001right any discussion all in favor aye um studies there's a whole bunch right here [Laughter] I didn't even catch that I did his leg it's not because like if that had been Alyssa it would have been like yeah how much time do we want to allow for this versus I don't think that the SBA is going to take long nope [Music] standards did we want to try to split the time I want to I don't want to over extend the first one and not have my son for Steph out of the way because it's really pretty simple after we just approved the agenda yeah the only change to the bsba is that all the positions I think we agree on with the exception of three and four and three I rewrote and Miss Sigmund helped
002me and we I don't I've Missy attached it she did but basically it's just ABC it's like we need to expand Broadband we need to have us and I like the way you put the get the state to fund these things so so if we all agree to that language because essentially legislative positions are the same we've just tried except it looks like it's something are you okay with it yeah consulted I think what Miss Sigmund and I discussed and I I think our recommendation to the board and I think this is kind of is that we should have our own buying Authority but the state should not mandate electric buses because for many districts they're not really a viable option that's how we're going to get them so if if that's the case if
003they link them then we just don't know that this this this particular position is unacceptable okay so no objection to that if not then we'll we'll put that on for a vote on the um and what about number three are we we're just asking for a change in the language so that it clarifies the legislative position because there's this like it grew like they keep adding things to it but nobody bothered to rewrite it right all right so we'll put that on for the action all right so if it's not Rewritten though we're okay with it as beginning yeah except that I take exception of the idea that there's a cost-effective way of providing education through the internet I just think that's a dumb statement well it's because it ties to another point on their
004right policy platform that they aren't editing so yeah next year okay all right so I mean and I don't care if you vote no on it yeah because because I think that ultimately it's really contingent on us all right so let's target about 40 40 program of studies in an equal amount for the steps okay okay all right so go ahead now you can get started now we've got them hi everybody hi there Michael bowling I'm the director of academic programs really excited to be with you tonight to talk a little bit about um the vision for secondary redesign and then also about the vehicle that kind of delivers that to the public and kind of establishes the vision and the delivery tool for it how to implement um so with this uh I just
005wanted to let you know that we're going to have three main sections first I'll talk a little bit about the high school redesign the vision there then we'll talk a little bit about the Middle School redesign and then finally we'll talk about the program of studies and the changes that have been made in the program of study so I'll stop after each section to answer questions about that that'll help us speed through it as well if if you can let me hit the assumptions and knock them out and then because I've anticipated a number of your questions at least I hope so so we'll start off with uh talking about URLs strategic plan goals and number one goal one talks about ensuring that in objective four talking about that every student making sure that every
006student has access to rigors rigorous and robust uh opportunities leading to high quality post-secondary opportunities and so in order to do that we're going to have to adjust to labor market needs changes we're going to have to look at modernizing our current offerings and then and then improve Logistics to maximize that instructional outcomes for students so we'll dive into the data here just a little bit so we'll start with looking at the growth rate forecast for Stafford County uh over the next 10 years this is some data that was provided by tomorrow which is a database that it's called jobs EQ and it's provided access is provided provided through the Department of Education to every school division for forecasting and uh really it talks about all the different areas the ones that you notice that's
007very far out with the 46.4 is Arts entertainment and Recreation and just so you understand that includes a lot of things including food service industry for some reason it does include like landscaping and groundskeeping as well as Fitness in a number of different areas so I think that that's a demand area in a lot of places but you see I'll highlight those those three kind of in the middle like looking at stem Health Care information technology and transportation as well as Educational Services of course when we look at the top employers for Stafford County and this is not including Stafford County Public Schools which is on this list but when you when you look here these are the major advertised jobs that have been advertised these are your major employers and so mantec if you
008don't know is kind of a national security organization as well as BAE Systems is in aeronautical Aerospace realm and so that tells us a lot about you know what our kids are going to be doing and what they're doing now and where our graduates need to be aiming towards we also wanted to reach out to high school parents and get their thoughts on the high school redesign and so we shared with them a number of questions and I believe that you received them in a superintendent's bulletin last week and and I hope you got a chance to take a look at that but what they did is they we provided a list of potential areas for academies and these are like specialty programs in high schools which we'll be diving into quite a bit in
009just a minute and they kind of decided on which word they're the ones that they thought they would have most interest if their kids were to do it all over again and so they also indicated a willingness to travel um like from to become a part of the the school to which they their program exists and not traveling during the day and that will also long term look at easing up some logistics for this County uh when it comes to Transportation now the students on the converse they said that they like to travel between schools now there that could be for multiple reasons but that is what they did Express the vast majority of response respondents did talk about having one transition only in ninth grade the other option was to do it uh to
010go to their Home Zone School in ninth grade and then transfer in 10th Grade to a specialty type of Academy so here's the vision in a real succinct nutshell is that every High School all six high schools would have a specialty program called an academy right now now we're not married to any of these names just so you know for planning purposes and the academies I'll on the next slide we'll talk about what those potential academies like might look like each Academy then would have certain Pathways multiple Pathways within it to different types of jobs and um which would provide the groundwork some of them would go straight to jobs some of them may go down to college and then on to a career but the academy would provide specialized programs in the area of
011focus the programs are those to which I'm referring are those that already exist that we may need to do some consolidation with or other things based on human capital and also space as well as a number of factors but those programs it could be one or more programs that would exist in school in addition to the academy and at this time uh we're thinking one Academy but it could be multiple if I mean it depends uh on on our planning so potential academies and these were shared with parents include a number of areas I think that you all are you know very familiar with uh including engineering and design that I'm going to be highlighting and and uh health and Health Sciences as well as Aviation and Performing Arts Visual Arts as well and they
012did a lot of ranking in there uh it quite frankly there were a number that Rose to the top but we're going to have to still continue our work with the labor market data as well as with our existing programs and licensure of teachers to look at how we can um best provide opportunities for kids based on their interest and also on you know the market that to prepare them to be great citizens uh so some of the examples of existing programs are these that you you all know about International Baccalaureate program the I.T staff program Commonwealth Governor schools as well as the automotive culinary and others and uh that's to clarify to make sure you understand what we're talking about when we're discussing existing programs uh as an example one if we were to
013have an engineering and design Academy at one of the high schools it might prepare uh students for different careers and you see some of those listed there civil electrical mechanical as well as um uh designers and Architectural engineers and that's just to name a few and there are certifications that would go along with those things as well as organizations that could support them and also provide Pathways for work-based learning when we dive into it just a little bit and to think about what a a student might experience we talk about different pathways through coursework that would be specialized come on in specialized coursework so you notice that it says Eda engineering math so it wouldn't just be necessarily an algebra 1 course it would be a specifically designed course that may integrate mathematics over multiple
014years not necessarily in the traditional algebra one geometry Algebra 2 format but it would really focus on applications that that are in the engineering area and those would be designed by teachers that were teaching it in conjunction with the business community and experts in those areas another example might be a Health Sciences Academy where we have Pathways to doctor nurse and right now currently we already do have CNA but this would be adding in an LPN and therapeutic services workers as well as Pharma pharmacists or Radiologists but it's it's a kind of a pre-med pathway a number of pre-med Pathways and there again on the right you see some certifications that may go along with this as well as support activities as well so next oh here here is the kind of the look at
015the coursework that might exist please note that um these again would have your specialized math and science programs as well as thinking about the language that uh these folks may serve other than English that that you know might be diving deep into the Spanish language but it could have some um also like a course like medical terminology could have some real Explorations within Latin so it might even be be able to utilize a Latin teacher that that can help with roots of of some of the medical terminology team in addition you'll notice in the second the far right columns you'll notice the 11th and 12th grade required field field experiences and work based learning where they get a lot of real field experience so they have a resume prior to leaving High School which will
016really help them go right into jobs uh okay so when we start talking about timelines I think it's really important that you note that it's not all just going to happen at once and it's not going to happen tomorrow however it will be happening in an expedited fashion for first rollouts in first implementation in with the ninth graders in 24 25. so the rest of this year would be engaging stakeholders uh more than we already have uh and also identifying those academies Pathways deciding which high schools doing asset mapping of what facilities and teachers we have the human capital behind it and then thinking about plans for consolidation and Logistics around that I think what's most important and I always remind the people that were when we're having these discussions is there are people behind
017these decisions there are human beings that have jobs that that live in neighborhoods because maybe they wanted to coach there and and and and you know like so there are a million things so we can't get too mechanical about it we have to have empathy in a heart and think about the individuals that are behind it and their licensure is really really important to make sure that there's a pathway here will we have to hire different teachers with different types of um uh you know licensure or or certifications maybe sure but we have a lot of great human capital here and a lot of experienced teachers so in 23 24 then we would continue to engage the stakeholders in the development process and then we would roll it out all the new academies through the
01824-25 program of studies then develop those Consul and Implement Consolidated application system right now we have some various ones for different programs we would try to do it through one application where you could fill out all the information and then choose the programs to which you would like to apply that's that's my vision for you and I think that that will help a lot of parents out as well as students and so then finally uh eighth grade students would then be applying for these academies in the fall late fall of 2024. for acceptance early in 25 and then the and then moving there and the idea would that that they would become a part of that school full time uh when they apply for one of these academies so it would not be traveling during
019the day which will greatly assist the School Division um in things like Logistics so uh then as we move forward we look at 24 25 and Beyond and I'll just cut right to it and say look at 2728 would be your first cohort graduates that would come through an academy that was right after the end of your strategic plan so it would show full implementation of your strategic plan that ends in 2627 and then of course we would be opening all of those Pathways the the so that that's the first time that the 12th graders would be in those really specialized types of courses and then moving on to graduation so with that I'll I'll pause at the end of this section to talk about the high school academies and Pathways sure this timeline I
020don't I guess I'm not connecting how we decide where where these things will live if when we have high school six not opening until 26 ish sure so then are we moving kids again in two years or are we not starting anything there until it opens or we would likely and and of course we're still in the plating phase but sure I would say that we would likely open the an additional Academy have other academies before it opens and then open up an additional Academy with additional opportunities for kids and I believe that's the 26-27 school year is that correct so we won't be necessarily removing people or reassigning that would be the last thing that we would want to do is moved it your last slide said that the 11th grade that the new
021high school would start with the 11th grade I think that's just all things that are happening in that year we open the schools probably should have been a separate bullet yeah I think that was a geographic thing so yeah you know all on one side yeah so that's just a follow-up one Miss sigmund's question so if we're going to open High School six with the 11th grade pathway courses no no no it should have been a third bullet yeah in the other schools it'll be 11th grade okay so so the high school because when we open High School six they're they traditionally would not have a senior year right so that would be a brand new class we would just be start yeah that was my question and I can make that change and we
022can repost yes yeah well that's a little confusing because I thought well are they only going to get two two years maybe I'll I'll put that up in parentheses after 26 27 the opening High School six yeah yeah I I certainly made that case so especially with your LPN programs requires um clinical experiences do we already have partners for this program or um also I'm wondering what other Community Partners can we rely on to help with work-based learning experiences that are going to go hand in hand with many of these academies great question and I what are those things in place to match this timeline yeah absolutely yeah sure um wish we would need outside partners for any Academy that we choose to start and have a pretty concrete articulation agreement between services that they
023would provide in conjunction with what we're doing there's a natural fit with any kind of computer science program we have articulated agreements between several folks cyberbytes G cubed and so forth and so on that that are a good fit and that's the kind of partnership that we're looking for we actually have a meeting tomorrow with Folks at the hospital to discuss just this um and and there I'm thinking one of these are going to require those Community Partnerships actually all of them will require a Community Partnership in some way shape or form and and even depending on the type of program that that we look at some may have more of a fleshed out component and some not for example if we were to go down the pathway of having Academy tied to Visual and
024Performing Arts some of those areas would be very natural with some of our Community Partners and the Arts some of them not as easily articulated in terms of Performing Arts so you know it's going to look different for each Academy but it is a necessity and an important component of this because so much of this is going to require our upper class students to have some type of work based learning experience for certifications these are tight timelines can we oh yeah so I'm I'm a little concerned about maybe getting a little more Community input I mean to only get five percent response from Stafford high schools pretty low um and what has me a little bit concerned is the the traffic situation in Stafford County and so I could see people picking their academies very
025much based upon the location so if I'm in southern Stafford and school is starting at 7 30 in the morning it might be very challenging for my child to get to school in north and so I might not look at the Academy in the north and I might be really upset that that Academy is up north and I can't really have access to that Academy even though it's the Academy I really want and vice versa for people whose kids to sporting events or whatever that finish up at 5 6 p.m and then have to try to get home during that traffic so so I'm just it's just a question of of the logistics of that I don't know what that would look like I think one of the bigger things would be that we would
026we would insist that students transfer to that school and that they would be a part of that school community so it and it was interesting to see the survey responses from the parents and they they were all on board with uh transferring to the school and the kids were like no no no let me stay with my friends um I I think you have a good point I think that that ultimately this will this will have to be a finite number of seats in each Academy just as our finite number of seats in our Automotive program and a finite number of seats and all the programs that we have um and I don't think that this is any different and uh much the same way there are programs offered in some locations that are favorable
027and others that are not it may even open doors to to kids uh in a pathway that they haven't otherwise explored um this is not and I think that this is kind of goes without saying but I think we should say it anyway this is not the rest of your life as a kid so if you choose a pathway of something that interests you that may be a great uh career pathway for you to start your your life as an adult or Life After High School or it may be one more thing that you decide later on that you don't like which also has value absolutely either way I think offering a portfolio of academies is far better than the alternative of not offering a portfolio just because you don't get your first choice um
028so one of the things you put up for your example courses for engineering was you were talking about the EDH Eda engineering math one this would not take the place of our traditional algebra geometry this would be and an and right and first of all I I'm going to go back to one thing that we're talking about business partners so we need to have the engineering firms and the folks at the table to talk about what are those experiences through High School especially in mathematics that they need to really best prepare kids for first for college that in an engineering school um so one idea and this is meant to give you an example of possibilities it could be taking those courses of Algebra 1 geometry and Algebra 2 and integrating them oh okay yeah
029it's just like you might teach them a little bit they would be allowed to get out of like a you know the advanced diploma math you know what I mean like that's where I was just oh no no absolutely not that it won't have any impact on that actually these classes in integrated classes are done throughout the state yeah um not as frequently as they are throughout the rest of the world the United States is actually one of the few that doesn't integrate mathematics and teaches it as algebra and geometry and algebra two however um I I think that that's a really important part that we will be meeting all graduation requirements and invisible thefting and all those kinds of things um but really the focus is going to be on applications that are co-developed
030with real engineers in the engineering program like for instance if you look on the far right in 12th grade the Statics course is something that people may not have heard of and and that's that's something that's based in in mechanics and and it's really it's a study of equilibriums and systems and it's it's a really important part about give and take when you're talking about architecture you know earthquake bending all those kinds of things that keep a building in equilibrium and so those are some just examples and so it may not come out looking exactly like this we just wanted to give you an idea of what it could what the future could look like that might be different from the traditional mathematics or science program studies that's interesting I like it um I'm just
031curious how much um this implementation would cost us above like what we're turning on now with our budget because I I think this is great I love this I hope this works out perfectly but I can't wait so the good news is you have a finite number of kids and a finite number of rooms with a finite number of adults and as we section off kids for classes that number is not going to change so you have kids that are going to go somewhere I will say that some academies have a greater expense as compared to others and I'll give you an example uh Visual and Performing Arts is not likely to cost you a a substantial difference in dollars than what you would normally spend but you may have a different output in terms
032of the focus on the curriculum you may spend a little bit more on materials and supplies but it won't be a substantial Personnel expense and I think that that is where in a budget where pushing 90 percent of our operating budget is Personnel expense that's really where you can look for cost controls but in an engineering program where we might be looking at Specialized equipment or things that along those lines we we may be seeking donations from Partners we may be seeking to purchase outright but I think that those are idea grants that and there are there are a lot of competitive grants that would support advancement in some of these areas one of the things that was on the list was had something to do with transportation and Aviation um well that's a very
033expensive uh undertaking but it's also probably one that's going to be most heavily subsidized because of national pilot shortages National drone shortages and everything else that kind of goes along with it and I think you ask probably a really important question this sustainability over years um I think it would be very easy for us to launch any one of the academies that we would conceptualize but sustaining it over time and making sure that we had the resources to innovate over time and that's probably the question that that we really haven't unpacked a lot is how do you stay fresh how do you stay relevant um in terms of meeting the the regional and state economic needs part of how we're financed in terms of federal CTE dollars is largely tied to how closely we're meeting
034some of some of the regional economic needs through the Carl D Perkins Grant so you know that that's that's a part of it um the good news is is that you know you're still going to have classrooms teachers and kids and we're going to still grow at whatever rate Stafford is growing at 6 000 students over the next 10 years in case anybody hasn't been paying attention for the last year um and we're still going to need to find room for them and whether they're in a program or not um you know that that's left to our imagination I have another question still again I think this is great I actually went to Academy when I was in school so it's great ideas um when the students apply this is like well into the future
035but I just hope there is some type of rubric or metrics where we're not just looking at A's and D's and you know like there's like a me out there who's smart as heck but just not really awesome at the grades um so I want this to be open for all students who are going to who who can take it seriously and thrive in so you know we're good yeah I'm sorry I actually my that's kind of where I was um the application process in terms of competitiveness and how like I know you're saying develop sort of the application itself but I have concerns about just making sure the accessibility of the program that it is there and that it is a fair process because it is true that you know testing wise I'm not
036sure what that measures so much um but I want I just want to know do we have a sense because you're saying limited number of spaces limited number of whatever so clearly it's a competitive application process so we're not the only ones that have ever tried this right right matter of fact we're the only large school system in Virginia that doesn't do that right that hasn't um you know even for Governor's School it's an application I just don't know so I just want to know how it is it's teacher recommendations it's an interview it's your discipline record so yeah you're looking at multiple data points for criteria but but how uh we would weight that criteria may also be program dependent too so you may have certain programs that have a different mechanism for weighting
037criteria um I would certainly hope that we would do a whole lot better than just looking at grades and test scores yeah um good news is is that there's a lot of models um to to go from one model in particular that Mr bowling has a lot of personal experience with when he was the head of code rva's Regional School is that uh all of the demographic character heuristics of the feeder School divisions needed to be represented at the regional code RBA School and that includes students with disabilities and that include English language Learners and that included a whole host of other characteristics that needed to be a part of the profile that fed into that some of our programs will definitely lend themselves to needing a lot of that creativity and of course I
038think student interest is probably the biggest driver of them all and and probably should have a greater weight but I think that that's a follow-up conversation because this doesn't even have your approval yet I know so so I have two more questions and the first one is I watches and working directly That Base do we have because they would probably also be best aligned with us to kind of talk about resources and living do we have a sense of outside of like our relationships with Mary Washington and all that stuff who we could partner with at the Collegiate level and provide feeder School opportunities for our kids absolutely yeah there's there's definitely um and I'll give you a good example of this uh for health and medical science programs in particular there are four-year and
039two-year institutions that do have direct feeder pattern opportunities okay um uh for a while I think VCU was doing a program where they had a guaranteed admission to their medical school if you met certain criteria for undergraduate admission very Innovative approach and being a part of a an academy style program was definitely one of the characteristics that they looked at um so I think that that was kind of kind of clever and a little different we do have a dual enrollment agreement for courses that that could be considered dual enrollment our dual enrollment agreement is primarily with German and for uh the the classes that can be offered vis-a-vis germana they're our agent for issuing dual enrollment credit there are a handful of credits that obviously couldn't be issued through German and we can go
040to outside sources to obtain that and that also kind of expands that and we're not relegated to just Virginia schools though right like in partnering with them or is that just easier as a it's probably easier yeah but I don't know that there's any hard and fast limitations okay we used to have an engineering course at Stafford High School that was through Rochester Institute of Technology cool um therapeutic services worker tell me again the therapeutic what's is it mostly PT otpt in those areas nothing in terms of Social Work and mental health so that's that's just the thing because we don't have a lot of employees available there yeah and the market will drive some of those decisions right on on our programming and offers cool all right thank you so uh having no we
041still have more questions I'm sorry yeah I just was curious how many seats are we thinking each school um it really would depend on the program uh I think that you could have a broader scope in some programs more easily obtained than others uh some of that also may be tied to Staffing for instance it may make sense to have a broader scope for a Visual and Performing Arts particularly the forming performing art side of things and I'll give you a good example of that and I'm not a banned person at all matter of fact don't have any musical talent but I do know that for instrumentation you may want a certain set of instruments represented in your band and so for instrumentation purposes you may be seeking a specific number of students same for
042orchestra same for chorus and so forth and so on but maybe less so on the visual art side and maybe less so in other programs you may be looking for a smaller group in an engineering program but a big group and a medical science program I mean but you have Vision I mean some some Target of what you're thinking are you thinking 30 per high school for a class are you thinking 60 for high school for a class I mean what what are you all I think you can go somewhere between the the 25 to 50 range per cohort per program okay in the school I think that that's a pretty reasonable Target for the size of our School Division and depending on the pathways it exist within that you know so that would be
043like five percent or ten percent could be both of the student body support your own document okay and I have a question how are we planning on exposing our middle school students to these potential features because you know right now I mean I'm I'm assuming that everyone in focus because is going to be you know picking out what they want to apply to but there's a lot of our students who may not have the the um you know the the home background to be encouraged to explore these or you know whether it's because of economic issues or language issues or or you know just not having you know parents that are you know have are in that position um so what are we going to be doing I mean I don't want this to be
044a program to roll out so that you know the people that are going to apply get it that you know what have you have you gotten into that sure yeah and the benefit is is that we have a lot of footprints from a lot of different places that that have done this work already and and there's some that we can adapt for Stafford um you know the good news is is that our our K-12 strategy for how we prepare Kids for Life After High School comes into play here in a perfect world we're building awareness of different career opportunities and different things that exist in this world for kids at the elementary level they should be exploring those career fields and those Pathways at the middle school level and planning for their life as an
