001good evening and welcome to the seven o'clock stafford county school board meeting this order this evening i would um call us to order i'm going to have the board members have roll call first then we're going to have our color guard presentation and pledge of allegiance ms hall can you call up the role please yes ma'am dr chase president miss hazard here miss healy here miss hollerbach here miss randall ear dr warner here and michonne here madam chair you have a quorum i would like everyone to rise as we have our color guard presentation and pledge of sir allegiance to present the caller present the colors praise done colors 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
002for all right face forward march you may be seated i can't tell you how excited it how exciting it is to have our students back in our chambers presenting the colors i'd like to thank our colonial forge high school army jrotc our cadet staff sergeants marchant mccabe leland and diaz i'd like to thank them for coming out this evening if we could give them a quick round of applause hopefully they can hear us next we'll move on to the approval of the agenda is there a motion to approve motion to approve the agenda second it's been moved and seconded any uh deletions or changes hearing none all those in favor please say aye aye any opposed motion carries unanimously we'll start with our awards and recognitions i am going to start this evening with our
003proclamation regarding um recognizing the week of september 12th through 18th this week as arts in education week last time i'll read this one so whereas arts education comprising a rich array of disciplines including dance media arts music theater visual arts and more is a well-rounded subject and an essential element of a complete and well-rounded education for all students and whereas arts education enables students to develop critical thinking and problem-solving skills imagination and creativity discipline and collaboration on alternative ways to communicate and express feelings and ideas and cross-cultural understanding which supports academic success across the curriculum and whereas arts education contributes to increased attendance and graduation rates and prepares students for college career and citizenship readiness whereas arts education contributes to personal growth outside of the classroom including increasing a student's likelihood to participate in civic
004life volunteerism altruism and community engagement and whereas to succeed in today's economy students must masterfully develop traits that business leaders demand in a 21st century workforce and whereas the school count stafford county school board is charged with the education and development of well-rounded students now therefore be it proclaimed that the school board of stafford county hereby proclaims the week of september 13-17 as arts and education week throughout the school division and encourages all faculty students and families to observe the week with appropriate activities adopted this day the 14th of september our next proclamation is healy thank you miss hazard this is a proclamation for the observance of hispanic and latinx heritage month from september 16th through october 15 2021 whereas national hispanic and latino heritage month celebrates the hispanic and latinx community and highlights its
005countless achievements and whereas hispanic and latinx heritage month celebrates the histories cultures and contributions of those whose ancestors were indigenous to north america spain mexico the caribbean and central and south america and whereas many latinx americans trace their roots to the cultures of the indigenous peoples of the americas including the araks the aztecs the incas the maya and the tainos some of whom trace their roots to the spanish explorers or to the africans who were enslaved in the new world and whereas stafford county public schools recognizes honors and celebrates the invaluable ways that hispanic and latinx students families and community members contribute to our school district and community and whereas stafford county public schools recognizes the value and importance of celebrating the value and importance of students of diverse cultural backgrounds now therefore be it
006proclaimed by the school board that september 15 through october 15 shall be observed as hispanic and latinx heritage month throughout the school system the school board encourages all citizens to celebrate the contributions of people of hispanic and latinx heritage to our community adopted by the school board of stafford county this 14th day of september thank you miss healy miss hazard just one question um i don't know who wrote this but at the top it says it's from september 16th through october 15th and then at the therefore clause it says september 15th so we before we publish this or before you sign it we need to clarify whether it starts tomorrow or thursday got it it goes through october 15th thank you great thank you all right moving on we will be going to our presentations
007and reports we're going to be starting i believe with mr fulmer with our fy 21 year-end financial report i will look to dr either the presentation or before as a member of the fab since i believe you all have reviewed them if you want to have first comment and then others good evening uh madam chair and board members um i provided an update to the fab last week on our preliminary financial results for our operating fund for fy21 and uh wanted to also update you this is ahead of the county staff will be providing an update to their board in a few weeks and at that update they typically include a slide or two about the school board so i've worked the schedule back so that i can get it in front of the fab
008and it's in front of the full board but letting you know that these are still kind of some raw numbers that they're getting really close we have to submit our annual school report by the end of september but it's not really until the end of august that we start finalizing numbers and then we do our final entries the beginning of september so these are preliminary they in no way have been audited but i do want to go over some of our some of the revenue recapping some of the uncertainties leading into fy21 while we were building the budget how we ended up with our actuals our expenditures and then recapping with what our year-end carryover will be so high level on the revenues if you recall when we went into building the fy budget there
009was a lot of uncertainty resulting or erupting around enrollment our state revenue and basic aid which is tied to the enrollment and then the state more or less told us hey work with the numbers we're giving you but they're not going to come to fruition you can pretty much expect that we're going to come up short in our sales tax and potentially with our with all their basic aid so while building the budget we reduced our budget adm in the middle of that budget cycle as late as as was march and april and we also built in a state revenue contingency of three million dollars so we budgeted all the revenue but then we took three million dollars of expenditures and set them aside to help salt help offset any decrease in revenue actually sales
010tax came in over budget from the state the state enacted in a whole harmless cause for our enrollment so we saw not only we captured all of those from set aside funds but we exceeded that our federal was right in line with where we were expecting some local revenues unrelated to the local county transfer about 500 000 that came up short as the year was going on in any kind of a nominal year we would expect those accounts to come up short those were could be expenditure rebates that we get for p cards and items like that with with some reduced spend we would expect a reduction there and if you recall when we built the fy21 budget we built in a carry forward from fy20 we knew we were going to have savings in
01120. so we said let's move a million dollars from those savings into 21 or the supervisors approved and appropriated that however because of the additional state revenue we actually didn't have to move that million dollars over so we left that in the reserve fund that's held on the county statements i went to clarify that that 3.3 in a total of total additional revenue was not appropriated from the county so we don't actually have a right to spend that 3.3 million dollars so i explained to the fab there's two big things that we have to make sure that we follow one we need to end up in the black and the positive we not want to overspend in any way and then two we can't overspend the legal appropriation that were provided from the board of
012supervisors on the expenditure side once again we had that three million dollars so on our revenue this is not that three point three additional revenue does not include the three million dollars that we set aside on the expenditures so we've had that three million we set aside for the expenditures since our revenue exceeded budget it freed up that three million dollars that we could then spend in fy 21. on top of that we had salaring salaries benefit substitutes hourly compensation we had savings across the board in our compensation lines we had savings in fuels utilities actually saw because our buses were not running as much last year we saw a decrease in the repairs and maintenance on our buses so those charges that we would pay to flee had savings of approximately 500 000 maybe
013almost closer to 600 thousand dollars in savings there and if you recall starting as early as april and through may and june came in front of you with with several agenda items which the board approved that we could redirect those savings and apply to some of those mission critical things that we need to our buildings a lot of them were security we finished some projects that we've been working on over the last couple of years as funding came available like our kitchen ac projects were able to do some general maintenance like carpet and furniture replacements but we're excited to replace some fire alarm systems and some other key buildings and then we're also able to fund design work that would be for future projects that are coming up in the 3r that we would have
014had to identify um you know design work in itself can be expensive so we were able to do a lot of that we were able to do some building assessments uh facility assessments along with some plans of looking at you know heartwood and drew of funding those items so in summary you know it all comes back to what is our carry forward and our county transfer so a few numbers there but really what it comes down to is our bottom line number which is our carry forward of about 4.84 million dollars i just want to point out that is only one and a half percent of our total budget for fy21 so we had considerable savings we were able to redirect that and and complete a lot of a lot of important projects at our
015schools so our surplus for 21 would be 4.8 that's actually right in line for probably what we had in fy 20 as well though we did have a million dollars budgeted in fy 22 so that 4.84 million dollars is really only 3.8 that's going to go back into our reserve fund because we do need a million in fy 22 assuming that we do need that so so it'll actually be 3.8 going back into that reserve fund and just reminding you again that these are unaudited they're not final and we have to do our final reconciliation with the county our other funds we i do not have an update for you a very high level update that i can tell you that we are working on those i don't think there's going to be any major
016surprises our health insurance fund in and right about where we expected if you recall during the year it was approved that we could move a little over four million dollars to cover stipends that we paid out to employees during the year i believe it was paid out in december um so we took that out of our health insurance fund so our health insurance fund our our final numbers will show a loss of over 4 million but that was actually designed based on taking the savings of cash that we had on health insurance fund and recognizing recognizing the employees so i will share those with the board at a later date and so i just want to touch on fleet services and school nutrition as well because i don't expect any any glaring concerns there we
017know that based on the year we had we're going to see a reduction in revenue we're seeing that but with school nutrition the only real revenue we had was our we federal reimbursement we got for all the meals that we did provide to students um so we we did have a pretty substantial revenue source there as we look through those final numbers that's the one we probably still have the most work to do with some reconciliation because it requires some some numbers from the federal government fleet services i'm pretty comfortable with that we're going to show a loss it will not be anything significant all these funds will have a fund balance to cover any loss that they do show so that is my high level update really concentrating on the operating fund with with
018another kind of this recap of our other significant funds and i will open it up to any questions thank you mr fulmer um i appreciate all the effort you and your staff do um last year we set aside three million dollars in an abundance of caution we have you know i appreciate that mr fulmer has been very forthcoming with figures so that we've been able to do special projects like drew and hartwood and try to assess and evaluate what what we need and i appreciate that he keeps our budget in the black so that we don't overspend because that would be bad really don't want to go to jail and i think that we have demonstrated a lot of fiscal restraint in trying to meet the school's needs and adjust to the crisis at hand
019and with that i will leave it open to questions for anybody any questions or comments all right i'm gonna have one sure my usual um you talked about that the state sales tax revenue came in higher than expected what are we seeing on the county side for the restaurant you've walked this path with me for several years because of the discrepancy and we've worked that through with the board of supervisors that we didn't get shortchanged if we did not go over how and you may not know tonight but just as maybe a follow-up just for us because i know that is a dedicated fund um for the schools i'm i'm just myself even just curious how that ended up working out on the county side like i said just as a follow-up gifts yeah yeah
