001second 2025 work session of the York County School Board. Being our final meeting of the year, the board would like to thank everyone for their dedication and support throughout the year. Please note that a special meeting will immediately follow tonight's work session. Before we begin, we'd like to extend a heartfelt congratulations to the class of 2025 who will be graduating next week. We are so proud of your accomplishments and we wish you the best in this next chapter. All right, without further ado, let's begin. Dr. Shandor. Yes, thank you um Miss Goodwin. Board members, we have three presentations this evening and I believe you have two discussion topics. So, we're going to start off with um Miss Christina Head, our assoc well our former uh associate director of elementary instruction and academic programs. Um she
002uh walked out Friday um to bells and whistles retiring, but she was gracious enough to come back and do this one last assignment. Um she's going to provide a summary of student performance on the spring 202425 Virginia language and literacy screener system vows. Um, and this will be her last presentation for YCSD as she's retired. Also, I did want to add that she has zero pressure on her this evening. I'll turn it over to you. Okay. So, good evening. So, tonight I am going to share the kindergarten through 2 grade valves data from the spring administration. And so in this presentation, I'll briefly explain the the new valves assessment again and speak to the spring um data as well as the wristband rages which change for each testing administration. And then I'll show you the
003data dashboard with the spring results. And after I share the spring results, I'll we'll take a look at some of the action steps we'll do to support students. And so you are quite knowledgeable on the the vows the new vowels assessment as I in November and March provided presentations on the new literacy screener as well as the data results from the fall and the midyear. But before I start to share the spring results, I just want to do a quick recap of some of the specifics about this new literacy screener for the public at home as well. So this is a state required screener for literacy and it's called vowels and it stands for the Virginia language and literacy screener system and it's provided to students in kindergarten through 2 grade and selected third graders
004in the fall, midyear and spring and it measures critical literacy skills that children need to develop as readers. And it's really designed to identify students that are at risk for reading difficulties, but it also gives teachers valuable data that they can use for instruction as well as intervention. And so students scores are calculated based on performance across these codebased subtests that you see here on the left. And the student scale score tell us whether or not students are at risk for reading difficulties. But it also shows growth over time, which the previous assessment for literacy did not. Um, and the different weighted scores for each grade level indicate a student's overall band of risk. And there are three bands of risk. Low risk, meaning the student has no reading difficulties. Moderate risk, which means they
005have a few things to shore up and strengthen. And high risk, meaning the student does have um risk for reading difficulties and needs intervention. and the resulting scores for all students fall into one of these three risk bands. And so those riskban ranges increase for each administration. So they increase in fall, midyear, and spring. So I'd like to show you that again. So taking a look at the moderate wristband range here for first grade. You see that in the fall, the scale score was 604 to 629. And at midyear that increases 630 to 645. And you see in spring increases again from 650 to 661. So using that first grade example here, let's look at a first grade student. So here you can see this first grade student in the fall scored a 635 which
006put the student in the low risk band area. And in the midyear assessment, this student increased by five points, which is wonderful. But because the scaled scores increase also, this student is now in the moderate risk. And then in spring that student gained another five points in the assessment which is also wonderful but it does increase that you see in high risk band in spring increases and so that student is now high risk going into second grade. So you can see that the assessment material gets um harder and rigorous as well as the wristbands changing as well. And this is that change from just showing progress which the student did but now you have to actually show right achievement right it has to show um progress in those areas of those subtests and they increase
007in rigor they don't they're not the same so they increase as the students should be increasing according to that grade level at that point of time. Now, does this test also do depending on how the student answers a question, it the computer program decides whether it's going to get a harder question or an easier question? Somewhat. It does have specific um it doesn't want to hit a ceiling because it wants students to be able to um show growth but also not master that assessment in that subtest area. So, it does somewhat, but it does also have different weights. So there's no there's really a formula that we um really don't have access to that, but it does have each part of that subtest has certain weights more than the other subtests that equal the scaled
008score. And so let's take a look at the spring results for kindergarten. So this is the same data dashboard for vows that I shared with you previously before. This is kindergarten. If you see any pink that has no number there, that is because that is less than 3% and it doesn't show up on the scores there, but it's about one or two students. Um, so I'll walk us through this dashboard for this first one. So, you can see here um in the fall that 787 students um participated in the fall assessment in kindergarten. 39% were at low risk, 37 moderate risk, and 24% were at high risk in the fall. But then you see here at the bottom here you can see spring results. So at for our spring we had 796 students tested in
009kindergarten. 80% were at low risk at spring for those in kindergarten. Isn't that wonderful? And you can see that 10% were at moderate risk. Remember that's not below. And then 10% at high risk um compared to 24% in the fall. So they really had showed growth. And then here on the dashboard, you can see our fall and spring results for each school um for both um administrations. So, kindergartens made great gains. You can see all that green and a couple of schools only had one or two students such as DARE Elementary or Waller Mill that only had one or two students in the high-risisk span at the end of the year. And then at the bottom here, you can see the demographics or our student groups for kindergarten. And some notes here that is that
010um some reporting groups like Hispanic and economic disadvantage and English learner they reduce the percentage of students at high risk almost in half from fall to spring. And so with first grade our spring results so here you can see our first grade dashboard with the data for both fall and spring. So we see that we had 96 students tested in first grade with 78% low risk as compared to 55% from the fall. And again you can see the green increasing and the peak pink is decreasing with 11% at moderate risk and then 11% at high risk in first grade as compared to 16% in the fall. And here's our individual school results um compared with fall and spring. Couple of schools again like Bethl Manor and Mount Vernon only had two to three students that
011were at high risk at this point of year. And here at the bottom you can see our um demographic areas. So we have um our students here showing growth. You can see a lot of of movement. You can see that um we had students e English learner and black students who decreased their high risk about 10 percentage points. And our students with disabilities also doubled the number of low risk from the fall to the spring in first grade. And for our second grade results, we had um the dashboard here which you see are fall and spring results with 98 students participating in this assessment. 71% at low risk compared to 46% from the fall and 16% at moderate risk and 13% in the spring were high risk as compared to 19% in the fall. And