045adult at the high school level so it goes from awareness to exploration to planning planning so in the middle level we have a required Middle School course career Explorations where this would be a pretty central part of that and try to put this into context for kids we also have a number of community engagement activities that we would also do that look a lot like fares we we did something very similar to this at Brooke Point earlier this year we obviously would enhance that that was a very well attended event where Middle School parents of all walks of life came to Brook point to learn a little bit more about high school programming we would of course amp that up in a pretty significant way to get engagement but but I think that that those
046are are some of the Cornerstone pieces but it's like until a kid can touch it and see it and and your point is not lost on us this is really how we achieve that goal in the Strategic plan of giving kids opportunities to be prepared and candidly there's a group of kids that will not want anything to have anything to do with any of this and that's fine uh because we we can still offer a high quality uh diploma-bound education that still prepares kids with life skills and the things that they need to be successful after high school but for the kids that do do find some interest and want to hyper specialize as long as they're enrolled in this program they can attend the school and go to this program and be a part
047of this class work and you know need me go to a different school they're not enrolled in that program they would go back to a home school if it was different than if their Academy school is different than the one that they enrolled in the last question is have you made an assessment of the impact of these academies with our existing programs because I'm assuming there's students in the in the IB program or the Governor's School or some of our other programs that may you know who wouldn't normally gravitate toward that that may want to go to an academy so do you expect there to be a a change in the um the other programs population yes it's a short answer um yes and and it's hard to predict um what will be um there's
048definitely an interest in exploring different things and I think kids gravitate to what's available um and and try to find things as to what's available I don't think it's our goal to to ever cannibalize a program we don't have any any designs to to kill or cancel or reduce any program but maybe to enhance and build build elements in if we wanted to go hard into computer science well we have several different things that have a computer science event there's there's nothing to say that those things could not could not be a part of that and could not morph into that and be a little bit more robust as a result of being connected with a bigger Academy program so I think that there's the aim to to augment or enhance not necessarily to remove
049or to cannibalize any program but we do anticipate that there will be an impact the question is what and how much because we've looked at the Palestine consolidating some of our Governor's schools right now we've got three governors schools and you know that's a possibility if we're going to be adding academies we may want to look at where we've got the the other programs I'm not making any suggestions but you may be a chance to to realign that's absolutely part of the whole planning process and and that'll be happening this year uh examination of the impacts of all all potential changes that's why I refer to an asset mapping of you know what are the programs that are existing what are the facilities what are the physical pieces that are in those facilities equipment-wise but
050then also looking at the transportation impacts and also the human capital remember our our teachers you know and thinking about that but um that's a perfect actual question for the segue into the next section if we want to go there but unless you all have others I have one other thing I want to say just as somebody who is married to a computer scientist and has a daughter who's a computer scientist I will just say I'm extremely skeptical about you being able to staff that program just given that the University of Maryland cannot staff it's a science program and various other universities have the same problem I'm just going to say I'm extremely skeptical especially given the employers around here who will pay so much more money than we can afford to pay for that
051so just my two cents worth not just that program yeah we don't want to over promise to students that we're going to be able to deliver programs in the academies that we're not going to be able to to do um what what does the board want to come back on this you know in terms of you know scheduling or proposal or I mean I assume you know this is an introduction to us is there anything that we want to ask to come back for the next step or as we might have finished the rest of the presentation before we make that decision well but I'm talking about the academies the next one Cemetery it may make sense to um to come back with a follow-up in um the late winter early spring and then with
052this some of this a little bit more fleshed out there's a little bit more data collection and Community engagement that needs to happen but this is as you pointed put it an introduction to a possible shift in how we might provide different opportunities for kids so if if that suits your time schedule I think that that might be a good good Next Step okay and so we're now officially into our part two of the meetings so do we want to well I mean obviously we want to continue with this but do we want to agree that we may have to put Staffing standards off until the next month it's something we can you know start on at the uh at the retreat but we we're not I don't want to shortchange these topics I saw
053the Staffing standards in the Fab C but the rest of the board I mean you know three of us have and four of us have not so I'll let the other four make that decision I'd like to get an overview of the Staffing standards all right well how long do you think that Mr bowling this part yeah we think we can roll through all right well let's roll through this and then we'll get to at least the beginning of the staff and together so the questions about the criteria and about providing opportunities for students leads right into what we're gonna what I'm calling kind of the middle school section with redesign it's about creating a pipeline that prepares kids and I'm going to start with talking about your goal too about high expectations in objective
054three of goal two was that that Stafford County Schools will lead the Region 3 and Northern Virginia in academic performance and the only way we're going to be able to do that is it and to also prepare them for these academies is to make some pretty major changes to the middle school and that's going to include um realigning our our electives and the types of electives to align with those High School Pathways to better prepare them it's also going to be providing access to Algebra 1 for all students in the Middle School by the time prior to high school and then that access to additional high school credits while they're in the middle school and so as I dive into that just a little bit first we're going to look at the current data again
055and so you can see here that currently there's 42.4 percent of our grade 8 students that are currently enrolled in algebra one or geometry and that breaks it down just a little bit further and then you see that the pipeline has changed after this current year and that is as a direct result uh in my opinion of of covet and changes in learning loss and so in order to mitigate that what we're going to have to do is make some big changes the other piece of data here and I'll dive deep into that in just a minute but we also wanted to get uh thoughts and feedback from middle school parents on electives uh and so we dove into this a little bit and the vast majority of parents indicated that that they wanted to
056have their kids to have multiple uh electives during the Middle School um actually that is two-thirds of parents indicated that their student did not receive some or all their preferred electives that is a correction that was made that's two-thirds of the parents didn't feel that they got that their their students got what they needed so we needed to make some changes there uh and so uh we'll be talking about that uh in the next couple slides and then over two-thirds of parents indicated that Middle School courses should be aligned with high school programming yeah then they they indicated their level of preference when it talked about some different areas and you can see the alignment of some of those with some of the high school Pathways that were offered up as potential Pathways um and
057these uh are kind of the highest uh ranking five so here are the things that our next steps that we need to do is number one we need to align elective courses with the high school academies and programs we need to we've got to work on the division curriculum to prepare all students to take algebra one prior to high school but I I will tell you that I took on this challenge of getting all students in algebra one um back in 2005 in Chesterfield I was given that charge by the superintendent we did it Over a four-year period and it was it worked very well it's still in place and you still have around 90 percent of students in Chesterfield County that are successful in algebra one prior to leaving leaving the middle school and
058so I have some experience in that area and and can anticipate some of the challenges which jumps down to that last bullet which is it really takes a lot of professional learning opportunities for teachers and help them working with those students with the new curriculum but that new curricula is going to have to start changing you can't just accelerate kids artificially can't just say all of a sudden you're going to take this grading skip six then start seventh so what it needs to be done is is done through an integrated fashion that starts in grade four and so it would be ramping up the the curriculum in grade four and in grade five and we'll be starting that next year um for the uh the the next year's sixth graders coming in uh that and
059and better prepared them for a little bit higher level of sixth grade math so that you're not just adding extra content on top of the sixth grade math curriculum that exists now so it's about integrating it slowly but over a longer period of time and then providing more Recreation coursework uh to better prepare students for those opportunities and giving a high school opportunities and then giving them High School Credit and so we're gonna we're starting with this and so you'll see reflected in the program of studies this year is that we have a net of net of minus six electives so we've uh in a sense eliminated six electives from the opportunities for our middle school students and you can see some of those that were just elected eliminated outrights and then those that were
060kind of Consolidated so the content from some would be Consolidated into others well it sounds like we offered too absolutely correct definitely explains why I'm in the minority and my kids always got what they wanted because they wanted World languages and all of these all of these are what my kids yeah so my kids in two of these right now and so uh in in hearing past conversations about middle school and also about hearing from parents we made these changes uh principles were very proactive in working with Dr Grider on coming up with a list to eliminate and that is just the beginning of the the realignment of all the Middle School electives to to lead to the pathways one thing that we did add though in the past years we've only offered Spanish one
061basically a part one for seventh graders that will now become a full opportunity to take a full Spanish one in seventh grade and then Spanish two in eighth grade so two high school credits potentially potentially just in the world language area okay right and then in addition to that algebra one and or geometry in the in the middle school so that's four you know so there's some real possibilities here that will open up the doors to get back to your criteria question so one of the biggest barriers to higher level programs is typically Algebra 1 and 8th grade yep have you had it Governor schools across the state I used to be the director of Governors schools across the state and that is one of the most common criteria that are in those programs whether
062or not the areas of focus of the governor school was in algebra or are we in mathematics or technology so it is seen as more of a common barrier um that won't necessarily be the case with all of our academies but what we want to do is prepare them to apply for any of them if that were to be available so um to try to move I mentioned grades four and five uh curriculum changes I talked just a little bit uh Dr Taylor talked about the pathways for Success course for seventh grade students will we will have to revise that as a matter of fact we're working with a organization called Json learning and and we've um we actually have entered into a grant opportunity a go Virginia grant for them to develop new content
063for that course engaging content that I think will be really exciting as an addition to that course and then again we will have to invest a lot of time and effort into providing professional development opportunities for our teachers to bring them along with us and help them know how to best address the needs of all students and that includes uh if we were to make changes to middle school schedules because we may have to increase instructional time for mathematics then then we need to make sure that we're providing professional development that focuses on effective use of instructional time and not just more time for homework and so this is a really important thing to me that was one thing that uh when I did this in Chesterfield I will tell you that it was I
064put a lot of effort into what and how things were being taught in the schools and about bearing and in student engagement and not just about two lessons per day because you had more time it's it's about how do you do something that's really coherent that makes sense and applies content so it sticks and and um not just babysitting homework times that's that's ineffective right and so we will be putting a lot of effort into that um so the timeline here so this year what we'll be doing is is getting more feedback we will be looking at revising that middle school schedule in mathematics and actually Dr Taylor alluded to it last week in the uh bulletin and then looking at continuing to look and reviewing that Middle School elective alignment with the high school
065Pathways revising that math sixth grade curriculum for 26 27 remember that the fourth and fifth grade curriculum will be changed for next year to start the pipeline to match up with those kids that will be 8th graders uh uh I mean sixth graders during 26 27 and then also again providing that professional learning that's that's important now I'm gonna I can stop there pause or we could do these last two slides and then we could take this as a whole package the last one is the this last little section couple slides is about the actual program of studies this document this new document here and so you let me know what you want to do you want to take questions on the middle school and yeah how are we going to get the math teachers
066that we need I mean fundamentally we are already not recruiting enough Math teachers and I I have absolutely I think it's important to emphasize the math and get kids to the point where they are taking algebra one in middle school and they are ready for high school but I don't know how we're gonna how are we gonna get them hang tight for Patrick's staff standards presentation that uh we'll answer that question in a nutshell I will tell you that having time to plan ahead which we do because the biggest challenge is getting qualified teachers to teach Algebra 1 during day three year so we have a little bit of a Runway to get there so that means that when we're hiring people we're looking at more people that have a secondary endorsement of the add-on
067endorsement for algebra one and or the secondary endorse the full secondary endorsement so we start doing that now and then you have the people in your building and then you realign them and one of the ways you could say is hey in two years you're going to be teaching all algebra one because we're going to have a a lot of course sections in that and that that excites people you know I mean so they get excited the other way is to also offer opportunities through tuition reimbursement and others and to have cohorts and to take our existing teachers and prepare them to take the practice exam which adds on the algebra one endorsement so tonight you back off with that so if I'm just trying to like I'm not the Staffing person so if if
068I have currently because I asked Dr Taylor this and currently I'm nine FTE short for math in Middle School if I'm going to 90 minutes every day do I need more Math teachers or do I have enough Math teachers you will need more math so I'll need more Math teachers okay so so I know that that given that I'm getting a hundred more students in middle school next year I'm actually I need 10 Math teachers more than what I have for next year and then if I'm going to 90 minute every single day I need even more than 10 right okay I'm just just trying to make sure I I've got that in 2005 when I did this in Chesterfield it was the exact same issue and and it worked well I mean I think
069the thing that that you know as a parent who had a child with no algebra teacher for 12 weeks and he just had a different sub every week um it was kind of a nightmare and what I hate is the idea that some students will get a great math teacher every day for 90 minutes and some people will have a long-term sub who does not know how to teach math and that's my fear so I'm just you know we have that now yeah we do we do but we don't have science more um my question is what is the process for how are we tracking that the pathways for Middle School elective to high school programming like what is our mechanism for checking that now because I'm living that process so I and I you
070know I hit a speed bump totally fine um but it was a poor match and I reported that as a parent but I want to know how we are checking are we getting feedback from students are we checking with guidance counselors and like everybody who took this is now dropping it because they thought it would be X and it's y like so I think you got a number of factors and Dr Chase has probably identified the number one uh which is that the there might be incongruity with the teacher and the student match but I I think that one of the bigger changes that you'll observe in this program of study is that it's an actual K-12 program study and not uh high school then a middle school and I don't think we've ever even
071brought the elementary to the board for consideration before so that even that's new but we think it's important to give the some continuity between what the parent sees from the beginning all the way to the end and make sure that we are aligned with that so I I think that there's a couple of feedback loops that what you're suggesting do make a lot of sense that we that we do need to do like this isn't a quality program at all a quality question at all my daughter took digital art for example two years loved it taught but it's taught by an art teacher and then she gets mapped to a course in high school that uh you know the course name sounds like it would be a next logical step but it's really a business
072class and she's like wait a minute I took this because I like art and I like doing that digitally creative Outlet not future Business Leaders of America membership status um nothing wrong with either path it was just an unexpected you know connection and wasn't what we were looking for um so I would just like to save everybody the hassle of having to transfer students based on expectations um and of course we're not the ones sitting in those seats so I want to make sure that we're getting those connections from you know that feedback from the students or at least from the guidance counselors who are like I hear all the time that this wasn't what they expected when they took this class in Middle School in this class in high school not based on quality
073or education but based on ART versus business or you know this is more math when I thought it would be science or whatever that looked like so will other languages still be offered in Middle School certain Latin Latin exploratory is like a pre-latin one um that was literally exploratory's gone right like one is still going to be available the last eighth grade or something yeah no changes to the existence to you know first seventh grade students and German Germans still offered Latin um Spanish I don't know French is still still friends used to be old French used to be and then I thought it came out of school I think some schools for the middle school students who want to take the foreign language it's been literally years since I had kids at the middle
074school so I don't remember oh I don't know if the qualifications for that change do you still have to have like a certain test score and you have to have like you know maybe being honors English or I know that was awesome it's interest-based yeah and I'm honestly shocked it was like in in the top five but so low because that's the only like my kids are in like the UN like the unpopular classes I guess but they only got like their third choice in foreign language that was which is fine but you know Spanish is very that's the hot ticket in Middle School how is Middle School going to look other than the six classes going away net six classes going away how is Middle School going to look different next year I mean
075I've seen this build up but you know I have a very unhappy place about our middle school program sure and so in addition to the net loss of six uh Middle School electives we're also looking at the possibility of limiting electives for sixth grade students so that they're more likely to get their electives as well as reviewing and revising all of the offerings in the Middle School limiting further because we only had 10 choices for they'd be more likely to get them if you so starting next year we'll also have fewer students that are in intervention courses which opens up the door for them to take um because those are you know required electives uh you know based on learning laws and so you know we're trying to get students out of that program so
076that they can be more into their elective courses so so math would be 90 minutes every day English every other that decision has not been made every other I would say for start but we we also know there's a tremendous amount of learning loss right so there there are students that are going to need to be targeted for additional support writing is such a is such a hard thing that you know coming out of elementary school it's not really great in the middle school and not to have it's very hard for a teacher to develop writing every other day in addition to their reading and they're you know I just I just feel like that's a lot to put on a teacher and I I understand targeted students will get can get it every day
077but I just don't feel like we're robustly addressing a writing issue that we have and it carries into the high school it's a huge frustration in the high school but I can tell you you know having put three kids through my oldest did a lot of writing my middle not so much my youngest didn't write his first paper in Stafford County ever until he was in 10th Grade that's ridiculous so I mean I think if we're going to continue doing this every other day there needs to be something in the writing room because it's just not good what also depends on the school you're at and the teachers you have sure because if you look out and you've got those good teachers or Librarians or whoever's going to help you learn but they have a
078lot of course to to try to teach and if writing isn't something being tested or pressed or you know otherwise utilized it's it's very very tough but I will I will also say though that 90 minutes every day some children can be unbelievably poor well I don't say it has to be 90 but I eat to make it I mean you can make it 45 minutes every day it doesn't have to be 90 minutes every day getting it to a 45 minute no one says that you know right now we teach our middle schools like it's a junior high yet all of our middle schools are labeled Middle School right so I mean we can go to middle school and just put them in just like they came out of Elementary School in small chunks
079you don't need to send them right into sixth grade at 90 minutes right we can send them into sixth grade and divide their junk their day to 45 minutes of English every day and I'd be a better success so I'm with Dr Chase on this one like 90 minutes of math for me would have been terrible yeah that would be unbearable because and we're going back to that it's so hard for me to process the concepts anyway that smaller bits of it in you know over the course of time by long bits I I would probably zone out and sleep um because it's just it's I I'm too busy fighting the math content in my head to focus on learning anything after that point um I just have two questions I feel very concerned about
080the statement that we're competing with Nova without being guaranteed no for funding anyway and and so when I when I saw this up here and I get where Region Three I get that we're on the tip we're tacked on the tail end but but I have to know if this message is getting out to everyone that signs a check for us because this is literally our reality right now I mean we are looking to increase our academic achievement across the board for all our kids to be competitive with Nova which is now our reality but we're still at the do they call it Silva no I'm just kidding but we're still at the southern Central um pay ranges or money ranges so um I mean I think we have to put it out there to
081the universe so that we can get a little bit of it back but I'm really cognizant of that funding challenge at this point in the game just because we do have sort of this Albatross hanging on us to compete with the Prince Williams and the Loudoun counties and all that um so that was more of a statement than that question what is the highest math that kids get in the middle school right now geometry management but only 17 of them yeah yeah well right right so but yeah it's an office yeah well and that was my other question so this these percentages that you have are Stafford County school not across Virginia all right and so there are there are schools that offer Algebra 2 in middle school we have one student currently taking algebra
082two yeah in eighth grade yeah but this is after we cut back the math yeah we were we were at 90 minutes right and then we said oh no we need more fun electives and choices so clearly we need more math so I'm glad to see there's not a lot I mean there are a lot of engineering electives but there's only like one math elective that I can think of off the top so even if like if you're like me and you want your child to go back to having math every day it's it's easier to get like an English elective every day than a math elective every day so so I'm sorry my next question is just so I'm sorry just to focus on you said so right now we have a strong need
083for the remedial math and the interventions you said they're going away is that as a result of trying to revamp the fourth and fifth grade curriculum I said the intention of intervention courses is to help bring them back up to speed so that they are kind of released from that intervention course so that they're back on track right so just okay our hope that over time what we'll see is a decrease in the need for remedial amount services at the middle school level by realigning the fourth and fifth yeah material math for three or more years that is that is a problem I just want you all know I didn't think remedial math my first year college program um but so okay so this is the goal to have the fourth and fifth grade math
084programs on and now how how does this to our easel students and our um our disadvantaged students and I was one when it came to math but how does that translate in terms of the need for You Know Math teachers in the fourth and fifth grade let alone the sixth seventh and eighth grade it would not change the need for Math teachers in fourth and fifth grade they can still teach the content uh that are in grade four grade five it's it's based on the the grade level that your your licensure is based on the grade level that you're teaching okay yeah so it's not like we need more we will have to train teachers on the new content of courses okay when we're integrating it Hands-On ways to best deliver that content to students
085so that it's most uh as accessible to every other student including economically disadvantaged El students right and what's good for those students is good for every student well that's you know so um so one of the questions uh the club programs I was looking at in the this may be for later I'm not sure was you had Innovation Studios stem foundations and engineering and design and if you read the descriptions of the three of those they're very similar so to me why are we offering three different very similar classes with three different titles in the Middle School it just doesn't I don't know yeah it is something that has we've started those discussions with middle school principals that was on the list these were the the six that you saw there were the most easily
086identifiable because there were questions about CTE and licensure and with certain ones of those classes so we need to hammer that out before and it could be that we could see a change between now and the final version that comes to you where we may be able to eliminate further but they're also very popular like amongst the students that like they call it one thing but don't have it three different types that are it would be you know that make it a little bit easier to have four sections of one thing then yeah but if you read the descriptions they're very similar to me it's just like you're expanding a program but you're not because it's the reasons when they started digging into it they noticed some there were some pretty big differences between those
087courses I cannot talk about those specific in in those specifics right now I would be pissed to do that however that's why the principles weren't ready at that moment when we were making these decisions to eliminate you know they wanted to make sure that they're honoring the teachers and the programs and make sure that we're not um actually putting students in at a disadvantage to a decision made too quickly um one thing I wanted to add that you might be happy to hear is that the whiten wisdom program that was implemented a few years ago does require daily writing and a major writing assignment every quarter thank you I keep going back to that but this is all going to be going to be tingent us being able to attract and retain the highly qualified
088teachers absolutely because if we don't have the teachers none of this is going to count I think that's a great point but I also think bringing an academy academies to Stafford County also makes us more viable since we're the only one in the state that's not doing it for large or large I was trying to say what he said I messed it up but um because I I also think that you have Educators I mean Educators aren't doing it for the money they're doing it because that's where their passion is and they're going to want to be a part of that either the building up part which might be in fourth grade or fifth grade up until high school or being actually one of the people who work at the Academy I think that it
089will help us attract not a ton right but I do think that's going to give us just one more thing on our Pro list for Stafford County like why would they not go to Woodbridge or somewhere that's one more thing maybe not for Liberty but you get what I'm saying is one more positive yeah well we might not have what's called academies but we have special programs I mean I don't want to put the idea out there that we are deficient in our offerings I mean we have a lot of specialized programs that right now we are transporting students among the schools so they may not be these academies but they are programs that some of the students start in the ninth grade and go through I support the academies but I also don't want
090to overcome this I want to make sure that we you know meet Dr Chase's you know challenge of being able to staff them before we offer because every time we have a program of studies we have an asterisk that goes out that this is dependent on the interest and the ability to step so I would want to make sure that we are confident we will be able to staff these programs that we are going to be to be offering and there's another point and this is you know my parent had I think the fourth grade may be too late to get started in elementary school I think we have some serious challenges for our students going into Middle School into math and maybe fourth and fifth is enough but it might not be and I