020and i'll look into that and we'll probably get an idea after the county presents in a few weeks on what their preliminary year-end results are um so the meals tax is what you're referring to and it is dedicated the county's meal tax revenue is dedicated for the school division so if it happens to go over budget they do take the increase um with that exceeded budget and they move that into our capital reserve fund that's held at the at the county side as well so i just want to make sure because if that if that is indeed the case um that is something we have worked with the county um with and it does go to to something with the school so i want to make sure that we just watch i'd just be curious
021with based on what we thought and what it ended up being perhaps there may be some more that may go into our reserve fund which would be great thank you thank you anyone else all right all right our next one is our staff update on the first four weeks of school so let's see i see um you know look to dr jones to introduce the team or to dr nichols however you all want to uh tag team well first i just want to thank our principals for being here this evening but dr nichols will take it from here good evening madam chair school board members dr jones it's my privilege to be here tonight to present our principals who will be presenting on the inside of our core mission which is about teaching and learning
022this evening specifically we have three of our administrators who have volunteered to present this evening representing each of the three levels we'll have starting out mr bingham who is the principal at hh pool middle school this is keena butler the principal at parkridge elementary school and then dr stemple the principal of mountain view high school this evening we're going to provide an overview really looking at the climate culture in our schools and then we're going to talk a little bit how we've been supporting the challenges that we've been looking at with our students and our situations and also addressing the unfinished learning that we've had and then finishing up talking about how we've been managing our transitions within the school day and again these incorporated some of the questions that we've had but also provide
023an insight on having our students back face to face so at this time i'd like to ask mr bingham to come forward and start a presentation good evening madam chair dr jones and school board members tonight we'd like to give you an update on how things are going for our schools however i think you'll see a different perspective from the emails and phone calls you will receive i want to start with a much with how much students and teachers and parents want their children back in classrooms with in-person learning last year during hybrid classes and virtual learning students were afraid to talk in the hallways and in their virtual classroom meetings that even even when students returned they to the hybrid schedules students would not talk in the hallways or between classes it was a
024sad sight to see the halls so quiet between transitions this year we're seeing students walk through the hallways laughing talking to each other building appropriate relationships with each other that we're desperately needed for our students parents are sending emails about how excited their children are to be back in school this year we continue to offer school activities however we have more students trying out for sports and after school programs and participation and activities that are offered parents will be able to attend indoor athletic events and cheer on their students and teams social emotional learning supports our universal focus among the schools thanks to you our school board all middle and high schools have a full-time social worker to help teachers in the classroom part of the high school and middle school emphasis on social emotional
025learning includes restorative practices in which the schools are in various stages of implementation beyond the changes associated with our new student code of conduct restorative practices include a continuum of learning of opportunities from classroom circles to restorative justice approaches to conflict resolution and accountability in addition our elementary schools continue to use to work on responsive classrooms this emphasis on social emotional learning also includes programming informed by the ongoing monitoring of panorama survey data last collected last spring the panorama is a program purchased by the county that surveys schools and is specifically designed to identify the needs of our students and buildings and provide student schools and classrooms with lessons that help us address the social emotional needs of our students interdisciplinary plcs and grade level team meetings also meet weekly on all levels these items
026discuss student academic performance social emotional development and any other factors that may impact our student learning and development by having the students attend five days a week versus hybrid or virtual teachers are able to see the students and identify their needs last year teachers struggled to live with with the limited engagement between students and the teachers through the monitor it was difficult for teachers to identify the needs of our students teachers could only guess as to what was happening at the other end of the computer on in some cases occasions in the middle school a 30-minute flex time is included in the schedule for students who need support for the classes they are currently taking these intervention sections target groups of students with similar skill deficits despite the challenges this year many schools have moved
027to flex move the flex period to the beginning of the school day so that students don't miss core instruction schools are making up lost time by opening schools early to allow for breakfast students who may have missed instruction class can access teachers at 8 20 in the middle school for extra help and catch up on the work as needed teachers are recording their first blog classes to review with the opportunity for students to check in with teachers during flex time or after school all students provide provide concurrent instruction with students who are quarantined teachers are equipped with owls and technology necessary for students to participate in real-time classrooms in the event that a concurrent instruction is not possible due to the venue or lab alternative learning activities are made available through canvas students engage in
028learning activities that support their multiple intelligences while providing opportunities for student-to-student collaboration and creativity within the classroom students are generally excited to return to school and welcome each day with positivity and enthusiasm student engagement and work completion have improved since last year due to their teachers having immediate access to students and being able to provide just-in-time supports all of us are getting weekly emails from parents thanking us for all that we're doing to ensure their students are safe and learning parents understand the need for a little cooperation and sacrifices to ensure their students are in school and are learning at the high levels they come they have come to expect from stafford county public schools miss butler good evening madam chair other members of the board and dr jones at the elementary level we are
029in the process of completing full growth assessments to determine the needs related to learning loss we have begun our professional learning communities process where collaboration as teams is occurring to review reveal result of preliminary data which is helping us make database decisions yeah i'm a little short you're a little shorter i'm a little shorter than rob we have begun our professional learning communities process where collaboration as teams is occurring to review results of preliminary data which is helping us make database decisions additionally at the elementary level our schools are afforded the opportunity to hire additional paraprofessionals to enhance small group instruction we have taken these new individuals provided training thank you on math and literacy intervention and we've grouped them in literacy and mathematics teams to go into classrooms during those instructional blocks to provide
030small group support to allow our teachers to meet the most significant learning needs so things are going well at the elementary level we too are receiving lots of emails from parents and lots of support as we try to navigate these new orders thank you good evening down arrow got it i want to go over a few mitigating strategies and talk to you just briefly about some highlights from this first quarter of the year because i think a lot of the highlights are lost in the emails and the complaints and we want to make sure we highlight the right things for you first the adherence to our mitigation strategies all the schools are slightly different slightly populations are different but everyone has continued the mitigation strategies that we started last year we are trying to socially
031distance as much as greatest extent possible students eating in various locations students moving through the hallways wearing masks as much as some students don't want to washing hands and hand sanitizer disinfecting deaths between classes all of these strategies are in place and there's evidence that they're working i sent an email to my populate my community with all of our staff we have over 2300 people in the building our worst week of covet positivity that goes from sunday to saturday is less than three-fourths of one percent of our whole population so our medication strategies are working that same week the pop the positivity rate daily in virginia was just 10.6 percent so i think you can see that our mitigation strategies in our schools are working and we're working to make sure they do and a
032lot of that has to do with all of the people that we need to take a minute and thank tonight and there are many first we've got to thank our teachers i don't think last year holds a candle to this year what we've asked teachers to do the concurrent learning was tough concurrent learning teaching students that aren't there but still responsible to teach them teaching kids that are in quarantine or home because of covid teaching students while you have other students there it's been a tough job but what's amazing about our teachers is what they've gone above and beyond helping with bus duty i go by margaret brent every morning on my way to work and i see all the margarine teachers out there on bus duty helping the car rider line directing traffic and
033that happens at every school teacher volunteers and like the teacher on the screen mr thompson he teaches physics at one of our high schools two weeks into the school year he was told he had the quarantine his only question was can i teach from home he did not miss a single lesson teaching from home and that's one example of a teacher going above and beyond his classroom duty we have another teacher who leaves on his planning period third block drives to another school to teach math class and drives back so when a kid asks me how they can get the class in five minutes if you can get from colonial forge to mountain view in five minutes you can get to class in five minutes so we don't ask how fast he's driving but teachers
034are going above and beyond and we owe a great deal of thanks to all of our teachers for the work they're doing they're working their tails off and so to that we salute our teachers our bus drivers these two bus drivers mr role and mr brickhouse are just examples of all the complaining you're hearing about transportation just look at these two gentlemen salts of the earth after their five six seven runs they'll come back by the school and make sure everybody's been picked up and if nobody's been picked up they'll say get on the bus they don't ask where do you live they just say get on the bus these are two gentlemen that just epitomizes what our bus drivers do for our kids every day and they're doing great stuff and we thank our
035bus drivers our nurses this is a picture of a school nurse on a saturday this is not uncommon to be there on a saturday i was there too but it's not uncommon to see a nurse on it but you know you think of a nurse you think of things like stethoscopes and thermometers and those old pictures now a picture of my school nurse with a phone next to her ear because she spends so much time with the contact tracing and our school nurses have just been wonderful helping each other out and contact tracing and probably saying the same thing over and over again every phone call why they're have what's going on with contact tracing but to that a big shout out to our nurses and thank them for all their hard work our safety
036and security team you have not ever been called any bad names until you've directed traffic in stafford county public schools it is a thankless job everybody knows how to do it better but never volunteers to do it so a big shout out to anyone whether it's a teacher an administrator or safety and security team that's direct in traffic we couldn't do it as you know you've seen the complaints traffic has been greater in all of our schools but with the help of our safety and security teams and our volunteers we've made traffic moving traffic along so we certainly thank them and our administrators we have to thank them if you look past this picture you'll notice that it's pouring rain the buses don't load themselves it takes administrators outside to load buses in the rain
037on this particular day i was outside too and i did have someone asked me if i knew it was raining and i said yep i did and we were pretty sure but the the buses don't load themselves and administrators when it's 103 out there and the black asphalt are raining they're outside doing their bus duties and smart principles make sure we have good aps to do it for us so and then finally we have to thank our wonderful students without them i had a nice email from a parent and this is epitomizes what our kids feel right now and she said i'm so thankful my kid is back i've seen the stress leave their shoulders i've seen them become more social thank god my kid is back and for that i think is really how
038a lot of kids are feeling about school and it's great to have them back so thank you very much and i'm gonna turn it back over to dr nichols well first i'd like to have all our administrators our principals who came from the elementary middle and high school to be with us tonight to show their support for their colleagues just have them stand and thank them with a round of applause for what they do each and every day yes yes and there is one other group that we would like to thank because we work with partnership with them each and every day and school would not be school without our parents so thank you to all our parents who support our education and again through these times and we know we're getting a lot of
