School Board Work Session & Special Meeting - March 10, 2025

001good evening I'd like to call to order the March 10th 2025 work session of the York County School Board it's hard to believe that uh the year is flying by we're already in March and not far from actually uh spring calling it officially I guess spring um and spring break is around the corner so hang in there thank you Paul for being here as we continue to work together together to support our schools and Community just before we get started I do want to say one thing I owe Dr shandor an apology because evidently in several uh meetings I refer to his last name as shander and it should be shandor so publicly would like to say I'm sorry uh somebody pointed that out to me I'd like that in writing I just want to

002uh make that clear okay so we're gonna start with presentations we have quite a few this evening uh our first one will be capital projects and Dr shandor would you to introduce our first presenter this evening thank you you can call me whatever you want it's fine uh good evening everyone good evening board members um we have a number of presentations that we're going to jump into tonight our first one is our capital projects presentation and this is the last presentation that Mr shearhart will be presenting to the board as he is going to hop into retirement he has 37 years of dedicated service to the York County School Division he's been in his role as as the associate director for Capital plans for 13 years um we are really um going to miss Mark

003Mark has done amazing work um not only working around the capital projects in all 19 of our schools and a number of other buildings but you know what what you may not know about Mark is the time that he goes into schools and talks to kids and talks to kids and shares plans and whatnot in the schools with elementary kids or middle school kids so Mark's done a wonderful job here and unfortunately Dr Carol's work working with the situation right now he wanted to share some remarks as well but Mark we're going to miss you we appreciate all you've done if we could just give Mark [Applause] just quite honestly Mark any other tie tonight would have been perfect I know okay um here's your Madam chair members of the board Dr sh Shand door

004thank you here's your Capital project report for month of March so the first project i' like to touch on is BR High School roof repair and Cody they have uh completed replacing all the metal paneling on the building all the metal sighing with the in ination in it they've continued to work on metal trim and down spouts and you'll see some pictures of that uh they've continued replacing the windows they were working on them actually yesterday and they also began coating roof edges remember that was the last portion of what they had to do with the roof they had to you got the center portion done and they had about two feet left all the way around the building that they had to get done finish up the coating and the weather started cooperating this

005is one of the windows in the cafeteria they replaced yesterday and here you can see along the edge of the roof here they actually coated back about 3T they cut out about 2 feet here you can see the gutters are installed and they put the metal Trim in and they then they coated the roof there finish the coating on the roof so they have about 70% of the edge of the roof coated now so they're getting very close to the end of this project uh get they're we've ordered the lettering to put on the building you know it says brute and high school on the side of it and also School of the Arts and they've got some ladders on ladders on order and a couple other small things like that but this pretty much

006is getting wrapped up here they believe they'll be done by the end of uh end of April so the next project is one that Michael piveral is who is our project manager now this is Michael over here in the corner here uh he's our project manager for Capital plans and projects and he's handling this one right now uh so right now the stage curtains and the seats should arrive in mid mid July by mid July should have it all um he's met with all the staff and the schools they've selected all the carpet tiles that's that's done now uh we're working on the lighting and sound system proposals they uh initially we were going to just replace the stage lighting on in the auditoriums but the uh house lighting in some of the auditoriums is

007also in poor condition so we're going to replace that in several of the auditoriums and also it gives us one Central console that will control the stage and the house lighting instead of having two different people controlling the lighting uh then lastly he's waiting on proposals for some other work it has some demolition work some concrete work that needs to go on uh in in in as part of this these Auditorium upgrades so he's waiting on those proposes as well so he's moving forward on those the next project is AstroTurf field installation this is a project that Greg dox is is taking charge of and uh they've been continuing work on the field as weather has permitted you know there's been some this stuff white stuff called snow it's been slowing things down and also

008rain has also really impacted them but they did get the concrete curves poured and they do they did get some uh drainage installed in in the in the ball field then soil stabilization is next I think I told you in the last meeting when they did the proof roll there they had some squishy areas in the ball field so what they're going to do is they're going to mix concrete with the soil and they'll make a nice firm uh uh bed for the AstroTurf so here you can see on the left hand side of the picture here you can see some of the curving here against the Asal asphalt track and there's some more curving here in the center of the picture and then here's a picture of the overall view of it but once

009they get the soil stabilization in in place they should really start to be able to move on this project so the last project is the tab High School additions and Renovations so the geothermal uh solicitation went out this morning for installing the geothermal wellfield uh the engineer is finalizing the LED lighting replacement plans um we're tying in the ball field lighting we're making that changing that to LED as well as the building LED lighting uh so is working on finish tying that tying those PL those projects together there uh right now we're also in the process of negotiating with an A&E firm for the uh for the design of the renovation additions uh lastly we're also planning to adjust the renovation scope uh to stay within the budget and we want to get as much

010as we can done on the building uh within the budget so uh some of the features of the project is converting the building to HVAC converting the building HVAC to geothermal this is a lot more efficient uh system for heating and cooling the building we currently have eight buildings that have geothermal in them right now and there are some of our there are most efficient buildings to run right now in the county the next uh thing is the LED lighting that will also save some energy there we plan to cut that energy the lighting energy almost in half and it's a significant number of of of energy that we use for lighting last next uh we plan to build a new modernized front to the building we want to make something that's more inviting to

011the public when they come out to the building and something that really says this is tab High uh next we uh went to provide the learning comments in the vein of what we did at brutin high school and York High School already right now they have a very small library and they only have one collaboration space we want to increase that next we want to increase some we went to create some additional classrooms inside the building envelope currently there's several classrooms that meet in a mobile classroom outside we like to pull those students inside the building so we'd like to create some additional classrooms inside the building we want to enhance the gymnasium entrance I mean when you walk up to the gymnasium entrance I'm not sure how often you all go there but you

012walk up to gymnasium right now there's dumpsters on one side there's a coolant Tower and the and the chiller on the other side and just jump piled over here and there so we want to just clean that all up and really give them give the visitors and give the visiting teams give the give the students and also their families something to be proud of when they're walking into at the gymnasium next one down here is renovating the restrooms and locker rooms so this is areas of the building that have not been touched or not been renovated since 1972 when we built the building so some of them have the original fixtures in these restrooms and the locker rooms now you know last year last summer we did a lot of work around the locker room

013areas but that was mostly in the team rooms and not inside the locker rooms and we knew we didn't do that work inside these rooms because we knew the U the renovation was coming so we left the locker rooms pretty much alone last summer and then lastly if we do get it opportunity we'd like to install solar array on the roof there to have high school which would also greatly reduce the power consumption of this building and make the building much more economical to run and that's my last slide thank you Mark not just for this evening that's my last slide anyone have any questions for Mr shearhart yes I do um actually and it all comes from I know we've got a budget Strain coming up that we can't get everything that we want

014and I know you know anytime a project like this is put together we go for everything that we want and um I guess what I'm looking for is have we identified the different projects as desperately need need want and then like or wish you know that if we had all the money that we could these these would be added in um I'd I'd like to see a classification process like that rather than an all or nothing you know this is this is what we have when we're doing all of this or we don't do anything at all especially knowing that we've got this um budget I want what's best for our students to acheve achieve academic success in the classroom and what the teachers need in the classroom to facilitate the students success that's my

015focus but I also know that our taxpayers our citizens only have so much money that we can't just keep going up um and looking at the budget it looks like that the budget has increased 5 million every year and this next fiscal year budget has the the same thing that it's going up um I know as a taxpayer in York County I don't have a closet full of extra tax dollars and so I'm looking at some of these you know is there a way to look at also when we're looking at the CIP is what happens if the budget ends up being cut by 5% by 10% by 20% do we have that identified in the CIP and I guess I'm looking at both of you you know well that's happened before so that's happened

016before we've had the CIP Frozen a number of years ago and we didn't do any projects basically during yeah so we basically move move all those projects back so my question to you would be which of what we presented at tab High School what would you cut well I think it's looking at this um is the learning Commons a desired wish or is it a desperate need driven by a mandate or data you know this is going to help the students succeed having this or is that something that we can move move off um um the enhancing the gymnasium entrance yes I know I've gone in and out of there a lot and i' I've seen it and I know what it looks like but is that something that's a desperate need or is that

017a like or wish that we can you know put off knowing that we've got this issue with the budget and and along those lines the solar panels um the costs under that does the budget include the equipment necessary to convert from DC to AC or to make sure that all of the um user systems underneath it can use the DC so that extra so if I can if I could just interject because you've asked about 15 questions sorry so so if we could take them one at a time I think that would be be be helpful I think part of understanding there Mark if you can go back one or two slides for me one more one more so if you see the last one there that that that fourth bullet where it says planning

