001I'd like to call to order the January 12, 2026 annual organizational meeting, special meeting of the York County School Board. [clears throat] Good evening. As this is our first meeting of the new year, tonight's meeting provides an opportunity [clears throat] to reflect on our shared purpose, reaffirm our commitment to serving our students and community, and carry out the organizational actions required to ensure board is prepared for the year ahead. As we go into our organizational business and our annual elections, I will now turn to Dr. Carol to lead us in the election of board chair. >> Right. Thank you, Madam Chair. Board members, I open the floor to nominations for board chair. I would like to nominate Mr. Pyovich. >> Like to second that nomination. That was slow. >> All right. Are there any other
002nominations? Hearing none. The floor is now closed for nominations. [clears throat] Thank you. Um so we have Mr. Pyovich has been nominated to serve as board chair and no additional nominations were received. Miss Howard, please pull the board. A >> motion was made by Miss Skidwin, seconded by Mr. Richardson to nominate Mr. Pyovich for board chair. Mr. Schaefer. >> Yes. >> Mr. Richardson. >> Yes. >> Mr. Povich. >> Yes. >> And Mrs. Goodwin. >> Yes. >> Congratulations to our new chair. [applause] >> Oh, yeah. You got change. >> Yeah. cuz you got to leave. [clears throat] >> Why don't you recess in a second and do the organization change now? >> Yeah, we're going to do we're recessing. >> Yeah. >> Vice chair. >> Oh, so my I would like to open the floor for
003the nomination for the vice chair. >> I'd like to nominate James Richardson. >> Okay. Do I have a second? >> I'll second. >> Okay, Miss Nichols. >> Motion was made by Mr. Pyitch and seconded by Mr. Schaefer. >> No, I I was first. >> Kim was second. >> Oh my goodness. I apologize. Okay. A motion was made by Mrs. Goodwin and seconded by Mr. Schaefer to nominate >> Jesse. >> I nominate >> Motion was made by Mr. Schaefer and seconded by Mrs. Goodwin to nominate Mr. Richardson as >> vice [clears throat] chair. >> Yes. >> Mrs. Goodwin. >> Yes. >> Mr. Schaefer. Yes. >> Mr. Richardson. >> Yes. >> And Mr. P. >> Yes. Congratulations. >> Congratulations. [applause] >> So, we're going to take a brief recess uh to switch chairs. >> Switch chairs. That's
004right. [clears throat and laughter] >> We are returning back to our meeting. Uh first of all I just want to say thank you to Miss Glen for a year and a half service to this board uh for such a doing an amazing job. Great job with the school division and leading us in the past year and a half. Also want to say thank you to my board members uh colleagues for trusting me and giving me this opportunity to serve the York County School District for another year. All right, moving on with uh our next organizational item is resolution 26-01 approving schoolboard organizational business for calendar year 2026. I will now turn to the superintendent for our comments. >> All right. Thank you, Mr. Povich. The organizational [clears throat] resolution was posted to board docs last
005week. I know the board members have had the opportunity to review these documents ahead of time, but um are there there may be questions or comments relating to the resolution or any of the attachments that include the policy review timeline uh the uh work session and regular meeting calendar and committee a table of committee assignments. So, we'll open it up to any questions you have. >> [clears throat] >> Well, first of all, I need a motion uh and a second to approve resolution number 26-01. >> I'd make a motion to approve resolution 26-1. >> I'll second actually we opening for the comments. Do you guys have any comments or questions? >> I don't miss Howard. >> Okay. A motion was made by Mr. Richardson and seconded by Mr. Schaefer to approve resolution 2601 approving county
006school board organizational business calendar for 2026. Mr. Schaefer. >> Yes. >> Mrs. Goodwin. >> Yes. >> Mr. Richardson. >> Yes. >> And Mr. Pyovich? >> Yes. >> Motion pass. Four to zero. >> All right. We're going to move on to the presentations. Dr. Kell, would you introduce our first presentation? >> Yes. >> Thank you. Mr. Bill Bowen, chief financial officer, will provide an update on the governor's proposed budget for FY26 [clears throat] and FY27, as well as an update on the superintendent's proposed capital improvements program for FY27. Mr. Bone, good evening, Chairman [clears throat] Pyich, members of the board, Dr. Carroll. Um this evening's presentation is an overview of of the FY26 FY27 budget outlook with a focus on state revenue projections, standards of quality funding, lottery and Senate and categorical accounts and key budget
007development milestones. The intent this evening is to share updated information and flag areas of risk or uncert uncertainty as we continue to work through the budget development process. And I'll conclude the presentation with a brief update on the superintendent's proposed CIP. It's important to note um as we go through the budget information that we have an outgoing governor of one party who's presented a budget uh to uh another party and certainly we expect some changes to occur. There will be different priorities. Um how that might impact K12 at this time is uncertain. U probably the first look we'll see at at the new administration's budget priorities will occur crossover which will [clears throat] happen in February. So let me begin um with uh average daily membership. As we know average daily membership is a significant
008budget driver uh for state funding. This chart shows historical ADM trends and current budget assumptions. So if we look at FY26 they're highlighted in green is what our current budget is based on 13,051 students. However, with the new projections um and with the governor's budget, that number has been decreased to 13,8 33 students fewer. And I'll walk you through the impacts of our current budget as a result of that. And then furthermore, when we look at FY27, VDOE is projecting um a further reduction of another 18 students. So, we're looking at a total of 51 from the current budget to FY27. So, this is the first part of FY26. What we're looking here in the first column, FY26 original, that's our current budget, 13,51 students. The expected budget is what we have right now with
009the governor's release, 13,8 students. There's the change of 33 students. The majority of the accounts that we see here are largely impacted based on the reduction of those 33 students with the exception of this at risk. As you can see there, there's a there's a note C lottery section below. So, as part of the governor's release, there's also technical amendments that are made to all revenues. Um, so what's happened here is that lottery revenues are actually exceeding the current forecast. And so what the state will often do is they will shift programs in SOQ down to lottery funded programs. And that's what's happening here. We actually started with 193,000. I'll show you what we end up in the lottery is 182. So there is about $11,000 impact on the loss of those students. But they
010are shifting the the bulk of this program now to um to the lottery program >> and that's going to be carried on from this point on >> for the for the remainder of the year. >> Yes, sir. >> Now what happens when lottery revenue drops? >> Well, historically the the state has been conservative in their estimates and we we see these changes occur this time of year. It's just a movement of money. Then what it does it with with additional lottery revenue and then shifting those programs to lottery it frees up additional general funds which then the state uses in other areas of the state budget not necessarily K12. >> So this is the incentive in the categorical programs. Um not a lot of change here except for one program and that's highlighted here in
011this bonus payment. Now this is something that the governor proposed for FY26 that came out in December. the there's an issue that we're working through right now because the way the current language reads is that school divisions will have to certify by June 1st that they have provide provided a 2% bonus. Um what we're not seeing here is also that there's a there's a required local match of almost 700,000. Now we all know that we have more um positions than this than the SOQ's required. So the $1.2 million doesn't cover completely our cost. There's additional calls for those positions that are not covered by the the standards of quality. That's not unique to to York County. About 98% of the other school divisions also have positions that exceed the SOQ requirements because the SOQ's are