012then to the here on the dashboard you can see our school individual data um as compared to the fall. And you might notice that McGrder and Waller Mill and Mount Vernon reduce the percentage of high risk from the fall to spring by at least 10 percentage points. That's great. And the demographic areas that you see at the bottom there, um I noticed that percentage of English learner students in uh low risk or the green in the spring more than doubled from the fall. And our students with disabilities made a great gain with 11 percentage point decrease from the percentage of high risk from fall to spring. So on this slide you see another look at just the high risk data for each grade kindergarten through 2 grade. And as previously mentioned students in the high
013risk are at the greatest risk for reading difficulty and should have a student reading plan. But you can see here also that our kindergarteners made the the most decrease in the number of high um risk from fall to spring. And remember, in the fall, our kindergarteners come to us with a variety of learning experience. Some with many learning experiences before kindergarten and some with just a few. And both first and second grade made an approximate 6 percentage point drop in the percentage of high risk from the fall to spring. Now, this is a new slide that I haven't shared in previous Val's presentation. Um, here is the percentage of students in high risk band at both the state fall and midyear and York County school division data. So, Virginia Department of Education hasn't provided the
014spring comparison yet, but soon as they do, we will provide that in Friday notes. But as you can see by this comparison, our divin our division's percentage of high-risisk students is much lower than the state, almost by half for each grade. And I spoke to um the Virginia Literacy Partnership out of UVA just last week to ask them a few questions and they did say they have learned a lot from this assessment in its first year and they plan to really provide additional resources, make a few tweaks but really provide additional tools for teachers to use with um for next year with the vows and we as a division also have learned a lot with this assessment. I'd like to show you a few things that we're going to do for to leverage vows um
015data for our students to support. So, we'll be providing families with um uh resources and materials to use over the summer for students that are at high risk, but also I use this data to identify students for summer academy or summer school and then be able to use this new spring data in that area for summer school. But also, we'll be having this we'll have this data right away in the fall. Teachers will have it at their hands, the tools, the reports. So they'll be able to get started and have a jump start with those um targeted explicit instruction on these on the students that need with areas of need, but also before that first fall um vows assessment. So right away and then we'll also be making adjustments using this data. For example, we'll
016be aligning our kindergarten through 2 grade um standardsbased report card um to the to line with ours, but also um any additional professional development that we we need to provide for teachers and areas. And um I might have mentioned this before, but next school year we're required by the state to assess all fourth, fifth, and middle school students that are at risk with the vows assessment. So that is going to be fabulous. We've never really had that kind of information and we're going to need to include that in our division literacy plan and each of those students who are at high risk will have a reading plan. Yes. Question for you as far as uh for over the summer. Say that you have a child that just made it into the moderate risk. Could they
017request uh some uh assignments and stuff for over the summer? Absolutely. I mean, our teachers more than likely would be talking with parents about what are those summer opportunities and giving them materials they can work for. On our web page and on the um state web page are also some additional resources for parents. We've done a lot to build that up as part of our division literacy plan. Gotcha. And also um our we've done this for quite a bit of time, but any third graders that at the end of the year below grade level um the reading specialist and usually the teacher meet with that family and provide them a pock like a bag full of resources to take to use. We've been doing that for quite a bit of time as they leave third
018grade if they're below. So we also provide a summer academy for parents on literacy. We do a like a family engagement night so families can come and we have quite a few families who come to that. Are the extra resources and um additional interventions are they just a repeat of what's been done all the year or are they different basically differentiated instruction because they haven't gotten it through the year. So the resources that we provide them for the summer is definitely according to this spring data. So the spring data shows the subtest areas that they need. They'll provide resources specific to those areas. But the interventions is really data driven. So using the valves data at the fall, midyear and spring to fill those gaps, but also to look at progress monitoring in those areas.
019So but are they the same methods as what's been done all year long or are they looking at different ways of reaching those particular areas because they've already gone through one method during the school year, right? If they haven't gotten it through that method, are the interventions and extra resources different methods to see if there's a better way of reaching them or is it just repeating? They are they are usually different because the Virginia Department of Education has given us an intervention list to use. So they're list of approved programs that are specific to a variety of needs. So they have um some specific to comprehension, some specific to very decoding and some a combination of those. Okay. So that list is also available on the DOE and some of that is with like the
020reading specialist will work with specifically with certain students on top of in addition to what they're getting with the general their general education teacher. Okay, great. Thank you. It's all outlined in that student reading plan that is the parents sit and go with. Mhm. And then um as I mentioned the division literacy plan um about this time last year I went over that new required division literacy plan with you is for K to 5. But now the state is requiring us to update this plan by June 30th to make it a 2-year or bianial plan. And this two-year plan needs to include how the vows will be implemented for fourth, fifth, and middle school, but also those interventions that are going to be used, the supplemental materials, and anything that we've added for interventions such
021as we've learned that we've um through the data that we needed something very specific for our students with disabilities. So, we are adding such a intervention that's on that list for students with disabilities. So that division literacy plan outlines all of that um to include the middle school things that we're going to do in middle school for those students. And I provided that in Friday notes a couple of weeks ago, but I also posted that division literacy plan update to um the board docs for today's work sessions. And so that concludes the bounce presentation. Um but you know for this first year of implicitation, I also want to add that this was a big year for literacy in our division. Um, we've had the BLA implementation. Our elementary teachers have had the HMH new program
022to use. Um, we've had the required uh teachers have had required Virginia Literacy Act professional development modules to to use where they've learned um the updated research on reading and we've had the vows new interventions. Um, I want to uh just applaud our teachers and all that they've they've um learned this year and used. and our our um coordinator for English um Molly Brown and the literacy coaches um we just really the teachers have done a fabulous job as you can see as well as our students. So there's tremendous gains really are good. That was a great presentation because it it's totally different from the assessments we did before. This is doing it a totally different way and it's really focusing on what the student needs, right? And growth over time. Growth over time you