039responses back and positive quotes that we can pull out emails that are just thanking the schools for having their kids back in school face to face in that learning environment especially after the year we've had so thank you to all our parents also terry neely dr greiter and myself are here and dr jones if you have any questions specific to our overview presentation based on what's been going on the last four weeks of school i'm gonna start us off okay um thank you guys very much for coming and supporting each other and presenting to us it was it's so exciting to see the pictures and to hear the stories because you're right we do see one side of it um and it's and i can tell from going into schools like the stuff that we
040have to hear and deal with up here sometimes is has nothing to do with the day-to-day runnings in the schools because they're just they're just doing their job and providing the teaching and learning experience one of the questions that i had was how are we asked for you mentioned social workers that we provided from the schools but we also have provided additional counselors and so my question is um how are they being utilized are they just um in the height you know i know counseling in elementary versus counseling in the middle versus counseling in the high school is different some of it is dividing it up by letters of the alphabet but i also wanted to know how that is working in the schools to provide more social emotional support sure appreciate the question i
041will ask if miss neely or mr dr greiter have an overview before i give one on the high school so from a middle school perspective two of our schools only had two guidance counselors drew middle school and dixon smith middle school and so we were able to add a third counselor to those two schools which i think has really done a lot to help the workload of the two that were there and also to help with the administration and teachers so i feel like it's been very beneficial and i thank the board for for that and i would just say in elementary we're really noticing that our kindergarten students our first grade students even and some of our second grade students who are our youngest to actually coming back to school and just learning school
042has been a major emphasis for us in terms of the work with counselors and and just helping integrate back into or maybe for the first time because we have some students who were totally virtual last year who were just experienced in school the first time this year or had a long break so we definitely appreciate your support in that area and i'd have to say at the high school level you know with the addition of counselors in our high school level our case overall caseloads have decreased which gives the counselors an opportunity to actually work a little more one-on-one with students again working in groups looking at our sel data from our surveys and things and trying to provide an environment that's conducive for learning and providing that positive school culture and climate so letting
043them work with the students providing groups and again i'd have to echo what dr stemple said i also see our counselors out there directing traffic supervising students but at the same time at lunch they may be supervising but they're walking around talking with students and i've seen that a lot more this year than i've seen in the past so i think the increased numbers have definitely helped within reducing the caseloads that they had in the past any other comments all right i have one um and this is just more long-term thinking most board members know i will not be here as much for the budget coming forward but with the increased responsibilities going on in any of the schools i know the board several years ago put an emphasis on large schools having additional um
044assistant principal support realizing that the schools of today are changing as well as our numbers i'm trying not to stay on my growth thing but i can't ever get away from it going forward and based on all the different roles that were shown on on those scales of what everybody from the admin to our teachers are doing is there a thought that potentially going forward to be thought about for the budget that potential administrative support may may be needed because i'm not certain i would like to say i'm certain we will be out of this covid experience soon but it has not and having learning support additional support for teachers i feel that that's also part of an admin role has the start of this school year identified in your opinion potentially that maybe additional
045admin support is needed at any of the three levels i'm going to look at you for high school but i know that you have other colleagues who may jump over you to if for whatever you may say next but i am but as i watch those um slides we are asking a lot more of a lot of people do we need people at the school level um so i'm giving you the opportunity i'm going to make a comment here so one of the things that's real clear to me is that our staff are working really 24 hours a day i mean there's it's non-stop and i've had conversations with several of our principals about administrative interns that's something we used to do in stafford county we have you know one of our more veteran principals
046spoke today by dr stimple i hope he's not considering retirement but i would certainly understand after this year if he if he was so we need to make sure that we're have a succession plan so having administrative interns would certainly be something i think that would be prudent for us as a community to ensure that we have strong leadership in the future and that we're preparing our administrators for even more challenging times so i'll just mention that as one one thing we might want to think about as we go through this budget season still want to jump in dr nichols i'm sure there's probably 30 others that are going to come up and get the mic also yes i do believe that the call and school has changed over the years and and the requirements
047placed on our administrators you know we still have to remember our primary focus is teaching and learning and sometimes with all these other demands we get away sometimes of what's really important so i think the added support would be appreciated at every level because when you start getting six this you know five six hundred kids on a caseload that's a lot to try and deal with your students and individual needs and as we continue to focus on individualizing education to meet the needs of all students i think there is a big need for increased administrative support whatever that may look like well and i'll just add this comment too you heard a comment about um so if you think about teaching first second third graders how to read you need what we've discovered from covet
048is we need more staff particularly for that small group instruction i'm sure ms neely wants to comment on it but that small group instruction we know is so foundational so if we don't get it right by third grade then we spend the rest of our resources trying to help students learn the skills they need to be successful if i could just add one thing and miss hazard you brought up a great point if conditions like this continue to persist in in future years so our principals do a lot during the course of the day as a normal part of their job but this year almost all of them spend a great deal of time doing contact tracing so they're working with their nurses trying to figure out which students need need to be quarantined working
049with the parents to try and help them to understand so it's a tremendous load in addition to all the normal things that they have to deal with so you brought up an excellent point thank you all right ms neely come on you got to go for elementary your principles are here i think you just foreshadowed a budget request from elementary principles that will be coming your way so i i am sure that we concur and we're thankful that we have a few schools that we've been able to go ahead and integrate that in a plan a continuum plan but we certainly have other schools who are in need i don't we have some of the greatest staff but i also don't want to burn out the greatest staff and so part of where i'm going
050with this is in that it's in that vein whether it is you need additional communications help and i don't mean that like you can't communicate but additional people i just really would indicate that it seems obvious to me that that is something that might be needed in the well probably not in the future probably yesterday but i can't really change that so i just wanted to give you all the opportunity to to say that so thank you all thank you thank you all for coming this evening all right excuse me turn myself off um our next section will be our citizen comments this evening three minutes are allotted to each speaker or group speakers are encouraged to provide a copy of their comments to our board clerk who is sitting over to my right it
051would be to your left you shall identify yourselves by name any organizational affiliation if you represent that organization please also announce the purpose or topic of your comments the chair reserves the right to restrict the total citizen comment to a predetermined maximum number with approval of the board any citizen comment which is profane abusive or which threatens imminent physical harm shall be ruled out of order by the chair although the board provides the opportunity for citizen comment individuals desiring to register complaints against the division employees or programs services or activities can also utilize procedures outlined in stafford county public school policy 1113. if you have not spoken before we have the stop light system up here when you get started the light will be green when you have one minute remaining there will be a
052yellow light that means you have 60 seconds when the red light comes on you will be asked to stop your comments if you are mid-sentence quickly finish that sentence and then the rest of your comments if you have them in writing please hand them to our clerk i have two people who have signed up to speak this evening if there is anyone else who is interested in speaking please feel free to go ahead and get out of your seat and stand on the far side so you can come down very easily i have two um nicole doolin and melissa angel and like i said if there's anyone else just stand off to the side so you can come down easily and ladies come on forward thanks for coming this evening hello my name is nicole
053doolin i have two students in stafford schools one at hampton oaks elementary and one at brooke point high school i'm here to talk about transportation um i know that this is a national issue i know you guys are fighting as hard as you can against an overwhelming shortage i have some specific concerns that i don't know if they've been addressed or if you're even aware of them but i i'd like to know what's being done about them my son's bus has been particularly problematic my son has not arrived at school before the start of classes one day this year he has been 11 minutes late at the least and 40 minutes late at the most [Music] he's missing instruction time in his first period class i printed out a copy of his most recent test
054which i'll make available if any of you want it but i wonder how well you would expect to do on an earth science test if you had not been in class for the material in talking to my son he mentioned that sometimes his bus is picked up as a second route or a double route where he's being put on a bus with an another route in one case the bus driver picked up the shirley heim route and the book point route and ran him and all the high schoolers out to shirley heim and then over to brook point and he pointed out at that point your contact racing falls apart you have no idea what students are on that bus we're a month in and he hasn't been picked up on time in the in
055the evenings uh i i'm making arrangements for a neighbor to pick him up uh because uh he's getting home after five if he takes the bus and i am keeping an eye on what time the bus rolls through the stop and it's about 10 after five every day um on fridays his bus has no driver we get a text message in the morning that says that his bus will have no driver that day and that he will be a second route the first time that happened i called the bus garage and asked what was and they said it's running about 20 minutes late and i said if it was only 20 minutes late it'd be 10 minutes earlier than usual you really don't have any idea where your bus is uh the other thing with
056him arriving 10 or more minutes after the start of school i just heard i know i'm out of time just heard one of the teachers say that they're making time in the morning for additional instruction and breakfast if they're arriving 10 minutes or 40 minutes into first period some of your kids aren't eating please please follow up with an email it sounds like you had some information if you could share with us or if you have it tonight to send to our clerk but also you can send to us as well perfect thank you thank you good evening school board members my name is melissa angel and i'm in the acquia district i'm also one of the leaders for the local chapter of moms for liberty we just recently formed so you'll be seeing more
057of us in the future whether that's good or bad i guess depends on the decisions you make this school year i am here to share my experience with the transportation issues we've been dealing with since school started for the past five years i've been blessed with an amazing bus driver she takes pride in her job and truly cares about our kids i know my children are safe with her i make sure each year i show her my appreciation and let her supervisors know as well and at the end of each summer i pray that we have her again in the new school year but ever since my oldest started middle school three years ago it has been a struggle to find a permanent driver for her route pre-pandemic we just dealt with late bus times
058and multiple different drivers last year it was the same thing this year i have driven her to school and picked her up more times than she has ridden the bus i can count on my two hands the number of times she's ridden the bus and we've been in school now for almost a month and a half the first week was chaotic long time long wait times for pickups and drop-offs and scorching temperatures each day i drove home i saw kids at bus stops waiting for buses that sometimes never came parents already headed up north for work scrambling find a neighbor that could possibly drop their kids off first we were asked to drive our kids as possible transportation relieved out what help they could get then i received an email after a few days asking