012minimal standards. So, um we really need to look at this and work through the budget process to see how this um plays out. What we understand and what I've heard from other finance colleagues who have talked to the Department of Education is that there's language, we haven't seen it yet, but if you if school divisions exceeded the required raise for 25 and 26. So in 25 and 26, we were required to provide a 3% raise in order to receive the state compensation funding. We did that in in 25 we provided an average of five and a half and last year we provided an average of three and a half. So we've provided 9% when we were only required to pro provide 6%. So what the state we understand may be saying is that if you
013exceeded your raises by 2% then you've qualified for this money and you don't even have to give the bonus but you've you've at least qualified for the money. But I'll walk you through because as we saw on the first slide, we had a lot of accounts that were in the negative. And if if the language is indeed allow allows us to capture that money, then we would still be able to provide a bonus, but it it might be much less than the 2%. So, hitting to the um lottery and preschool accounts. Um couple of items here I just want to show you. Um, this is the at risk [clears throat] funding that came down from SOQ's. We were had we were at 193, we're now at 182 special education regional tuition. This is the uh
014funding that we're reimbured for our students that go to New Horizons. We're seeing a decrease here, but this is because we're we have less student participation than what we previously had. So, there should be a corresponding decrease. It probably won't be equal to the amount of revenue that we're losing. However, there should be less expenditures, but that's something we have to drill down on through the budget process. >> So, we sending less students to the New Horizon special ed and or it's just overall number of students. >> So, there's an application that we have to fill out and what we do is we have to we capture um those students who have significant services >> and if they reach a certain benchmark then those those students go on to that application. So, we have fewer
015students that have reached that benchmark for this year. Okay. And so a total increase in state funds would be 719,000. That's can that's assuming that the bonus money can be used for um something other than a bonus or it it's coming to us without further restrictions. So if that money is available, if we gave a bonus to every employee, it'd be about $350 to $400. Now we could do some things to change it. Like in the past, we have given part- timerrs one amount, we've given full-time employees a different amount, and and we've also restricted the bonus to those employees who who started before January 1st. So, they've been with us basically more than half the year. So, those are things that we'll be continuing to work through throughout the budget process. And uh Dr.
016Carol will have a recommendation for the board in February. That's FY26. So, are there any other questions about FY2 26? >> All these are going to change [laughter] >> most likely. >> He expected there could be some changes. So, moving on to FY27, [clears throat] we see here that um just again comparing to our current budget, we're seeing a difference of 51 students, but we're not seeing quite the change in the [clears throat] in in in the standards of quality accounts. So the reason being is that this was a rebenchmarking year for education, the first year of the bienium always is. And the governor in his budget fully funded the rebenchmarking. So you can see basic aid has gone up significantly um as well as some of our other accounts. One of the things a
017couple things I wanted to point out here and this is to do the VRS um related account and group life which is also part of VRS. Um the BRS pension rate is a significant budget driver for K12 and as I mentioned earlier in the year the board of trustees recommended a 2.1% reduction in the rate that we pay on behalf of our SOQ funded employees because that the the governor has accepted that rate. It's also tied to funding because the the the state provides us funding for the VRS for those SOQ funded positions. So, we lose a little bit of state revenue, but where we gain it is in the local um funding that we pay for our employees. So, we should save on local funds at least a million and a half dollars. And
018again, that number is likely to go up, but we'll have to work through that process through throughout the month of January to determine exactly what that number is. So, on the categorical and incentive accounts here for 27, uh the big change here is what we see with compensation supplement. Um last year the state provided us $4.5 million and that's always a more significant number in the second year of the bienium. Um so what happens is the state looks at as part of the rebenchmarking process they look at these raises. Now the full $4 million didn't make it into rebenchmarking because the rebenchmarking always looks at the past previous three years not the previous year. So there is some uh factor that's taken into account for compensation but we do lose a significant piece of that
019for uh FY27. >> So do excuse me do they do average of three years? >> No it's it's it's three years back is what they look at. It's one one >> and then on the lottery funded programs um couple of things I wanted I did talk about special education regional tuition. We're seeing the same reduction here. Um, but what I wanted to focus on the lottery program is really the K3 primary class size reduction. You can see it's almost increased over $900,000. And just to briefly touch base about that, this is um a program that is optional for schools to participate or school divisions to participate. You can see here I have two schools that are highlighted in yellow. McGrder and Yorktown Elementary. Those school divisions have been eligible for this funding for more than
02010 years. is probably closer to 20 years. And what we receive once once a school has a three-year average of free lunch eligibility, not free and reduced, but free, then we receive additional funding to reduce the class to reduce the class sizes to teach teacher pupil ratios. So we've had that um for many years for those two schools in FY27 because of the percentages uh increase we have five additional schools that have qualified for this funding that's Coventry Grafton and Bethlair Seafford and Wallerl. So this is what we have to do um moving forward. One, HR has to look at the current teacher ratios at those schools and we have to determine how many additional teachers are needed to meet these restrictions. And then once we do that, we have to look at where those
021teachers uh what schools those teachers go to and then do we have the class size to expand. So it may be um that when we look at this we might not be able to add all the teachers but I will tell you we don't like to turn money away. So we will be looking at this very hard to make sure that we can try and capture as much >> they get they give us money for the reason because it's free and reduced that needs more uh attention given if you will and so that's why they give us the money to for the teachers and all that. >> Exactly. And when you're saying the class size, you mean the space. >> The class space. Yes. Classroom. [clears throat] >> Now, another thing to note here is
022um and this is really for all of us, for the community, too. We're seeing a significant change in the economic disadvantaged population in the county >> and understand that when those numbers change, it comes with additional requirements, resources, remediation, tutoring, um some some social supports. Um so this is something that we need to pay attention to. This is going to likely drive our our budget uh in the next couple of years as we address these increasing populations. And one last thing to note is um while 30% is the first benchmark. Um York York Elementary has reached a secondary benchmark. You can see that the funded per pupil amount is $821, but for Yorktown Elementary it's,68 because they've reached a different benchmark. And I don't know if it's 40 or 45, but they've reached it. And
