and trading and trying different things and and I think it's going to be an exciting year for us and I really um I'm excited I have a new counterpart um Mr Diggs and I have spoken a few times and um really excited about having a line of communication between the two of us and I was excited that Miss Gary

154gave me some time last week to have conversations with her and I'm meeting with Miss Allen um Monday to have conversations with her so we are in our CIP budget process we do hope the public gets involved with us as we go down this road and uh you know make sure that we're keeping um uh communication lines open so thank you Miss H well I want to congratulate our new chair and vice chair and uh wish you well get a lot of sleep and uh enjoy your snow days when you can um now I'm I'm I'm really looking forward to our our leadership on the board and um you know I would encourage this board to be positive um as we move into to the budget season it's always pretty challenging um but we we

155need we need to work with our counterparts um yes the the picture is dire and um things are are are not going well they're not going as we like them to but the bottom line is that we as a school board do not control our fin finances um so it is incumbent on us to make our case to the County Board that does control the finances and you to to impress upon them you know where the money's going how it's being used and why we need it and I I I think Dr Taylor's um budget is is a good start because he tells this story and and that's what we need to do we need to tell this story and this isn't about the school board and it's not about the Board of Supervisors it's

156about the Stafford County Community our parents our students our staff um and and the the the people that work in the schools and have the benefit of the schools I think the um the graduation that U Miss Randall referred to at the Phoenix Center is is an example you know it's an alternative that we offer because we are a good school system um but but we can't do we can't do it alone so um I I I think it's great Miss Randall that you were able to reach out to supervisors outside your district and certainly um you know I've done that on occasion but um you've encouraged me to try to to you know do that some more as well so um i' I'd ask this board to try to stay positive um and you

157know let's let's make our case and um and and do what we need to do to move the school system forward this year Miss holed so um first I just want to wish my mom a happy 82nd birthday so I I know she's not watching she's probably in bed by now no she's might be up watching hockey or something but happy birthday mom um I'll send her the link tomorrow and my sister will will show her that I said it but um anyway um and I definitely I wanted to welcome our new Representatives student representatives to being here because um they're going to be a lot of fun to watch um grow I think over the course of the year and and I wrote down a little advice for them because I uh which was

158buckle up because this ride just got real so um so hopefully they'll they'll watch this tomorrow and understand where that's coming from but I so tonight I had a hard I had a very hard time putting my thoughts um together for tonight's um comments but yet look at my thoughts are four pages long H I'm just kidding I'm kidding I'm kidding I'm kidding again um I'm kidding um I just I just want to remind somebody as we start this year and we look at all these things so when I got on this school board it was I I really struggled um greatly with this concept of the will of the board and it took a few votes before I shook that off and said I voted the way I voted but the board felt differently

159so I accept the will of the board but I promise you it took me even longer to convince myself um that I believed what I was saying I think eventually I understood why it was so recently we had a will of the board vote twice and since that vote things have gone down that I believe are the anti antithesis of the acceptance of the will of the board the ensuing problems that this has caed is the the ensuing problems have cost this County both time money and more importantly it blurs the lines of authorities and it's creating division that does not need to be here I'm not sure if we're really paying attention but our kids are really the ones that suffering as that are suffering as a result of adults who can't play nice

160together can't respect each other's differences and offer a way to meet in the middle it's really painful to me to watch adults just want it their way or no way at all now I'm not asking for anyone other than me to lose sleep about this but every time we put Pride before progress a child in this County loses every time we put emotion before education a child in this County loses every time we fail to take a step forward we push a child in this County backwards I for one am tired of watching it our kids have a right to live in learn in a county that have schools filled with well-paid Happy Teachers with heat and air conditioning and without another child sit sitting on top of them in their personal space our K

161our kids should not have to be sitting on buses for over an hour and we shouldn't have to worry about Crossing students over big highways and traffic times I get it I'm not naive I understand what the issues are I've said this before and I'll say it again decisions are being made that don't hurt me the board members so if they're being made despite this board it's not it's hurting the families that live here we have all fought for the right things given the information that was presented to us and the options on this the table yes these things change over time and sometimes quickly but our staff worked their fingers to the Bone to present us with as much information as we need to make impactful decisions so to have other members on any

