Stafford School Board 8/9/2022

001miss hall said any discussion all in favor all right this is the work session okay yeah i'm just wondering if it's realistic for us to get through this school board self-evaluation at the end here um i i think and i thought we said we're going to make it first yeah and i thought we were going to make it first too so well what's what's your druthers do you want to change the order or do you want to say if time permits okay and let's say our time is going to be what six o'clock that will we yeah yeah the half hour for the closed session or yeah we'll have 403 and if not we'll divert to the next work session okay number one on the next one yeah do we have to say i didn't

002mean it all right so is that acceptable to the motion maker that's right not really so it's a friendly amendment well let's let's just be efficient with what we're doing and then we'll get to it gotcha alyssa yes um we had we had a motion to uh end the uh work session at 5 50 and defer the uh school board self-evaluation if we don't get to it to the next agenda absolutely okay all right oh my god i'm sorry that you're hey we haven't gotten improved yet yeah all right all in favor all posed all right that's unanimous and will you know miss guys here okay all right so that brings us to announcements wait a minute no wrong one i'm moving ahead we have plenty of time for this evaluation all right strategic plan

003phase two goals and objectives thank you madam chair first up is dr towery to go over our proposed and recommended golden objectives attached to the agenda item or was a redline version also of some of the board's comments of dr towery i don't know if you want to go through that first or go through the recommendation first but i'd refer you to and dr charlie do you want us to hold our question i think that makes sense okay so if you have questions job them down so we if the when we get to the end we'll just go you know each board member will go through any questions so probably easiest if i walk you through the redline version so you can easily see the tweaks that we made post feedback i do want to

004highlight that some of the feedback you all sent isn't necessarily captured in the objective edits or metric examples but i do think will need to be incorporated into the strategies and tactics they just fell more at that type of some of the ideas um that were shared out i think would be great strategies and tactics to implement towards these objectives and with goals but let me know if you all people missed anything um from what you all shared out over those few days but is as messed all scrolls down oh i think that's oh that's the secret candidate no that's okay it's probably the other tab there you go this one yeah there we go okay so one thing i think that was a theme from the feedback you all shared with making sure that

005um it didn't come across like we were trying to lock middle school kids into a specific career trajectory versus ensuring that they were getting ample opportunity to explore different careers and career pathways so the state does have kind of a college and career readiness plan but i tried to tweak that language a little bit to emphasize that this is the focus of this plan of middle school is around exploring careers and seeing what careers might be fits for students and then added over to our metric examples um really trying to target um exploring florida six potential career paths during middle school career paths being a broad indication but that could be kind of an in-depth exploration you certainly could do more but making sure that for every kid um you know for example if you

006did six you would basically each semester be really looking at a career path type of avenue as part of that also added to that the focus around participation courses and extracurriculars that facilitate career exploration really trying to expand opportunities for middle school students through both the kind of elective offerings that would allow them to explore different careers as well as supporting some extracurricular opportunities that allow them to get an idea of things that are available um i'll give an example of that would be um pre-covered when we first started doing 21st century programming at drew we're able to have high school students come from the program's visit kind of give a demonstrate of hey this is what it's like to be the culinary program this is what it's like to participate in ib this is

007what it's like to do these types of things and we kind of did a combination of high school kids coming down and talking about high school programs and getting um career professionals in um jobs in local industries who would come down and talk about this is what it's like to do um stormwater engineering this is what it's like to do these types of things so that would be some of what we look at for middle school and then sure we don't have that uh the next big adjustment um there was also themes around kind of um the connotations around adequate and that kind of sounding like a mediocre benchmark um so we changed this to kind of um mate annual growth goals in literacy grades prepaid for 11. um those were kind of the different

008pieces with that as you all know most of these platforms kind of pre-built in what broke polls should look like for kids so we would want to make sure that we're checking that box so let's get stats nerds for a second here and talk a little bit about what that looks like kids are growing at different rates and may be on a little bit different of a trajectory and the what we're looking for is really for a growth goal to match their line of best fit so as we collect data points in their development over time using some of these metrics we should be able to project out a good score that a student should attain and on any one of these metrics and we want to be able to measure ourselves against whether or

009not they meet that objective so it's going to be different for every kid and so that's a little bit a little bit different than what we've done in the past where it's like everybody's shooting for that 400 sol score this is very different than that because the the growth target may look very different for different kids based on their previous performance should be pushing them a little bit further all right we added in here um to kind of um give ourselves some additional challenge uh northern virginia in addition to region three um region three we're obviously the largest division in region three we are one of the smaller divisions um in northern virginia if you start to kind of consider us i know we're kind of at that crossroads um so we're really looking at

010trying to admit that as well metrics from united stand there uh we did add uh some of the feedback which was very good um making sure that we pulled together an annual graduation kind of cohort report that includes some stats on our graduating class to include on-time graduation what our postgraduate plans are in other metrics i know one of my goals and realistic kind of earlier some of the vlds types resources one of my goals um for our division is to ultimately tap into that virginia longitudinal data system so that we can ultimately track our students post graduation to some extent um some of that will probably have to go through some irb processes but that's that would be one of my goals as we start to have a better idea of how do our

011kids spare five ten years after graduation right now we don't have a great metric to do that another suggestion involved um ensuring that um as part of this goal three piece that we include our stafford county sheriff's office school resource officer reports makes a lot of sense to make sure that we're capturing that data point as part of what we're monitoring and taking a look at and and everybody's going to get a copy of that is that right i've received a copy but i don't think anything okay um some of our people are trying to remove the adequate piece and really specifying that we want to make sure that our classroom space really appropriately aligns the programmatic needs and really allows us to provide high quality learning experiences for our students and um same thing

012with resources that we have in the live student and educator needs to facilitate high quality instruction so let's take a quick pause here and cite an example one of the modifications that this might look like is noting on our program evaluation our of program capacity sheets that every every school should have an art form every school should have a music room every school should have a library every school should have x y and z and yes a teacher worked there and that aligns to meeting the programmatic needs versus saying adequate this was updated for consistent language again trying to make sure we're emphasizing the transparency here um in addition to acting these good resources and trying to be as efficient as possible while we're doing both of those some additional metrics here include kind of

013starting to make sure we analyze data participation in the information training program documentation and programming and support of staff wellness so really starting current catalog and coupling with that starting to very consistently measure what staff find most helpful as we're providing different programming offerings um so that this is seen um because we're providing staff wellness opportunities that they're seeing is benefiting that kind of additional to use necessarily um a number three here ensuring every student has access to high quality high qualified educators really doing some language there we did add a metric here in terms of number of teachers with national board certification that was not in there originally and then just clarifying language here um on this the voluntary separation form but you know this is a form we've used in hr the last

014couple years that gives us some pretty adjacent data um to track when people leave what their rationale is it's a military move versus i don't like working here right so one we can't do anything about and we can so those are the red line edits okay is it possible for um a middle schooler to do in the new program four to six career like um and all students or like i'm worried about or thinking about students that need additional support in math or um reading is it possible for them as well to be four to six i would argue that it is because i also think um you know when i was in the classroom one of the things i was constantly trying to do is how do we embed things within interesting curriculum right

015so in my social studies classroom i might have ways that i can bring in people who are in fields related to social studies that can share out about that um you know civics coursework provides a really good opportunity to do some of that uh i think there's a number of different um fields i know one of the grants we've had that's kind of wrapping up is has been with advancing computer science education the teachers that have gone through that work the whole emphasis has been kind of on how do you in grades three through eight um design performance tests in computer science to embed that in additional classes so i do think there's a number of ways i think you'd have to take a a multi-pronged approach in order to do it so it would

016have to not just be through electives it would have to be about yeah so in fairness to you what i think you're asking um if we designed this in a perfect world we would be very heavily focused on career awareness at the elementary level career exploration at the middle level and career planning at the high school level and there's a course that has a requirement in virginia called career explorations at the middle school level we don't offer that course as a standalone course with fidelity in stafford county we embed the content in that course and to dr towery's point yes it's possible to embed that content um if it happens so the follow-through is that's great if it happens so it's either us deciding to go down one path in the program of study where

017we do it by design or through another pathway which is through evaluation of existing pathways so that definitely tiptoes into the strategies and tactics realm of like what the board wants the program of study to look like and its offerings and where do we stand in terms of that crossroad of handling through our existing curricula or following a little bit more of a prescriptive curricula to get to that right okay i had a similar question that was about that as well but also with four to six that just seemed like a large number to try and you know i just didn't know if you wrote four to six is there uh something that occurs if you can't get four to six do you know what i'm saying sorry all right i feel like it would

018have to be almost admitted because they're going to be in the support classes and then you know you only get two electives if they're if there are the kids that are always in chorus or always in band like or always doing your language you know they don't get the variety of students who are flipping around in their lifetimes trying multiple things some of our students you know have those talents that are just going to grow in them right um and that just this isn't necessarily a course is it that you were just talking about in the classroom sometimes and it could be before school after right just i'm just saying that electives can't be our own right and that's why i asked that because they were taught across curriculum right then i think we're getting

019all students in a way that we wouldn't necessarily just make it a standalone course yeah so somehow we're going to have to have the teachers able to measure that so it can be recorded so that's just something to think about coming in the next part if they're doing it in the classroom yeah okay next this semester or something uh so we've been looking at the learning deficits coming back into this year we've had discussions about social promotion and those kinds of things are we addressing the potential need and can we look at i don't want to say holding students back who aren't ready to go forward right now that's not been popular in the past does this acknowledge any of or are we acknowledging that we're starting already sort of behind everything so we're already

020playing the year of catch up um and we're talking about kids that aren't necessarily going to catch up that fast we haven't been i mean at friends i guess nobody wants to keep their kids behind actually some people do i mean yeah some people have asked for it so um are we gonna start acknowledging that we can't promote every kid like and i don't mean that negatively i'm just asking it as like a generic question as we go through this because these aren't a lot to live up to if you're looking at them especially since we're starting from behind the people i guess one of the things when i talk with principals about social promotions or holding kids behind one thing was there's actually a assessment tool that principals use to try to make those

021decisions but i was just stunned at how how your probability of you graduating when you're held back goes way down it's one year it goes down like 30 percent if it's two years it's like 60 that you're not ever going to graduate from high school and so that's just me because i've spoken to three parents who have been begging and fighting to get their kids held behind because they're not going to graduate and when there's a drama right and my understanding is if parents i mean one of the things that is part of this this thing assessment is is there parental support for the child who is being held back will it work and the other strategy is really we may need to put a lot more into rehabilitation into remediation right that there just

022need to be a lot more services so that kid doesn't have to be held back i couldn't show that we can keep them moving i just want to make sure we're acknowledging the that you know happily the first year when we start to look at so but we don't have rules that say you can't hold your kid back and i know parents have been advocating for it right maybe they just need to learn how to advocate in the best way because you still can i mean it's really hard i don't know as a parent i'm just going to be the loudest voice to learn from my kid with all these stuff all educators who know but like they don't have the money with that that i have or other parents have so i just find

023it like if you if you are if you have a clear path with your educators and you understand what they're doing with your kid in the classroom and they've got that parental support and there's remediation usually the parents and the educators are going to be on the same page because you're going to see the progress or you're not going to see the progress every teacher that i've every teacher and principal that i've talked to we've talked about this social promotion question they've said it's a collaborative process parents are deeply involved in this i know i don't disagree but i'm telling you also spoken and one mom is a principal at a different school not this school system a different school system and her child is now being promoted to the sixth grade this doctor county

024and she reads at our great level so she doesn't participate in classes anymore and the principal told her we try not to hold our kids back because it's not good for them to be older but if you kept her back three years ago we wouldn't be in this boat but now she feels alienated she doesn't speak in class and it's really affecting her emotionally and we're talking about a woman who also fosters emotionally difficult children and has a great story but the bottom line is we're already starting at a deficit now so we need to figure out i mean we're not even grading when do we start creating abcd again okay you know what so but if we're going to achieve goals i just want to make sure we're looking at for some of our

025kids it might be better just to keep them back here and see what's going on and that's not this minute it's at the end of this year when you give them these resources i just want to acknowledge that we have a learning deficit we're looking to close that gap and if we're not we need to be honest about why and how we can do better next year but yeah if you look at the goal with the individualized growth process i think that's exactly that's the answer well i mean but that's i think that's the answer to the question you're asking and i feel like students can probably meet the goals that we are setting for them and in the same time also benefit from repeating whatever they were in um just because you know making

026those two baby steps rather than one big step for some students might work they are not an either or and just like the conversation with parents you know has to be tempered because for every parent that's begging for their kid to be held back you've got a parent begging their kid to be in an honors class dad okay this is a good discussion but this is all right because there's like rumors everywhere about object kind of sol's what's that song they don't want them and you see the guidance counselor and the teacher and then they send something to me saying are you sure and then you say yeah but you also need to make sure like the parent needs due diligence and look at what you need to graduate so your kid does have all

027that so but if you have any questions feel free to send them in i'm just trying to keep us on track and we're we're never going to get to the last thing much less the next year can i just ask we've got like four things before in the next 48 minutes i saw that you had a glossary or all of those metric examples where it has an acronym are all of those in the i tried really hard to get them all in there because this one let me know i saw the um and but the other thing that i'm also wondering is since we've at since we're doing region three in northern virginia can we list those counties in the glossary as well okay anything else on these goals and objectives no all right well

028let's let's go on to this update this is going to be relatively short yeah yeah are you pretty sure you can roll through it it's a capital improvement plan thank you much more a discussion so attached to this and also our regular meeting following this are the resolutions that we drafted to support each of these um want to point out kind of where we settled and then one change that we made to that so nothing um as far as totals they they are the same looking at the operating revenue increase our bonuses and this additional construction funding so where we have a little bit of a of a change so i'll have a total of 1.7 million dollars of our additional recurring operating fund dollars i want to target that with the staffing studies at

029our elementary school esau level for this year and then look at addressing or sorry secondary level i'm going to address the elementary level going forward that is 9.8 um currently at our for esau teachers about 700 thousand dollars i'm going to jump and then come back so the fuel reserve is not not due to you it was about a million bucks that we were looking at setting aside prices have come down a little bit they're still high if they stay where they're at right now this is adequate if they spike back up we're gonna have to get creative again during the school year um one of the areas that i advocated for um is we need additional procurement support and the reason why is because we're already inundated now in addition to that we're adding

030all of these additional projects not only in our 10-year cip when it comes to high school six which we're in the middle of now but hardwood elementary school drew you know whatever we're looking at in the next five seven years we need staff to help pull together those documents in addition to the additional um construction money that we're getting that is that immediate two-year hit where we're going to be drowning if we don't uh try to address that and get ahead of it that we can put out um so we can kind of adhere to our vpa and all the state guidelines um as far as our rfps and our ifps and fitting that out and chris this is on the agenda for action tonight yes okay so i wonder once for action i want

031to make sure if anybody ever has any questions that we address them while they're up here because we're going to be seeing again very shortly so two questions one are you going to be able to get 9.8 uh east hall teachers this year no not even close however uh i think throughout the year i think that there's a high probability that by um by the by the spring we will uh the challenge of course is when you're building out any type of staffing model or trying to address a staffing need i don't want to hire somebody without having a position to put them in and having the fte allocated does a couple of things for you one it's the commitment to the school that this is what their allocation should be should we find a

032con a qualified person to fulfill that role we then have a position to put them and can hire them at any point in the year as soon as we can find it we can advertise with that position and we have it the second piece of it is that since this is part of the operating budget it is year over year and it is now part of the staffing for that school year over year this is going to be an extreme need in the very not too distant future and um this is one significant bite of this i will say that the equivalent ratio at the elementary level is plus 30 fds so you know it is a is a substantial change to addressing the esau situation it's a little bit trickier at the secondary level

033for esau because level one and level two students at the elementary level are getting a lot of language acquisition support in the in elementary grades just by being in school because all of the students are getting literacy and language acquisition support at the high school level and at the secondary level there's a tremendous amount of additional support that's needed for students who come without language skills so the smart bet and and where we would place our money to have the highest return on investment right now the secondary so i think that this is really more about laying the groundwork for a future investment the other sideways piece to this is so let's say we don't fill but half of it theoretically so 350 000 still remains in your instructional line at the end of the

034year that becomes part of your three hour rollover contingency still not a bad idea so i mean we we also are projecting that we have more students than we anticipated and you might actually need to use some of that money to hire teachers rather than to roll it over to become uh projects yeah my second second question the procurement officer did we get an osha officer this year so we have one advertised okay and so that's so it's already in the budget terrific thank you the procurement officer is targeted towards construction projects because we're hoping to speak shovels in the dirt here soon and one of the things that we don't it's hard to quantify and uh is the money that we save by having an adequate current office our procurement office is like literally

035blocking it right now um and just yesterday got noticed that they were able to negotiate and save this 35 000 on contract those are the things that you don't really hear about but they pay for themselves over time okay did you have anything no i picked it i don't think i'm sigmund it's all said i think i mean i'm i'm i'm understanding this as well but this isn't coming from the original checklist remember our wish list that we had like this is coming from because there were you know i know we were missing like special needs stuff too or whatever this is more yeah i'll give you an example like a high priority that was in my proposal to you and was also adopted by this board was deferring some of the expense for uh