091would look at that whole Elementary School math program to make sure because if you get into the the fourth or fifth grade even then it may be too late I can't tell you how many school board members have had children that they've gotten tutoring and math in Middle School it this is not unheard of Elementary element but it's also Elementary what do we do in K through three to get them ready to be receptive to that through yeah my personal observation is too little too late by the time you get to the fifth grade to catch up on math and then you're thrown into middle school if you're behind when you get middle you'll never get to it in high school and um as a matter of fact the the standards of learning for mathematics
092Statewide are changing this year so there's new ones that are going to be adopted in 23 this is the perfect time to adjust curricula to better meet so while we're looking at drafts right now from the state and that's where our content specialist uh Kathleen feels that she we can do it appropriately in fourth and fifth but we can certainly look at additional opportunities in the grade three process I mean start early so if you'll uh yeah if you don't mind if I can just wrap up with the last two slides um the main reason that we're here is because next month you're going to be receiving this document that's in my hand this 186 page document um and uh this will be for your of your approval next month here on the slide you'll
093see some of the the pieces that are really important that changes to this particular studies is um first of all we're starting some of the logistical updates that Implement that vision of the high school meaning uh for the stat and GCS programs we're going to be asking that ninth graders next year only they get transferred to the high school that holds the program that does not impact any current high school student and I think it's really important to say that to you all and to the public is that it will not impact travel for any of the current high school students at all um but that will start the the change in the logistical piece with travel secondly we're adding add adding in sections that provide more information on local and state required assessments mostly
094on the state side it and then as well as Elementary peace there's never been the K5 or pk5 piece in the program of study and so we've now added that to provide parents with a one page or it's actually two per grade level that tells them what are the things the general areas that are going to be studied in in grade three for instance um and then we also provided a pertinent to your conversation and governance the other day uh some additional information about the standards-based Ripple I saw that reporting and I hope that that that graphic helps address some of your questions and maybe the questions that parents might have about the standard space grading but of course nothing beats meeting with parents and really talking through it and so I don't want to
095Boardwalk to that topic but so because I want to roll on but we uh definitely it reflects the deletion of Middle School electives uh and adding uh rigorous High School courses uh that I'll enumerate on the next slide but you'll see that we've also consolidation of all of these two documents into the K-12 whole picture of what does Stafford County offer uh all students I think clarification I so a number of these two these two bullets represent a lot of work in editing and also just clarifying things uh and to make sure that parents are better informed about course enrollment transcription graduation requirements all those pieces and graduation requirements change from time to time of course and so we updated uh even resources and things in there that and we've now changed all written links
096into actual hyperlinks and by the way just if you're going to be reviewing that over the next the table of contents when you hover you can actually jump to the section you don't have to scroll through 186 Pages it'll jump you through uh using the table of contents and then finally uh we we did in World languages at a a major new addition is of the ability to word credit through demonstration of proficiency through what's called stamp testing and so students if they are already influent in a language we can give them a credit for it if they just have to pass this test and so that enumerates uh most of the changes I will say that the high school course editions that you would also be approving are the Spanish one for seventh graders
097leading to Spanish two for eighth graders next the following year just so you know we're not just dropping those kids that were in part A or part one of Spanish one need to take part two next year to make sure it's logical then we're going to be adding uh three other courses uh rigorous courses advanced placement precalculus dual enrollment precalculus as well as English 10 AP seminar and so uh with that wraps up the changes I really do encourage you to roll through this you'll see that there are some page breaks when uh that need to be adjusted and we will certainly get to things like that um when things get turned into PDFs they don't follow the same rules if you just print them I gave Thomas A couple of my things after I
098scrolled through some of that question why is that first bullet it's a high school credit bearing course but it's a middle school course right and it's so it's not an outright Edition it's a it's an addition for seventh graders access to that course well I guess the question from you then will we be adding further Advanced Spanish in high school because we have yes yeah oh sure I I get it but I wonder if that was the ultimate goal it does considered the Spanish one in Spanish too are they considered under their High School Credit courses but aren't they Middle School courses if we're often them in the Middle School yeah it shouldn't be honest I'm just trying to you're right make this logical for me and those those courses are already approved by the
099board they're just now being offered at an earlier and so I just decided to highlight it while I was hiding highlighting the other courses talking about rigor and the reason for pre-calculus is that because we don't have enough students taking calculus you already offer pre-calculus analysis yeah but offering it for an AP credit or for a dual enrollment credit is a new Option so that's another another opportunity same content but yeah it's the opportunity to get college credit correct so are they going to pay for those courses uh for the for the dual enrollment precalculus that depends on which program yeah yeah we we actually have an articulation agreement I think they're I think they're good with the dual enrollment there's no additional costs right and for the AP classes only if you take the
100AP test so that is going to gonna get away with math analysis there's a name change if you still be math analysis you still can have a math analysis of course that's still of course in your catalog and that's still a viable option for kids but kids who are trying to pursue a b or BC calculus it's probably better that they take a pre-calculation I hear you I'm just asking my kid took a calculus AP calculus but they took math analysis first yeah and I was just what I heard from the CGS folks because they they were telling us about the AP pre-calculus class and they said it pretty much just complete really fit with their math analysis course okay it's just now you can get a credit and if you're not mathematically inclined then
101maybe you can I have to take math in college without having to deal with the calculus thing okay and if you're not you don't understand you have an opportunity to take it so I like that yeah no pressure uh Patrick you got 10 minutes buddy yeah the question is let me let me ask the board do we want to take our break now and then we can eat through the presentation yeah and then that way we can roll until like 6 40 45. oh wow okay well I mean I I take five minutes go get your dinner let's get that and let's see I mean we're going to have to just have the overview there is no way we're going to have it we're not a meaningful discussion on this yeah oh thank you your
102presentation um go behind each of the specific proposals and I really want to emphasize this is a proposal it's been it's been informed by a number of people okay because I realize I'm sorry no that's fine it slowly is mine I accept full responsibility I'm just saying talks too much in class so excuse me so my attention span songs I do want to emphasize this is a proposal right this is uh not something that is coming as an upbound vote anything like this because it's something that has a lot of implications uh and something that we've taken very seriously and the preparation and that we want them forward to have the opportunity to take seriously as well it's something that a lot of people have had the opportunity to give input on our subject matter
103experts in our in our school leadership team um and uh it's something that we're particularly excited about because the time is right because of where we are with the Strategic plan uh development because of the tremendous work that Mr White has done with our enrollment projections and because of the five-year Vision that we're trying to set out both the strategy plan with the budget and now to align Staffing to that as well the big things that I want to emphasize for why we do propose that the board formally adopt to the Staffing standards for the period aligned with the division strategic plan and I know that Ms Healey will remember that a number of years ago the board did adopt Staffing standards but it has been six and a half years since the last time
104that standards works out yet and I don't think we've met them yet we have not we have been working towards them yes um because they were cools yeah um and I think that's a different thing we want to emphasize is the difference between standards and guidelines um we we want to propose standards that are commitments um and the emphasis that we want to make here is uh taking a enrollment-based formula in the approach for school-based Staffing to improve the transparency so that and predictability and the alignment of our staffing uh the transparency because a school can look at their enrollment and be able to figure out on their own selves this is what I should be expecting um the predictability because the outstanding projections that Mr White has been able to produce the last two
105years would enable us to be able to give schools their Staffing projections much earlier and the alignment to make sure that as we've made these revisions that they are aligned to our strategic plan and to better service to our English language Learners to our students with disabilities to remove some burdens from classroom teachers and to put us in a position to be able to hire more effective teachers um on the transparency piece one of the things I want to emphasize University mentioning and we have not met those uh standards that were adopted in March 2016 as of yet and one of the challenges is that if I were to say well which ones of them have we met it's a good question because the budgets that have been adopted over the last seven fiscal years
106don't specifically name which ones of those standards printed out so that's why we have Staffing cool not Staffing standards the challenge that presents is that it leads to a great risk of inequity to a individual School individual program comes makes proposal says we would like XYZ if the title is right that might happen it might not but it reduces that transparency and the predictability so um changing to an enrollment-based projection gives us the opportunity to improve that um you'll have the opportunity to go into the details at the board retreat um a couple of things this will look like a lot more change than it actually is um in fact when you go through the details on the presentation you're going to see a lot of places where we say no change no change no
107change no change um even in the areas where we are proposing a change the overall net FTE impact uh in some areas it goes up another area goes down and it starts to kind of work out in the wash uh in some ways um there are there are increases a lot of them are offset by other costings um and what we would propose and all of this is information you'll have the chance of diamond it's also not something that you have to bite off all at once uh while we are proposing a full Suite here for school-based Staffing we also uh want to propose that it's something that is taken on in stages over the course again specifics on that I can go through and one other point I want to emphasize just for bringing
108a brief overview of what that proposal looks like is why does this actually matter because it's night so it's easy to say transparency and predictability um but our ability to get Accurate Staffing projections into the hands of our principles in late January and February as opposed to when the budget gets adopted and late April and May has a tremendous difference on our ability to hire and keep outstanding teachers this there's a stack of research that could go up to the ceiling I've merely picked the latest study that I found that is itself a meta-analysis of dozens of studies um and the impact that it has on student learning and the likelihood that teachers will stay with us is tremendous when you are able to hire people and March as opposed to June and when you're
109able to put Accurate Staffing projections into the hands of principles in late January and early February they will jump on it and they will are we able to legally do that we've always been told that we cannot commit until after we have our our funding you absolutely from the state and the local government because all of our contracts and all of our offer letters include language that says this contingent on the approval of available funding from the school so technically we're not we're making an offer we're not hiring right that's right yeah we don't send contracts until the budget is adopted and you also have the the Constitutional requirement to educate the children yes and so um it's it seems like it's a no-brainer but it actually does matter you know there is the reasonable
110assumption that you're going to continue services and that Stafford County is not going to go bankrupt and all the kids are going to move away because a nuclear bomb goes off we are assuming that we have 30 000 kids this year we'll have 30 000 kids plus some next year and what that looks like you're trying to argue but it says teachers hired in Spring technically we're not I'm not hearing them until after we give them a contract uh that is technically true that I offered position right now I would say people who's committed to take positions this is a national study in the term but they can't commit until you make it off perfect but we can make lots of offers that don't get you yeah yeah so the acceptance of our options it's
111just the wording height we're not hiring anyone in the spring we're offering we're offering the term using the study is I think the hired is they agree to come here so if you want to say acceptable for sure I I feel like if I could just interrupt because my biggest thing is lately has been special education and the lack of sort of resources and Outreach there is this saying that the goal that that this Staffing standard seeks to return students to Bay Schools which means not traveling across County I'm assuming far enough away from Barons um definitely reduce class sizes but I mean it would literally make me giddy if we could stop based on a student need and not just assigned a category like I wouldn't even know what to do with myself if
112that was actually a thing because that feels like a dream world right like our kids could I feel like that's how we would retain them right that Fab it was presented that we would have one self-contained program that would remain untouched for our multiple disability students those still would be in a centralized location right that's because the vast majority or near their basements yeah and and the only reason that that one programmatic uh decision is made is because uh unlike some of the other programs the multiple disability programs are almost medically fragile students right there's a lot of capital requirements that go along what literally physical equipment sure uh to serve their students and so having specially designed classrooms and whatnot yeah I just feel like this is literally what we're I mean if this
113is this is the goal this is the dream goal and that's and I think one thing you'll see when you have the opportunity of the details and I put one piece here just as an overall summary of the goals of the proposal that's uh there before you um and with regular special education chance return students to their base schools um and uh and make things based on Staffing need rather than disability category so about what's the amount of service need that a student needs not what how would we designate their disability right how many buses again would that free up someone had said it before I thought it was about it said roughly yeah we're working on 20 buses which is just another positive stuff I mean it sounds like a dream and it may
114be a dream and it may be great but keep in mind we are not actually returning students to the base School we are placing students in the base in the basement in effect this is a county-wide redistricting of special ed students and I would say anytime we do any redistricting we proceed you know with people are very great parent involvement and you know with with study so my concern about this is that we not rush into something that sounds like Utopia but it it may not actually end up that way so I would want to know what we have done and what we plan to do right if this were to be adopted to engage the parents in the community because when I lives through redistrictings or maybe say survived to redistricting the special ad
115has been one of the most painful Parts because it's so hard you know even even harder Believe It or Not than you know the other students who make the adjustment to a change in the school so so that's something and I know we don't have time for that now no and that's something I am very interested in and how we are going to involve the parents and get their input if maybe you've already gotten their input um I mean I will say it again that's something that I know that it's a definitely something to dive into during their dream and knowing exactly what you're saying that uh given this that the amount of parent uh input would be very hard well and the special advisory committee there I mean there's all kinds of potential places
116to go to Educators to get this input but I would not want to move you know rationally without um and sort of be more strategic in our approach to acquiring staff for our special needs students to really kind of Target more of a special I mean these they really are a specialty focused and it's so difficult so I mean I'm not saying that it's going to happen in 2024 I'm just asking if this is what we're targeting as our long-term goal I've definitely heard parents of special needs kids expressed frustration that their kids have to travel so much right that they're being they're being they're spending a substantial amount and these are kids with special needs spending a substantial amount of time on a bus to get to a school that's far away parents are
117having to potentially split time between two elementary schools split you know spirit wear and cookie dough and but then runs and all that right and I'm sure they're also parents who really like a particular school or feel like they're they're as a cohort and a group of and teachers so it's it's if this is the ideal way to go and it's going to be educationally better and I would want to see that data that we're going to be able to better provide the education services and meet the needs of these students better in this environment than how do we go about it so that we don't just abruptly say you're reassigned that that's you know Change Change Is Not a Bad Thing no but it needs to be well planned and and we always and
118I have not seen any sign that at this point would I mean it's just coming to the board so the next step would be the the community study and then the Educators as well because I'd like to get input from our special ed you know Staffing that that yes this is going to be better I mean if it's going to be better why not do it if it's not going to adversely have that question yeah right the price of course right okay so given that just I recognize there's a component of this that I need to hand it over to Mr former to touch on um um uh the one wait a second there's a ton of detail in here four minutes uh what I want to speed through you'll have the opportunity to dive
119into a whole bunch of this if you go for um but there is one particular thing that I do want to call out only because it was referenced earlier uh Dr Warner would be well how are we going to get these Math teachers um this is not strictly a staffing standard but as we were developing this as we came around to this thing of we'll shoot we are going to have uh an increased burden and expectation on ourselves to uh hire a lot of these folks what are we going to do about that and uh one of the items of this that we do want to put forward as a proposal is this idea of critical shortage area uh salary supplements um in the areas that a are our highest shortage areas right now uh
120but you'll also notice B uh these are with the possible exception of special Educators um these are all positions where the people can uh the teachers in these roles can uh find employment outside of Education with their existing credentials so how competitive is this idea with any other localities like where are we offering this versus spotsy offering this versus Prince William it would be a big step uh totally different this would be totally different okay yes than what our names are doing this is not brand new territory it's not like we would be the first people to ever do this right um but uh it would be uh set us apart in the region we have higher interest bonuses now from Mountain um and that's the shift here is instead of it being a something
121that's done for two years that this is uh something that is baked into yourself what about the Paris don't we give a special ed para additional um they're on a different pay scale um uh apparently this is this is not good this is just for teachers okay so that would be on a separate but I didn't want to call this out just because all this does implicate how are we going to hire all these folks and I did want to acknowledge that some work has gone into uh algorithm for yes how many Math teachers we need and all those other things we will be better at that's right okay is this where our vacancies are today this is these are the areas that are are uh our hardest Church like if you if you ask
122do we have more vacancies and CTE teachers or elementary teachers well we have more Elementary vacancies also have . um so that's so these are our highest percentage but you also have some that are stubborn so like a high impact stem CTE course like computer science or coding or something like correct you may only have one or two vacancies but they are incredibly difficult to fill because of the competitive job market right so when we're doing the projections of our students coming in we we don't necessarily have an ability to um qualify special need or whatever ahead of time within that do we unlock for a certain number we have a special needs students coming in when we're making our projections like what's our percent all right I thought you know what as soon as
123I started to ask it I thought I'd heard that number before all right so it's 13 me and Trish are like on it yeah I know because it could be more it could be less about 13. we projected okay just to kind of give it so we have that right now oh all right okay so we're officially uh done Patrick you're welcome yeah you know what I mean like Wednesday no way please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance 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 because we didn't have school today we don't have a JROTC with us but we want to share with the people here and with anyone watching a
124medley that was performed at the band together against hunger for of the military music this was last week yes please and this is all our high school bands and color guards together on the field at Mountain View High School [Applause] foreign [Music] it is [Applause] [Music] Michael card [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] thank you foreign [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] foreign [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] foreign [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] foreign [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] foreign [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] foreign [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] that's a good preview for our veterans day coming up as well you can also just say that was it Mountain View that had a baton twirl where the Twirls juggles fire batons juggles fire
125batons like to see it surreal just putting that out there she's got my utmost thank you all right um that brings us to roll call here here here thank you do we have a motion for approval of the agenda Miss guy I like to make a motion that we approve the agenda but we remove from consent the review of the new policies 3113-7201 and 2107 and 41 13 for discussion we move those to discussion for tonight okay we have a motion uh motion my Miss guy second by Dr Warner any discussion all in favor of the approval for amended agenda please say aye aye all pose motion carries boom I'm sorry use the work session cast your votes motion carries unanimously all right um do we have any announcements Dr Taylor um I think you
126still have a consent agenda to approve but then yes that's right all right do we have a motion for consent agenda moving right along tonight Skye would you like to make a motion for that I motion that we why am I so loud [Music] the motion that we approve the consent agenda second motion by Miss guy second by Miss Halstead any discussion cast your votes motion carries unanimously now do we have any emotion announcements thank you madam chair I'm very excited to make a couple of personnel announcements that were a part of the board's consent agenda the first is for our assistant director of Budget Finance and operations I'm delighted to announce that Miss Elizabeth Carter Finch will join Stafford schools next week as our new assistant director of budget Miss Fitch comes from the
127George Washington Foundation where she served in the Dual role of Director of Finance and H uh HR can we invite her down yes uh and come on down and and uh we're going to ask you to say a few words once I'm I'm done so come come right on up to the podio thank you Carter in that role she oversaw aspects of financial operations including major capital projects debt reduction payroll processing with a particular focus on Improvement of internal processes and maintaining a strong fiscal oversight definitely a skill set we need in Stafford schools prior to her role and at the foundation Miss Fitch worked in public accounting with a specialty in non-profit accounting and tax auditing miss fish holds a bachelor's degree in of business and a master's in accounting and information systems from
128Virginia Tech and is both a certified public accountant and a certified Human Resources professional Ms Fitch welcome to Stafford schools [Applause] um thank you all the members of the school board and female public I'm excited to get to work next week and it's going to be fun to see what we can do to make Stafford schools even better thank you Carter appreciate it you also have to get your photo up um our next is is actually a transfer internally and it is for the assistant principal position at Northstar early childhood education center Miss Lisa basiglia has accepted a new challenge in her long career with Stafford schools sliding into the role of AP at Northstar as many know Miss basiglia comes to us from her current role as the assistant principal at North Stafford High
129School where she has been also a leader at Dixon Smith Middle School serving as both an assistant principal and a principal in that school at the beginning of her career however Miss basiglia was dedicated to special education and worked in self-contained classrooms in early childhood education she's excited to return back to supporting and serving our youngest Learners especially those with special needs building on her experience and leading a special education programs at all School lovers So Lisa if you would come on down thank you Miss basiglia who has worked for Stafford schools for the past 28 years earned her bachelor's degree of Science in elementary and special education from California University of Pennsylvania and her master's degree in educational leadership from George Mason welcome back to an administrative replacement and thank you so much for
130being here and Miss pasiglia do you have anything you want to share I just want to say thank you very much I look forward to doing great work seeing our students benefit working along with you all thank you thank you Madam chair this concludes administrative appointments thank you Dr Taylor that brings us to Awards and recognitions we'd like to recognize Cadet first lieutenant Ali Barrera recipient of the United States Marine Corps Legion of Valor bronze cross good evening school board members and Dr Taylor this evening we will recognize Cadet major a Libera of Mountain View High School can I major Barrera thank you for joining us at the podium Stafford County Public Schools is proud to announce that Cadet major Ailey Barrera the commanding officer of Mountain View High School's Wildcat Battalion made up of
131over 170 Cadets was awarded the 2022 Legion of Valor bronze cross for achievement an honor that distinguishes her as the most outstanding Cadet among all 54 high schools in region one of the Marine Corps JROTC program this distinction awarded to a rising senior Cadet signifies that Cadet Barrera demonstrates exceptional leadership academic and Military Excellence additionally Cadet Barrera has consistently passed the Marine Corps initial strength test as required for Marine Corps boot camp eligibility and serve more than 100 hours of community service alongside her unit Cadet Barrera led her unarmed exhibition drill platoon to Second Place finish at Marine Corps JROTC drill national championships she also finished in second place overall in the unarmed knockout finals competing against over 200 other Cadets Cadet Barrera also helped lead the Cyber Patriot team to strong finishes for for
132the past three years last year her team finished 11th among all Marine Corps Gyros he seen JROTC teams in the Platinum tier and second in the state of Virginia personally she was the top 10 finisher in the JROTC virtual cyber Summer Challenge cyberstar had Naval Horizons submissioned deemed a high honor essay and completed the Marine Corps JROTC cyber stem virtual summer camp receiving three college credits for passing the I.T fundamentals Pro exam in her role as drill platoon Commander Barrera helped the Wildcat Battalion drill team win first place in five of seven drill meets in which she competed of the 17 drill meets she took part including academic inspection unarmed regulation platoon and commander of the unarmed exhibition platoon elements 15 earned top three finishes with eight of them as first place Cadet Barrera is
133not only an accomplished Cadet but a dedicated student a personal International Baccalaureate student and member of the National Honor Society she's in the top 10 percent of her senior class A Gifted Cadet with a promising future Cadet Pereira plans to study computer science specializing in cyber or Homeland Security at either a service Academy or Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University as an ROTC Cadet congratulations [Applause] Bluetooth back accepting the proclamation to recognize November 7th through 11th as National School psychology week this evening is Maribeth Christ a school psychologist at Heartwood and Conway Elementary Schools Mary Beth will you join us at the podium a proclamation to recognize November 7th through 11th 2022 as National School psychology week whereas all children and youth can learn with the proper supports and deserve an education that meets their needs and whereas