162board chastise this information as being late or delayed when they have had to adapt pivot and adjust to unfair demands and unrealistic expectations um in an underfunded system is not fair I think we should be grateful every day that our staff remains so committed to the families and kids and staff are giving them given the unsustainable burdens placed upon them so every trailer not funded doesn't slap this board in the face it slaps the parents of this County every raise not approved doesn't slap this board in the face either it slaps a teacher every dollar not spent on education at this point in our growth slaps this entire County in the F phase and makes us less makes us a less than desirable place to live which impacts the beautiful life that we could all

163be having in Stafford County we build communities around school period so I hope that we will all come together and recognize that the schools represent the true future of this County Lou Holtz once said there is never a right time to do the wrong thing and there's never a wrong time to do the right thing so I am truly hoping that all involved will come together and do the right thing thank you thank you Miss guy can you beat that clock no I cannot beat that clock I don't speak speak as fast um first um I would like to thank uh the outgoing chair and vice chair for very interesting year um that we had and um I do believe that Moren and I will get support from from you guys when you see us

164veering off course or you know if we just make a newbie mistake um I know you'll tap us of course I'm going to be great but you know it's going to be a little wiggle room for that okay and um I also want to welcome our student reps I'm very excited to see what direction they push us in and um I know jolene's going to get more comfortable and I just can't wait for her to find her voice on the dis and let it rip um this weekend I got to be a judge at the American Legion oratorical can hardly say that um Constitution speech contest and um that's open to the public I didn't know it existed until last year when I got invited and I'm just just letting everyone know you guys should

165should come it was amazing um I'm a constitution freak I have my own pocket Constitution I pass them out at Christmas time to people I have extras in the back if anybody wants one U so to be asked to judge was like the highlight of 2024 for me I just I felt like I was I was Beyonce highl only 16 days I know but that was amazing I walked in there with my crutches and I was like I'm here and you know four scores and seven years well it's not the Constitution but anyway um I love stuff like that and so um the individuals it it wasn't just for Stafford it was like the district so it was a big deal Moren um the kid who came in second is in your District I told

166them to call you um so I just want to thank them for having me but again to um you know tell the community please come out and anyone any high schooler can can um participate you don't have to be you know in a a special club or a certain age just any high schooler um also the spelling be I I I would never judge that but I would watch it because my dyslexic itself would be like there but the numbers jump I would no so but I I would love for Stafford County to do that I used to do spelling bees when I was a child too I lost every single one but now we know why so so that's fine and um what you were talking about I definitely will make more of an

167effort to engage with the Board of Supervisors not miss Gary because I do talk to her all the time but um with other board members if they're willing to work with me I'm willing to work with anyone I am toxically positive so I will stay positive but we desperately need the help of um of the residents to to come out come to our town halls if you can't make it to a town hall if you call whoever which one of us represent you we're happy to go through the slide deck on the phone with you I just volent told y'all for more work I'm sorry but I know that we would all do it we Happ happy to answer any questions or email us call us because we desperately need your assistance um and getting

168us on the right track for our students so thank you I will try to keep my comments brief um I'm really grateful to be back I am very glad that Dr Warner and Miss Healey and Miss Randall are back I think we built a lot of great momentum and I would love to keep that going I think the last three people we brought onto this board were really slow on the uptake I'm just kidding but to get all those newbies on board that was me but so we can continue our our uh our uh momentum and working together I love working with this group of people and I'm glad to welcome our two new students on uh to that um I want to remind people to get involved and that if you're boarded in Stafford

169County uh there is so much going on in our schools uh I also wanted to remind people that we have something I like to call the golden ticket because I'm a Willy Wonka fan uh but if you are over 55 and a Stafford County resident you can come into central office or reach out to miss Peters and our Communications office and get a golden ticket which will let you into all of our theater Productions or our sporting events uh for free and you can cheer on our kids and see some amazing Productions and some great uh competition um I love going to all of this and coming up this weekend we have uh all district Bandon Orchestra at brookpoint in the afternoon I think it's at 2 3 3:00 3:00 and that um I'm looking

170forward to attending battle middle school battle of the books which is more my jam than the spelling be because I would also be outs spelled by the youngest of the group but B Middle School Battle of the books was something I participated in when I was little so I love uh The Nostalgia of visiting and that's at Drew on Tuesday um so I'm looking forward to being there I also um want to remind remind people about our upcoming events we will be seeing a lot of each other I hope to see a lot of you uh at our upcoming meetings um I'm ready to move on to oh one last thing I uh as chair cannot stay on Fab and I would can I ask Dr Chase are you available to come back onto Fab