036families and for schools by uh giving a differentiated allocation to school it's a great idea still high priority right but unfortunately the timetable for the board of supervisors then receiving this after the board adopts it it's already after the start of school people have already purchased there's cool supplies it's not really going to do as much of much of much good so you know we're we are looking at one emergent needs right and and we've identified three um and then two where we're likely to get the highest return on investment based on the timetable in which we're requesting funds from supervisors okay another question and the other thing the school board added to the superintendent's budget was additional pay go three-yard funding which we're addressing and either the next item is that we were gonna

037so because that was something we were doing in conjunction with the sheriff's department yeah we wanted to add one like cool yeah yeah um and it was gonna be paid for out of fleet fund but unfortunately those that fund reserves are fun kind of guys um so this is uh same as what you've seen before when i was talking about the state approved bonuses that we paid on december first i broke it down with what that funding looks like and a little bit more um detailed as far as it would be contracted employees as eleven one and that's just we have to have to cut off somewhere so we can pay them on december 1st there's going to be some coming and going but looking at our contractor employees as november 1st 1000 for all

038full-time contracted staff so bus drivers paraprofessionals teachers etc our fleet workers as well so all funds including school nutrition and fleet services um so of the state we're getting just a little over three million dollars from the state to fund this looking at supplementing that with our estimates free funding for the total cost of approximately 4.7 and i will say um there could this total might come out less and i can let you know once we get to november first because this is also assuming that we're relatively fully staffed which we know are not going to be fully fully staffed but so there's a little bit of a buffer in there and what that means is we're going to always spend this three million from the state we'll have additional so3 funding remaining which uh

039you know something that dr chase has pointed out in our fafsa [Music] our full-time subs what we'll be actually bringing back to the board as part of the fiscal 24 budget process to make general contracts going forward but right now they are not okay so so somebody essentially is a full-time sub teacher they're doing all their work is that a that's a tricky thing because that's in the moment well by 11 1 if somebody has signed this on to be a long term and what's the definition could they at least get them after three weeks yeah i think it's after few weeks oh that's all i'm thinking of the people that sign on for the whole semester because my daughter's had a full-time sub i call full-time long-term you know from october till the end

040of the year so i yeah maybe we can address that separately and when this comes when the other proposal comes we can look at that it's something that doesn't have maybe it could be something at the end of the year maybe it's that right look at the failure it was on something yeah a substitute that is effectively five days a week assigned to a school builder that is not a contracted position we have a long-term son who is specific to a specific job for a defined period of time this is typically a teacher that may or may not be on fmla league sure may have had birth child that we know this defined period of time that they're likely to be out whatever um and then there are those who are very much the gig

041economy like uber they take one job at a time and make their their choices one one day at a time and they decide their work schedule and we don't decide if it works so we can ask the fab to look at that and you're the fab person i'm confident that we would still be in that 4.7 million dollar range considering ours okay so so i have a question just you said anybody that's under our employee as of 11-1 so somewhere between now and then if we have a and you know slingsley 11-2 [Music] i just wondered how you if there was a play on that like if they resigned so within that time frame but okay i mean you're right you've got a stopping point yeah you had more yeah so um last item was

042our school construction funding of about 8.7 million dollars which once again is coming from the state directly but it's a flow through from the federal government that are using some of their escrow funds at the state level and pushing it down to school divisions um i wanted to point out i reached out specifically to the state to ask about modulars thank you and the north stafford auditorium enhancements for the sound and lighting and either one of those um you know especially the north stafford auditorium was something that we wanted to target unfortunately the state said they would not be eligible do and they said unless you're holding classrooms 100 percent of the time in your auditorium which at that point of the auditorium is to have classrooms according to this one yeah but i do

043want to point out we already decided we're building a best did do on our need our list is by funding some of these projects we've opened up a slot for our north korean enhancement society so they are now funded for next year and i think next like summer so fy24 they would be funded the north stafford um lighting and sounds happens that will be brought to us to approve next year if something else happens and then so so it's actually in the three r list that you guys would approve next month right okay for the next because it's in the immediate year following this three hour list adoption it would be there and really so it's not it's not going to come back at the end of the year because it's already funded for next

044year so i wouldn't be on this coming years so and that's because it falls under mechanical systems that's what you're saying like yeah to impact the entire boat you're about the north staff yeah so is that happening because it's not in a it's not impacting the classroom directly we're students right but usually you can do it moving forward once you open up one of these because these are the projects that are listed that are attached some of those were on our funded through our list or by moving them off we've now taken unfunded projects and now we can use those funds gotcha their approval they are fully funded we're not asking the county for additional funds but we do need the appropriation of the additional money we're getting okay all right thank you chris that

045brings us to to 33 10 years capital improvement plan and 3r infrastructure project priorities all right now let me let me ask this question for the board we have we're going to end it by 50 that gives us 40 minutes do we want to a lot how much do we want a lot to hear thirty thirty i mean i think one of the things i would like to do is get the information then test the fab with bringing the priorities back to us which we've done every year um prior to this so so that might consolidate the discussion okay we've seen this yeah from our side looking at inflation percentages um they're proposing that we adjust our inflation for year one to fifteen percent you know a few years ago that was more like four

046and a half percent it was 12 last year now they're saying it should be 15 percent which you can see the impact that it has on high school six because now we're we're taking that base year of high school six and after i had fifteen percent of that before we then get into the years so mr fulmer if i could interject just very briefly and note that there is a very real cost associated with waiting on capital improvement projects and this is a two-fold hit the first hit is in the fact that we are place facing inflationary costs that's the first tip the second hit is that we've also we're also going to be facing substantial financing costs because of the interest rates associated with the bond repayments for financing this project so as we

047assess future projects moving forward we often hear from our funding partners this is not a good time to build and the reality is that there is no good time today two years yesterday minute that goes past is a worse time than yesterday so as we think about our projects and our needs being more proactive is a cost-saving measure more so than really anything else that we can do at this point is moving forward with projects and moving forward with our program um that that is what will save us the most money looking forward so um do we really are we really is the land for this high school really available i had two supervisors tell me this is it was condemned there's an order entered i by the way i don't know what started if

048we advertise a contract yeah we have to do school started we kids are ready yeah we get stuff done faster than anyone else but it's time it's time um when are we going to issue it well i'm getting off topic you and i will talk about what i was told and you tell me whether it's correct or not the other thing i want to point out is the architect is obviously and this is not news you know we've seen a lot of construction delays but the architects talks to a lot of construction companies and vendors out there and what used to be about a 26 month building from the time you issue the contract when you can open the school is more like 30 to 34 36 months which really puts us that we're not

049opening a school in august of the good news is we're talking to the architect they don't really see a price increase because of that because we're still building we're going to bid this out in february this will be out on the street before then we're trying to award it um in february time frame but this will be out on the street and we want construction to start right away so really the midpoint of construction is about the same we're just trying to give the contractor more time so if you try to convince that schedule the contractor then wants to you know cover their budget so now they're increasing the cost of the bid that they're submitting to us so to try to get those bidding down they're saying we need to get them a longer

050period of performance why are we waiting until february because we're finishing the design when will we see that it's actually next month yeah september we see it yeah are we are we on track on that contract this is it seems like it's taking an awfully long time on the timeline based off of the delays of the land per capita you're on track so um i would i would like us to seriously be looking at whether we're going to need to put trailers at stafford high school i mean they're they got 90 90 more students than projected for this year and if this isn't opening until 2026 yeah um you will see you're probably looking at three high schools it says not just no but stafford is already over yeah but this is also a good

051part of our conversation you know i mean i know it's been a year and a half since we've talked to the supervisors with words exchanged but it's a good conversation to have in that you know you will pay for this and trailers and we're talking high school but the reality is we're also going to be talking elementary schools the inflation adjustment is going to be and that almost it's a quarter of our a third of an elementary school do you have a sense of how competitive this bit will be in terms of numbers because i know it's really hard to find construction companies that have staff like that can actually march like a pre-qualification first we're going to go out and find contractors that can actually do the work first instead of putting out taking

052the lowest bid because then you you also have staffing issues construction companies themselves and then my old work literally unless we pay a premium and so that's that's the issue is yeah this is a cost controlled model is it is a jacked up price of 18 million right plus potential financing costs on top of this to boost this is the cost controlled model because of the time waited full price that need to learn the it's across the street they need to learn the lessons we learned that lesson here already i want to point out is people starting to say 183 million dollars for a high school um loudoun county and their cip has their next high school at 202 million and it's less students than ours looks for you know yeah so a smaller school

053and more money and this was unless they've already adjusted first inflation but that's a six-month-old maybe we could emphasize we could build our hacking program and just have the kids transfer some funding i am not advocating that we don't need to do work at drew because we certainly do um but we need to consider that with what we're trying to do as far as rebuild or renovation or um trying to hold it over with some three-yard funds until we can get a rebuild and so i point this out because actually in our current year fy23 approved three our list that you guys approved last year we have 3.8 million dollars set aside that was supposed to start doing some work at drew um i probably don't want to spend 3.8 million dollars there i'm not

054advocating that we do that i'm also not advocating them to spend zero dollars at drew i just want to bring it up for discussion so we can talk about that and see what that looks like we did this at ferry farm where it was zero zero zero zero and that was a big problem and it still is yeah because we're not completing this so i'm gonna say why did we not do that given the fact that drew was identified as a number two priority to the supervisors they ignored that completely and just went they went around their priorities other than the high school that we agreed on so i don't i'd say there is no reasonable expectation that we're going to be able to do drill as our second priority so i say we stick

055with what we said we put in there got to put everything you know if in fact you may need to do an inflation adjustment well especially since you know even if we were to get drew on the bond referendum we're looking at not the answer yeah at the earliest maybe 20 20. you just 27 to 20. you can't not do anything exactly i'm just watching exactly it's a disaster no i i mean what what do we have here i assume it's essential things we wouldn't have approved anything not needed yeah so what you get into is that hypothetically we're replacing seven years right number that we know is not immediate but it's coming up within a ten year period we don't want to spend two million dollars on mechanical upgrades that are going to get

056torn down or or whatever we're not going to put a new roof on it you know one of the big needs out there is parking so one of the things we talked about is you can help with the parking there that you can still um construct the parking in a way which still supports whatever we do there in the future whether that's a head start rising or a rising star placement at the jerk site you can still use the parking so we're not completely just throwing money but we may not have options on mechanical if your generator isn't working or yeah your your heat and your air aren't working it may not be ancient yeah so it's working but you know maybe it's hanging on by the last breath and we can keep it you

057know chugging along until seven to ten years all i bet you anybody here it's not going to be rebuilt in seven years no the way things look today you're looking at ten years at the best and that's what changes yeah in government but but we're going to have to do something and and we're going to have to get some of these projects right forward because we we need capacity clearly i mean and if we can rebuild sooner rather than later it really saves our middle school um attendance problem for for a decade i agree but it may be out of our hands and to me that's more cost effective than what they're suggesting completely this is the most troubling slide that's right i'm skipping to the next one the projected enrollment and future scene that

058is oh i really went down yeah i'm on page board yeah that that's very distracting disturbing to me to know that in ten years if we did all of those and that we would still be worse than we are today so annoyingly that's not this is actually a a very friendly version of this and i'll tell you why it's because those 2 900 elementary school students are not all in one place sure so it really is more schools than three schools in terms of your actual need if that's just the equivalent equivalency of what those schools would look like in terms of student council but it's actually much much worse yeah they would be already in the red school yeah so you have you have a need that is greater than that unfortunately and we

059bought how many trailers and we move okay also not enough oh i agree eight elementary school classrooms right now between rocky road it's great and the numbers haven't gone down it right so i think the board and everybody understands maybe the outlook that we have and so if there's any convincing of you know we're already seeing the students or over projection what we already projected for this year knowing that it might come down a little bit after the final enrollment numbers come in but so really the point of this meeting is that we can get some guidance and i think that was pointless presentation i heard maybe we still want to go back to the fab before it comes back to the next meeting but really trying to get some guidance on which order you

060guys want your priority listing that's going to be approved at the september i think that we've all talked about a lot of our priorities have not changed high school 6 elementary school 18 we need to rebuild drew we need to rebuild hartwood we need elementary school 19. i think that um it would be nice if we could get some of these projects bundled especially if we could get them on the bond referendum and i'd really like to see fab bring to us a list of priorities i can say that in my supervisor there is not an appetite to make the bond referendum as friendly as we would like where it's a county bond referendum they want schools and county well if it's going to be schools that it should be our wish list not theirs

061except that you're putting us in competition as opposed to yeah working together as warren county i just think we're being set up to not do that yeah i see that that high school six is funded and the hartwood elementary replacement is funded i am not going to as a school board member i will not be able to vote to spend that money to only get 68 seats or less when the school opens i mean that's just i i just can't because i have to agree i i don't know i don't know where the rest of this board is but i i'm looking at how many additional students conway and falmouth got this year over what they were projected to have and that to me is is very problematic so and grafton is full yeah yeah

062yeah i i i left iran and conway both have trailers yeah and that's just the course we're gonna we're gonna keep adding trailers because we can't have a building no i'm i'm not gonna support anything that doesn't happen i have a question about the funding what about that um inflation factor that's not funded is it no no so [Laughter] oh it's there is a footnote what does that put number okay so the the new cost is there what's that footnote for the high schools that's that includes our offsite costs for the land development and so technically it's not fully funded it's not approved at that amount it has not been approved no no this isn't an approved amount okay yeah this is our question in parentheses to me that says yeah it's been approved yeah

063it's the last one was it the last slide one of those so this is what the county adopted somewhere you had funded written next oh my gosh they were 150 and we went 180. whoops yeah well that's they're funded and they don't know about that or they haven't been given well but that's what they made yeah they increased their that's excessive 20 yeah they funded it at last year's amount in last year's cfp because they haven't seen it anymore this is just the list of all the projects for discussion with the two projects that the board of supervisors approved so so our understanding was there was this three on three we were told that there will be no more discussion about these two projects so what does and you said something about there will be

064a borrow brought to us for approval in september is that the case or are we still working on getting this not a not a bar as far as the county is concerned as they stop the trc stops ranking projects that are funded for the next year that the activity is supposed to start which we're supposed to start this uh designing the next elementary school 18 which is parkwood elementary school according to the world of supervisors so that's why it's not an elementary school team that's hardly correct we are doing an elementary school prototype and the county is saying it's for parkwood so i have it on there as funded because that's what the county where's our letter but you know the county can fund it but the school board still approves the contract the design

065and everything or doesn't that's what i mean correct right but we need to publicly put forth our position right true and i i know not everybody but i'm just the consensus that we needed elementary school 18 before hart would rebuild because of the difference of 650. we have a net gain of zero schools if we rebuilt hartwood we have no other schools i understand 300 i understand what you're saying that's but at the end of the day what's called elementary school 18. it's not elementary school 18 because it doesn't give us a new school it's still 17 yeah it's going to be elementary school 17 but if they don't if we take heartwood out of the mix when we get it then we're only still going to have 17 schools so you could say that

066the new york times you need to take all the students from where i would put them in elementary school 18. i'm asking you to assume that elementary school 18 is just elementary school 18 with 964 seats but that we are able to decompress the current and existing hardware elementary and rocky run and have everybody be happy if that is the case that is fine with me but i do not see why we are continuing to look at this and shoot ourselves in the foot and i'm not asking to be grateful for every little bit they give us but if we're going to negotiate then i think we need to negotiate appropriately which is hardwood is the fastest growing district in this county clearly we can even take some of your ferry farms and whatever if

067the location is strategic enough but then you're still going to have to address 20 million dollars in a harwood elementary school that is not septic and well we our proposal was to do them both at the same time correct with concur where's the money coming from we're losing 17 million dollars because of inflationary costs so i don't know how much more we can tax the taxpayers on this i don't know how much more we can convince people so if elementary 18 goes into heartwood and it gives us 964 seats and we're able to pull from these schools i think it's a win-win we don't get 964 seats what she's saying is correct absolutely absolutely if they let us keep part wood open yeah take it down to a 500 like that's max capacity right right

068like bring it down to where it's supposed to be and be able to take well not stressing the septic system when you start adding the adults and hardwood elementary building and so we don't it's not like we don't get both and we need 18 elementary schools not 17 and we'll lose one the other part of this that's the difference the other part of this is that if we keep heartwood open we are still going to have to invest in some of the majors just like we are true just like we are with you absolutely so so it's really more cost effective for them to give us two elementary schools yeah it's because inflation isn't going to get better no but i do want to say something about the comment that heartwood area is the fastest

069growing if you look at the numbers of where the most students were added in elementary school as of yesterday they are hampton oaks um winding creek um i mean they are all parkridge they are all the elementary smiles yeah we're right right and that as far as is but as far as students it's that darn form a radius that's problematic what you're saying but you're still looking at they would still want to put in that wesley which is yeah absolutely i'm just saying that's if all right that's that is an excellent point and that can be part of our letter back to the supervisors that that we wouldn't we would expect that the location of this school will help you know allow us to reduce the population at heartwood as well as or however you

070want to put it but you know that's that's a that's a really good argument but i mean i'm not optimistic but we keep that they're gonna do anything right we can't do that because this was done if not you had this discussion with your counterpart because he was part if you want to join us you're welcome too otherwise i'll just meet with him you can meet with him later all right well yeah i may or may not were you meeting him uh the library okay do that meeting instead of meeting with me okay you and i will just figure it out i mean if he's on board with it i would think that that the supervisors would be you know more likely to take it into consideration because he's the representative and that's his district