023can see from that. So yeah, that's it's wonderful. Thank you. does that program um I know when I saw at the high school and middle school they were using that to drill down to the specific area where a child is really struggling in this program um at the elementary level is there something in there too where they drill down to the specific it does so there's many subtests that we had showed before on the code base but there's more in addition to that where it really drills down on very specifically where the student is having difficulty Whether it's encoding, which is spelling words, decoding which is sounding out words, passage comprehension, fluency. So it really digs deep to so that so that teachers know exactly where or intervention is to where to dig in and
024to to really give them that that targeted explicit instruction. So it's great stuff. I remember from the last presentation uh how much this program will bring and does bring to the students and teachers. Just want to say congratulations to all of you for such a great results. Yes. uh that uh you guys posted and uh that our students achieved. Uh we will miss you so much for all of this. My pleasure. Um and I look forward to seeing that, you know, implemented both fourth through middle school in the same kind of way. So I'm I'm so excited like cuz I was always looking like I'm what's the next how it's going to look like and this just shows us because we had the improvement in mid year and now it's like now the fall like
025the spring we kind of wrapping it up in a really good note. So thank you for that. You have a question. Thank you. So our next presentation is on our strategic plan. Dr. Shander a little about that. Yeah. Before I do, I just wanted to to um wish Christina Head well. We have her retirement gala tomorrow, I believe, at Seafford Elementary School. So we look forward to going there and sharing some stories and celebrating her. So, Christina, thank you for [Applause] everything. She said she had to be in bed by 6. So, if you want to want to head out. All right. Our next presentation, um, Dr. Writes, our chief human resource officer, and Dr. Butler, director of student services, are going to provide an update on strategic initiatives and progress in improving school climate
026and working conditions for FY 2025. Neither of them are retiring, so they both have a ton of they both have a ton of pressure on them tonight. Dr. Wrights. Thank you, Dr. Shandor. Madam Chair, members of the board, thank you for this opportunity to present a strategic plan update on school climate and working conditions for FY25. Of course, our priority that it supports is supportive culture to provide safe, welcoming, and caring environments in which all students and staff have a sense of belonging and purpose. Which then leads into our theory of action. If we create student centered learning in safe, positive, and well-maintained schools and workplaces focused on student and staff growth, then team members will be well equipped to foster a sense of belonging and purpose. In our strategic plan, YCSD makes a promise
027to provide a safe, welcoming, and caring environment in which all students and staff have a sense of belonging and purpose. And of course, this promise is rooted in research. And the research is on this screen where teachers are more satisfied and plan to stay longer in schools that have a positive work context independent of the school's demographic characteristics. Another research um is there are strong connections between school climate and academic achievement of students. A work environment characterized by a positive working conditions has a direct relationship on employee retention. And the majority of employees, 94% report that they would stay with an employer longer if it invested in their career. Current research shows that a positive school climate and job satisfaction is strongly linked to employee engagement as defined on this slide. In order to measure
028our promise, these three tolls are used. The one is the Virginia school survey of climate and working conditions. The other is our power 10 survey. And our newest is our pulse survey which we use every month. And those definitions and descriptions of those collection tools are on the screen. So here's a timeline. And so in November 2024, all schools received the VDOE working condition survey. And then in January 25, students in grades 4 through 12 received the YCSD, our power 10 survey. And then in February, all staff and students in grades 6 through 8 receive the VDOE climate survey. So in between those surveys, we do our pulse survey on the months that we don't deliver those other surveys. So, our act today, June 2nd, our last pulse survey went out to staff um to
029gather more information. We're going to talk about the pulse survey in a few minutes. Have a question. Are these surveys um anonymous other than saying they're student or staff or faculty or are their names connected? And I'm going to answer that in a minute. Okay. Okay. So this one is our staff working conditions, our school-based um power 10 that we received. And so this data is the green lines are instructors and the blue lines are staff and the ratings go across in the key categories. So our top rated areas from um this one is safety and the question was I feel safe at my school. The second one is respect. my professional role is respected. And then physical environment, the physical environment of my workplace supports my work responsibilities. And then there are lower rated
030areas where shared decision-making. I contribute to decisions about educational issues at my school. We also have professional growth. The professional development I receive meets my needs. And then family engagement. The school does a good job of encouraging family engagement. These results are shared with schools and each school can filter results when developing their next steps. This is our trend. So we take the trends of 2022 23 and the 23 24 and 24 and 25 school year. So you can see we had an increase in responses from the previous year. The average and overall satisfaction has increased from the 2324 school year. PD has stayed the same. And in the fall, Dr. Nichols is going to report out our YCSD's efforts on how PD was provided this year and how we have also surveyed our staff
031so we can help match what PD is needed for our teachers and staff. This group consists of paras office staff, custodians, nurses, and all other non-licensed instructional staff. And we had an increase of responses from the previous year. Also, the average and overall satisfaction has increased from the 2324 school year. And this one, this is our non-school-based and this is the working conditions for those for that subgroup. And the top three was a caring environment where adults at this department care about students safety. I feel safe at my work location and supportive environment. I feel supported by other adults in this department. This is the trends for the non-school-based. So last year we had 88 responses and this year we had 71 more responses. And the top three groups responding for this category was our
032instruction department and special education, our IT department and our maintenance. And there was a noticeable improvement from the 23 20 the 22 23 school year. But for the 23 24 there was a slight decline and that occurred in the 24 and 25 which our current score is 4.89 out of a six-point scale which is still above our 22 23 levels and below the previous year's levels peak. I love this slide. Isn't it fun to look at? But it really tells a story. So that's why I I put it up here because I think it tells a story when it comes to our pulse surveys. So we just started our pulse surveys this year and we're really excited about the information that it gives to our schools. So each month we invite team members to answer