059parents to trust the buses and not drive our kids because we are causing traffic issues on courthouse road i continued to drive my kid to school whenever possible because the bus was so late my child was missing her first class and part of her second this is not how i want her school year to start then it evened out and it was only a day or two here and there and that bus was that the bus was delayed but within the past week and a half i've had to drive her to school every day because a route still does not have a permanent driver and i have not been receiving any communications that the bus will be delayed in addition to this she has had school sport games delayed for the past two weeks because
060of the transportation issues i am fortunate to telework and have been able to drive her but not every parent has that option and although i was blessed with an amazing bus driver the last few years i know many have not shared that experience the issues with transportation started before the pandemic the pandemic just made it worse and finally let everyone know see how bad it's been getting our children and we the parents are carrying the burden of poor planning and bad decisions our children deserve better and this is not the return to normalcy we promise them thank you all right anyone else come on down right to provide this before good evening my name is logan moore i'm a father of two boys and i'm here on behalf of the growing concern for my eldest
061son hunter age eight second grade he has suffered emotionally and mentally in this calamity that we're facing in my own educational opinion he is behind in his academics i've had to put him in therapy because of his growing depressed behavior since the onslaught of uncertainty and instability in this social and his academic life he lost opportunities to be with friends and well-trained teachers professionals who are better at young child education than i am they have said not only have they seen that he has suffered but other students as well emotionally socially and academically my child has expressed suicidal thoughts when reflecting on his missed opportunities of friendships knowledge the joy he received from his engagement in sports here in stafford county my family desperately needs an explanation of how any of these policies that we're
062considering i improve my child's best interest i'm here to sorry so my concern is um if if i'm sorry i'm trying to blink right now i guess my question is if we are restricting basic human socialization that children need at this young age you know it's definitely necessary for the mental health why is it necessary if we are to consider going back to virtual teaching i hope that's not anything that we're considering um you know what benefit does this have for our kids and what is the impact we're going to see in the future that's all i have to say thank you thank you if you could sign in on that sheet right to your left that would be great oh there's a whole new system oh good thank you come on down sir you
063can sort of be in the on deck circle evening my name is dave vandresco um it's got a couple of quick stats i'll try to keep it under three minutes here so it's coming to my attention recently that basically the school board is going by the cdc and the virginia department of health all right fine so all time according to the vdh staffords had 13 915 cases of covid that means 91 percent 91.13 percent of all of stafford county is unaffected that's an a all time staffords had 421 hospitalizations that means of the 13 000 cases 97 don't go to the hospital and that means 99.73 percent of the total population of staff where it's not in the hospital because of covid that's also an a total deaths in stafford 89. that is 99.36 percent
064of the cases in stafford do not end in death or 99.94 of stafford county is alive and well not dealing with coveted problems that's an a we're looking to get out of this right those are a grades wrap a hand oh and that's all age groups according to the vdh rappahannock region getting short on time here so i'll speed this up toward a population of people under 19 unaffected 95.75 that means people of the 165 859 people in rappahannock region under 19 they didn't deal with covin 99.98 percent in the rappahannock region weren't in the hospital 99.994 percent of that age population in the rappahannock region are alive and well according to the vdh there has been one death in the rappahannock region under 19. according to the cdc there has been zero at-risk population
065per the cdc diseases in children mostly appear to be relatively mild and there is evidence that a significant proportion of infections infections across all age groups are asymptomatic most of the cases are they have more than one symptom comorbilities morbidities i think it's 2.9 there's actually an article in the atlantic i don't have a source for that here because it came out yesterday um that i think they did 50 000 hospitalizations in the united states half of them didn't even come in for covid we're looking to get out of this we're not looking to prolong it we have a grades let's calm down here oh [Music] one more second here i got uh stafford metrics here basically everything's really really good in stafford and sir if you want it i'll be done in a second
066uh sir we had three minutes if you can if you can provide that information to us please homecoming's been canceled for the kids gatherings anyone recognize these board members who are okay sir if you would like to provide that to us sir we're finished i know i'm done okay thank you my point is rules for thee thank you right is there anyone else who wishes to address the board all right hearing none i will close public comments and we will move on to our board committee standing uh reports thank you madam chad i know which way i'm going to look so the fab met on 9 9 and discussed the finalize the fy 23 budget priorities making additional edits to reflect the discussions at the work session on age 17 this is on the agenda
067for action tonight these priorities focus on three key areas developing a competitive sustainable compensation plan for licensed and non-licensed personnel and improving efficiencies and planning for the cyclic replacement of our technology buses and other resources we need to plan for the challenges associated with population growth the new census data is out and shows that our growth exceeded expectations and we are the second fastest growing county in the uh in virginia and one thing that remains on our priority is increasing the ppe towards the state average we had discussions of class sizes for high school and middle school math we have currently 13 classes with more than teachers have more than 32 students math teachers are a critical need we are offering additional compensation for those teachers teaching extra blocks and using concurrent teaching methods for
068some courses to expand access to students especially for dual enrollment or other specialized math classes we have other areas of critical needs lowest incidence special edge and which is not offered by virtual virginia and we also need science and foreign language teachers in an effort to increase our recruitment and retention of staff we discussed changing policy 2105 which would allow for the transfer of students for non-licensed staff currently from our licensed personnel we enroll about 160 students across all of our schools which represents about a half a percent enrollment in most cases most of our non-licensed staff actually live in stafford county so we anticipate that this would be even probably about half as many potential students so we will be recommending the fab will be recommending a revision to school board policy 2105 and
069allow non-resident service sector employees to attend stanford county public schools part of the reason for this is we feel that some of the bus drivers who left us may have chosen to stay because they could not adjust their schedules in where they lived with the schedule here additionally we discussed the uniform salary scale and adjustments since we have several critical groups in transportation fleet services operations and maintenance health services and of course we're trying to add paras to help with these small learning groups in elementary school and other areas and i.t and in many cases many of our service sector employees have crossover roles in the community in the private sector so we are constantly competing i'm going to go on and i also am chair of the governance committee so and there we um
070we have a new updates to the electronic uh participation in meetings this is a state of mandate we also have additional updates to the title title ix policy this is a federal update and we will be bringing human resources will be bringing policy 4 thousands for review to the board where they were reviewed in the governance committee additionally we discussed a draft resolution to add the ad hoc transportation advisory committee which will be discussed tonight and if if the board is agreeable i will be moving that to action thank you any other word standing committees all right seeing then we will move on to board member comments any volunteers to start us off nobody miss holler back i'm not going to look at you then because you looked at me i'm going to defer defer
071all right miss healy well thank you miss houser for not starting on the end it's usually dr chase or myself it's the disadvantage of of sitting at the end i want to be very brief but i do want to talk about transportation i had the uh the benefit of earlier this evening having a discussion with dr jones because i am personally professionally incredibly frustrated i want to recognize that that dr jones is doing the best he can mr fulmer mr baldwin but in my view that best is not good enough right now and part of my concern has to do with communication and we are not communicating on an adequate basis with our constituents our students and their families so i know help is on the way and i'm i'm i'm confident that dr jones
072and his staff will will come through this but it's got to be faster if resources are a problem tell us i mean we've we've increased the pay for bus drivers we can provide resources but we have got to communicate with with our families and we cannot leave children standing at the bus stops for hours at some times and in some cases their parents are in a position or a neighbor where they can drive them to school but in other ones they're not and and that that's what concerns me so i i'm i know dr jones is going to have more data for us and he's got you know plans on the horizon and i very much appreciate that and i appreciate you taking the time to talk to me but i do not want to
073get another email although i will invite emails if someone is calling transportation not getting an answer or getting a voicemail continually we need to know because i mean i got one as of yesterday and i know i talked to mr fulmer after the last meeting i talked to dr jones and i know we've got more people out there to to staff but the phones aren't getting answered or they're going to voicemail so we have to do better we just we just have to and and i feel that you know this is not on just on you this is this is on the school board i mean i am failing to provide transportation and that's my responsibility that's that's not a luxury that is something that i am required to do we're failing these kids that
074are getting the schooling and i i asked dr jones i said what is it you know you're the lucky one that gets the bus on time or the unlucky one that doesn't because it sounds like the same students are continually on that second run third run and getting to school late so i i i'm hoping that when we are here next we'll have some joyful news um on a positive note i want to thank the parents who are writing in they're not complaining about their bus drivers they are celebrating our bus drivers they're telling us how wonderful the bus drivers are how much they appreciate them it's the it's the whole it's a support system that isn't working so i am not complaining about bus drivers in fact i applaud the bus drivers i you
075know i don't know how they're doing what they're doing and i look forward to the new bus drivers that we have coming on very very shortly thanks to dr jones i think we had one that started this week and more that are starting next week so that's that's a good thing but we have got to communicate we've got to look at who's not getting served here i mean there should be some notice and see who can provide transportation who can and let's focus on the ones that can't you know get it done this is six weeks into school so that's that's my thing and i like i said i i was incredibly frustrated and after talking to dr jones i felt a lot more positive about it i know you know there there's there's things
076on the horizon but i want them like tomorrow i want to i don't i want to have somebody say well at least they answered the phone and they told me you know what was going on now the even better than answering the phone is to get that word out so they don't even have to call but that's that's that's the challenge that i would present you know let's let's let's communicate and once we communicate then we can better work to resolve you know these issues so that's that's that's all i have to say tonight thank you thank you i do i it's kind of a comment question type of thing and and it's dealing with with what um miss healy said um about the communication and and i know everybody's trying their best my question
077is is are we short handed in the transportation office to accept phone calls and that kind of thing is there something that the board can do can we allocate some money for you all to hire some temporary admins to field phone calls and and direct them to where they need to go so that parents can get answers when they call as opposed to not getting the phone answered well i know initially at the beginning of the year a lot of our staff that have been answering the phone were driving buses they shouldn't be answering the phones if they need to be both driving buses so that's that's my question do you need more resources we have and i'll give uh mr baldwin and and mr film an opportunity what they want to comment but i