071and he's going to um then he could be an advocate on on his board but can i also advocate that there is conversation about those there is a conversation about losing westlake property and instead giving us one million we need property not one million you know what i'm saying like there's a conversation which we've asked about we're like oh you know that's not happening right now yes it is so that's you know if that can be part of the conversation too you know that could be a replacement site for heartwood next if that needs to be i i'd like to hear your blog uh that application has dropped off they haven't filled in the paperwork whatever so that another thing is i would like to ask fab to bring us a list of priorities i

072think that then make their recommendation well the question is in terms of the large projects have has has anything changed does anyone here feel that we need to change anything because if we don't feel that then there's no need to have another look i i drew as my school elementary school 18 is probably more important i i did not think that before i went through the redistricting numbers like when we voted on that and then i'm looking at the actual math and i'm like we need the seats and i believe that it's feeling that's a smaller i mean it's a that bucket's feeling faster yeah that's reflective of the new total total yeah yeah so that's where and i would probably put i would probably go elementary school 18 and then elementary school 19 and

073then the heart would rebuild and come lower because i'm looking at the numbers around park ridge hampton oaks um windy creek we're going to need more elementary school space so that's just that's just my two centers and if we could do some initial investment in drew and keep it limping along the reality is that replacing drew middle school solves our middle school problem for a long time so um that i think can move farther down the list just because though that need isn't as critical as the um elementary school when i did the numbers i mean we're looking at 10 years from now we're going to have an additional 3 800 i think 3 800 seats that we need to fill for elementary school in trailers right now yeah based on i don't like bushes

074i don't either i don't i don't like it either no i i i like it as a reality i mean you need them all we need them all yesterday i think we're going to have to look at moving the day school from drew we we are not obligated to have that there as they pointed out we don't even have a need for an mou the school is there as a courtesy it was because that space was available at the time remember the student population it drew was very small yeah and i would like someone whether it's the fab or staff or whoever to look at you know what we could do with drew if the day school were not there and you know come up with a proposal i mean right now it costs the

075county nothing because it's it's our space but if we need that for students we'll we'll have to go out and lease some space and you know that that's it at their table i was gonna ask if you know we could get some recommendations of where space might be available either at least or not because that was that would help although i mean we don't want to put too much in because of the right the timing but it looks like it's going to be a significant you know number of years before we can rebuild drew then we should consider you know just renovating the space and that that assumes that the space is usable for up for students and not like the basement and yes fairy farms yeah no it's definitely classrooms down there all right

076so is that something that um we have students there well is that something the board is interested i absolutely think that we have to make some hard choices and if we can't get construction projects that meet our needs we're going to have to make our choices i have a newbie question then if we are going to push through down and try to renovate drew and make it better who's in charge of making sure that we actually get what we paid for and the renovations actually are worth their money and that it's not awakening because i just always know i'm listening or i've heard historically we fix things but it wasn't good we did this but we didn't do anything you're going to have declining returns on any building that you're renovating that's the age because

077they're so old yeah it's just like with my hip we just can't get it right that's right you know how much money you're not really gonna you're not gonna walk into the school and be like oh wow this looks like 3.8 million that's right yeah so we also think that we should be having town halls in the community that are for cip the same way that we did for the budget yes and i think that we should schedule those so all right asap yep all right so when is this coming back to us so it's supposed to come back for september september so that's that's the next time i mean how do we want this to go the fabric do we i mean it sounds like it's pretty much agreement here yeah so so what

078we're talking about the high school six i mean that's that's done it's a done deal well we got to get the other funding but then then the next would be elementary school 18 18 then heartwood replacement elementary school 18 is built can we agree informally because we can't take any action but can we agree that the elementary school 18 would be used to relieve hard work yeah yeah and rocky rock right yes but i'm definitely i'm just i'm just focusing on heartwood right now because the supervisors that was their first yes choice it was approved we want to show them that we're going to we're going to accommodate you know part of the problem there but we need to need this consumer and thank you for that it's a really pragmatic solution because you do

079keep your capacity that exists that's existing right now while still acknowledging that you do have buildings that need to be decommissioned in your cip down okay all right so so it was elementary school 18 elementary school 19. true drew yeah heartwood replacement right now yeah and then everything else falls in the order it's in there yeah is that good all right because you have anything else chris because we got to move on yeah 10 minutes 10 minutes just clarification on your it's um drew that hardwood are they yes four and five three one two four eight four and five no more a and b four and five yeah it's coming to us rather than being staff days it should be suggested dates it's the board this is all the board representation all right so that'll

080come back all right let me just ask since sergeant dr meeting with daryl ron i will definitely try to be there in the details later so that i can write them down but this isn't the updated list i think it would be important for him to see just how like we'd even projected you have all that you've got what's cool because i i this is our needs rather than hour by schools not just counting specifics because then they can we can't be in the middle of under our own mind okay so the fab's going to give us recommended dates for that right so that'll come back all right that brings us to town halls school board town halls the reason this is on is i was getting i had some questions and i had a

081couple members ask me questions about the the emails that missy sent out saying that we're going to be reserving schools for next year for these town halls and they were county-wide town halls and they're also on like wednesdays and stuff whatever but the thing is that we need to talk about how we want to you know identify our town halls and i mean traditionally any school board member you know has had their town halls in their district sometimes you know i know i have had town hall meetings with the garrisonville representatives or it's just you can go in with somebody else but then it's it's a town hall you know sponsored by those members um and it's usually located somewhere in the distance it's not always in a school generally it may be like in

082a library or a fire station or some community center or you know wherever you can find it because um having these in the schools does present a cause um to the schools of course and and the staff so we need to talk about you know the county-wide and i know what's your intention and when you mention this when this first came out um when we were gonna have the thursday the second tuesday meeting that you wanted you need to use as an opportunity to hear from your your right right um and and i thought that was you know gonna you were gonna have hardwood town halls that we you could invite us to i mean public meetings anybody can come or anybody can come to them but then once these came out as with and

083missy i didn't talk i didn't know about so i got it where we're setting up the high school you know auditoriums or you know the monthly town halls i was concerned and i know i just i just want to know what this board wants to do about having a county-wide town hall do i would suggest that if there's a county wide town hall then the board schedule that and and you know it schedule it and you know be part of the participation um if you if you choose but that i wouldn't suggest any kind of um you know criteria for individual board member town halls because that's that's your gravitation that's between you and your your district but i wanted to to see how the board feels about that because before we get too far

084down this road and we're scheduling you know for next spring with the auditoriums because i'm thinking oh my gosh you know what if this drama people want to be there was only two that were moved because it's a huge clarifactor then because for the reasons why um and that was it and the only reason why i picked 29 stafford was because it was a location people knew i mean i and we didn't have to bother any of the schools then but two were moved because the county community center was not available it was not available and one day was moved to a wednesday because there's something it conflicts with um legislative support yeah so that those are the only two yeah the rest are there the question is are you intending to have a county-wide

085town hall a little hall state county-wide town hall or is it a a alyssa halstead heartwood town hall to be held in another venue because you can if you can secure a place certainly you can have it anywhere else but but the issue is just county-wide versus you know within our individual districts yeah if it's county-wide it seems to me like every board member should be pulled for the dates that work for them yeah because then then otherwise you're holding it at a time that board members might not be able to make and if it's county-wide you're kind of representing the school board but you're just one member of the school board so it's supposed to be the sec the day of the second meeting which we cancelled that's it it was supposed to be

086strategically placed just for that because that day is already open on the calendar for us as a result of we may need to have like the work session we had last month or whatever so and the only reason why i publicly announced them as it were was so that if everyone could make it it would be great we wouldn't have to worry about having any legal meeting vice you know whatever so if someone wants to step in on a tuesday and say hey i'm running this one amen um you know not not i guess i think you're always talking because i know exactly what elisa wanted to do i think it's a fantastic idea i think the issue is that whatever way you set it up the staff has to be there too yeah that's

087that's the problem that is if it was just me and you having a town hall every other tuesday at my house it'd be fine or whatever chaplin have to be that whatever way you set it up staff we're forcing staff to come and work that evening as well we need to do it so that's you know it can just be our us like individual town halls and staff does not need to come it's not that it's what sarah just said is that when you are arranging a town hall and you were having a county town hall you were speaking uh you are putting it together and whether we are there or not you become the voice of the board and that's not accurate and the other part of this is it was for those extra

088tuesdays if we weren't using them if we're using them they're not available so that doesn't give you an example yeah i mean that's clear it was my intention the other side of that is this isn't a town hall about alyssa speaking for the county this is a town hall for the county to speak to the board or they have discussions with them so if you're so if you're there i mean there's no reason why i couldn't report back either but there were four of us at the last town hall that couldn't happen if we didn't announce them so if there's concerns that you're missing something or you can't make it or you want to run one then just pick a tuesday and run one house because school board town halls and then people should just

089sign up and say i mean i'm not going to argue semantics it's for the community we can call them community council yeah like the three of us show up does that require us staff to be there that's really where that's the other question that because that's the thing it's like if i'm free and i show up great like i've opted out of attending other community groups because i knew two school board members were going to be there and i didn't want to get in trouble i was last rsvp so so it would be nice to know like what happens if three of us show up at but also if we're using our high schools who's gotta be there who is that they're not they're not they're not meant for the high schools those two were

090changed specifically because they couldn't ask me to change them no no i know i'm just saying but if we're using the high schools what cost does that have for the school what staff has to be here where i don't know for those two days what they are i think we're going to have to relook using them for high schools unless it's something you know if the board wants to have a town hall on certain topics then that's one thing then the board schedules that town hall and you know it would be the will of the board to schedule that and you can have whatever town hall you want but we're basically trying to notice that a lot of people the only point was trying to notice it so that if seven people show up nobody

091gets trouble well i'm not worried about noticing i think any of these should be noticed so that we all have an opportunity to come i've gone to other members tomorrow just to be supportive so any town hall should be noticed so we can call it whatever you want we can put the difference but the question is do do we want to have seven of us being able to call a county-wide town hall anytime we want about anything we want it needs to be clear that it is that members town hall not the school board's town hall and i i would not i would feel like i would be overstepping my bounds if i said well i'm going to call a town hall and i'm going to call it you know for these districts or county-wide

092without talking with the other so the problem was that was what it was called no i think it's a question it's just what what do we want i mean we can say fine anybody can have a town hall anytime you want you can make it your district you can make it somebody else's district you can make it county-wide you can do what you want but it seems like that and you can use any school that you want yeah that's one question that's that's the yeah i i just when this all came up i thought the intention was that you were going to use it to to have town halls with your your constituents i can i have no problem doing that but then people put voices and concerns everybody can come anybody can come but

093like if i have a town hall it's going to be rock hill town hall or if i asked maureen to have it it would be marquis you know we i think we're trying to be broad because what does that mean i'm a garrison bill district my kids go to high school in hartwood my kids go to middle school in rock hill my kids come to my district for elementary school so like people don't understand they know what they have a problem with you know anthony burns they don't necessarily live in my district they're going to live in maya's district too so it's just a matter of if you're free you want to come hang out it's almost like office hours i guess like i thought it was more like office hours for that second tuesday

094but we're adding dates now because if that second tuesday wasn't available but we're also now moving it from a facility that's because we have a thousand requirements we have the second tuesday that we have a board meeting and then we have a time on that week as well you know there was no building was being used for something else on the tuesdays so that's the town hall we'll be moving as well and remember we're going to evaluate our scheduling in december yeah so we may not have a free but so this it may be a moot issue for that particular date but this isn't everybody may show up to the next town hall we may not find that there's no need for them either but this was i mean i feel like people think i'm

095toast stepping when all i wanted to do was because i voted down the second meeting was open up a portal for discussion for the community i didn't it could be just people if you'd like me to do that but if i just have ones in hartwood and nobody else has one and there's no way for me to invite more than two board members or one board member really with me because that is the name people meeting like all i wanted to do is be semi-proactive so that i can say hey guys every two every second tuesday you want to come great if not you know there's no topic really we're just going to sit and listen to people or come don't come whatever then we don't have to do it if only hartwood shows up

096and then what's garrison bill gonna say like how come hartwood hears me well then garrison donates the buses that's right like i know i'm having one in a fire in september and it's gonna be a choir district town hall right it will say over to the public so whoever shows up is that i think that's supposed to do it and whoever shows up and i'm just going to tell missy hey just you know make it whatever is that whoever can come and also nobody who works here needs to come like it just needs to be and i'm having it in a non-school location because i thought that was the problem was the extra money that it takes for us to have someone there to open it clean it and then also our staff members having

097to work like 14 hour days to do that so my big issue i don't like either big enough i would have fair i really just don't want to get in trouble i was dr jason said i don't want to go to jail like if me and my if me and alyssa want to come on up to you in town hall you don't really care about it i don't want to do anything we should advertise anything at all i think we're all in agreement there as long as we advertise them then any board members but if we and and that's something when you do schedule a town hall you know missy needs to know so she can put the advertisement and they are open to the public everybody can go to the town halls but the

098question is who is it intended to be for the entire county or is it intended to be for you know a board and under sister and and if that's where i'm fourth thing if the board wants to have it county-wide it's gonna get a little um challenging to follow because if all of us start having these you know different times because i'm assuming we're not all to be able to do it on the fourth tuesday um then just keeping track of them all which missy will will do for us but being able to attend them that's why i picked one single location for tuesday of the month so that it was already an obligated time frame and they picked 29 separate it would be available in that little whatever room there and there's literally tds

099that's not available so far we don't even know the second one they'll still be going on because we don't know if we're going to go back to the meet right but these are your town halls or just town hall though i don't need them to be mine okay so so they don't know i think it's the question is is that we've added two dates because the either the facility or the date wasn't available because it was a conflict we added one adult girl i can hold it but if you tell me to move it to a bar i'll look at the bar i don't i just wanted to have i'm sorry library library um i don't need it to be this big they don't either okay well i mean my intentions were what they were

100so if they're not going to work out then i'll figure out a different solution i just that means i can't have more than two people there at a time that means like i mean there's there's no question that you can have one two people at a time but if say you want to do it one night and another board member wants to do it one night i don't want to have a i mean there shouldn't be a conflict because you know the other board members focus would most likely be on their district i mean when you have an acquire you're not looking for i mean you're welcome and that's that's traditionally you know what the town halls are for an or they're on a special issue um so did we do we come to any

101conclusions do you have the theme for each of your months for conversation because not yet no i mean that day we did because it was out there the code of conduct was out and there was no meeting in between so yeah the global conduct was up for discussion with the public they had looked at it they wanted to talk about we wanted them to talk about it give them the opportunity because then we voted on it and there was no other time in between but that moment for them to talk about as it were so really if there was something big on an action item or whatever that we needed their opinion on and we didn't have i'm just going gonna go on the record saying i just wanted the public to feel like they

102could be heard if they wanted to be heard and i don't know that it matters who hears them as long as someone does but if it matters then just take my name off of it and make it uh i don't think i'm trying to find out what the board wants to do but unfortunately we don't have unless unless somebody has a 30-second wrap-up because we've got to fold this and we can continue this discussion in our next web session right after the school board evaluation which of course we did not um get to well i just think it should be a school board event are you ready to read this session so okay all right we'll post another session and um this is going to read us in the closed session moved that the school

103board convened a closed meeting pursuant to section 2.2-3711a1 of the code of virginia one to evaluate the performance of the superintendent okay [Music] okay hello nope is yours hello testing testing i'll get loud it's okay i'll take care of it my mic is on hello hello excuse me we have to come out of closed session that pursuant to section 2.2-3712 of the code of virginia the closed meeting of the school board of stafford county on august 9 2022 be certified by adopting the following resolution now therefore be it resolved that the school board of stafford county hereby certifies that to the best of each member's knowledge only public business matters lawfully exempted from open meeting requirements were discussed in the closed meeting to which this certification resolution applies and two only such public business matters

104as were identified in the motion convening the closed meeting were heard discussed or considered by the board second uh madam chair i moved we have to do the roll call to vote right do we have to vote yes yes certified and then uh president of the presidential call vote all in favor doctor chase yes miss randall yes mrs sigman yes and dr warner miniature motion passes do we have a motion coming out of closed session uh i'm trying to move that we continue the closed session at the conclusion of the business meeting do we have a second second i think we have a motion by ms halstead second by dr chase any discussion all in favor please say aye aye now we're recasting yeah well it's not up there it is up it is oh

105all right now we're up there i have a spiderweb on my microphone okay dr warner what's your vote yes yes okay oh i'm sorry no it's not clicked it's not reading it technology all right seven yes all right unanimous motion passage unanimously we'll continue the closed session at the close of the business meeting now we'll call the regular business meeting to order we have the presentation of the national colors and the pledge of allegiance to the flag please stand [Music] colors 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 ready cut more time arch right turn arch over march colors oh fallout they just are they're so cute we'd like to thank the

106mountain view high schools marine corps jrotc the members of tonight's color guards is adam jones michael tankway michael goodwin ian crandall and cody johnson and their instructors lieutenant colonel richard barnes and sergeant major alan tanner both retired thank you um we don't need an authorization that participated electronically so we'll go to the roll call this hall dr chase here miss guy and miss halstead here miss healey here miss randall here ms siegmund here and dr warner here and i'm sure you have a quorum okay do we have a motion to approve the agenda madam chair i would move to approve the agenda with the removal of item 3.07 from consent to action second all right we have a motion and second any discussion all in favor please say aye aye aye oh i guess we

107should vote and we didn't have a flicker last time here we go 3.07 all right looks like it's unanimous vote for approval the agenda with the changes requested by dr chase now we'll is there a concern to approve the consent agenda second i thought we just approved it all in favor cast your votes motion is approved thank you that brings us to citizen comments actually madam chair i've got announcements a couple of announcements uh to share at this time we're delighted to announce the appointment of uh several members joining our leadership team and since the first day of school is tomorrow this is a pretty timely appointment for several of these schools as i introduce these folks i'd invite them to come to the lectern up here at the front and when i'm done with

