001i'd like to call the special called meeting of july 27th 2021 to order i do not believe anybody will be um participating electronically so um ms hall will you pull the board for a roll call yes sam dr chase president miss hazard president miss healey here miss hollerbeck is absent miss randall yes dr warner and miss young here man i'm sure you have a quorum right do i have a motion to approve the meeting agenda motion to approve the agenda second all right it's been moved in second and i let ms hall sort out who thank you very much um all those in favor please say i i any opposed motion carries unanimously we will be reading into closed session i move that the school board of stafford county convened a closed meeting pursuant to
002section 2.2-3711a3 of the code of virginia to discuss and or consider the acquisition of real property for the construction of high school number six where discussion in an open meeting would adversely affect the bargaining position or negotiating strategy of the public body second it's been moved and seconded any uh discussion hearing none all those in favor please say aye aye any opposed motion carries unanimously we are in closed session and we will be staying in here for this i have a reading out portion oh okay there it is the certification okay uh that pursuant to section 2.2-3712 of the code of virginia the closed meeting of the school board of stafford county on july 27 2021 be certified by adopting the following resolution now therefore be it resolved that the school board of stafford county
003hereby certifies that to the best of each member's knowledge only business matters lawfully exempted from open meeting requirements were discussed in the closed meeting to which the certification resolution applies and two only such business public business matters as were identified in the motion convening the closed meeting were heard discussed or considered by the board for those that are coming in we are still in the middle of our meeting the board is the board is coming out of uh closed session i would ask that you all enter quietly thank you all right um ms hall it's been moved and seconded can you go ahead and um pull the board yes dr chase agree miss hazard agree miss healy i'm going to abstain because i i left a meeting okay miss randall yes dr warner yes and
004miss young no no oh oh yes yes yes yes sorry okay she kept looking at me motion passes madam chairman can i put on the record that i left the meeting because of their um the the property under discussion is owned by um a party that my firm has done business with and while there's no conflict i didn't want any appearance of conflict so i did not participate um in the closed session thank you thank you for that clarification yeah okay she hasn't resolution yet okay that was just the certification sorry is there a motion coming out of closed session yes madam chair i move that the board authorized the superintendent or designee on behalf of the school board to make an offer to purchase an identified and specific parcel or parcels of real estate
005for construction of high school number six at its appraised value to engage in negotiations with the owner for such purpose and to return to the board for review of the negotiated contract terms for approval second all right it's been moved and seconded all those in favor please say i i any opposed no and any abstentions abstain all right um miss hall do you have uh do you think okay all right motion passes thank you we are out of closed session give us one minute if anybody wants to get something to drink and then we will resume in two minutes all right thank you all right good evening and welcome to the tuesday july 27th school board meeting of the stafford county school board we do not have anybody who is participating electronically this evening so
006we will move on to our roll call ms hall can you pull the board please yes ma'am dr chase here miss hazard here miss healy here ms hollerbeck is absent miss randall here dr warner yeah ms young here madam chair you have a quorum thank you if everyone could rise for the pledge of allegiance please i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all next we're going to have the uh approval of the agenda ms healey i believe you have a motion chairman i move that we approve the agenda with one change and that is to move the consent agenda up following item four awards and recognition is there a second second it's
007been moved and seconded any other additions hearing none all those in favor please say i i any opposed motion carries unanimously all right we will be starting with our recognition of our gla middle school t-shirt design winner i believe ms bellino will be leading us please come on down and please bring your friends i do like to bring my friends good evening chairman hazard members of the board and dr jones this year for our summer great learning adventure we held a t-shirt design contest for our middle school students and tonight i'm joined by principal mike archibald and assistant principal rose averitt and art teacher sheila liske from rodney thompson middle school so we can recognize the winner of the contest emily scuse was an 8th grader at rodney thompson middle school last year and soon
008to be a ninth grader at mountain view high school her design which is shown here when i say here pretty fantastic right um so her design is in two color schemes and was selected from a variety of entries as our winner so i think you can agree that it's very fun and exciting it's exactly what we wanted to demonstrate for the summer learning that was happening um tonight we're going to award emily and her family with shirts of their very own and miss averitt is our vana today she's wearing the shirt yeah very fantastic i'm gonna invite emily down and we would love to get a picture with emily and we also have a fantastic poster that we're printing for emily and for her family so that they can display the accomplishment in their home
009so we're very proud of emily and we're looking forward to seeing more terrific work from this artist and here all right come on down family this is the photo opportunity you get your i guess no kodak moments anymore it's more iphones but go ahead make sure you get your picture and congratulations put your shirts down so you can get a nice picture there you go you can take a mask [Applause] mr hughes will be waiting for you at mountain view and mr boatsman thank you so much have a wonderful evening thank you all right our next agenda item is to approve three consent items is there a motion second it's been moved and seconded any um comments or deletions hearing none all those oh excuse me yeah yeah i thought we had had some discussion
010about the um oh nope it's a different part of the agenda i'm good thank you all right thank you so all those in favor please say aye aye any opposed motion carries unanimously i'm going to recognize dr jones to give us the introduction because one of the consent items is our personnel report we have some new appointments so i will turn it over to dr jones for introductions madam chair members of the board yes we have several appointments uh this evening beginning with carolyn goddard good evening everyone good morning or good evening madam chair school board members and dr jones i am very excited to announce the new assistant principal at anthony burns elementary mrs deanna gabriel mrs gabriel joined anthony burns the nc burns family in 2019 as a fourth grade teacher having previously
011spent 12 years in elementary and middle school classrooms in texas arkansas and florida this is a return to leadership for ms gabriel who previously served as an elementary school assistant principal in her native san antonio for five years mrs gabriel will bring her strong instructional background and enthusiasm for anthony burns students to her new role mrs gabriel holds a bachelor of science degree from texas a m and a master's of education from trinity university in san antonio congratulations welcome aboard and thank you for coming this evening and next we have scott elchenko from stafford middle school madam chair members of the board dr jones i had the privilege tonight of introducing jessica ramey as the new assistant principal at stafford middle school mrs ramy has been an educator for more than 13 years for the
012past five years she has served as the math coach at shirley high middle prior to coming to stafford she worked in both prince william and caroline counties as a classroom mathematics teacher mrs ramey has a strong instructional background has a proven track record of improving academic performance amongst diverse student population and his experience in facilitating teacher professional learning communities additionally mrs rainey comes to us with much experience in analyzing student performance data and establishing systems where ongoing student progress monitoring has continued to show significant school improvement efforts in her previous experiences mrs ramy is a 2003 north stafford alumni received her undergraduate degree from virginia tech in 2007 and her master's in education from the university of mary washington in 2009 she resides in stafford county and enjoys spending time at home with her husband
013and three boys please join me in welcoming her welcome aboard and thanks for coming today next we have dr george harmer who has several appointments good evening madam chair school board dr jones i do have three announcements that i'll be making today it is with great pleasure to announce our new compliance and data analyst supervisor for student services and special education mrs kate johnson kate has a rich background in special education all of which are here in stafford county she started as a special education teacher at shirley high middle school in and then transitioned to anthony burns as an autism teacher she later became an educational diagnostician in 2016 and then became the assistant principal at a g wright middle school in 2018 where she also served as the special education designee for the past
014two years she has served as the elementary supervisor of student services and special education she attained her bachelor's degree of education at vcu and also received two master's master's degrees from umw one in special ed and the other in educational leadership we are very honored to have kate accept this position and looking forward to her applying her expertise excuse me expertise and supporting our students with disability in this new capacity and thanks for bringing the family absolutely wait for her to come on down all right next up it is also with great pleasure to announce our new supervisor of elementary schools for student services and special education mrs kelly webb kelly also spent her entire teaching career in stafford county where she started as a paraeducator in 2008 she also had a passion for working
015with students with disabilities so she went back to school to get her modified curriculum degree at odu while working as a para educator and became an autism teacher in stafford in 2010 she then transitioned into a diagnostician role in 2017 and after that she transitioned to a behavioral specialist role in 2018 and recently served as one of our autism coordinators so she's been around a while and has a lot of range of abilities and so kelly's also currently working on her master's degree in educational leadership and is on track to graduate in 2022 we're very excited for to get started in this capacity and she will be a great addition to our team and we got one more last but not least i would also like to recognize our new middle school supervisor for student
016services and special education kimberly nye and she brought her family as well kim started her career as a long-term substitute teacher in prince william county in 1999 where she developed a passion for working with students with disabilities as a result she went back to school to get her master's in special education at george mason university while she was a teacher's assistant and a special education teacher at benton middle school and later transitioned to hilton high school as a special education teacher for the past nine years where she also filled in as the role as the administrative designee and department chair then in 2019 she worked as an administrative intern and summer school principal kim has a bachelor's in science and business administration from elon university and kimberly has attained her master's in educational leadership from
017george mason university kim will be a great addition to our team and looking for her to come on board thank you very much thank you and thanks again for bringing your family for them here to support you and we have just one more roxanna bandez muldoon good evening madam chair all the board members and dr jones um i have the immense pleasure to introduce or i'm sure you know her already is monica cortez foreman monica has a bachelor's of science from arizona state university and masters from the university of phoenix and she's getting another masters in school administration the summer of 2022. she started her career at spotsylvania at the alternative school teaching math for middle and high schoolers then she switched to english to high school english for over 10 years moved on to
018instructional coach and then the secondary secondary literacy facilitator not only has she done all that but monica has been already helping with the edoc who you have heard present and the equity and family advocates and she's such a welcome um such a welcome why am i so nervous she you're very welcome to ask the lead equity facilitator in our office so thank you and before i forget her children monrovia isabella and camilla are watching online you can give them a nice wave thank you so much right dr jones have we identified all of our um okay i my account was i think right but what need always need backup so all right our next uh agenda item is our staff reports uh that which is now 6.01 i believe that will be led by dr
019hummer and ms hokana i believe come on down good evening again let me just pull this up for you all give me one second good evening madam chair school board dr jones we have prepared for you the mitigation strategies for the opening of the 2122 school year presentation i'm going to hand it off to mrs hokanna and herself myself dr jones and we'll be prepared to answer any questions that you have so i'm going to hand it off to mrs hokana our nurse manager administrator administrator good evening everyone um yeah i'm sorry i'm shorter than him by a lot so this evening we prepared this um presentation um to start off with as you can see we've got a timeline of the mitigation strategies that we've had for the school system starting from last june
020of 2020 we started putting well actually we started putting mitigation strategies in a year ago march immediately when covert 19 started but as of june 30th the state of emergency uh was ended by the the um governor and um as of july 1st the health commissioner implemented the emergency health order which ended as of july 25th so the state released some interim guidance through the virginia department of health on prevention strategies in preschool um preschool 2k12 so we're looking at those this evening the most important thing that we really need to focus on is the fact that children benefit most from in-person learning we've noticed over the last 18 months that our children have had a lot of difficulty with doing online learning for a variety of different reasons but the social emotional impact on
021their growth and development has been studied around the country and so it's a very significant impact for these children um we need to put education first over any extracurricular activities so we want to make sure that we get the children back in the building with their teachers to receive in-person learning our focus needs to be on the prevention of transmission of this disease there is a new variant that's more highly contagious so we need to really make sure that we are continuing our mitigation strategies that we've had in place and supplementing them when we looking at considering the needs of the community we need to be looking at our transmission rate within the community which right now is on the rise also the vaccination rate within the community to determine the safety of having our
022children in the buildings and we need to be flexible and innovative as we have been throughout this whole process i think to begin with we must have had a change every other day as far as what we were doing with covid19 um and as all things covered um today was another announcement that made another change so we need to continue to be able to be flexible um we have adhered to department of health guidelines from the beginning of the um pandemic making sure that we're falling in line with the mitigation strategies that have been proposed by the board of health in order to make sure we keep our students and staff safe so um mitigation strategies that um recommended to be implemented are as you can see this long list which involves still continuing to
023screen everyone for their health status as they're coming in to school daily families still need to check their children please don't send them to school sick we need to consider social distancing to the greatest extent possible last year we had very clear-cut guidelines on what that looked like but we're trying to make sure we can get as many students back in the building as possible so we do want to keep that getting the kids back in a priority and also make sure we keep them at a safe distance we want to make sure we're still teaching the children how to frequently wash their hands and wipe down frequently touched surfaces so the hand sanitizer is going to continue to be available in the classrooms that don't have any sinks in them we're going to continue
024to encourage our children to wash their hands not touch their face frequently that kind of situation make sure they're using good hygiene with coughing and sneezes to make sure they're covering their coughs and sneezes as we've been trying to teach them we want to continue with our indoor mask use with staff and students and guests when they're in the building regardless of their vaccination status the cdc came out with an announcement today proposing to change back to having everyone regardless of masked status i mean vaccine status to be masked in the school setting because school settings tend to be a petri dish for infection um mask requirement on the buses is a federal mandate we are considered a public transportation when we have our children on the buses so any children accessing the buses are
025going to have to wear masks that's based on the federal guidance again we're going to continue with our cleaning strategy that we had in place last year which is frequent wipe down of high touch surfaces the scheduled cleaning of the buildings so none of that is going to change we're going to keep that in place we still are going to encourage people to stay home when they're sick so they monitor their screening for symptoms daily if they're sick stay home okay and we also are going to continue contact tracing there is a change with the contact tracing last year during the public health emergency the school nurses were doing the immediate phone calls to the families regarding their primary contact to a person that was positive with the health emergency being rescinded the school nurses
026will still con compile the line list for the health department because this is a reportable illness just like measles just like chickenpox so we still have to notify the health department when we have a positive case in our building we will give them the immediate contacts of those cases names and phone numbers for the health department to make those contacts to the families the other change with contact tracing is in the school setting with the children being three to three to six feet apart if both parties are masked fully masked properly and one of them is positive the other party will not have to quarantine regardless of vaccine status however if one party is not properly wearing that mask then they will have to they will have to quarantine so the positive person will have
027to isolate for the 10 days and the unmasked child will have to be quarantined for 14 days and that's the health department guidance as far as that's concerned so these are our reasons for having universal masking you know we still have children that are under the age of 12 that cannot be vaccinated at this point in time we are on a meeting with the health department weekly to discuss the updates um of requirements for covert 19 mitigation strategies and we've been asking them for months when they think the vaccine will be available to the younger population and initially we were told it would be some time in the fall and today they said late fall possibly january so we are going to have an entire population of buildings of children not able to be vaccinated