023so that's something else to keep an eye on. But I thought this is good information to know because we will do everything within our our power to to capture this funding, but it might be a challenge. [laughter] So >> you're saying um this amount we we get that money that [clears throat] would be beneficial. We'd have that money, but at the same time it's going to cost us on the other side by having additional resources needed for those children. Correct. So, does it end up being a wash or do we end up being short? >> It depends on [clears throat] it depends on the other resources that we need to add. >> Okay. >> Um, it could be since we added new teachers to the budget for this year and we didn't reach our uh
024budgeted um number. It may be we just have already had the teachers in the budget and we can just carry them forward and no additional teachers are needed for this for this. But then we need to look at the additional resources that will be needed classrooms. >> And again, when we did we did a cursory review um and it's based on January enrollment. I mean, we don't know what's going to happen between now and August. Um you know, last year the the Department of Education was projecting a 400 student increase. We didn't like that number and we had a study with with Welen Cooper done. We actually reduced that number several times. We we didn't meet it. It didn't make sense why we didn't meet it because we only [clears throat] went up 85 students.
025I'm not comfortable with seeing declining enrollment. The economy is still strong. Um York County is a destination school division. I I would be surprised if we ended up losing students, but I don't have any other information to base on changing that number. It would be a conservative number. Probably [clears throat] be a good number that we can use. Have the have the standards changed for the what uh determines what economically disadvantaged is? I mean isn't it isn't it like 200% of the um poverty line? >> I do not >> I don't know the specific number but but in this case this is those that are um I believe they are direct certifications. So when you get direct certification because it talks about community eligibility provision those those numbers are coming from department of social services
026those that are are have applied for wick um and snap >> those standards haven't changed >> right those haven't changed >> okay >> and then um I wanted to share with you some good news um I often talk about the [clears throat] children services act and I'll just say it again this is a program for students with severe um special needs. So what we try to do is we try to educate our students in the school division, but if we can't provide the required services, then we have an option to New Horizons. If New Horizons can't provide those services, then the students go privately placed. And you can see from 2016 to 23, we had a relatively modest increase. No, no significant swings. And then we get to 2024 and we saw a 15 student
027increase. Now I will say this coming out of co even though we didn't see the numbers jump significantly we saw cost across the board increasing particularly in the area of salaries and private contracting services. So we did see even though our numbers with the enrollment [clears throat] there in the program were relatively the same the numbers were increasing exponentially. So uh in 2024 though we see this 15 student increase and we saw significant cost increase. But what I want to point out is that in in two years um the great work the special education department's done, we've pulled back 10 of those students. And while we will always have a need to send students there, um what happened in 2024 is that New Horizons was an was not an option for us that year. They
028were having severe uh staffing challenges as we all continue to do in special ed. But um they were leaving YCSD and we were having direct placements into private placements. So that became a real challenge for us and it takes a lot of work to have these students placed but it's even takes more work to pull them back and the work that uh Tmaine Hop Hopkins and her team has done has just been amazing to pull back the 10 students that we've we've pulled back this year. >> What would be an example just is for a private placement. When you say private placement what would that look like in terms of a student who could be served say at a new horizons what would that >> Yeah. So um by law children have to be educated
029in the least restrictive environment and so it's a continuum >> [clears throat] >> um and as students um if they if they are not finding academic success in one of our classrooms the IEP team will come together and they'll talk about what is what is what is it that they need in order to meet their academic [clears throat] needs. And so oftent times if they're in one of our self-contained classrooms and that they're not finding success there, we would look at like a New Horizons. Sometimes New Horizons, a student may go to New Horizons and they're still not finding that academic success and the IEP team would come together and possibly look at a private day. Sometimes it the team may decide to go right from one of our programs to a private day setting
030just based upon the needs of the student. It could be something that um a child with autism who has unique um needs that can only be served through that private placement. Um it could be behavior related. It just depends on the uniqueness of the situation. Um but we try everything we can to provide instruction in the least restrictive environment as possible. And then um finally just again the review of the budget calendar. Uh general general assembly convenes on Wednesday. Um what we're really looking for our next big um event is crossover that occurs in February. That's the first opportunity. We'll see how the the the new administration's priorities will impact K12. And that concludes the budget [clears throat] update. Any questions? would seeing how we have one party rule in all three [clears throat] areas,
031does that mean that we should get quicker turnaround for a budget to come back to us? >> They typically work well together when they're all the same party. Um we're looking forward to that happening. Um as you know, we've had budgets passed um >> July, >> late June, even September. So >> we're we're hopeful that we can have a budget, a final state budget by May. All right. Thank you, Mr. B. Appreciate it. [clears throat] Uh, we have one more one more update on the superintendent's proposed CIP. Um, just real quick, uh, thank you to the board. Thank you to the board of supervisors. They approved the funding for the facilities study update um, or for the facility study. We reached out to the county to see if we could piggy back on their contract
032and and they told us no because they they recently conducted a a facility study. So we we are looking at another contract that we are currently under and seeing if we can use that uh as a vehicle. If so, then we will probably commence um here in the next week or so to uh to start that process. We know we're working under a short timeline. The board of supervisors will approve our CIP. Well, the school board will approve it at the January regular set uh meeting. Then the board of supervisors will approve it in May. So, we do have some time for the study to be performed, but we will certainly trying to get ahead of this the county approving the final approval. Um, if there if there's any subsequent changes after January, uh, particularly
033as it relates to the facility study, we will bring those updates back to the board. And so, that's a CIP update. If there's any questions about any CIP projects, be more than happy to answer any questions. >> And Mr. Bow and their denial was just procedural. It wasn't uh wasn't that they were denying us to to piggyback. It's we couldn't do >> correct. Correct. >> I just wanted that to be clear. >> They didn't say no. They just said no. [clears throat] >> So, Miss Bz. >> Yes. Unless there's any questions. >> Yeah. >> Well, thank you very much. >> Thank you. >> All right. So we're going to move to FI23 through 27 strategic plan academic assessment preliminary scholastic aptitude test. >> All right. Thank you, Mr. Pavich. Got to get used to that.