134sounds psychological principles are integral to instruction and learning social and emotional development prevention and early intervention and supporting culturally diverse student populations and wears children's mental health and resilience are directly linked to their Learning and Development and must be prioritized in order to ready children to receive instruction and where schools provide an optimal context to promote resilience and strong mental health in Children and Youth because of the nature of the learning environment and the presence of trained and caring professionals and whereas School psychologists are specifically specially trained to deliver a Continuum of mental health services and academic support that promote children's resilience competence and well-being within the school setting and whereas School psychologists facilitate collaboration and help parents and Educators to identify and reduce risk factors promote protective factors create safe healthy effective and supportive
135learning environments access needed Community Resources and Implement research driven prevention and intervention strategies and where our school psychologists acknowledge the adverse impact they that may result from social injustices and are poised to promote Equity healing support and positive steps for all and we're as citizens of Virginia should recognize the vital role that school psychologists play in the personal and academic development of our Commonwealth's children now therefore be it proclaimed that the school board of Stafford County hereby designates November 7th through 11th 2022 a school psychology week throughout the School Division adopted by the school board of Stafford County on this 11th day of November 2007 Eighth Day of November 2022. thank you all right brings us to Citizen comments three minutes are allotted to each speaker or group citizens speakers are encouraged to provide a
136copy of the comments to the board Clerk speakers shall identify themselves by name and organizational affiliation if the spokesperson represents an organization speakers shall also announce the purpose or topic of their comments citizen comment which is profane abusive or which threatens imminent physical harm shall be ruled out of order by the chairperson although the board provides the opportunity for citizen comment individuals Desiring to register complaints against division employees or division programs services or activities may also utilize the procedures outlined in Stafford County public school policy 1113 public complaints and Miss Hall did you advise us we had 27 yes ma'am speakers and I'm going to suggest to the board that we go through half of the speakers and then take a brief break because I don't want anyone to have to miss anything that the
137speakers are are here to talk to us about so when we get through number 14 we'll just take a 10 minute break come back and then complete the list is that acceptable to the board all right so Miss Hall if you could um call five at a time yes ma'am uh and what I'm going to ask in in order to keep this orderly and going uh forward that you line up when your name is called and then come down you know following each speaker so we can stay on track the first person to speak will be Valerie Parham Nolan Jenkins Patricia Smith Michelle Wickman and then Beau belotti miss Karen okay do you do you need the why won't you just run through that again so we can all right make sure people know is
138the first person here after Miss Perham would be Nolan Jenkins Patricia Smith Miss Wickman and then Beau belotti thank you hi my name is Pat Smith my church is in the Falmouth District so I hope you will consider this moral perspective on the plight of the custodial workers we had a town hall meeting about the workers at the church recently I first met one of your custodial workers more than two decades ago when I visited one of my best friends an art teacher after school there was joy and laughter in their connection the custodians were my friends closest allies in the school they shared in the joy of student achievement sometimes very messy student achievement these workers were hired by the county and they were an integral part of the school family a year ago
139I met with a dozen custodial workers hired by a contractor there couldn't have been a more Stark difference between the custodians I met two decades ago and those I was now meeting grief filled the room as they shared their stories I worry that some would be lost to despair but instead they organized fighting for their lives they fought to protect the thing that could not be taken from them hope at the risk of their jobs and workplace bullying they spoke out so that we should never normalize poverty inequality racial religious and ethnic divisions they spoke out so that once again you could develop a culture of care and community we are interconnected and must fight for one another [Music] please do not let your own history of hiring be redacted edited to silence those without
140power please face your history and know that hiring custodial workers directly is the right thing to do thank you foreign Nolan could not be here so I'm coming instead of him um thank you um I am here about baseball teams in Stafford Middle Schools uh okay hello my name is Ephraim Denning I go to Rodney Thompson Middle School I'd like to get a baseball team in Stafford schools there are lots of other is well okay sorry um there are softball teams and we'd love it if there were more baseball teams as well I know there are a lot of baseball teams in Stafford we cannot control other schools however so in case they were to oppose this idea we have a backup plan we don't have coaches yet but we have spoken to coaches who
141that have shown interest in the team potential team we need baseball gear and permission to play on certain Fields there are a lot of health benefits in baseball such as building strength in your arms and legs it also helps improve cardiovascular health as well while getting a lot of vitamin D playing baseball can help develop your hand and eye coordination while helping people make with making friends and developing better social skills 7th and 8th grade are partially based on preparing you for high school and baseball can further that advancement thank you for your time it's been a pleasure talking with you and I hope you all have a great day thank you good evening members of the board Dr Taylor my name is Michelle Wickman Garrisonville District I've got two kids in scps I teach
142at North Stafford and I am sea secretary on August 9th you voted unanimously to approve revisions to the professional growth system based on an addition to the code of Virginia enacted in 2021. every licensed educator in Stafford must now demonstrate how they meet required elements of standard six cultural competency and Equitable practices and undergo cultural competency training at least every two years tonight I address specific language from the Board of Education and your own adopted educator evaluation system that directly conflicts with the proposed revisions to policy 4113. it's a pretty big ask to formally evaluate Educators on their ability to Foster classroom environments that acknowledge value Advocate and affirm cultural and social diversity while simultaneously proposing a policy that prohibits items representing such diversity from being displayed by this proposed revision classroom Decor is curricular
143speech and by the evaluation system you approved we are required to use curricular speech that represents and validates diversity from all rings of culture that include generational gender religion class nationality race ethnicity native language ability and sexuality under the revision's definition of controversial every item of Decor representing diversity within our schools is in danger of removal in the education world we refer to mirrors windows and sliding glass doors reflections of themselves opportunities to see into the worlds of those different from them and the choice to experience something new students learn best when they are provided with all three when given only mirrors they're susceptible to an overdeveloped sense of self and a distorted view of the world how can we Foster inclusive classroom environments that acknowledge value and affirm social and cultural diversity if we
144are told to remove the very items that validate and affirm The Pride flags and stickers the advertisements for Fellowship of Christian athletes meetings Muslim Student Association meetings black student union meetings Pride club meetings and many more possibilities under this proposed policy when those items are ordered removed from our walls and hallways how will you work with families to process and respond to their feelings of discrimination how are our Educators to build meaningful relationships with all students angered in affirmation mutual respect and validation when you introduce barriers to establishing such relationships when that which humanizes our Educators and makes them relatable may only be displayed privately on a desk policy 4113 as it stands already provides the discretion to address legitimate issues of inappropriate conduct or behavior afford administrators the trust and professional courtesy to do
145their jobs support the development of the whole student as pledged in your own code of conduct and outlined in the legally required elements of standard six if your goal is Recruitment and Retention stand behind your Educators or you stand against them foreign [Applause] I'll call the next Gene Mills Gene Mills would be next then Al Watkins Sarah Taylor Shannon fingerholes and Rebecca Wardlow hello my name is Anthony bobolotti this is probably my 15th time addressing this board since I was 16. I'm a graduate of Colonial Forge High School and I'm a student to be excuse me I promise I don't have code but I'm getting over a cold um I am now a student to be graduate of Virginia Commonwealth University I'm also focused on possible Masters and PHD programs and I wish I could
146tell you that this is a story of how Stafford schools prepared me for academic success but unfortunately that would not be the whole story 88 of lgbtq youth feel unsafe at school 31 percent have missed four or more days of school because they felt unsafe in high school I was part of that 31 I missed dozens of days of school during the time during my time in high school many of which I missed because I did not want to be misgendered by teachers ridiculed by my peers or worse at the time I went to Colonial forage gender identity was not even in the anti-discrimination policy yet it was part of my activism as well as so many other people some of which are whom today that changed that I'm not an activist because I want
147to be I am an activist because I have to be I had my life threatened in a Stafford School I've been dead named and emotionally hurt by staff and students alike the one small thing that my teachers did that brightened my day that showed me I could be myself if nowhere else in their classroom was to have a visible pride flag or safe space sticker it did not change the abuse that I endured but it did show me that I had an ally which made school a little more bearable 51 of trans youth have considered dropping out of high school due to near constant harassment that is a systemic failure it is your job and responsibility to create an environment where students feel Health where they can learn and if a pride flag helps that
148even marginally then it is your job to let teachers do what they may what they feel makes their students most successful the classroom Decor revisions for policy 4113 are vague as someone who has crafted legislation and studied it I want to tell you that this does nothing but open you up to lawsuits and at the end of the day it is your duty to create a positive environment for students and teachers to teach and learn in not to settle lawsuits you cannot win so I urge you for the sake of all students to strike down the controversial Decor policy and do not move forward to it be voting on for it to be voted on in the at the next session thank you [Applause] good evening Dr Taylor and members of the board I'm Al
149Watkins from the George Washington District as written in the minutes of the September 8th governance committee meeting regarding the proposed amendments to policy 4143 Ms Halstead proposed to prohibit the display of teachers of personal emblems which purport to represent personal Lifestyles and religious or political beliefs she stated that personal decor items are often distracted to students and sometimes are considered offensive symbols or Decor that she deemed divisive and inflammatory should be prohibited the additional video recording of that meeting provided a lot of context Miss Halstead stated a concern of hers how do you think the kids feel with that flag hanging up a special note in the 28 minutes that policy 4113 was discussed flags were brought up a dozen times notably rainbow flags and only by the two board members present she continued how
150does that not negatively affect the education with them feeling uncomfortable in the situation because of their belief systems are so strong so take it out then no one has to worry about it so that the students and everyone else sitting there learns how does that hurt anyone Dr Taylor displaying his experience insight and knowledge of what actually occurs in a classroom's learning environment stated uncomfortable is okay there are lots of things that we do that make students uncomfortable in the moment that is part of their learning experience I agree with Dr Taylor as a former teacher with 44 years of experience I understand there are instances where academic learning must take second place educators are given the task of dealing with every student that walks through their classroom door to work with the whole of
151every student children learning all that they can about our diverse world is something our division strives for developing into a whole person our division literally demands this of teachers as evidenced by the seven evaluation performance indicators in standard six culturally responsive teachers and Equitable practices Dr Jones specifically mentioned this evaluation standard at the meeting but it was immediately glossed over if the decor in a classroom raises a question or makes a person uncomfortable that is an incredibly valuable learning moment reducing the real life experience is that marginalized ethnic cultural and religious groups deal with also does a disservice to the larger groups that must learn to coexist taking away these uncomfortable experiences from the majority essentially causes them to stay in the very same bubble that they live in curtailing their social growth as members
152of society a four walled classroom devoid of potential Enlightenment and potential spirited discussion might as well be an empty box leading to children having empty heads and empty hearts thank you hi my name is Sarah Taylor from the Falmouth District I'm a teacher at North Stafford and a parent of Stafford students teachers don't decorate their classrooms because we're ego maniacal exhibitionists who have a compulsion to share every little aspect of who we are with a captive audience we don't decorate our rooms to indoctrinate our students either if we actually had that power of mind control over our students we'd use it to get them to stay off their phones we decorate our classrooms to make a connection with our kids and to celebrate who our kids are I know you know that connections between teachers
153and students are vital to the success of most learners or some of you wouldn't have fought so hard against the coveted shutdown you knew that a lot of students need to feel a connection with their teachers in order to successfully learn and connections are hard to make through a computer screen [Music] some teachers are Naturals at making those connections they have that magical ability to make every kid feel special instantaneously but some of us have to work at it it certainly didn't come naturally to me but eventually I figured out how to use eye contact body language self-deprecating humor recall in tidbits about their lives and sharing tidbits about mine and my classroom decor most kids especially most teenagers aren't going to just be brave and vulnerable in front of 20 or 30 of their
154peers on their own they need to see us the teachers putting ourselves out there taking the risk of being judged being silly and goofy about our enthusiasm for a particular Pastime team or franchise before they're willing to return their that bravery and share parts of who they are in class discussions and literary analysis the classroom Decor is also a way to celebrate and respect who our students are we display artwork quotes and posters celebrating our students diverse ethnicities we put up artwork or projects that our kids create and we share symbols to celebrate the whole child and that's also why we have pride stickers on our doors or small Pride flags on our desks to recognize and represent who our students are I'm not sure exactly how you were trying to use the word controversial
155but we live in such a fractured and polarized time that pretty much anything that we have on our walls could be interpreted as controversial I hope you can see how opening this door will invite greater Division and exclusion and how you will be putting teachers in a no-win situation thank you hey guys Shannon fingerholtz Hartwood District I might cry it's usual menopause um of the cool things about our leadership in our country is that it swings back and forth sometimes one side is in the lead and sometimes the other we kind of do this little like political wiggle back and forth and it kind of averages out to a reasonable ish progress what is controversial changes every decade but a lot of times ends up okay in the end we all know Jesus was crazy
156controversial in his day there was a time not long ago that if you put up a sign saying I teach blacks and whites together Jews are welcome now hiring Japanese apply or women can vote just like today it was highly controversial or think about our community with disabilities they would be institutionalized or left alone those in charge didn't see a point for them being taught in schools let alone being around our other children they were hidden away best unseen and unheard there it is the children of black Jewish Japanese families those with disabilities and even us girls we just wanted to play and learn with the rest of them I encourage everyone seriously man I encourage everyone to watch the video recap of the school's Multicultural Fair the smiles the beauty the joy and being
157unique but still a part of the Stafford County family is visible the celebration of diversity that makes our school system stronger more resilient and one of the more desired school systems in the region is heartwarming and it makes me proud to be a Stafford County mom foreign diversity isn't for one day it doesn't stop it where you or your ancestors were born diversity is in every one of us the music we listen to the religion we practice our financial means clothes we wear the careers we choose Charities we support who we vote for our abilities and our disabilities the people we love and the food we eat yes even coconut enthusia fuzzy okra what happens when one day you aren't in charge and the new board has a complete opposite opinion of yours and decides
158to enforce this proposed Rule now your causes or beliefs are controversial rules like the changes to policy 4113 have harsh and long-term consequences let's continue to join forces and build our schools up and fix our capacity issues make new schools all the things that impact learning um and let's continue to focus on that learning loss the things that bring us together thank you is Miss Wardlow here all right the next four names Madam chair will bring us to 14. well why don't you read the next five since we've missed a couple it'll be Jane Hill Juliet schweider Nick Candela Luke Wright and then Diane Schwartz foreign I don't think Julia is here so you might want to call another name am I wrong we'll just wait until it's a turn and they may be in
159the bathroom excuses it happens all right good evening everyone I'm Jane Hill and I wanted to talk today about the proposed amendment for policy 4113 and the tragedy it would be if it were to pass I believe everyone here fundamentally understands that this ban on controversial Decor is an attack primarily against symbols of the LGBT community and its allies with the intent of inciting harassment and discrimination against the LGBT students faculty and staff of Stafford County's Public Schools this move will hurt people as it forces people back into the closet and as it cuts people off from communities of support and love that they may not be able to reach out to otherwise this policy will hurt the LGBT students that go to school in Stafford County by telling them that being true to who
160they are is fundamentally wrong and that they ought to be hidden away from public spaces this is cruel to these students many of whom don't want to think about these issues as they'd much rather focus on learning and enjoying their youth but the push from politicians to politicize the lives of these students means that they and others have to fight for them to be able to live free of an atmosphere of fear and hate removing these symbols may not seem like much to an outsider of LGBT life but it is these symbols that tell LGBT students that they are in spaces that accept them for who they are and that they don't have to fight merely to be seen and to be safe I know the value of these symbols to LGBT students because I
161myself am a transgender woman who is a student at Colonial Forge High School some years ago and the space is demarcated by the symbols of acceptance safety and love were often the only spaces in my life where I was allowed to fully be myself I still have the rainbow pride flag that I was given at Colonial forges Sage club for LGBT students because it has always reminded me that I am not alone in my struggles and that I am not wrong for existing as I am outside the school I had to hide away who I was for so long for fear of my safety and I personally know that making LGBT students afraid to exist at schools will not make anything better they will make the lives of these students worse as removing these symbols
162will embolden those who wish harm upon LGBT people likely resulting in more senseless violence against them please do not move to pass this policy Amendment for 4113 if you at all value the lives of your students and your children thank you [Applause] good evening my name is Nick Candela I'm both a teacher here in the county and the parent of a student I'm here tonight to speak to the proposed changes to the scps standards of professional conduct for all employees I believe this is policy 4113 the implementation of a policy that seeks to police classroom Decor in no way benefits student achievement but instead creates an exclusionary environment for select individuals and limits the ways in which teachers and students can engage with one another to begin the proposed policy is extremely subjective its motivations
163are dubious its overall tone is frankly a bit sanctimonious in section 7c for example it's proposed that Decor considered controversials prohibited from being displayed in a compulsory classroom setting however it's not explained who decides what is controversial or who is even qualified to make that determination the policy seeks to control Behavior through ambiguous terminology and undefined parameters which are Hallmarks of prejudicial governance further section 7f mandates that items must be displayed in a private manner such that they're not in plain view of all students there's no apparent rationale for this in any pedagogical sense the number of students to whom Decor is visible has no impact on student achievement unless that Decor is outlining specific course or lesson objectives moreover I believe that attempts to police classroom Decor is simply an attempt to police the
164personal politics of your teachers we don't all see things the same way but as with any ecosystem that diversity is our strength without diversity an ecosystem is destined for ruin students deserve the opportunity to form their own perspectives in an act of unadulterated free will that allows them to be responsible for their own education we don't require their complete agreement only an awareness of their options policing of classroom Decor by the school board also creates exclusionary learning environments that risk alienating further students who may already feel undervalued and unheard in nearly 20 years of teaching I have never once had a student Lament The Presence of any visual in my classroom neither the pride flag or the Jolly Roger or pictures of my family or the brexit outgoing seniors get to paint every year have
165ever been points of contention not ever on the other hand I have had plenty of students Express gratitude that the space is so fun to look at so exciting to wonder about and so inspiring a room in which to learn I also get a lot of compliments on my family pictures which can be viewed by anyone who comes to my desk and which this policy seeks to disallow I'm proud of my family they bring me joy and they've played a significant role in shaping me into the person and teacher that I am today isn't that exactly the kind of thing we should be sharing with our students students see my family and identify that as a goal of their own it's another way in which I can reach my students another way to open a
166conversation and build a relationship it wasn't so long ago that single parent homes were considered non-traditional and socially taboo as as were mixed race families I can't help but feel that a policy like that takes us back to that kind of thinking I'm concerned that an unintended consequence of this policy will be that students will once again be left to feel that what they have at home or how they may see themselves as individuals may be non-traditional abnormal not right those feelings will surely lead to a decline in performance in more areas than just school is that my hook understand put them in the record if you want to give them to me will do um if I may just close with if you're seeking opinions on how to make things look better please ask
167an art teacher thank you [Applause] good evening everyone evening sir my name is Luke Wright I'm a retired Marine a public school teacher and a resident here in Stafford County I'm here to speak tonight on the contract and employment of those Stafford County workers that keep our schools clean each one of us have been to a parent-teacher meeting at summer school sport event or graduation or to school every day and every day after we finish those people come in and magically the next morning the school will return and clean sparkling as if nothing happened anytime you go to an organization building or meeting there are four things that you remember what it looked like what it smelled like how it made you feel and how much it costs you emotionally physically and financially and that's
168what people go through every day the students the teachers employees and visitors that come to Stafford County Public Schools anyone that has children no this is right if you could address your comments to the board anyone that has children knows that our kids from the ages of kindergarten all the way to 12th grade they will put their hands in every office of their head and touch walls handrails desk and then our teachers our secretaries and our fellow employees end up touching those surface areas and people can get sick those bacterias can go home to family members spouses and other children and if those places aren't kept clean then how do we stay safe what I'm asking is that when we consider the options for our employees that we consider a contract that considers their safety
169their pay and their benefits because many times in many organizations when we think of contracts it's as if their safety benefits and Welfare is dedicated to a contractor you work for them not for us if these employees are not a priority on a contract what we are indirectly saying that our kids their safety their welfare our teachers our parents their siblings at home and their elderly grandparents at home are not a priority there are many employees here tonight here representing not only themselves but their kids the teachers and everyone that visited Stafford County Public School what I want you to think about is that they're here tonight but tomorrow morning when you go to school those schools will still be cleaned thank you very much [Applause] all right I'm Diane Schwartz I'm in the Rock
170Hill district so I read the proposed changes to the standard professional conduct it was so obvious it's coming about because staff members were displaying messages of inclusion and safety in their classrooms that some people find offensive in some way the proposed changes are a blatant attempt to intimidate School staff and prevent them from being genuine with their students it's also another Pander to the voters Moment by portraying the changes as somehow protecting parents rights the school system tells us to form relationships with our students and families to let the students know what we're like outside of school apparently that holds true only if you're white straight Christian conservative I'm not sure what you're afraid of but school is the place where you are supposed to learn about different things and different people have opinions and
171emotions about them and not be afraid to express them I was especially intrigued by how teachers with flat desks are supposed to display personal items privately and then you get to decide if it's private enough do you also want to determine what objects are or are not personal to me teachers aren't trying to indoctrinate children they're trying to teach them to let them know school is a safe place well it's supposed to be and the board just makes it harder chances are there are already gay teachers trans teachers atheists teachers and teachers of many other preferences why don't you or your kids know about it because it's not a topic of a discussion I've never heard a teacher walk into the classroom on the first day of school and announce good morning class I'm your
172teacher and I'm gay neither have I ever heard a teacher announcer heterosexual it just doesn't happen frankly we have enough to do just trying to teach apparently the board isn't worried about sped Esau and other groups trying to teach in hallways corners of libraries cafeterias but you're worried about decor face it you only want parents to have a say if they're the right parents white straight conservative Christians that believe the way you do this is a diverse County and becoming more so in the end you're going to force through whatever you want my feelings are that go ahead and open this particular can of worms I and others like we will make it our life's mission to hold you to every word and Nuance we'll follow the rules because we have to so do you
173you will be astonished at the amount of things we will find controversial upsetting offensive induces intense feelings or engenders strong emotions differences of opinion will abound you will come to see the rules that you make to strip others of their freedoms will surely come around to take yours thank you for your time [Applause] we're going to take our pre-announced 10-minute break now and when we come back we'll hear the remainder of the speakers so 10 minute Sports would you please excuse me we're calling the meeting back to order Miss Hall is going to call the next four speakers all right Madam chair the next speaker is Clifford heinzer or a bigger part and Juliet swider is the next speaker followed by Clifford heinzer Milton Bratton Stephanie Mojica and Bert Berta Rios hello good evening can
174I start yes all right hello good evening not here to bully you or threaten you God bless you like you had the last one um I just can't believe we have to say these things out loud and show support for amending our current policy which would no longer allow political personal ideology ideological Decor within the classrooms or School here's the biggest reason why we need to get back to core education 2018 82 in math passing 2021 reading 78 69 in 2021 I don't have to go through all of them we know we're struggling our schools are struggling okay there's no reason for any school to fly any flag other than the United States flag or our state flag for we're all Americans and we live in the beautiful state of Virginia how can you decide
175what kind of flag is okay so let's just stick with the U.S flag the Virginia flag um growing up I had no idea about my teachers they just were there to teach me if I felt I had great relationships with them I could talk to them but I didn't need to see a display if I picked a teacher to be closer with then I might have learned something else but I had no idea whether they were straight or gay or anything we need to come together and help our children learn we've got to get ourselves out of this hole that we are in and improve our our schools because ultimately our tax values our property values are dropping as we talk about our schools dropping so in classrooms we need to know how as parents