028not by parent choice but due to the unavailability of the vaccine so we need to be cautious of that we also are looking at our mitigate our um transmission levels in the county and um they are on the rise as i said earlier so um in the notes you can see that um that uh we only have about 4 34.3 of our less than 18 year olds are fully vaccinated with only 42.3 in this age group having only received one vaccine does not keep you fully vaccinated so you're not fully protected so if you've only received one vaccine it's a 14 day quarantine period for that child okay so there is a big push to get people vaccinated because it does help to protect it there is also um if if we're going to interrupt
029the speakers i will clear it this is somebody who is speaking i believe many of you would like to respond we would like to hear what she is saying as well as we would like to listen to you i want the same courtesy extended to any speaker who is at the podium thank you miss hazard so we do have uh the variant is in the state of virginia it's across the country it's more highly contagious um the health department did say today that um with the variant being more highly contagious that persons who have been vaccinated that do have breakthrough um infection with covid19 seem to carry the same load of load of virus that an unvaccinated person would have so therefore um the feeling is that there would be transmission from that person with
030this particular variant that was not present in the other variants so it increases the risk of transmission at that point in time we don't really have a means of monitoring who are vaccinated and who are not this is not a required vaccine it is a voluntary vaccine and so we have to have permission from the parents or from the staff member to access their vaccine status so it's kind of difficult for us to determine where they are in their with a vaccine status to determine if they've been exposed whether they need to be isolating or quarantining or not so um that makes it also difficult um there there is a we have to be aware of what our vaccine uptake is and that's why i gave you those numbers earlier um we need to be
031also aware of the new guidance from the cdc and as i said they're recommending masking for all staff and students and visitors regardless of their vaccine status this the virginia department of health has historically throughout the pandemic adopted cdc guidelines and we follow the vdh guidelines as well so they have not had a chance to respond to this new information because it did just occur at three o'clock this afternoon so um we got off the call knowing that the the news release was coming today um so next week we should hear from the vdh i did ask them on our meeting today how soon they would take action on that new guidance and they said they would be moving as quickly as possible however i don't know the timeline so i can't give you that
032information so again when we're making decisions about how we're proposing to educate our children we're looking at level of disease transmission in our area that is on the rise as of the 17th we were at moderate um transmission with 30.67 new cases per 100 000 in the seven days prior and a rate of a percent positivity of 2.8 as of the 26th which was yesterday our transmission is still moderate however the new cases are now 57.3 per 100 000 and a percent positivity rate of 6.6 percent over the last seven days so that's a fairly remarkable climb so that's something to be aware of again we discussed the vaccine rate in our students we had a couple of vaccine clinics for covert 19 at north stafford and at um sorry not colonial forge and north
033stafford and at brook point specifically for covet 19. um i have reached out to the health department to see if we can held more vaccine clinics geared at targeting our students so i have to wait to hear back from them we really don't have any data right now on the impact to the schools because the children are not in school full time so that's something that we need to look at as we move forward um also last year when you're looking at the capacity needs of the community in the schools we had definitely seen the need for the impact of not having in-person learning and how these trends of the the sol testing and standardized testing were affected by not having in-person learning the health department has totally encouraged us to continue with our layered
034approach to mitigation strategies meaning the cover your cough stay home when you're sick wear your mask properly wash your hands frequently frequently touch surfaces to be wiped down continually throughout the day so you know these are all things that we've had in place for a really long time we want to keep that going um so this is the layered mitigation strategies outlined in the new um interim guidance it's promoting vaccine and as i said we're going to partner again with the health department to see if we can get more vaccine clinics for the students as needed there has been a report from the health department that there has been a downward trend in vaccination requests per the vaccine clinics that they're holding but we do encourage people to continue to seek the vaccine again consistent
035and correct use of the mask while indoors is very important we're going into fluent and cold weather seasons when people will be up close and personal again and that's when transmission of respiratory viruses occur this is a respiratory virus so we need to make sure that we're protecting as many people as we possibly can our flu stats last year were practically nil because of mask use so you know we need to be aware of that again the same medication strategies we're not changing what we did with the ventilation system last year they upgraded them changed the filtering systems they put in the the hepa filter air purifiers in all the classrooms so we're going to continue to maintain that as well again teaching the children respiratory etiquette hand washing cleaning symptoms screening staying home when
036they're sick that contact tracing in combination with the 10-day isolation for sick persons that are positive for covet-19 which is standard and then also the 14-day quarantine um the cdc did come out with guidance for the earlier quarantine release however this health department wants us as a school system to continue with the 14-day quarantine because that is the gold standard is that 14 days so we're going to continue with that the physical distancing piece needs to be three to six feet to the greatest extent possible but we need to be feasible when it comes to trying to make sure we can get students into the building but we also will realize that that means that when we contact traits we're probably going to have more people to quarantine okay and then if you have any
037questions all right i'm going to start dr chase i don't know if you want to start we'll just go go around or sure so um i think there was one item on here that maybe you skipped and i just wanted to ask about it and that was under your uh reasons for universal masks one of the things i don't think you mentioned was difficulty monitoring or enforcing mask policies that are not universal so what's the issue there the issue is that you've got students that are allowed not to wear masks because they're fully vaccinated and then you have students that need to mask because they're unvaccinated and you have two thousand children in the building and how do you keep straight who should be masked and who shouldn't and then you also have staff members
038in the same situation it makes it extremely cumbersome to try to figure out who should and who should not be masked the other issue is in the middle school level you have students in varying ages and the majority of your sixth grade students are less than 12. they cannot be vaccinated so therefore you know they should all be wearing face coverings to protect them because they don't have the ability to be vaccinated their parents don't have the choice to take them to get vaccines in elementary school none of those students are age appropriate for vaccination and now we're being told that that's not going to happen until possibly january okay and we're going to go through flu season so um i just wanted elementary i appreciate that dr chase and thank you for pointing that
039out to me because i did want to discuss that right but in elementary um the least that that the cdc and the health department wants us to do is to mask our elementary students but when you get into the middle of high school how are you going to know who should be masked and who shouldn't be masked and so then you're singling out students because you have to figure out okay do you have are you supposed to be missed or are you fully vaccinated and we don't have a means of determining who's fully vaccinated or not because it is not a required vaccine so we don't have that documentation to to refer to to see if they are vaccinated or okay so it makes it difficult okay thank you and then um another question you
040sort of mentioned that now if if somebody is masked and there's a child that exposes them to the virus that they don't have to quarantine because they were masked as long as both parties are masked as long as both parties are mass but do we potentially have a i mean our is there still a case where we might have to quarantine an entire class or an entire school could could are we still looking at a situation where the department of health the rappahannock area department of health could say there's been an outbreak at this school and so this school is going to have to be shut down for some amount of time they don't typically say to shut down the entire building okay but they will look at an outbreak and where that outbreak is
041occurring from and then determine that they need to shut down a program okay so as we had with sports right um there have been outbreaks on some of our teams and we've had to shut down those teams for the 14-day quarantine period until um the children met that 14-day quarantine and then came back to school um without having had illness it would be the same in a classroom so i mean this past year everybody has had to be masked in the classroom so did we have any cases where we had to shut down a classroom this past year no not that i'm aware of that that i can remember okay so this coming year we might potentially have a case where there could be classrooms that would get shut down and then we would not
042be doing in-person learning for those children for some period of time or at least 14 days okay from the last exposure to the person that's positive okay all right thank you for clarifying for me so that is a big concern thank you could you just say that one more time you said 14 days from the last exposure to the positive person so if a student becomes ill on thursday and has been at school on thursday but doesn't go to get tested until sunday and doesn't report it to school until monday the last exposure to the class was on thursday so day one is friday for the quarantine period for the rest of the people that are primarily exposed okay thank you i like that those examples always help thank you no problem i'm sorry dr
043warner that's okay thank you come on um to be clear the delta variant there are breakthrough infections in people who are vaccinated and those people can shed virus in the same rate that somebody who is unvaccinated is that correct that's what they told us today and it's rare but it is it is there and that is the major concern from the cdc the other thing is if both parties are wearing a mask what is the risk of transmitting the virus they said it's less and so that is why they're allowing us if the both parties are wearing the masks properly the nose and mouth has to be covered fully and there should not be a 15 minute cumulative time period where they're exposed to each other without masking then they don't have to quarantine and
044isn't it true that the delta variant is increasingly occurring in younger people younger yes so if i'm not mistaken i think that the children's hospital in kansas and in alabama and mississippi and louisiana are all seeing a surge in children entering the icus i'm not 100 i haven't listened to the news in that way to to get where it is exactly i have researched it so thank you i appreciate that but i would say that you are pro more than likely correct i haven't just seen it myself but yes i would agree with that thank you i'll give you the number 600 children have died okay okay um thank you thank you for the informations um it's very helpful i had some questions that dr chase and dr warner already asked so um i'm going
045to ask the remaining ones i'm not sure if you have this answer but what are going to be the school hours in this new year this new school year do you know that the school hours yes i'm going to be honest um i'd have to defer to somebody else because i'm very confused as to what time the schools are going it's okay the only reason why i'm asking um is to find out if the kids are going to be in the school longer together and um are we going to be three or six feet apart and we're having more kids in the different classrooms correct we're going down to three feet and i believe they are going to be in the building longer during the day i'm not 100 what the times are okay so
046that that's a concern to me um if everybody's not wearing a mask including those uh students that are allowed not to wear masks because that's that's also dangerous that they're allowed not to wear masks because they could be carrying the very like why are we allowing that i i don't understand that um the other concern i have is around eating so i've been getting emails i've gotten emails from you know hundreds of emails but i've gotten hundreds of emails from the opposite direction also so the question is about eating habits um if individuals are eating they're not supposed to be talking while they're eating so we need to you you need to be careful about that because they could spread the the the variance around that it's also a choking hazard i'm sorry it's also
047a choking hazard there's a lot of talking so we need to look into um to that um and then will that be opportunity for those individuals that are sick and have to stay home and quarantine to virtual learn i would have to defer about virtual learning for individuals that have to quarantine before and these are just questions you don't have to answer them right away but just get me the answer just so i could think their education will be provided for while they're on quarantine i don't know if it's virtually but we are required to make sure that we provide for children's education when they're out sick yeah so this is your wrath so this is about the health of every single child yes parents make decisions but it is about the students right now
048okay there's randall any questions um do we know where the students will be eating lunch this year will they be in their classrooms i know last year we had to move high school some of the students into the gym they were sitting in desks do we know how lunch is going to be done in the elementary middle and high school level that's being thank you it's currently going to be a combination we're going to be factoring mitigation strategies social distancing and then coordinating with each of the administrators and the chiefs to make sure that we have enough distancing while students are eating so it's going to be a combination both cafeteria and in the classrooms okay so is it school by school choice thank you each school is different in terms of spacing so so
049different administration different questions okay and um when you um is the mask to mask no quarantining is that new for this year because i don't think that that's the case for us last year no that was not the case last year that is new since um i think it's the 21st of july okay and and remind us an outbreak is what two cases or more that are epidemiologically linked okay so if there's two cases in a classroom and that's an exposure from one student to another yes that is an outbreak okay and um why and i understand that i guess i'm confused as to are we trying to follow cdc or are we trying to follow vdh because you were just saying uh in one instance that we the quarantine was going to be the
050vdh because it was the gold standard and not the cdc cdc also says that the gold standard is 14 days but we always adopt what this what the bdh does and vdh has adopted cdc guidance since the beginning of the pandemic it just takes them a couple of days longer to to adopt it okay because the cdc is the federal level so they have to pass it down to the state level okay but it wasn't the didn't the cdc have a different formula for quarantine wasn't it like if you had two negative tests or something like that you could come back chewing negative tests was very early on and it was determined that that's not an appropriate uh test measure because um for up to 12 weeks after and longer after having had covert 19
051you would still have a positive covet test result right so they took that out um so that has not been a factor since last july a year ago july the cdc does did add in the if you got tested after between three to three to five days after exposure that you could come back in ten days um but need to monitor for the rest of the 14 days however for school settings they and the vdh have always recommended 14 days the full 14. okay thank you you're welcome i have a question about these local transmission rates it says as of last week it was 30 per 100 000 is that stafford county or is that yes that is stafford county okay and how many people do we have in stafford county it's 150 approximate there's
052a formula that this that the health department uses to calculate the per the um that is not the rappahannock region that is strictly that is stafford county do we know how many of those um either the 30 last week or the 57 this week were um under the age of 18. they don't report that because i i would like to actually i didn't no they do report it but i did not look that closely i'm sorry they do have that information i mean we are we are talking about our students and i i would like to have that information if i can get that made available and i i would think that with the summer travel you know that those numbers you know would probably rise i know with christmas or well holiday whatever it's
053term is correct right now with the with the holiday season you know we you know we're concerned about that because there's a lot of people that travel when they're exposed to you know different areas so i i would like to to know if if that change is something that is just jumped last week or whether there has been a increase you know through the summer months i'm not asking you for that now but you know that that information would be important but particularly how many of those are under the age of 18. okay and also this is uh um this is just a comment i'm not gonna give testimony about this but i really would like to see more opportunities for families to to have their their children vaccinated um it at the schools um
054and also if there's a way we could include you know parents or guardians in that as well they did they did open it up to parents if they were we had to have no stafford and brooke point but if we could have more i mean neither one of those is in the southern end of the county i mean i know they're you know north and the brook point central but if that's something that we could you know we could do to facilitate it i think that would be you know and we have reached out to the health department to see if we can do it again um parents are also able to contact the local pharmacies and obtain vaccine as well and um the health department still has their link going and are we making
055that information available to families it's on our website and it's on the website i mean if you don't have the internet and it's a little hard but but i you know we've we've got all this covid funding and all these assets i mean i i think one of the best things we could do is to put the opportunity out there just to make it a choice if parents you know want to have it for their students particularly the students that are you know younger you know that that may not have the opportunity and we know we have a lot of families that have you know work two jobs and you don't have a lot of time so if we are able to do it again i would suggest we do it in more schools and