108their biography if you would say uh hello to the board and anything else that you want to share with us at this time maybe introduce any family members or guests that you brought along with you we're just delighted that you're here our first new administrator i'm delighted to introduce is latrice knight he has applause miss knight will be the next assistant principal at widewater elementary school originally from wisconsin miss knight has been an educator for 12 years first as an elementary classroom teacher and most recently as an itrt at conway elementary she is passionate about reaching students through building teacher capacity and support she completed her master's degree in virginia at mary washington university she is a certified reading specialist has a certification in esl and recently completed a cohort at the college of william

109and mary where she earned her administrator certificate latrice and her husband alol have been married for six years and were married right across the street at the stafford county courthouse she is committed to the growth and education of every student in stafford county and is really excited to take on her new adventure at widewater elementary school congratulations miss knight thank you all i'm really excited for this new adventure um i was able to spend a little time at whitewater today and i just love the staff and i'm just really thankful for this opportunity and i'm excited to continue to grow in stafford county my husband who's back there um we've been here for a while and this is my fourth year in stafford county and i really love it and i can't wait to just

110continue to make it home and grow our staff and students great thank you thank you next it's my honor to introduce dr jacinta calzada marone doc also another applause dr calzada monroe will be joining stafford at north stafford high school as the new assistant principal dr calzada marone joins from friendship public charter school in washington dc where she served as a special education coordinator for the nine school charter network supervising a team of special educators and student support staff to help meet the needs of exceptional learners she previously worked as a special education compliance manager for kipp schools in north in d.c and has a special education in both co-teaching and self-contained environments in washington dc and new jersey she is also an instructional coach also served as an instructional coach for aspiring teachers through

111the teacher residency program in dc and is a clinical faculty member at the johns hopkins university dr calzada marone earned her bachelor's degree in english literature and communications from william patterson university her master's degree in administrative science from fairleigh dixon university and her master's degree in special education from keene university all in new jersey prior to earning her doctor of educational leadership and management from drexel university in philadelphia welcome to stafford county i'd like to say good evening to the board dr taylor and the greater stafford community i'm really excited to be part of stafford county public schools north nation i am excited to learn and serve alongside dr turner and the other administrators at north stafford high school i look forward to a great number of years here in stafford county and thank you

112for welcoming me here and for the opportunity thank you it is always tough uh to lose a bandy teammate to school leadership but uh we love it when our teammates at bandy uh step up and take the mantle of leadership at a school and it's a a a pleasure to introduce jessica olsovich who will be the next assistant principal at conway elementary school ms olsovich has been an educator for 11 years starting as a special education teacher for students with autism for the last four years she has served as an applied behavioral analysis therapist in our department of student services supporting school-based staff teams and making data-driven decisions to support students with greater behavioral support needs miss ulcevich is a graduate of penn state university with a bachelor's degree in specializing in special education and

113a master's degree in special education with a certificate in applied behavioral analysis from george mason and with her complete certificate also from mason in school leadership we're delighted to welcome her to the team as the new assistant principal at conway elementary school i'm just really excited to start tomorrow and welcome all of our students to school and it's going to be my first day too so i'm really excited great thank you [Applause] um our last appointee this evening is jennifer rojon we'll say this everybody's in the cheering mood tonight miss rojon is excited to join us as the next assistant principal at stafford elementary school miss rojon oh she's got the shirt miss rojon is presently the assistant principal at james carey intermediate school in essex county where she was nominated for the 2020 virginia

114department of education talent pool for distinguished educators prior to becoming an administrator ms rojon was an elementary school teacher in both fredericksburg city and prince william county she is a graduate of virginia commonwealth university with a bachelor's in elementary education and a master's in teaching and completed her administrative endorsement at the university of mary washington or mary washington university miss rojon lives in stafford county with her husband and family isn't excited to give back to her community welcome to stafford county public schools [Applause] hi um i'm so excited to be here in stefford as you can see i'm ready to represent uh separate elementary and become a dolphin um i as he said i live here and i'm so excited to come home this is my home i view soccer county as my home i'm

115excited to give back to my community and raise my family here and my and my son to be able to go through this school system as well and i just cannot wait to hit the ground running so thank you so much for this opportunity i'm very very excited and i cannot wait to get back to you guys all welcome go dolphins [Applause] madam chair before i yield back the microphone and i recognize that this is highly irregular but this is a highly irregular circumstance i'd like to address the board in the community at this time i don't see any objection no please do dr taylor thank you madam chair members of the board and community since my arrival in stafford county i've noticed several issues that have needed to be addressed and many that still

116need to be addressed one of the most significant issues that i've seen is how fractured our community is and how education and the development of our kids into great adults is at the center of that division at times since december 1st of last year the school board my team and i have all looked for ways that we might create unity one of those attempts at unity was to host an all staff convocation this past week we were not successful it's important to take time to fully acknowledge the shortcomings from our convocation event last friday for those unfamiliar this was an all staff event that was held last friday morning to kick off our strategic plan and to bring our staff together for a professional development speaker due to excessive heat our event ended early many

117of our staff members had to receive medical attention and treatment for heat-related illness several staff members were also transported to the hospital for treatment even for those who did not receive medical attention it was a traumatic experience to see friends and colleagues in distress i take full responsibility for the way that that event ended and i am profoundly sorry that so many of our stafford family members and teammates were adversely affected by this event i sincerely apologize to the entirety of team stafford for friday's event the responsibility of leadership is not something i take lightly there's a lot that can be learned from this event and a lot that will be learned from this event first and foremost the way that we change the way that we uh change the way excuse me first and

118foremost we will change the way that we coordinate our large-scale events from planning all the way to execution incorporating more partners earlier in the planning process and something that struck me earlier today and this is something that that strikes at the heart of every educator is one of the first things that we learn as teachers is to think maslow before bloom and at the heart of that is is taking into consideration the needs of people so that they can learn it's really hard for people to learn when their physiological needs are not being met friday is a good example of that we can do better we will do better because we must do better to this end i'll be sharing out our findings as we unpack the issues associated with friday's event a bigger issue

119also illuminated by this event is the organizational culture that we have in stafford county public schools and the freedom for people to say something that concerns them without fear or worry this is tough in any large organization but for us especially for some reason and i haven't gotten to the root of that we need to change this belief this reality this perception on a large scale and this will take time as a small step forward in repairing the trust that was lost i would like to invite any staff member to come to one of two listening and healing sessions on monday august 15th at north stafford high school in the auditorium and another one on thursday august 25th at stafford high school also in the auditorium both at 5 pm i'll send out details so

120that they're publicly available i'll also be sending a link in some resources to staff who cannot intend in person but wish to participate in some meaningful way i want to publicly thank our first responders for doing what they do best in crisis and i'm also moved and very proud of the many members of team stafford that stepped up instantly into action to support their colleagues friends and teammates our nurses our athletic trainers our teachers our staff members of this board and other community supporters were there and were incredibly supportive and instrumental in providing care to team stafford they are absolutely heroes and deserve to be acknowledged and i thank you for your time thank you dr taylor that brings us to citizen comments three minutes are allotted to each speaker or group speakers are encouraged

121to provide a copy 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 madam clerk will you call the speakers who yes the first four individuals will be kathleen butler followed by christian peabody then michelle wickman and john hatzis what's up okay i'm short okay good evening members of the board and dr taylor i'm kathy

122butler and i live in the rock hill district and i'm the sca president since the pandemic began i've spent counsel countless hours worried about the health and safety of stafford educators trying to assess risk and prepare for all possibilities wondering if you're making the right decisions and terrified of the consequences if you don't some of my worst pandemic fears were realized during friday's convocation but the dangers in this situation were predictable and unavoidable we recognized that the intent of the convocation was positive and the message uplifting i'm not here to point fingers or vilify individuals it's clear this was a series of miscalculations that snowballed which we know was no one's intent the fact remains that despite best intentions friday's events jeopardize the health and safety of over four thousand educators the messages regarding the

123convocation were positive but they also made clear that this was not an optional event a lack of transparency and breakdown in communication meant staff were uninformed about what accommodations they might need you don't have to have a health concern to be opposed to sitting in direct sunlight for two plus hours before a long potentially unair-conditioned bus ride home in august with a heat index pushing the red flag to black flag status these were known conditions prior to the day of the event staff began expressing their concerns over the predicted heat as early as tuesday we were told temps were expected to be in the low to mid 80s and you did not anticipate extreme heat we were told essentially to suck it up and deal for the greater good in any employer employee relationship there

124is an imbalance of power there is a mandatory event many staff felt they had no choice but to take sick leave and i commend them for setting that boundary but i'm appalled that it had to be set and their they feel their concerns were invalidated the events of friday were quite literally traumatic for many and an apology falls short on behalf of stafford educators i respectfully request that you forgive the leave for those who chose to stay home friday and any additional leave and cured by those experiencing continued medical issues i ask that you provide an opt-out without without leave for medically fragile staff for future events that your conduct and investigation into these events leading up to and including august 5th provide a thorough explanation of what the plans were and what factors influence

125the failure of these plans and what would be done to prevent reoccurrence finally i request a restitution of payment for two hundred dollars for full-time staff and a hundred dollars for part-time staff regarding these future events please considering having an alternate plan for participation for employees with health concerns we use restorative practices with our students to remedy harm done i am calling on you to remedy that harm do the right thing take that step to rebuild trust with the educators of stafford county so that we can move forward with the positive mission that was intended thank you yes dear members of the board madam chair dr taylor my name is christian peabody live at 121 forest avenue in fredericksburg virginia i am the music teacher at falmouth elementary and i'm returning to now as the

126vice president of the stafford education association the fred nets event was a systemic failure that risked the well-being of 4 300 using the division's numbers employees we all agree the intent was noble and that the execution was the living definition of hubris i have never witnessed in my professional career my question is why weren't we listened to about this forty three hundred plus employees at a very conservative average of twenty five dollars an hour salary for the four plus hours it took for the first person to arrive and the last one to leave arguably equates at least half a million dollars spent in salary alone sitting there in the heat and we already know what happened in that heat what if there had been an emergency thunderstorm with no adequate room to shelter in place

127what if they've been an active shooter with nowhere to escape or barricade to you know employees can even get into the shade or excess fruit or water in a timely manner what if this had been a sudden life or death crisis thousands of your staff at all levels tried to share cover share their water and work with first responders and the event did become traumatic and i reiterate that word traumatic because it was traumatic to see our colleagues carried out as they fainted get put into ambulances collapse on the way to the buses collapse on the buses getting phone calls from them throughout the weekend saying that they're getting sicker and sicker and sicker all while this event continued like nothing was amiss someone could have died from this and for what and at what

128cost now although not a severe potentiality to speak about maslow versus bloom i was asked by a colleague what benefit versus risk singular benefit versus risk i gained from this event that eased or improved my workload going into this year for the costs that were incurred as a teacher of the year and a two-time grammy music educator the year nominee i could answer that question now this isn't a time where the sins of many should be placed on the shoulders of one to say the punishment has been made all has been forgiven let's move on i said to dr taylor's point this is a tremendous opportunity for the most people person profession in this county this division to do right by its people the employees of this division so i ask you to seriously consider

129the requests and recommendations that stafford education has brought forward to like make it immense through forgiving the leave that had been taken providing cost incurred restitutions collaborating with the union so we can provide guidance and insight on a global scale as we work together to support the success of this division moving forward this is a tremendous opportunity to forge that new relationship for this new year especially after we learned from the lessons from friday that taught us all and to show that we are invested in this partnership to elevate stafford hand in hand moving forward and dr taylor you should be committed for your comments you just made right now so thank you for that sir [Applause] good evening members of the board dr taylor i'm michelle wickman i live in the garrisonville district i

130teach at north stafford and i am stafford education association secretary last month i told you that we looked forward to a renewed partnership with you based on transparency and a shared commitment to the best interests of stafford educators our intentions have not changed but in order to truly foster this relationship there has to be transparency on both sides stafford educators are disappointed and they're hurt we support and appreciate the goals of the convocation but there are a few breaks in the chain that we see from our end after hearing from educators this week number one please don't schedule mandatory outdoor events during the summer the common theme we're hearing from staff is that they support the spirit of the convocation but doing it in august just wasn't a good choice number two if you are

131asking principals to disseminate information in this instance details on how to obtain accommodations please ensure you have written language that they can share with staff and ask them to do it at the same time better yet send district communications to the entire district instead of routing them through individual admin this will minimize inconsistencies when we're all supposed to be on the same page number three listen to your educators you've been getting better about involving staff and decisions that affect us which we appreciate but sometimes you ask for a professional opinion and you don't actually listen to it like the bell schedule decision other times we don't get consulted at all as was the case here worse yet staff expressed legitimate concerns about the predicted heat and they were dismissed please do us the courtesy of

132seeking our opinion and don't dismiss it the practice is incredibly invalidating and it is damaging to the relationship that we want to build with you we don't have all the solutions but we want to work with you to develop them right now what educators need is reparations for friday and to explain that request a little bit since supplies ran low when the event ended before all schools got to eat we've heard from staff who incurred expenses for bottled water and food some took alternative transportation rather than wait for buses many educators lost the rest of the workday on friday due to heat related issues and worked through summer all of the weekend to make up for it the combination of these factors is the reasoning behind a request for restitution payment despite the failures one

133primary goal of the convocation was still achieved on friday we arrived as individual schools but we left unified stafford educators division leadership and local board members banded together with ems to assist in whatever way they could we don't believe that any one person should take the blame for this situation there was clearly a series of missteps along the road to good intentions we ask the division our educators and our community to focus not on placing blame but on what it means to truly accept responsibility to make amends to learn from our mistakes and move forward thank you [Applause] madam chair while mr hatzis comes forward i'll call the next four it will be sarah taylor followed by dana brown bridget farrell kuzma and al watkins all right again awesome dr taylor in school board good

134evening uh my name is john hatzis and i live in the rockhill district um i just want to know something real quick that the last speaker said you know me and my friend were actually talking they were talking about having like a convocation kind of like a homecoming at um like in the act in like october or something i just thought that was a neat idea um to kind of make up for what happened previously but i want to talk about something a little bit different um i sent you guys an email about the transportation with with stafford county and i and actually i have a script it was actually pretty funny but i want to talk about something just ever so slightly different um because i was at transition day today which was a

135great idea so thank you dr taylor it was actually a lot of fun we got to have a freshman pep rally and everything freshman didn't really participate but i enjoyed it so i appreciated it um but we had the the student q a session right at the end of the day and one of the students there was a stat student and she was like well john i'm a stats student and they're going to bust me to to from mountain view to north stafford and back right because i'm really interested in theater and i'm like yes you know like they're really interested in theater woohoo and i'm like oh yes that's what they used to do they always used to do that they always used to bust you back and forth don't worry you'll be fine

136and that was not accurate um actually one of the other students got up and he was a uh would you what do you call it stat student and he's like well actually they changed it now so you're going to get bus from north stafford back to your house so you're not even going to get bus back to mountain view i'm like well she's a freshman so for me it's an inconvenience right it's a tax it's something i have to pay and if you don't want to change that i can deal with it i have a job well she's a freshman in high school you know she can't drive herself and i don't know what her situation is but if her parents can't drive her over that's the ball game you know she can't i mean

137that's that's that's uh is that sports that's staying after you know you name it and so i i get i understand the thought behind it because it is a small group of people being affected um but i just hope that you can change something i was saying before it is legal for me to take three people um it is against stafford county policy i only can take one person and so then now i'm splitting the cost in half and the previous speakers talked about communication i was thinking about that as well you know i was told because my parents forwarded me an email and i was just scrolling through it and then i'm like what you know they're not providing a box that was a huge shock to me and everyone i knew and that

138was what like four days ago and that student didn't even know and it was the day before the first day of school um so it's something that we've depended on for a long time you know when i chose to stay in cgs after a year block zero the biggest reason why is because i was told oh well transportation's going back to normal john you're gonna have the opportunity to go back and forth and i'm committed you know i'm staying in cgs you know because i enjoy it as a program but i would hope that stafford would would return to the policy that they had before since it did work you know busting people all over town was not as effective as just busting them straight from mount view to north stafford and back it seems

139to me the best policy both for the students the bus drivers themselves and financially in terms of the county just the best option overall so i'd like to thank you very much for your time have a great evening [Applause] taylor hi my name is sarah taylor she her falmouth district i'm a parent of a junior at stafford high school a senior at north stafford high school and a teacher on my 21st year of teaching in my 12th at north stafford i'd like to comment on another situation in which i think intentions were good but the execution is actually destructive to the mission of this school system and that is the recent ban on teachers calling trends and non-binary students by their preferred names and pronouns unless the students have a gender support plan in place

140or if they identify their preferred name as their nickname specifically if i extend your trust in the benefit of the doubt i guess this was an effort to avoid students feeling required to share their pronouns which i agree is a bad idea requiring students to share pronouns potentially creates a situation in which students who aren't out at school to either feel pressured to come out before they're ready or to make them feel badly because they lie about who they truly are to protect themselves at their particular stage in the process of coming out it could also put pressure on a questioning student to artificially make a choice in order to answer a question that isn't so straightforward for them i totally get that and agree that requiring students or pressuring students to share pronouns is