033five brief questions. Again, I said that that went out today. Um developed to enhance our workplace and better respond to the needs of our staff. By participating, you can influence continuous improvement in our division. So each month we receive around 300 replies. And on this slide you're able to see the highs and lows across the months by response groups which makes it easier to see outliers and determine trends. So I'm going to give you an example. Look at the top blue line which is Bethl Manor. And in December the overall satisfaction was high but in March it dipped and then it jumped back up in May. So results are shared monthly with schools and departments. The pulse survey is anonymous and there is a free response question in which employees have an opportunity to leave
034a comment to help supervisors target and address staff concerns, celebrations, and climate issues. The monthly results will help form trends if the same occurring theme is presented. and the process allows for items to be addressed sooner in the year than lingering all year long. And now let's drill down to the data and look more closely at our high schools. This is an example of trends for a high school over a year. So looking at the outlier, that pink line, which allows us the opportunity to work more closely with that school in December to help address why there was a dip. Pulse surveys allow us the opportunity to address concerns in a timely and intentional manner. This one is our non-school-based pulse survey and we have two groups represented here. One is the maintenance transportation and
035IT and the other is our SPO departments. There are many ways for us to disagregate this data where we could take it and we could pull it out by zones, we could pull it out by departments for us to look at it in a more um closer look. And we went from September to October, November, December, March, May, and of course today June is our last pulse survey which we will collect that data. Now I'm going to turn over and transition to student data and Dr. Butler is going to walk you through that. Thank you, Dr. Rights. So for our student climate surveys, as Dr. Rice has shared, there's two metrics we use for that. One is the Virginia secondary school climate survey, which alternates between high school and middle school. The other survey is
036the power 10 we use with a strategic plan. So our key components that we look at, we look at areas of safety, we look at relationships, teaching and learning, and then in institutional environment. So looking at respect, fairness, and the rules. So the questions I'm going to focus on this afternoon, we pulled those these out, was the sense of belonging. I feel like I belong at this school. Safety overall, I feel safe at this school. Caring environment, adults at this school care about me. And then for student discipline, the consequences for breaking school rules are the same for all students. When you look at the survey results, we had 8,040 students that took the um the survey, which was a good representation of our schools. And I will actually go into the different levels. We'll
037do elementary, middle school, and high. The overall satisfaction was 4.69. And this is on a six-point scale with six being strongly agree and one being strongly disagree. So we do believe looking at the data we do have strong indications that we do have a positive school climate but we have to drill down a little further to see which areas our growth areas and what's our trend data for the division. So when we look at for our elementary schools this is only for our fourth and fifth graders. So you can see there are 1,972 students who did take this assessment. And when we look at the trend data for the three areas, we see that in the area of safety ranked as one of our higher ones where again students did feel like they were safe
038in their buildings. When we look at the area for student discipline, we see a similar trend that is very much consistent to where it was back in 2023 24. Sense of belonging is one of the major things we've been looking at. U Mrs. Tossler did a presentation where she focused on how connective are students when we look at student activities and extracurricular activities and we can see that that's a strong rating of 4.87. And then one of the higher marks was caring environment where we have students who at 5.18 said there was caring adults in their buildings. When we get into our middle schools, we had 2,630 students that did take this assessment and it was at 4.70 for the survey. When we start going into look at some of the highlights from that data,
039we see a very similar trend. We see that in the area of safety at a 4.86, our students do feel like they're safe in their buildings. When we look at student discipline, there was an interesting dynamic going on. So, the year before it had dipped down to a 3.96. And so our middle school principal were really trying to dig in to figure out why the students have a perception that discipline practices weren't the same for all students. So they spent a lot of time this year with the town hall meetings at the beginning of the school year. They did reinforcement meetings at the midyear point and even going into this last stretch before the last 30 days of school when we got back from spring break. They did another refresher on um expectations and rules.
040And so you see when we look at that data that that did go up. um it's not as high as it was back in 22 23 but it's in an upward trend. One of the things you also want to look at is respect and that is saying that students um are treated with respect by staff members and that was consistent with where it had been in years previous and then the caring environment is also consistent. Our high schools we had 3,438 students that took the assessment. You will notice that their overall satisfaction rating is less than both elementary and middle school at 4.37. And so when we went down in more detail to determine what those ratings were a result of, um, safety is one of the things that ranked highest with 4.71. However, student
041discipline did come up as one of our lower marks. Uh, even though it's a little bit higher than it was the previous school year, it is still at 3.53, which was the lowest of all three levels. Uh the same thing we see that same patter for student behavior um at 3.85 which was slightly less than it was the year before but also lower than the division average for sense of belonging that's been consistent with a 4.37. So students do feel like there's connections they have with school and we do know at the high school they have greater opportunities for Virginia High School League also with the different extracurricular activities and then for a caring environment they did say consistent with last year's scores feeling that there are adults in the building that care about them
042and make attempts to make them feel um wanted at each school. So our next steps based on that data Dr. Shandor had worked very strongly with our building administrators Mrs. top stellar to focus on student advisory groups to make sure that students have input in how the school is overall. So we they pull in different groups of students to get feedback for how they can make improvements to overall school culture also to academics and rigor. Um all of our schools as I shared back in March have a school-based MTSS team and they really drill down to look at discipline. So every month they look at discipline data. They also look at the different trends when it comes to school safety to see if there's certain things they should do differently. Maybe they need to do
043some refinement. Maybe they need to do some more reteing. Maybe they need to have more assemblies that focus on specific things such as the vaping is an issue in the building. How are they going to retach and how are they going to provide training for our students on those type things. Um our student connection coaches have made a real big difference when it comes to make sure students are coming to school on a consistent basis. But not just coming to school also they focus on are they connected to school in some positive way. And so that's one of the great things they have been doing. our divisionwide professional development. We're going to spend a lot of focus this year. Um Dr. Skinner has allowed our team to integrate many of the practices that go back