056you know more geographically um central like you know minecure would i would think be a you know a good spot or why water behind you know the middle schools in the in the south i don't see any schools in you know in the southern end of the county here and i can work with the health department to see if we can do that in a more southern location um it does have to be by appointment because that vaccine is very um right needs to be sensitive yes it has to be um taken care of in a deep freezing situation and they don't want to waste vaccine and defrost vaccine unnecessarily and and not be able to use it i understand and i don't know i'm just i'm just making this a commentary and i don't
057know how the board feels but but personally i think that's something that we can do that would would benefit the community and also you know benefit the schools as well it so i totally agree with you on that to make it available to families in certain certain areas um i also wanted to know when you mentioned the numbers of individuals just getting one vaccine it's a number that's provided on the health department web link this is not a required vaccine so our staff are not made aware of who is vaccinated and who is not the health department does follow up with those families to try to get them to come back in and most of the time with those clinics they are making their appointment for their second dose before they leave when we did
058the clinic at north and at brook the next the second dose date was set at the same time as the initial dose date was set and they just needed to come at the same time for their vaccine and if parents were there and needed vaccine they were given the vaccine as well so it was we worked with giant and we work with safeway per the health department so that's how it was done oh yes that's one and hopefully the rate went up i'm not going to switch on the spot it's hard to give you the rate of vaccination for our staff because some of our staff were reticent to report whether or not they were vaccinated because it is a confidential health information and it's not a required vaccine so for us to be able
059to tell you what percentage of our staff have been vaccinated is extremely difficult kids need to come in at four year olds and they need to have their shot anchored this is coming to be such a thing and so prepare thank you you're i have welcome couple questions um first one um and this is one i should probably have figured out with regard to the rates in stafford when somebody is um going in and gets vaccinated how is that done let's say they don't get um and this probably sounds crazy the vaccine here and staff like um college students i don't know i have to so let's say they were vaccinated somewhere else or not vaccinated or if they were vaccinated on a military base does the um vaccine um box get tick based on
060where you're getting the vaccine or based on your address question i will have to yes it does make perfectly good sense and i don't know if the health department if it's given at a health department or out in town it is required to be entered into the virginia immunization information system military is not and military is kept on the base so i don't know if when they put it in the viz is that based on the locality that they receive the vaccine or based on their address of residency so i will have to get back to you on that and ask the health department that question just because i think about it with many of our um parents or families that that live here many of them are military or even government connected where they
061may have gotten the vaccine and so i'm somewhat not that i don't believe it but it seems low knowing some of the people that are here and so like i said it's not deter but it would be interesting for a community that i believe is fairly tied to military installations and even the government to see are they being captured or not because i don't want our rate to look a certain way that it it may be something else but just just to understand how it's it's um captured um my other question is when we talk about the three to six feet everybody knows my usual issue is growth so i'm going to move it in even in here we have schools now with four trailers we have large class sizes if we are not able
062to meet the three feet distancing what does that do it does make sense what the guidance is is to try to make it at least three feet to the greatest extent possible without limiting students being able to attend school so if you can't maintain the three feet and it's going to prevent children from coming to school they're saying to make them closer okay i mean i feel like that's we have to um the american academy of pediatrics as well is very much in line with trying to get children back in school um because the social emotional learning their mental health status they're also their physical status um so they're also in line with that that recommendation as well it's just as we plan and i know we talk about local buildings some buildings may or
063may not be able to meet those distances just in order to make sure that we um are allowing our students to be in there i just wanted to make to see if there was then we get to some other level of so i'm glad to hear i think that part um going forward could you go over one more time what do you expect the timeline next at 3 30 today i know it's at three o'clock i'm sorry i didn't see it till 3 30 but new guidance has been issued sort of the now what happens in virginia typically it takes about a week or two for them to adopt the guideline and to post it and to share it with the school system so i would say within the next two to two to three
064weeks they they really couldn't give us a timeline we were on a call with the health department today we meet with them weekly um we did specifically ask like if there's change how soon will we hear this guidance and they're saying as soon as possible but they could not pin us down to a time understood um so i will say to um fellow board members i believe that the guidance but i am certainly up to uh the will of the board believe that this is actually a decision that has been specifically given to school boards they didn't even give us much other um [Music] options based on guidance unfortunately from my perspective virtual virginia was closed on july 15th so if there were decisions that families wanted to make based on going forward those decisions
065have been happened shut i believe it was july 15th was the last day um i will be um honest having guidance and i do appreciate the um the guidance that you've given tonight but i have to say i am a person who likes to study it and look at it and make sure i understand it i understand some of the questions asked by members of either additional information that at this you know particular point i will be very honest i don't believe that school boards are the ones that are most equipped to make this decision my decision in regards to education is to get kids into school as quickly and as safely as possible however i would like to say that i think that there is still additional guidance potentially forthcoming that will be provided
066to school boards or hopefully to help the health department i really feel uncomfortable making decisions that then will be potentially overruled within weeks so i am just asking my board members how do you feel um i know this is not on for action um as of earlier i thought we would put it straight to action i'm just trying to get a sense of the board i have not had a chance to read the new cdc guidelines and i agree that i think the virginia department of health is going to be updating their recommendations based on those so i i don't want to make a decision tonight that that may be overturned that may be nullified by new guidance i know the american academy of pediatrics also recommends the masking especially in the elementary schools where
067those students cannot be vaccinated so i i can see delaying until we have clear affirmation of what the cdc is recommending but if that takes more than two weeks that's after school starts right so we cannot wait we can't wait that long my propos my thought would be that we would give it a week that we would meet here we can either have a public hearing just on this particular topic because i think it is of utmost um concern on people's minds but i also believe it needs to be a full and fair process because i will tell you getting information at 3 30 not just from the school system but from the cdc um is difficult for me to be able to read in three hours when there isn't that option i also note
068that one of our board members is not here this evening and would like to also participate i believe in this discussion um is there um i believe there may be a preferred date of wednesday of next week is that an open evening i know that i would ask board members to check their calendars see if they can be cleared we could i believe that the chambers are open thank you august 4th august 4th is that um is there a particular start time would you like to be earlier later what time well it depends on the board that board member is not here if that's a good time for her so she could participate she usually can't participate i would say no no sooner no earlier than six would be my preference i think would be
069and i think giving this much notice it's it's easier to madam chair i'd also like to point out that next week also begins orientation for the middle school and high school and elementary school so i'm just just wanting to make everyone aware that uh you know those are opportunities that we could visit our schools but also they need some guidance um madam chair i'm just i'm concerned that we are in a position to make decisions and policies and guide the the team we we have someone in front of us that is part of our school system giving us guidance and i think we're saying that that's not sufficient right now did we ask her what she thinks right now what we what what she recommends as our person that supports us on this is there
070anything different from your presentation that you would like to change no i feel that the um the health department has given us good guidance until this point and that you know masking the children to try to prevent further transmission is important we also need to continue the mitigation strategies that we have in place in all layers not just masking but also the hand washing and all the other layers of of this mitigation that we have in place so i'm with her that's all i have to say it's not a one step process i busy i'm not sure you want to hear from me it's okay i'm just trying to come up with something i'm just floored i mean this board makes policy that's our job that's one of the few responsibilities we have and in
071making that policy we consider we certainly consider you know our superintendent we consider our you know our health experts and we also consider the community and i'm i i know you know from emails i've gotten you know there's there's two sides there's always two sides but that's what i'm going to be considering and whether it's this week or next week you know i'm going to weigh all this um which which is one reason why i i did ask about how many of these percentages you know these 30 people last week and 57 people this week how many were under the age of 18. if you tell me you know they all are or significantly you know more of them are then then you know that and i can get you that data yeah that may
072have that may have an impact but if you tell me very few you know that would have an impact as well so you know to say you know this week we've got your recommendation and this is no effect but you know i really do respect you and admire what you've done it's amazing you've survived this year because really you have had the weight on your shoulders you know from everybody in the school so thank you very much for what you've done but but i i think it's our responsibility and i think we need to consider the experts but we need to consider our community as well and that's what we need to hear from the people here we've already heard from a number of people and if there's other information we need i certainly would
073defer on that and you know given given the the impact of this i think we very well may need seven people here because you know six is an even number so i'm i'm willing to do this next week but i i'd like to get it done as soon as possible so people can can be making their plans and the schools can be be ready because this is a very important issue last year it wasn't it was easy for me last year we it was an unknown um you know we we we really didn't have you know much to go on and i think it was the right decision this year i think things are different so i'll just leave it i'll leave it at that i do want to hear you know from everyone but
074um let's let's just let's just make this and go and certainly i i do hope that this board you know will be making this decision considering all the factors you know that that are required so thank you thank you really thank you for everything you've done thank you it's been a long year i know we have dr chase i think you're ready yeah and and i just want to say i'm experiencing i have to say a little bit of deja vu so a year ago this board made one decision about masks without hearing from everybody and then as i recall staff completely bombarded our emails and we suddenly realized that we hadn't heard from part of the community and we ended up voting and completely changed what we did so i i agree we do
075need to hear from from the entire community thank you one more comment yes um i i agree about hearing about the whole community um i received 101 emails we have 29 almost 30 students and i'm hoping that we have an opportunity to hear uh twenty nine thousand thirty thousand minus 101 emails some emails um from two parents of one family so i would also like to hear of the whole community uh to ensure that everyone gets a say all right and now because this new pl the plan or the proposal or recommendation from our staff is now been released we did not release it until late this afternoon we'll give everybody time to review so what i will be saying we will be calling it i guess it would be a special called meeting beginning
076um i believe at six o'clock um or 6 30 i so i'm i i just would would like to check in with our other board member i'm not going to do it during the meeting i don't um i'm going to do that but it will be either 6 or 6 30. maybe maybe miss hall could um do that while we're what we're meeting just so we can have a date and a time sure before we leave here and can we also allow comments to be submitted for the record for for people that may not be able to be here i mean it is the end of the summer um break before school starts so you know it and anything that's submitted could be you know entered as is part of as part of the record
077so once we make the decision depending on where we land is there a sufficient time for individuals being that virginia whatever it was called is closed and the other one i think i forgot the name they're not accepting any new students so then what happens to parents that thought we were gonna just continue with what we're doing which is masking and then suddenly god forbid um we change our minds where do they go where do they land where is their choice there's just a question that will come up what what what choice would they have and then i'm not done yet to ensure that one of the things i know we had covet funds i don't know if i have an answer to that yet but i know some of the classes have plexiglas in
078the classroom i'm not sure if we're doing that for every single class and perhaps as something that we need to invest in um just just start looking at that because if we run out you might want to start looking at that just in case of whatever decision you all make ms rand oh excuse me that's we make i know where i stand randall did you have a question i'm sorry thank you for that no all right i would ask board members if there are specific uh questions i know ms healy years was there but if there are additional questions believe it or not when we leave here we can meditate and throw it i would ask that we return those questions to our uh clerk to be shared with all board members and um dr
079jones and of course dr kisner please let's give our staff some time they are also planning for the opening of school so i would ask by the latest by friday at noon if there are additional questions uh that you would like answered i would like to ask as well um this will be in my request of a um very straightforward um i love examples i know miss hakana got that from me of how um quarantine how all of that would work in a classroom i do think that is something that would be very helpful with an example or a sports team let's come up with some of the examples that we think might or could hopefully not typically occur and what the ramifications to the students in that room or that team or that um
080activity would be just so there is um um clarity uh to the extent that we can get clarity of course and then if there are questions that um that are raised by emails like i said though let's try to limit them to noon on friday to our staff all right are we good there oh dr chase are you sure well i just wonder if we can also if we need legal counsel on some of our questions is that an option as well um i believe that we have access to that i know that it was encouraged in the guidance from the governor's office and i believe several of the attorneys are fielding this from several school districts so yes so i i just have this question of if we if we did parent choice and
081a parent wanted their child masked and we did not make sure their child stayed masked during school um would we be liable so i'll i'll put that question to the to the to the attorney sure please make sure that ms boatwright is ceced on especially on that one um or any of those that have that um possible shouldn't they just all go to the clerk and the clerk can coordinate with ms boatwright about which ones we need the outside counsel on because yeah this boat rate it's our council yes exactly i i have a question and and this is this goes to the mass the no mask how are we going to confirm that a child was quote and i'm saying anybody any a student was properly masked during this time i mean is this
082an honor system that's what concerns me i mean we're all talking about this quarantine and what's going to happen which is going to be if someone was not properly moused but say you know the mass slips down oh my gosh does that mean it's not proper and we have to be quarantined so that's all this enforcement is i think going to be interesting because we're talking about especially with with with younger ones i mean the teacher is not seeing every student every minute you know with hallways you know whatever so so i i've got some questions about that but that's that's not really i'm not going to be answering but it's something that that would concern me because we're we're getting all oh my gosh we might have to quarantine because they weren't properly asked
083well how do you how do you know how do you know so that that's worth tour you can craft your question and send that in there's not going to be i mean i'd like to see an answer to that one i wouldn't expect an answer we can always try all right anything else on this one for right now okay so our second staff report i believe will be with mr fomer regard related to the american rescue plan act esser 3 funding update thank you mr palmer good evening so if you recall about a month ago we were in front of the board and and asked them to approve a request for the board of supervisors to appropriate the funds from arpa the s43 funds and we submitted that request to the county they did approve
084and appropriate those funds and so now staff have been working with the chiefs and the principals on developing a little bit more detailed plan if you recall high-level overview we received about 14.2 million dollars in this sr3 federal stimulus funds 2.8 to that 20 percent had to be set aside for learning loss and remediation we had already identified about 1.7 in fy 22 operating budget items that would qualify for this that we moved out of the operating budget and moved into our grants fund for the sr3 funding and then we moved 1.7 and fy 23 so that it wouldn't hit right away in the in the second year of the budget and that was items like air purifiers and not air purifiers but air filters instructional software other supplies so that was our first allocation