018to adjust the renovation scope I think part of it is making sure that we are we are sharing the process so people understand the construction process so if citizens or board members or others who may not understand how this how how this process works you know we have a facilities master plan that has all of this information in there that's great detail so I would encourage you and others to really read through there to see if you go I forget which page it is in the facility master plan the number one most expensive building to run is tab high school so so we know that so that kind of checks off geothermal and and LED lighting right so so we know that's something that's needed the other thing I think it's important to to bring

019up is you Mark just shared we have fixtures in there from 1972 so so the question is if tab high school or Grafton or our high school are the number top five schools in the state of Virginia are we comfortable keeping them in in 1972 we want a 1972 library or do we want to provide collaborative spaces with resources to kids to modernize what in what education looks like now so I understand that it's just we when you have limited dollars that's what I'm looking at to see the the whole idea of the dollars can't be too limited when they gave a tax cut I mean didn't I just give a tax cut this last okay I'm talking about what we get in hand you know whatever but what I'm saying is this money is

020shouldn't be too much of an issue when there was a tax cut okay not to mention the fact that we have the lowest uh in in the bottom quarter bottom third of the state in dollar spent per pupil so I think yourk county is very very uh frugal we do what's needed and hey I still got uh 1972 locker rooms at brutin well okay but I will tell you this I was just putting the questions out there the uh the learning Commons was a very good Edition because it is totally used all the time we got rid of the old computer labs and and uh and yeah yeah so when you think it is for the for the students so when you think about the uh converting and it's more of a converting so when

021you're adding those the learning Commons you're you're sort of killing two birds with one stone right you're going to create the space for the kids to have this opportunity like the kids that yor High School have and like the ones that brutin have to use that space teachers sign out and use that space all the time has flexible seating in it plus all of the different rooms so it's a wonderful opportunity and resource for for our kids but at tab the numbers are growing tab Middle School is you know we have a lot of kids coming up through the system so there's some there's some grade levels that are pretty high so what I'd prefer if if we have an opportunity we convert the the old library is that what it's called are we calling

022it Library the old library whatever the official term is you convert that into classrooms so you can convert that into I don't know Mark three or three or four so if we can gain four classrooms how that it will help to convert with a new learning common so so you're kind of doing you're kind of killing two birds with one stone when it comes to that however I do want to make sure that I share this again we are planning to adjust the renovation scope like we've met with a county we've talked about what the process is however when the bid process starts we can't share information like right like when you think about the procurement rules we can't share information until that process is finished so you know we have a history at least

023I'll speak for my 11 years we have a history of doing renovations that we have never said let us have nice to halves we've never said let us have nice to halves we have focused on closing breezeways we focused on putting um what do they call when you go Security vules in every school we have focused on upgrading you know schools and hallways that have been around since the 50s and 60s so I think we have been extremely responsible and reasonable with our request what and that's what I can't control I can control assessing what needs to be done and then trying to execute it what I can't control is the cost of construction I can't control that however we also know that when we come back to this we are going to be relooking

024at the solar we're going to be looking at the um the side entrance like the side entrance isn't going to be a Taj mall like you're walking into uh you know um the Staple Center in Los Angeles I mean we're talking about cleaning things up a little bit right to make them um adequate so to speak and I think the other part that that citizens and folks need to remember is Once We Touch these schools we're not going back there for you know maybe 30 years I mean we have sinks in tab High School that are from 1972 York High School has issues and concerns as well so so we have slowly made our you know continued progress we've done this all the way through the elementary schools we have done I don't know how

025many Renovations that we've done where you know quite honestly I get offended when we get questions so much on a few of these things I understand the money part but also this isn't personal we're advocating for the schools in the county and for our kids to have a safe place to go to school that's warm in the winter you know cool in the in the spring where they can flourish so so to answer your question yes we will absolutely plan to adjust the renovation scope that is absolutely in our plans can I ask question too it's actually two separate budgets the CIP is one budget which is where this comes out of the one that we're having I don't know if we're really having issues with but the one where we're getting less money is

026our regular normal operating budget right so yeah we're not really concerned as much right now with with this budget unless the county says well to make the operating budget work we got to take some money from the CIP and they we and we understand they play hand hand we fully understand that and and again this isn't our you know this isn't our first day working through this we've done this for over you more than a decade many times before and that library at tab by the way has been there since the 70s I mean same size everything and it's pretty small I think the only thing we removed was the card catalog that's Mark whenever you men whenever you mentioned the within the uh building envelope you're going to bring uh more classrooms that's the

027Library part we're talking about for classrooms extra these are all ideas you know once we once we finish negotia negotiating with the A&E firm and we get a contract in place then we can sit down and actually start working on the renovation scope we haven't been able to do that yet so we don't have you know I have in my mind some of the things that are priorities and then going down the ladder but I need to find out from the architect what they think each of these things are going to cost so we can make some decisions and that's that's a great point to make mark because understanding those numbers in each of those blocks are just projections they're just projections they and you know as Mark just said once we get closer to

028that information we'll be able to nail down these things because yes then you start prioritizing when you say oh no this is this is way too much we need to sway something else comes up correct yeah I have a question when the when the A&E comes out with their report and their suggestions do they say you can do this and it's going going to be this amount if you do these five things or you can have similar results not at the you know the diamond level or platinum level um that you originally want but then there's this that you can go to if you need to come down do we get that kind of report from A&E that they break it down and I don't know because we haven't set down to talk to the

029Ane firm yet so I don't know what we're going to get and I want to say this here I'm very very I'm very responsible to taxpayers I want to be fiscally responsible to taxpayers we are not building a tajma hall here no way I just it's just beyond me to be able to do that I can't do that now I grant I'm going out the door but but you know all all the renovations we've done all the renovations we've done we've done to be physically responsible to all the taxpayers it's their dollars we want to make sure it's used wisely we want to use it for the best for our children we don't need a talk mall to teach the children we need something that's nice that's utilitarian it would but it needs to look

030good too it's going to be somewhat similar to what we already seeing that yes that's that's what my thoughts are and just I would like to add because and I don't remember who did the specific presentation so forgive me but there was a presentation where you laid out especially when it came to the geothermal how much money we are going to save overall when with that geothermal in there so a lot of these projects are credited in the down the road to our a bank account so to speak because we are implementing more um efficient ways of you know generating power and so forth so that's going to be a savings that's going to accume you year over-ear down the road as well that will help you know in some respect with some of these

031other things that we want to do so that's something we need to take into consideration and I don't remember who did the exact breakdown of the numbers but I I remember the numbers being significant in the savings right you might I mean does anybody else recall that I don't remember the exact ones I don't remember the numbers but I remember they stood out to me I was like oh you're going to save that much with just with the LED lighting cutting the uh electricity in half half lighting high schools are pretty big M yeah so I mean we're talking a lot of square foot yeah need definely all right any further thank you Mark apprciate you sir all right moving on with our presentations our next one is on budget yes yes thank you Miss

032Goodwin uh Mr Bowen is going to provide an update on our FY 25 as well as FY 26 budgets and Dr WS is going to um add a little bit at the very end related to one of our processes that we shared with you I think it was a question at the last board meeting about what was qu quader review so he's GNA jump in there Mr B thank you Dr shandor Madam chair members of the board and Dr shandor so this evening I'll be providing an update on the FY 26 and fy2 25 and 26 uh budgets um since the superintendent presented um his budget in February we've had two key developments that have occurred uh first a revision to our average daily membership for both uh 25 and 26 and as you know

033ADM is a critical factor in state funding and I'll explain how these changes um impact our budget the second is the conclusion of the general assembly session in late February and I will summarize the budget actions included in their adopted bill now I do want to remind the staff and um board members and the community that the budget document you're going to be presented with a budget document in March um that document historically is based on the governor's budget so I'm going to give you some general uh General Assembly budget uh information but we're going to present to you on the governor's budget as we always do if there's changes um that come from the general assembly's uh actions then we will present those to you at a later date as as well as uh

034changes from the local government so board members um you will recall that this information was part of the superintendent's proposed uh budget in February and looking at 2025 our budget was initially based on the ADM of 12966 students now that's our current fiscal year and that's highlighted in green however when the governor released his budget in December the Virginia Department of Education revised our projected ADM increasing it by 176 um to 13,142 and U that's for the current year and by 401 students um for FY 26 to 13367 now these projections raised some concerns as the increases were significant for both years as a result we contracted with the Weld and Cooper Center at UVA for a secondary assessment of our ADM and based on their findings and then discussions with staff we have revised

035our numbers um so for fy2 our revised ADM is now 13,061 which is um where we're currently trending uh this is an increase of 95 students over our current budget but it's 81 students fewer than the Department of Education for FY 26 our revised ADM is now 13,26 which is an increase of 302 students over our current budget and 99 fewer students than BDO significant do we know where they're coming from uh no they just use different metrics um for for measuring um I will tell you that the information that we provided uh Welden Cooper was more just of a historical nature from 2016 to 20125 um of what our current what that enrollment has been neither neither projections this is not an exact science so neither projection though takes into account you know the