044into how do we create caring environments but also be consistent with discipline practices to make sure that we're being align in alignment with the student code of conduct because no one wants to go to a school where they feel like there's chaos or that is a toxic environment. They're really focusing hard on consistency with rules, on consequences, and on being consistent with how we apply um the sanctions across the board. We'll also be looking at leadership academy to focus more on our individual school data so they can make corrections and this will all be put into their school improvement plans or their SIPs that they do on an annual basis. So, we do thank you for this opportunity to provide updates on the working condition and student climate survey. We're available for questions at this
045time. I wanted to offer a comment. Um, I noticed that in all those slides, I was looking at it earlier today that safety is just really up there as far as everybody across the board, students, staff, everybody feeling they are safe and and that warms my heart, especially given all of the, you know, chaos that goes on in the world today and all the things that come up, you know, with the schools. to see that, you know, really shows that everything that we're doing that we can possibly do at this level is working to make people feel safe. And, you know, safety is one of those basic needs. So, if you don't feel safe, everything else is going to hold me down. So, that makes me feel good as a board member. Is it possible
046um for future when uh you do these reports and it's a lot of good information when you list the um average number of respondents can you also put out of the total available you know for the elementary middle and high school so that we can see if we have 2607 or the number of respondents or the average number what was the total that was from for the total okay yes ma'am We can do that. Okay. Is everybody given like the survey in this is just up to the student if they want to complete it or how does that work? So for the student climate survey um families can opt out for the Virginia Department of Education survey. So we send out those opt out um those opt out forms and so as long as parents
047don't sign that then yes then the students are given an opportunity to share. If they choose that they for some reason don't want to take it then of course that we don't force them to take it but we do make it open to all students who their parents have agreed that it's fine for them to take the survey. Quick question as far as the uh advisory groups are we going to have for each of these categories that is on low end student advisory because I'm looking at the college and career life readiness uh on high school and middle school. Well, I understand middle school it's going but in high school is pretty I mean it's on the lower end of what we have. So like what what is it that they're saying that we're missing
048that you maybe you want me to tell the qu the question the question is teachers at this school often connect what I'm learning to life outside the classroom. So, it's one prompt question. And so, I think there's some work to do about making sure what we're learning is relevant and the why around that. And that's good information for us as we're working with teachers and professional development principles or working with um their teachers about explaining that why and connecting the learning to the things that are important in their life. Why do I need to know this? It's that question that we all go back to, right? I went the whole day and didn't use geometry. So, All right. Question. All right. Anybody else? All right. Thank you guys. All right. Our last presentation is um
049FY26 mill prices. Dr. Carol's going to provide some information related to his recommendations for the mill prices. Dr. Carol. Thank you, Dr. Sher. We go. Uh first of all, I'm not going to bury the lead. Uh we have not uh received the paid equity tool this year from the USDA. It uh it lagged a little bit last year and it's gotten even later this year. We have not um not received it. However, our surplus funds are so sufficient, we are confident that we can uh recommend no increase to meal prices for next year. So that's that's the bottom line. But I want to want to talk a little bit uh more about how we go through that through that determination. So when we sit down to talk about whether we're going to raise prices or
050not, we look at what are the things that are probably going to increase in cost and those are our labor costs like next year we know they'll have a 3 and 12% raise. Uh food is unknown but inflation is is easing right now. And commodities are those foods supplied by the US government. they too uh could have some raise in prices, but that's unknown at this time. Also, we've had since CO a subsidization from the federal government for supply chain uh costs and um increases that was already pre-planned to end with this school year and I think that was to the tune of about $230,000. So, that subsidy is ending this year. Uh we've also uh we factor in uh you know we we don't want to put off not raising prices too many years
051in a row because we don't want to do what I know there's a division up near Richmond that uh that increased them 25 cents a meal going into next year. So we try not to just drop a big price on them. So we're we're always looking down the road there also. And then the last thing which kind of uh fights against it which is a good thing is the impact of meal participation. We've had a steady growth in meal participation. So our partner Sedexo is doing a great job. More and more students are eating both breakfast and lunch and so from that then our our reserve fund grows. I have a question with the I guess it's law now that is eliminating the the artificial colors in school foods. Do we know yet how that
052is going to be implemented and how that's going to affect the cost? No, I don't I haven't heard anything on that front. I don't think that you know the companies that create food have to have to figure out what their substitutes are. I don't know what that's an FDA thing, not a school, right? That's FDA. So that that may be down the road and I don't know what the time limits are on that. Okay. We do have another thing and that is that there's been a by a byamerican effort that's been on the books for a while also and uh so we can't buy any more than 10% of our food that is that is not from American suppliers and that is that's been for a few years and that will continue at 10%. I
053don't anticipate any tariff issue if if if there would be uh that would be nominal. And then I think it's 2030 or 2031 that's going to go down to 5%. And so they'll have to identify it. And when we have audits, uh they they really look for those things. Uh I think we took one case last year that we shouldn't have in an audit last year that popped up. So we got cited for that. One case of cans of something. All right. So, our reserve fund status, as I said, is and when I say this, this is in excess of the three months that we're required to keep for operating costs. Uh, so we have that 3-month reserve balance. We also, the surplus above that stands at 1.8 8 million as of today and um
054and and we have that and it can we're trying to work and we have been on increasing aggressively addressing the reserve fund that we built up during CO and at the highest it was at 6.05 05 million and Cheryl Parr back there and and Greg Dolac and his team have been aggressively trying to buy new replacement kitchen equipment and um you know improving the the equipment that we have to provide lunches and breakfast and so now that's gotten us down to the 1.8 million. We still need to spend that down and we have planning right now that accounts for at least a million of that and they're continuing to explore, you know, options there. Uh but once again, we feel that we still have the room that in case we did have an overage, we'd
055be fine as far as our our balance. Uh and then once again, I mentioned those meals. They've increased 81,000 meals were served. This was FY22 to 24. We served 81,000 more meals two years later after FY22. And that was a 6.6% increase. Now this year on a per meal basis we've increased about 3%. We don't have the totals yet. We'll get those at the end of the year. Uh but on a per meal basis 3% increase over last year. Uh but we also uh lost eight days to weather this year. So that that's uh having an impact. But uh still once again we feel comfortable with where we're at. So uh once again I'll come back to the first slide in the sense that here are the meal prices that we are recommending for next