034Dr. Candy Skinner, chief academic officer, will present on the FY26 PSAT student performance, including the results for the PSAT for 8th and 9th grade and the PSAT NMSQT along with trend data. Dr. Skinner, >> thank you. Good evening, Chairman Pyitch, members of the board, and Dr. Carol. Thank you for providing me the opportunity to share our student outcomes on the preliminary scholastic aptitude test which I will refer to throughout the presentation as the PSAT. Um tonight's presentation will include four parts. The first we'll begin with just some background information on the PSAT. Then we're going to examine how school our school division uses PSAT data to inform and strengthen academic outcomes for advanced coursework and preparing our students for the SAT. And then um I will say uh these first two sections will look familiar
035if you've seen this presentation which we put each year on. I wanted to um provide this information because we do know we have community members who might be seeing this for the first time and in order to understand the PSAT data, I want to make sure they have a little bit of that background information in which to do so. The third section um tonight we will look at PSAT data results for this year. So our um our current students who took the PSAT um they took that in October um and we will share their results and then we will also look at the SAT results for our cohort of seniors from last year because this year seniors are still taking it. Okay. And then we'll conclude the presentation by discussing some of the ways our
036schools and the division are supporting student achievement on the PSAT and the SAT. Student performance on the PSAT is a future ready graduate key performance indicator for our school division because it helps us measure our students progress towards preparedness for the rigor of college coursework. So let's begin with a little bit of the background information and this slide may look familiar to you. Um there are four assessments included in the SAT suite. The first three as noted in the blue boxes are considered PSAT. So you have PSAT 89, PSAT 10, and PSAT National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test. We call that the NMSQT. [laughter] They all lead to the SAT test. Um, in York County, we administer the PSAT 89 to all 9th graders. We administer the NMSQT to all of our 11th graders. There's no
037charge for those assessments for our students. And if you if a family has students in grades eight or 10, they can pay to have their students also take that assessment if they choose. Um, these assessments do provide a baseline for preparing our students for the SAT. And I use that word baseline strongly, and I'll explain a little bit more about that. Um they also use this information to identify uh a student's potential for advanced coursework such as a VS placement or AP dual enrollment courses and our um IB classes. And then um this also directly supports what I shared with you last month which is the 3E framework um enrollment as part of that. [clears throat] And then lastly, the NMSQT as its name um says, it's an opportunity um when our students take this,
038they can be selected as a National Merit Semi-finalist. And if you remember, and then that allows them to compete for the National Merit Scholarship. If you remember back in October, um Dr. Carol recognized four of our semi- finalists and then 19 of our commended students. And then additionally, the last thing we really use this data for is to really help our um our our instruction department make informed choices about our curriculum options and our courses, things of that nature. Okay. So, now we'll look at this chart and this really gives us some information on how to interpret uh PSAT scores. So, the PSAT is broken into two sections. evidence-based reading and writing, which we call the ERW, and math. The benchmark score for each section increases over the suite of assessments. And so, for example,
039the ERW, the first one right there, a student must score on that PSAT 89 of 410 as a benchmark. The benchmark score is 410. Um, and so for the NMSQT, the benchmark increases to 460. And then finally on the SAT it increases to 480. So at the bottom of the slide you'll see there. So why is that important? According to the College Board, if a student meets that benchmark, they're considered to have a 75% chance of earning at least a C in their first semester college course for um classes like history, literature, social science, and writing. when you think when you go down below to the math you see that same progression of benchmark scores and you see that um college and career SAT benchmark is 530 and what that means is according to college
040board a student who scores greater 530 or greater has a 75% chance of earning at least a C in a first semester college course for algebra stats preal or calculus and then according to um college board students are considered college and career ready when they take the SAT and they meet both benchmarks and that's when you talk about like a final score which we'll talk about in just a minute. Okay, so that was kind of an overview. Now we're going to talk a little bit about how we use the PSAT data to support students academic success because we really want them to be able to um kind of go through that suite of increasing their scores and that first baseline score shows them what information they need to do that. So, as I shared earlier,
041the PSAT is a great tool to help our students become future ready. We use PSAT data to help our students um move towards that college and career readiness benchmark. We help them and look for advanced courses that they might take and we also helps them look for some career insights that they might want to think about. So, after each PSAT, the students will see receive a score report and that's the sample one that College Board provides. So on that co on that score report you'll see um several different things I'm going to kind of point out to you. All right. So the first one um for this example for this student here you'll see their total score was 1120 which places that student if you see right there in the 75th percentile and that means
042that that student scored um better than 75% of the students who took that MSQT test. The second section um shows how they did on the reading and for this particular student they scored 620 which placed them in the 60th percentile and in math of 500 which placed them in the 70th percentile. So that's very useful information for a student taking this assessment. It gives them even further information which I think is to me this is really where it's at. Um the PSAT has eight areas. So if you look at the reading and writing, there's information and ideas, craft and structure, expression of ideas, and then standard English conventions. There's four areas for math. Algebra, advanced math, problem solving, and data analysis, and then geometry, and trigonometry. So let's just look at algebra for example. For
043this student, when you look at this, you can see that algebra was 35% of that test. the student there's about 13 to 15 questions to v it vary dep on which version you get but the student's performance was between a 610 and a 670. So you can see they by the number of shaded boxes they did relatively well. That same student when you look at problem solving and data analysis you can see that their scores weren't quite as they didn't do quite as well here. This is important for the student because now they know what they can work on to improve their scores as they go through that suite of assessments. Okay. All right. So, we also use the um PSAT report to help our students identify any potential AP courses they might be good
044candidates for. And that's important because when they sit down to register, the counselor and families can look at that information and talk about what courses they'd like to take. But it does tell our students what they have AP potential for. It also tells us what AP courses we might want to consider offering our school division, which is very helpful. Um, we also use this information. You've heard me talk about dual enrollment quite a bit. The PSAT score can actually be used um for a student to get into taking a a DE course because currently a student should have a 3.0 cumulative GPA, but you can also use your um PSAT score to allow you to enter into DE. And then the last thing that it does, and many people don't know this, but it does