036impact of the military moves here in New York County doesn't take into uh account the construction um that's occurring in York County and as Dr Carrol presented at the facili master plan presentation in November we saw that 2024 25 was one of the biggest years of construction so um that did give us some some you know reason for concern um and that's the reason why we backed off a little bit because we do believe that students are coming to York County yeah the good thing about this is while we um believe the numbers um have have some flexibility there um we do have a number of positions that are proposed in the budget so if the uh ADM the students don't materialize we can pull back on on the on the position new teacher positions

037so let's take a look at fy2 budget so we're currently working with three um ver budget versions We have the original fy2 budget um that was approved in June of 202 4 this is with an ADM of 12966 we here have the governor's budget which includes that increase of 95 students and um as we look at the uh standards of quality funding you'll see that we've have an increase of 755,000 as a result of the increase in students the general assembly's budget also takes into account that revised ADM and you'll note here that the increase is 773 th000 there's a slight difference between the governor's proposed budget and the the general assembly's Budget on that line item and just real briefly I'll explain it because there's a uh there's a difference in the lottery programs

038too it has to do with uh atrisk funding um atrisk funding is funded either through S soq line item or through the lottery programs and it just so happens that when the governor proposed it it fell into the lottery funded programs but when the general assembly proposed it it fell into the standards of quality that's standards of quality are state general funds Lottery dollars of course come from the lottery funds so there's a slight difference there between the general assembly and the governor total um incentive program funding we have a small increase of about 22,000 both for the Governor's and general assembly's budget this is resulting in the increase in the compensation supplement that comes from that category which is related to the increase in average daily membership so as the number of students increase

039your funding your funding formula for teachers and support staff also increases so then they apply those increases to the compensation Form and so we're seeing a slight increase in that in that area in the lottery programs I'm sorry in the categorical funding we see a small increase of $1,200 um and uh for both the governor and the general assembly's budget and that's related to special education homebound Services just u a slight increase in the children that were serving and then in Lottery programs we see a $300,000 decrease from the original budget when you compare it to the general assembly and governor and what happened here so the original budget was developed more than a year ago and so we have to work off projections but when the governor releases and the general assembly release their

040budgets and updates for the current year then those numbers are Tred up and so now what we're seeing is more actual reflection of the participation in the special education Regional programs as opposed to last year's projection so this concludes the um the updates to the fy2 budgets um again we will present to you the March budget and March the updates to the middle column the FY 25 Governor proposed before you go to the next SL any questions on that I'm surprised the lottery went down because I thought with the restrictions on the the other games that came out you know that was competition to the lottery I thought that the lottery would have been higher yeah and also why is this early childhood programs reduced so much so early childhood programs um so uh this

041is based on participation so we run a 3/4 Day program um but you're only funded either on full day or half day um so our projection of those those students that were participating was based on the 630 however when we start to look at the numbers that are participating actually participating um that number has been reduced there there was a about aund $130,000 reduction for the Governor's budget and 254,000 for the uh uh General assembly's budget a little little more than what I expected um we need to dig into that and figure out what what's actually happening there and if we were to have full-time preschool within New York County how much would we have increase in funding from the state on that kind of so if we go back and look at the calculation

042tool the budget calculation tool from booe um what they budget for us is about um 11 1.1 to$ 1.2 million that's if we're running 176 kids at a fulltime program okay that is just a portion of what it takes to fund a prechool program so it would require significant investment by local government or an increase uh by the state and then we that would require additional bus drivers because the reason why we run a three quter program has large part to do with the transportation thank you and then lastly I've got to mention the bonus um not included in the general assembly's I mean in the governor's or original budget is the general suly included which is $1,000 bonus funding I'm sorry funding for $1,000 bonus for all funded positions we talked about this at

043the last meeting um so we've done some just some quick estimates if we were to provide $1,000 to every employee every full-time employee it would require about another $500 to $600,000 in additional dollars now where could that money come from it could come from potentially from end of year funds we haven't worked started our our process and identifying what our end ofe fund balance is going to be but certainly if there's money available uh we will bring that back to the board for discussion and for your approval if you decide to go that route do we know what neighboring divisions are doing um not neighboring divisions but um uh some of my colleagues from around the state uh they are looking to make it $1,000 there is some concern about you know the economic forecast

044and what that might do for next year um and we we share those concerns uh but some of the school divisions I've heard from one one that's about our size R not County they're they're looking at the full thousand for all employees and again this is a $1,000 bonus that's pre-tax um people when they hear this they're expecting on a check there's a significant contribution that we have to come from local funds to give that, to to each employee and so we're what we have to do is we have to look at okay the full-time employees will get it uh what about our part-time employees we have a lot of part-time employee groups so we have to decide how many of those folks in in those groups would be eligible and then we have to

045determine at what point that a person started working for us in fiscal year 25 would they be eligible for a bonus so if they started working for us in April is it really fair to give them a full bonus uh as opposed to folks who have been who at us all year long and then you also have to consider with the end of year dollars I me we we we really rely on those endof year dollars for multiple projects whether it's buses technology um well as we talked about earlier there's concerns about CIP and so we typically use um end of your dollars to as cash contributions to our CIP so which we've already which we've committed which we've already committed a lot of dollars yeah okay so let's move on to the FY 26

046budget so on this slide um this is a a slide of the governor's proposed budget and it's just comparing the original ADM that we used that for the superintendent's proposed budget now to the revised ADM which we believe is more accurate it's a reduction of 99 students and you can see the reduction in Revenue in each of those categories we lose about $714,000 as a result now consequently we we adjusted our expenditures initially we projected needing 16 16 additional teachers for 101 new students but with the revised ADM we now anticipate only needing 12 teachers thereby reducing the expenditures by $320,000 and so uh let's look at the budget impact so with that revised uh ADM we see um our total available funds decrease by 74,000 and then our expenditures for Future Ready graduates decrease

047by 320,000 then and the resulting change brings or increases our budget Gap or or budget shortfall to almost $3.6 million so when the superintendent presented his budget that was close to 3.2 so we've increased that a little bit now this uh slide is a comparison of the governor's revised budget to the general assembly's adopted budget and here we see some positive changes so ADM is the same uh but when you look at s soq funding um that increases by almost $2.9 million with the general assembly's budget and this includes $2.4 million for the restoration of support positions now included in the S soq formula and then also 550,000 for special education addon funding in in the area of incentive funding uh we see an increase of $137,000 and again this is uh for the compensation

048supplement due to the additional uh positions being included support positions being included in the S soq formula Lottery programs increase slightly by 58,000 for some additional atrisk funding provided by the general assembly there's no changes to categorical or early childhood programs so in total the general assembly's budget uh increases our Revenue by over $3 million and then we can take a look and see how this uh in impacts our budget so now our total funds available would increase to almost $7.9 million reducing the budget gap or shortfall to $512,000 and so which is a significant Improvement and probably the best case scenario we could look for at this point yeah and then that rest of that will be funded through local well that's what we would hope um if the local government cannot fund this

049then we would have to make uh reductions within that budget and most likely it would come from the compensation increase but now we're looking at a $512,000 budget Gap whereas before they go with the the governor that's a big if that's big if yeah yeah did I did I hear that right you said you were looking at the compensation would handle adjustments we would we would have to adjust much much of what was in the budget were legal mandates legal mandates or comp soq changes that we had to uh to satisfy compensation is the one area that we would have to look at if we um didn't have this budget G covered is there any other area that we can find money um so what we've done in the past um is we've had an

050agreement with the county on utilizing Revenue stabilization funds so we had a n we had 900,000 from that Reserve fund for one year it stepped down to six it stepped down to three and then it it carried on to three for one more year the only problem that we we hesitate by making that suggestion is that we are we have committed a significant amount of that cash reserve for our CIP with the uncertainty that many of us are feeling in the economy uh and that some that the general assembly is already talking about uh there would be some concern that if there was a budget reduction from the state that would be the first place we would go to is is to the revenue stabilization fund so um I would not recommend going to that

051fund any any more than what we've already committed to yeah because you you said you've gone down in that over over time are reoccurring dollars too they're not one time dollars yeah and we we did that for a couple years years ago with Mr Morgan um to help sort of even some things out and and it worked out well for us but where we are right now back then we weren't putting millions of dollars into the CIP which is we are now right and and also we've committed to doing these projects in the summer to upgrade the auditoriums which haven't been upgraded in you know 50 years since Inception yeah right since the schools were built so so we've we have we've committed a lot of those funds already and I would agree that we're

052not in a position that we would recommend to use the revenue stabilization funds for that and the reason why we felt comfortable um committing some of the funds is because we had $4 million over $4 million that we had received in excess uh in excess impact aid funds that were deposited last uh year so you know if we were to see significant um uh receipts of Revenue and excess from from Impact Aid that's something we could consider but um at this point in the year I'm almost $4 million short of our Target so in our budget $8.7 million is relied upon impact Aid I'm about $4 million short of that right now so um I don't know if that's we we don't believe it's being held up by anything at the federal government sometimes it's