176we can come together and help teachers to teach how can we be receptive let's talk about what more we can do to volunteer in the classrooms what we can do to help out versus worrying about all this decorum we need to get back to Stafford excellence in education instead of debating and arguing with our teachers let's pull together I am in favor of this new rule and that's it thank you Mr heinzer heinzer if he's not here then the next person will be Mr Bratton hello everybody my name is Milton Braden I'm from the Griffith Widewater area I've lived here since 99 after retirement for the military I'm here to talk about the the decisions that's being made for the custodial workers I've been here for a couple of meetings kind of expressed some of
177the concerns that we had with employment lack of cleaning materials and just lack of number of people or workers to keep our school clean just recently we understand the importance of making sure that our schools are clean with any type of outbreak from unknown calls reasons but we do know the cleaner of the school the better possibilities of various outbreaks doesn't happen the most important thing that I want to kind of give an Insight on is by getting another contractor are we going to have a reoccurrence of what happened before what are we doing now that's going to prevent this from happening who is going to be the people that's going to do the oversight of making sure that the new 7.6 million dollar allocations to make our schools cleaner is money well spent and
178how do we identify problems and correct those immediately because it didn't happen before we totally filled in the oversight so when we come to this conclusion of who we choose how do we put the gears the mechanism the process that's for going and prevent this from rehappening and making sure that it's not only do you keep the custodial workers safe by buying them a livable wage and some benefits but also make sure that the school is clean like it normally is and everything that when you wake up in the morning you don't have to worry about an outbreak or if you do at least then you can find a process how we're going to correct it so it doesn't reoccur again thank you is Miss Mojica here where does the time or when do I
179start oh okay thank you uh good evening my name is Stephanie from Mom's um for Liberty chapter here in Stafford and I reside in the Garrisonville District I will be reading a letter from an anonymous teacher who teaches here in Stafford County Public Schools good evening as a teacher for scps I would like to speak in favor of removing all distractions from the learning environment in hopes that our schools will again begin to focus on learning I do not believe any teachers should wear any shirt that does not support every student in their classroom for example I do not believe a teacher should wear a black lives matter t-shirt a white lives matter t-shirt a blue lives matter t-shirt a trump t-shirt an Obama t-shirt a rainbow t-shirt a Christian t-shirt a trans t-shirt Etc
180I believe the same should be true for the walls of the school the walls of every classroom the art forms are ever School Etc teachers are often role models for their students and their students will emulate them at every turn why not use that capacity to influence students in the areas of reading or writing or math or science or geography or a multitude of other things rather than imposing our beliefs on our students even if it's unwittingly during the last back to school night I had a parent ask me what one of the new teachers in our school was teaching since I did not know the new teacher yet I said no and asked why they were asking I was told that their classroom was full of Pride flags and lgbtq decorations but there was
181not a single reference to curriculum I found that interesting and shared the parents concern I do not understand why teachers feel the need to expose students to their personal beliefs it is wholly unnecessary to create relationships with our students to be direct most middle school students are still very self-centered you can have wonderful conversations that you that allow you to create great relationships just by listening to your students more often than not they are happy to have someone listen to them and value what they have to say you can do this without imposing any political or ideological agenda thank you for your time also I wrote something of my own but I have less than three minutes to read it so I won't be able to read it within that time frame I also as
182a moms for Liberty I'd like to pass along a parent pledge for you to view so please let me know if you're interested in signing the pledge to honor the fundamental rights of parents and my emails listed on here Miss Rios following Miss Rios will be Diane claveno Carl rice Yesenia Diaz Tiffany kopchak and Maha or Maja Garcia buenas noches foreign business ES I'll be translating for her good evening Miss here and Stafford County Board of supervision my name is Britta Rios I am custodial worker for County Schools protected by ABM I am staff for Resident and a taxpayer I've been working for ABM in schools for six years someone asked me why is it important for counties to hire us my answer is three basic points first the communication we would have better communication
183without intermediaries experience has already taught us that with the interventions of third parties vested interests the lack of personal and work materials recently led us to having more than 1 000 cases of influenza in high schools second the supervision because the schools are responsible of the county and those they could have better control of each one of them this is no one better than County knows their needs third products and equipment for cleaning the third and not least important are cleaning products equipment in good working conditions the lack of which lead to not doing and to more job thus causing the spread of virus putting not only child Children at Risk but also their families and community in general thanks have a good night good evening my name is Diane klevenough I'm from the Falmouth
184District and I'm also a teacher at North Stafford High School I am here this evening to speak in opposition to the proposed policy 4113 this policy to me demonstrates a lack of trust and confidence in the professionalism of the employees who work for Stafford County Public Schools I teach content and curriculum but so much more I teach patients kindness courtesy perseverance this policy has the potential to make it harder for me to build the authentic connections with my students this past summer I was lucky enough to attend the model schools conference in Orlando Florida where I got to hear many expert Educators share their ideas one thing that stuck with me was a presentation on building relationships to increase achievement and to get buy-in respect must be earned and the key takeaway from that was
185that connections are built on conversations and not interrogations a lot of times they used as an example how teachers say to build a community we give out surveys like what's your favorite music what's your favorite color what's your favorite food what's your favorite hobby that's an interrogation in order to build trust and build a community there has to be some give back to they need to learn I have to give something of me for them to trust me um it was built on a two-way conversation and I think at the high school level that probably was one of the biggest weaknesses of our virtual learning we were talking to dots it was one way one way it was hard to build that connection with the two ways this I brought props this is my personal
186computer this is what I walk around the school with this is what I have my kids with it says a lot about me it's just me it um you know who I am what I am I like Avengers I got this one today this is brand new um a smooth scene never made a skilled sailor that speaks to perseverance and effort I like that power lifting girls in Power Sports lift weights I like that I love the woods I love California I love baby Groot I got vaccinated and and I'm willing to be there for all my students and that's all it is it's I wouldn't want to be afraid to have this with me it's I don't know that's how I feel the things I choose to share are to let my students see
187me as a person and a person with strengths weaknesses interests and someone who cares about each and every one of them they'll all be seen and they'll all be respected as individuals and that's how I build my community [Applause] my name is [Music] nueve Moses thank you good evening Madam president and Stafford County Board of Supervisors and Miss super edent Dr Thomas Taylor my name is Yesenia Diaz I am part of the custodial group of working with cleaning Stafford counties I am also a staffer resident and taxpayer someone asked me why is it important for the county to hire us cleaning one or many schools is not an easy task the specific knowledge is needed to be able to deal with cleaning with total guarantee we the custodians already have the required knowledge and experience
188cleaning and disinfecting of schools is an important part of preventing and minimizing the spread of diseases in the school's environment and prevailing pretending preventing illness and infections in school we the custodians of the schools are the essential and necessary personal with the attitude and without the fear of to face any Health crisis that comes our way so much so that in 2022 we were the only staff who stayed attending our schools during the Covenant epidemic as of today we are facing the Wave of flu that inflicts us thanks and have a good night foreign good evening distinguished members of the board and Dr Taylor my name is Sydney kovsack I'm in the Falmouth District I'm a 16-year veteran of a veteran high school teacher in Stafford County I've got a master's in education I'm a
189national board certified teacher I'm a certified journalism educator I've been nominated for Teacher of the Year for seven years in a row and I'm old enough to make Susan Lucci jokes about that which no one sadly seems to get anymore thank you God okay I'm a national name as classic journalism I'm a mentor a resource and a team player I work with a number of you already and crafting policies to improve scps schools which was one of the highlights of my very positive career you really can't afford to lose me but I'm burning out and I'm bringing out really really badly it will crush me to leave the kids I teach from freshman year through senior year but I am constantly struggling to stay in the classroom I don't know how much more being a
190teacher I can take especially my employers members of my school board decide that using me as a political Pawn or to make a political statement is more important than supporting me and teaching students if I had to write an assignment as vague as the revisions to policy 4113 I would have confused kids and angry parents what is this target I'm supposed to reach what does controversial mean where is the bar where is the line if it exists in somebody's head it does not exist when I went to a Kansas City Chiefs game there were picketers outside the gate do the offensive name the Redskins are now the Washington Commanders we have a school whose mascot is the Indians what is controversial mean where is a line there but that's not what the policy is the
191explicit conversation the governance committee meeting was that this policy was a poorly written attempt to remove Pride flags from classrooms which you can't explicitly say because that goes against your own anti-discrimination policy in addition to violating a number of state and federal laws my role is to share knowledge and help students develop skills but my job is to keep Kids Safe period that's it Maslow's before Bloom means kids need to be taken care of before they can learn physically emotionally mentally Pride flags are a tool I use as an educator to help lgbtqia plus students who face twice the risk of being the target of a violent attack than their peers feel safe not to be in my classroom and be receptive of learning in my room as a CIS educator not that it's in
192your business or anyone else's my safe space sign indicates that they don't have to fear of being rejected by me if I find out their lgbtqi Plus they don't worry about being bullied or being overlooked or being dismissed by me they can focus on the curriculum for my co-workers that are lgbtqia plus not that's any of your business the flag shows an adult thriving given a population 45 percent of which considered suicide in the past year a hope for the future why would we come to school if they don't feel safe [Applause] good afternoon my name is Carl rice and I'm a senior at North Stafford High School I've been attending Stafford schools for six years now four of which at North Stafford one thing I can say very proudly is that Stafford excels in
193diversity I can't speak for other schools but I can say for sure that at North staff will be pride ourselves in inclusivity and acceptance there isn't a single day that I walked in and have ever felt reprimanded for who I am what or who I love and what morals I hold what such clubs such as the sexual and gender equality club or Sage The Fellowship of Christian athletes the Muslim Student Association the African Student Association or the multiculture club Etc there is no limit to the arms of North Stafford no matter who you are or what you believe in you are welcomed and you are accepted though the idea is that we have been that have been brought up today were restrain and shatter this value that we have spent so much time in creating
194students deserve to feel respected to feel loved and safe in their school and with love comes acceptance you cannot expect students to feel loved or cared for in a school environment when you strip away the school's ability to accept the student for who they are and who they were born to be students should be allowed to feel safe be open to their student-teacher relationships that allow students to feel more comfortable in their classroom but by restricting this the student what the student discusses and what basis the human morals that can be shared you are severing that tie you are severing the safety net that could be the difference between a student's personal physical and mental well-being I like much of the rest of Stafford County students believe that I deserve to feel and be loved
195at the schools that I'm a part of and if and it from the ex and from the acceptance if it is a club a flag a book a flyer or a name then that form of acceptance should be supported not covered up or cast aside no Steward no student deserves to be cast aside for the sole basis that we are living human and breathing human beings and whether or not I am gay I am straight trans bisexual or gender fluid I deserve to be heard to be seen and to be loved in my school Society this is a loving community staff of Virginia is a loving Community love is not something that you can just say or that you can that can be love is not something that you can just say and to be
196expected to be accepted it is something that must be shown but removing the right to be display our form of love is removing the right for students to feel love and allow students to be accepted do not pass this thank you my name is Sharon is Miss as Miss Garcia comes forward the final three speakers will be Justin Thacker Kelly Lynn and Laura Brewer good evening my name is Maya Garcia I'm a junior at North Stafford High School I come to you today to discuss the quality policy limiting teachers use of controversial decor and what is controversy what is controversy the Oxford dictionary defines controversy as a disagreement often when prolonged public and heated what is controversy what deems one controversial topic as acceptable to be displayed in a classroom who decides what controversial topics
197are too controversial to expose younger generations to I'd raise you this what is change and where does it begin one might argue that almost none of us would be here today without controversy so I ask you where is the line drawn in history women in our country were treated as less than the average man in our country are you going to be the one to tell our sisters mothers or daughters that because their rights were too controversial at the time they didn't deserve to be advocated for and places meant to be utilized for the teaching and the growth of our youth at one point in time everything that we have come to know and normalize has been controversial without the teaching of controversy our society could never have grown into what it is today how
198do we as a society deem what is too controversial for the future of our country are we letting our decisions be dictated by fear or unwillingness to change I wonder had this topic been brought up in another manner one different to certain personal beliefs would we be debating the topic at hand I wonder if this debate was brought about because of controversy in classrooms or personal Prejudice I wonder what is controversy is controversy a sticker on a teacher's whiteboard is controversy a personal pronouns something of which we all have he she they something that truly strikes me as controversial is the fact that an argument has been struck over what really and truly is a matter of the comfort of our children in a classroom every child deserves to feel safe and seen in the
199place they spend over half the week do you agree and whether that comes in the form of a rainbow-colored flag on a wall or the Pledge of Allegiance in the morning every child deserves that Comfort do they not what I will leave you with is this what do you expect that your child deserves and receives within a public education do you expect their culture and identity to be respected and do you believe that every child deserves their culture or identity respected as well thank you for your time foreign my name is Kelly Lynn and I reside in the Garrisonville District but I am reading a letter from a teacher that would like to remain anonymous good evening I am not a teacher for the record I can never do what any of you do you
200guys are amazing as a teacher for scps it has been very eye-opening and disheartening in the past three weeks I have learned that sea is telling teachers that if scps passes the proposed changes to classroom decor she has in quotes remember that retaliatory discriminatory actions in any form against employees who conduct themselves legally is a violation of law in the Commonwealth I have to wonder what would be the motivation for making such a statement of that nature people can conduct themselves legally and get fired from a job if you do not abide by the policies of your employer your subject to termination uh it would appear that sea is suggesting that any new policy in this regard should not be followed because the school system cannot retaliate discriminate if a teacher is terminated for not
201following scps policy whether or not the behavior of the teacher is legal has no bearing on the issue I have had great relationships with my students over the years as do most teachers I have students that come back to visit me that I have made an indelible positive mark on their lives I have done so without ever having pictures of my family in the classroom without ever having any Flags or decorations of any political personal or religious nature if anything my fellow teachers often riddle ridicule me ingest about having so little on my walls they will often say these things are necessary to build relationships to their students I have found to the contrary that none of that is necessary for my students to respect appreciate and come to me if they ever need it
202as a teacher I really believe that schools should be a place of learning not grooming which is what has really begun to feel like in my school I hear daily about protecting trans rights gender fluid fluid the non-binary students yet on the other hand I never see the same passion from teachers for the majority of our students who are significantly below grade level in Reading Writing and math we can't even get our students to pass those subjects in closing as a teacher I would love nothing more than to teach my students my content while allowing them to maintain their innocence as long as possible it is unfortunate that so many people have other agendas and that they want to press upon our students as a teacher of scps I am pleading with the school board
203to pass this new policy please allow our children and their families to maintain their innocence from the focus on sexuality that has begun to dominate our culture in scps school should be a place a safe haven for all students to remain innocent in the negative political culture coming from both sides of the aisle the rest of her stuff is included thank you [Applause] thank you hi um I signed up two weeks ago but for whatever reason my name wasn't called or I may have missed it so I apologize I'm sorry my name is Christine Rivera had you miss Revere did you sign up I did sign up online do you have a record of that Miss Hall I'm I'm Sorry Miss Rivera I have other people here that did not sign up and they're not
204being allowed to speak all right but if you have something you want to submit you can send it to send it to us an email and we can certainly take a look at it thank you Miss Hall is that all the speakers that have signed up Mr Thacker and Miss Brewer perhaps they left or didn't weren't able to come so that is all okay yes ma'am all right is there is there anyone here who signed up who was name was not called in advance no no seeing none we will close the public comment period come to the board for Action items item 7.01 authorization for the school board's appointed delegate and Alternate delegate Dr Sarah Chase and Dr Elizabeth Warner to vote in favor or against proposed amendments to vsba legislative positions during the annual
205vsba convention on November 10 2022 do we have a motion all right motion to authorize the school board's appointed delegate and Alternate delegate to vote in favor against proposed amendments second okay we have a motion by Ms Sigmund second by Miss Halstead now are there any uh directions that we want to give that we discussed at the work session perhaps the recommendation and the discussions of the work session that we will all the there were nine I think 13 nine there were nine there were only two that were in dispute one we have um asked for revision of the language for our legislative position three regarding technology and the fourth one um we would request it be divided into two separate legislative positions where we would support the buying Authority for the school board but
206the second one on these electric buses is a mandate from the state we reject okay and that is what we're voting on that that direction to our delegates if there's no further discussion um cast your votes motion carries unanimously doctors you have your direction 7.02 adoption of a resolution authorizing an application to the Virginia Public School Authority for the sale bonds and an amount not to exceed 106 million four hundred and sixty thousand dollars do we have a motion motion to approve the the SBA Bond purchase most of my Dr Warner do we have a second second second by Miss Halsted no Mrs fast all right any discussion yeah I was I was just going to say for the public this is about high school six we'd see uh the ground was started to clear
207today right Dr Taylor that's correct Madam chair uh timbering and clearing begin today Madam chair this also includes um mechanical systems and finishes at Drew and mechanical systems at Park Ridge okay any further discussion all right uh all in favor of the motion please cast your vote motion carries unanimously 7.03 adoption of proposed new policies and regulations 11 24 and 1204 proposed new policy 9108 and proposed amended policies 1108 and 4403 and for the benefit of those that are here that is none of these the policies that are under consideration as proposed to be moved to the agenda there's a different action item information item all right do we have a motion motion to approve exactly Miss Randall second by was that Dr Chase all right any discussion no all right cast your votes tally
208votes motion carries unanimously all right 7.04 adoption of the 2023-2024 and the 2024-2025 school calendars do we have a motion motion to approve second yes Paul said second by Miss guy discussion um Madam chair I still have issues with the August start time I had really hoped that we would um push that back a little bit and um and then push the start of the Christmas break back a little in order to allow people a little more time in the summer so I I will not be supporting this calendar thank you thank you Dr Chase any other comments I too will not be supporting these calendars I had hoped that we would use the final two days of that second week in August for the transition days and then start the week fresh on Monday
209pushing back adjusting those other dates I just think that you know next year we're starting school in August 6th it just feels like it's getting earlier and earlier and I understand the concept of Labor Day but we're a long way from Labor Day so I just feel that especially with those transition days it just might be more useful to keep that first week and then let all the students start on the same day following week any other comments no I I would just like to comment I was never a fan of pre-labor day I'm still not a fan of pre-labor day but um I I hear what said and we do finish the semester before the holidays break we finish the spring semester Before Memorial Day and I think that's where we are now and
210to me two days is not really going to make that much difference so I'm I'm going to support this I've certainly think that the staff has made it more than clear that they prefer to have that two-week break it you know for the for the holidays so I'm that's that's why I'm going to be supporting that all right um so I I also I mean I'm going to support these calendars because I do know that we've allotted and we've made a lot of changes and adjustments but I kind of feel like after this we do really need to address this early start because I mean our teachers are now scheduled right to go back mid-july and that feels pretty excessive to me as well but um I just I want to know that moving forward
211we're going to start to really look at in dresses so we're going to have teachers going back and like do just the way the calendar is going to fall so um I don't feel like there's enough reason not to support the calendars at the moment but I do think we need to take a look moving forward at these early start dates because it is very impactful on the families that's just my thought well it's hard it's always been a tradition it was always a tradition in Stafford we started after Labor Day that was very important when this pre-labor day started I didn't support it then but um that's where we are now certainly I would encourage the the community to come forward the next time we have this out for action and and make your
212thoughts known because that it is always an option but one thing to keep in mind is we get out a lot earlier so basically we're trading days in June weeks in June for weeks in August I don't I don't know that there's any happy answer because it's hot in both of those months this might be a question for Dr Taylor I Feel Like We in some of our calendar discussions we did discuss that in future years based on how the days fall we get closer to the middle of the month I want to say the 12th and coming years um and for the teachers who I've talked to about the loss of the professional development day next November that also comes back in Future years based on how the other uh days off fall particularly
213the ones this week like election day and Veterans Day whether they fall on a Friday or a Monday will dictate when and where we have that that November work day but next year is somewhat of a transition um but if we go back to you on that where we go on that August start in future years I think we've talked about that and I just want to make sure I'm remembering correctly yeah yeah you don't need me you you answered it um uh in in the 25-26 year depending on what the board wants to do and and every year is a a chance to revisit this it does start later just because of how the dates fall and there are choices it's a it the calendar is always a series of trade-offs if you don't
214mind ending the semester after the winter holiday your flexibility gets dramatically more flexible and if you don't mind two day weeks professional learning days mattered throughout the calendar also become a lot more uh flexible where you are right now with these two years I think you're 24 25 year has some benefits that the that the next school year don't have in terms of how the dates fall in particular as Miss Sigmund mentioned the professional learning day in November which is something that we utilize this year but don't have a next year's calendar because of how the dates fall so great points but it's a it's a trade-off and it's all in what the the board wants to do and and uh the community feedback that we collected uh definitely reflected stopped moving things on us
215is what our community said to us um and there are drawbacks and positives to every calendar that gets adopted no then cast your vote on approval of the two calendars Telly the vote motion carries five to two the uh dissenters are Dr Chase and Dr Warner 7.05 Award of his service contract in the amount of seven million 738.77 to Associated building maintenance for contracted custodial cleaning services at multiple Stafford County public school facilities using budgeted FY 23 annual operating funds do we have a motion motion to approve those second motion by Miss Sigmund second by Miss Halstead any discussion yes so this guy I um I wanted to make a motion um and I don't maybe I missed the opportunity but um because I'm obviously torn here but I I wanted to make a motion
216that we not vote on this and to bring the custodians into being Stafford County Employees 12-month employees so if that's if it's only for discussion that's what I think we should do so I would like for that to be a substitute motion and to proceed from there okay do we have a second second we have a substitute motion not to award the contract and to insource in Source the cleaning services okay discussion this guy I'll let you go first since it's your motion I think it's the right thing to do I think that um you know everyone talks about getting back to basics with our education but school systems are more than just educating people we're preparing at the whole human for society and a part of that is showing them um that we care
217about people we just darn care period And if we care I don't see how we don't hire them and I think that there's something that we would gain that's intangible if you look at the numbers okay me you know we would maybe Save A little maybe not but I'm talking about the intangible these people who are working their tails off getting sick providing for their families on less than Stellar wages and they're doing a fantastic job for the time that they've been advocating for themselves no one has ever come up and been like you know the custodians don't really work that hard or they don't do a great job like I've never heard one negative thing about any of the custodians and so for me I gotta I gotta be able to look at myself
218in the mirror and I got to be able to um be proud of my votes and I just feel like the right thing to do is to hire these people and um that's that's just where I stand thank you any other discussion Dr Warner thank you madam chair thank you Miss guy um I too would like to see the uh custodial staff brought back in-house I realized there was a time that Outsourcing these contracts made a certain amount of sense because the savings was there but um the way labor markets are changing that doesn't seem to be as effective anymore the other part of this is our custodial Services work 12 months a year and we don't have a lighter contingent during the summer we have a full 12 month calendar for our custodial staff
219the difference in salary that we can offer by bringing them in-house and benefits would result in about one and a half to one and three quarters million dollars that would go back into our community back into paying rent and buying food and putting shoes on their kids feet and putting coats on their backs I am a believer in you treat your employees well then you get that back in productivity and you get that better back and I also think that if we were a small employer where we didn't have four thousand forty five hundred employees it might make sense because we didn't have the infrastructure to maybe provide all the other parts of of having the employees but but we aren't a small employer we're one of the largest employers in the county I would