078know we've done some things to try to reassign staff there to provide additional support so i'll invite them to yeah dr james let's let's hold that comment let's get through all the board comments and then during your um board member comments i'll let you share the um how you would like to how about we do that just so we can get through um i'd prefer that um exchange if that's okay um dr chase is that sorry i know you're on the end is that okay so um yeah i i would definitely ditto uh miss healey's comments about transportation and and um i would emphasize also that the students who are missing their first block every day since school started are really really um we we need that fixed so just to reiterate that but um
079i want to take a minute to thank dr jones for attending last week's board of supervisors meeting to assure them that critical race theory is not part of our curriculum and to our knowledge is not being taught in stafford county public schools but i have to say it was upsetting to me to then see the five supervisors who were present for the meeting unanimously vote in favor of drafting a resolution tying some part of school funding to our not teaching something we don't teach in my opinion it indicated a lack of trust in our interim superintendent and this board and i must say it reminds me of a resolution that was passed a little less than three years ago threatening the school board with a loss of funding if we did not put a trailer
080at hartwood elementary school and some might ask me why get upset about the passage of this resolution if stafford county public schools isn't teaching critical race theory we have nothing to worry about right well my focus needs to be on how we provide the best education we can for our students and one of the most important factors is good teachers so how do i keep good teachers in stafford county salary is huge and i appreciate the county's help to make teacher salaries more competitive but a second important factor is work environment especially if our salaries are not yet competitive the proposed resolution has the potential of making our teachers work environment toxic especially for teachers of color many of our teachers are anxious about covid and they are having to juggle students in the classroom
081and students who are quarantined now we are adding the stressor of having to monitor what they say in case it is misconstrued as critical race theory i believe that our two boards work best together when we keep our focus on stafford county's children i am so proud of our successful collaboration on things like the purchase of the nurse northstar early childhood education center the building of the new moncure elementary school the renovation of ferry farm elementary school the establishment of the fire and rescue program helping us with the purchase of technology at the start of this pandemic and most recently in funding more competitive salaries for our bus drivers to help with our transportation issues so i respectfully ask the board of supervisors to not pass the proposed resolution thank you thank you dr werner
082was giving that good afternoon i thank the transportation leaders staff and parents that are helping to resolve the transportation issues i believe i've mentioned this before i think that by pleasing some of us on the board by squeezing the time i mentioned that in may that we may have created a problem that did not exist so i think we need to look at that i still would like to provide some kind of compensation to those parents that are helping drive their kids and other students to schools i was wondering if we could put that on the on the fab as a request for me on another note i wanted to say that i do enjoy getting emails and um but some of the emails that i don't appreciate are are those emails about race about
083attacking my character those that want me to disappear or that i'm a horrible person i even received some emails about watermelon and eaten chicken yes so when miss healey talked today about the proclamation of hispanic and latin acts and i know i think i read the one from black history month i believe that if we believe and accept cultural diversity then we would not need a monthly celebration right that we all won so when you invite us to a party just don't invite us to the party but make sure that we're also having a good time that's all i have thank you ms randall sure um one of the things that i uh set myself up to do when i got on the board was to try to always be a listener and always be
084a learner and i find that the best way to do that is in reading your emails and listening to you coming forward but then also talking with my neighbors and other friends in private conversations but i've also learned that the best way to divide a community a room is to insert fear insert frustration and insert anger and we've seen that every day in so many ways with our leadership our government our media and even in our meetings bring up kovid bring up vaccines bring up lack of funding etc and now we have a divided room i like to remind myself and maybe it can help someone else and this is something i have to really work on is to remember that when those things come in the room the opposite is usually the solution adding
085kindness adding love adding patience and adding faith do we have do we all have the same feelings no do we have to reject conversations and socializations for those with differing views no do we have to pass judgment or classify or name call no are you right because you feel it or you know what you know maybe maybe not so going forward i just want to remember and remind others that when you speak and us too this is on us too is to remember to try to keep the room together and not divide the last meeting i asked dr hummer and miss o'connor during their presentations about continuing continuing to follow cdc guidance in such a way that would shorten quarantine as our level of positivity from quarantine with staff and students has proven low which
086again we have said from last year and we will say again this year is students are safer in schools than they are in the actual community based on the numbers that we see in the community and also if you look on our data dashboard you can see the number of students that we put in quarantine versus the ones that actually become positive is quite low i know dr jones has continually said in-person instruction is key and we are definitely in the phase of learning recovery i've i have received a letter from a friend of mine in a southwest school district where they have the quarantine letter that i asked for us to do where there are dates for a start and finish with the choice of a 14 or 10 day quarantine and how it
087is to be done and how virtual learning is to be done for the student while they are quarantined spotsy last night and we all received the presentation also is changing their guidance still following cdc and i would very much like it if we would be in consideration of that additionally over the last few months various members of the board have asked for vaccine clinics for our students and before we get into considerations of mandates i would like for us to keep hands off of that but i would also very much appreciate having dates and locations in the north south east and west of our county to establish vaccine clinics to help our populations that would like it to have it and i know like i said it's been i think we've been asking since may
088i think we offered one over the summer but i would very much like to we're a month into school to have something of a date you know set the dates at the locations and then we can work from there sooner rather than later please [Music] teaching and learning offerings are what we're in the business of but still an agreement with miss healy and the other board members of course i am we're all in agreement about the transportation challenges but i'm really growing concerned about the undue stress on students as students have grades that count in the middle in high school and need information for ap ib dual enrollment sol all of those things to be missing consistently and i appreciate i really do appreciate that we're standing up and using technology to record these teachers
089they're still like we said the in-person learning is you know they're they're going to be playing catch-up on their own as opposed to being included especially if they're on a bus i mean um i just feel like it's just really kind of um hurting it's hurting these kids and it's making it fall apart and since i've asked a few times i asked one time and i'm waiting still to find out what percentage of buses are we still having arriving at middle schools on time and what percentage of buses are writing to high schools on time additionally i asked and i knew it was too early to ask but now i know it's not um too early uh is what is the i'm understanding now that sports and middle schools have been somewhat put off in
090that they're using charter buses so i'm curious if i'm hearing that correctly or not and i'm also curious about affecting our costs of that and anything that i can learn about the middle school and high school sport and activity transportation thank you thank you madam chair first of all i just want to note that i am getting far fewer complaints in my email i appreciate how patient parents have been and how helpful they've been in trying to help us address the transportation problems and i echo my fellow board members and saying that it's been a very frustrating start to a year that we were all looking forward to but we are working diligently to solve it we are doing everything we can i also want to thank dr jones i attended the meeting at the
091board of supervisors i want to assure everyone we do not teach critical race theory critical race theory is of course taught in law schools it is not something that we teach to our children equity is not critical race theory equity is about making sure that all students have what they need so that they can reach their full potential that is what i see our job as our job is to make sure that kids have everything that they need so that they can learn and that's what we're trying to do i'm concerned when the board of supervisors threatens our funding over a ghost something that we don't teach that they can't identify that they don't know how to explain but they're certain is is there we need to work together as a community and i think
092it's important that we need to remember that our constituents are the kids of stafford county and the families of stafford county and that's who i feel that we work for and i will take full responsibility for the mistakes that we make and for the problems we've had and i will assure you that we are trying to solve them and i will listen to you when you tell me hey this isn't working what are you doing i will try to fix it that's what we're here to do so i just want to say thank you for your patience we're still working on it and you know what i've really really enjoyed seeing kids in the classroom seeing them work together on projects and laughing together and talking together and having lunch together it has been such
093a reaffirming of how much how important i think education is to see our kids in school and i'm just really relieved to do it thank you all right first i wanted to thank the board members and the fairy godmother project for giving us our our ribbons it is for childhood cancer i believe it's month and i just for any of you who are not not familiar with that group they provide and offer services to our staff in our schools for anyone who may have a child in their class that may be suffering through childhood cancer or other things they come in with a lot of resources so um if you are and it doesn't just have to be as a teacher it can be also as a parent so i don't always give a shout
094out but they really do offer some amazing services in support of childhood cancer and other concerns that kids have so i wanted to make sure we saw that partnership i think that is the word um tonight we heard our what i call on the ground people are our administrators they are talking about the partnerships within the schools to deliver the best services that we can for our for our students and those services are multifaceted yes education is a very important part of that but all of us know when we look back on our school years i can tell you probably one class that i don't remember very well or tried to forget which was trigonometry but i remember that year very well struggling through it going to things being a part of a team being
095a part of a drama presentation i remember those memories and i want everyone to know that the school division is trying to reestablish that partnership and build on and build a new partnership because we are in a different area i talk with many parents and i appreciate those who will take the call back and have an opportunity to listen i like to listen to you but i also feel like sometimes you need to listen to some of the things that we have going on and to understand the issues and what i would just like to say is when i hear the comment i want my child or my family or my life to be back to pre-covered i am looking at you and i am hearing what you're saying and i'm saying i do too
096but i also don't want us to set up an unrealistic expectation that things are different right now we are trying to do the best that we can having buying getting counselors getting other people yes transportation has been frustrating and we are trying to diligently work on that for those of you who have come to me with ideas thank you for the rocky run um idea and i thank you for meeting with neighborhoods in my in the heartwood district who invited me to come and talk to you about your neighborhood it helps me understand as well so that partnership goes a lot of different ways i see it within the school district but i also see it throughout our community and especially with our board of supervisors and we all have to be focused on a
097year that isn't looking like how we maybe wanted it to look but let's focus on we are in person we want to stay in person we are a growing community our class sizes are growing we have trailers at different schools we have some learning loss we need to take care of i would love to make sure that when some sometimes when bad news comes out on either side or within the community that the first call that i would get i would hope from any of my board any board members here or even those any other elected officials is wow how can we help and i hope that that's how we all react to news that comes out because we the news every day is not always joyful and there are things that are going on