141wrong however inviting students to do so if they'd like giving them an option of doing so can be incredibly affirming for trans and non-binary students who are out at school or ready to be out you may say that's what the gsp is for but requiring them to go through this othering step of filling out a form with the input of their counselors and their parents sends the message to trans and non-binary students that they don't belong it says you are so different that you need a negotiated contract to be recognized i'm not saying that there isn't a place for gsps in some circumstances but something as simple and important as names and pronouns isn't one of those this requirement cuts off students who aren't out at home for getting vitally important gender affirmation from an

142adult we say at our school we are family for some students that isn't just a platitude for some of them it's a lifeline what about the trans and non-binary kids who have parents who are hostile or dismissive what about the kids who aren't out to their parents because it would likely result in abuse neglect or homelessness what about those kids who just aren't ready to come out to parents and need to wear the identity for a bit to test it out in a place that is accepting before sharing it with family those kids at least used to have a safe space at school where their identity was being affirmed now they won't i hope this wasn't the board's intention i hope this was just a matter of sloppy execution among so many other crises but

143this is incredibly important and needs the board's attention not only is this an equity issue thank you [Applause] good evening i'm dana brown i live at 41 st williams way in the rock hill district and first i just wanted to address the convocation incident it was unfortunate and i really hope that everyone is okay i hope nobody is suffering some long-term effects from this but i think we should lighten up on the superintendent just a bit sounds like he was trying to do something nice for staff and we all know that mother nature is fickle was it too hot to be outside in august probably it was 95 degrees when i was driving over here through a flashing school dismissal zone today the public repeatedly told the former school board august was too hot when

144staff was railroading them to change the first day of school to the beginning of august we warned you but it fell on deaf ears except for miss healy who voted no i find it ironic that the sca is complaining it's too hot outside in early august as i recall from being on the calendar committee many of them supported the central office demands to force kids back to school that early you know stand outside at the bus stops in the heat have recess cancelled because of the heat not one word that i hear from them tonight about how this was for the kids so i'm confused are they now saying it's okay for the kids to be outside on hot buses but not them and then yesterday i was really appalled to open the newspaper and

145find that the sea is looking for a little payout is this for extra compensation for normal expected august heat and how do they arrive at that number their money request seems quite random that someone say hmm let's do 100 for every part-time employee and how about 200 for every full-time employee is this a ransom demand as a taxpayer i don't want to pay that or is this payback because they don't like the new superintendent's new policies who knows my response would be if you're not happy with the new guy find somewhere else where you'll be satisfied and be very careful what policies you help push through because they might affect you if school didn't start so early neither would convocation and then the second thing i want to talk to you about was please try

146and be considered to the public consider moving public comment time to the top of the agenda tonight was good very happy with that we don't like to be marginalized i would like it if you would reinstate allowing the chair to open the floor to public speakers after all the people who signed up to speak um and please release the stranglehold you have requiring folks to sign up before 2 pm things happen after 2 pm school buses get home late after 2 pm kids get home from school and tell what happened to school after 2 p.m it's not nice to make somebody wait 30 days to tell you that and really imagine the actions give you the appearance of wanting to discourage comments from the public from appearing on tv i really think you should go

147back to that early start date and revisit that staff sold it as we were going to be online with everybody else in surrounding counties that was kind of fake we're not we're taking spring break and official winter so i hope you reconsider that thank you bridgette farrell kuzma rock hill district teacher and parent i'm here to offer my perspective on friday's convocation i appreciate the sentiment of the event the gathering the unity and the inspiration hamish brewer's message and presentation were on point while sitting in traffic on the bus to arrive at the event it seemed that timing and logistics were stumbling blocks from the beginning obviously of great concern is the health and safety of all those attending the event personally i started feeling unnerved when those who seemed to be in charge were

148communicating in a frantic manner we were spoken to and kurt almost demeaning tones those messages and feelings were unsettling we were rushed out and told buses were leaving we stood and waited for the buses with no communication we were finally told to walk to our bus and we were then yelled at by stafford county public schools employees to use the sidewalks and the crosswalks in the spaces where there was no traffic or all traffic was stopped when tensions are high we all need those in charge to do all that they can to remain calm cool and collected as a classroom teacher if i were on a field trip with students and something went awry it would never be acceptable for me to speak to students in the same manner in tone used toward me at

149the convocation yes everything did not run smoothly and i know many lessons have been learned dr taylor has owned the missteps and apologized new situations come with risks of course we never want the risks to come at the expense of anyone's health and safety i feel dr taylor is not solely responsible for this event and the negative outcomes that are generating much attention i view this event as one that highlighted areas upon which stafford county public schools can continue to improve with communication and logistics at the top of the list at the high school parent level i feel some uneasiness about the seemingly big change the high school schedule at the hour long lunch block in the new and different planned use of that time with the promotion and explanation of this change it has

150been stated that there will be bumps along the road at the district level there were indeed many bumps in the road of the convocation event i hope that you as a school board and we as a community do not make this a negative defining moment i hope we can all learn from the experience while understanding the best intentions behind it we do need to keep in mind our goals of inspiring and empowering others even in and especially in a challenging and unforeseen situations i do believe dr taylor is working to help stafford county public schools to elevate us to a level where we can all excel thank you good evening members of the board and dr taylor my name is al watkins and i live just off of samford drive i'm a retired teacher still

151in close contact with many current educators although i was not at the convocation last week i've heard directly from many many who were in attendance there is no doubt that the intent of the event was commendable but ultimately the event will not be remembered for those good intentions bringing staff together start the year to motivate to inspire to create camaraderie is a very positive endeavor my questions regarding the event predominantly pertain to communication some staff members with medical needs did personally ask for their accommodations to be met and they received emails confirming their accommodations however the entire staff was not alerted with an email or any other message that they could request accommodations if required a list was created of those who were to receive assistance like viewing the event from one of the 13

152air conditioned suites during the morning as the heat began to overwhelm people in desperate need they sought to enter the suites and they were initially told no because their names were not on the list ultimately they did get into the cooler areas only after insisting that they needed help all of this was avoidable if only the entire staff was made aware that they could have requested accommodations further monkey elementary was the last school to enter and be seated at 9 45 a.m just as the national anthem began to be played some schools had already been seated since 8 45 a.m even as the anthem played some in attendance were already feeling overheated and asking for assistance was anyone getting that information as the event continued attendees continued to be affected and require assistance many educators

153really began to provide care for their peers the staff was coming together bonding if you will though not in the manner intended that morning most have no recollection of anything the guest speakers said they were too busy it was clear on from early on that many were getting overwhelmed by the heat it required much more urgent care so why did it take until 11 15 for the presentation to finally end more than an hour after the event started and well after many had shown signs of heat related illnesses surely senior staff had recognized earlier that the health of the staff was being compromised i've been told by those on site that actually it was the ems and sheriff's department that asked for scps staff to get the people out of there i hope that was

154not the case dr taylor indicated that many lessons were learned a thorough transparent investigation needs to be made with the results reported to staff and to the general public if for no other reason to make sure that the trust that has been lost can be rebuilt and to make sure that the concerns of all stakeholders are properly addressed thank you [Applause] all right that's the close of the citizen comments brings us to action items item 5.01 appointment two board members to serve as the primary and alternate liaisons to the head start policy council for the term of 1 september 2022 through 31 august 2023. do we have a volunteer um madam chair i spoke to miss guy and i will be the liaison and she would like to be the alternate for this upcoming year

155well thank you we have volunteers so move move to appoint uh dr warner as primary and miss guy as secondary second all right motion by dr chase second by miss randall no discussion cast your votes tally the votes motion passes unanimously 5.02 appointment of two board members to serve as the board's delegate and alternate delegate at the vsba's annual conference in november 2022. do you have a volunteers i'm happy to volunteer i i will be alternate all right anyone else interested then do we have a motion on motion that sarah dr sarah chase and dr elizabeth warner be the delegate and alternate delegate at the vsba's annual convention in november okay any discussion tell your votes tally the votes motion passes unanimously 5.03 adoption of three school board resolutions to request appropriation by the stafford

156county board of supervisors for additional fy 23 state funding for one recurring operating funds two one-time school construction funds and three one-time funding for bonuses for all contracted staff motion to approve 5.03 second we have a motion by dr chase and second by dr warner any discussion dr taylor just so we can have it for the record could you confirm uh the parameters for those bonuses you know when the contract employee has to be on our rolls and when the bonus will be paid out absolutely our target for a payout is going to be in the december pay period so an employee would need to be um with us and on our uh payroll on uh november 1st for this to be effective it could do any amounts so a full-time employee would be eligible

157to receive the 1 000 bonus and a part-time employee b would be receiving a 500 bonus okay and that's what the the board is voting on that motion to approve so any discussion all right cast your votes tell your votes motion passes unanimously 5.04 adoption of the goals and objectives for the new strat strategic plan stage two of three do we have a motion motion to approve the um phase two of this new strategic plan second second oh gosh darn it you gotta jump in there all right we have a motion by dr warner second by dr chase and we'll give a third to uh miss guy no all right cast your votes tally the votes motion passes unanimously 5.05 second slash final review and approval of the proposed amendments to finance policies 4712 5101

1585104 5107 5108 5109 5503 5504 5506 5701 5801 and 5802 and rescission of finance policy 4601 do we have a motion motion to approve i was going to say a motion to prove all but uh i would like to delay on 5802 and have that one come back i i would like more information about that one we have a second a second i'll second it emotion my doctor chase second by dr warner any discussion is there a time when you want 5802 to come back um i would say next month would be fine i just would like some to to i i'm a little confused i thought this purchasing authority was 125 not a hundred thousand i thought we had raised it last year um and i just would like some examples of when we

159have needed to have that higher purchasing good point all right do do we want that to go to the fam okay that would be fine that's meeting before the next meeting all right is that argument all right well let's put that on the fab agenda to review that and come back to the board with the recommendation the fab agenda has like 10 000 things on it what's one more okay well all right y'all that's why you that's why you're you're you're you're fed when you're on the good coffee that's right bring bring your own what they call them k-cups all right so if you can maybe put that to make sure we get to that at the agenda i mean i that was actually reviewed by the fab government last year or governor i just

160said we were we were on it but since it's of instances of finance i mean the since it's a finance issue we'll ask the fab to look at the government's committee already recommended it all right well parts of it all right any other discussion no cast your votes tally votes motion passes unanimously and then we'll put that on the um the next agenda we'll put it on for action uh 5.06 adoption of performance evaluation and growth system for teachers and other licensed staff for the 2022-2023 school year do we have a motion uh motion to approve 506. second okay motion by dr chase second by ms halstead discussion yes i i would uh one of the changes in this performance evaluation that was uh that i had questions about was changing the minimum amount of

161time um required for length of classroom observations from 45 minutes to 30 minutes and and that just brought this question to me in general about what exactly does our performance evaluation and growth system look like and so i i would be interested in just a really brief really brief um review of that good evening i can step in on that um so uh and thank you for the question uh dr chase uh the you know our evaluation system is modeled after the guidelines for the uh uniform performance standards for teaching that are published by vdoe each year and that were amended last spring and some of the changes that were brought here tonight were meant to align with some state required changes uh to the evaluation model the state requires the use of classroom observations

162in evaluation but does not require the length of observations does not require the frequency or the timing of observations um the last time that the board adopted a performance evaluation model was uh seven years ago and it's been in use since then the model at that point relied on uh three required observations for first year teachers two for second year and then one for teachers in their third probationary year or who were in continuing contracts but in their formal evaluation year and uh but we've learned a lot in the last seven years i would say um and over the last uh you know more than decade uh in education and i think one of the major learnings from that was that the length of observations uh sometimes 45 minutes is the right amount sometimes more

163than 45 minutes is the right amount but sometimes less is the right amount as well and so in a review of the policies of other divisions also looking at other jurisdictions uh with a great deal of experience and teacher evaluation we found was that uh the minimum length of observation uh was uh rarely indexed at 45 minutes it was more typically at the length of a lesson or uh minimum of 30 minutes and so that was the recommendation shift here i think the continued guidance will be uh seeing the length of a lesson is uh usually the preference but depending on how a block is broken up how much time that is very any questions so we're still going to have good evaluation even though we're reducing to a minimum of 30. just we're just

164reducing the minimum not uh not dictating that it's only 30 minutes um and so no i'm i'm i have great hopes that uh by solidifying some of the language in here including some of the uh state's changes to the performance standards themselves um as well as uh i hope much more clear guidance for evaluators for teachers around student surveys and the artifacts that are submitted and an encouraged reflection process as opposed to a we're going to do x and we're going to give you a rating much more of each component of the evaluation is focused on the reflection of the educator the conversation with the evaluator and i think that what we've learned especially over the last decade is it's those processes that are the most beneficial thank you and i'm happy that you said

165seven years because i had no recollection of ever having really heard much about performance evaluation and so i if i hadn't the only person who had was dr healy so i appreciate the information thank you did i get a promotion i have a jd is a jd make me a doctor well it is a dr george i don't know never had that title um and that's why when you called me i i i was pretty much on track with your answer and that was probably what i learned seven years ago outstanding so excellent thank you so just i have a question then just as long as um because when i you know read this the first time i didn't think anything of it until now like i'm looking at it and you're talking about the

166observations in 30 minutes and whatnot but so the requirement for all teachers in their first year to receive an interim evaluation for the end of the first semester what was it before and what is the what is the potential outcome that we're looking for sure so this is actually something that was an amendment to state law and clarification from vdoe previously there was not a requirement there was not a specific time-bound requirement for teachers in their first year there was language introduced by the general assembly that uh said that all teachers in their first year shall be received be evaluated informally during their first semester uh previously vdoe had interpreted that to mean they should be observed during the first semester and apparently the language they got from the general assembly is no we meant

167they should be evaluated informally so that was just new guidance that came from vdoe and uh had dialogue with vdoe just to confirm that's like this is what you actually mean um and one of the things that we're encouraging with that interim evaluation is again there's not a rating issue at that point that it is an interim evaluation of what's going well what's not going well how can i help you what so again that emphasis on reflection and conversation and and finding out if they have everything they need to proceed successfully through the rest of the year is what i'm hoping this means exactly all right okay any other questions discussion not tell your votes i'm sorry that was cast your votes now we're telling the votes thanks doctor motion passes unanimously wow i'm i'm

168i'm honored dr chase i'll consider that an honorary doctor if that was the intent um that brings us to presentations student technology use update i don't think the uh we gotta put the screen down missy yeah okay okay i think we're ready all right so um coming out of the pandemic we with all we have learned we have an opportunity to empower every student for success in a way we probably haven't had before basically we can prepare students for the world they will find when they graduate not the world of today and technology is an excellent tool for this mission if it is used correctly so what we're going to do is we'll look at three basic things we have a lot of information here but it's three basic things how we're using technology or

169sort of a way to look at how we use technology in the classrooms how we're protecting our students currently and what changes we have for next year okay so the salmon model is a way to describe how to use technology in the classroom the s stands for substitution and it's really where technology is just to stand in for a traditional learning task a worksheet done on a chromebook is still just a worksheet it doesn't really add anything to the lesson to prepare for the future technology must be more than just a stand-in for the past it must be used in ways that inspire creativity and critical thinking so as we move up the samur model we move to augment which is pretty much the same lesson but it's a little bit of an improvement like

170for example when you're doing a google doc online it underlines the words for you you know so you don't have to look them up in the dictionary you can focus on the writing this is where next we have m is for modify and r is for redefine and this is where technology can really make a big difference in a classroom it's a way to do things that you couldn't do without technology for example an earth science class might have some digital probes connected to their chromebook and they can check the water quality in a creek right and get a graph real time and collect all their data instead of sending it off to a lab or something like that get it back weeks later okay any questions about the salmer model so we have some

171examples of that this is a couple of high school students doing a chemical doing a chemistry class where they're having a chemical reaction monitored in real time with a ph probe you can see the the little ph thing sticking in the purple uh jar there and a graph in the background where they're actually graphing the data in real time it's pretty cool some in a in elementary school these two elementary students are learning coding and robotics at the same time with robotics and they're using a chromebook to do that here we have a couple of students that are producing video tutorials for their peers and maybe they're doing a presentation for a class but really what you have [Music] is the samer model in action where teachers can really transform not only the future of

172education but also the future of our students okay so next we'll review how we're keeping our students safe online am i going too fast we're good everybody good all right so [Music] student data protections are really um one of the big points of our firewalls and and all that and a lot of the things that we do there are a lot of great resources out there um but there's a lot of not so great out there too as we've heard during the pandemic that's where our internet content filters come in and then we have some changes we're going to discuss for next school year a lot of that's around the internet content filter okay so our student data protections start with their defense in depth around our network we have the department of homeland security

173their cisa group actually does penetration testing for our network and it's very effective and we get a notice every monday if we get one not on monday it's bad news we don't get too many of those but it's just an update each each week that everything is still good we've this year we're adding internal scanning we bought a tool that we're going to use inside to basically check everything inside you know we have i don't know 35 000 little hackers out there potentially so we're going to be doing some intrusion detection we also have a position that is dedicated to security now and he's really making a lot of great changes and then lastly we do the software data privacy protection we have a couple of staff members that do this almost well not 100

174of the time but a lot and every software application that we look at our website we we acquire or adopt we do a full privacy and technical scan on those to make sure that we're we have good privacy protections in place for student information okay any questions so far we're good all right so our internet content filter there are a lot of misconceptions about how that works so we we have three basic levels we have the district level which is more than simple compliant for the new for this year we're blocking tick tock completely from everywhere [Applause] strangely our administrators have the same sort of idea about whether that was good or not [Music] of course we block pornography maturity mature content drugs you know all those things schools can go further and limit youtube