045provide our students with some career insights. Um, it doesn't tell you what career you need to do, but it does give you some good information about it's like a snapshot of in demand jobs in the state of Virginia. And so it gets students kind of thinking about careers, which I think is, you know, important. On this report you can see it does [clears throat] it shows interest area. It gives career examples. It gives a median yearly income, a number of jobs, the job growth in the coming years and the most common educational level required. Again, this is just a snapshot and a sample, but it does give them some things to be thinking about like what are those top jobs in the state of Virginia that they want to think about. And then lastly, um,
046we use that information also when course planning with the students. Okay, so now we're going to jump in and we're going to really look now at how our students did on the PSAT that they took this October and then last year's um, SAT performance. So, as I kind of go into that, if you remember last year, I um I talked a little bit about some of our work around advanced coursework because you do see some discrepancies between how our students perform on the ERW and how they perform on the math. And so, we've done some work around that area. I'm excited to share some of that with you tonight. So, [clears throat] when we look at um our student data, we want to look at our math course sequencing and how this is impacting our
047students on the PSAT 89. On the left side of the screen, you can see the course sequencing for middle and high school. [laughter] Um the highlighted row shows the courses that a majority of our grade nine students take. And so this is algebra, geometry or advanced geometry, algebra 2, algebra 2 trick. Now when you look over here on the right and you can actually see our nth grade math course enrollment for this year. On this chart, you can see the number of students that have enrolled in each course. 76.6% 26% of our 9th graders this year are enrolled in algebra, geometry, and algebra functions and data analysis. 23.4% of our students in 9th grade are enrolled in algebra 2 and algebra 2 trick. So now we're going to look at this pie chart. And on
048this pie chart, this explains the percent of course content that's tested on the math portion of the PSAT 89. For example, the blue area you can see it's 42 and a half% of the assessment. So algebra is 42 and a half% of that assessment. Um when you think of when you look at the green that's [clears throat] geometry and trigonometry that's 12 and a half% of the assessment. So that's about 55% of the test. And when you think about that when you look at that 76.6% that's the number of students have not been exposed yet to 55% of that content. And so when they take the test, there's going to be some things that they have not seen yet when they take it. So I think that's important for us to think about. Um that
049leads to [clears throat] this next slide. So knowing the importance of advanced math coursework in middle school, the division has developed a 4-year strategic plan strategy that is specifically aimed at increasing enrollment in advanced math courses in middle school. Um, and also I will note that in March of 2025, the Code of Virginia changed where um they amended it to require school divisions to begin um looking at um requirements for advanced u math at the middle school level. Our division, I'm very proud to say, was already working on that when this came out. So it it worked for us, but there [clears throat] is some um state code around this now as well. So on this slide you can see the math course sequencing for grades six, seven, and eight. The students that are in
050the blue course sequence will take algebra in grade seven and geometry in grade 8. Those students that you see in the green course sequence have two different options. Um the students who take pre-alggebra in grade seven are on track to take algebra in grade eight. And that's an important um as I because of the information I just shared with you. All right. So this these two areas pre-alggebra 6 and pre-alggebra 7 is really where we focus on course enrollment. So what does that mean? So on this chart you can see this is our middle school math course enrollment over the last three school years. The courses include pre-alggebra grade 6, pre-alggebrade 7, algebra grade 7, algebra grade 8, and geometry. The green bar represents uh enrollment in the 24 school year. The um purple is
051the 25 school year last year. And then that mustard color is enrollment this year. So as you can see the chart shows that in um enrollment has increased across all math courses since the 24 school year and with the exception of grade um algebra grade 8 which had like a 1 percentage decline since the 24 school year. But that in itself you can see where geometry has increased, enrollment has increased. So I think that was I wanted to share that just so you can see we're doing some work around getting students earlier exposure to advanced math and you'll see that kind of play out over the next couple school years. Okay. So now we're going to turn and look at how our kids performed. So this chart shows student outcomes for this year's PSAT test
052and last year's SAT. When you look at across the we'll start with PSAT 89. You can see that 68% of our students met the benchmark for ERW, 48% met the benchmark for math, and 45% of our students who took the test met the benchmark from both. When you look across at the NMSQT, you can see that 70% of our students met the benchmark, these are grade 11 students, met the benchmark for ERW, 43% for math, and 41% met both. And I will remind you, one of the reasons that we give the PSAT twice for our students is to help prepare them for that SAT. All right. So now we're going to look at how the students that take the SAT did. So of our seniors last year that took the SAT, 90% of them met
053the ERW benchmark, 63 met the BA the math benchmark, and then 61 met both benchmarks, which means college and career ready. Additionally, when you look at how we did across compared to the state, um we outperformed the state in all three areas. So, now we're going to look at historical uh PSAT data. So, this shows historical PSAT data for the 24, 25, and 26 school year. And it goes up. So, at the top, you'll see PSAT 89 data. And as you can see on here, the ERW assessment, the percent of students meeting the benchmark has increased by 5 percentage points over the last three school years. Math, we've increased by five percentage points. And then the percent of students meeting both benchmarks has increased by six percentage points. So, we're really excited about that. When
054you look at how our students did, our 11th graders on the MSQT, we've seen a 5 percentage increase over the last three years, eight percentage points in math, and then eight percentage points um as far as students meeting both benchmarks. All right. So I will say because this is a key performance indicator for us, we do have available to our um community and our viewing audience um they can go on to our website and you can delve deeper into this data. You can um if when you go on there you can see how PSAT data did across the last four school years. You can look at it by school and you can break it out by demographic data and you can also look at our mean scores, our mean average scores. And then we also
055have that for the um NMSQT available for our community as well. All right. So now we're going to turn to the last part of our presentation which is really um how we are helping students excuse me um how the school and our divisions are supporting student achievement on the PSA2 the SAT assessment. All right. So, as I shared earlier, one of our maj major strategies is to increase student enrollment and advanced coursework in middle school level in math. Um, we know that students when they have higher access to higher level math, [clears throat] they have the opportunity to take more higher level math in high school. Um and last year the code of Virginia VDOE has um given us more guidance around this as far as who qualifies for advanced math and we've made a