098in our community that we would like to fix but the way we're going to do it is through partnership and by picking up the phone and saying how can i help and if tonight you are somebody who's who wants to be that we have advisory committees we have a transportation one there are opportunities to get involved but in general as a community let's be the pick up the phone and how can i help because i want to make this situation better is that all turned to dr jones all right i want to end with some very positive comments but we do we didn't have a conversation about transportation and i've shared with the board that i have some some data um to answer your questions about buses that are late what percentage of buses are
099like we've been working on that had hoped to have that by friday but we just didn't have it available then so i do intend to share that with you soon um so while i'm mentioning that i will mention this and then i'll invite mr former and mr baldwin speak but this past saturday mr former hazard as well as um myself all went by the transportation office and we met some of our transportation staff they had a training class this past weekend we have a recruitment day this coming saturday so we are on boarding some people um obviously not fast enough um but we're we are making every effort to do that um and i will just mention this stuff i've observed this with our staff i've talked to parents about transportation issues mr former spent
100probably a couple days over the transportation office actually had a parent who drove in with his concerns and and they met with them and and uh mr mr baldwin's probably being exhausted with us asking them to call parents back but but we are communicating directly with those parents not as of not sometimes not as often as as quickly as we like to but what we find is generally we can address the concerns when we have those conversations with parents so we don't want to discourage you if you have a concern but i do want to invite mr baldwin and mr fumer to talk a little bit about the adjustments we've made since the beginning of the year to address communication not to say that we're there yet we still have work to do all right
101good evening madam chair board members dr jones um just to talk about communication and what we've done we've tried to create some live documents that we share between our dispatch office and our schools for daily updates so if a bus or we do not have a driver for that day we are able to put in this document in which the schools can see from that is how we send our messages so we send a phone communication and a text communication in the email about the status of the bus primarily if there's no driver for that particular time we share that but the goal is to send a bus back around chances are that bus will be late but we are telling folks at that point of time if there is a bus or no bus
102for that time period and so we do that in the morning we try to set a set time that we are able to send it out at least 45 minutes to an hour before each tier so before the elementary before the middle schools before the high schools we've met that time that time period at times and sometimes we have not it's really based on in the morning at how many drivers are calling in and maybe what time it could be some mechanical errors it could be anything and we try to keep that message sent going out in the morning as well in the afternoon and it goes for accidents that are occurring if the bus breaks down so we are using the resources that we have now in terms of personnel resources at any point
103in time during the day i have anywhere from two to three people on the phone lines our dispatch office kind of stays online with our schools they have some of the direct lines we are using emails actually a google hangout that each school has and that our dispatch team if they're on the radio with the bus that the phone may be ringing and they may be chatting a school up to determine hey we are sending some run sheets to you or the school may chat to them to say we're looking for a child do you have this what time of bus will come so we do have active modes of communication would we like to have more resources in terms of personnel to help do that yes we would that's always a push we are
104interviewing we started today for some extra admin help but we've tried to put something in place because the folks that are usually answering these phone calls again on the bus and so the parents that call in that want to know what's going on if there's a special case a safety issue about a bus stop or want to know why the bus has been late these are the folks that are can research research it and get back to our folks my lead drivers those are the primary ones that are doing it they may be on the bus in the morning they come back they get information from our communication system or any notes of any issues they try to research it and get back to the parents before they leave and get on the afternoon ones
105and once they're done they come back and they try to follow some phone calls and so we have our folks doing the same thing i'm on the phone i'm moving around and so in the evenings i'm able to make phone calls to parents about any particular issues and like you said parents are upset i get it they want the kids in school on time i want to get them there on time but to be able to listen to them and then be able to offer some existence and the mode of what we're trying to do it has been some pleasant conversations i'm not solving their problems because i can't tell them what time and when i'm going to be able to get their child to school on time but they're better to understand our situation
106and so and i also invite them to call me back if there's something that we can we can solve and if it continues i tell them please call me back so we can address it because a lot of the things we can fix i can't necessarily fix all the late arrivals but in terms of the communication of understanding i try to lay that groundwork so that they understand that we're working it's not something that we are just pushing to the side uh that we are ignoring them is that the volume sometimes overruns what we can give back to you you welcome to leave a message or send the email we will return your calls and get back to you adam chair can i follow up with a question um what what is the remedy during
107your explanation of this you had said the communication gets sent out if there is no bus or if the bus is going to be late i guess my question is what is the remedy for when you have to communicate to parents that there is no bus how are we getting these kids to school well if there's no bus at that time we are telling them but we also are telling them that we will send a bus back after the day after the school day starts for them so basically what happens is any bus that finishes going to school dispatch will ask call out and ask can you go back and rerun a route and what we will do is go back around so and that's what we're telling families because we do not have a
108bus at that particular time but we will send a bus back around and it's usually after the time school starts okay so getting back to what i asked dr jones during the member comment can you use an extra set of hands for temporary administrative help to help you answer phones so that the people in central are in your office can be doing other things whether it's driving or sitting and we have provided that we do have a retiree administrator that's been able to come in and help respond to parent phone calls we have actually started interviewing for more administrative assistance help to be able to have more folks respond to the phone calls when the parents are actively calling in so these are permanent positions that you're creating right now temporary positions hoping that we
109can fall into a permanent position okay okay all right well if you need anything more from us please ask for it trust me i am going to be you may not have an answer to this tonight but and i've talked some with dr jones about this the students that have been late every day for the first past five six weeks why are they continually being like and this may be a rhetorical question but i don't understand if we know these students are being left they're late every day why we are not able to do something about it so this this is my this is my frustration i i don't get it and these students as and we had a speaker tonight who i assume you're going to get in touch with tomorrow morning to discuss
110you know her particular situation and and that bus but i don't get it how we can allow students to be late every single day with maybe some help on the horizon but it's not going to be tomorrow and probably not the next day so that's what i'm looking for when dr jones gets us that data on the buses that are late you know you know which buses or is it random buses because what i'm hearing from and i'm sure the only people that are going to contact the school board are the ones that don't have any relief you know the people that have been late their kids have been late every day except i didn't see one that was on time yesterday so yay you know may maybe that's going to be a new track
111we're going to be on so and i i i know if you if you could wave a wand you'd have everybody in school early but there's there's got to be something as miss hollerbach asked resources that's actually what i asked dr jones as well when i sent him an email what can the school board do and and that's what i want to hear what can we do to make sure that you're able to get our kids to school and i'm going to say optimistically early so they can get that breakfast they can get settled in before the day starts so that's you don't have to try to answer that now but but i i do want to know that and i'm i'm going to be looking for an answer at some point you know why
112we haven't done anything for the kids that are late every day i mean as a parent i don't i wouldn't want my child late any days but if they were late every day i i i just i i don't know i'd be up here ranting and and and god bless our parents because they're trying to be supportive you know they're they're not reacting the way i feel i would be reacting you know under the circumstances they're they're grateful we're all grateful we're in school but but this is an area we've we we owe these kids we do one of the things we're going to have to strongly consider is time the time between levels i mean it's something that we're going to have to consider doing but i don't want to do that without looking
113at the data that i'm going to share with you so that is but that is a factor thank you all right any other comments thank you mr baldwin for coming and it was fun chatting with you on saturday i do have a couple other comments um so today i had an impromptu meeting with mr lawson you may remember he's the north stafford teacher that came and spoke to us with a couple students about bike paths so i went over and met with him today and i have to say one of the things i really appreciate about him is just his humility because what he said was this wasn't my idea this was this is a result of conversations i've had with students so i'm going to go visit his class next friday not i wanted
114to do it this friday but he asked me to wait till next friday so i want to do i do want to have a conversation with him and his students next friday and i want greg martin our safety person to join me when we have that conversation as well as dr nichols because we think in the short term we can really look at those bike pathways we want to make sure that they're safe before we encourage kids to use them mr hornick dr hornick did tell me that there are more students using bike paths now but mr lawson did share that he hasn't seen the entire pathway and so we want to go out and be deliberate and taking a look at that and sure that's safe so i want to share that with you
115uh also i just want to tell you a quick story last thursday i went to montcur elementary school i visited a fifth grade class and they were reading a story about this unusual panther bird and the students showed me pictures of what they were reading about but they were having this very rich discussion about figurative language and i just i was there with mr sidebotham and i couldn't help but pause and just bask in the moment of seeing fifth graders who were excited about what they were reading and having a very vivacious discussion about what they were reading so um part of what we wanted to do tonight is remind folks that our core mission is teaching and learning and so our students despite all of our challenges are having some very good experiences and
116then lastly i just want to make this comment for all of our staff you're feeling the stress of all the challenges we face as a board we are all feeling the stress as staff i took a moment today i was i felt overwhelmed by email and phone calls so i just walked away from my desk for a few minutes and i walked through the building and i just checked in with people and what i found was our staff are extremely dedicated to what they do despite the challenges they still enjoy enjoy coming to work every single day so we're fortunate in stafford to have people that really believe in the work despite the challenges so i just want to thank our staff for being so committed to to this you know we're not necessarily having
117fun right now but we're staying at it and we continue to go at it so um i think we ought to be very proud of our of our of our community and their dedication even in the in even in the midst of adversity so thank you all right um ms hall do we need to i don't think that she's connected yet i'm sorry if if uh i'll monitor the situation with mr cipher in the back and if she joins i'll let you know actually because of the timing um i know that um ms young would like to call in i don't want to stop us sort of mid stream is there a way that we can go ahead and make a motion that she can join us virtually at this point i'll move it second
118all right it's been moved and seconded of ms young um if she is able to join in at the appropriate time that she can join us virtually all those in favor please say aye aye any opposed motion carries your name is thank you i just think this was a better um point in the meeting to to make the motion all right motion to approve the consent agenda second all right motion to approve eight items on consent any um discussion or removals hearing none all those in favor please say aye any opposed motion carries unanimously moving on to our action items madam chairman this may seem a little out of order but we have one of our very hard working elementary school principals who remember they start early yeah before the crack of dawn who is