053just the timing we don't know when we're going to receive those funds but I'll will tell you last year year I received significant deposits in April and May so we're optimistic that that's going to continue so you don't just get a one-time deposit here's your big check it doesn't go in like that it goes in in different increments right okay and then and part of the agreement is if for some reason we don't meet our Target of $8.7 million in Impact Aid the agreement between the board and Board of Supervisors dated back to 1993 or 1994 states that we can request that that shortfall be carried or covered by the revenue stabilization fund which means we would be taking another significant deposit from that or withdrawal from that uh from that fund okay so you

054think government's going to have budget in March March no no I I'll talk about the next steps so so the governor has until March 24th to act on the general assembly's budget um in April the general assembly will reconvene to consider any amendments if changes are made the budget will go back to the governor for final approval and then assuming the process stays on schedule staff will present the final budget to the board at the May business meeting and then our final slide um this is part of the uh Dr shandor's budget presentation in February um there are some details that need to be shared I'm will turn that over to Dr Wes thank you Mr Bowen Madam chair members of the board Dr shandor last month Dr Nicholls presented on how ycsd conducts their

055quadral review and the groups reviewed um we shared those groups and how we continue to be competitive in the market with the region and our Peninsula districts based on Dr shandor's February presentation on the budget he stated there was $165,000 budget implication related to position adjustments and our quadren overview um so this slide captur those adjustments one is um what we realized through the quad review was our bus assistants were um currently the lowest wage in the region and so we are um asking for a 3% scale adjustment to bring them up to be equal with our um competing competing districts then we have two position adjustments um so for our administrative Associates that currently right now are at the 97 day um calendar they will be moved to 217 day for Operational Support and

056that's part of a three-year um routine and schedule that we've had put in place because last year we moved them from 185 to 197 and the next year we're going to move them so they're all on the same um pay scale and the same days working um and then we also have our Middle School principal have asked our Middle School counseling directors to go from 11mon to 12mth and that is for scheduling purposes and enrolling students that there's not that month that students are not registered and are not schedules are not produced and then we have uh a few grade adjustments due to the following below the the minus plus 5% for the quad review and we have an HR technician we're going to move from a 13 to a 14 we have the lead

057copy shop from a 14 to 15 and our custodial area supervisor a 17 to 18 and our records manager from an 18 to 19 and those are all the grade adjustments based on that quad review and that is it and that concludes the update for the SE thank you any questions thank you guys thank you very much all right at this time we are going to look at our FY 2227 strategic plan midye student attendance yes thank you Miss Goodwin uh this evening uh Dr Aaron Butler our director of student services he's going to present some information to you related to attendance and chronic absenteeism data during the first semester of our 2425 school year and when he's when he finishes that he is going to transition right into uh a presentation related to student

058Behavior in conduct so so we don't have to stop he sort keep rolling after that presentation's over Dr Butler Madam chair members of the board and Dr shandor thank you for this opportunity to provide an update to a strategic plan for um supportive culture specifically for student attendance the frame of presentation this evening um I'll go into U three categories first we'll look at um the definition of what are the metrics and methodology we use to collect and Report student attendance data then we'll go into a review of the data for the first semester with comparisons from FY 24 to fy2 for both of those time frames and then I'll share information about some of the school-based interventions and structures we use to support consistent School attendance so there's two buckets we use when it

059comes to attendance one is truancy and the other one is chronic aism so truy goes more into legal compliance and that's based off of Dakota Virginia as you know in Virginia is ctory for students to go to school from Age 5 to 17 and so in order to make sure that we have that in place we have to have procedures and protocols installed to make sure that we are tracking that data and doing correct interventions so whenever a student has AC creed five unexcused absences Virginia code requires that we do have to have an intervention meeting and so that's why parents are so important parents have to be brought into that meeting um along with the student and the school-based team to talk about what is the challenges or the barriers preventing the student from

060attending school on a regular basis and then if the student Acres 10 on his stud absences those students are referred to court services um we have a division treny officer who um provides that for us so again truy Moore is looking at our numbers for legal compliance when it comes to Chronic aism that is more of an academic impact so we know that when students Miss more than 10% of the academic school year uh they are a larger trajectory for falling behind their peers they tend to have lower academic achievement scores they also have a higher trajectory for high school dropout so that's why both the governor and the Department of Education have really stressed the importance of students coming to school every day and on a consistent basis one of the things that we

061look at for chronic absenteeism uh is that they have a benchmark that's established both at the federal and the state level so last year the state level was 15% so you want to make sure that your school had 15% or lower when it came to Chronic aism The Benchmark has been changed now to 11% uh there is one exception students with disabilities that's at 12% I have a question can you describe or Define how what's the difference between excused and unexcused and is there a scale to differentiate between students who consistently keep up their work and their grades even though they're absent versus those who don't um two questions sorry so Virginia code gives very specific guidelines for what's excuse so for example we have a large military population in our County so with the

062military compact um families who when a when a service band or some service woman is coming back from deployment or going onto deployment they're allowed to take time out and those days are usually excused for them to spend time with that service um individual before they're deployed or when they come back some other things such as medical religious observance there's different things which the code specifies and then of course unexcused would be anything that there's no we don't have any notification why the student was absent uh we do look at both academic impact though because when students Miss significant time from school for an excuse they're not able to make up those assignments and even if they try to catch up they've missed that face- t- face instruction with a teacher and with students I

063guess the reason I was asking and this actually goes back to when I was teaching full-time is there a difference between um those students who are absent for a family trip say there's a family reunion with great-grandparents and whatever that they're away on a family trip but they've made sure that they've kept up their grades their grades are already decent in school they've kept everything up and there's no basic loss of learning during that time is that considered excused or unexcused for a trip like that and who makes that determination so when the student handbook for if it's a predetermined trip um the family is asked to work with the building principal so if they are going on a family uh for family reunion or family trip sometime during the school year they can get

064permission beforehand front of the principal then we usually as you said provide makeup work and assignments for before they leaveing when they come back one thing we do ask our families though we try to publish the School Division calendar ahead of time so that families can try to Cluster their vacations doing natural breaks that we have during the school year to try to prevent that Interruption of learning right thank you but but also as you were sharing crion cism includes both excused abses unexcused and then out of school suspension so all those are put into that equation so even if there excused if they have above a certain amount that they've missed even if it's an excused absence it still counts against them yes ma'am it's still considered chronically absent and and we're Bound by

065law with that with the federal and the state issues is that so it's a part of the accountability framework so what they do there's a framework now it used to be in the past it was a credibility and so they would have the reports in the school profile report now they have a school performance um framework where they include this as part of that overall equation U to determine if a school division is a school is on track I'm off track distinguished they have different categories I believe Mrs Beasley had given a presentation and Dr Skinner ear this year thank you very much so one the thing we try to do is we use a structure called multi-tier Syma supports it's a research-based framework where we look at for tier one if schools partner with

066families and we have clear and consistent expectations for attendance then usually 80 to 85% our students um will attend school on a consistent basis and will not be conically absent from school we will have though at tier two some students even when we have these clear expectations they may require some targeted interventions to support attendance and then finally we have a few at tier three those are students who need more intensified services and many cases they are on an attendance plan or they have to have court involvement for attendance but the dashboard that we could that we use for our School Division I'll go into detail to explain what how the dashboard is recorded So this first category on the dashboard really looks at overall attendance so we can see our daily attendance monthly attendance

067and then the percentage of students who had unexcused absence for the division the other part of our dashboard looks at I'm sorry it's going backwards I'm okay sorry okay the other part of our dashboard looks at um for each school so we have a listed so you can see for every school their daily attendance and you can see how many of their students uh at this point of the school year have zero to four unexcused absences 5 to n or 10 or more at the very bottom of the screen you can actually look at our division daily attendance and you can see that there were certain Peaks so right here this is the area right around Thanksgiving break where we had the two days of school and then we were out for Wednesday Thursday Friday

068we did see a peak in absente right before Thanksgiving on the same thing when we were here for December we saw a small Peak right before the winter break and then finally we look at Chronic absenteeism information and we can see from our reporting categories uh the percentage of students who are chronically absent this allows our schools to provide interventions targeted for those specific individual students when we look at our elementary data we can see a very similar we can see that for for elementary school students there are two groups of focus um all the areas that you see grade out are right at The Benchmark of that 11% um we have slightly above that for our economically disadvantage and our students with disabilities and those are uh populations that our students our schools are