171I don't you're not on a committee now um and I think our meeting is at the same time as it was so if you're still available Missy if you could take me off of Fab and put um Dr Chase back we're not having a February meeting so Dr Chase be the chair of fat is that how that works no I don't know how that works okay um well it takes me on nothing but oh I missed that part but yeah I can do governance then okay um I can we can okay no we can figure out the rest I just wanted to make sure that I wasn't breaking any rules by staying on um it's part of the joint schools um so standing committee reports Dr Warner would you like to do the report for

172governance I don't on my alphabet otherwise governance committee met on January 11th um we've been discussing the committee Charter trying to update it so that the charters for our committee structure have the same format and also are more reflective of what we actually do which is always a nice thing um we will be reviewing the student the school board code of conduct that should be ready for next month's meeting um and we've set a timeline for the superintendent's annual performance evaluation and um we are working on uh a school board evaluation which we have um added discussions to try to locate a facilitator so that the board can better reflect on the job that we do and also create a survey um we uh we're presented redistricting policy and the timelines with charts on how

173we do these things a lot of this will have to begin next year um planning for the attendance zones for high school number six naming and other duties will begin fall of 2024 which is very close um the administration principal and athletic director office manager will be hired um August of 25 and the timeline for the elementary schools is about a year before they open those are projected open um 2026 six so 2025 will be a very busy year um the amendments to policy 1108 were voted on tonight which this allows citizens to sign up in person prior to the start of the regular school board meeting and um that was first read on today's meeting and it will be adopted next month I think for Fab and governance Madam chair can I make a

174motion about our fabc governance changes sure and I move to remove you from fabc and add Dr Chase to fabc remove me from governance and add Madam chair to governance is there a second okay to vote okay push cck I imagine there's no more discussion because we've already discussed she has to either two of has to yeah yeah that motion passes unanimously I'm still giving the budget committee report update um We the finance and budget committee met on January 3rd uh we received a briefing from the office of constituent services and then we received our monthly update on student meal debt our meal debt balance increased about $115,000 in the month preceding the meeting we did receive a donation uh in excess of $3,000 that was applied to our overall debt um um we tabled

175our discussion uh about the committee Charter review and we did discuss board member compensation and expenses this meeting immediately uh followed a change in compensation vote that happened in an adjoining County so we wanted to um have discussions on the compensation that are given to the varying boards and commissions in our County and what is the process uh estab that is established by Virginia code that is followed that must be followed in order for salaries to be increased um should the boards desire we also had a pretty big conversation about our contingency reserve uh mostly to receive a briefing on our Reserve funds uh we only budget half a million dollars in our 2024 operating budget for as a reserve that is 0.12% of our overall budget we have 0 do in our 22 um

176in our 24 budgeted for capit capital reserve so uh thus far we our unplanned expenses that should have come from a capital reserve are $1.17 million and if you go to the fabc agenda there's a list of all of those expenses that we have had to put out to manage our properties some of these repairs and things we've that we can't put off that have happened uh that are emergent and that's what those um have total thus far just in 2024 uh the document here says our next meeting is scheduled for Tuesday February 6th however that meeting has been canceled so we will not meet until they will not meet until March okay last item uh 12.01 announcement of upcoming board meetings there are a lot of them on January 23rd at 5 o' we

177have our 7 on S joint work session with the Board of Supervisors regarding our Capital Improvement plan uh immediately following that meeting uh and the joint work session is here on school property this time uh immediately following that this board will have our budget work session on January 29th at 6m uh Miss Healey will have her budget Town Hall at AG Wright Middle School on January 30th at 6m um budget Town Hall at brookpoint high school that's um Miss guy and Dr Warner on January 31st is the Hartwood and gar Ville budget Town Hall at Anthony Burns on February 1st at 6 p.m. the budget town hall for Griffith's wide I'm sorry George Washington and Falmouth at the Grafton Village Elementary School on February 6th at 5:00 pm uh this board has a budget work

178session immediately following at 7 pm will be our public hearing at a special called meeting of the board on the 25 Budget on February 13th we have our work session and our regular board business meeting where we will vote to finalize our budget with that we are adjourned