220much rather see those dollars stay in our community than go to an out-of-state vendor and I'm also certain that with the problems that we had last year we were spending a lot of man hours tracking down those complaints and following up on those things I just don't think that the savings is there anymore to warrant the position that it puts these workers in so I would like to see them brought back in thank you other discussion okay so you're going to have to remind me um if we onboard them like how long of a process is this and now just remind me of our ongoing costs the ongoing costs of the school system I don't object to considering it I just want to make sure that I have I remember what I'm talking about because
221I know like this is a one-year contract right it's it's 18 months because it goes through the remainder of this year and the next school next year Eric our contract with the current custodian Services ends December 21st correct Dr Taylor so that's why this is for 18 months traditionally these contracts for 12 months but in this case we don't want to consider a contract that would end in the middle of a school year but so so do we have the option I mean how long will it take us if we would agree to this to onboard all of these custodians that we're looking for to hire them to get the resources and I mean would we still have to negotiate this contract to the vendor thinking moving forward we're going to start all that like
222I I need a little Clarity because I'm not sure certainly well there's there's a couple of details that I I think are are noteworthy to to flesh out and to share the first one is uh that no matter what the board does it is going to be more money than what the board budgeted uh part of the conflict with the incumbent vendor was over financial resources and so any change is going to have a fiscal impact on the school system um contrary to what a lot of folks think we are a 12-month Enterprise uh each year we don't take time off in the summertime uh this uh this thing keeps going year round uh and whether we have uh all of our students in the building in the summertime or just some of our students
223in the building in the summertime we have students in the building just about all the time except for a very short window of time in our winter break where just about everybody is off and we just have a few student athletes who are occupying our gym space in our high schools wrestling basketball and that sort of thing so trying to find an optimal time for there to be a transition is that there is no real optimal time this is about as close as it gets that being said there there still needs to be a substantial lead time the more time you have in terms of months the better whether you're insourcing or switching a provider it doesn't matter the more time that you have the better this is kind of tight but it still is
224tight with the with the understanding that there's optimal time period where there isn't a need for service to occur on a daily basis during the winter months but knowing full well that come January when our students and staff return to the building we have the expectation that they are in Full Service no matter what the setup is whether it is our employees or whether it's another vendor we still have the expectation that they be up and running so I think there's expectations that are high and a tight timeline that we're operating from that being said under the circumstances being put in a bind by the previous or the incumbent dissolving its contractual relationship with us this is probably the best time to do this if we were going to do this in the middle of
225a school year versus at the end of a fiscal year Dr Chase yes so um when when my children started at Stafford County Public Schools the custodians at their elementary and middle schools were in-house um they were wonderful people their children were in the school with my children and I felt like they helped to educate my children along with the teachers the principals the lunch ladies and the bus drivers and so it worries me that we're treating one group of employees very different than another group of employees when we are really trying to to build a a community as a PTO mom they were always willing to lend a hand with dances carnivals programs like the time I brought in the Virginia Wildlife Museum and an owl um uh dropped on the floor as it
226flew across and uh the custodians had to clean that up they were not constantly being reassigned to different schools within the county so they were really part of the community I have heard many people complain that the schools are not as well maintained as they were when custodian Services were in-house and and I do want to say Outsourcing is not without its problems as we have found I did notice that back in 2008 we had a little bit of a a little bit of a litigation thing with the vendor at that time um but at the same time I understand it will cost more to bring custodial Services back in-house at present so um this is a tough decision for me thank you Dr Chase Ms Sigmund I want to say that my children are
227in schools now and have had a similar experience to a Dr Chase's children had when they were in school um the relationship you know exists because these people are part of our school communities and we are grateful for them I struggle with having to make a Monumental change like this both an expense and and an effort in six weeks turn around I do like that our new contract will provide a 36 percent increase over the current minimum wage to 15 the current employees minimum wage to 15 an hour um will have paid time off we'll include holidays leave Health dental vision benefits I'm reading from what's in here because we wanted that as part of our renegotiation process and consider that in the contracts that we considered I um I understand that all of our
228options are going to cost more I also know that there's an increased capital expenditure for bringing the employees back in or the uh I guess the employees back in sourcing that is an estimate but we haven't really like wrapped our heads around what that actually costs and entails I think it was about 10 years ago we opted to move to our current situation though we still have some employed people still working for us because they just haven't it's not been that long and I don't want to go back and forth so quickly without um you know giving it due consideration which is why I was okay with considering what feels like a long term but is really relatively short-term 18-month contract while we consider further as a board if we are going to make this
229change how to do that in the proper way in the proper setting at the proper expenses and not be forced into what could be a more expensive solution because we are fast tracking it um so that's where I sit on this thank you yes so I would definitely agree echo of course Miss Chase from being um PTA parent as well all of the um the extra things that they did for us but that we could also reciprocate so like we had family dinners we made sure that they were given one given dinners as well to take home to their families or just to enjoy while they were working in our schools always included in the um anything that we did for staff we always included our custodial workers as well I also am happy that
230we're going to be giving um better weight the the company that we're considering um is off you know one of the things that of course we had stipulations that you know made us um wake up to what was going on and Co and what the custodians were being paid as well as treatment was of concern to us and ultimately led us to where we are now um with the incumbent service opting to leave or end our contract um and so for me um I'm also a little concerned about bringing everybody in-house with actual costs that's a lot to do and right now I don't I I have I guess struggles in you know allowing um because when we say we've had them in-house before um it wasn't 100 we still had outsourced companies in fact
231as I read I think it was three different companies five different contracts while we still had some in-house sourced and that's before we started to go Outsourcing so we've never had that I can see and I won't say never I've not seen where we've had a hundred percent of our employees in-house for custodial work I just think that if we tried this for 18 months and it's not to the loving then we could consider and definitely bringing in-house I just feel like the turnaround time and getting everything right is really really short right now and so I I have to think about this thank you okay okay my turn um I'm I'm the only one here that was here when we did make the uh the switch and it was more than 10 years ago
232it was a long long time ago um at that time there had been a study of Stafford County Public Schools and that study determined that since our focus is education that we should be looking at trying to address our service needs in a more economical Manner and that was the basis for making the switch at the time now we did not say today we're going to be in-house and next month we're going to be contract and that's why we still have some custodians we have you know basically let the custodians that had the time in the system stay until they were ready to either retire or to leave of their own volition we have a few left and that's after at least it's been at least 12 years since since this started and yes they're
233loved but I can tell you that the custodians from the contractor are loved as well Miss Randall and I I were a bit north on Friday was it probably on on Friday and the custodians were there people we've seen come to our meetings and and Dr Turner said we're never going to let them go they're a part of our family so whether they're working for the contractor or working for the schools they are family and and if nothing else I think this this this this information that has been brought to the board has made our staff and our parents and our students more cognizant of the struggles that our custodians have and made us all a lot more appreciative for the services they provide we did we put in the the the request for proposals
234that that there had to be a higher minimum wage there had to be you know recognition for for leave and and offering benefits I'm willing to consider bringing it in-house but not now and and the reason I say not now is because we have what 33 days between today and when we start doing our own custodial services when the when the contractor is gone as of December 21st they're done then it's on us and I have to look at our primary mission and my focus is on education and we have to hire staff you know we don't even have recruit we're not able to recruit to fill all our teaching positions all our support positions so before I add on an additional burden of managing and hiring the contractors I want to make sure that
235we have enough resources to do it how many resources is it going to require us to do and and and maybe maybe it's not is simple of we're going to save money versus it's going to cost more because there are a lot of other factors and I appreciate you know everyone bringing these about but I'm I'm looking at this from a practical standpoint I want to make sure that we keep rolling and to me with this 18-month contract we we have a contractor a vendor who is has met the requirements they've been vetted they've been you know referred to us by the the staff is is able to do this job and the prices high but it's the best we're going to do at this point so you know I'm going to support this contract
236for the 18 months but I certainly would be willing to consider over the course of that 18 months another proposal and it's something that I would want to look at very carefully and consider all the facts and I'd suggest that perhaps this time next year that come back to the board or approximately this time so that there's plenty of time for the board to to make that consideration and if the board wants to have an option the board could put another request for a proposal out or the board could say well we we want to do this in-house but right now I don't feel that that we have enough or at least I don't have enough bases not to support this today because I want to keep going straight forward with with our with our
237education and with our students we've got learning loss we've got challenges we've got other issues and and I want to I want to just just move forward and it certainly is my hope that we'll keep seeing these same friendly faces on the 22nd of December that are that are there on the the 21st but whoever is is is is employed by this new contractor is definitely going to be um in a better position because of Stafford County Public Schools and the request for proposal and the minimum requirements that we put in that in in with respect to taking care of the employees so that's that's my say all right so we are voting on The Substitute motion which is to bring the custodial Services in-house effective December 21st correct all right so that's the motion
238cast your votes no my vote didn't you know those and said that one didn't come up okay that motion fails four to three so that means we go back to the original motion which is to approve the contract as stated in agenda item 7.05 cast your votes tally the votes motion carries four to three well well it's three Two Reds one yellow we have some diversity among our uh our colors up here so the motion fails because it did not get more than no the motion passes because it got four votes we have one one abstention so is there a basis you want to put in the record for abstaining [Laughter] obviously there is no no no sometimes oh my I didn't hear that I guess I'll have to listen to the recording all right
239thank you for the light moment Miss guy all right that brings us to information discussion now this is a new item that was added to our agenda as a result of the uh the the removal from the consent agenda and that's item number 8.01 adoption of proposed new policy 3113 proposed amended regulation 7201 and proposed amended policies 2107 and 4113. all right um Miss guided you made that motion would you like to start us off on the discussion sure the first thing I'll say is um I just grouped all the policies together because I just wanted to give any other board member an opportunity to speak on any of the policies but I also know that they might not be so we don't have to go through each one if you know so we can
240just start with whatever okay did you want to start with one of them or I think that a lot of the points that some of the people brought up today um were really good I think that um it's just it's very glaring to me that we do already have a lot of policies in place and we already have the authority to do what this uh 41-13 revision and the policy already has us well we already have the the ability to do that what it's trying to enforce so it just doesn't seem to me like it's needed um listening to some of the things that was stated by staff at the governance meeting it was very clear that it wasn't needed so um I I just don't see a I don't I don't see a real
241need I do believe that there are some people who have had who've taken issue I do believe that and um as I think I think someone said Dr Taylor said being uncomfortable is a part of the learning process I mean there's a lot of things that make our students uncomfortable and we can't Shield them from everything so I just don't think this is needed thank you do we want to just go down the line did you want to speak Dr Chase so um I have comments both about 41 13 and 3113 are we just doing 41-13 first let's just do them both together okay well then each one separately but then we won't have to do another round okay all right so uh 41-13 um which is the amendment or addition to the employee code
242of conduct I went and visited Stafford High School and Mountain View High School because it's been a while and so I wasn't really sure you know when the policy came through I was sort of like is there a problem and so I went and visited the two high schools um and I didn't really see anything that was particularly controversial to me and I spoke with the principals and they hadn't received many complaints and the couple of complaints that they had received they seem to have dealt with them appropriately so the one I heard about was the don't tread on me flag um and it was in an AP History Class and that was assumed appropriate to the curriculum of the AP History Class I also learned that we don't provide funds for classroom decoration and
243teachers are not contractually obligated to decorate their classrooms so I want to thank teachers who've taken the time and spent their own money to create intellectually engaging and welcoming spaces for their students I was blown away by the art room at Stafford High School and the biology classroom at Mountain View High School it has a really huge and cool Hornet's Nest in there another thing about the policy that's a little concerning to me is chairwoman Healy often has said to me and others that the school board only has two employees they're the superintendent and the clerk and so I don't really want to have to decide whether things are private enough on somebody's desk so that piece if the policy stays for me that piece has to go because that's not really my job um
244and then with respect to 41 13 um I I think this policy could interfere with two priorities that this board unanimously agreed upon for our strategic plan the first was the attraction and retention of teachers I think when we micromanage teachers we risk losing those teachers and the second is student mental health I've spoken with a teacher from King George and another from Prince William County and it's my understanding that counselors gave them stickers or emblems about safe spaces and the reason counselors gave these to teachers in our surrounding count counties was that um the emblems are supposed to help students in the lgbtq plus Community who are at higher risk for suicide and I don't think anyone can get to my age without knowing someone who's committed suicide or knowing somebody who's attempted to
245commit suicide and my life has been touched in multiple ways by this horrible thing and so for me something that lowers the risk of a child taking their own life will never be controversial um and so I will not support policies that run counter to the best practices of student Mental Health okay so that was 4113 you ready for 31-13 all right so 3113 for those of you who didn't notice it uh has to do with parental notification concerning instructional materials with sexually explicit content where did this policy come from the Commonwealth of Virginia okay I actually like to ask Mr bowling who's our director of academic programs to shed some light on where this came from and kind of where we're at right now and some of the actions that Stafford County Public Schools
246is taking to follow the law so let me just say if you have not read this policy there is quite the vocabulary in this policy but go ahead uh Dr Thomas good evening uh Dr Thomas uh is correct um this is so this policy is pursuant to a new section of Virginia code that was enacted in July uh and that's 22.1-16.8 which requires every school board to adopt a policy that is consistent with or more comprehensive than the model policy uh developed by the Virginia Department of Education so our policy the policy proposed is consistent with it and following uh this first review review actually next week there's going to be a committee that's meeting to discuss um existing um processes that are similar or related including how parents challenge materials and then we're going
247to look at how we can weave them all together to a new process that will not create additional steps but really kind of brings it all together to one process and so that should be that draft should be in your hands at the next meeting foreign so I I just wanted to to go on the record as saying that I've had three children go through Stafford County Public Schools uh the last graduated three years ago they were never exposed to sexual content in any of their classes that was explicit or age inappropriate so I don't want anybody thinking that this policy is because this is going on in Stafford County Public Schools so that was one thing I wanted to to say however I cannot say they were not exposed to some inappropriate content on
248school grounds via their classmates cell phones um so just it's it's it's not the teachers teaching that are exposing them to this content it's the parents sending their children to school with those cell phones so I had questions about how this would be implemented and I gather there's a committee that's going to work on that I want to make sure it will not present an undue burden on our teachers because I don't want to be losing teachers so I would hope that however it gets implemented that you know maybe at the beginning of the year or twice a year a reading list or something is sent to parents and then they're given a one or two week window to to respond so that teachers aren't spending their whole uh whole free time having to having
249to deal with that I also wonder if we shouldn't also be informing parents about potentially violent content being presented for me sexual content is probably not as distressing as violent I have a good friend who's a 14 year old son when he read Elie wiesel's Knight was really upset and traumatized by that and if his parents had known in advance that that was being covered they might have been able to to mediate that in some way and then finally I would like parents to be able to opt their children out of active shooter drills I've spoken with parents whose children experience nightmares and anxiety following these drills at the very least we need to make sure parents know when there have been active shooter drills at their school so that they can be prepared to
250handle that thank you I thought you wanna thank you madam chair um I'll start with 4113 um I've been in a lot of classrooms I've taught I have never ever expressed my personal political or religious views I think that teachers are professional and they tend to not do that because your words can't have a huge impact on students but I also know that um 70 percent 73 percent of all lgbtq students have experienced some form of violence in our schools 60 2 3 67 percent have experienced have stated they feel unsafe um when I was in university a young man I knew committed suicide because he did not have somebody that he could talk to my friend's younger brother committed suicide under the same circumstances so I think that we already have procedures in place
251but I think instead of a regulation we need more conversations talk to your children's teacher say Hey you know why is this in your room is there a reason don't just don't just ask us to go in and decide what's controversial or what's going to cause discomfort um being in the human race is uncomfortable sometimes there are lots of things that made my kids uncomfortable that I wish I could have protected them from I couldn't but I also was relieved that some of those things occurred when they were instilled in the safety of our home and we could talk about them I think it's more important to build relationships with your kids teacher and to talk to your kids help them sort through their feelings sort through what they believe so they can defend it
252because I guarantee when they get out of your house they're going to have a professor or a boss or a boyfriend or a girlfriend or a roommate that is going to make them uncomfortable um I noticed in the uh or the Personnel report there were two assignments of licensed teachers and 10 resignations I don't want to put a burden on our teachers or give them the impression that we're looking over their shoulder because we don't trust them because it's already hard enough to recruit good teachers and Stafford has a lot of good teachers aside from the vague heavy-handed nature of the policy we can't protect our kids from different points of view or controversial issues but we can teach them how to respond we can teach them how to defend their beliefs and still be
253respectful of others and teachers are an important part of that because they spend so many hours a day with our kids teaching them those skills will better prepare them for the future where they will encounter these things without the protection of being at home I believe that the policies we have in place already work and the reason I believe that is because I've talked to teachers and I've talked to principals who've told me they've never had to even adjudicate any of these issues so let's step back from trying to regulate everything and let's just try to build those relationships and talk to our teachers and our kids Miss Sigman um oh gosh I'm going to try to be concise we got an email this week and I keep going back to what I read and
254I apologize in advance for not asking this teacher's permission for quoting his or her email but you know here we are I fully support the proposed verbiage for 4113 as it pertains to classrooms at walls and curricular speech the classroom walls should only be for curricular topics I am able to represent diverse mathematicians including people of color representatives of the LGB community and historical and current world leaders because it relates to math as opposed to a subversive objective and I think that was essentially the goal to remove symbols as opposed of inclusion rather than actions of inclusion I also have strong concerns over discussion or normalization of human sexuality between students and between staff and students because that's CR the Virginia Department of Education includes that under Family Life curriculum parents have the option to
255opt out of that and children are removed from those discussions but if it becomes a topic that we are saying well it makes them uncomfortable we we need to have them talk about that that's not an uncomfortable topic that we're allowed to just bypass a parental right to opt out as a reminder parents are opting their children out of all sexual contact conversations in school whether it's homosexual heterosexual you know birth control adoption that is a conversation that they opt to have at home so those are my big concerns with that also we had a lot of emails either fearing for or hoping for the removal of the American flag in our classrooms I just wanted to remind everybody that Virginia code 22.1-202 requires each School Board to not only recite the pledge daily but
256also have the flag displayed in every classroom and outlines the the way that can be protested or opted out of so that is something we do not have control over here at the school board level um I also wanted to know for students I hate to use the I don't know do we have in the counseling process the ability to facilitate classroom placements for students who may need the support of us of teachers who either display or do not supply display um Flags or no Flags or any other is or if a student is in a classroom and they feel the need to have that reassurance from a teacher do we allow them to switch classes or otherwise I don't know so especially because we are not requiring this safe space or flag to be
257displayed if it's and in some cases the assignment of students is somewhat random rather than by choice like an elective or by you know academic level or or for lack of a better term because I'm thinking of math skill level and I don't have a skill level but it is kind you know sometimes we don't have a lot of options with placement and does that impact um student performance or mental health what do we do in those options if it's there or not there um so those those are the concerns I have uh with this whole situation and look forward to feedback or other ideas thank you Miss Halstead so I'm going to keep most of my comments for board comments when it's my turn to speak since this has largely been a an assumptive
258campaign against me for an intention that was never meant um so I'm going to save most of my my question my comments for that but but let me be very clear when this was brought to governance this wasn't from me this was from over seven months of campaigning and listening to people and them telling me what they wanted and what they would love to see happen in our schools I have no desire or the time or the Crayons or the inclination to take anything away from any kid or teacher and I'd fight anyone to prove that I bring it show me what you got and don't bring me a meme that means nothing that's number one number two I never intended for this to go through the way it was written and the implication that
259I would bring forth something like this that's this important and not anticipate a conversation with you ladies after everything we've been through is not only insulting it's pretty disgusting and it shows that some people are dedicated to division all I had to do or Sarah thank you for calling me first all she had to do was pick up the phone and say can we talk and can we handle it this way 100 I never expected to approve this policy without sitting down in a conversation with you ladies this wasn't something that the legislator put forward that we didn't have an option on that we had to do legally this was something that was requested by a large portion of our population that we all represent and we have the obligation and duty to put forth
260something that acknowledges that so if it's okay with you madam chair that's not even the highlights of my board comments but I would like to move our discussion on this policy to a place where we can address the needs of all of our constituents together and find a happy medium that works for everyone because that has been my goal all along and I will specially thank Dr Chase and Maya and Miss Randall because and Maureen but um for your understanding of what of my like I'm like why are we all out there why has this become everyone has been upset for 10 days for no reason whatsoever none there was just no there was no call for it this board we are a crazy group of mixed up feelings and emotions but I will tell
261you I never thought that I would trust I could work with them and I 100 think I do and I 100 think there's a solution here and I I thank them but Dr Warren I should apologize for you for not have gone to you sooner but anyway um so I'm gonna Reserve I'd like to move this to our Retreat you can video me you can do a performance of me when it's over you can do whatever you'd like no I'm singing no I'm singing this guy's our dancer um so that's that's all I have to say on it but I do also agree with Dr Chase that I would like to put a special note on violent content as well because that can be very detrimental to our children and even though some things are
262a part of the controversy that we need to expose our kids to I don't need to worry that my child is going to be up regressing because we couldn't manage violent content thank you Miss Halstead Miss guy I think if I'm understanding correctly then um the thing about the violence I think that's a great idea um I'm assuming maybe governance would would talk about that at the next governance meeting and bring us something for the violent thing just trying to put a put a pen in that um okay and I'm glad that you got some of that off your chest Alyssa to let to let people understand um where you were coming from okay okay all right I got you I got you but um I will say that um there was one thing that
263just rubbed me uh wrong but I'm not putting any intent behind any of the public comments and I'm not assuming that they aren't a great person like I'm a great person but the the um it was about maintaining our children's innocence and um acceptance of every human on the planet doesn't stop your child's innocence my children are incredibly innocent and even my adult ones I'm like what are you still thinking but they they completely accept every human on the planet and think if you have if that's your framing some of that is a problem and so I just I hope that all of us can you know when we go home tonight or tomorrow we can just look at our beliefs and just try really hard to put ourselves in the other person's shoes because
264when we talk about a lifestyle or where we talk about that community we're talking about humans they're people they have feelings they have desires just like we do and they just want to live their life and be happy just like I do just like Miss Randall does and I just I just need us to remember that we're we're talking about our neighbors and people's aunts and people's children and so we all deserve to not feel some kind of way because we are the way we're made because we are you know and I will also say that um this is an amazing group of women but one of these things are not like the other sometimes marginalized people we just feel invisible we just do I've had teachers I can't tell you how many times are