056year. These are the same as last year and would just add one note that uh the reduced meals the last two years have been 30 cents and 40 cents respectfully respective of breakfast and lunch. However, we have had no guidance from USDA on that. We don't know if that'll continue or not. So that's to be determined. And that uh concludes my report and I welcome any questions you have. No questions. Thank you. Yeah. Okay. You were saying actually like out of the surplus we looking to spend another thousand like 1 million million. What is it for again? Different kitchen equipment. So you know we've got 18 kitchens. So yeah. For instance, last summer we double or triple sized the walk-in freezer at TAP High School. Walk-in freezers, serving lines, combination ovens. We've been we've been
057working across and we'll pick one one type of thing, let's say those ovens, and we'll work through those and then we'll work through the freezers and we still have some some of that work to do. So, and it's really been uh dictated more by our capacity to do that work uh with our own staff. that's kind of and supply chain issues between the two of we've been trying to do it as aggressive as we can between those two constraints. Thank you. All right, board members, we now um move on. We got to discuss the board meeting calendar. If you've had a chance, but hopefully you've had a chance to look at it. Um if not, if you could pull it up. We'll pull it up. Okay. See that? Is that a different No, it's Yeah,
058just you're gonna have to go on and pull up on YC or Board Docs. Sorry. Board docs. We'll give Dr. Carol just a second to do that. Maybe we'll let go. [Laughter] wasn't ready for that audit. Thank you, Miss Goff. Yes, sir. All right, there we go. All right. Anybody have any excuse me, any questions regarding the proposed school board work session and regular meeting calendar for 2526? I guess the the only question I really had was at the bottom where it lists the NSBA conference to be determined just to have it as notes. didn't we um separate from that um back at the beginning of 2024 because that organization had called parents domestic terrorists the ones who would question things at schoolboard meetings [Music] separated no they necessarily separated I think uh we haven't
059gone to that necessarily the other there's the new one which is called the Cosba Cosba yeah which I think is the one if I was going to go to a national conference that's the one I would go to. I wouldn't go to the national, but I think that and I for can't talk tonight. Um, correct me if I'm wrong. These are just some of the proposed um conferences that Yeah. I mean, this is the board TBD. So, board if they wanted to go board me. Yeah. Or if you want to strike off um I can't see that far. Is it NSBA? Is that what it is? Okay. If you want to cross off NSBA and just put national conference, then you it could be whatever. Yeah, that's fine. We can certainly do that. If anybody
060Yeah, these are all I don't I don't think anybody's gone the last couple years. It's been several years since we've done that. Since we've been Yeah, it's good networking, but it's been a long time since we've been. Yeah, but I mean that can be changed to reflect just the national conference. Other than that, um, dates, they look okay. No, I don't know if you May and December. That's the two that are out of way, right? So, that's Yeah. Other than that, yeah, we've doubled Yeah, we've doubled December and double June. So, it's pretty much the same as before, but just shifting dates, right? Okay. So, I believe there you go. So we'll update that and when you vote in the we could up it's a word doc so we could update what we just said
061and make it national conferences before you vote on it at the next meeting. Okay. So we'll vote on it the next y special meeting. Yep. Question on that also. Um do we want to add in any of the others you have VSBA? Um I think sorry. Can you pull that back up please? Sorry about that. Oh, you mean put up the VSBA conference? Well, I was trying to see what the V VBO that's um that's VAS and Vasbo. So, that's superintendent. Okay. So, it's myself and Mr. Bowen. Um that's just we put those dates at the conference so that everybody knows where we're at. Dr. Carol has typically sat in on a one or two meetings that I'm not here. Okay, that's shared. That's the history of those notes are simply to explain dates that
062may not work for meetings to occur. So, it's not that you're voting. You're not really voting on the notes. They're just there to provide information. Correct. That is that is what that's there for. All righty. Okay. Sounds good. All right. So, then we'll move on to our next discussion. So I've spoken with some of you uh regarding um how we want to proceed as far as guidance to Dr. Shandor regarding survey for um looking at McGreder's name change. Okay. And that was really to just assess from you know the public um in all our districts uh what you know their take on that is just to have it's just to have more information. Okay. It's just another frame of information for us to use and it looked like to me from from some of the
063conversations that many of you liked the engage survey platform that is no extra cost so we're not spending any extra money for it. Um, the nice thing it can be used only once, which I think we agreed that we only wanted people to be respond to respond one time. Can we limit that one to just the York County? Um, I'm just concerned if other people It would be I believe that would be limited to just people that lived in districts 1 through five. Am I correct? That's kind of hard. So there will be a process where we can identify um the limitation of those individuals whose e email addresses we have um one way that we could when I look at um the community so you would have graduates, alumni and such who may not
064actually be currently residing in York County but may have that connection to the school. So that would be where we would ask that one demographic question that I believe the board was asking. Right. and taxpayers as well as which district you're in. Correct. So, um, with not having email addresses to those individuals, that is the one factor that is will be slightly different for it as far as not being able to control, but we can ask questions that help us indicate. So, through the survey, is it that we emailing people with the link or it's public link that they will click on it? So, there thank you for asking that question. There are two methods that we can utilize um internally. So for staff or those connected individuals that you identify as wanting to conduct
065the survey with, we can send them a a unique link. So each individual gets one link. Um and then for those who are not already connected and have email addresses and it would be a public, but we have other means of ensuring that when they take it, it is only one. So name and address is the we have multiple opportunities. We can ask zip code. We can ask address. Okay. Those types of of questions that we could ask because again the zip code may be slightly different if they are 23185 is uh for Williamsburg for parts of James City County for cuz yours is, isn't it? Yep. And your county out there. And again, it's only as um clear as the individuals what they choose to enter in there. I mean, we can geocach the
066fact to determine potentially where if we somehow received an abnormal number of surveys in Vermont, right? We would be able to identify that that was occurring. So there's I to get to your question, I think you discussed about anonymity and not wanting it to be anonymous like we need to have complete transparency here. Can we have that? So we don't have these anonymous but we have transparency with the surveys. The platform does allow a question that is demographics where they could enter a name but again verification of that right but you can't force a person to put in the correct name correct name but the idea is as opposed to just a platform that doesn't have that at all you could end up you know with when it's totally anonymous you don't know where it's