175social media streaming whatever they want to they just you know ask us hey we need we have a problem with this or we'd like to block this before it becomes a problem and we do that but then the third filter really is the student self-monitoring and to help with that this year we're going to start some dental digital citizenship training with a program called common sense that we'll talk about here in a little bit but the goal is that the student will progressively self-monitor and self-regulate over time because you know in this world of internet connectivity they have to learn how to do that by the time they graduate right because everything is connected to the internet these days so um the commonsense.org group has a lot of age-appropriate digital citizenship stuff and how to

176you know protect yourself online etc you know the online stranger danger the whole thing and it's that's um that's something we're going to work on this year okay so youtube is a special case [Music] of course we're already blocking mature videos we're blocking the featured auto play video so it doesn't just keep going one after the other we're blocking the video thumbnails down the side we're blocking the comments the sidebar is disabled all those things are happening already with elementary school at the end of last year we ran a pilot where we basically said everybody's got to have educational categories or they can't every video has to be in an educational category or that we won't allow it on elementary school chromebooks students didn't like it teachers loved it so we've rolled that out across

177the board this year okay okay so changes for this school year um we're going to leave the elementary school chromebooks on carts in the classrooms they only go home if there's an instructional purpose or a financial need and that's at the teacher's discretion they don't have to get extra permission or anything they just use their own discretion for that um and of course we're maintaining the education only video settings for youtube in secondary we're trying something a little different if a we're going to try to help with some of the breakage when a student gets a chromebook where they're going to get the nice bigger ones but if they break theirs they're going to get a little bit smaller one and that's going to be their loner and we're going to fix the their broken

178one and give the same one back to them and we hope that they'll be taking better care of it when they realize that they're going to have that same chromebook until they graduate okay so a seventh grader is going to have the same chromebook until they graduate that's the that's the goal we're going to try it see if it works and how much extra overhead there is and go from there we're also going to meet with the administrators and get them information about internet activity if they're building so they can make better decisions about what's going on with them okay so really the internet safety is a shared responsibility we filter in inappropriate content like i've described but no filter is perfect if the student's intention is to get around the filter then the student

179code of conduct does apply and that's something that people need to keep in mind parents please talk with your students about responsible use and help that with that we have some ideas from webmd.com which is a pretty reputable um website for things like this um to help with the talk and that's not the the technology talk not the other one so um [Music] so elementary things like lead by lead by example you know have good screen habits yourself you know play and watch together set time limits all the things you would think about but you know maybe just they need that little extra push you talk about online privacy and online stranger danger that kind of thing when they hit secondary and they start getting older and needing more you know taking on more responsibility

180work on those screen rules together you know encourage them to get outside and and just realize if they're gaming with friends that's more social than gaming by yourself that kind of stuff so those were some suggestions from webmd.com okay so and again that just think of age-appropriateness and what students how well they can self-monitor and sort of increase their own responsibility as things proceed so we're going to add a little common sense to our common sense to our digital citizenship with commonsense.org it's a multiple way to sort of approach the the problem of digital citizenship so there's professional learning for teachers if a certain percentage of teachers are working at a school or have taken the certification then [Music] they will become a in the school is also engaging families and students then they will

181become a common sense school and then once we hit 75 percent we'll have a common sense district and i hope to hit that sometime over the next year um we'll we'll have a little celebration if we make that so our expectations for this year is respect the tech definitely take care of your chromebook bring it to school every day if you're in secondary or if you take it home and that self-monitoring is so important so um just please keep that in mind in really working together we can really make a big difference in how technology is used in preparing our students for the future any questions skye all right so i just want to make sure i understand so in elementary school the chromebooks stay there and then in seventh grade you get your chromebook

182and you keep that till you graduate um so in elementary school the the students will can take it home if there's an instructional purpose but in general it's going to stay on a cart in the classroom and be charged up and all that in sixth grade they actually will be able to check out chromebooks in seventh grade and eighth grade ninth grade and tenth grade they have the larger chromebooks okay so maybe maybe have misspoke there a little but basically the ones that the seventh graders are getting now we hope for them we hope that they'll last until they graduate okay they should they're really good lab uh chromebooks okay so for the sixth grader um i guess is there a parental involvement for the like say i'm i'm a sixth grade parent and i

183don't want my son to check it out um is am i allowed to do something or do i write a letter to school saying don't let johnny check out his chromebook like how does that work um we haven't considered that because it is going to be a very key part of the curriculum um and if they have homework they're probably going to need the chromebook okay i was just asking because i know some parents wish they wouldn't bring it home so i'm just trying to yeah well they will have the option to leave it at school too okay like the elementary schools do okay yeah ms sigman um yes parents can say no chromebooks at home because i got to that point at uh some point over the past couple of years um i also

184do want to say that i did see this water treatment display at a high school visit um that was very cool and the teachers were very appreciative of that can we go back a little bit because i know dreambox is an educational tool you have it in here as a as a safety oh it was just that we we checked it for privacy okay yeah right that they have all the and they're one of the better ones with with student privacy policies and stuff okay um that was my big question and it's time for us basically for privacy great um i love all of this especially keeping the chromebooks at school for elementary students and locking down youtube i think that's going to make a really big impact we learned from last year and is

185there i don't know how to ask so right now for elementary we have educational youtube only and then we have something different for secondary are there intermediate steps because we might find that maybe our middle schoolers little need a little more restriction but have more freedom than element you know what i mean like is there room to play around or is it on and off um so the educational only category is on or off but there are other parts to the filter that we have applied that is got like a machine learning thing that's supposed to help with education only videos and really push that because some things that are educational might not be set as that category so we give the the secondary teachers a little more leeway with that but um we've had

186one school lock it down like they were having issues last year so they locked it down just like elementary yeah so that the principals always have that option okay thank you thank you dr warner thank you um this looks really good um the one question i have is i see that so parents aren't as technically savvy as their children generally speaking are we offering any training classes for parents and support for them so that they have more maybe more control because i do agree that kids have to be self-regulatory but they're often not very good at it so what are we doing for parents so the commonsense.org curriculum has a family engagement component in fact i encourage parents to go to commonsense.org and click on the family link at the top and there is a

187lot of resources for them to have the talk and also just to kind of help them understand some of the things that their maybe their students already understand it's randall i would imagine there are going to be a lot of school-based trainings going on around that concept too is all of that on our website right now um not yet but i recorded this presentation with probably a little bit cleaner verbage um for release um after this is over okay thank you and also um when the seventh and up get their chromebooks will they be returning them at the end of each year or will they be keeping them over the summer that is not the current plan that we plan to for them to have them available over the summer [Music] that makes me grumpy

188miss halsted um so you have review uh hold on let me go up here i just had it reviewed by the administrators like you know general review by the administrators here regular review of internet how how is that working like is that like a random spot check of the computer are they taking things how are we going to ensure it'll be a summary of their whole building internet usage is it's not going to break down by students unless there's an issue that you know like we have a a student that keeps trying to get to block sites and stuff like that but in general um it's a summary thing like say we have a lot of people going to um instagram for example so and they don't have anybody using it instructionally which so that

189that would show up in our filtering as a summary item and the principal could decide to block that so his kid you know the students would pay a little more attention in class or whatever so it's going to be things like that big categories of things or individual issues that we find okay um so so you'll see a printout at the end of you know all time of like each site that was attempted to be hit is that how that works um yeah it's it's summary and like top 50 kind of things because it's a lot of like yeah um all right so last year we had some parents who took chromebooks and definitely away from their kids for you know inappropriate use and whatnot so do we have any accommodations for parents who are

190not happy with chromebook or have banned chromebook from their home not just their homes but from their student because we have to acknowledge that as well yeah so they can absolutely ask the school to just keep them at school that's not a problem okay um or as soon as it comes in the house they could just collect it you know well there's lots of workarounds at the schools they're very very creative yeah yeah yeah i just want to make sure that we're still doing that not just we haven't taken that off the plate yet okay and then my final question is you said um the teacher the administration can limit as they go along we all start with the same blanket one if there's repeated and then the teeth they can change is that a

191set policy written down or is that just an arbitrary like game time decision when um as we're going through the school year right we can absolutely change it in the principal meetings we have we talk about that um pretty much every time but does do are parents aware that and teachers aware that you know accessibility to certain websites might be limited limited as you go through because who knows what these guys have they're so creative yeah i just want everyone aware that things can change we're not we're not saying this is a complete situation it's a fluid moving situation man okay all true that's all yeah so i just want to follow up on the comment about if a parent doesn't want their child to bring a chromebook home but all their homework is on

192like do they still have physical textbooks that they could bring home if they're not going to have the chromebook at home can they get printouts of the worksheets if they're not going to have the chromebook and that may not be a question for you that may be a question for that really actually that's a great opportunity and jay if you could uh mr cook if you could go back to the samer slide let let's just take a quick second to go back to the why you know stafford made the switch to chromebooks out of necessity in the middle of a global pandemic crisis and candidly stafford was late to the party there have been school districts that have been utilizing technology for over a decade as a matter of fact henrico county first distributed laptops

193for students to take home in the year 2000 22 years ago this is not a new concept or new idea the sammer model is not a new approach but it is very new to stafford and this is our heavy lift instructionally if we are just doing worksheets on chromebooks they they are very little value to us in terms of return on investment but if we are utilizing uh the technological resource to do some remarkable things that we otherwise would not be able to do without the technology that really is the opportunity to give our kids a competitive advantage that they can take with them in life after high school so you know i think that this will take some time and take some adjustment there's still a novelty factor to uh kids having their own

194device that's school issued and so as as we develop it this is really an instructional chore just as much as it is a cyber security or a technology use chore for parents and adults in the school it it's very much an instructional thing that we need to focus on on how we might make our lessons a little bit more engaging and a little bit more toward the modify and redefine elements of the spectrum so that there that they can leverage the tool a little bit better leveraging the tool just in the substitute form provides little value for where we are as a school system and what we need to do to elevate right and and for me my issue as somebody who studies cognitive psychology and knows a little bit about attention and a little

195bit about memory and things like that what is concerning to me is if i'm a parent and i don't want my child i don't want to have to babysit my child at home while they do their homework and their book is on the chromebook and that's the only option we've got i would have to sit there and make sure that they stay on that page and they're not flipping over to youtube to watch educational videos or that they're not flipping over to some other website um to look at stuff and so that's my concern and and it's a real concern that we have children who really do have these challenges and these difficulties and so i i'm asking is there a way that a parent can choose not to take that device home and their

196child can still get their work done so i think that there is maybe not a cut and dry answer to that because i think if the goal is ultimately to have engaging lessons that leverage technology in part i think it's largely going to depend on individual assignments and individual opportunities at specific times not blanketly yes or no and i just think that that that should be our objective too is that it should be a la carte and not comprehensive in every regard and then another question uh so i love that we have this filter at our schools does it filter their cell phones um only if they're using the wi-fi if it's if it's if it's using if it's using the wi-fi it will but if it's if they're using their own cell service it's

197not going to yeah so i think that's an important thing um for people to realize is that this does not actually solve some of the problems we like tick tock i can just look at it on my phone it doesn't matter that you've blocked it on the chromebook i still have perfectly great access to tick tock and to instagram and to youtube and to whatever else so i really hope that we crack down hard on the phone not being out during school times because it really does impair pair learning and then i know i have just lots of questions the modify students share a paper online to get feedback um do our teachers have uh electronic pencils with which and and will they work with the chromebook so the teacher can just write their comments

198on the page rather than having to use these really complicated yeah it's built in the google the google drive correctly for google docs system yeah great thank you um ms guy i'm sorry i just had one more quick i know thing that popped in my head when you were speaking mr cook um so my kid last year had a chromebook but then the chromebook could not handle the work from the class so they had to give her a macbook and so then we had to take care of her chromebook and her macbook and then we i don't know why we got her her own laptop and so my only thing was i wish the school had only let just like only give one you know if you are in technical drawing right so the chromebooks

199can't work in that class because of whatever the content then we will we will give you a mac and you just have the mac and it just is just one less thing because i didn't know she had the mac because it was like a footstool right it was just like literally stepping i didn't know so it just it makes it easier on the parent or um maybe if i would have gotten an email or something like hi your kid checked out this yeah our model is to collect the chromebook when we issue another device okay that's fantastic thank you just might have gotten missed it probably did it's fine miss sigmund i just wanted to kind of i had some of the same concerns that dr chase did so with our laptops we have locked

200things down at school but parents will still need to be aware when their child is connected to any other network other than school have there been any changes to the chromebook themselves as far as security-wise yeah um that was actually part of the presentation that i forgot to add the the act the um there's a network in inside the network filter but there's also one on every chromebook too and i left i forgot that part in the presentation so thanks for asking that and yeah so wherever the chromebook goes and this to wherever the student logs in it doesn't matter where the filter will run on that chromebook okay and then are we i know you mentioned that we are not doing tech talk are we doing in are we blocking all social medias tick

201tock specifically um we're blocking tick tock specifically okay um but we can add we can add to that i'm sorry oh okay we can we can add to that list but there are some uh communications that happen through that so um in the that communication comes through the chromebook to that family um so sure there's that uh that complication i guess and then um so back at the very beginning of um covid when we started using the google platform children were able to message each other like instant message each other on g chat some kind of nefarious stuff went on there because that's what kids do and we locked that down but then canvas now has the option for students to kind of inter chat that way and i've always just kind of been concerned

202about how that's monitored who monitors that or if it's monitored at all for inter student communication it's all all those things are filtered whether somebody's monitoring it or not is a is a different question i'll have to check into that okay you know if there's my daughter's cell phone for example we got a violence alert from her european history homework because it talks about you know war so i didn't know if there is some sort of content filter where if certain topics are being discussed especially if it comes to um health and safety issues that if there's a way for anybody who needs to know can get ping so for taking just a little bit of a closer look yeah we'll take a look at that any other questions comments no that brings us to

2037.01 superintendents reports and comments dr taylor thank you i'm gonna do this from uh down low he just doesn't wanna sit anymore okay thank you mr cook mr cook thank you good evening uh madam chair members of the board uh i am delighted to be here on the eve of the 2022-2023 school year there's a lot that i want to share tonight in particular today was our transition day where we hosted kindergartners 6th graders and 9th graders in all of our schools today and today i can tell you was an undeniable success our schools definitely were excited to have our kids back in our school buildings and for the students that were in our schools this was the one time that they could have the entire school to themselves and i want to congratulate our

204principals and teachers for putting on such engaging programming i got to spend the majority of the day in one of our high schools and i got to interact with some 9th graders who were not enthusiastic about coming to school in the morning but were a little bit more wide awake in the afternoon and i'm not sure what they knew what to make out of a pep rally because i think it's been several years since we've had the chance to do one of those so we had a lot of fun and there was a lot that was going on in our schools today and it was a great thrill there's been a couple of changes in terms of our communications with families and with staff members over the past couple weeks that i want to bring

205to everybody's attention we are issuing an internal newsletter to staff on mondays that folks receive via email and we issue a family newsletter every friday afternoon that has links and updated information about the happenings going on in stafford county public schools if we have families out there that are not receiving this newsletter we'd love to know about it because we want to make sure that people are getting this information it's great that mr cook was up here talking about parent education and some of the resources that we have and one of those resources you may have noticed in our last last issue of elevate weekly which was a little tag to talk about phishing which is something that online predators do uh to to solicit information from people and violate their privacy and so we

206are hoping to drop little tidbits uh throughout uh um our newsletter and throughout some of our publications to to try and educate our community to make them a little bit more savvy in terms of digital citizenship as well as the happenings that are going on in stafford county we are thrilled today that this was our first crack at our bus schedule and you know no first week of school goes absolutely perfect but we really were very pleased with the performance of our bus schedule today and how things went granted we were catering to about 7 000 students and not our usual 31 000 students uh we're but it was a great dry run and a great opportunity for our drivers to to get to know their routes we certainly ask our families to to recognize

207that this this short week this first week our drivers are still figuring out a few things and uh and to help them along and be patient with them our groups that we're transitioning are usually the ones that need the most assistance with transportation so this really was an opportunity for them to help as well which kind of brings me to the last topic that i wanted to bring to the board's attention and at seven o'clock this evening i sent a notice home to families that included some information that i wanted to share about school safety because i know that this is a topic that has been on the board's mind and on the community's mind as well as my mind for much of the summer and uh and really all of the time i you

208know i i sent a video home this evening to parents and even to our secondary students and it was a different video for students in a different video for parents that talks about this topic of safety and how important this is and and in that video i say that i would love to tell you that instruction is our number one priority it's not the reality is is that campus safety is really our number one priority and so there's really three dimensions of safety that i want to bring forward tonight to talk about one is that the physical campus safety uh that that seems to be on on all of our minds uh today and and throughout the summer cyber security and online safety and of course our whole child supports and i'm not gonna dwell

209too much on that because jay covered a lot of that and the last one is a continuous improvement and and how we focus on safety moving forward so this is probably our most outward facing dimension of safety we have a department of safety security and risk management we do a lot of extensive monitoring of what's going on in our schools both with physical eyes and with cameras if if this presentation lacks any specificity it's because we don't want the quote unquote bad guys to know all of our tricks but we do have a pretty robust safety program and a lot of it is preventative and that that really is a large part of our focus we do have practices and drills and protocols and emergency plans to help our kids exit buildings in the event