265like okay we're gonna go back to the 1950s and let's do life like that um I wouldn't be in this school and going back to the 50s it wasn't a great time for my people that's life but we have people who live like that today they spoke some and some Educators you know they're cisgendered whatever but they still are repping for those people who feel invisible sometimes and sometimes they feel or the way Society can make them feel whether it's happened in the school or not is less than and I I absolutely identify with that and so I just want us to remember that we don't all experience everything exactly the same my students just like your students went through Stafford County Schools but your student was never told their skin color is a disability
266like being blind or not having a leg but my students were told that by Stafford County employees so there's a difference of how we raise our kids how our kids get on the bus and get off the bus it's different not better not worse it's just different and sometimes there needs to be some type of sensitivity to that because inadvertently things do harm people and I believe that for the students whose parents were speaking to you I believe we need to have some type of sensitivity for all of us but I also believe we got to go with like sometimes we gotta Point parents back to the schools to let the schools adjudicate this and not make a policy on what I believe is a minority in this in this sense this is a policy
267that would have broad sweeping effects that would you know affect all classrooms or whatever right but how many you know like I I respect that you heard this when you were campaigning I did it maybe you did do you get what I'm saying so I'm just saying make sure we're making policy where policy needs to be made Mr Randall so I would first like to say honestly thank you for those that have come here to speak both for or against thank you for emailing us both for and against it helps us to see different perspectives echoing similar to what Ms Halstead said is you know the one thing about us as separated and divided as together we work as to whatever one thing is I have picked up the phone as have others up here
268and spoken to every single member saying what about this have you thought about this how can I re this if this is my thought how can I see it from a different perspective and to you know I'm you know and this guy sometimes is made um mention of it to me as well I'm an and I think I'm not going to be four or against I'm and I'm trying to come to a place where I can be and and I agree a lot of what we can hammer out work out will be done at Retreat and I'm I'm so thankful for a board that's open to doing Retreats and hard work and conversations and we do you know it's hard for us and in all the different ways our different life paths are different children
269ages our different life experiences but we still try to figure it out together I'm also thankful that I was visiting high schools particularly with the respect of observing and learning about one lunch and in the process I've been able to pop into classrooms and talk to teachers because I'm not interrupting a lesson per se so it's been I just want to thank the teachers for answering my questions I've been able to plop down in hallways and talk to kids of course talking to administrators seeing different things in different schools yes I see it um you know so I actually am fortunate enough I get to go to Colonial for just my last High School to visit Mrs Healey came with me for my North visit but I really appreciate um being able to just plop
270down and listen and hear things even the f-bombs but that's yeah there is a lot a lot um and I guess my shortness they don't realize that I'm an adult I don't know um but I also want to thank our school system because in the years in prior to coming on and since I've been on to learn about and listen to all of the training that we have given our teachers that have enabled them to be better at cultural sensitivities so hopefully we don't have comments said similar to what you know Miss guy had said to her children that we've had enough diversity training well and I won't say that there was ever going to be enough because just when you think you understand it um it's going to change um but also having the
271opportunity to provide this for our teachers and in turn you know maybe we need to open things up so that parents know what our teachers are being taught so that they can say Hey you know this is an aspect I haven't thought about or hey wait a minute can you think about this from my perspective um definitely I have learned a lot in the letters that we have received um personal letters versus form letters um I've I've really appreciated the the information that I've received both ways um because there is value in both not just one and I've I've really appreciated that so I look forward to further discussing with my girls um next weekend thank you well I think that's about uh all said one thing I have to say Dr Chase I hadn't
272seen this last line that the school board reserves the right to determine whether the item is displayed privately enough didn't realize that one was in there so that's that's going to be one of my topics of discussion that's true well I didn't write it but we had we had the discussion I I just I want to Echo my colleagues comments that we learn as we go just like everybody else we're not perfect but we are trying to make the best system we can for our students and that's going to entail keeping our our staff engaged on board and and and staying with us so it is important that we hear from our staff but I would ask you to have the courtesy as as we do to listen and to consider other points of view
273because we really are here for every child every child and that's how I look at these policies just like I look at who do I represent I represent everyone in my district you know whether they agree with me or disagree with me whether they you know vote don't vote our job is to represent our community and to do the best we can for our for our students and our staff is very very important so I appreciate those who who've written to us and I encourage people to continue to write to us because we will be you know continuing to review this I encourage the speakers and I I know you're passionate and I heard anger on some parts which makes me sad because it's not the intention to anger our staff you're our valuable resources
274so please you know give give us a little uh patience and benefit of the doubt as we move forward and one thing I think you you see is that everyone here you know has a passion and we will do the best that we can and we'll be back next month sure whatever Dr Taylor whatever policy is passed in whatever form is that the The Next Step would be the accompanying regulation on how that policy is implemented not all policies require a board regulation and but all do have some type of Regulation some manner shape or form and it is the how something is to be executed a good example of this might be a regulation tied to one of the other policies having to do with bus discipline uh that might be a one-line regulation
275which says that riding a bus is a privilege for students without disabilities and not a right and therefore we reserve the the the right to remove students from the bus if their behavior is not in line with student code of conduct that could be a regulation so regulations can be board approved and very closely managed by the board or they can be delegated to staff to and then I noticed with the I guess the existing 4113 that was passed previously there was an accompanying document that was kind of a matrix that outlined um issues are concerned raised about that or this uh policy and then what our staff response was some of the concerns are somewhat the same as far as the vagueness of the language and and I feel like some of the answers
276might be similar though slightly different so one I think it's a good reference point for how those questions have been answered in the past as far as vagueness of language but two um given you know the breadth of this whatever this policy ends up being a question a document like this might be also helpful uh posted with it um and we might consider that at the board retreat well what as well what might be in the accompanying answer Matrix for future consideration well we'll have a lot to talk about but I want to thank thank you all for being so respectful you know of each other and for for having dialogues and I know we've had a lot of one-on-one with other board members um no no two on one because that would be a
277four-year violation we're very careful about that at least not that I know of um but but thank you and and I look forward to continuing this discussion and I do encourage people to continue to send your comments to us because they will all be read and they will all be considered um and we we also have some comments that came in on digitally as well that will be um available to the public to to to view with the um record of the meeting all right that brings us to oh my goodness we have a presentation okay Mr White you got a 99.9 a plus plus um like you can't possibly have how long are you going to talk to you just within a point zero nine seven percent margin seven slides okay can you can
278this is like name name name that tune how many how many minutes do you want Mr White okay do you want I'm gonna I didn't say he's gonna get it but you know three is that enough what's that three minutes sure okay I'll make it extremely fast perfect thank you if you if you need a couple more we'll indulge you okay I appreciate it okay all right I'll get started here okay don't start his clock until he gets it up there all right here we go so we're here today to talk with you about this year's projections this false projections for the next 10 years last year's projections were pretty good and we're hoping to have similar success next year all right in terms of our projection methodology we use a modified cohort progression method
279which uses births student yields from future housing and historic Trends to predict enrollment and of course projections aren't done in a vacuum so I want to say there are other contributors that provide information for our projections such as our I.T Department County GIS for residential housing data and GIS data as well as the state of Virginia for birth data all right so let's jump into it uh here are actuals and projected K-12 enrollment over the next decade this school year we're at 30 30 622 students over the next uh five years with slated to grow 2 200 plus students and nearly 6 000 students over at the end of the decade so we're still growing all right so now we're going to get into it by school level and so here we are Elementary projections
280uh over the next decade and we see that Elementary enrollments later to grow 800 students over the next five years and nearly 3 100 students over the next decade and for those of you who like to see color-coded maps here's the projection for next school year just want to make a quick note that the color coding has changed a little bit this year now the reddish tones show overcrowding so the light red shows if a school is slated to be over 100 percent to 104 percent and everything in that brick reddish tone is anything greater than 105 percent and it's clear to see that we have crowding you know North and South ends of the county okay let's move five years into the future you can see we still have a crowding need and of
281course we're anticipating some new schools I'm sorry Rocky Run in Conway are over but that is over and they have trailers that is not include like they're not 82 students over that's correct capacity right now right so Rocky Run does have rocky running con we have four relocatables at each school to offset uh crowding hmm all right and we don't want that to be permanent yeah yeah right wait for elementary school 18. well but 18 is going to be direct for those 19 is going to help some of the other ones hopefully all right okay so as a matter of fact yes uh when yeah when yeah correct it wasn't really reflective of the the level of Crisis that we're experiencing to have red be over 105 percent when really red is a stop point
282at a hundred percent so we did change the the color scheme just a little bit and we removed the light green and if you look at where light green is that you could be light green and still be at 90 capacity which is when we should be opening a new school so yellow is uh is the new light green and and that's really more reflective of how cautionary things are at that pace and uh how dramatic it gets very quickly thank you all right so here are the fall 2027 Elementary School projections then moving ahead you see in 10 years we have a lot of brick red and that's assuming that the schools are not providing the CIP and of course they will be so it'll be much better than this all right so here
283we are with Middle School projections we see this year we had 7191 students over the next five years we're slated to grow 900 more Middle School students uh and over the next decade a thousand in total here's where we are with Middle School this year a lot of green light yellow which means under we're in pretty decent shape of course the numbers show you C count so projected seats available or deficit depending if the number is positive or negative here we are five years out and here we are 10 years out in 2032. all right now moving on to high school over the next five years we slated to grow 500 students and over the next decade in 1900 students in total at the high school level and here we are this year as you
284can see we have three schools already over capacity I'm sorry I apologize this year we do have three schools already over capacity next school year fall 2023 is the same then you see it just gets progressively worse if we go out five years and of course this doesn't show High School six yet the value of having this information going out 10 years it sort of helps to inform how many students we need to move when we do our boundary change so that's sort of the value of having the five and the ten year all right and next steps we've already shared the draft projections per the county policy November 4th was our date sharing that information with the technical Review Committee that was information that was on our website which is public information so we
285shared that uh we also have school board consideration of our school capacity standards and of course we're going to be planning for deployment relocatable classrooms our goal is to get staff's recommendation and by December which is next month and we want to get contracts executed ASAP and the enrollment accommodation plan report will be released next month well we have that EAP in the enrollment accommodation plan we have that um sometime prior to us going seven on seven so that we have time to look at it uh what's the date [Music] December 7th I'll try my best six through seven yeah something like that and okay if we could just have it to like okay make sure we're caught up because we obviously would want to provide them a copy but okay um if we would
286have it so that we could have any questions answered or whatever on that okay the plans for relocatables is that um is that we're talking about that at Retreat and so then that would okay so that would inform staff a little bit more about where we're going okay gotcha thanks okay Dr Taylor I have a question um we've had relocatables for a while in some of the schools but I've never seen a um report on how they're doing or the you know how it's fitting in with the school or any issues or pluses or minuses is it possible just to get a general um you know update on that I it's been a few years since we've had them I just remember um one of the schools in my district actually asked for one and
287I I talked to them and they're they're using it and things are going well but I've never seen anything official yeah it's right for yeah of course uh I'm talking about in charge I have one question does can we in the future also get a um because I noticed like this doesn't have in 2017 our beautiful new high school seven could we get an idea of what this number next time not clearly not now but like what does this map look like once at least High School six opens oh yeah yeah so you don't even want to take numbers around and just float them in no don't the only thing that probably is going to happen that yellow blob in the south is going to end up being in the South that that all will
288be okay all right I see what you're saying that four or 500 kids that got moved up to forge what 10 12 years ago with the expectation they would be moved back when we rebuilt Stafford never it wasn't enough room hopefully they'll get to stay close to home I just wanted to um clarify for the public that when we talk about planning for deployment of relocatables Staff recommendation in December execute contract in January that's for placement in August hopefully because that is our how long it takes to get them that's not like oh we buy them in January they'll show up by spring break no it takes so much longer and that's why we're having these conversations what seems like earlier than normal is because it is earlier than normal and speaking of reports on
289trailers it made me think um what is the lifespan of a really relocatable because I know we've talked a lot about the break-even point for rental versus purchase but once we purchase them how often like how long do they last we can put that in the report yeah it varies but yes we'll we'll absolutely add that to the report but in general um I think of it almost like a school bus says you know 15 years and you're really pushing it can we get the age of the ones that we currently have I know we purchase new but we also have some that are not we have the ones we bought when we um we did the elementary schools years and years ago once we put over at stepper middle so in other words we're
290going to have really overview that's how we bought those didn't did we not buy those yeah so we did purchase a few of those I think that's actually what's at Colonial Forge and maybe even the one that's headed you right after we were done with them at with the elementary school right now as we moved them to the high school loop and yeah they're actually in demand and did those have water no okay all right thank you Mr White thank you we'll see you thank you thank you we'll see you next month all right superintendents reports and comments in eighth ninth and 10th grade and 11th grade took the PSAT we hosted our first chart your future event for 12th graders uh this was the largest Economic Development uh Stafford County our seniors met with
291colleges employers and Military recruiters all to help inform the division of their decisions about what happens next After High School uh this cursor to a bigger event tied to all of our students the decision day on May 1st of 2023 it was a great event and it's one we hope to repeat in the future and to play our video if we can we just have a short recap how long is it sure oh God I'm sorry guys I'm tired [Music] this is my get up at 4 30 in the morning the next day nights welcome to the 2022 what is the problem with our sound tonight shark your future the first time that we've ever had this event this is where our seniors will be making plans for Life After High School here's a little
292recap thank you when I thought about the Expo it was very educational I learned a lot of things that I didn't know about things that I necessarily wouldn't have thought about before learned some new things in different areas that I didn't necessarily think that I'd be interested in my favorite part about uh this Expo is I get to learn many opportunities and learn about different things I can do in my future I thought it was pretty interesting I'm glad I got to walk around look at the different places that have internships I think the event was very great there was a lot of good opportunities and jobs to look at and a lot of college College I got a few applications that I was excited about at all I also think it was great it
293was really interesting it helped me figure out what I want to do in the future and it also opened up lots of more opportunities that I wouldn't have thought of before well I thought the event so far has been great I've seen a lot of places like Starbucks King Dominion a bunch of colleges some colleges actually I'm sitting applying to this job's rocking immediately seems really nice it's really cool [Music] thank you [Music] thank you we treated our students to a conference style event and uh that conference style event um was definitely what we needed to do to elevate our kids uh to to prepare their thinking for what happens next many of our students are preparing finalizing or have already submitted college applications many others haven't decided what they want to do and this
294was a critical step in that process and helping them decide We Had Each of our students fill out a card for their preliminary plans for Life After High School they gave those cards to their counselors and those that weren't quite sure what to put in those were the ones that got our first appointments with our counselors so they could talk through their next steps very exciting stuff we had our very first Multicultural fair at Colonial Forge this past month we had our band together to Fight Hunger event just a few weeks ago we got to see that on video display at the at the start of our meeting very proud of that and we have nine schools that have received a purple star designation which is supporting our military families We wish all of our
295veterans a happy Veterans Day and as they are supported in our schools we would like to thank Margaret Brent North Stafford High School who are new awardees of this distinction Rock Hill Elementary School Widewater Elementary School in Winding Creek who all received renewals for their purple star distinction as well as Anthony Burns Conway Falmouth and Rocky Run that have had the distinction and will be up for Renewal next year very proud of these schools and their military connectedness and how they how they support our families in a pretty meaningful way this is uh the the season of thank yous and uh and in this time of thanks I especially want to thank our teachers and staff for the hard work that they've put into making this year a huge success so far this is definitely
296been a light years ahead of where we were 365 days ago and I'm just tremendously grateful for the hard work that everybody has put in as we recognized earlier this is also a school psychology week National School psychology week and National School psychology awareness week we have a lot of students that need a lot of additional supports and for many of them our school psychologists are that first line of support for them and we're just so so grateful for all that they do for our kids there's a couple of things that I just want to point out that the board also passed tonight you passed a policy and a corresponding regulation policy which effective in January would establish a student member of the board in Stafford County that is so exciting I am so proud
297of this outstanding school board and how seriously you take all the work that you do and how focused you are on kids this board got an opportunity to meet with student government leaders for lunch at Cyber bites and had the opportunity to interact with them and hear directly from them you clearly care about what our students are thinking and and want to see them represented in local government and I just think that that's great big shout out to Mountain View football who's going to be playing in the playoffs this weekend uh Stafford and Colonial Forge are also in the field hockey state playoffs Stafford beat Midlothian High School today four to nothing to advance to the state semifinals so congratulations Stafford High School and our first state champions of the year go to Stafford High
298School our state champion chip uh cheerleading squad at Stafford High School we're just absolutely thrilled with them there's so many good things that are happening in Stafford County Public Schools this is just an absolutely fantastic place to live work and learn thank you for the opportunity to serve thank you Dr Taylor Miss Halstead would you like to start us off I would just because I probably you probably want to end on a high note and that's not me um I'd you got this Maya um so first up first I mean I will start on a high note which is I did my school visits to A.G Wright Montour and Drew Middle um found out that the principal at A.G Wright was actually born in the hospital in the town I grew up in I literally
299called her a liar because I'm like no you were not no one has ever ever said those words I was born in Hackettstown New Jersey and so I was so excited and then we spent like the last the next like 40 minutes of the first part of the visit talking about Hackettstown New Jersey which is like so obscure but anyway um I I will say one thing you know the principles the understanding the schools just watching the kids like go through the hallways saying I hugging the principles I mean that's that is school and I get that all this other stuff you know there's like these little tiny percentages of all of this stuff going on but man if you can see that in their lives could just be those moments in time it would
300be a phenomenal place um to just go and spend your day it would also be weird and you'd probably get arrested but it would be a phenomenal way to spend a day it's just it's so welcoming some of the kids that Drew Middle just to watch them when she walks into the cafeteria their faces just light up and man she is such a Spitfire I I laughed so hard on that visit I can't she was I'm like I'm like I don't know if you're looking for a roommate but just in case it doesn't work out with me and my husband I can come live with you because just kidding um I'm just kidding I but yeah Hey listen it's late um but the truth is is that she has she has what I think I've
301been looking for for the most part which is that Ron Clark Lean On Me look of the world like she just sees things that most people can't say and I find that to be amazing plus she loves dogs so it can't be all that bad all right so to our veterans uh this is my special shout out to you on your week thank you so much for your service to our country for everything that you do you keep me humble throughout every day fighting to maintain the sovereignty of a sovereignty of a nation that is sometimes not so grateful but also um just so appreciative of what you give up and sacrifice and I would be remiss if I didn't say happy birthday to the United States Marine Corps in two days we will be
302celebrating Ura Semper Fi thank you for your generous service and kind time to me as a Marine Corps spouse that has you guys you can't imagine the the intensity and the fun that Marines can be um so I really want to take a minute and even just to recognize our ROTC kids and what they're putting in right now and what their what they go through I mean we saw it today um my uh Miss guy I've had Maya here this guy I keep forgetting it um Miss guy and I met with the health department October 26th as promised I asked her to come and be my second on the initiative just to start it off I feel like we have a really good balance and a really good vibe with everything and we're able to
303kind of um get in there with both sides of the fence and and help each other see through the muck and the mire and maybe help kind of find some ways to get more programs here we told the health department to go ahead and figure out how much you know if they need had extra money they wanted to give us extra resources extra people we would go ahead and and take whatever they had so thank you Miss Kai for for agreeing to take this journey with me because um I I don't know where it's going so oh you're right I didn't actually give you the opportunity to say now I will say she stayed on the phone with me for like four hours on a ride to Jersey one day talking about it but all
304right so let's talk about Alyssa's emotions and how I feel about what's gone on in the past 10 days and the revisions to the polit to policy 41-13 I mean I'm disappointed for a ton of reasons but primarily the instant reaction to people believe it for people believing this was a targeted campaign by me against a group of kids so I I'm going to get to that in a minute but at the end of the day I've had my ear to the ground of this community for a long time and I find it very telling that the teachers that spoke today spoke through someone else they didn't have the courage to come here today because they're afraid of retaliation for believing what they believe and I think that's very telling and it's very upsetting to
305me that they are spearheaded by an organization that creates that kind of fear in them that's the first thing for the last three years we have removed offensive items off of our children our teachers and inside of our classroom without any consideration for how the people who were wearing those things felt because you deemed them emotional and offensive and controversial and now all of the sudden we can't identify controversial why is that we knew a controversial was when we took the Thin Blue Line flag down when the don't tread on me flag was removed when the Maga shirts came off so why now all of a sudden do we have a problem identifying that I don't understand it this wasn't about the board regulating what you could do or couldn't do this was about saying
306what's fair is fair you want to identify controversial and emotional because we can do this all day long as one of our teachers threatened to do right here in front of us which is beyond disappointing to me as well we are grown adults this is the real world we live in all right so let's go on this board has the obligation to all students we don't get to decide whose child is more important we don't get to make policies to make everyone happy because in the end everyone loses then inclusion does not come without exclusion it's just part of the it's just part of what happens if you want to include me in everything I do you're eventually going to put me somewhere I don't belong right or you're going to create a space for
307me that I don't feel is safe because you brought everybody else in I'll explain um we have our safe spaces right and our flags and that makes a group of people feel safe and that's wonderful I really wouldn't have a problem with it except that there is still another group of kids in the school that don't feel safe and the message you've given to them is that they're not okay in your classroom because they don't think like you because they don't believe like you it's literally exactly what our transgender kids are going through you didn't give the transgender kids The Voice you took it away from the other kids because you didn't do it evenly you didn't find a way to work together and that's what this board has to do now and I believe
308we're dedicated to do it to make sure that each each of you the transgender kids the gay kids the black kids everyone on this board is dedicated to you and dedicating to find an equal way to share that space together so that no one feels like they have been demeaned demoralized or you know in my case um belittled um so I do find it highly offensive that a group of people who fought to have are highly ironic that a group of group of people that fought to have offensive materials removed from the schools forced other kids to now hide their beliefs if you don't believe me I can I can't present to you because they don't want to come forward either I had 11 different kids come to me I asked every one of them
309if they would share a thought or statement with me but they're afraid they don't want to get these kids these are Christian kids they're Muslim kids they're Jewish kids they don't want to get retaliated against do you know why they don't tell teachers and principals for the exact thing that you all did to me because that's what they're afraid of because that's what we put out there look at what went on when that policy came out I didn't even get a chance to tell these guys that the policy was coming because we jumped right on the fastest hate bandwagon we could find to me not the policy and not a single person stood up here and said but I understand the Christian kid might be feeling put upon I understand the Muslim kid may not
310get it not a single person so what is the definition of Tolerance that's what I want to ask and that's what I want to know because I will tell you that's not it that's not it we watch religiously diverse kids across the board be canceled ridiculed bullied told to get over it their opinions don't matter because we have another group that is more important than you that we have to bring up and hold up right so who defends them who stands up for them I do because they came to me and asked me to give them their voices back or to help them find a way to not feel empowered to be a part of the system because they don't believe in their souls that this is okay and we can't find a way to