067coming from right at least we're going to have um we're going to have district we control drill down to some of the important specifics. Okay. Is that is that okay that you know it might not give us exact name per say? I mean some people don't mind I'd like to see the overall county and then my district especially and I think that was the other point here that um we can find out who is in the Brutin zone versus other zones. So we can look at the whole county and then we can look at it by the zone of Brutin and we'll have a lot of different information. We we would have two ways to conduct that. One could simply be asking the zone they live in. But again, we want to try to limit
068the number of questions we ask. Yeah. Too many could be overwhelm because we can send a unique link. We could send a unique survey to the Brutin zone and then send the alternate survey outside of those currently living in the Brutin zone connected to the division. Yeah, it needs it needs to be for all of the all the districts for all the you know if one has changed that may affect some of the other names you know as as I've done research and apparently some other people out there have been doing research. Do we know um the cost of a name change? We haven't we haven't computed that yet. The last few weeks have been a little busy for for all staff. So, um, our plan was to get this survey out and it was,
069so we wanted to come up with the method first. So, we're going to, it sounds like it's consensus for using the engage survey platform, right? Okay. So, we have that, Katherine, you have that information. We also talked about unique survey links. We've talked about the Brutin zone versus the uh, county as a whole. And then I think the last part was um when um our recommendation um as we've discussed this in cabinet would have would have been to do that survey as soon as possible. I think we had some d we had some dialogue related to well it's the end of the year and we should maybe do it in the fall and then we said well the fall starts and it's the fall. So and I also think you're sending a message that it's
070important and that you want to get this feedback. So our um our recommendation would be to do it now to do it before the school year ends. Yeah. Like I think we set a 7 to 10 day window. Catherine, best practices. Typically we do about a 10day window. We send the initial invitation and then we'll send one reminder maybe a day or so before the it closes. I really still think like name and address in my opinion would give us that geo like know will will they be honest with it. That's one thing, but like I think if you have name and address, you can see the repeats. I agree. That's just my I think the way I don't know all the IT ins and outs, but you have probably a way to screen all
071that through your the program of looking for duplicates and things like that. We do. We do. Yes. So, we should be okay. Cool. So, we've got all the details hammered out for that. Yeah. And then once we have that information to your question, Miss Fairman, we'll certainly look at the the cost and price of that. Um, we are we do we for the last couple years we've been working on changing some of our signage at our schools. I believe Graf and Bethl Dare McGrder and there were a few other ones Dr. Carol I can't remember. Is one of those that is McGrder was one of those that meaning putting like the actual sign on the school. Currently when you face the school there's an entrance here and an entrance there just like Coventry sort of
072same footprint in at Coventry we've put that sign up there a few years ago but um ours is out by 143 right well yeah there's a sign out on the road we also wanted to do some uh signage on the building so so that would still count as a cost but it wouldn't be an additional cost right okay it's it's that whole plethora of all the different things that you have to change right well we'll have before we as a board make any decision, we will have that information in addition to survey information. Okay. All right. Sounds good. All righty. I think thank you everyone for presenting this evening. We'll take a short break and we will begin the next meeting. Great job. Sir. All right. I call to order the June 2nd, 2025 special
073meeting of the York County School Board. Welcome back. We'll now begin the business meeting. But first, I'd like to share the YCSD mission statement. The mission of the York County School Division is to ensure that every student is valued, supported, and challenged through learning experiences which prepare them for a successful future. We'll first start with our HR presentation by uh Dr. Wrights. Yes. Thank you, Miss Goodwin. Again, good evening board members. Dr. Writes is going to provide um some information related to a pay plan update. Dr. Wrights. Thank you, Dr. Shandor. Members of the board, Madam Chair, I have two proposed pay plan updates for you to look at. One is the NJC. We are planning on making them um having their own paygrade category to capture how NJOTC instructors are paid. And so we
074wanted to put that into pay plan as a separate um category. And then we have the operational substitute pay increase. And that is to match our operational substitute pay for the budgeted positions for non-licensed and administrator pay scale. And those pay grades over to the right. Could you explain um just so everybody even listening to everything can understand what is that difference between the NJOTC uh from a regular teacher or standard teacher. So the instructors are paid upon hire and the pay is proposed by the military and so um so the military and the cost of living and then they're placed on a teacher uh salary scale and then thereafter. So really the military sets their salary and then they get the cost of living based off of that. Do they do they get funding
075from the military or is it's all from your county? Bill, it's funding from the military. Receive some funding from the military to supplement that. Yeah, that's what I thought. I just want to make sure I understood that. And that is it. Next we'll move into financial matters. I will ask Mr. Hyovich to discuss those. I have a claims for certified for payment for May 2025. We have significant expenditures for May which include instructional regular expenditures total approximately 655,075 includes payments to Alli healthcare stop partners college and newly Mary Emily Haynes hatchet vision services gym service association lakes learning McMillan holdings maximum healthcare services new horizon audio research foundation audio research foundation uh Pearson's education plan B academy purple communication Steve Wise music, the Fisen Center, the Stepping Stones, and Department of Education. Uh, also Virginia
076Peninsula Community College and Washington Music Center. Payments for technology related items to uh totally approximately 53,000 and includes payments to ACES, CDW, Cox Communications, Mid-Atlantic Installers, SH Communications, and VA Business Systems. payments for operations and maintenance for a total of $410,240 and includes payments to Cintes for fire protection, Dominion Energy, Hampton Sanation District, Republic Services, Riverside Paper, Riverside Positions, Rowood Associates, VIRCO, uh, WW Grryer, WB Mason Company. Transportation related expense include payments to the McCarti Tire Company that is for the 377 passrough buses. Payments for school nutrition services totaling 8007 uh 800300 uh 837,900 includes payments to Alto Hartley Global Payments, Sadesco and the Met Group. Payments related to capital projects total 871,542 includes payments to AP acquisitions, Sentinet Contractors, Mobile Lease, Simpson Unlimited, ZBZ and Associates. Now, consideration for approval of financial report for
077May 2025. We have significant changes relating to the operating budget and for May revenues. Um the May revenues and expendure have been posted at the time this report was uh prepared. State revenues is approximately 5.2 million higher in May FY25 when compared to the May of FY24. The change is due to the increase in students enrollment at risk funding and the state's portion of the 5.5% compensation increase for FY25. Federal revenue is approximately 1.97 million 97 1.97 million less in FI25 due to the expiration of one time as stimulus grant in FI25. For expenditures expenditures for instructions are approximately 6.8 million higher in May 25 when compared to May 24 due to the 5.5 increase in salaries increase in employer health health premiums additional positions added for FI25 and onetime bonus paid in May 25.