085and we also set aside a hundred thousand dollars for a community engagement bus and so with the learning loss money and in addition to the balance of about 7.8 million we knew we wanted to identify specialized staff and instructional paraprofessionals to to help the learning loss across the division so with working with the chiefs and the principals looked at at the elementary school level identifying about four to seven pair professionals per school per elementary school and those would be assigned uh you know based on need you know they were targeting the grade levels with the highest need and they'll continue to uh to shift those um as deemed necessary based on the results of when when kids return but obviously with school starting in a few weeks we are looking to move pretty quickly on
086that and so that's why we're back here updating you on that on that progress the pair of professionals we would um we know we're not going to hire every single one of them with four to seven per school depending on size so we know that even if i budget for the full amount we're going to have a lot of savings and even in the first year and the second year so i didn't budget that we were going to be fully staffed with four to seven per school instead assume that we are going to have savings each year and that was able to extend out those paraprofessionals not only for this entire school year but also for the following school year and in the third year of this essar grant we would start to phase those
087paraprofessionals out so that we don't have a massive cliff that we have to pull all the paraprofessionals out at the same time so look at cutting down to about 50 of those paraprofessionals at each school and then in the fourth year they would go away at those elementary schools and then a similar approach at middle school except we're just looking at two paraprofessionals at each middle school and then at the high school i'll let um stan we provided this update to the fab c and for for folks that were there know that um stan can you have a little bit better explanation for how we're delivering that at the secondary level because at high school it's a little bit different with the class structure it's not not the same as an elementary school classroom as
088you're all aware and so i'm saying if you can uh delve into that a little bit so just a more targeted intervention approach and particularly in literacy and math at the high school level because we know that those are areas where students suffered the most this year and we were looking at this instructional pera approach and we did a community stakeholder group if you recall at the june 29th meeting we had a public hearing and then after that we actually did a community stakeholder group a virtual meeting with a lot of our advisory committee parents student or a parent and staff advisory committees and the other school board advisory committees and the number one thing 95 percent of the people said is they wanted support and we didn't we actually did not prep them it
089was a very high level i just said you know this is how much we have this is what it could be used for and it was very much across the board that that they thought we should do this targeted support in the classrooms um whether it was after school during school but they wanted to see those instructional paraprofessionals uh reaching out to our kids so it helped really drive home that that was the decision we wanted to go with from from the chiefs and and the principals so uh that's where we are are moving towards and so i just wanted to provide that update and we're going to start hiring those right away i know a lot of the principals have already identified some of those paraprofessionals excellent thank you any questions remembers none all
090right thank you mr fulmer appreciate that update all right next we are moving on to um public comment our citizens comment this evening uh three minutes are allotted to each speaker speakers are encouraged to provide a copy of your comments to the board clerk if you don't have a copy this evening and would still like to provide them they can be provided to our clerk certainly via email but if you have them this evening in written form you may present them to ms hall and she will distribute to board members speakers shall identify themselves by name organizational affiliation if that applies speaker shall also announce the purpose or topic of their comments the chair reserves the right to restrict total citizen comment received at any particular board meeting to a predetermined maximum number of minutes
091with the approval of the board when you approach there are it's the green light approach when you get started the green light will come on when you have one minute remaining there will be a yellow light when the red light goes off because we have many tonight you will need to stop um you will need to stop your comments at that point we'll give you a second or two just to quickly wrap it up we have a lot of people here tonight we want to give you your full three minutes i would ask that we um listen to each member um i would prefer to um clapping we want to keep the comments moving and rolling so what i will do is list number of the names then i would just ask for a few
092of you to stand on the side and then come forward um as your name is called especially if you're like sitting in the middle to crawl over everybody if your name is called make your ways to the edges so you can come forward quickly i'll call about three or four at a time any citizen comment which is profane abusive or which threatens imminent physical harm shall be ruled out of order although the board provides the opportunity for citizen comment any individual desiring to register complaints against division employees or division programs services or activities may also utilize the procedures outlined in stafford county public school policy 1113. so i'm going to call the first five names um like i said if you can make your ways to the side it'll just um have you all come
093forward i have a suggestion and and this is just to be fair to everyone i'd say for tonight because we have a lot of speakers that second or two that you talked about for some goes on a lot longer some people stop immediately when it's yellow you have one minute left when it's red i think we should stop i mean i know that may sound harsh but i think that's the most fair thing to do um and and make sure everyone is able to speak who who wishes to speak sure i mean i've i've seen people go on when other people may want to go on but they're going to respect that so if if we could do that i may be something we should consider implementing at some other point but sure all right
094when the red goes if you will um stop speaking at that point you may of course at that point if you have your comments hand them to ms hall for distribution to the board all right i'm going to call off the first five names uh stephanie edmund rick edmund melissa bradley courtney supfin and alyssa halstead so if you all could whoever can make it forward come on come on down and um provide your comments and thanks for coming this evening thank you good evening madam chairman members of the board my name is stephanie edmond i recently retired from stafford county public schools i taught here for 22 years our family's been looking forward to our grandson returning to the classroom in the past few weeks the delta variant has been described as coveted on steroids
095it's surging throughout this country country as mrs hokanna has given in her report last week dr wilinski with the cdc stated that 600 children in this country have died of the covet variant our family is deeply concerned we're even more concerned due to the fact that stafford county does not require teachers or staff to be vaccinated i personally know teachers in the building i worked at who didn't believe in this so to speak consequently last weekend after i was getting ready to enjoy retirement i was asked to homeschool my grandson we are concerned with putting him in the classroom he is a third grader we want him fully vaccinated before he's back into the building we i looked into the option on the stepper county website for cave 12 stride i went through the presentation
096a couple of times and the next day i contacted park ridge elementary i was told that the stride program closed in june my only option is to homeschool him or send him into the building we're not willing to pay to play russian roulette with his life i told asked the assistant principal parkridge if i could have a pacing guide if i have to go find a program to teach him then i need a pacing guide to know what his classroom teacher will be teaching each nine weeks so that i can parallel his curriculum with that now mind you i'm an i'm a middle school science teacher for 22 years but i'm willing to teach third grade i need resources i asked for books i was told possibility i know i spent until 9 30 at
097night building lessons on canvas with this i need i asked if there were any teachers that would provide me some of their resources so i'm not starting from scratch i was told that probably wouldn't happen here's the deal i am an experienced teacher i am more than capable of educating my grandson but what about people in this county who aren't teachers who either aren't capable of teaching their children or they're not able to teach their children this virus is surging whether we like it or not it is um very uh good at making its way is that red that's red i'm asking that you allow my grandson to be admitted into this stride program please thank you thank you very much for your time thank you all right rick we're not going to do that
098doesn't um briefly i think it's one minute now i we we have had this in the past where we have allowed minutes and swapping and it has not um gone well mr edmonds is there any way you can come forward with just give us the the big picture you can always follow up with an email i just i i'm not trying to um do that but then we start and it allows people a little bit extra if you could give those to ms hall i'm sorry thank you mister give us give us a second she's going to get in place wait till the green light starts okay thank you as a retired military officer this is going to be very easy for me getting it from a group of people so i'd like to basically
099second what my wife said i think it like miss young said what do you do about parents who maybe have decided about six weeks ago that we really wanted our grandson to go to school we're with everybody in here that kids need to be in school but if it's not safe and we don't think it's safe and we're parents and we say it's not safe what do you do now if there is no other option other than go to school so it's a parent's choice and there's a lot of people behind me that are saying parents choice so if it is truly a parent's choice to go to school or not go to school then i think stafford county needs to provide some means for parents who are not going to put their kids in
100school to get a proper education and not just say go online and find it yourself that is just not fair because things have changed board members things have changed the covet's getting worse i mean when i was in the pentagon they said you can take this off i was like thank god it's gone but i expect in the next couple weeks the department of defense and i work for the army is going to tell me that i got to put it back on so be it but for these parents like my wife said that are not teachers you can't just make this up or they're going to be behind so if parents do not want to send their kids to school it is their choice please support them with a program to help them so
101when they do get vaccinated they can't come to school and that's all i have to say madam chairman thank you good evening i'm melissa bradley i reside in the rock hill district i'm a parent of a middle schooler and a rising freshman my middle schooler the school system failed her last year unfortunately she didn't just fail she got zeros all the way down zeros she wasn't allowed to have her camera on she's high functioning autistic she has a 504 plan they couldn't follow it it just physically couldn't it wasn't capable she wasn't allowed to have her camera on because it was too much of a distraction so how much of a distraction is it going to be when the teacher has to stop to tell her 18 times that she needs to pull her mask
102up because she doesn't she can't physically handle having a mask on i enrolled her for virtual virginia in case you guys did not pass or you guys are requiring the mask mandate as a backup because i can pull her out of virtual virginia if i need to unfortunately if she fails in virtual virginia they're going to kick her out anyways and then i'm stuck she's developed lung inflammation from an unknown source i'm not going to say it's from the masks but they have no other answer as to why in the last year she's developed it also the other point is how many kindergartners come into school every year and get sick within the first couple of months because they've been home for their first five years of life they didn't have a preschool experience their
103immune systems aren't built up our kids have been masked for so long their immune systems are at risk you know you're going to put these kids in the schools with masks on and they're not getting the antibodies that they need from the germs from the colds from everything like that i 100 don't want her going to school in a mask she is going to be touching her face a whole lot more she's picking up germs touching her face she's going to be touching it touching her mouth and then touching everything around her whether she if she's got a mask on she's going to be putting more germs out there that is just one of the things that i don't think people are thinking about you know i understand everybody's concern i really do but it
104should be you know and to piggyback off of the previous commenters there should be more opportunity up until the start of school for the parents that do or don't you know i shouldn't have had to make this decision at the end of last year to put her in virtual school because i wasn't knowing what was going to be happening so i do agree with that comment but sending our kids back in masks i think is just going to be more detrimental to the classroom to all the kids around them it's going to be more of a distraction and they just need to be free thank you all right next come on down but just so everybody knows virtual virginia is not run by the school boards it is run by the state thank you okay
105hi um i'm switching gears here a little bit my name is courtney sutfin and i'm a full-time office manager at mongcure elementary and i'm here before you tonight to propose a revision of the policy 2000 student services which excludes non-resident non-licensed employees from transferring their children to their school of residence stafford county schools prides itself on being equitable the very core of the word equity is equal the policy i am referencing tonight directly negates stafford county's central motto let's review some of the surrounding school systems transfer policies regarding non-resident non-licensed employees and i can provide hard copies of their policies if necessary spotsylvania king george orange culpepper caroline prince william county as well as fredericksburg and alexandria cities only require that you are a full-time employee to transfer your children licensure is not even mentioned
106they see the importance in creating a lateral incentive applicable to all full-time employees with intent to recruit and retain the best employees period i understand it's a numbers game budgetary regulations real estate development zoning overcrowding etc i'm certain that the surrounding counties have dealt with the same concerns at one time or another however the significant difference is these school systems are not willing to cut corners when it comes to supporting all their full-time employees as they are not seen as expendable in closing i sincerely hope you consider what i'm proposing here tonight ultimately there is no difference between a non-licensed and licensed employee with respect to being a parent we could all use and equally deserve the county support thank you thank you alyssa hall said uh hartwood president ronald reagan said government's first duty
107is to protect the people not run their lives well this has not been the case for the last year that's why i'm here tonight i'm a public health emergency manager who worked extensively in the public and private sector to develop right and exercise emergency plans my expertise was biological planning more specifically pandemic planning i worked for the largest health department in this country and then multiple health departments across this great nation for 15 years based on my work we have egregiously failed our children by ignoring well-defined strategies designed to protect them from the beginning instead of trusting those plans we've allowed the cvc a non-governing group of scientists to dictate how we live as free americans the national biostatistics system said it was impossible to quantify how many people died of just carbon because of
108pre-existing conditions and co-morbidity yet we continually allowed the media the government and those elected locally to help keep us safe from this level of overreach beat us over the head and into submission we as parents have failed our kids we have to live with that it's time to stop perpetuating the lies lies that have resulted in online schooling for our children and last mandate shipping them of their fundamental rights to be kids innocent and free from fear it is our job to protect them but we haven't we've taken away their rights to participate in school activities to smile at each other or a stranger to hug a friend in need and worse we told them they're responsible for other people's health and wellness that's disgusting the ramifications of this i think we will not know
109for a very long time we have seen increases in drug use and abuse in teenagers suicides we've watched family members turn against each other encouraged neighbors and strangers to publicly shame each other and isolate our children for nothing we the parents come together now to ensure this level of control does not continue to happen or happen again i started to think of the children who live in abusive homes who have nowhere to go because school and public buildings such as libraries and community centers were closed to them by not pushing back against unconstitutional mandates we have failed them and so many others because we will say no more children are resilient but that doesn't mean we push them to the edge and expect them to come out of it unscathed in my career i worked
110with doctors scientists and academicians not a single one of them ever talked about doing any of what's been done to our kids today they wouldn't have even considered it because it's unfair it's unconstitutional and it's un-american the handling of this virus was politics plain and simple recently someone said the fight of parents today will determine the faith of the future faith in themselves and their ability to stand up for themselves and each other in difficult times faith in humanity faith in god for where there is faith there is hope that's something we haven't been allowed to have in the last year as adults we are living our futures our yesterday is gone so our actions our inactions today our mistakes successes and failures impact our children's futures tonight we have one chance to change the
111course of future by saying no more our children deserve better than this thank you i guess so all right hold on i'm going to read the next list of steph i'm sorry okay lisa kennedy kenny kelly loins john roy and jamie decatur if you all could sort of make your your way to the to the sides that would be great i would appreciate if we do not um clap just respectfully listen to each of the speakers that would be great go ahead thank you ready for your green light oh got it oh sorry good evening my name is stephanie mojica and i reside in the garrisonville district i have two children who will be going into fifth and third grade i am here this evening to address my concerns with my children wearing masks in