056lot of changes around that area to increase enrollment in pre-alggebra 6 and pre-alggebra 7. We also know that by having more students taking advanced coursework, I want to complement our schools, they're providing more support for our students who might be taking a more rigorous course than maybe they had had before. And so we're continuing to provide those services to our students and families. Um, also these courses might look familiar to you. Um, to ensure that our students have some rigorous coursework to take in high school, this board recently approved additional advanced course offerings in our program of studies. And those are the ones that you just approved a couple months ago. Um, and that first that top one is actually a middle school class. So we're very excited about that. And then the division also
057continues to provide students and parents with important information and how to use the PSAT data to prepare for the SAT. That's really important that that report that you saw and how to interpret that and how to use that. Each of our high schools um meet with the students and they show them their PSAT report. They also show them something called big future which is in um the College Board website and there they'll go over how to interpret that data and they also connect them to something called the Khan Academy and the Khan Academy helps them look at those areas where they and gives them practice. This big big future website also helps the students explore careers. It helps them look for scholarships and financial assistance as well. Um, and then many of our schools also
058host parent universities. And I want to give a just a shout out to Grafton Middle School. And while we don't require our eighth graders to take the PSAT, a lot of our families do. About 20% of our families will pay for their eighth grader to take it. And Grain Middle School this year held a parent university for their parents and and there they showed them how to interpret that data and how to use that data to get better um each year. So, I thought that was great. And then last spring, our division, and I think I shared this with you at the time that we were planning to do this, so I wanted to kind of tell you what we did do. We designed and provided all of our students who took the PSAT with
059a free prep course. Um, we did that through our Canvas and there our students could access tools, tutorials, and things of that nature to help them with practicing and improving. We also offered virtual a virtual family session which you see there where we had um parents log on and we showed them how to use and how to interpret that data as well. This was a flyer that we distributed and I will say that we are planning to do the same this year with our families. All right. Well, that concludes my presentation. I don't know if you have any questions for me or any comments. >> That was fabulous. >> Yeah, that was good. that I mean I was looking at it and I'm like wow d this data is so interesting to see >> yeah
060well done >> Dr. Gar, thank you so much for showing this and the increase of the over the last three years is just testament to you and your staff. >> Well, and I have to I want to give full um kudos [clears throat] to our high school and our middle school and our high school teachers, our administrators. Um I really think that they've you know these assessments were new to us and I think they're really taking really helping to build family partnerships with our families because they we want our students and our families to have this information. >> Okay, >> thank you Dr. Skinner. >> Thank you. >> Um, uh, Carol, do you have any comments for the film engagements? >> Yes, I do. Uh, we have Mr. Brian Fes, uh, associate director of student
061services for elementary. He's going to present on family engagement activities in the York County School Division for the 2526 school year, including uh, historical trend data, and this is his first solo presentation. So, good luck to you, Mr. >> [laughter] >> Good evening, Chairman Povich board members, Dr. Carol. Tonight, I'll be providing an update of family engagement events um for the 2526 school year, as well as Dr. Carol said, historical data for the past few school years. So, presentation has four parts. I'll talk briefly about our connection to the strategic plan, explain our family engagement framework that we use here in the York County School Division, provide you an overview of our family engagement dashboard, which is a public facing dashboard, and then share some event highlights from this school year so far. As you
062know, one of the strategic plan priorities is collective commitment. So really getting around the the idea of students, staff, community members, and families investing in our students outcomes and then being actively engaged in relationships to support student success. Our theory of action for collective commitment and family engagement is if we maintain open, honest, and timely two-way communication with our team members, families, students, and the community. Take steps to partner with those who can support the needs of our students and schools and ensure the voice of stakeholders is heard and used in the decision-making. then we will have a community invested and engaged to support student success. I want to take a minute and highlight here. We really focus on that two-way communication. So the events that you'll see reflected tonight that I'll talk about are
063really opportunities for our families and our school staff to engage in dialogue. So what you don't see reflected, the numbers are anything that's purely a spectator event. So we don't log all of our athletic events. We don't log necessarily band and chorus performances because those are again kind of that one-way communication or one-way opportunity. Um but again really focused on that two-way communication as we share about our events in York County. Our family engagement framework um we define engagement as an intentional approach um to ensuring that families, students, team members and communities have a voice and not only have a voice but believe that their feedback and input and participation [clears throat] is meaningful and valued. So we don't want to engage just for the purpose of receiving information, but actually to take that information
064and and act on it um to improve outcomes for our students. We've set six purposes for family engagement that are grounded in the literature. The first two are about empowering families um both to support student learning and then also to support student safety and wellness as we know that both of those are key aspects of our students experiences with us. The third purpose is to connect students and families to services and support. An example of this would be our openhouse and resource fair that we host annually for our families of students with disabilities. That's coming up in mid-March. And that's really an intentional time again to connect students and their families with resources not only in the school division but in our community at large as well. The fourth purpose is to involve student and
065family voice in decision-making in the school division. We have a number of different committees that we involve um family members and community members with. And then the last two should really be reflected in every event that we do. Every event should be about fostering positive two-way communication and then certainly about building positive relationships with any any families that we encounter. [clears throat] So, I'll take a few minutes and share with you our family engagement dashboard. Um we're going to navigate through our live dashboard. This rep represents um events just for this school year so far. So, we've had 64 total events. You'll see that in the top lefthand corner. What I would like to highlight is we're not even halfway through the school year. Um, and we've already um we already have about 80% of
066our total from the events from last year. So, you can see on the trend data last year we had 80 total family engagement events. We're at 64 and again, not even halfway through the school year. Um, and that's a big commendation to our principles and building leadership teams and all of our schoolbased staff. We recognize that family engagement events often happen outside of school hours. Um, and so just a big thank you to all of our school-based teams for making these opportunities happen. Um, for our families. Also like to show that our estimated attendance for this school year is over 20,000 individual attendees at our events. Um, and I'm proud to report that um, we've already exceeded last year's total attendance um, by over 2,000 family members that have come through our doors. And we