078Expenditures for transportations are approximately 1.3 million higher than uh and expenditures for operations are about 1.5 million higher in FI25 due to the increase in salaries, increase in employee health premiums and onetime bonuses. Expenditures for technology have increased by 1.6 million due to the increase in salary and benefits. Onetime bonus and transfer out of the $700,000 to technology reserve funds. uh significant changes relating to the school nutrition budget. Um and again this is uh posted only for the May revenues uh by the time this report is prepared. Total school nutrition revenue is down 456,758 in May of FY25 when compared to the May 24. The variance is primarily due to the timing of May 25 revenues postings. Total school nutrition expenditures are 247,157 higher. Although although not all may expenditure have been posted, FI25 expenditures
079are projected to significantly exceed those FI24. The increase reflects the plan spend down of funding balances with the school nutrition fund. Consideration approval resolution 2535. Resolution 2535 requires the board approval authorization procurement of more than $100,000 and a change of orders greater than 50,000. There are three items on the resolution all for fiscal year 26 and totaling 1 uh 1,525,000 the details of which can be viewed on a board docs. Madam chair I now move to approve financial matters list. Any questions or discussion? Miss Howard? A motion is made by Mr. Povich and seconded by Mr. Schaefer to approve by natural matters listed. Mr. Richardson. Yes. Mr. Schaefer. Yes, Mrs. Fairman. Yes, Mr. Pot. Yes, Mrs. Goodwin. Yes. Motion passed 5 to zero. I will now go over the consent calendar. All right. We have
080approval of personnel actions, approval of minutes from a work session on May 12th, 2025, a regular meeting on May 19th, 2025, and a special meeting on May 23rd, 2025. Approval of resolution 25-37. A resolution to approve FY26 property and liability insurance coverage. Approval of the filing of the 2526 ESA ESSA application grant for funding for title one part A. Approval of the filing of the ESCA ESSA local application 2525 2026 for grant funding for title 2 part A. Approval of the filing of the 2025 2026 ESA ESSA application for grant funding for title three part A and approval of the filing of the 2025 2026 ESA ESSA application for grant funding for title 4 part A. Approval of meal prices for school year 202526. Approval of 2024 2025 annual progress report and financial statement for
081York River Academy. Approval of HR updates. Approval of the 2025 2026 board meeting calendar. Dates only. Approval of the division superintendent to execute the 16th annual addendum to the facility operating agreement between the county school board of York County, Virginia, and the Boys and Girls Clubs of the Virginia Peninsula of Virginia Non-Stock Corporation. Approval to authorize the division superintendent to sell surplus equipment at public auction. Approval of student activity and overnight field trip for the York High School NJOTC. Approval of the consent calendar as listed. I'd like to have a motion and a second to approve the consent calendar as listed. Madam Chair, I move uh approval of the consent calendar as listed as you read. I'll second it. May I make one comment? Sure. Sure. Under item M. Yes. which is the consideration of
082approval to authorize the division superintendent to sell surplus equipment at public auction. Dr. Carol contacted um Dewey Ray who's the principal over in Horizons. You know, they have several automobile classes over there. So, they're currently I think reviewing Dr. They came over and took a look. So, there's two or three vehicles that they might be interested in and uh we'll see if we can come up with a good accommodation for them. uh but they so that they can use that as part of their curriculum. So we we'll work with them after they give us a a final decision on what they're interested in. Thank you. Should we amend that particular um proposal on those pull it out? I would leave it. My recommendation would be to leave it because we're still we still have to
083sell it. It says sell and probably will charge them a dollar or something. Whatever is legal, whatever the legal council allows us to do. I was just looking since it said at public auction. Yeah. That I would suggest um amending that to remove at public auction since that particularly requires that. Sorry. If it's approved, we talking about that settled or say that again. We we don't know for sure. It would just sell on M. It says to sell surplus equipment at public auction. Whereas if we're negotiating with possibly selling a it's only few vehicles like know they have there's a list of um anything that's providing. So could we come back later if he decides on three vehicles and make leave them off and then come back and do that. Yeah. Hopefully by June 25th
084you have a meeting, you have a retreat. Maybe we can bring it back there. But if we want to keep it this evening for the um auction piece, that's Yeah, you're authorizing it, but we won't go there until we know for sure. Okay. All right. Any other questions, discussion? Um the only other comment that I have is um I don't have uh a problem with these other than the one special meeting was uh for a closed meeting that I I believe two of us didn't attend. And you know, I looked at it. The minutes are just the basic minutes for having a special meeting and going into a closed meeting and then coming out and everything. But since I was not in attendance at that one, um I just want it noted as such. And
085then I would need a motion and a second to remove that from the consent calendar. Oh, she just wants it noted. No, I just want it noted. Just want it not. Oh, you just want just want it noted. Oh, okay. Okay. All right. So noted. So noted. Okay. Anything else? All right. Miss Howard. A motion is made by Mr. Richardson and seconded by Mr. Schaefer to approve the consent calendar as read by Mrs. Goodwin. Mr. Schaefer. Yes. Mrs. Fairman. Yes. Mr. Mr. Richardson, yes. Mr. Pivet, yes. And Mrs. Goodwin, yes. Motion pass 5 to zero. Okay. We have no action items. We have no policy discussion. And we have no second reading. So, at this time, I will say thank you to everyone for your input and for being here this evening. We'll be back
086in August. I hope everyone has a fun and relaxing and safe summer. We do have a closed session this evening. Can I please have a board member take us make a motion to take us into close session? I'll move that York County School Board convene in close session to discuss personnel matters relating to the following discussion related to the appointment of a prospective candidate for employment to fill a principal vacancy pursuant to the personal exemption personnel exemption at section 2.2-3711A1 of the Virginia Freedom of Information Act and as the matters addressed in close session are confidential. No minutes or recordings are permitted. Second. The motion was made by Mr. Schaefer and seconded by Mr. Privet to approve the school board meeting session as stated. Mr. Richardson, yes. Mr. Schaefer, yes. Mrs. Fairman, yes. Mr. Private,
087yes. Mrs. Goodwin, yes. Pass 5. [Music]