112the upcoming school year first is measuring how hard it is for them to breathe fresh air while wearing a mask all summer long they have enjoyed going maskless and being free my child who has a speech impairment can be misunderstood while trying to speak through a layer of fabric that is placed over hit their mouth this is a huge disadvantage for my child who already struggles with so much the frustration of how my child is made to feel when someone is unable to understand them while being required to wear a mask in my opinion it is inhumane to a child who is struggling from speech apraxia let alone any child if the mass mandate is enforced then this will be hindering my child's ability to be heard clearly and possibly affect future progress i also
113want to mention that the mask has created anxiety it took some time just to get my other child to a mask and walk outside without feeling like they would get in trouble for not wearing a mask during the summer this is cruel what is being done to our kids in the future years to come we do not know the long-term implications that wearing a mask can cause on our children and their mental well-being parents should have a choice if their child is to be master or not our neighboring counties fall care king george and now spotsylvania are allowing parents the options to unmask their kids during school if they can set these rules and guidelines and so can stafford school board please consider a parent's choice on this matter and what is best for each
114individual child thank you and have a wonderful evening all right come on down whoever's next hi uh thank you for letting us speak tonight my name is lisa kennedy i'm in the falmouth district my son just graduated this year my daughter is a rising sophomore this is one of the masks that she wore when she was allowed to come into the building last year it's not medical grade it was made from fabric squares that i bought at hobby lobby i don't know if it serves a purpose what i do know is that her walking around wearing this routinely caused her to develop anxiety issues and she has been paranoid and withdrawn ever since my nephew who is in elementary school same problem when he meets people that he doesn't know he immediately claps his hands
115over his mouth because he's petrified he's petrified of meeting strangers including children he doesn't want to be around other people i don't mean any disrespect if people want to wear masks wear masks by all means do whatever works for you i just know anecdotally it has not worked for my family and it is creating a lot of problems and that's really all i have to say so thank you very much for your time thank you my name is kelly loins and i'm from the rock hill district i'm here today to ask you to institute a personal choice mask policy each board member should be considering what is in the children's best interest there is no data to support continued force mass masking of children in fact most data points in the opposite direction an article
116from april of this year in the international journal of environmental research and public health cites 178 other papers and or studies regarding the negative effects of masks from both pre and post covered time frames of particular interest is that the world health organization describes sick building syndrome a condition in which people living mostly indoors experienced acute disease-relevant effects without being actually ill from a diagnosed disease many of the issues associated with long-term mask wearing and breathing are similar to those of this syndrome from increased carbon dioxide levels to increase heart rate and respiratory frequency headaches fatigue which over time can take a huge physiological toll to a distraction in the classroom masks are an impediment to health and learning they obstruct fields of view and oftentimes provide negative sensory input they prevent adequate communication due
117to difficulty hearing what is being said and also speaking loud enough and clear enough to be heard i've watched many of you in these meetings over the past months pull your mask down or aside in order to speak clearly enough to be heard and that is with a microphone in front of you masks prevent children from engaging in normal social interactions that are full of nonverbal communication and facial expressions completely blocking the exchange of emotions and decreasing their ability to adjust socially to their peers additionally the constant touching and readjusting of mass negates keeping the germs at bay constant touching of a mask with dirty hands that is saturated with exhaled respiration does nothing but spread those germs around not to mention children breathing all of that back in with each breath not wearing a
118clean mask every day exacerbates this problem along with potentially very detrimental physical side effects there is no positive relationship between force masking and the social emotional well-being of children the mental and emotional toll of this past year and a half is more than most adults let alone children can bear i am not asking you to institute a no mass policy i am simply asking you to allow parents and families to decide what is best therefore each family can take into account their personal circumstances and determine the best choice for them and their children parents are in the best position to judge what is needed for their children to succeed and have a healthy positive social emotional experience in the academic setting thank you john roy acquired district thank you guys for the job you do
119i know it's a tough position to lead in a situation like this but lead you must uh in the army uh when i had to wear a gas mask for the other storm and as a construction worker for the past 30 years we are told over and over again what doesn't doesn't work for masks i can't imagine going to war against that i'm saying wearing any one of the masks you guys are wearing now they don't stop anything there are dust masks on a construction site when i have dust masks for my goddess to wear in a situation where there's dust they wear a dust mask i get fined by osha if i have a more serious mask on the job and i don't have somebody on the site who's trained in a respirator and
120how to wear a more proper mask that would stop something like a virus so along with all the dangers that they're saying that it does to kids i'm saying the masks aren't helping anybody so it should be a choice if somebody feels better wearing a mask by all means wear a mask if somebody says hey i don't want my kid to have to wear a mask they shouldn't have to make wear that's all thank you ms decatur can i read the next five names before you start you can come on up and get comfortable but i thought i would go ahead and get the get everybody ready so next uh five marion sigmund eric kennedy edward hendry and monica gary so if you all could just make your way thank you thank you no problem
121hi everyone jamie decatur griffith wide water resident many people are here today to speak to the topic of masks for the upcoming school year regardless of whether they'd like parent choice to be the way forward or a continuation of a mask requirement for all children it is my firm belief that their input should be considered by the board sunday evening i went to board docs to review the agenda and prepare what i wanted to say to the board regarding masks i was interested to find that the agenda item 5.04 titled required and recommended health mitigation strategies for the 21 22 school year was under the category of staff reports the background information for this item states staff will provide information on the updated mitigation recommendations from the virginia department of health and the mitigation strategies
122scps will use for the beginning of the 2122 school year to me that sounds like it's already been decided i had many questions as to why this would be a staff report rather than an information item for the board that would then lead to action taken in terms of approval or not i was then told a few things by superintendent kisner number one the board can take action if they choose number two this is how we've addressed the return to school plans since covet and number three not sure it matters where it's placed on the agenda as long as the public and board get a comprehensive overview of the topic while that exclamation explanation could make sense it strikes me as odd for the following reasons a staff report is in no way shape or
123form a direct invitation for the board to take action unless there's a special motion to move it which you guys already know that number two return to school plans up until recently were mandated at federal and state levels localities were not given much leeway that has changed number three i'm not sure either that it matters where it is placed on the agenda as much as it matters how it was placed on the agenda placing an item on the school board agenda that is a staff report is not for board information that leads to an action item generally this gives gives constituents zero input we could come up one by one tonight and speak to masks and no masks all day long however unless the board intends to amend the agenda to bring this staff report
124to an actionable item nothing we say for against masks in school makes any difference by approving this agenda you allowed the staff to do your job i'm wondering how required and recommended mitigation strategies for the upcoming school year is not a board decision especially considering as we are aware continuing to require masks when as a suggestion and no longer a state mandate should include parent involvement awareness and consent in such a case the board should have involvement in passing a plan that can includes constituent input i bet if someone were to ask for a show of hands a majority of this room wouldn't indicate they anticipated a vote today one way or another that said i would like to strongly encourage the board to take action on allowing parent choice regarding masks what you've heard
125and will hear is a lot of parents supporting that choice many of whom support parent choice will still choose to send their child with a mask we support that what we do not support are a small number of individuals telling us that we must not do what we are comfortable with but instead be forced to do only what they are comfortable with there was an online option for that all right next hello my name is maureen sigmund i'm in the garrisonville district my husband and i have four children three are returning to school one is still waiting his turn i'm here to talk about our rising fifth grader she has been in speech since the day she stepped foot in stafford county school she's made incredible progress until last year last year her i with
126her iep she actually ended the year behind where she started regardless of receiving in-person and virtual speech and that is because she can't see people's mouths and people can't see hers so they cannot correct her and she cannot self-correct as she has been taught to do for the past five years by stafford county speech therapists so now i have a child that i am going to have to pay out of pocket to rep to re to repair the damage done on top of that i hear that you guys get a lot of emails from people opposing return to school masks that kind of thing i read those documents when they come up public a lot of them i've seen over the past year come from a vea email server we do not have a lobbying
127organization to help us send emails we send them one at a time and we show up one at a time and i i just wonder if you want us to flood your emails we will flood your emails but we have to do it grassroots we don't have an email server to do it i don't even know that you know their teachers matter teachers in this room matter but the vea doesn't represent every employee of this county and it certainly doesn't represent every teacher there are teachers that i've met through having my children here who don't want masks either who are terrified for masks who have had negative cons consequences for masks so i i beg you not to just go based on that i also want to ask for an opt out i want everyone
128to wear a mask who wants to i am also going to use my last minute to beg you to make the meeting next week after seven o'clock when the middle school open houses end so that i do not have to choose between attending my child's last open house in person for middle school and being here advocating for her i should be able to do both and i think that you know this meeting started at seven if you could make that one start at seven as well that would open the door for a lot of us to be in two places at once as a lot of us parents have to do these days so thank you hi my name is eric kennedy i don't envy any of you i think i don't think you signed
129up for this when you were elected i don't envy what you have to go through but as my wife mentioned earlier we have two teenagers in stafford high both have had social anxiety issues that would be okay if there appeared to be a real threat but what happens in on the ground in stafford what the students are seeing isn't matching what what people are being told publicly and what i mean by that is for instance when our my kids come home um they go to lunch they take their masks off at lunch to eat my both my children were marching band they were told to cut holes in their mask so they could play their instruments football players lining up face to face stafford stafford highline face to face breathing on each other sweating on
130each other wrestlers in stafford county were wrestling i can't imagine a more intimate physical activity in school than than wrestling and yet they're not wearing masks so when my children come home they're losing faith in the state they're losing faith in their schools they're losing faith in the school board they're losing faith in the federal government they're losing faith in the media because what they're seeing on the ground is not does not is not equal what what they're being told they see this they come home and their friends say the same thing so my concern here is not just what everyone else is saying and i applaud all the parents up here both sides um saying what they what they're saying but i just want to make it clear that also the risk here is
131that our students are losing faith in the system because they don't see what their adults are telling them the risks that are there because they're experiencing them firsthand thank you good evening my name is monica gary i'm in the aqua district i'm here because this is very concerning to so many people myself included i have seven children and five of them are still in our school system from first grade all the way to a junior in brook point high school this is such a difficult thing and again i don't envy any of you like he has stated is it is it right for the school board to be making decisions about health no but that's where we are you know and so you're taking the best guidance that you have and your personal experiences and
132the things that you've got as far as feedback from the community and from where i stand i just have to say that i i do support parental choice i think that legally that's something that's so important and protected i have two children that had a biological father who's not my husband and to remove parental rights is nearly impossible in the courts and so i think we always have to consider that that said i've also told my children if it's not mandatory to wear masks these are times where you might want to do so anyhow when you're walking through crowded halls and things like that so i also want to i really want to focus on the importance of caring for one another we have our individual rights but we really have to care for one
133another through this i wish we could have navigated this year a little bit better in regards to that it's very important through this and this is to the parents as well especially that you know we're going to get through this but our children will remember the way that we taught them to care for one another for the the community around them for each other uh for ourselves as well of course so there's this is a difficult decision to make but on that i was really hoping we would have a decision i have to say as the parent of five children getting ready to go back into schools and i had to re-enroll them because i did homeschool them and that was an entire adventure too um this last year we really need a decision i
134know you shouldn't be the ones to make it but you are and we need it because we have to be able to prepare and talk to them have discussions about what's going to happen and how to navigate that so please please please and i also support marine suggestion to move it to later i too have a middle schooler and i need to be at the open house with him and i'm sure we're not the only ones so please next week and if you can move it later that would be amazing thank you so much before he starts can you give him if mr fisher james fisher is here feel free to go ahead and stand there i have one more name i didn't wanna i'm so sorry you're going to get to start over so
135with your green thank you okay may i start yes all right i've emailed you the studies that i i'm going to mention i just want to make a couple points the first point is that the the mask requirement is based on a premise that there's asymptomatic transfer of covert 19. a large study was done in wuhan china with 10 million people they were able to identify 300 who were asymptomatic carriers of covet 19. they tracked and traced them to more than thousands a thousand other people and found that there was zero transfer of covet 19. so if there's no asymptotic asymptomatic transfer of covet 19 as was indicated in that study why are we requiring mass for all these children and if you factor the the number that they came up with 300 out of
13610 million that's equivalent to one student of the 30 000 we have here in stafford and then the concept that we're going to mask everybody when there's no asymptomatic transfer another point i want to bring out is the fact that mass are ineffective a large study done in denmark involving six thousand people okay uh where they compared three thousand with mass and three thousand without mass and found there was no statistically significant difference between those who wore mass and those who didn't wear mass as to as to whether they contracted covet 19 and there are many other studies like that um another point i want to make is that mass are not only ineffective they're dangerous all right there was a recent uh analysis done of mass worn by children in a in in a
137elementary school they found those mass contained uh pathogens uh bacteria parasites fungi uh 33 of what was found were antibiotic resistant pathogens okay another point i want to make is that the wearing those masks right now we have 20.9 percent oxygen level in this room osha says that if it drops below 19 and a half percent it is dangerous to life it's life-threatening when you wear those masks the oxygen level drops to 17 to 18 percent and we're doing that to our children dr marguerites grietz was one of the foremost experts in the world she's a phd md okay here's what she said about having children wear masks she said to deprive a child or an adolescent's brain of oxygen or to restrict in any way is not only dangerous to the health it is
138absolutely criminal okay and and the the problem is that hypoxia and hypercapnia caused by wearing those masks causes brain damage and that brain damage is irreversible and in fact when you're wearing masks now you might not know it might not happen right now 20 30 years from now those brain cells do not regenerate okay hypoxia is real hypercapnia is real it's dangerous thank you good evening my name is james fisher and i'm in the garrisonville district we've all heard school boards across the country claim that they're just following the science well frankly in my opinion that's just an excuse since the science clearly shows that mass do nothing to stop the spread of the virus however let's talk about the science no less than 15 randomized trials found that mass were not effective in preventing
139respiratory virus infections of all types including covid19 one of those studies from stanford university states and i quote the data shows that both medical and non-medical face masks are ineffective in blocking human human transmission of viral and infectious diseases such as covenanting a recent clinical trial conducted by the american medical association of the carbon dioxide content in inhaled air with or without face mass in healthy children showed that 68 percent of those children had problems with wearing their masks the results showed that the co2 levels of the child with the lowest carbon dioxide level measured three times greater than the limit that's considered hazardous to your health the children with the highest levels of carbon dioxide 25 000 parts per million that's an over 1100 percent increase above the level that's considered dangerous and hazardous