067really view all of these as 20,000 individual opportunities to engage in that intentional two-way communication. So very proud of the work that our our schools have done there. [clears throat] When our principles and schools submit our family engagement events to us, um they select the primary purpose for the event, which you can see reflected here in the top middle. um at the beginning of the year with so many open house and orientation events, you'll see that a lot of the events are to build positive relationships, but we've also had 27 events so far this school year to empower families to support student learning. And then if you are navigating our public dashboard on your own, you are able to drill down by school and department to see this data reflected at the individual school level,
068which we won't do tonight, but um you're able to do that on your own. We track the days of the week um that each of our events are held. And then we also spend some time tracking the target audience. So you'll see that most of our or the um majority of our events so far this school year have have either been um targeted for the whole school or for a specific grade level or content area. Um but we do have events that are reflected to focus on specific reporting categories of students such as our military connected students and our gifted students. >> [clears throat] >> Finally, I'd like to highlight um three of our family engagement events so far this school year. So, in the top left corner was an event hosted at Grafton Middle
069School by our gifted education advisory committee. Um they hosted a high school advanced learning night. It was a moderated panel with um participants from our school sites and also from the governor's school to provide middle school parents with information about advanced learning opportunities in high school. So, really designed to um empower our families to support student learning. In the bottom middle is a picture from McGrder Elementary School's back to school night event held this fall. Um what was powerful about this event is that is a student upfront, a student leader in the building presenting information about the school year so far to parents. So we really try to get even at our elementary grades our student leaders involved um in this family engagement piece. And then last but not least in the top right hand
070corner is a picture from Coventry Elementary School's anti-bullying presentation um which is an example of one of our events that we've done so far this year to empower families to support student safety and wellness. So yes, it was a student performance, but the school counseling team at the end of that um shared with families ways that their students might be able to intervene or respond um if they're experiencing bullying or unwanted behavior. So these are just three highlights of 64 events so far this year. Um, again, we're proud that we're on track to exceed our events from last year and um, thank our school staff for those individual opportunities to connect with families throughout the year. Happy to take any questions that you have at this time. >> Do you include the PTA events in
071the family engagement when you do a bingo night or whatever they they may be doing as well. >> So, what we logger events specifically hosted or created by the school. Um, so if it's a PTA only event that that's not okay reflected here. um it's a collaboration event where let's say it's a school open house and PTA is a is a part of that then certainly but we just wanted to make sure we were >> I'm just thinking they're engaging the families as well so they're doing it as well >> that would just be there's even more >> even more yeah they've been doing that for years and I would I've been to several over the years and it's been great to to see that as well to bring the families in and have a
072fun game night or whatever they're they do a bingo night and win a candy bar or whatever but just to bring the families and and have fun. So, >> another example would be so we have some some of our military based partners that host back to school events and our school division will go and participate. We don't capture those on here because it's not a school initiated event, but certainly another example of ways that we're participating. >> Okay. Very good. Thank you. >> Just amazing that you guys actually brought so many of our parents to school uh to exceeding any expectations that I had. So, continue doing a great job. >> [snorts] >> That's a testament to the support that we have from our community. Also, we obviously couldn't do this if we didn't have
073people attending. So, we thank our families and community members for for joining us at these events. >> I can tell you that each of the events that I've been to this year have been bigger than the school thought it was going to be. And you had uh like the whole family. It wasn't like mom came with a kid. It was like the whole family came and they were huge. They really really were. Even even got Jim to one of them there. >> Yeah. If I could at >> the math fest. Yeah. Yeah. >> Yeah. Yeah. I didn't didn't pass. [laughter] I want to thank Mr. Freeze and the collective commitment team and also very much the schools. U I I have been to more than one. >> Well, no, I mean one with me and
074>> let me qualify that one. Now, I've been to a number of them this year and I know a lot of the board members have been to them and uh the difference in kind of like you said those surface events or or or a performance we're really getting into activities and it's so uh heartwarming to see kids uh engaging with their kid with their parents and the activity and really being engaged in it and it being based in a lot of academic work I think is is is just wonderful and I think it's it's a testament to the strategic plan that we're pushing. This was something that we've wanted to do. It's taken a little time to get traction and now you're seeing unbelievable numbers and uh so it'll be interesting to see where we
075get by the end of the year. But thank you to everybody that's been involved. Thank you. >> Thank um before we move on, I actually forgot to ask a question. Uh Dr. Carol, do we have any update on Graft and Turfield? >> Uh yes, I think we uh Mr. Bowen can speak to that. Yes, thank you for that question. Um, we um have met with when we when we first started and we met with um Newport News Water Works. What we received from them verbally was a no. Um we were denied and moving forward. Um what they offered as a possible um solution is to have a study done. [clears throat] Um, and the offer at the time was that we would have share in the cost of that study and that would give us
076a more definitive answer. But based on what they were seeing just on the literature of the plastic contents and the actual synthetic turf would exceed their tolerance for runoff into the reservoir, >> the water shed. >> Yes. So that is something we we didn't do um we didn't do the study but we we took them from their word. What we have since done is we have met with the athletic director. We've met with the principal to get an idea of what other projects we might incorporate with that with that money. Um we looked at moving um the middle school baseball field to I'm sorry the high school baseball field to where the middle school was thinking we could put a turf there but it's our understanding that the entire property would be part of that
077new wershed. We have not confirmed that with new waterworks. So that might be something that the a study might further confirm uh confirm for us. So we're kind of at a standstill. Um >> what do you think a study what are your estimates? Do you think a study would cost anything? >> Well, last year we were we we were told no more than $30,000 >> and they do you think they still would brunt the cost of maybe half of that? >> Um we can we can ask them. We can ask them. Now we also had another offer from Astro Turf which was the vendor and their offer was they would pay for half of the study if indeed we did the work they would cover the full they would cover our half of the study.