069working on to make sure that they had the proper interventions reaching out with parents working with staff also working with our professional staff such our school social workers and counselors for our middle schools there was two identified areas as well so we're focusing um for M middle school students for our black African-American students which was slightly above the Benchmark when we took this data at the semester turn our economically disadvantaged students and also our students with disabilities and then for our high school data you can notice that for high school the unexcused abenes are a little bit higher than it was for the division average also for elementary and middle and that is something that our schools have been actively working on to address that and also trying to partner with parents when we go

070into more detail with that we notice that there are a few more reporting categories uh which we are focusing on one of course economic disant students disabilities but also our Caucasian or white students black African-American and Hispanic students focusing on those populations as well when we try to drill down to find out what was the most frequent reason for absences during the first semester our high schools we noticed that unexcused which would be one of the reasons why it would be preferred over for truancy but then behind that is sick um there was a lot of students who had many sick days during the first semester which you can find from the data next is appointments me these were either medical appointments we had several seniors who are starting to go off the colleges and

071so some of those appointments were pre-arranged absences for them to go to college businesss um some of the things that were interested students who were running late so they missed a significant part of the day uh we also had some parent early dismissal and of course medical was one of the last of the top most frequent so I'm GNA transition from chronic absenteeism over to treny so for our treny data if we follow the national model we would expect 85% of our kids to not be Tru from school missing five or more unexcused in York County for the first semester we were at 92% of our students um were considered not truant we have about 5% that had five to nine excuse absences and only 2% that had 10 or more unexcused absences over the

072last three years we've been seeing a steady decline and that goes back to the work of our schools really talking with our families and using a lot of family engagement time they focus on um good attendance at school to make sure they're notifying the main offices they're um absent on our school website we made some changes so that now families can just click on a button on the website and can submit an absent teote and it goes directly to the main office so by doing some of those interventions you can hand looking like the true High School parent and so we've seen a mark decrease in the number of students who have been um Trent from FY 23 to fy2 um we saw a significant decrease in our elementary schools uh dropping from last year

073from 164 down to 144 same thing for our middle school students sign from 532 to 165 Now High School is kind of plateaued and so we're still focusing on that as I shared in the last slide um that's that's been one of our challenges because we have a wide range we have everything from freshmen uh to seniors who are at different places um and so trying to make sure that we're keeping them encouraged and making sure that we are doing interventions and make sure they have R rigorous instruction to make them when to come to school as well as connections to school one of our biggest things that we focus on is students who are connected to the life of the school tend to come to school on a more frequent basis and so making

074sure our students are connected with sports activities and clubs so they are have that vested interest in to coming to school well and and our high schools having the well you're just going to get to it the student connection coaches we know that that intervention has proven successful at all of our high schools that's for sure I want to highlight something here because I don't want to lose it's appropriate I think in that I get asked questions or people just make random comments you know why do we have all these people working in the school division you know we we should cut POS we need to cut positions you know they don't understand the bigger picture but when you look at these positions and the decrease it has brought in getting kids to school getting

075them more connected a teacher and a principal don't have just have all that time to pour into that so you need other resources so then you get your student connection coach you get your you know social worker interventions in there I mean it's it's everybody all hands on deck but you need resources to do it and resources cost money yeah but it's it's producing results absolutely and I would add those aren't full fulltime positions those Student Connection coaches that's a you know when you think about who those people are the principles work really closely with those you know they're handpicked of who we won in those roles and it's a it's a small stien position but I just wanted to highlight that because it is you know and who forever is listening out there that

076you know we we put these things in place there is a little bit of a cost or you know associated with it but it's producing the results that we want or that the state wants us to have or whatever so they're working and if we didn't have them we probably you know these this is a different generation I mean you know let's face it if I didn't have a choice my mom would look at me and say if I said I was sick she'd look and say you don't look sick get to school and I you know could have a fever but it was like go to school you know so it was different you know we don't have that same um the generation's different well not to mention the fact that uh now with

077within especially the elementary schools so much of the admin's time is taken up with discipline yeah you know I mean it's it's I don't see how they get their job done yeah quite frankly and we again different generation you didn't you didn't want the school to call home no it's very different so just saying okay sorry I didn't I just felt it was it was appropo at that time to make that comment and mam chair that was a good segue into what I want disc so I'm just going to go through just some of the interventions and structures we do have in place to support our students um we I will talk through the student connection Coach position and Dr shander shared a little bit but I'll give you a little bit more information um

078the Department of Education had actually given us a option it's called the flexible in person instructional loss time recovery approach and I'll go through that we also have a division level attendance intervention team um every school has a school base attendance team which is required by Virginia code that you have to have um also our school social workers I'll share that that's one of the budget priorities that the board has over time has added a social workers we started out when I first was in the division about two or three for division we now have up to six and so they are able to work more closely with zones and students and then our assessment compliance coordinators they also provide a valuable intervention as well so our Student Connection coaches one of the good things

079they they are totally funded through title for grant money as well as the Allin funds that Governor Yen and the Virginia Department of Education provided so that is no economic impact to our school division but they make a powerful impact with the lives of our students so that is funded uh through grants and as Dr shandel were sharing these are usually full-time staff members and so this is one of their add-on duties instead of having a duty period um their Duty period is to work with students as Student Connection coaches or they do after school and before school interventions and typically the code of Virginia require that we have some type of early intervention before student gets to five my excuse absences so they work very closely with our attendance secretaries so if a student

080was out for 3 days with no note or notification they reach out to the family they try to find out what's going on and some cases they found out that some students maybe have some death in the family or different things they're also able to provide that support for those families and then if students really aren't connected to school at all they try to encourage them to get involved in some type of activity they use something called the check and connect program framework that comes from the University of Minnesota but that's a database uh program which looks at tracking student attendance student participation after school activities and academics it's a spreadsheet where they can go through and they can track by a daily basis you know are is the student coming to school um have

081they been having positive interactions are they passing all their courses and they use that to try to determine how to communicate with families and bring them a part of that process yes ma'am on the early intervention um so it's basically they're just calling the parent following up that way sending emails is that Lally invention or there other activities with it so they do a variety of things so that one of the things is trying to talk call parents and get them involved but one of the things that the grant requires um entitled for is that they are also making positive connections so some of our Student Connection coaches take students on College visits to try to get them to see you know these are opportunities if you come to school every day that some of

082the outcome could be that you could go to college and this what it would be like uh they bring in speakers in some of our schools um many of them like I said they really work on that program that track to make sure that they're on track with their grades and attendance and if they are not connected to some activity they do that um some of our connection coaches like at tab Middle School they also have like after school Mentor program where they're trying to work with students so that they do feel like they have Advocate with adults in the school building so they serve several purposes but primarily it is attendance but also to be advocate for the student and keep them connected thank you like and one of the good examples here this

083is Yorktown Elementary School so their sec I work with their ACC to have a a student I mean a parent breakfast and so they invited parents in to focus on academics to focus on attendance and as you can see they tried to make sure that it was a family centered event so that they could hone on you know and usually they said breakfast is the easier time to get families and it's hard to give them to come back um for dinner time or for lunch but they said they can usually get them in the morning and so that's one of the activities they were found very successful they've done several of these over the course of the year and their data shows that this had a powerful impact act on attendance um our assessment and

084compliance coordinators U they chair the school-based multidisiplinary attendance team and as you can see in this picture here they work very closely with families and staff to develop Improvement plans so if a student has Miss fire more excuse absences they're required to do a a plan that talks through interventions what were some of the barriers and then they implement it and they follow through um in some cases they do have to refer the families over to the attendance officer for the division if those interventions are in um INE effective however their goal is to not have to refer to us the court but to try to make sure that families are supporting us and making sure their children come to school and these are for unexcused absences yes ma'am unexcused thank you as I shared

085the Department of Education provided us an option so you can hold a before after or Saturday school session with students to help them recover time so if they have Mis days that have excessive absences this does not change their actual daily attendance but it does change chronic absenteeism um for every three hours that a student stays for flexible inperson learning we can recapture one full day of chronic absenteeism for absence now the caveat to that is that it must be with a licensed teacher and it must be directly aligned to the Virginia um standards of learning so it has to be either math science uh yeah Math and Science English or social studies as well as it has to be iners so I know some schools have want to do a virtual option but they

086stress that is students learn best when they have iners instruction and plus if they had been missing time from school it was more beneficial to have them in school for these sessions and so we tracked that information and we're able to calculate that so in the data that I showed before that does not include the hours of um flexible learning that people have recovered but we keep a spreadsheet at every school and that information will be added into the system so at the end of the year report uh that report will look will not look the same way the when I just showed it to you because that is not including those hours of recaptured time that in person um 3 hours is that done like um like on a Saturday how how do you

087get that in because they can't do it during their regular school day so how do you get that in so some schools yeah so some schools have those Saturdays of success but for the most of our schools they have been using the after school methodology so we have activity buses usually on certain days during the week uh particular and that's from elementary all the way to high school so they just try to schedule it so we know that some students have to stay for clubs or Sports so they try to do it on those days that they're not staying for those activities and they keep them for that time and then they work with them and they're used to ABT to capture that that time now is the licensed teacher is that also a classroom