140to your health and this was only after wearing the mask for nine minutes our children in school wear their masks on an average of 270 minutes per day and then there's very real mental social and even health downsides when acquiring mass on our children that same stafford stanford study i just mentioned says wearing face masks have been demonstrated to have substantial adverse physiological and psychological effects these include hypoxia hypercapnia shortness of breath increased acidity and toxic toxicity activation of fear stress response and on and on so i can refer you to scientific study after scientific study that say mass are ineffective in stopping the spread of the virus can you show me one study that says mass are effective bottom line if the science doesn't support it then it must be about submission and by
141that i mean power and control never forget you work for the citizens of this county the decision is not about what you believe it's not about what you want it's about what we want and starting yesterday there's no mandate from the state to hide behind like it or not it's on you you have the power to get rid of the mass mandate and urge you to do so [Music] at this time do we have anyone else who wishes to address the board if so it asks for you all to make your way to the end and just one by one come forward if anyone else wishes to address the board okay come on forward yep wait a minute just wait wait till you get up to the front and introduce yourself please my name is
142stacey bertati and i'm with garrisonville um this really is not even a math question it's more of uh what are you going to do if children are on quarantine and we're not allowed to do virtual these kids are 14 days at home they're going to lose 14 days in school what are you going to do at that point are you going to let them do virtual are you going to change the absentee policy especially for seniors they can only or for high school students they can only have two days off two days out sick what do you do about that we have to look at all those things as well these are things that are really concerning to me you know that's something else that we have to talk about these are policies that are
143already in place so i mean these are uncharted waters i'm not gonna we've never had to deal with anything like this before so god bless all of us for having our opinions and sharing them um everybody's got a valid point i think all of our opinions are important um but we have to take it all into consideration so good luck to you guys if you could sign in on that um i think it's to my left your right always bad at that you can just sign in i appreciate if there's somebody else who wants to be come on come on down and just introduce yourself and then at the end sign in as well my name is elizabeth chinevong and i just wanted to read from read to you from the face mask box from
144costco it says these masks do not eliminate the risk of contracting any disease or infection nor do they reduce the risk of illness or death it says it right on the box i mean please there has to be a reason that you decide to use these and if it says right on the box that they don't do what you guys want them to do then there's no reason to be putting them on the face of our kids it's detrimental thank you thank you all right please let's let's limit that come on down if you could just say your name hi lucy hi lucy go ahead and get started um well they don't really feel good when you like have to talk and you can't really hear anybody and it also kind of teaches you to
145be a little communist because you're doing whatever the government tells you to do so then you're just blindly reading what they should tell you and then um then it teaches nobody that they should speak up for themselves and um what else people that also like have like that can't really speak that well it makes them more upset about it because nobody can even understand them so where they just keep it to themselves and then they can't really like communicate that well so that's it thanks for giving us your experience [Applause] yep if you just was sending she's under 18. i think she can sign in i think if no address okay it's been taken off for that reason anybody else want to speak come on up you want me to introduce myself yep just your
146just your name um hi i'm nevin bertati um i suffer from anxiety and sensory issues and i can understand i don't like wearing the mask it took me a long time to find one that didn't bug me i understand there are kids that cannot physically wear them because it will cause them to panic and i understand that but as someone who has family members who struggle with underlying issues i cannot with a good heart go into school and have to worry about not bringing that home and giving it to my dad or my grandmother who might not make it through that and as someone who is very open-minded i can understand where you're coming from i'm not going to tell you to wear a mask i'm not going to tell you to not wear a
147mask i'm not going to tell you to get vaccinated i cannot tell you what you can and cannot do that is not up to me i am only 16 years old but what i can say is that how would you feel if a family member of yours got sick and passed away i know what it's like to lose family members and i'm sure probably everyone here does but if you can prevent that and you didn't i can't imagine how much worse that would make you feel because you could have prevented it and there are ways that you can prevent that and it it's a choice that you have to wake up and make and whatever choice you make that is yours and i can't tell you that it is wrong or right but please please
148keep in mind that i there are a lot of kids like me who have family members with underlying issues and it would really really suck to lose them when we could have prevented it thank you thank you [Applause] yep if you just signed in thank you anyone else come on down if you want to speak go ahead and stand up and stand to the side make your way down no no come on down yep no no i was just saying if anybody else is thinking about it go ahead and get up and stand on the side so you can make your way down nope she'll she'll get you started hi i'm amanda i guess it's a quiet district i'm not sure stafford elementary my two children go there over the mass i'm sick of the
149mask it should be a parent option to begin with but i have a question that's on my mind crt theory is that going to be taught in the elementary school or any school district in stafford county crt critical race theory right we don't have a dialogue we don't have a dialogue during public comment this is your opportunity to tell us okay i can't ask a question you can ask the question but this is not a dialogue with that okay well i'm over the mask i'm sick of the mask i hope you guys don't do the crt theory okay i'm just i thought i could ask a question i guess not okay that's all i can always email us and stuff i have no answer thank you go ahead and sign in please all right anybody
150else going once okay i don't see anybody moving oh go ahead come on forward okay wait can you come up and then say your name and then get started thank you thank you for your time first and foremost and thank you all for the job that you're doing i know we're all just trying to do the best for the county and or sorry for the community and for our children um my name is jennifer hansen and i'm the mother of four students um and i'm from garrisonville county um i there was a few questions that um that i had um when we had uh excuse me i'm a little nervous we had our professional come up that works for the school and she gave us a lot of facts and information about the the risks
151and one of the questions i had when i was sitting here listening to this was she spoke of the the masks and if we're in the classroom and everyone is properly masked then we don't need to do the 14-day quarantine um that rose a very interesting point to me i'm not really sure what the statistics show as far as the difference between mask wearing and not mask wearing what is the percentage difference in our success of not contracting covid with or without a mask how does that warrant not having a a quarantine period because we at a boy wore our masks so that's just a big concern to me why is that why is that a um why is that okay i guess you know where where do we get our facts from that tell
152us that we're safer how if we wear these masks properly and we don't need a quarantine period it was just an interesting point and i didn't hear anybody else ask the question and so i was prepared to speak tonight that's all i have for now but i just wanted to pose that question and see if anybody else might want that answer as well thank you and if you'll sign in to your my left your right thank you all right as asking again anybody jumping up thinking about it let me know yes okay come on down come on come on madam cheering can we ask anyone else who wants to speak to please line up so you'll know i think i've been trying to say that but if they line up then you'll know they want
153to speak because we do have a lot of items to address thank you again i will reiterate if anybody else would like to speak please stand to the side so i can recognize you and you can quickly come forward thank you go ahead hi good evening my name is thais kollover and i just wanted to say i am not originally from the united states i came from a different country and i came here because america is about freedom it's about having choices and that's what is best about this country i have two stepchildren um that you know one has just graduated one is getting ready to start breakpoint and the whole mask thing number one there's no proof that it works and and to me it's it's become something that people have just put in
154their face to feel protected it doesn't necessarily mean they are protected and there's no studies behind it in fact there's studies that show that it really doesn't matter you know that's not the right mask to use for this type of disease so it's just to me why are we still doing this it's just a game it's about people's feelings and i think every parent should have a choice whether to mask their children or not i think that it's very um cruel to children but if that's a parent's choice then so be it but the parents that choose not to they should also be able to have that choice that's what's america about choice thank you can you sign in right there yep come on down sir my name is joshua pacheco i'm from the acquire
155district i have three kids i grew up in stafford county went to stafford county schools i have three kids that attend stafford county schools all three of my children have had covet i've had covet my ex-wife has had covet you guys work for us you are elected by us we send emails constantly i've sent emails to all of y'all multiple times with absolutely no response that is absolutely ridiculous you are letting the kids this year and the parents of those kids this year choose if they are a boy they can go into a woman's restroom and vice versa but you're not allowing the parents to choose if they want to wear a mat with their kids to wear a mask or not my kids will not wear a mask to school so i'm wondering what
156are you going to do when my child shows up every day without a mask are you going to reject them from going into the school that's all i have to say my name is sharon lakeen wasn't going to talk because i do this super emotional but as i sit here i felt like i just had to share my story my eighth grader this past year went into a deep spiral depression of virtual learning and because of masks when we went back to school he was my butterfly child he was my social my i want to be with everybody i want to do everything and i couldn't get them off the floor i don't want that again we have started to come out of this sports being involved with people being back in school brought him
157out of depression it didn't matter what i did at home didn't matter how much encouragement and love i gave him at home that didn't help him he needed to be with people without a mask and that's what he wants moving forward now if he chooses going into ninth grade if he thinks he wants to put that mask on i'm gonna let him make that choice for himself he's old enough to make that choice not only did we suffer the deep depression we suffered severe germaphobia i can't even touch him i can't even hug my child unless he's about to go take his shower because this community this world has instilled such great fear in him no matter how much my husband and i try to encourage him sometimes it just doesn't matter because the community
158overtakes and overpowers and i'm hoping and praying that we have a community this year that moves forward and encourages our children and opens us back up for freedom for life for love and i hope by the end of this new school year that i can hug him again without him having to go take a shower thank you [Applause] okay anybody else there's nobody out everybody went all right okay with that i'm going to close public comment and um thank you all for coming this evening we will move on to our next item madam chairman because before we move on we had a couple people request we moved the time to seven o'clock i'd like to um make that recommendation as well i mean the issue before was how early it would be for um what
159you know for even to to accommodate everyone but i assume lingard is not going to be a problem and i think you mentioned uh well that that was we were talking about 6 or 6 30 but with the middle school um openings i i think that we need to do that so that everyone will be able to participate and not suffer you know without without making that choice the other board member that's lady well if she can make it at six or six thirty she said she certainly should be at seven all right is that a consensus of the board seven o'clock okay all right thank you for that i was actually going to move into that and got off so we're going to talk about uh first our board committee reports um let's see
160who would like to go first dr warner start us off thank you madam chair the finance and budget committee met on july 22nd we are organized for the upcoming year i will remain chair miss randall will be the vice chair the board of supervisors has approved the appropriation of the esser funds as discussed by mr fulmer uh we began a preliminary discussion of the school board fy23 i wonder if you could stop for just like please as you all are leaving if you can just leave quietly to go out because we do still have remaining board business i'd appreciate it thank you a preliminary discussion of the school board fy 23 budget priorities included continued implementation of a multi-year funding strategy to address division needs and growth challenges to continue to address our ppe with
161increased input from the county relative to the state funding that allows us to be competitive with surrounding communities in recruitment and retention of teachers and staff and investing in resources and to establish an adequate funding mechanism for construction and maintenance of our infrastructure while planning for cyclic replacement to avoid costly emergency investments these are important uh priorities to set for the board so that we will have a work session that was tentatively scheduled for august 17th that will be discussed in the budget calendar that is that is up for information on this agenda the fab reviewed our sip goals which remain to accommodate student growth maintain existing facilities and provide high quality facilities that meet the needs of our community and allow us to provide the programs and resources to all of our students so
162they reach their full potential the fab considered the sip priorities for the fy 23 which will these will be reviewed at the 8 17 work session and presented 8 24 for information we concluded that the cip priorities the large capital projects presented last year remain essential for the fy 23 year given the county's growth these priorities may be more critical the list includes high school 6 elementary school 18 renovations at drew middle school and additional ecse classrooms middle school 9 and renovation of the north stafford high school fine arts wing elementary school 19 and high school 7 are also added to the list based on the 10-year enrollment projections although the need for high school 7 is just outside that range the trigger for requesting new schools is when we reach 90 percent of design
163capacity currently we have over 95 at the high school level we have discussed using program capacity for planning for elementary school contr construction since the design capacity target doesn't really reflect how space is utilized in our elementary schools it was recommended that the joint schools working committee could discuss these triggers to ensure that they are actually meeting the county's needs mr anderson presented a summary of the status of ongoing construction projects and three-hour projects which we have approved and that list has been attached to your handouts by ms um by missy thank you thank you very much anyone else any other um committee reports board committee okay madam chairman i'd just like to thank dr warner and the committee for sharing this um this report with us i think it's really important to have that
164as we start the budget year and it and i appreciate you it's nice to get a list of how we're doing on things that we've approved yes thank you very much moving on to our board member comments i'm going to start with the birthday girl ms healey well you know i am the oldest person here and now i'm even older now i did not say that i can say that even even when mrs kibby was here i'm not sure that was pretty close if she was older than me but you know i'm i'm the survivor i guess you could you could say um i don't really have much to say because it's been a long night and it's going to get longer but i do appreciate the public coming and um you know there was
165a comment about not responding to emails and i i want to assure everyone that i do read every email there just is not enough time in a day to get everything done and when we have a a topic that is you know very what do we say hot topic um you know we get i mean mrs um miss young mentioned 101 i didn't i didn't count them but that sounds about about right but i i do read everything i do not have the time to respond you know people are welcome to call me if they want usually we set times to talk because even that is is hard but i i appreciate everyone sharing their their their feelings and their the comments and and i do i look forward to this you know meeting next
166week and i think i think it is important that the board make this decision it is our responsibility so um i will certainly keep in mind everything that was said this evening everything that i've gotten to date everything that comes in between now and the meeting next week as well as whoever um you know is able to come and and speak next week so thank you thank you ms randall um i just wanted to say that i was very grateful for the opportunity to drive a bus um that was because i said before that i always wanted to be a truck driver and my parents told me no but um the accommodations that my um trainer did for my to for me to drive the bus how high we could get the seat up and
167move things and i my feet didn't touch the ground but i could reach the pedals so i got to drive around and what was astonishing to me as there is a panel of switches that i couldn't even tell you and it didn't want to touch but when you drive a bus one of the things that was surprising to me was there's a three foot clearance at the back of the bus and you have to be like when you go to pull out from when they pull out from the curb i have a whole another appreciation when i pull out from a curb i turn my wheel and i pull out and i drive big cars but when you take a bus i would take out a whole line of people if i tried to do
168that with a bus then imagine i mean you've got mirrors after mirrors trying to find your line of where you're supposed to be on the road staying in your lanes but thankfully the mirrors help you do that too and kids are talking parents are talk it's a lot that they do i was so appreciative of having the opportunity and then they wanted me to parallel park the bus but we can just say that they helped me cheat because they moved everything out of the way so that i could parallel park the bus as they called it but i had an amazing trainer who also graduated from north stafford just before i did and who um has lived in the county as long as i had as well so that was really fun the biggest thing