119here for agenda item 12.03 in information on a dedication of a portion of the school and i have do not recall any time ever that we have not um approved one of these but i would like to move that to 11.01 action so our poor principal can go home i'm afraid we're going to have an extended discussion on some of these action items and i hate for her to have to wait her husband got to go home hours ago that's right because he was early on the agenda but if the board would consider that i'd like to move um 12.03 12.032 1101. it's done but second all right all right all those in favor of moving 12.03 to the new 11.01 all those in favor please say aye aye any opposed motion carries unanimously so
120i'd like to let dr warner make this uh next motion yes motion to prove item 11.0 what is it a one a one for the approval of the name and dedication of the outdoor classrooms at wide water elementary school for dr scott kisner second all right it's been moved and seconded any information that anybody would like to hear about are we good all right i think it reads well all right all those in favor please say aye aye any opposed motion carries unanimously thank you for staying mrs bingham thank you miss healy i was just gonna move her up on the agenda because i was just thinking there's no reason for her to be still here yes and i'm sorry i was like thank you ms bingham and anyway all right let's move on course
121you're welcome to stay can we dr um jones do also an introduction so i'm gonna thank you very much uh i want to invite jay cook uh forward to introduce one of our new staff members i forgot let me apologize to him cause i forgot to mention this to you at the beginning of the meeting so thank you madam chair board members dr jones please allow me to introduce you stephen rayford our new assistant director of technology steven has many years of experience in project management and process improvement formerly in d.c public schools so he's been managing the implementation of several information systems and the integration of data and stuff like that stephen holds a masters in information technology from the university of maryland university college and a bachelor's from winthrop university in south carolina
122i think he resides in sponsylvania with his wife margaret and their three dogs and we are very happy that he is joining us congratulations [Applause] thank you so much for the warm introduction and it's been my pleasure to work for the school board um same time i worked at dcbs i hope to enjoy and retire here too i know you'll have a high rate here wonderful well welcome aboard and thanks for staying this evening we appreciate we will look forward to seeing you in the halls thank you all right anybody ready for 11. the new 11 point i i will make a motion that we approve uh 11.02 the approval of the proposed f-23 to f-30 fy 32 stafford county schools capital improvement projects and 3r infrastructure second all right it's been moved in second
123any discussion all right i'm going to make one comment um i do i agree with where we're going i think growth is a main driver here however um based on um my discussions uh this weekend and going over to fleet services and one of i forget which page it is i think it says 29 but it talks about the aging our year of construction for many of our buildings and i just want to draw everybody's attention to our fleet services date it's 1980. pupil transportation 2009 believe me that's more modern than um our most recent elementary school which was 2005. but we also have our support services of 1998 and as i was talking to mr baldwin and as we look into hopefully and approving a later agenda item about a larger deep dive into
124transportation hopefully over the next few years we need more buses i've talked about this before but we also need to be able to maintain them and i really feel that we need to put in this cip or i have an alternative if we can't but that infrastructure needs to be looked at we've i talked with mr baldwin and i've talked even with mr fulmer over the years and even dr jones and i talked so he's not in the dark that this is coming but talking about we're a big county having fueling stations in multiple parts of the county so we are not all coming to one or two places being able to perform maintenance minor well i guess there's never minor major well on my car it's never major maintenance but some of those maintenance
125um things that we don't all have to come to the same place because we buses our buses are all over the county i really hope as we go forward and study this that those kinds of they can be other parts of making transportation easier i understand this is sort of last minute so i am supportive but i really would like the board to consider in the cover letter that is accompanying this capital improvement program over um i believe signed by dr jones sent over to mr presley i was wondering if the board would consider a sentence or two highlighting that maybe as of today we do not have the projects identified to be putting on the county's radar because fleet services is a partnership that um we may be exploring those projects as well as
126part of our transportation structure the only reason i'm saying for me before we're gonna need a high school seven we're gonna need some transportation support so for me but i am not going to vote against it for that but i really feel i don't want to miss an opportunity because what are we always told um we didn't know about that or that's a surprise i don't think it's going to be a surprise in the coming years that we need some support in fleet services as we begin to study transportation so i just would ask if the board would consider at least a sentence along that lines of identifying we're looking at transportation but it may have building or cip type needs just something for the board to consider and jeremy i appreciate your comments because
127i can't tell you how many times over the years that building has been on the on the list and has gotten taken off however rather than add a sentence here which i think would just be superfluous i'd suggest we consider adding that to the mandate for the ad hoc transportation committee is we've already got four items for them to look into let's ask have them look into a fifth and then get a recommendation from them we're going to get the recommendations before the spring and that would be a good time as we're re-looking at updating we all know this is a quote living document we could you know put that in you know on on the next round here because i mean we're we're so far out on these projects saying that we're we're looking
128at something i don't think it really you know gives it much weight and there's probably a lot of other things that we should be looking at you know as well that are that are not on here so i would suggest we add that to the the the mission statement for the ad hoc transportation and then and see what comes out of that and this very well could end up being on the um cip list you know in the next round i i second that idea yeah i agree i was going to suggest the same thing that it made more sense to have transportation hack committee come to us with a recommendation that it makes sense that if we have more than one fleet services a facility especially given the size of the county one in
129the north one in the south may be very beneficial but i think that would be something the ad hoc committee should should maybe delve into i agree thank you miss haley because ms helium and myself and ms hollerbeck we've had fleet services nine years it's gone in and it comes out because it's always like well we need something else perhaps the events of the last several weeks may dictate a new look and at the real reasons why we need those all right well i will withdraw that but i really feel like we should be talking to our counterparts because this is something that i believe will be needed sooner rather than later madam chairman if we could um if we have a a joint schools working committee meeting that would be a good topic to
130put on there since the county had also has a vested interest in that in this facility and the services that are actually provided from that sure all right could i just ask um maybe our clerk to make a note of that for yep thank you and i think our uh our resolution somewhat hints at that as well so um all right all those in favor please say i i any opposed motion carries unanimously all right our next item 11.03 motion to approve the adoption of the school board's fy23 budget priorities second right any discussion or comment all right i'm going to make one other comment and this again will probably not one of the things that we keep talking about and i did talk with uh dr warner a little bit about this earlier is
131when for our for our part one um about our multi-year strategies to raise salaries i'd really love to see if the board take a real take a stand on either and i know we can do it through the per pupil expenditure but i'd really love to see a consideration of a percentage over what the state offers if the state offers a three percent i would love for stafford county to say we want to be two percent we would like to provide two percent more than that because we don't stay competitive when we give what what the state gives that's what everybody's getting how prince william gets ahead is they say thanks so much for the three percent or the five percent but we're offering sev we're going to offer seven percent to bring in you
132know we we want to put we want our local effort to be a certain percentage over what the state is because right now the state gives us most of our money that there's a majority of it that comes from the state the way that a community supports its education is if the local dollars go there so i would just say to the board i i hope that we consider that or it's considered as part of the budget making because having sat here for a while doing whatever doing what the joneses are doing is not getting us any further and i just i don't know is there a thought or is it it may be best to leave it this way but i just feel the need to say it yeah and i i would just
133like to point out that that we did give many of our teachers last year did get more than the five percent and that we have discussed with the board of supervisors this plan to bring the the top of the salary scale down um but yeah we we are hoping that they will commit to that and this was not just a a one a one-time thing so you know i i appreciate your um your thoughts madam chair um i think one thing that this last year's taught us though is we need to be very flexible so i don't want to commit to a specific percentage but i also think that it would be nice if we can um offer the board of super supervisors a better long-term strategy for how we're doing this and that we're
134um cognizant of what the um what the competition is because we are losing good teachers to prince william because that's where they're going and so we need to be but there's more to working in stafford than just salary and i think that i'm i'm more comfortable keeping it more open-ended just because i think that we need that flexibility understood i i'm a goal person like i like something that we could be working towards so i think the more distinctive goals that we have but i do think at some point this community has to decide whether it wants to just do what the state gives everybody or whether we want to carve out our own niche but that comes from also our public so all right all those in favor of the uh fy 23 budget
135priorities please say aye aye any opposed motion carries unanimously all right 11.04 the adoption of a proposed amendment to policy 1403 regarding school attendance zones motion to approve the um amended policy um 1403 ma'am jimmy before you go on i'd like to second that so we could then we can have the discussion okay um 1403 one of the problems i had with it was something that miss randall brought up initially is we talk about the why we do it but there was never the how in the when and this clause i think kind of gives us a little bit of guidance as far as that goes but it also keeps it retains the school board's role and and what and how we do this and whether we do limited um redistricting and and to to
136alleviate overcrowding in certain schools where we have to go to a whole and under the guidance of we have great staff we have lionel who is a genius at the figuring out where our population is dr jones has been very helpful in in giving us guidance in that that venue and i i think this clause kind of cleans up one of the questions that we had with this policy all right ms healey will you i want to um say thank you to whoever came up with this um proposal i think this certainly addresses the concern that was at issue that there be uh a opportunity to address issues or take action but it does not um unilaterally open up to um the superintendent the authority to just you make what i consider some significant changes
137in the school's population so i i was the one that had the initial problem with the higher percentage um this may you know could could end up at a higher percentage but it's in the board's court so thank you to whoever drafted this you can thank miss boatwright she and i discussed it a couple weeks ago and she was extremely helpful any other discussion comment none all right all those in favor of the uh proposed amendment to policy 1403 please say aye aye any opposed motion carries unanimously all right moving on to our information items i believe it is still 12.01 sorry let me get my it is it is this is um about the formation of a one-year ad hoc transportation advisory committee i'm going to try and have it in front of me
138because i know we were going to add come on it fit on one page right now so let's see well one double true i think we can still do it i do too you pick the right paragraph to add it would be the whereas where we have the four um areas listed it would be to add an area five is that correct all right let me see and review it so um ms hall we would um take out the and and put in the four and then after the um and then we would add a five of ms healey are you perhaps we could say review the transportation support facilities and make any recommendations for enhancements or facilities yeah because it but it it is the facilities in the broad term right does everyone come
139i mean i think we we've covered it i i think that's a great one to add yes ma'am that was review the transportation right right and it was review the transportation support facilities period or and make recommendations for recommendations all of these these are these are all to make recommendations to the school board okay so so i'd like to make a motion to move this to action so it would be uh 12.0 i mean 11.05 a second all right this is to move this um item to action all those in favor please say i i any opposed motion carries unanimously to move it to action to establish the ad hoc transportation committee second let us get that far there okay sorry i just noticed and i should have noticed this before but it references the