088teacher or is this an additional teacher who comes in for this this is a classroom teacher so they have a rotation and that's something that we've received some grant funding from the all-in um grant that we received from the Department of Education so we use that fund to provide stiens or payments for students to staff that was my next question yes I mean we have very dedicated staff that you know with but it's it's better when we have the funds that we can actually give them compensation for staying absolutely thank you for doing that we shared also our school social workers they also serve in that multidisiplinary team for schools and they conduct home visits they visit for um families who have excessive absences to make sure there are any barriers but also they connect

089them with resources in our community and our least School social worker Mrs Cotman she does a great job of filling in those gaps because as you know we have certain social works that are assigned the buildings but she will also go out she goes to several of our community providers and try to make sure that we're aware of the resource in our community for those families I have another question on that with um with the social workers if they're going if they're going to the homes do they do they make arrangements obviously with the parents or do they just you know show up I need to check your home or how is how is that handled and you know I'm looking at the legality of it now traditionally they will reach out to the parents

090and call first before they come to the home and schedu an appointment uh if it's a crisis situation they're trying to get more information they always will take another party with them so many times it might be the social worker and the school counselor um but usually the families they already have a relationship with they usually don't just don't just appear at someone's doorstep they normally have a pretty um a pretty schedule I mean a pretty um pretty refined schedule for who they're going to visit at the time of day and watch the purpose of that meeting they're not CPS they don't function as a CPS officer yeah that's what someone had asked me about this when when they saw that so that's why oh yes but no oh no man they're they're not there

091for punitive reasons usually they're there because the family has asked them to come or like if a child had just been missing for several days and they' made several phone calls and can't get a hold of the family they might come by to do a wellness check to see if the child's okay or if the family is moved um but it's never of a punitive nature more of a supportive nature great thank you and then at the division level on the school based level we do have a tennis intervention team so at the division level we track and monitor data so the the D the dashboard that I showed you earlier that's one of the measures that we do look at at the division level because we need to see if we need to provide

092additional professional development supports and training for our school-based teams uh here's a picture of the York high school team uh they're working very closely they're looking at student data they're pulling up their chronic ACM reports and student treny and what they do as they partners they decide what typee of interventions they need to put in place and that is across um our whole division at all of our schools we also are fortunate that we have the York County Juvenile Youth Services they have partnered with our School Division so if you have a student who is missing excessive amount of um days from school they will actually partner with us they also use the check and connect program and they will assign a mentor now the only caveat the student has to be between ages 12

093and 177 but they will partner with that family um if there's an issue with Transportation an issue if there's some job in security they try to work with the family to provide wraparound services and that's something that we can't necessarily provide but they're able to do that because of their role and how long does that assistant last usually until so they usually come to the intervention team meeting so it'll be written into the plan so sometime it's just a couple months there's actually some mentors have been with kids for a couple years um because they've been working with that family and cycling through while they've been in our school system so and again that's also a free service but it's done through our County uh the juvenile Services again so thank for this opportunity to

094provide an update on the Strategic plan for student attendance I'm available for any additional questions I I wanted to add one thing I wanted to see if Miss Barry wanted to add anything because we have you got to see a lot of interventions you got to see a lot of data you got a lot you got to see a lot of data headed in the right direction which we're really proud of all the hard work of all of our not only our staff members but our kids are working hard and our families are getting engaged so we're really proud of those results however there are times when you know it doesn't go that way so miss bar can you talk a little bit about the go when we get involved with court services well yes

095when the interventions aren't successful it does go to the try officer and she takes it to our multidisiplinary treny team uh that we have established with mental health on there we have probation on there we have juvenile Services um different Health Care Providers and we will look and see if there's anything else that we could offer to the family and if there's nothing then the decision will be made to file a petition with the court so the child will need a supervision petition and that's a petition that I take to court and I basically represent the School Division in those cases to have the court order the child to go to school if that still doesn't work then I'll file a criminal show cause petition against that child so that they'll go to detention if

096they don't go to school the only problem is the general assembly has uh kind of tied our hands now as we're limited to seven days of detention for a violation based on each court order um so seven days in detention is not a whole lot kids can easily do that and then they come back and they still don't go to school so unfortunately um they have decreased the the punitive nature of what we can do to try and encourage kids to go to school um but we keep trying I guess have another question for Dr Butler with a strategic plan and I think it's great showing some of the improvements on those slides um over you know the different years do we have say a stair step saying in six months we want to see

097this much improvement for this particular year we're going to check that and see yes we've not only met it we've gone beyond it or no we're kind of stagnant we're not seeing an improvement so we need to adjust some things do we have that with the Strategic plan that has identified steps and when to check it to see you know how we're doing on our goals so we've aligned our strategic plan with the federal accountability standards so for for chronic absenteeism the answer is yes we're we're trying to focus to make sure because eventually it's going to go down to 10% not so it started at 15% it went down to 11 next year it'll be at 10% so they want 10% of your school I mean you have no more than 10% of your

098students chronically absent so yes so the way that the plan was predicated so that we will match and that we'll parallel the Federal Credit accountability standards for treny is the very same thing we follow that model we would prefer that we not have any kids truing and going to court and so that's always been the aim but how we try to make sure that we are providing the right kind of supports we go back to again we should not have more than 85% of our kids that need to have a attendance improvement contract and definitely no more than 5% that would have to go to court because of that I just to know if we we actually had a stair step to improve on that 85% you know obviously that first one that you showed

099it was 90 something that are are we looking at we want to improve you know and I've asked Dr shandor about this also to have stair steps of after four months we want to see it up here you know that we're maintaining this success you know are we reaching this or have we slipped somewhat and we need to make sure rather than just do it year by year Well we don't do it year by year we do it by month we we again the data you saw today was just by the first semester okay so when you when you go back to those charts and you can see that the stair steps decreasing that's obviously really good work okay um and I think what makes the strength of our strategic plan or one of the

100biggest strengths is you know this data is being worked on at the school level at the grade level um so you when you're looking at at across third grade in a particular Elementary School like what you got tonight was big picture from elementary middle high however where the work is happening and where sort of the rubber meets the road is that those individual teams and those individual schools with those individual phone calls getting those parents involved and making sure they're involved in school and as we continue to get kids engaged in school and their families getting engaged in school they're obviously going to come to school which is obviously um our goal so we we have not sent you know arbitrary we're going to increase by 3% 5% 6% or decrease by those percentages um

101and and it is School Division like your county that's sometimes even more challenging because if you have a grad rate at 98 and you have an attendance rate at 98 you know you you're there's a really small margin there of of where you're trying to move the other part is is understanding from year to year like the you you may see the numbers on the screen but we're a pretty transient area so you know with the military are and kids moving in and out so each year some of these situations at these schools are drastically different from year to year or every two years right it just really just depends um but the way that you get this work moving is you have somebody leaded like Dr Butler come up with a solid process to

102make sure the whole division is is is sort of rowing at the at the same you know the same pace so that we're getting those results just also question uh we are tracking outcomes on obviously on um do we have a way to track what's been inputed to get those outcomes kind of like know number of interventions calls emails and stuff like that or is that something that it's not been tracked oh it's tracked well I mean I think about working yeah I mean really but but when I think about like ogr meetings right so when I think about our ontime graduation rate meetings from September October as we go through the whole year I mean yes there being tracked the counselors and principles at the school I had Karen's on those meetings and Dr

103Butler and Dr Skinner and and other Michelle and others in the room and Lisa who's here it's messy because you'll see scratch marks and you'll see everything else because you know certain kids were behind and then we caught seven of them up so that number might look like this the beginning of the year and then the whole year it's decreasing and you can't really put your finger on one intervention that's working because all of our kids are different and they all need different things you know there's different situations so but the 100% it's tracked yep did I miss anything with that Aon all right do you want to move to we could transition to your next um presentation so now we're going to talk about a real fun topic we're going to talk about student

104Behavior Dr Butler and this is a strategic Plan update for student Behavior which also follows on supportive culture and for the presentation I will do this very similar to attendance I'll kind of go through the methodology and the metri that we use to capture student Behavior and the administrative response to that behavior we'll look at the first semester from FY 24 and FY 25 this year also share some of the structures we do put in place and responded to student behaviors so Virginia code requires that every year we have to submit to the Department of Education um all the events of student behavior and how did administrators respond to those behaviors the methodology they use now it used to be the dcv or the discipline crime and violence report um several years ago they switched

105over to what they call Sar which is student behavior and administrative response and that's their official um data collection tool that information is also available on the Department of Education so you can actually pull our data by going on to VOE site in addition to that we also have Federal requirements so under the every student succeed act or Essa we have to report how many students receive out of school suspension under the gunfree schools Act of 1994 we also have to submit to the government how many of our students were in violation of firearms VI violation so knives that are larger than three in any type of ammunitions weapons guns those type things and then for individuals disabilities or idea any student with a disability that was removed from the school environment either for a