169i wanted to touch on tonight we talk physical health has been discussed at great length great and thoughtful length but this board in our budget has shown the mental health is a priority we have added counselors and social workers we have protect we have protected the morning meeting in the elementary school by changing the elementary school time and i know we have an app that a program that middle school and high school can use when they check in in the mornings as well but as we look to the start of school i still worry and i feel for the social emotional welfare and the steps we are taking to get in front of this and not just respond to be honest i believe we all have had some level of trauma to go through over
170the last 16 months to each our own we saw facts and figures that showed domestic violence went up while reported abuse of children went down this further demonstrates another level of heroism by the hearts and eyes of our school educators staff are soon going to see these students and will these students will share and show in some fashion at some level of which that they are not okay additionally we know that addictions to devices vaping drugs and other unsafe practices have also gone up over 50 percent of our high school and middle school students have had many social challenges whether they're reliant on or believing what they see or hear or even unkind things on social media the things that they put in their head with no way to handle face to face any of
171these challenges talking through subjects when they have had the ease of deleting blocking and canceling conversations i believe our students are able to rise up and see better do better and think better dr kismer once described how hard it is for a child to have had something that happens at home only to come to school and have to keep it inside and then something makes them blow and it has nothing to but now they're a discipline problem in the school but really they have a home problem that we just didn't know about we have a lot of learning to do but i truly appreciate the need and time for staff to be checked in on as well given tools and opportunities to help with their own mental health i believe box breathing the actual science
172of tapping yoga conversations journaling are all methods that we need to give our students and our staff what i want to do is to be in front of and i'm glad we have resources that our county has approved to aid our families and that includes our staff but what about beforehand when an issue comes up should not shouldn't we have protocols to get in front of this and not just be responsive i know dr hummer our award-winning dr hummer has many thoughts and ideas on being proactive and i look forward to hearing more about them thank you um dr warner to start us okay i'm going to keep it short i um i just wanted i got the opportunity to go see how fairy farm was doing with miss randall i got to check on
173the progress of the construction with mr anderson and miss ranville i was really excited to see how nice the basement is coming together how beautiful the building is starting to look and i wish that we could have it open for the start of school but unfortunately i don't think that's going to be 100 possible the new addition is taking shape i think with labor shortages and supply chain disruptions i think that's probably a bridge too far but i'm very excited to see the progress that's been made there i also had the opportunity to go to kate waller barrett and see their great learning adventure and i was excited with the number of students that were attending the summer school program at kate waller barrett and the kids were very excited they were all engaged and
174wearing their masks and you know excited to be in the classroom and the teachers were doing a stellar job i also went to shirley high middle school and met with mr underhill who was the new principal there very excited to meet him he's got a great energy for the school and i had the opportunity to watch the um groups of students the middle school students who had put together presentations for their projects for that week and present them to to us one one group did a very good presentation on reducing the amount of homework so i'm just suggesting that they might have some good ideas for the teachers um it certainly does become difficult when you're juggling multiple classes to to be taking to have multiple homework assignments so a lot of their points were
175valid the other group did a presentation on hunger and has started a food drive in their school was very impressed with the students they did an excellent job and i want to thank them for inviting me to join them dr chase um yeah i had the opportunity to visit falmouth elementary school and similarly see the summer adventure program that was going on there and kids were teachers and kids were doing wonderful stuff so i'm really glad that staff was able to organize that and put that together and i also want to thank staff for developing a mitigation plan i don't know what the board will decide but i know there's a lot of work involved with all of this so thank you good evening everyone late night i wanted to thank john and lionel and
176their team for the the stafford report um of the facilities project it's um it's good to see what we have what what's going on this is um very interesting and looks good i also wanted to thank the staff for the mitigation plan today that also is very helpful information i did not have much activity this week except um last week um i was present at the staff leadership meeting presented by the edoc which is the equity diversity opportunity um committee and the keynote speaker ravi hutzi singh that's how you pronounce it dr kisner just in case you had trouble with that um so that topic the whole day was interesting thank you so much roxanne for putting that together the other thing i'm not sure how much i could say about purchasing of land for
177schools high school seven six six hopefully high school seven is going to be in the north because i feel that the growth is in the north not only for high school but also for elementary and middle that's what the data shows and i think we need to take that into consideration also we need to look at the land that we already have for the elementary school and so um today it's a no for me um simply because i know that the need is in the north but we need a new high school so wherever it is um i will support that in the future um what else do i have i think um that's it and in terms of um in terms of our health mental health is something that i've been fixated on even
178before covet came and so kovit just made it more of a reality that we need to check not only the mental health of our students but also of our teachers and our staff and and so i like miss randall mentioning about you know driving that bus and being someone else's shoes and so that's how it feels sometimes when you are looking at others and not knowing um what they're living and how they're living and you know the way how you live versus the way how they were living so um stepping in someone's shoes or even thinking about how somebody else lives is important especially when we're making decisions about other people's lives so it's good to do that um in general and that goes for everybody um so in terms of the students and this
179new year and and covet i'm hoping that you know we take all the precautions to keep all our students um healthy and our teachers healthy and even losing one child or one teacher is is is not it's not okay so uh we could go on and on and we're always going to have pros and cons and who believes and who doesn't but i'm about safety and and that's what i'm going with and i want to stress that we have coveted monies we need to look into plexiglass for the classroom for whatever decision we make uh we we if we can't deal with the ventilation that i've been talking about for the past year and you know we don't it's not at the level that we want it to be then we need to invest in
180plexiglas at least in the classrooms that are going to be tight with too many students and that's all i have thank you well i know the people most the people sitting in this room right now know that school is up and running in many different ways we welcomed new teachers and new staff today it was a great event it was amazing to see the i think and i'm sure i can get corrected around 360 new staff members am i close okay hey i did listen um but what was actually really exciting for me today is i saw two children not anymore that i have watched grow up who are going into the classroom one i know their mother very well through her involvement in the girls smarts program and it was amazing to see her
181son there today i also another friend who i have watched him grow up and now he's like at least a foot and a half taller than me standing there um representing the really great things that come out of stafford county public schools as my board members know i will not be here but and i have mentioned this to mr burnett i really hope we will consider potentially a 500 some number bonus for those who have gone through stafford county public schools and choose to come back and teach in the community they grew up in i think they are our best ambassadors so to my fellow fab board members something to think about because i do think the more that we can encourage and develop our own homegrown all the better because i can tell you
182it was just great and there were some principals and others who have developed them and they've decided that they didn't grow any older although the students seem to have somehow gotten 10 years older so that was really fun today seeing those students so i hope we can begin to think about a way to do that kind of investment for our up-and-coming students um i did mention today for any of those new teachers if they were kindergarten teachers they were developing the class of 2032. so we are looking there with regard to um the superintendent process we are really excited to get uh public comment um to date we have had almost 450 comments online there are online there are forums tomorrow at five o'clock thursday noon and five o'clock if for some reason um that
183those do not work there is it's the staffordschools.net dot superintendent search there is a response form for members of the public to fill in we want to hear your feedback to make sure that we get the best person with the fit for stafford county public schools on a final note um i know we will hear a little bit about transportation but living in the district that i live in but i would actually say probably most of us have these similar cases i'm on a a group that talks about things going on in my district and one of the biggest things that's going on in my district is people who speed not just speed they go down the road and think that somebody going 45 which is about what you should be going or to and
184going flying by them um lots of mishaps lots of issues um i have spoken with um dr jones and and dr kisner and sandra and with the sheriff's department of trying to do a real concerted effort of what we are going to have school buses on the road soon passing me going 45 or 50. hopefully nobody's listening on poplar road is a lot different if you're going around a stop school bus i get angry because i just get angry on that stuff but it isn't something when there's a stopped school bus my kids your kids we all have roads that we know where the speeders are so i hope that as we move forward i know we're going to be working in conjunction with the office but i think that's just something we want to
185really begin to think about people have not thought about it for a while and all of a sudden i can tell you so that's just something on my heart because i really do not want to see a tragedy occur because going too fast so i know that's something we're working on with the sheriff's office but i wanted to make sure that board members knew that and how we can begin to get that out maybe even through some of our and i look more like ms neely of to our elementary um principles to of just reminding people what are the rules um and we are working on that but that just is one something that's really on my heart um this evening so um with that i will um turn it over dr jones for superintendent
186comments just a couple i know that uh mr former's here to talk about an enrollment update as well as keep involved when to talk about transportation and as they come up just a couple things i'll mention you mentioned the uh the school buses last monday we did have our mandatory safety training law enforcement partners were there so we had conversations about keeping our school and community safe just want you to be aware of that um thank you for mentioning sla and we had a fabulous today day today with nti um lots of opportunities for for staff to collaborate across curriculum areas as well as other areas so really really really great and this is just day one so i would encourage board members to go to the nti website and just give us a picture
187of all the things that are happening thank you all right yep dr kisner asked me to provide a quick update on our enrollment to date i'm going to give you some disclaimers really quick that these numbers are going to change i'm going to give you very high level just in elementary middle and high i'm going to give you numbers that include those that have officially enrolled and those are the ones that are in the queue which means they've started the process they haven't finalized it so maybe we're waiting on a piece of documentation proof residency whatever it may be so they've started the process haven't completed it but we want to kind of plan for that secondly um we always have kids that are enrolled students that are enrolled that after 10 days they still
188haven't shown up so maybe they moved and they never told the school division that they moved so really the september 30 number that we report to the state is usually the number that we we go with but i just wanted to give you some tentative um updates so you can kind of see the direction we're moving from out of the the coveted year uh so uh for k through five at the elementary level currently looking at twelve thousand uh four hundred and seventy five students which is about eighty nine point three percent of our program capacity at middle school currently have seventy three hundred which is eighty nine 89.4 percent of our capacity and at high school uh currently an enroller in the queue is 10 339 which is 97.1 percent of our capacity and
189last disclaimer is we still have a couple weeks before school starts so we're going to have more that are going to enroll we could have some that drop some will never complete the q process or they they do all complete so those are just rough numbers right now and we'll uh we'll get you better numbers once the first couple weeks of the school year settles down thank you very much for the elementary school elementary elementary and middle were both almost spot on at 89.3 89.4 so just below 90 percent missile we had talked uh previously about expecting a higher number of um kindergarteners and first graders do we have any information on that whether those numbers are higher than you know they were in prior years uh yeah so our i know our kindergarten enrollment
190we've been tracking it weekly and i'm trying to remember based on what we had projected we were approaching about close to 95 percent of what we projected already so it's and and when kindergartners enroll it's pretty much a lock that they're coming we don't have kindergartners are going to drop out like we do at the other levels that have we've carried up from the previous year so we don't normally see such a big drop in enrollment after the 10 days for kindergarteners so we're looking to hit the projection that we had for kindergarten so pretty much in line with an increase from the prior year any other questions all right hearing none so are you going to hire ms randall absolutely i trust her with any of my trainers guaranteed to win good evening madam
191chair board members dr jones just wanted to share with you some comments about the startup school as related to transportation first thing is thank you miss randall for attending our job fair open house event we had a great day just really quickly we had about 31 people that we interviewed for the evening out of that 31 we had 13 actually start class on monday with the rest with the anticipation at our next class of august 26th so that for us was a really good win-win for us so far we have about 166 active contracted drivers we're still building our routes but our magic number that we want to stay close to and under is about 200 and so that creates the void for the driver vacancy that we're hoping that we will be able to
192feel through internal and with the new prospective drivers that we have in class now so we may start the a little short but by october and november we're hoping that we will have our staff a little bit more staffed good deals so next thing is just about opening school what's important for our families to know about getting of the bus assignment and moving forward so the first thing is all of assignments will be available on our versatrain e-link website august 2nd so that day families can log in and if everything is successful with their students fully being enrolled within the synergy system we should be able to provide them a bus assignment all students must be enrolled in their synergy system that's been a big concern but i think we are managing that well that
193the students must be enrolled in synergy in order to receive a bus assignment the next thing is our communication right now we have an online tracking system that we're going to put forth to better use and so we're asking our fan our community to utilize this online tracking system this system allows us to provide a faster more timely response for bus stop changes any safety issues that may appear in the neighborhood we are asking our families to use that we're going to encourage our families when they call to use this system it's a great system i think we want to better utilize it this year than what it's been in the past it allows us to track the parents get a notification they get an email we even get follow-up so if there's a delay
194in acting on those incidents we get a reminder to do it so we want to create a again a win-win situation for our families during the first week of school as the buses roll we're asking all our family members to have a little patience we know with the elementary beginning as the first tier parents want to be out they may want to have that special time with their child as they get on the bus but please know that we still have to get our kids to school on time so we're asking for our families to be flexible but still maintain the expectation which is to have our kids at the bus stop at least five minutes before the scheduled time for the stop any head start kindergarten elementary school student all will need a little
195time before boarding so we're just asking for that flexibility that patience from everyone that we are working but we do want to honor the respect that kids are starting their first week of school the last thing is the additional bus assignments this is the form that is required if there's an additional stop other than the home so this is day care after school stops from that standpoint that must be in our office before we can actually do a bus assignment so i realize we have been getting bombarded in my office but i also know that we get another bunch of these forms during open house so as soon as parents know about alternative stop we're asking that they get that information to the school and so the school can share it with us in our
196so therefore we can then um assign the students this stop that's needed from them so from there that's all we have we're going to post this on our website we're going to tweet this out on our social media platform just so that everyone understands what our expectations are and what we're going to look like during that first couple weeks of school any questions any questions just thank you yes thank you my pleasure my pleasure and and like i said you'll probably be contacted about the bus driver written the safety but as you know people are driving like crazy out there and i just think that is something that we want to get ahead of i mean you need to get them all assigned about and we want to work though i know with the sheriff's