140bus monitor and we would prefer to be bus attendant um in the resolution is that the correct um yes and and i do i'm glad that in the discussion at our governance committee that we added a fleet services um person and a you said bus attendant yes correct ms hall have you noted that for our um yes ma'am thank you and very and i would if if he's willing to i would like to to recommend uh christopher lawson the teacher who came up with brought brought the bicycle idea to us as maybe one of the teachers to be on the committee that'd be great i'm sure he'll welcome that addition to his long list of duties other duties as a sign right but i think that's i think we should offer it to him and
141also i just wanted to um bring to the board's attention i know everybody has read this but to look that perhaps there will be a broader and more in-depth to talk about roads traffic patterns we will be bringing that up at the joint schools working committee and we can also loop in the information about the fleet services and facilities so i just wanted to make sure that that was already started all right section 6 says the superintendent or designee may serve as a committee member and be entitled to propose and recommend items for consideration to the committee i would suggest that that rather than we say may serve as a committee member that we consider saying will serve as a resource to the committee i don't want the committee to feel any undue influence not
142not and this is no reflection on you dr jones but sometimes when you have someone in a position of authority particularly when they're your boss's boss you may tend to want to do what they are recommending yes so so i think it's important that the superintendent or you know a designee be available as a resource because somebody's going to have to provide the administrative services and get all this information together but but i'd rather have them be a resource to the committee and and even though i always tell everybody will means may i would put will in there rather than may sound so maybe you know this this way the committee knows it's going to have that that resource available and and certainly um i i don't like the to be entitled i just don't
143particularly like that language and and just say and may you know it may propose uh and recommend you know rather than be entitled because we don't want to entitle you know one member of a 19-member committee so we would say the superintendent or designee will serve as a committee resource and may propose and recommend items for consideration to the committee all right so those who move the motion with the um requested uh edits that's fine with me yes all right all those in favor please say i i any opposed motion carries unanimously i know this was not as part of it i would ask each of the board members as you note there is a recommendation that you will appoint one primary member and an alternate i've when thinking about this and in the um
144particular time that we are in we want to make sure that there is um an alternate so i would ask uh dr jones would you say by next wednesday like a week or so because i yeah or actually whoever you would like me to look towards would you say a week okay so by next wednesday let's say wednesday as opposed to that gives us a day off on monday so a week to get our two names in yes okay and also um in just in consideration um as you as you talk to parents trying to make sure that we've got elementary middle and high represented as as parents for the different runs that's probably good all right well thank you board members i think this is going to be an important committee uh for yes
145um can we make sure that they get and i'm sure they will get the transportation study but we also the board received um a decision briefing can we make sure that they get that too it was just like a shorter page document i just want to make sure that they not they get that as well i'm sure mr fomer and mr baldwin will have a whole working group uh notebook for or some kind of documents for them to um to to to be familiar with so all right next would be 12.02 a one that's right we have moved we can't we keep filling that spot um this is a discussion regarding the um stafford county oh sorry stafford county planning commission's possible recommendation to modify the urban services area i may have um i know
146i'm on here as the preparer it's partly because the commission member approached me in that regard i don't know if mr anderson you want to come down and provide any comment god bless you yes good evening and um thanks miss howard miss hazard for bringing this to our attention to my attention lionel and i have been in communication with the county and i'm sorry mr white mr former ben fulmer has been helping with this as well and the urban services area is basically the extent of where the utilities reach the areas where you can do bigger development so they're not talking about moving the utilities or you know take making it farther it's already at the edge of the urban services area there's apparently been a request that that an area be removed from the
147urban services area that includes our land and there's really not an advantage for the schools to remove any land that we own from the urban services area so our recommendation is that it not be removed and we're communicating with the county and if they did remove it it could easily be put back in when we i mean easily it could be put back in when we were when and if we're ready to build on that site the cliff farm property is not the preferred site for any of the projects that are within our 10-year plan right now but it doesn't mean we would never build there so this is something that we think should stay in the urban services area because it's right in the edge right now it was determined and is currently in
148the urban service area so you know perhaps should not be removed can i yeah so this is in in my district um and i have been in contact with uh a couple of the homeowners who live in that area and so i want to say that the concern for them is there is in in the other area that's being proposed to remove from the urban services area is what's known as the filippo farm and there was talk of that piece of property being rezoned to be turned into a 55-plus community and the homeowners were rather surprised there's concern about the roads um and how much traffic will be yielded there's concern about will it really not impact the schools because it's only one member of the household has to be over 55 for it to
149be an over 55 community so there was was concern about that and so in their discussions was the thought that if it was removed from the urban services area then the family at least could sell the property subdivide it based on by right which they can't do if it's in the urban services area and so i think that is why there was the discussion of of that property now it's my understanding that um about let's say 15 12 15 years ago um the filippo farm was not in the urban services area just the cliff farm property was in the urban services area and then the cliff farm property got moved into the urban services area so it seems like it could certainly just that portion be moved out and cliff farm could be left in
150the urban services area so for from from my perspective i don't have um i don't think it's the school division's decision about the filippo farm and what the recommendation for that should be but i do understand uh that we might have some concern about removing the the cliff farm site from the urban services area i'm sure sure um in all the time that we've been on this board and involved in stafford county discussions whether it was planning commissioner board of supervisors with regard to the urban services area and the attempt to stop sprawl there was a large exercise about the different urban services areas and wanting to keep all the development inside the urban the um the district for the for the water where the water lines are right so i guess my question is
151is what is what is their what is the intent on taking that out because you take that whole parcel of land out of the urban services area you are now welcoming more sprawl so how does that coincide with what they've been preaching for the last 15 years right um i'm not um sure i don't think i have a good answer for that i know there's a meeting tomorrow and um mr white was planning to attend that he's been in communication with the planning commission um and so the um the decision that they make on the other properties is not really what our concern is we're just focused on the school property and it's not a huge issue for us but you know obviously it would affect us to take that out of the urban services
152area again we're not planning to build on that land anytime soon but it it you know would need to be in the urban services area to be developed so i'm not sure what the advantage is for that other person that's off of our property and i'm not really sure why they're doing this or why they're considering it all i do know it was in a subcommittee discussion and so it was moved forward to the planning commission and they're going to address this issue tomorrow night yeah i'm a little bit confused too because they went for many years the board of supervisors trying to encourage us to sell the land if we're not going to use it don't keep it in your inventory if you're never going to be able to build there right we're never
153going to be able to afford to build there because nobody's ever going to the bos is never going to give us money to do the land development there it was too expensive that's why we haven't built on it yet so them taking it out of the urban services area makes it even more difficult for us to sell it if we want to that's true so anyway i think there's a lot of i'll be i'll be curious to hear what they say yeah selling it though any land that we don't use we have to surplus to the county county and the county would be selling it so hypothetically we would not have any advantage to um and we're going to continue to look at that property and we'll continue to look at that property and and
154the way i see the growth in this county it may be very well a site for for some school that we need to build in the future it's just not within our 10-year plan right now because my only comment was in bringing it forward is because this is the land that is in our inventory that i felt that the board needed to take a look at it to make sure that we did not support any decision that could make it less desirable or less marketable or tie our hands in any way of either keeping it or not keeping it being the board member that represents the only school that is on public water i would encourage that we'd always be putting our skills on in the urban services area and so i just feel like
155at this time it would be to our advantage without tying our hands in the future with regard to marketability or use as a school we're all we're going to want it to be in the urban services area to get the maximum possible use yeah definitely and i appreciate you bringing it up so that we're not um you know doing something that you all would not support so on this just helps us strengthen our resolve to keep it in the urban service area recommend that the county keep it in the services urban services area the school portion the score and and i would just say to make sure there's an understanding that we do not have an opinion about the other portion exactly our focus is only on the school property we appreciate the county taking
156care of everything else exactly we're staying in our lane that's right exactly all right thank you all and um thank you mr white i think you are you going tomorrow to the meeting we we appreciate you um doing that all right well we moved from land to buses um i believe the next two agenda items relate to the purchase of buses um dr jones is there any urgency to these matters i mean to these um items yes but i'll let mr former speak to it i can see mr baldwin back there if you have specific questions mr baldwin will come up but uh the center being placed the orders at this point there is the sooner we can get on the list with the bus manufacturers the better they have delays just like everybody else
157and chip shortages and we keep getting pushed back on our prior orders so the sooner we get on this one the earlier we get on their list all right so i'll make a motion that we move items i don't know what these are now are they 2 and 3 1202 and 1203 to action second been moved and seconded all those in favor of moving these two agenda items to action please say aye aye any opposed motion carries oh thank you all right is there a follow-on motion i think it's eleven five and six yeah move to approve 1105 and six seconds we probably ought to uh do each one we can do it quickly but i do have several so move to approve 1105. second right it's actually 1106 and seven now okay 11.06 do
158i have 11. all right any questions on that one i had one yes so when i was looking at the and i mentioned this in the fab and i just wasn't sure there was a little bit of a discrepancy in the cost of the 77 passenger and one in a 77 in the other contract and i was wondering if we were able to get i mean it's so small i know but i was just curious if we were able to say anything about that yeah sure so it's two two different manufacturers that we're using this time and that's intentional it's also um some diesel buses and some gasoline buses so they're not identical buses and so we're trying to diversify the fleet a little bit there okay thank you all right all those in favor
159please say aye aye aye madam madam chair sorry was there a second for that yes yes i was it okay i apologize all right all those in favor please say i all right motion carry oh any nays all right motion carries unanimously motion to approve 1107 additional buses second all right it's been moved and seconded any discussion about uh or questions about the uh sunny merriman purchase all right hearing none all those in favor please say aye aye any opposed oh thank you all right motion carries unanimously go and get those buses um upcoming meetings uh we will be here next week board members at six o'clock we will have the meeting with the pto pta representatives on thursday i believe the 23rd and then our next meeting will be september 28th thank you we
160are adjourned madam chair is uh tuesday going to be soon enough for me to get this revised resolution signed oh yes um would that be okay you have to redo it okay