106short-term suspension or a long-term suspension that data also has to be reported to the federal government so those are the metrics that we use for collecting data as well so when we compare our data for our data dashboard that we use for our division we look at how many of our students have never had an office Magis referral so that means they're able to go to class they follow what teachers ask them to do their self-managed their own behavior and they actively participate and engage then we look at the students who did receive an office discipline referral but it was not something that resulted in out school suspension it was more of an in school intervention it could have been um detention it could have been placed in the ATS room for a period of

107time it could be a full day of in school suspension but they were able to stay at school it's just that they weren't in the regular classroom setting or there was some type of disciplinary intervention and then we also look at how many of our students um were suspended from school for out of school suspension we use a very similar model to for attendance as we use the mtss model and that says that if we have very clear and specific School language procedures and expectations then 80% our students should be able to self-manage and will not require any type of administrative intervention I me you've probably been to many of our schools and you've seen like in the York Zone they sore which is safe uh orderly uh and respectful students and so that's one

108of the things that they have so they have clear expectations for when students are in the hallway when they're in the restroom when they're in the classroom how are they soaring same thing in the tab Zone they use Roar which is respect and then up in the brutin zone they have two they have the Stars over at Waller Mill and then at McGruder they have pause and they they follow that same thing over at brutin and at Queens lake so by using those type of very clear expectations and explicit instructions 80% to 85% of our students should never have to go to the office for office disciplinary referral however even when you have that in place you still going to have some students who are going to need an intervention and so usually around 15%

109or 10% and then you have a few students who need more intensified Services uh we hope no more than 5% some of these students might have to have a functional Behavior assessment because they have behaviors that you really need someone to track that data or you might have some type of individualized intervention like a uh IEP or you might have some type of behavior plan for those students we look at our school division data for the first semester we can see that 91% of our students did not have a office manag referral meaning that they were able to stay in the classroom and manage your own behavior we had almost 6% 5.8% which did have an office dis referral but it resulted in some type of in school intervention and on the dashboard you can

110see that the color purple also matches with classroom removal alternative sanctions and then school suspension and then we had about 3% of our students who did have to have out school suspension and then at the bottom you can see that gold box that shows what were those behaviors that resulted in an out of school suspension I have a question on this slide um I know when I was looking at the PowerPoint there's no way to expand it to see what's cut off on the right side that are descriptions like behaviors that impede what behaviors related to where it has the um ellips the dot dot dot okay you can't read the rest of it is there somewhere that everyone can access to see what yeah actually on the dashboard if you go in and if

111you click on the eye above where the not on the presentation slide however in on the dashboard um on the dashboard when you click on that yes it gives you all those descriptions so you go on our website pull up our dashboard and click on those you'll be able to just read the full description and then I will also do a presentation I'll try to pull out and show what what the type top five behaviors for those categories for the grade levels School levels as well thank you so when we look at our elementary school students um higher than the division average 93% of our kids did not require an administrator intervention we had about almost 5% that did receive some type of intervention that was in school and almost 2% % that received the

112our school suspension for our Middle School very similar 90% of our students U did not have an office matage to spend referral uh close to 6% did have some type of intervention in school and then we had 4% that that received an our school suspension and then for high school and almost mirrored um Middle School except for you had a little bit more students who did receive some type of office manage intervention we had almost um 7.4% and then we had two 2.47% uh that received an high school suspension is this related to a cell phone policy we have that's we're going to look at that so I I want to we want to drill down and look at that too so on the next slide I will show you what those what was those

113top five uh one of the positive things that we look at we looked that discipline trends for the last uh three years for the first semester and you can see that there was a so so was a at 2524 office referrals back in um 2023 it went up a little bit but then it went back down so staying consistent I'm however one the good things is that the number of students who received the office this referral uh you see there was a decrease from what it was last year however however it's a little bit higher than it was two years ago and then the number of students who received at least one out of school suspension uh from 783 back at FY 23 to 416 last year at FY 24 down to 337 FY 25

114why do you think it's pretty well stayed cons you've you've got some Rises and Falls but it's pretty even stagnant across the board is there a reason is something not working or is something just part of it is when you look at the data remember you have to remember what you're dealing with you when you have 90 at the elementary level 93% of your kids don't receive they have none right so so take them out middle 90% and high school I think was 90 or 91 so that number is is is pretty is pretty small that you're working with to begin with so and I'm I'm just looking at these numbers here these are numbers of students correct right they number of students or number of incidents no so the top one with number of

115incidence so that's the number of actual oh number of referrals okay number of referrals then the second one is number of students and the third one is number of students with a high school suspension and doing fre say I will kind of go into detail and some of the work that schools do is is unique to every student in every population so our teams work to figure out what's Trends and patterns for student Behavior so they can respond so that's why you might see ups and downs because depending on what the concern is at that school it depends on how the administrators respond to that behavior and so I now when I go into the different School levels I'll try to explain that so we looked at our data looking at the trend for the

116last three years you can see like for elementary school you can see there was an increase in a number of office disant referrals that were submitted FY 23 to fy2 however at middle school you can see that last year there was a Peak at 758 and then has gone down to 640 for the first semester this year and in high school there it's been a steady decline um from three years ago from 1 113 back in FY 23 down to 884 and fy2 so when we look at what are the top five behaviors that result in office dis referral um the top one was interfering with learning in the classroom with 360 6 behind that it was shoving pushing striking or biting another student unexcused tardiness to class refusal to comply with requests from staff

117and then Reckless Behavior um when we look at for elementary school we can see that shoving pushing striking or biting another student was one of the highest ones that we had for odrs we look at interfer Learning in the classroom Reckless Behavior non-written threats at beginning of the school year I know that there was a heavy focus on making sure we were talking to parents and students about making threats to classmates and even posting things online um and so we see that data there for this first semester and then of course striking staff striking staff is a little different from assault and battery that's just whereever a student is disregulated and they hit a staff member but not to injure so there's no injury in this but there was some type of physical contact that

118occurred um for our Middle School you can see INF was learning in the classroom was the highest number followed by shoving ping strike or biing another student refusal to comply with staff requests this goes back to what Mr priv was asking about with some of our cell phone policies that's a variety of things but that's just where staff asked the student to do something and they did not comply it could be phone it could be um moving down the hall at different different items um because of our middle schools and they because of their maturity level we usually see this unwanted physical contact um which comes up at the middle school level which has to be addressed and then non-written threats at our high school a little different Dynamic so the highest at the high

119school is unexcused tness to class so they made it to school but for some reason they didn't make it to class on time so that was one of our highest there uh then of course interfer with learning in the classroom and then goes back to student not going to assign class so again they're in the building but for some reason they did not go to their assigned class and they were apprehended by school officials I'm refusing to apply with staff and then finally student unauthorized area of Campus that was ones of the students not going to the signed class yes you can see for high school majority attendance um we don't see against striking or hitting by that time Orting not for our high school students now and then when we look at the grade

120levels that we try to focus on you can see that our ninth graders really had some struggles when it came to behavior on the first semester they are the highest in the division when it comes to office distri referrals uh you can see at middle school there was a pattern which was we had had to double check the numbers but it was almost even across the board kind of a plateau for Middle School behaviors and and Elementary we did see some spikes we saw for first grade and for third grade and there were some behaviors at those grade levels that were a little bit out of s the other grade levels and then of course kindergarten as well when we look at the um office discipline referrals that res in our school suspension we can

121see again that uh sixth graders the most the suspension that the high frequency was at the sixth grade uh Then followed by seventh grade and then we also see at elementary there were several students who received our school suspension same as high school one of the things that we do look at for um odrs is a risk ratio and that's just to see um we would we would expect to see that all students if in equal circumstances would have the same probability of receiving office discipline referral um when you see anything as two or higher that means that we have to kind of dig down in the day to see why are they two or three times more likely than their peers uh to get an office discipl referral and that might cause us to

122do different interventions with those students or those populations so that's something our St our schools always look at to make sure that we are responding to student needs that's one of things the Department of Education looks at so we have any population like our student with disabilities when they have um three times more likely than PE to got office dist referral we get a letter from VOE to say well what type of corrective actions are you taking to address those situations we go ahead and we do those regardless because we Monitor and look at that information but that is something that we do report to the Department of Education so when we look at our systems that we use to respond to behavior we have a mtss leadership team at the division level so I

123can share some of the interventions we do there um you see a picture here this is um one of our school-based intervention teams from from D Elementary School they meet on a regular basis and I'll talk a little bit more about what they do on a monthly basis and then we are fortunate that we we get direct support from the Virginia Department of Education we're part of cohort 5 which is for the Virginia tier syst of supports called the vtss program and that's to support schools when it comes to student Behavior because student behavior is not just something unique to your county that's something across the Commonwealth and so they try to make sure that we have resources and support to respond to that and you said this is just a de Elementary in picture