311work with that nope we got to go right to the campaign right to the one that says Alyssa's a homophobe Alyssa is a racist keep saying it over and over and over again it's never going to be true ever but you keep saying it please so I want to say this policy was actually designed to remove all politically inflammatory distractions all of them from both sides of the fence because it's a distraction to the learning environment and it has an impact and it has an impact because it causes animosity between kids and families and the school system in general that's why it was brought up because for some parents the respect isn't there so please don't stand here and tell me this is about respect out of this side of your mouth when out of
312the other side you are disrespecting an entire part of the population of Stafford County that still is here and that still has whether you agree with them or not it's not up to you to decide whether their religion is right or wrong whether how they believe or how they practice their faith is right that's not up to you what's up to you is to say I want the respect I'm going to give it but that hasn't happened so I want to point this out a little bit because um personally the emails that come to me the ones that don't go to the whole board the ones that are filled with hateful language and what could be considered um emotional uh torture I guess for lack of a better word I am really really really struggling
313to understand how you can demean me for being intolerant when I see and read some of your words and the anger that comes out of your mouth directed specifically at me because I decided to stick up for another group that is now currently being marginalized in our school system remember the pandemic it wasn't enough for you to mask your kids you had to mask someone else's and when that kid was in masked or wasn't doing whatever you had your kindness word what was it Grandma killer already for us right because that's tolerance that is so stressful to me I can't even tell you and it's the reason why I gave up four years of my life at 50 years old to get in here and fight for our kids and to fight for our families
314and to say no nobody gets to use mean words to our kids no one not you not me not anyone now let me explain something the sca your continued campaign to keep us on opposite sides of the field is a true disservice to this community you had a choice when this policy came out you could have asked me for feedback you could have said where did this come from and why are we doing it you could uphold your members and said how do you feel about this policy that would have given us a lot to go on wouldn't it of a simple survey do you like the policy do you not like the policy help them understand the words that we can use to make this representative of everyone but you took the low road
315you went to the media and you caused an issue that didn't need to be a part of this community again because it's not the first time no it's not the first time I don't think many of you understand either as you stand up here let's talk about the lockdowns for two seconds and the toll that those had on our classroom kids right you want to talk about that some of those lockdowns caused our kids to be brutalized in their own homes for close to two years but you fought to keep them there and now we have kids that are dealing with the fact that they were raped by family members in their home they were sexually abused molested by friends in it because they couldn't go anywhere they had nowhere to go and now they're
316in our school system right cutting themselves just as much at risk of suicide as anyone we don't want to talk about them bullying kids Mental Health crisis come on guys think about this it's out of control for all of our kids all of them and for us to say that it's one over the other is to me unacceptable completely unacceptable read the statistics talk to the schools see the kids they don't talk to anybody they suffer in silence there's no symbol out there for them are you sure they're safe in those classrooms because I don't know that they are and they certainly will suffer in silence versus telling someone what happened to them so let me ask you a question are you done putting everyone in a box are you done labeling these kids are
317you done asking them to pit themselves against each other as they design Define who they are because this is only a short time of their life 13 years they have decades to go through this settle I've talked to some see y'all think that I don't talk to the the gay kids or the gay community or whatever it is but I lived in New York City for 10 years can't get through New York City without at least a few gay friends that's just the way it is there so I called them and I asked them and I talked to their children because those kids are now school age 13 and 14 years old and you know what you just want to go to school they just want to be normal but they continue to feel the
318pressure of having to carry this with the kids and you know what they feel like can you just let me live in here by myself but no we're gonna We asked them to take on the adult fight you fight this in school for us you can not a single thing in this policy takes anything away from the teacher's right to be who they are what they are what it says is you have parents in that school system that are not comfortable I don't it's not your right to to decide what is or is not comfortable for another person's child that's not your right it doesn't exist as a right because what do you tell the parents whose child is uncomfortable and now that child goes home they don't know how to talk to their parent
319about what's going on they don't even know how to talk to their teachers or their principals they came to me 11 of them how do I get them to respect me again I am not I personally am not asking a single teacher to deny who they are what they stand for what they support I have not put a single limitation on you for what not that you didn't put we didn't also put on our other teachers the policy asks your respect through discretion and sensitivity that's it let me frame this video I worked in New York City as a public servant for seven years before I started my career and even after that when I got hired the first words to my employer were from eight to four we own you you don't get to
320wear speak or do anything that is politically religiously or otherwise divisive because you represent an entire system Bronx Brooklyn Upper West Side Staten Island couldn't have a more diverse population so please make sure that you don't offend anybody by doing wearing or saying anything that might upset that person and you know what my desire to help those people was a heck of a lot more it was a heck of a lot stronger than to have to wear a shirt because I could be out there in the community with them and I could help and I could work with them and I didn't have to worry that I would say or do something or whatever that would alienate them and make them feel worse and I'm going to end on this note I promise we are
321living in a post-pandemic world where the adults are probably more mean to each other than the kids honestly they really are I mean I know that for a fact and I told you I was mad so I promise I'll end this this quickly again next time find another way to handle your grievance because a lot of people went through a lot of undue stress over this I'd be happy to sit down with the Trans kids and ask them for a way that we can work together Maya knows it Sarah knows it everybody on this board knows it but every kid has to feel the respect you're seeking okay I grew up at a funeral home I've been listening to the saw I listened to the sobs of death since I was three years old each
322individual suicide that my father buried was probably more horrific for me to listen to than the next so I know I am very sensitive to the risk of suicide amongst our youths but this board doesn't have the right to take on who's at a higher risk or whose Mental Health is more important because if we don't approach this as everyone is and find a way to make everyone feel mentally viable then we've all failed okay any volunteers to go next any volunteer if you're finished Miss Halston well why don't we just go in order no I actually I I if you want to have a little laugh um it's a governance committee I suggested we consider a three-minute limit or limit on our comments well you should have put that on the agenda for gosh
323darn book but but I I actually got cut down by our chair but I'll be bringing it back up to the board when we discuss our meetings no I'm just actually if there is any volunteers I didn't want to no let's just go away all right all right thank you Miss guys this is my turn no clock starting here I didn't I didn't really have that much I write big and it was just five little points but I'm gonna try to trim it down to three um um it is a season of thank you like I believe Dr Gerald is the one that said it I just wrote that down so thank you vets I'm a proud vet uh wife vet and and I'm you know very proud of my family who served so thank
324you um I did vote for the student member of the board just because I needed someone to do a tick tock challenge with me because you guys refuse so um that will be coming soon right no just you have to be more hip it's Beyonce right now um also um serious Dr Taylor uh I do like your tie today but it but that kid who is here I think his name is Ephraim which is a beautiful name his tie was even better okay I had to say that so yes his tie was that very very handsome young man um yes he did look sharp I was like oh your mom addressed you you look great all right so at the work session that we had today which was a great work session I thought we
325spoke about learning loss in particular mathematics and it made me notice something so my kids who are currently in college when they were at the old Moncure we had so many different um options to deal with kids being below grade level with math I was a math mom we had math club we had opportunities for them to stay after school with staff and I'm not sure how all that worked out I know at the high school level or middle school level you make an appointment with your teacher and they stay after or you go early in elementary just seemed like they were always there but and I know I can't dictate anything to Dr Taylor even though I try every time in our meetings but I thought maybe we could write like figure this out
326at the retreat but I thought it would be great if we can afford to maybe um get back to to doing those types of things in elementary school and I know that that comes with maybe an a compensation for the teachers for doing stuff like that I know that pre-covid that type of stuff was happening but we also were used to people going above and beyond and then now that covet happened and people realized I got a contract I don't have to do all that extra so I think we should try to maybe compensate people a little bit for and ask them hey can you do this extra because we definitely need it but they also deserve compensation for the extra hours um and so I I don't know I was just hoping that we
327can try to address that um and also to the teachers who are doing it now still I know you're out there and I appreciate you so much and I wish we could compensate you okay um another thing is I just wanted to talk about um I had some Educators reach out to me and I will give details at our Retreat where it's like slightly private even though people can still attend they never do um so which is great because we can really be frank you know um but I did hear from Educators that they truly do and I asked I was I was blown away they said they truly do feel like this board is against Educators or is adversarial with them or is not trusting of them and so I was like are you
328kidding and they said no we're not and then they gave me examples because I asked for them and I will share those at The Retreat because whether you agree with them or not that's not anything that we want you can't have people who you can't have our kids Educators not trust us or not feel valued from us and I know that we are trying to change that narrative I know that we are trying to have people feel better about coming to work for Stafford County Schools but we're failing from these Educators point of view and so I will be bringing that information for us because I just think it's really important I think morale is is low sometimes for people and you know I mean we've got 10 resignations this month how many was it
329last month and we always have a teacher an educator shortage so um so that's it I hope everyone has a great Thanksgiving and that's it thank you Dr Chase do you want to go next um I I spoke a lot earlier so I don't have a huge amount to say I will add to what Miss guy said of only that um I've heard from a lot of parents that they want to be more involved I coached the math counts team for nine years at Drew middle school so I think there are other ways you're a volunteer I I think there are other ways that we can get some of that kind of stuff happening at schools that doesn't necessarily require that we ask so much of our teachers and then I just wonder if Miss
330Halstead would be willing to be my anger translator because I think you would do awesome at it and that's it thank you Dr Warner thank you thank you madam chair um first of all I do want to I do want to give a shout out to their veterans I have several in my family my son and my daughter-in-law and my daughter-in-law's family and I do want to thank them for their service and everyone else who has served and I was glad to see the Coast Guard at the career Expo because that's where my son was and you don't see much representation in the Coast Guard um I have been visiting a lot of schools for some reason I have avoided the middle schools and I apologize for that I think it's just a personal Trauma
331from my student teaching years and I am trying to make up for that so I've been visiting the middle schools and I do want to say um I I really am impressed with how well the students are working and getting along and they're very vocal about their complaints and some complaints I was willing to listen to and some I said I'm sorry that's that's between you and your teacher you're just going to have to follow the rules um I did attend a conference on a student-based funding for budgeting which I found very interesting because I I really liked the concept of the money following the students and focusing on um the different needs in our schools so I I there was one of the conferences that I attended from bsba and I will be giving
332the school board a report out because I think that Miss Healy is right I think when we attend those things I think it is important to share the information that we glean from them um I think that's it for me thank you it's late I'm I'm tired long day Miss Sigmund okay first and most importantly uh or at least time sensitively H.H pool Middle School invites the entire Stafford Community to purchase to celebrate National family literacy month tomorrow night at their family literacy night from 6 to 7 30 at HH pool there will be opportunities to build your at-home library books and there will be a Showcase of student work as well as resources from the public library family activities for all ages will be offered I will be there with my toddler so yeah
333um I have posted information on this on my social media and you can get more information of course from HH pool I also wanted to remind everyone to consider applying to serve on an advisory committee regardless of your interest area we have an opportunity and need you to help provide serve the service to the community and feedback to us applications are available online and will be collected through the end of the month I've not been in the seat a year but I feel like I've said this a bit if you are bored in Stafford County you are not looking hard enough fall Sports have essentially come to an end winter sports are right around the corner basketball indoor track what else do we got wrestling gymnastics all sorts of stuff if you like theater we
334have so many at the middle school and high school level our family had a great time at Lion The Witch in the wardrobe at North Stafford High School who will be doing Cinderella as a musical in the spring and I'm really excited about that and we saw Midsummer Jersey at Colonial Forge they will be doing Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor dream coat in the spring so lots of real cool theater opportunities and I love that especially that they are really really kid-friendly because these are kids so it's a great opportunity to expose our family to the Arts locally and in a way that is very forgiving to people you know young people who ask questions maybe in a not so theatery voice so thank you guys for accommodating that also our Middle School and High
335School bands courses orchestras are all getting ready for concerts so consider attending them look them up on all your individual schools our students are so talented I went to the fall musical or chorus concert at Colonial Forge which was outdoor and I don't do a lot of outdoor stuff so um it was just it was beautiful Moncure Elementary was one of the schools I visited they invited us to participate in their lifting leaders program which was so much fun and we were given a school tour by these just like little kids who talk to us about you know the Energy Efficiency of the light bulbs in their elementary school and I'm like you're like in first grade how do you know this stuff but I was also sorted um into their school houses I am
336part of ucana which means Valiant and our mascot is the dragon and our color is red and I went to the Cyber bites lunch with our high school students which I thought was fantastic I loved hearing the feedback we got on everything from you know the bell schedule to the vending machines um and I look forward to that being an ongoing conversation with our you know elected leader counterparts at the school level um I do want to Circle back a little bit to 4113 because we got a lot of emails that said well you can't provide one opportunity one instance of when this happened or people are afraid to say something or they have to speak through another person and I realized that technically I'm one of the people that people are speaking through but
337I'm also a parent who has had some of these conversations I have a bunch of kids in our schools I have one I'll be in the schools for the next 17 years so I got I've got a lot of kids um and I remember when I opted one of our children out of family life curriculum and I reached out to the teacher to figure out exactly what that meant where would they go during that time what would they be doing is there an alternate assignment and they were like wait what and I reminded them that I've opted the child out and they were like well that's really you know what's your concern you know I get that they were probably trying to problem solve and I explained to them that our religion requires us to
338have these conversations at home we don't teach our children to talk about sexual relationships you know outside of you know these circumstances and they said well you might want to consider a Christian School and in what other instance would we invite a parent to remove their child because of something because of a religious belief because of the color of their skin their gender their ability status that's not a conversation that's okay to have with anybody for any reason that's why we have a non-discrimination policy second again one of my own children was engaging was invited to engage in an albeit not age-appropriate conversation about who he or she may or may not date from you know this student this student this student this student and my child said I'm not having this conversation it's against
339my religion those children said well that makes me uncomfortable because you said you know your religion is dictating who you're dating they went to the counselor great first step counselor brought my child in explained her side and said well our religion says I can't talk about this um that's not appropriate for me to talk about the counselor said well we you know we have to be sensitive to everyone you can't talk about your religion how did I find out about this one of the students parents called me to work it out because that's what grown-ups do but I didn't hear about it from the school counselor I did not hear about it from the teacher who was in the classroom of the conversation was taking place and the teacher that was brought in by the
340counselor I guess to kind of be like what actually happened in your classroom I found out about it three days later after my kid had been in counseling from another parent who knew that this was going on these are systems that need to be fixed I wouldn't want it for any child for any reason to be pulled into counseling or to be invited to leave our school because there is something wrong with the system and I get that that's what we're trying to prevent um but I'm go you know I'm asking parents to share their stories because people don't believe they exist they exist I've been through it my kids have been through it if you're going to cancel my kids they're used to it they're School Board kids you know like I've canceled on
341bell schedule and whether or not we have the whole week of Thanksgiving off fine you know like but I feel like I'm open to have the conversation I want inclusion I want everyone to feel safe that's why I don't understand why marching one classroom safe versus another matters and that's why I want to know if we recognize if that's a necessary facet to a classroom for a student how do we make sure those students are in those classrooms we don't so how is the system working and how do we make it work we want every student to have what they need in their classrooms to get what they need to feel supported and if you don't feel or a teacher doesn't feel because Mrs Smith I don't know if we have a Mrs Smith and
342if we do I'm not talking about you has or doesn't have a sign a flag a symbol whatever in her classroom does that make her more or less likely it just might mean she hasn't decorated her classroom so that's where I am on that um first of all I would also like to say I'm thankful for um the the dedication and the work from our veterans um and big thanks to them I also have to say big thanks to the opportunities that our Educators have made it so that we can attend things like chart your future and to see Mr Fulmer and other members of our staff and invited guests coming to teach not only were did you saw the opportunities for them to go around and see things but there was also opportunities for
343them to attend classes and ask questions and I was really impressed with one girl talking about her retirement options with Mr Fulmer and she hadn't even graduated high school and he said we need to talk offline I think she blew him away the community night at Dixon Smith was really cool one of the things I learned new business didn't know it existed um Bella joy and they teach ballroom dancing and they have gotten quite the hit of kids that have really in because they can just be silly and fun together um I have I enjoyed the band together against hunger they always just are it's just so fun to watch one school and then another but then when you look off to the side and you see this huge group of parents and that's always
344you know such a it's such a welcoming thing back when we get to see the involvement of parents and band it's like its own nation of parents and as well as the students so I was very happy to be there and see that and experience all that was I have like I said been visiting you getting choked up I'm good okay I enjoyed visiting the one lunch at the schools um that has been really fun for me um I I'm looking for I know the middle schools go to debate next week but um we're going to be on I think on our way to retreat I'm not sure but they do have um oh gosh model un coming up in December which is I mean they're so dressed up and our whole county is going
345to Dixon Smith and which means many more opportunities for many more kids that otherwise couldn't be included and that's really impressive to see some of the engaging conversations they have as they represent different sides of huge issues um but uh you know one of the things that I want to say too when we look at ways that we can help and you know we see it in letters that we receive we see it in comments that we get up here the emotional charge for different things whether you're supporting or you're against or whatever but one of the things that I noticed when I looked at our discipline for the month of October was there it you know there there are certain things that um come up as something that's happening in the elementary building to
346the middle and even more pronounced in the high school and in talking to teachers yes there are some things that are school-wide exhausting for them but even more because they want so badly to reach kids teach kids and do the things necessary to help recover mental health to help recover learning um is the amount of disrespect from students to teachers to see in elementary school that one of the highest issues is profane vulgar language or gestures this isn't teacher taught to see speaking in a in in an uncivil discourteous way and that doesn't just start in elementary it's in the hot middle school and it's in the high school so when the conversation is how can parents support we got to start with making sure kids are being respectful to their teachers to hear a
347student come into their High School class and say when the teacher says it's time to take a test yeah I'm not taking that today I'll let you know when I'm ready whoa come on no we got to help our kids at home remind them that inappropriate touching as that is an escalating problem Elementary larger middle larger high school let's remember 18 adult these are things that we need our parents to help us with look at the code of conduct talk about it with your kids you know pay attention it can't be not my kid we oh no it is and they're that becomes another you want to talk about a teacher plate that becomes another item on a teacher's plate when they have to negotiate when your child is ready to take a test when
348they have to discipline about touching when they have to accept curse words being said to them so I'm I would very much like um as a parent if you want to be upset demonstrate upset in a way that is respectful so that the teachers get that in the schools too administrators get that in the schools too it's um it was alarming to me to read through the discipline and the highlighted areas of what were the problems and that's just one month so um I'm thankful that the teachers that walk in the building every day and sign in to be the Educators and the administrators I'm thankful that they are there because it's gotten harder and even teachers I used to teach with at Brook point and they're around the county now and we talk and
349they're still in the business and I'm up here I get to I get to hear oh Susan it's not like it was when you were here so and I know it isn't but I when we ask for help that's where we need a lot of help so we're we want our parents to partner with us as often as they can thank you Oh Maya wants me to tell you guys that she has been invited to sing at the North Stafford Christmas concert with them aren't we so excited for her but definitely take a look at the holiday schedule if you need a little jingle joy in your life from elementary don't you laugh at me elementary middle and high it's there so definitely get yourself in the holiday spirit thank you okay first I'm going
350to have a public service announcement I don't see Miss Lowry um with us now but she she was here this morning this this um at the meeting she wanted to give us some news about the turf fields and she didn't realize since she had last been speaking to the board that we changed our policy and you had to sign up in advance so I told her I would pass this information along she wants us to know that the North Stafford field hockey team had six home games on the new turf field and won five of the games the sixth home game North Stafford hosted a D5 Regional game and lost in overtime I know the first game was a day we dedicated the field they played Riverbend and I found out from one of the
351moms that that was the first time they beat rivermen in years so go girls and over at Colonial Forge their field hockey team program their field hockey program excelled on their new turf field and they won the D6 Regional Championship it was so exciting for Forge to be able to host the state quarterfinals on their new turf field today they won and they will not have to pay to rent Embry Mill Fields to prepare for the state 60 semifinals later in the week so thank you Miss Lowry for providing that information and I'm sure she'll sign up for the the next time she wants to come and talk with us it's always a pleasure to see her I want to thank all the veterans in our community and our schools we have the most amazing
352Veterans Day events um it's you know for for some years we'd be in school now we're off school on Veterans Day but we always recognize the veterans and also want to thank our JROTC instructors for the guidance and direction that they're providing to our students this amazing young woman tonight just incredible to hear about her accomplishments and she's in high School wow so so so impressive but that's a result of these instructors who are spending so much time you know trying to help our our students some will go into the military some won't but the life lessons they're learning in JROTC is is something that will stay with them forever um I want to thank Mountain View for inviting Miss Halstead and I since we share students there to the chili cook-off and oh my
353gosh how many how many did we taste we we had like 100 chilies to taste it was amazing I'm like oh my gosh I'm not really a big chili fan but I was after that but this this this just shows you I mean Miss Halstead and I are you know we have a lot of differences but in three of the four categories we picked the same one for the top and the other one we didn't have a top and we pretty much picked the same so that just shows you that there's you know whatever I'm volunteering to test the desserts the next time because I'm much more qualified to be a judge of cookies and cakes than I am of chili but it was great so thank you thank you to Mountain View for inviting
354us and I really did enjoy my visit to North last week with Miss Randall and we got to talk to a lot of teachers because it it was it was uh during the the lunch hour and um we got to see it in action and there were so many students that were engaged in a remediation and redoing tests and and studying in the library doing all different things so it was um it was a good thing um also want to say that I I really like the members of the board it doesn't seem like it sometimes I know but I think I think we're we're a good group we work together and the fact that we don't agree is positive because if we all agreed I've always said they wouldn't need seven of us so
355thank you ladies keep it up Miss Hall said your passion is is is is amazing and I encourage anybody out there who doesn't agree with Miss Halstead to have a conversation with her to meet with her she is open she's willing to listen and she cares she cares about every one of these students and she cares about the staff so don't make judgments without having all the facts and just as you are telling us not to make these decisions rationally I would I would say the same to you don't judge before you give somebody a chance because I mean I I never I didn't know her a year ago and she's amazing I mean she cracks me up plus she's an amazing dog trainer but that's I told her I learned some lessons from her
356I'm going to do on the board no no but anyway that that's that's on a separate subject but but but she is passionate she cares and she will always give you the benefit of listening and that's what I would ask everyone to do which is what we as a board have learned to do which is to have respect for each other to listen and to have a dialogue we may not end up agreeing at the end just like in the custodial contract tonight but that was important it was important thank you for bringing it up that we had that dialogue and that we show that we're willing to consider it at some point in the future so hang in there don't agree just to agree and the next board meeting is December 6th 4 P.M
357excuse me ladies if you let me make this announcement that we can all go home 4 P.M joint meeting with Board of Supervisors read the capital Improvement plan December 6th and the next board meeting is December 13th 4 30 work session 6 30 regular business meeting and we're done thank you oh thank you staff for sticking with us tonight thank you back to work back to work tomorrow what's happening with the um for sure oh I mean [Music] foreign [Music] thank you [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] [Applause] [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] [Applause] [Music]