210of an emergency there are regulations surrounding uh fire drills um lockdown drills bomb drills and and all of the sort including tornado drills because there are a number of tornadoes in in virginia every year but it's important to note that that's more than just the drills and the protocols that that we take into consideration we do pretty robust background checks of employees and and visitors who volunteer in our school space we are increasingly more interested in our physical infrastructure and our physical space and how our school buildings might become physically more safe this is a particular challenge that the board discussed earlier this evening in your work session talking about capital improvements we have a number of buildings that are aging and they're not showing their age particularly well and in addition to not meeting

211our space requirements which sometimes elevates to the top of the list of concerns our a real concern is how might we keep our students in the most safe learning environment as possible we have robust threat assessment protocols that we lean on and as the board knows our student code of conduct has has come into laser focus this year as we try to establish or re-establish positive norms for student behaviors and that's actually a major theme in the video that was sent home to parents and students but this is particularly important our partnerships with law enforcement are also of importance to us i will say that we do not have a school resource officer in every one of our schools and that's a problem in terms of uh the resource that that person provides i'm not

212saying that that it's always necessary to have a sheriff's deputy in every school but in our secondary schools it is a little bit of an abnormality in virginia to not have a school resource officer in every secondary school we have several schools that share but we are very grateful for our partnership and coordination with our sheriff's department they do a tremendous job in working with us they have great lines of communication with us and we also have additional security personnel in our secondary schools but this is a challenge should we find ourselves in an adverse position it is something that we are go we have to look at moving forward which brings us to our learning environment in general and something that we we are very focused on in terms of creating a balance we

213want our kids to come into a school that is really bright and welcoming and have a workforce that is really excited to be in support of children in our schools but it's a little little tough um when everything around every corner is uh in uh narrow windows or lockdown space or cinder block walls and locked doors but we do need to to be mindful and balance that safety requirement so for example the ideal environment for us and and you can experience this any community member coming into stafford schools is that you're going to come in through the front door of a school that's a double entrance that double entrance exists for the safety of the people inside that school but hopefully after you go through the second door and you enter the main office you're

214surrounded by love and support and smiling faces in our front office and our staff is there to greet you in a welcoming space but we need to be mindful of keeping um our school and its perimeter uh free from those that that would wish to do harm inside of our school space one of the ways that we can help uh keep our schools safe is having a really engaging and exciting learning environment where relationships are built between teachers staff and students as well as parents so that everyone feels comfortable to say something when they see something that doesn't sit right with them that really has led to more successful support of dangerous situations than anything else is positive relationships between staff students and parents and when those three groups are working together to keep schools

215safe good things tend to happen another big focus of ours this year and something that you'll see consistently applied throughout the district is how we set clear expectations for behavior and how we follow through with those expectations for behavior this is going to be a major focus of ours this year and something that we've honed in on as a priority um coming out of the the pandemic we were we were leaning more towards the caution of of supporting our kids from a different lens and one of the ways that we know we can continue to support our kids is to set some expectations for them and hold them to those expectations and help support them to meet those expectations the social and emotional development of our kids is critically important because that is ultimately what

216our goal is is to graduate kids who are prepared for life after high school but that are also the good neighbors that we want to have that live next door to us we do offer mental health services counseling and wrap around services to address everything from food insecurity to needs for mental health supports but this is an area that we need to continue to focus on and an area that we need to continue to grow because as our community evolves and changes and as neighborhoods continue to evolve and change the neighborhood needs tend to change as well and we need to be mindful of that and and the supports that we offer at school also need to mirror some of those changes another area of growth for us is how we might access community support

217and how we might offer community support and be a vehicle for for offering that community support the last space and probably the area where we excel but also have a lot of room to grow is training training on processes training on approaches training on how we serve kids and families this is a huge area where we have done some great work and and had a tremendous amount of respect excuse me tremendous amount of progress but also need a tremendous amount of growth the the tricky part with training is that our need for training never ends and that as we bring on new staff members and try to build out some of our capacity we also need to bring them up to speed and we also need to make sure that everybody is operating from the

218same page which kind of brings us to to where we are as an organization and what our target is and and to be very clear it's it's uh it's focused on how we get better as an organization and how tomorrow is safer than yesterday our ultimate goal should always be to to be the safest school system in america in all of the different dimensions and all of the different focal points that we have but it's very hard to become the best overnight and it's very hard to become the safest overnight so what i ask of us as an organization is that we be the best at getting better at being safer and as we do that there's a lot of things that we have adopted as approaches and continued to to lean into those as

219as best practices everything from reviewing our performance data whether it be discipline or critical incident or threat assessment data having tabletop exercises to simulate a crisis and after action reviews when things don't go well i would love to tell you that every single thing is going to go perfectly right all the time it's not i think we've got good evidence of that this evening but these are important processes to go through annual school safety audits after an event has occurred is is also something that needs to become the norm in our practice and for the most part we're we're actually doing pretty well with that something that's new on our radar for safety is our facility condition assessments in what shape are our existing school buildings and physical assets and how how does our portfolio

220of physical buildings and assets look in terms of safety and what do we need to do to enhance safety in those spaces that needs to be a more emergent question as as as we continue to look at our capital improvements and the things that we need not just space but also how do we keep our children and our guests and parents who visit our schools as well as our staff members safe at all times while in those in those spaces um to that end we spend a lot of time reviewing our our policies practices and protocols this is actually a pretty important aspect of this in particular a recent change in terms of our approach to how we deal with external threats coming into the school building all of our administrators were trained on a

221new process this summer to address how we how we respond to external threats coming into the building and i will say that our our training was expertly done and our our team responded with uh with great questions and and uh a great response that they could carry on to their own faculties but it's important for us to continue to stay sharp um and so with that um you know we we will be looking into how we might uh request some additional support uh from law enforcement to not be such an outlier with our secondary schools being supported um and uh and we'll also be pursuing some external help from our community in terms of formulating a school safety task force of community experts to help advise us on how we might become the best at

222getting better and the best at being safer so with that i'm going to close by saying that that we have a number of priorities that we've listed for school safety in in a number of different domains in this presentation this is really just the tip of the iceberg there's also an addendum that's attached to this agenda item in uh in board docs for folks to look at some of the accomplishments of our department of safety and security and risk management that we're particularly proud of those are the ones that we can share publicly that don't divulge any any confidential information or any uh strategies that we might use that we don't want publicly available but it's noteworthy to to see the evolution over the last couple decades of how stafford county has become a safe

223school system and how we might become a little bit safer in the future we're excited to start this school year but this is an important topic that we we need to address first before we start the school year thank you dr taylor is that the conclusion yes ma'am all right well that brings us to board member comments you had a question oh i didn't i didn't know there were questions sure one quick question about the facility condition assessment which i thought was awesome parents have been asking for that but that wasn't the word like we didn't know what it was called so will that be made public actually we do have that and it is publicly available on board docs but again it's like knowing what to ask for is kind of one of those

224things okay we do rank uh our facilities in terms of their condition and give them a score and in terms of how they do it it is a factor that goes into your capital improvement process but it's also one of those like one data point of many data points that that factor into some of that decision making but that's a great thing for people to take a look at so would you we wouldn't have a problem with me putting that link on my social media for people to see definitely publicly public knowledge thank you okay any other questions no all right now it brings us to board member comments dr chase would you like to get us started um yeah so i'm excited for this new school year and i'm excited to see all the

225the new teachers and and um all the new administrators that have joined us um there was a comment made during citizen comment about if teachers are unhappy with the superintendent they could find another job elsewhere i would completely disagree with that i hope that all the teachers we've hired will stay here in stafford county this year and i hope that once you get to know the superintendent if you've had any difficulties you will find that he is really a pretty good guy and to folks who have been upset about the convocation all of us up here have been upset about it as well but we would be remiss to treat the superintendent any differently than we would treat a teacher or a student people are allowed to make mistakes people in central office are allowed

226to make mistakes the important thing is that we learn from our mistakes and we want our students to be able to in our schools make mistakes and then learn from those mistakes that's what learning is and that's all i've got to say thank you thank you dr chase dr warner thank you um again i'd like to echo that the convocation was meant as a team building effort and we did build team i think that there was a lot of team effort exerted that day um and it because i think that's one thing that stafford does really well is come together it is very unfortunate that people were made ill and all of us uh feel terribly about that but i do want to say that um the new teacher institute in the new teacher training

227session i think was one of the best that i've seen since i've been on the board i saw a lot of new teachers that had a tremendous amount of enthusiasm and excitement for coming to stafford county and for working in our schools and working with our students and they came with a lot of exciting ideas and enthusiasm that i think is going to carry us through the year in a great way i think i heard great things about the transition day i think that our younger students kind of enjoyed the opportunity to be the only ones in the school and not be you know run over by upperclassmen and to be able to to kind of feel their way around without having to trip over kids who were telling them to get out of the

228way because they were moving too slow so i i think it was kind of good to love on them a little bit at the beginning and i think that it was an opportunity for our younger students for their parents to to learn a little bit too because they have to remember that our kindergartners and our first graders can't be left at a bus stop they will be transported back to the school so we want to make sure parents are there to or an adult is there to retrieve them i am excited for this school year i think it is going to be a great school year i think that we have put a lot of stuff behind us these last couple years and this is going to be a good year i have a good

229feeling about it thank you dr warner ms sigmund my husband and i sent our first child to high school today prayer is appreciated and our second child started middle school they both love the transition day and i know that the transition day is meant to kind of help solve some logistical issues in the schools but it was also great at home because it allowed us to send our kids to school a little less intimidated a little bit scared and a little less scared a little more excited our son while he was very glad to have one more day of summer particularly without his sisters he looks forward to rejoining his school community tomorrow and i hope that transition day is something that we continue and we can participate again in two years i've been busy

230with lots of school things new teacher institute i agree with so much fun i was included in some teacher work week events which was very fun i've been to some governor school things open houses at multiple schools i also attended the convocation and stayed as long as i could but i think dr taylor's sentiments um very closely echo mine so i will not you know spend more time building upon those i did want to provide an update as well from the fab we met earlier this month we did discuss the budget calendar which will very importantly include community town halls to discuss community budget priorities so please be on the lookout for those dates coming near you i think they come february-ish time frame it'll be cold come on out it's no surprise that stafford

231county is growing and with it so is our need for seats for our students what may surprise you because it kind of has surprised me is that we're already growing faster than we expected and this is something we have to prepare for in one way or another now we can spend money on trailers and they are associated infrastructure we can spend it on fuel we can spend it on buses or we can spend it investing in construction and that's why these town hall discussions are really really important because the children are coming and we have to educate them and we need to do that in the best possible way we can another consideration brought to fab was asking stafford county public schools to consider leasing school property to a company that wishes to put up

232a cell phone tower and this particular instance would be at h pool middle school though once we've done it and have a policy for it it could open that opportunity for other school properties it would be offer some revenue back to the school over a number period of years there will be future discussions on the topic likely town halls things like that but since this issue might garner feedback from more than just the citizenry that actually goes into our schools every day i did want to highlight it and ask you to share this issue with your friends and neighbors and make sure to share your thoughts with the board to everyone who's going back to school tomorrow i hope you have a fantastic first day or second day and each day after that and i

233do want to remind everyone as was said previously to have patience and grace with each other as we learn our new routines and we're all in this together and as always reach out to me directly with any thoughts or feedback you might have thank you ms sigmund miss halstead um okay so i um i wanted to just talk a little bit first about friday i was not there i was out of state um celebrating my birthday so unapologetically celebrating my birthday i guess i should say but but i want to talk about a couple of things i think the first is that um you know when we had our the essay come up and speak earlier i would also challenge you guys to conduct an after-action report to see how you could have better managed

234your membership prior to that you know i was an emergency manager for the long for the longest time i ran these events from top to bottom nothing ever goes right or the way you planned but certainly once we knew we were in a position maybe we could maybe you could have put membership bags together with extra bottles of water cooling towels or whatever so so let i think everybody needs to do that kind of thing when you look at this because if we're going to be partners moving forward if we're going to work together those are all things we need to take with us and learn from as well um so that so that's my challenge there sort of i just want to remind us all that the phoenix does rise from the ashes so

235you know sometimes when you're feeling the most burnt and the most defeated that's when you rise up and find the best in you um but that is also only going to come from a positive outlook and positive speaking and i'm gonna i'm gonna say like it was really upsetting to be on the outside not having been there right sorry i know you are dr chase i know you weren't there so so it was hard to grasp what was actually happening because we weren't there to physically see it and so just to see the enormity and it and it blow up everywhere right away i just feel like we could have also had some positive calming actions from external partners at well as well to help us calm down the folks who were upset a little

236bit and to help us work through some of those things first because we do have those first it's usually 24 to 78 hour or 72 hours in a in a crisis before we breathe right before we really take a step back um so i prepared a little something myself to say and i've really thought about this for a long time because i feel like this is such an important school year for us all um the last eight months i feel like i've been sitting up here looking at the enormity of everything and trying to figure out what's the real balance um you know it this has been y'all know this has been a hard one for me because of my previous experience in pandemic planning and so i've looked at the educational loss i've looked

237at the emotional social and emotional toll i've looked at the fact that we're finally supposedly getting back to hopefully a new year a new start of fresh start and so you know i thought about all the fighting that's gone on social media mostly sometimes in session i get it um but i also realize i have to put my past behind me if i want us all to move forward so i made a list of sorts it's a combination of my wish wish hope and prayer list and so just indulge me for a moment i hope this year we help our kids focus more on who they are and not what they are we've spent a good deal of the last three years labeling our children i'm tall i'm thin i'm fat i'm black i'm white

238i'm gay i hope that we can help them move forward focusing on i'm smart i'm funny i'm beautiful i hope that we can help them see that no matter what it doesn't matter what you are it matters who you are and as long as you love you maybe the world doesn't matter so much because at the end of the day all of us we're in this together but we also only have ourselves so we need to make our kids strong and confident in who they are just as much as as we do what they are um i kind of pray that we not a kind of i pray we stop fighting with each other and learn as adults what respecting differences really does look like um we need to teach our children that the world

239where they live outside of school isn't necessarily equitable and we can't make it equitable just by changing a rule or policy the world is what it is so i want us to teach our children that it doesn't matter if it's equitable they can make their own way anyway they can find a way around i feel like we need to teach our children we need to stop moving the mountains for them and show them how to move the mountains themselves and i think we'll get them so far if we do that these are i mean we've already seen the resilience in these kids as it is right so i think we're in a great place with them um i hope that we can show our children that what's online social media is less important than what's

240in real life and on that note i pray we stop bullying each other as adults as the example that we set for our children the online commenting back and forth look we all get mad we all get angry we all say something maybe we potentially don't mean but that's the example we're setting for our children and that's a very heavy weighty example for them to walk through with thinking they have to live up to that expectation as well i wish for our children to see our message as being a good student and citizen is inherently more important than being a youtube sensation or fighting for 15 minutes of fame and on that note i hope that the next time a student sees a fight start to take place they realize the help they can go

241get is from a teacher and an adult and not from pulling out their camera and videotaping the fight for all to see because that is some of the most upsetting thing that's one of the most upsetting things i think i've seen in a while that our kids think that help is joining in the fight and not going to get a teacher please empower the kids dare i say to tattle after years of telling my daughter not to tattle it's a terrible thing but anyway um a couple of things i pray we'll teach our children that actual kindness starts with respect and that differences are not only accepted when you resp differences are not only accepted or i'm sorry differences are only accepted when you respect it everyone has the right to be different not one

242different is more important than other but the difference is beautiful no matter what that different is we've moved away from that and i hope we move back to that so to my parents on this night before school starts protect the innocence of your children with all you can every day they believe in miracles and magic they believe they're capable of anything and that's a beautiful thing their entire lives are going to be spent in the world that has the potential to be unfair unkind and selfish don't teach them that they can't thrive in that teach them that none of it matters that you'll be there for them no matter what and as long as you love them nobody it doesn't matter it just doesn't matter i learned that with my dad and my mom every

243day even at 51 years old teachers your job is like no other in the world you must teach our children to be strong confident and steady in their daily lives as well you must teach them to succeed and do better all while acknowledging and celebrating failures along with their successes to help them rebuild from this failure and show them that failure is equally as important as success right you gotta fail you got to fall it's just the way it is um you must impart upon them the wisdom you have been given on your subject matter and if it's math that's not easy when you're teaching me you must respect all children and their individualities and their belief systems all all belief systems that's your job that's not easy but that's your job you need to

244respect that in your households you will see things that you don't agree with but that's not for you to judge it's not for you to speak upon at that moment but it is for you to recognize or acknowledge if it's a place where you need to step in and offer help and that's not always easy either right sometimes there's a student there that hasn't spoken out that hasn't given it that may be struggling you have to watch that you have to see that so please always be proactive take the chance that the student will say no thank you not today but will walk away knowing they can come back if they need you because you've extended that most of our teachers do that anyway all right to our high school seniors i could have mentioned

245all of them but you guys would have probably killed me so i just went right to the high school seniors this is the last year you have to be a kid an actual kid right without the real world knocking out your door without all the pressures you're gonna be these are your final football games your final band competitions this is the last moment you have to enjoy remember you have all you need right inside of you it is never further than your own person so don't rely on anyone else to validate who you are just be who you are because i promise you if you believe that and if you know it your potential is always going to be limitless don't be afraid to change your mind i keep doing it [Music] [Laughter] your path