197department and they were very open so i figured i wasn't stepping on your toes making that little pitch thank you thank you oh yeah i also wanted to say that the trainers that you had they're not just mine but the other ones that you had they were drivers that i've known for years in the county drove my kids or i've just seen them what have you they were very complimentary about you in the job that you're doing but also just hearing them talk about the satisfaction they have with their job was also heartwarming to hear but um to even hear them say i hope we have their day because for my kids and to hear that you know that level of compassion that those drivers have for the kids and and they're calling them their
198kids you know just like a teacher does i did and um but to hear that you know i i can't wait to do dare day was the one thing that they all mentioned that they wanted to have back because they like turning the radio on on the outside of their bus for the kids to hear music and they like to give them you know have a cooler of drinks on their bus for their kids so it was just really really nice they were awe they're awesome trainers good good spokespeople for the job absolutely i hear good stories every single day every single day great thank you so much for everything all right whoops i got sorry my screen went away give me just a second all right dr jones anything else that you want to
199share okay thank you uh our next uh single action item uh is shown is there a motion motion to approve the changes um the uh the there was policies for amendment policies for repeal there was a new policy for adoption which i believe that mr barnett has addressed and then there were some policies with no changes motion to approve the 4 000 policies as presented second amended right it's been moved and seconded any um follow-up i just have a question and this is with the proposed revised policy 4903 i don't know if this is a typo or i'm missing something but it's the uh the penultimate paragraph it's it says in accordance with the act blah blah blah in order to perform their assigned responsibilities effective january 1st 1995. that's uh is that typo it's
200carried over remember uh so recall when discussed at government's committee the this was a combined policy yeah this is where we were combined we were taking language from the old 4401 moving in here which is more proper home for it and so this was just carrying that same language from 4401 which was adopted by the board effective january 1 1995. so the statement is still accurate even if it seems this board is authorizing the implementation of the program effective january 1st 1995. this board can only do something during our term i don't i don't think this board has any authority to do something retroactively particularly i mean i wasn't even on the board in 1995. that's really ancient history that's right i didn't come on until 2000. i just questioned that that we're authorizing something
201effective january 1 1995. i guess my question is it has been authorized since january 1 1995 it will continue to be authorized in perpetuity with this change i guess i don't i wouldn't say anything would be in perpetuity it's i know the law against perpetuities as well plus 21 years but but but i i i just it's a very bad law school joke for anyone watching at home i'm not comfortable authorizing something when i wasn't even on the board even if i if it was during the time i was on the board i just but this was a policy that was in existence it's just been combined with this one so this this portion of it is effective january 1st 1995 but it's from an existing you steal my candy the board authorizes so that
202means this board is authorizing this effectiveness it just since we're specifically revising this it seems that it should make common sense but today's with the date when they revise it or we can just say the board authorizes the implementation you know of this that's right because it's going to be effective as of today that's right can we do that yeah and scratch effective january 1995. what if we just scratch that and then just we just have your stretchers today and then it's all in the present there's still more questions but we'll note that as an amendment if it passed to strike the effective january 1st 1995 language on in that second page of uh 4903 okay right ms young you had a question it may not be for patrick it's just in general when i
203looked at all these policies they were all employee related i just wanted to ask if we're done with the student um we're still on it's still ongoing i just wanted to know we would come okay gotcha thank you so uh i'll speak with this and if i'm saying anything wrong mrs boatwright can come up and correct me we've been going through the the titles the one thousands and two thousands are complete three thousands and four thousands are mid progress we have more four thousands that will come later and then we'll get into the five thousands etc just the four thousands happen to be all employee related okay so um 2021 you know just making sure they come to me all right thank you any other comments i have one okay if we could just say
204the board hereby authorizes then i think it's clear that we're authorizing it now okay or or just say you know effective immediately would be the same but i just don't hear about it you know the date was probably there because that was when it first went in i don't i don't know i wasn't here even though i'm so old i still wasn't there um then but if we say we hereby authorize and i think then it's clear that we are now authorizing it to be you're the lawyer too right i am a lawyer mrs b ryan is just in the back of the room well you're the lawyer thank you for hiding from me okay so let me just clarify so it is going to be the board hereby authorizes going back to that same
205paragraph in 4903 and is that it but still deleting the date yeah take out make it up take out the comma after responsibilities and delete the rest of the sentence effectively yeah thank you is that very indulgent okay um i just have one other um comment with regard to the telework policy i just would like to um and i apologize that i did not bring them tonight um the county also passed a telework policy as well for county employees and they had a form or something about sort of the um adequacy of their workspace and they had to sign off sort of like that i um like i said i i'm not anything to change but we always do talk about are we similar and i know we have different um things but i was
206just wondering if you wouldn't mind reaching out to their hr because i think i thought their form at least laid out some of the things that we have talked about with telework um and um anyway i just wanted to note that that they had just recently i think it passed unanimously and so there were just some other things like i said doesn't change what's here but i did find those forms um and attachments interesting that we may want to consider as part of the implementation sure we did we did intend to have a form uh as part of a supervisor employee may not have to reinvent the wheel but i'm happy i'm happy to reach out to ms wagner and uh and uh see what they can share i think it was at the first
207meeting in july that it was at least brought up so that would be um so but some consistency is always good sure with regards to what miss hazard was saying when you say establish eligibility requirements would that be that for a form or would that be sort of like the written requirement would there be that uh the eligibility requirements would be things that we would just delineate within the regulation that we would adopt to uh implement this policy um and then the form would be more about the agreement between the supervisor and the employee thank you that'd be perfect yes ms healey okay this is a lawyer question you can ask the audience if you like call okay come on come on are we doing a socratic seminar this one come on lisa why does
208it say should rather than shout because should is discretionary i mean you might as well say may is saying should i mean should is not mandatory if these are the criteria that we want to be included in the regulations and the guidelines would we not want to say shall we that is uh policies are at the discretion on the board miss haley so if you would like to make that wording change i would certainly support it why it was so why is there is there any intent to have this be discretionary and not include all of these items or is the intent to include all of these factors the intent is that these four bullets are the expressed intent of the board as to what the policy should be well then i would suggest dr
209chase has been longer than most so she knows where i'm i'm going i have this this thing if if we want to require it we have to say okay so hearing um this i know that the motion has been made i if there would be a modification to incorporate the changes as discussed with respect to 4114 and i believe 49.03 so are we including shower sure you're substituting shallow for sure so substitute yes 4903 we are striking the date january 1st 1995 and at the beginning of the paragraph adding we hereby authorize and for 4114114 we are saying telemarketing telework guidelines shall um and those four bullet points and as those are the only changes that i think the board has do you know who the seconder was miss um is randall do you agree
210to those changes i do all right any further discussion hearing none all those in favor please say aye aye any opposed motion carries unanimously all right moving on to our information items but i do call um i'm gonna group these somewhat if we look at information items 12.01 and 12.02 these are related to our really our mental health needs meeting those requirements the reason they are separated is they are two different companies um i believe that as you can see the um there has been a request to immediately uh authorize this i didn't know if the first two somewhat ran together if there is any questions i'm just i'm going to go ahead and throw a motion out there move to move information items 12.01 and 12.02 to action as requested by staff and they
211would become 1102 and 1103. it's been moved and seconded to move those to action all those in favor please say i i any opposed motion carries unanimously are uh so with regard to 12 points excuse me 11.022 and 11. um the school psychologist any questions regarding that particular item so are we gonna i'm just curious um we seem to be having a hard time recruiting psychologists is that an ongoing issue and what how are we is are there any how are we addressing that so that we aren't having to go through agencies yes it's our hopes every year and it's been an ongoing issue and it's a national issue it's not just the stafford or virginia issue we've worked very very hard with patrick and his team we've worked very very hard with our psychologist
212coordinator we're reaching out to universities very early on as a matter of fact we're reaching out to them now for next year we bring on interns and we try to grab them as quickly as we can working with mr fulmer and his team in regards to doing a study on regards to the pay if we need to take a look at that piece so we're doing our efforts unfortunately they're just not coming on board but again this is across the the state and i've talked to other region 3 directors who are in a lot worse shape than we are they can't even find them at all so do we use tuition assistance uh do we offer to pay down student loans or offer them any uh incentives as far as student loans go for psychologists
213yeah yeah it's the same available light that's for all licensed staff okay so that may be something fab might want to look at oh you're doing it already we just started our license staff so it's all licensed so that does include the psychologist no no i mean the uh you know looking at how we can attract thank you yes this has been a this has been an issue as long as i can remember yes ma'am we've never been able to fill all our psychologists but we have patrick now no pressure patrick no pressure and then once you find them we keep growing we need more [Laughter] i know i know i want to give a lot of credit to dr hummer and his team for the outreach they do to schools the preparers psychologists counselors
214social workers they're incredibly engaged in trying to identify interns that we can come to bring in to them they've been great partners to us in that regard and very active in trying to source campus so mr hummer basically what he's saying um if anything goes wrong it's you it's on me [Laughter] all right well okay are we moving to approve i was good to see you yeah move to approve um now 1102 and 1103. exactly award of the contract of maxim and award of the three continents of salient health yep i've heard a second any further uh questions hearing none all those in favor please say aye aye any opposed motion carries unanimously moving to now what will be 12.01 which is regarding a contract to the college board again there is some urgency with
215regard to this one move to move item 12.01 formerly 12.03 to action as 1104. second all right it's been move uh requested to move this to action all those in favor please say aye aye any opposed motion carries unanimously now we're going to move to approve the contract to college board that's your second it's been moved in second any questions about this uh particular item all right hearing none all those in favor please say i i any opposed motion carries unanimously all right our next um item is regarding some placement fees for teachers again i believe this is of uh time sensitivity could could we just get a little information about this program before we talk about moving it i agree yep come on up they were both exciting um so uh this year we
216entered into an agreement with participate learning which uh is the dba for uh the center for international education it's based out of chapel hill north carolina used to also operate as virginia international uh uh i forget the vif i forget the item was so uh stafford partnered with the then viaf years ago it's been quite a bit since uh we partnered with them but they are a long-standing long-respected uh j-1 visa authorized sponsor from the state department they go and they do recruitment of experienced teachers internationally uh to come and teach in the united states on j-1 visas which are good for three years extendable up to five so they go and do the recruitment the screening to have a highly qualified pool once you have an agreement with them you have access to their
217candidate pool and you pay per hire this placement fee um which is on its face quite high but what we try to do in the memo that i provided and thank you to mr fulmer and to mrs o'brien and his team for working to make sure we got the numbers right on this is to demonstrate that this is functionally budget neutral because uh vif uh now participate learning teachers are expressly excluded from vrs and so employer contributions to vrs are not encumbered when we hire these individuals teachers on j-1 visas are expressly excluded from the employer portions of social security and medicaid taxes under irs guidelines so that cost is averted and the thing that makes participate learning a good partner in this is that people on j-1 visas are required to have very particular
218forms of health insurance coverage including global coverage which can be expensive it's administratively i'm going to use a very technical term annoying to keep tabs on participate learning takes care of the insurance piece themselves so they assure that their they will provide the coverage for the folks that you hire through their partnership and so we avert those costs as well um so we had an estimate of what the savings is on that that is admittedly an estimate but it works out to the fact that the costs we alert are about equal to uh the cost of the placement fee um the we were very excited with the folks that we hired they're in three schools the principals are over the moon uh with the folks they've been able to source i just might make a
219picture all right i just love this because i remember talking to um tim kaine uh what's up dr chase and i um we were we met and this is something that with lisa also that we brought up and so i'm very intrigued about this and number two um the fact that they speak a different language including the english itself it's amazing because they bring that culture multicultural relevance that we need here in the school system so i'm totally for this thank you for um doing this so i just want to say at falmouth years ago we had a teacher who came in from new zealand and um he is now an award-winning principal in prince william county but uh he was really good he was really wonderful and he lives in stafford all right so
220i'm in favor thanks okay all right it sounds like an excellent program i think um motion to approve emotions oh motion to move it to action first i thought we did that so it will become 11.05 right from then you make that motion no i think she said let's ask the questions and then then before prior to moving it to action yeah i thought we made the motion already too second okay all right this is to move this uh 11.05 right and i'll move to proof 11.05 oh let's first let's know we've got to move it there all those in all right motion carries now mission motion to approve 1105. all right all those in favor please say aye aye all right motion carries unanimously thank you mr burnett our next i'm item is now
221fight is 12.01 um and this is about purchasing bulk fuel um i believe we all know that we will need to do that so that we keep our buses rolling any questions on this one all right hearing none um next one is about the budget development uh calendar i know that's mr former and um i don't know if anyone from fab has or if anybody hasn't have anything to offer here this um this was reviewed by the fab and um with the addition of the work session on the 17th um there are you know the fab agreed to this this calendar all right all right everything looks good we'll bring it back anybody have any questions oh i could ask questions now i couldn't ask questions at the fab meeting you were you were you
222were a listener no i'm just kidding i'm just kidding no i'm good do you have any questions no then stop whining [Laughter] the only the only suggestion i would have but we do this every year so i know several of my colleagues will laugh when we say perhaps we could put on our calendar for the joint school board presentation to the board of supervisors not being at the three o'clock meeting perhaps we might want to make that request in writing early just a thought and i'm happy to help facilitate that but every year we go through the three o'clock meeting presentation meaning many of our parents and staff cannot attend so that's my only i won't call an edit just a well the other issue is is that the uh board of supervisors calendar is
223a little different this year too so under maybe we could bring it up at the joint working session it behaves this is something yeah if you ever have yeah you have one maybe exactly all right but just it's more of just about to note certainly because it always happens and it's like february seems like an awful long way away right now they'll be here all right let's see thank you um and then an appointment of a delegate and alternate to the virginia school board association annual delegate convention i will let those attending by next time come up here there you go it can um so i will let you all work through it so i want somebody else to have that opportunity in person my suggestion to the board this evening is that we will
224go ahead and adjourn since we will be meeting next week possibly we might at 6 30 have a um meeting on um a potential close session agenda i think that might be um in order stay tuned when this comes back i'd suggest we go ahead and put on there that we would approve the attendance of the conference by any new members on the board because we know we're going to get several new members and that rather than have us have to do that later in the year oh yeah that's a good idea all right if not um we will we will be meeting next week the um august 4th at 7 00 with a placeholder for board members as a potential 6 30 uh closed session prior to all right thank you all right everybody
225have a good evening and we are adjourned thank you chair woman