078So but if it doesn't happen then we would be responsible for that half. So you know if it turns out to be good news then it could be that we don't pay any part of the study. It's either it's part of New Waterworks or part of Faster Return >> even more reason. >> So we we do we still have that option and that might be the best option we have just so that we can rule out >> the remaining pieces of the problem. >> We put at three schools now and that's the only school that >> Yeah, I would feel a client to at least request that stud. >> I I would feel that way too. I mean that that would be due diligence for the community there in that at that school. things. >>
079I I will say I've received several queries from the community [clears throat] and um >> and and and this is what generally happens in my experience. Um you know, we have turf fields at three of our high schools. >> Yeah. >> And if we can't do a turf field there, the the community is going to feel somewhat cheated, but >> they should. Um >> it's nothing that you that the school board office or the school board wants to deny because the funding is there to do it. >> Absolutely. So taking that next step and having the study done might be the thing we need to to definitively rule it in or rule it out. >> And then if it is ruled out then we can look at the other options that the that have come
080forward from the staff there at Graphen High. >> All right. Then when when do we need to order that and how long? >> Well, the amount falls under the uh authorization for requiring board approval, but what I'm hearing is that the board wants us to move forward. So, we will reach out to Newport News Waterworks. We'll reach out to the vendor again and get their input to see if they're still interested in paying for part of the study and then we will move forward with that. Okay. >> Because best case, it won't cost us anything. Worst case, it'll cost us >> 50. Yeah. >> Okay. Thank you for that question. Appreciate you. >> Thank you. >> All right. Moving along to the policy first reading. So, policy section J. Students, uh, Dr. Do you have
081any comments? >> Yes, I do. Uh, thank you, Mr. Povich. Dr. Aaron Butler provided an overview of proposed changes to policy section J students at our last work session. He will outline outline a few more revisions since our last meeting, and he and Mrs. Barry are available for any questions you may have uh before forwarding this policy section for second reading at the January regular meeting. So, Dr. Butler, >> thank you, Mr. Chairman, members of the board, and Dr. Carol as Dr. Carol had shared, we did provide the initial first discussion for policy J back at the December work session. There was two changes that we've made since then. On policy JC, which is school admission, we added language stating that misrepresentation of residency may result in denial of an out of zone application. In
082that policy, we go into great detail about the different types of um out of zone opportunities for students. Sometime we have seniors who their family moves during that school year and we have provisions for that. People that move within the county, so they were in the Brutin zone and then moved down to the tab zone. We have provisions for that. That was one thing that we did want to clarify though because unfortunately we do have people who do not provide accurate information and so we want to make sure that was clearly stated in the policy. The other thing is in Friday uh we did receive a question from Mr. private on Friday about polit which was entrance age persons not school age. Um originally we had just made some minor mechanical grammar changes but there
083were some questions about clarity. So we did go back and we replaced the original revision with um such individuals may be charged tuition by the school board. Um it was vague the way it was written so we did make that change. Thank you Miss Pyitch for offering that. Um, and I know that if there's any additional questions that the board had, we were available to answer them at this time. >> Uh, I I actually had some uh questions regarding to the policy JB. Uh, let me see if I can pull it up and it is in reference to the it's educational opportunities. part of that uh there is a wording [clears throat] that says include all facilities and I was just not sure how does that relate to the educational opportunities the way how it's
084written because everything else it's regarded to the educational opportunity rather than like just all facilities. So do you >> so typically when you when it's all facilities we're trying to make sure that we're in alignment with federal and state law and codes. this um facilities typically refers back to legal actions that have been taken. I know that Mrs. Barry has some additional information. I didn't know if she wanted to provide clarification on that or if she wanted me to come on up and join. >> Uh yes, facilities can mean anything. I mean we have facilities range from a whole school to a locker. It could be wide ranging. Uh it's just that we're not discrimin discriminating against any student based on any of the um protected classes um in anything where it may be um
085u participation in a club or it could be using the bathroom. We are um governed by case law as well as state and federal law. But as always, um, when we're dealing with any kind of of action, discriminatory or otherwise, it's alleged, we're working with that family on a case-by case basis, um, both student and parents. >> All right. Uh, also like, uh, a lot of the language that we taking out, uh, it's just referencing to the other policy. Uh, is the reason why we just removing that language or >> it was just not necessary. Uh, we are trying to streamline it. Uh we've also found that the law changes fairly regularly and this way we don't have to go back and change policy. Uh we all of them we just have to maybe go
086back and change one if the law changes. So it's just to try and make it a little bit easier. >> No. >> So thank you. Any other updates or >> No, sir. Everything else was um as we presented it. Those were the two changes that we did make and so we didn't know if the board members had any additional questions about policy or any changes. >> Thank you so much for your updates. >> Yeah, thank you. >> Uh thank you all uh to our presenters this evening. We look forward to a successful and collaborative 2026. Our next regular meeting is January 26th here at York. Uh we are now in need of a closed session. So can I have a please board member takes us to the close session? Yeah. I move that York County
087School Board meet in close session pursuant to Virginia Code section 2.2-3711A1 of the Virginia Freedom of Information Act to discuss a possible termination of a specific employees of the division. Uh a request for leave of absence by a specific employee in specific personnel matter. Matters addressed in close session are confidential. No meetings or recordings are permitted. Can I have a second? >> Second. >> Source. Motion made by Mr. Schaefer and seconded by MW to approve the school board's meet session as stated. >> Yes. >> Mr. Schaefer. >> Yes. >> Mrs. Goodwin. >> Yes. And Mr. Povich. >> Yes. >> Motion pass 4 to zero. You're in close session. Close session.