246is not laid out because you finished high school you can change college doesn't work okay just working full time didn't work okay go to college don't define yourself at 18. walk through and remember that it's important to carry your coat of colors and change the color whenever you need to that's the most important thing you can do um you know i remember that listen to me when i say it's okay to argue with your friends on different topics and different things and to not agree with each other don't walk away from friendships because you disagreed stay in the fight respect each other's opinions and hug it out at the end that's my best get through life advice finally my promise this year is to continue to hopefully or start helping to fix what was broken

247i asked for two considerations in the and i think i've asked for this before i asked for two considerations in doing this one if we can can we stop assuming that one word means all sometimes one is just one it's not everyone and so sometimes we spend a lot of time qualifying what we're saying right like i don't like coconut but i don't hate people that eat coconut it's just something for me right so if i mention coconuts and that i don't like them it doesn't mean i hate coconuts just means i don't eat them it's a texture thing let's remember that when we're talking to people i'm just saying i know but but it's true i like technology it's a great analogy listen we have a very big problem where i have to qualify

248myself online online wherever it is you say i say one thing and he goes she hates everyone no i no i i never said that it's one thing don't read into everything all right so excuses are gone we're rebuilding doctor taylor you have a job i am certain none of that's on this board envy at all none of us want it either thank you um we also know many parents couldn't handle it many teachers probably strive for it too though because it's a great place to be that's a head of a system like stafford so no matter how many challenges we face no matter how much is behind us or in front of us i hope that you'll stay with us and and finish this vision that you've created for us and thank you to

249my board members for always accepting my crazy board member comments you're next listen you're going to sound fantastic after i went you are a hard act to follow miss allstate boy i'm glad i'm not next i'd have to pass miss guy yeah i i love coconuts i love coconuts it's fine it's totally fun i did not prepare any anything because um it's been a rough uh weekend and you know getting kids to college and starting school i'm super excited about this year i'm really hoping that i don't mess up but i probably will and i think we have great citizens who give grace and who will call me out and who will also help me through it so i'm i'm very excited also alyssa mentioned it was her birthday well my son's 25th birthday is

250today so i'm super proud of him um i know 25. anyway i don't i don't he's my bonus son but anyway okay so um i have a town hall for a choir residence but it's open to all but it's maya's town hall for a choir residence it's going to be on september 25th and i've just told stafford county communications office this so eventually we're going to get some stuff and it'll be noticed and done the appropriate way but i completely forgot to let them know so i just did it just now um also um i oh uh oh yeah thank you i'm so tired it's gonna be in a quiet harbor because um it was free that's that's why it's going to be there that's the truth um also i just want to say um

251i did attend the convocation it was awe-inspiring when i was out on the field just to see all of our employees together in one space i've never seen that i've been here since 07. i've never seen that before um and i know the things that occurred that were not awesome but the awesome things that occurred was just um seeing people overwhelmed like you know just from us screaming and acting all silly and just seeing uh people who are usually real buttoned up and and you know not loosey-goosey like myself just seeing them try to let their hair down a little bit you know it was it was just really nice and so i slightly enjoyed that that part like i did um dr taylor i really like you i did not hire you but i

252dang sure would have i do not have blind trust in you but i my faith in you is limitless and so i'm we're good like i i know we're gonna right the ship and we're gonna do what we need to do and i know that you're the the guy to do it so that being said i just hope we can all be kind i did have a few um people reach out to me like principals and when i was doing my tours this past week i said hey what can i do to help and they said actually you can ask people to be nicer like all around parents coming in our schools parents calling us teachers talking to one another teachers talking to students on social media that's what multiple people have asked that i

253say is that we just be a little more kind to one another and hopefully our students will model that so that's it i just think we need to love on each other a little bit more and let's just have a really good year thank you miss randall good evening i first wanted to say that i was really excited to visit a couple open houses and also um transition day today i even heard as i walked through the halls of stafford high school dr taylor who was teaching a class talking about the cell phone policy and he came out to say hello and i told him to get back to work um and then i would also like to say congratulations to all of our bus drivers and our transportation system those trainers have worked so

254hard this summer in making sure that we have a ultimate fleet service we are needing our buses but i'm telling you these drivers have worked overtime trying to get that fleet up to par and i'm so excited for the work that they've done um i also would like to i was at the convocation also on friday i've been as you know a student oh god i'm going to age myself since 74. my mother was a teacher i was a teacher my son was a teacher three kids through the school system all of that and again even as a teacher we never had a full county it was impressive to be there and cheer you in it was hard for us to be told to leave and get down on the field for introductions because we

255wanted to stay all every they would announce the school and we got to it was just so exciting to see it just filling up and filling up and being on the field different perspective getting to see five high school bands playing together they were so good seeing five high school color guards working together so impressive from all the different service branches seeing five high schools of cheerleaders that are getting ready to compete against each other in the next 45 days all doing one cheer for the county together that was impressive i did sit in the heat the whole time um so yeah uncomfortable but i you know i could def i have to say when i walked in to leave after the speaker i was shocked by what i saw when i walked in the

256needs were great but for every one person in need if this isn't elevating stafford i saw five people on every person friends teachers and the first responders are not ems our first responders was colette hokana and our stafford county nurses and some athletic trainers they were phenomenal they kept calm i don't know anything about that taking care of people a little bit but when i'm told sit here hold ice feed food get them to drink don't let him throw up hold the barf bag you know just all of these things that i was doing for people and then i'm sitting there watching miss sigman using everything that she could find to be an ice bag which was never meant to be an ice bag to see mr burnett running coolers and i know he clipped

257feet and ankles and didn't care he was going to get ice where it needed to be oh yeah and dr hummer always with trays of food trays of drinks and those are ones i could see dr taylor coming over and talking to some of the teachers there was an ebs teacher from gale middle school she was dancing and she i said why are you dancing and she's like i'm so proud of myself because my job in stafford prepared me to stay calm at this moment for these people and i was like well all right it was in i mean traumatic for some traumatic for many but from my perspective i just was amazed i literally looked around the room and was just uh just i guess no we're like speechless because of how much work

258people were doing to help people and you know even hey i missed my bus and i'm like i'll give you a ride and and everybody was willing to do that everybody went above and beyond to help and it was an amazing it was horrible that it had to happen that way or that it did happen that way um but it was it made me very very proud of so many people and actually even if you were one of the ones that didn't get to do that and you left you were still a helpful person too and i'm i'm glad um that i i'm glad i got to be a part of it the good the bad and the ugly um and i you know we're going to learn a lot and we're still in conversations

259unpacking it and yes we will share because we do want to be transparent one of the things that dr taylor talked about was um security tonight um i do want to say stafford food security i was able to uh i saw he put out a call that he was needing backpacks delivered so i just said hey i'm in between two things can i pick up backpacks end up having to pack them and deliver them but what i want to say is that again if um you see something say something if you think the child needs food because these backpacks are complete meals and we want them in the hands of anyone who needs them they are family meals in these backpacks so please share that with teachers and administrators friends and neighbors because these are

260available at all the schools any school that requests it all the schools can get these backpacks i also want to talk about similarly to what ms sigmund said we are working forward on trying to put together a cip and a 3r list which we have to have to the board of supervisors by september 13th but we have a few problems and yes we will have town halls and we've asked for cip town halls sooner than budget town halls and actually miss sigmund miss healey and myself are on a three-on-three committee with the board of supervisors we asked our board of supervisors for an earlier meeting because we they took we gave them a cip last year and they did not adopt our cip they created one for us not the needs that we sent but

261the one that they wanted and i will say and it wasn't even about affordability because what they put forth was in regards to that we asked for an opportunity to sit down seven on seven we have one in october we asked for one earlier and we were told no for a multitude of reasons of which neither here nor there but we were told no we wanted to make sure that we had an opportunity to be very clear about our needs we were told no for a dialogue and i will tell you we were expecting a little over 600 students this year it's not even the first day of school we're over 900 students added into our school system not the first day of school we may even have people that still think we start after

262labor day we don't know but 900 students is a full elementary school and we don't have a new elementary school but what we do have we have a 65 year old building that's going in to be that's was supposed to be rebuilt then put to a renovation 18 months that won't be completed for four years it's in the middle of a renovation still we have hartwood elementary school busting at the seams on well and septic needs to be replaced old schools you will not hear from fairy farm parents from drew parents not from many hartwood parents you won't even hear from rising star parents those facilities are old aging but have a population that will not come and speak about it go look and we can't get them rebuilt we haven't opened and added a

263new elementary middle or high school building since we've replaced but we haven't built since we are growing we are there obviously we thought 600 income's nine so what have we done we have to put trailers at conway we have to we had to redistrict and the schools that we've redistricted to and some of the ones we redistricted from they're already full we have trailers at rocky run do you want a trailer campus educational facility imagine safety and security of our elementary kids in trailers campuses i need vocal community members speaking to your supervisors all of them in person in letter in group in mass in whatever you can provide we tried we were told no we'll see you in october in truth our seven on seven board hasn't had an actual dialogue since i think

264only one time and i've been here since 2020 one time canceled meetings you're getting a new board whatever the reasons we have not this is important this chart isn't even today's you see all the red that's how full our schools are and if we open if we open five schools within 10 years and our supervisors don't have that in the plan we'll be worse off then than we are today we have to help and you think about it you're adding trailers but we don't increase lunch rooms we don't increase art music no what we do is we lessen your time in those opportunities that's still part of our children's education this is what we need we have we have not a new building we have been asking they've been promising we don't have land well

265we probably do now for a high school and yet we're banging on the door for two new elementary schools to help us with these numbers right now and heartwood drew rising star and i'm sorry by the time you finish a renovation at ferry farm probably time to tear it down and start over i'm asking our board of supervisors i'm asking our citizens to please get vocal about the situation of our aging infrastructures and our in continued population growth it's not going to get better i don't care what vote's been done some of the votes have already actually added to the problem this is me being honest so i'm asking for help we already have two campuses with trailers and if we do not get the if we get the elementary schools on their schedule we

266will be putting more trailers at the taxpayers expense at more schools we don't have a choice stafford high school is 94 students over capacity three of our high schools may have to go to trailers come on that's the best we can do that's a big problem and we haven't even started the first day of school sorry to be the debbie downer but i just wanted to share thank you thank you oh you're coconut well you know you know what's ironic is what miss randall is describing is the situation when i came on the board in 2000 but the difference is back in 2000 we were growing growing growing but we had a supervisor board that worked with us and we opened this school just about every year sometimes some of those years we opened more

267than one school and i guess it was up to about 2006. um this this really is a matter for the community and if if we can have those town halls for the cip so we can educate the community more on what we're showing is our needs that would be very helpful because not only did the supervisors ignore our priority list that we sent over they told us at the meeting and let me just put a little footnote here there is no recorded uh meeting minutes for that because we were told after the meeting that the recorder had broke or something and there were no minutes or there's going to be minutes but there's no record there's no recording of that discussion and there was some pretty significant discussion going on there oh we were asked

268to you know make our own notes and send them in which is not anything like having the meeting but back to the point we discussed and adamantly advocated for ms sigmund miss randall and i having the supervisors go back and re-consider and revise what they approve this is after high school six because thank goodness there's one thing we agree on and that's high school six is the first priority but we want another elementary school a brand new elementary school that's going to give us 950 seats and we want now we're discussing after that to have a second new elementary school and also the the rebuild of heartwood um and and we had a discussion in our work session tonight um and i think i know miss halstead's going to count talk to her counterpart the

269supervisor for the the hartwood district about you know the reconsideration because we were told clearly no not only was it not going to be considered it wasn't going to be discussed it's not going to be looked at by the the review committee that reviews all these projects because it was approved for what started in 25. so it was just done and and we're sitting here shocked that we have this tremendous need for elementary school seats but it's not going to happen and i i don't think there's going to be room for the trailers that we're going to need in these schools i certainly rock iran's not going to be able to take any more um it's it's this is crazy yeah heartwood can't take any um something's got something's got to happen here and if

270we're going to be able to provide the quality education and aspire to be the best in virginia then we're going to need to have adequate facilities for our students for our students to learn and our teachers to teach so stay tuned for that because we will be coming back um you know to the community you know for support because it appears that's the only way you know we're going to have our voices heard unfortunate but we were we were just i don't i don't want to think of what i'm the words i'm thinking of are not appropriate for here but well we were told to no i'll just leave it at that no no i i'm not going to do that does it have to do i know it's getting late but it was it

271was it was very discouraging to be at it be that meeting i'll just i'll leave it at that for now um on a positive note though summer school graduation was a few weeks ago and it was great it was at north stafford we had graduates from all of our high schools plus the phoenix center and it was exciting there were so many parents there the good news is it was inside we weren't sitting out in the stadium um but there were quite a quite a few people there so i i want to thank north for hosting that and you know everyone that that the planners and everything that went on there the new teacher training was awesome awesome i've never seen anything like that and it made an impression because they're all talking about it

272i mean they're all talking about how they've never been welcomed into a school system like they were here in stafford um it's just amazing i was it was a privilege for us as a board to be you know invited to to serve dinner and have a chance to interact with with them and it was just very inspiring and i you know a lot of us were there for dr taylor's uh remarks which were very welcoming very inspiring and set the tone for this whole uh you know this whole session and i really like the idea of you know compensating people um yeah early for that because heavens knows it's hard to you know be a teacher we don't pay them that much and when you have to wait so long to get your first paycheck

273it's there is some food insecurity there so thank you for taking care of that dr taylor as well i want to mention the convocation i was i was there at the beginning i left after the speaker finished but i i was recovering from surgery on thursday so i was not outside all the time you know full disclosure i stayed outside until about 10 o'clock then i went inside had i known that we were going to need all this triage i would have stayed to help i'm not sure i would have been much out but i definitely would have wanted to help um but i want to say i'm so proud of our fellow board members i mean all i heard was this segment was amazing amazing and i said must have been on that girl

274scout training you know but but she says it's being the emt wife it's probably a combination and being the mother of for it's well and your nephew so she's she's i just just remarkable miss guy you know but you were there you were there and you were helping and miss randall she's probably too modest to to mention but she was pretty busy that day so you know i'm very proud of you and and i know the rest of us had we've been there um would well speak for myself i wouldn't have been able to do what you all did but you know i would have liked to have helped um and dr taylor you were there i don't know where these rumors are coming from oh he he gave the recorded thing and he was

275left i'm like he was out in the sun you know the whole time and then he he tried to manage you know managing this this this triage trying to get people fed trying to get water just just doing it all so i appreciate i appreciate what you do and i i know i know how important this was to you and that you wanted to have this fantastic kickoff to get to staff you know um excited about being at school and being part of team stafford and if nothing else well i wouldn't say nothing else because the speaker was you know very good but we learned that we are team stafford and we can weather the storm and that that's that's really important because you know that's that that's who we are and and as other

276people have talked about you know people helping one another that's that's stafford and it was pretty neat to see all the schools because they had their own sections and you could tell um i'll use the garrisonville gators as an example the green and orange and then we had this it was the skittles sapphire middle stuffer middle they were the skittles they're they're t-shirts with the color skittles and and yeah the white water and the head the gear that they had coming in and it was it was really fun you know they come up and go oh my gosh the cheer cheerleaders are included the school board when we're when they came in and that red carpet was was a great event so so i'm i'm saying you know it didn't end certainly didn't end as

277planned but it was very well intentioned and i think i think there were there were some benefits um and there's going to be lessons learned no doubt but we'll learn those lessons accept responsibility and move on into anyone who was hurt with the heat i'm sorry i'm really sorry um but we'll take care of you right dr taylor um anyway that that's my feeling i i've been here i mentioned 2000 because that's when we're going before and i've had seven superintendents that i have um i guess been part of the team that you know and and dr taylor has so much to offer he's he's got the whole package and i've never seen that in any other superintendent he's got the educational leadership he's got the instruction he's got the business the finance he's so

278engaged and involved in stafford county and stafford county public schools so i want to let you know i i support you completely and he's going to be moving here in a couple weeks because that house is taking forever and ever to build is almost done yes and uh um my students are enrolled and are excited for their first day tomorrow wow that's and i can't i don't remember any superintendent since i've been here that had any you know children in our school so so there's there's a lot and please don't get discouraged i mean you're i i know how you are and i know how you accept responsibility but i want you to just move on you know my bet you'll make sure that we are ready for it next time um anyway that that's

279enough um that red carpet the cheerleaders the band the jrtc's oh my gosh it was it wasn't an experience until it got too hot so that's it for me all right announcements no not yet oh you're getting ready next board meeting september 13 2022 4 30 p.m work session 6 30 p.m regular business meeting so we are now adjourned but don't go away team do it i move that the school board convene a closed meeting pursuant to section 2.2-3711a1 of the code of virginia to evaluate the performance of the superintendent a second all right motion by ms randall second by dr warner um all in favor aye aye oh do we need to we need to do this i don't see a thing up there all right tell me the votes all right come on

280guys motion passes unanimously all right we're going to take 10 minutes school board to before we start it's 9 10 we'll start at 9 20. thank you be certified by adopting the following resolution now therefore be it resolved that the school board of stafford county hereby certifies that to the best of each member's not knowledge one only public business matters lawfully exempted from open meeting requirements were discussed in the closed meeting to which the certification resolution applies and two only such public business matters as were identified in the motion convening the closed meeting were heard discussed or considered by the board this guy agreed agreeing agree agreed motion to have a special called meeting on august 23rd for the um superintendent to present an after incident report to the public and the school board will

281also conduct a itself evaluation report after action report we'll be meeting at six all right aye all posed we can't cast your votes because you're holding yourself good night cheers