124this is a lot of people right oh yeah know that hope so that's a training that we had this past summer for all of our school-based teams on that picture up which is the Dare team working but all of our schools have a team very similar that work our students I have a question and you may address this later um and if you do I'll just wait um it seems that the big wait is on interfering with learning in the classroom how are we supporting the teachers because I know as a teacher that just gets really frustrating especially when you have chronic students at the same one on a regular basis type of thing disrupting the class as well as how are we supporting those other students in the classroom whose learning is being inhibited

125by the other student who is disrupting things I think I addressed that on one of my next slides but if I don't I will come back to that question but yeah but that that is something that our school-based team they look at they try to drill down to see are there patterns are there certain classrooms are there certain students and then what are the interventions we're using to address that because students can't learn in chaos so if we don't make interventions to address those situations you do have learning law so that's why it's so important and I know the teachers have that flowchart to follow to do everything but you get to a point I know from teaching it's like trying to follow the flowchart it's just just settle down so that we can get

126on with this um I just know the frustration level with teachers um how difficult it is when you have a student who's disrupting the class and that's why we try to use a well not try but we use a team Approach at all of our levels so uh we have a you know our school counselors our Specialists who specialize in Behavior interventions we have at elementary school our rvts who are technicians when they C Behavior so they try to use the team approach to try to provide the specific Target intervention for those students so that they can go back to A disruption free classroom environment um but but again they have to have data for that so that's one of the reasons why we do track and monitor the number of office dis referrals and

127then what was the behavior that caused them to get an office referral okay so and so then at the and at the division level similar what you were asking Miss Fairman we have a division level team and it's a crosssection of different stakeholders we have everyone from the instruction Department my colleagues Dr Keo and Mrs headed uh and Mrs Beasley also we also have people who have expertise in behaviors from our special education department Mrs Hopkins and some of her staff as well as school-based staff we have some teachers who are classroom teachers that are on that team as well as some administrators and uh counselings so counselors so that we can have a full picture of what's going on in the building versus what's going on at the division level and we monitor behaviors

128we look at the number of infractions that are happening in a building we look at what grade levels we look at specific students and we try to make sure we're looking at the whole child so we look at attendance Behavior School climate so every year staff and students take the school climate survey and we find out you know is there a perception that you know my school's not safe their perception that you know staff do not respond to student behaviors so we look at all that see you know are there areas of concern and how can we provide professional development or can we provide interventions to address that behavior and we also look at mental Wellness so we look at the number of risk assessments that are done by staff as well as the number

129of threat assessments that are conducted in our building and we use that data to U develop training we look at staff support we also look at student support and interventions um and this goes back to ifu to some more of our school-based teams we see York high school and brutin high school here so at the school level these teams of of teachers and counselors and administrators they meet on a monthly basis and they review both student discipline and attendance data and they Implement schoolwide rules so they normally present to the school staff to say like for the month of of January these were our highest behaviors we saw at our school and these are some of the things we recommend to make some changes so if if the issue is on the playground students are

130pushing and shoving each other then they might say hey we need more supervision doing recess so we'll put more teachers out or we need a more structured activity for kids so instead of having a free-for-all on the black top we're going to have signed up and we're going to do three on three basketball those are things that they will Implement and then they'll go back and track the data to see did that intervention stop the number of incidents that happened on the playground and if it didn't then they had said we have to have another hypothesis to figure out what is exactly is the problem or if it is one specific student then they try to make sure that they're targeting that one student to give them the services they need uh they also try

131to create an incentive program to acknowledge students when they are doing the right thing uh and they provide that feedback and they do problem solving protocols to make sure is this a school-based issue or is this a classroom specific issue and if a teacher needs additional support with classroom management what are some of the resources we need to help that teacher with do we need to provide the RBT in that classroom or do we need to ask for the council to come and provide some support but we try to work together as a team and they do all this by looking at data is is data driven based on the infraction and the behaviors that they see when I think two you know to mention to is that the PBIS is not NE is does

132not mean because if you're doing positive behavior intervention it doesn't mean that you're negating the action of what they've done is that right like you're not saying oh you know we're going to send you to the office and you can talk with the principal and she'll give you a lollipop and send you back to class and it'll be okay right like that's not the concept of that no so P so PBS is a small component of what mtss um is set up to do so when it comes to student Behavior the PBIS or positive behavior intervention system it is that incentive program for acknowledging when students are doing the right thing and giving them feedback so we still have to have consequences so when students violate the code of conduct that's not PBS that is

133you're going to get a consequence because you violate the rules but PBS is more meant um back when uh back when No Child Left Behind was first started under the Bush Administration it was really meant to be that system where we supported students when they come to school they self-manage they show Improvement and behavior how do we acknowledge that and provide them and their family feedback so that's what that was meant to do celebrate because we're always quick to jump on people across the board when they're not doing something right but when they do something good we fail to say hey we did that well right so that's kind of like what this is at the school level what type of incentives are are given so it depends so many times like at the high

134school they'll give like they call it the swag um I didn't wear mine today from York high school but they have like little um the blue thing that has the Falcon on it and they say Falcon one um I know at some of the middle schools they have those same things sometimes they have opportunities to go to certain um events after school I know that tab Middle School they normally do like a semester dance or celebration for students so you get in invited if you had had any infractions so that's how they reinforce good behavior if you've had infractions then you can't go for this quarter but hopefully next quarter if you don't have one then you can get an invitation to the next one so it it's really like I said it's really a

135methodology so that they can really acknowledge and support those students who are self-managing come to school on a regular basis and given their best in the classroom how long has that been implemented in ycsd so we've been doing that program probably for the last six years I want I have to go back and check Maybe Might a little longer than that maybe longer I know as when I was a counselor I was doing I it wasn't called PBIS but that's the kind of stuff I would do with some of my frequent flyers is hey if you can you know achieve this through the week you know be good for the week and not sent out of this classroom then you know we'll have a little celebration in my office maybe I bake them a cake

136grab some cookies or something like that just to recognize that they did good we didn't call it PBIS but that's kind of what we're getting at here so and I think a lot of my at that time a lot of my colleagues did that so because it helps it it was a good thing to do and I think it back it used to be caught AFF of schoolwide discipline of what the name used to be back um years ago yeah the name have changed right and then it's morphed into um PB and now they of course they call it mtss because they didn't want to emphasize and I will say some school divisions and across they sometimes they use that wrong and they equate PB with like no consequences or no discipline and that's one

137of the reasons why we do have state support because they want to make sure that we're clear you have to follow the code of conduct for both their School Division and the state of Virginia and PBS is is not saying that we don't give kids consequences it's just that we have have to make sure that we are having some type of system that acknowledges students for showing progress and following rules and expectations and do we have that data showing that that progress or that Improvement when implementing these different things so we would have to pull that from the school so what schools try to do is so if students had infractions for the first quarter then they look at how did the interventions work and then they look at second quarter so that's something I

138could try to pull we don't we don't track that necessarily we try to look at recidivism how many students have repeat violations so we do look at that data got so and we track that all that's individualized anyway yeah and that's one of the value of our teams though because they really at the ground level um they know the kids they know the families they know what works they know which students are connected to school which ones are not and so they use that methodology and then as I share the Virginia Department of Education uh we have two coaches one from the College of women Mary her name is Dr um Lori Bon she used to actually be a special education teacher here in our division and she works at women marriage Tac and then

139we have Mike Cresco who works for VCU so they come in and they provide a professional development if they notice there's concerns they will actually go into schools and provide mentorship and coaching for administrators and teachers on class management um all this is free um we get this through a grant funding through the Department of Education so our professional development so the summer Institute that you saw I'm on the screen that was payr through Grant funds um same thing with working with our schools I have Grant funds so that they can have people in the building that can really support this work and do data analysis and do reports and they also provide us opportuni to get trained so we we're part of the uh science the implementat the implementation Science Academy through bdoe and

140that allows us opportunities to get um leadership how to be better leaders how can we better Mentor how can we better look at data and then how can we make sure that we're not just doing things because we think it it sounds good but how are you actually looking at data to match up what interventions are effective versus outcomes because that's really the they're giving funds for this to be accountable for Fidelity they want to make sure that if we're giving you funds how are you keeping data how are you showing impact and how are you making sure that students are being successful in the school environment and so that's one of the benefits of being part of the cohort is that we get that um explicit training and Hands-On support again thank you for

141this opportunity provide an update on student behavior I'm available foreing questions at this time thank you great thank you Dr Butler appreciate it yes all right all right we're going to um have a quick transition we're gonna have um Dr Kagel Dr Evans if you want to come to the table as well as Miss headed gets ready for her presentation so um Mr Christina head our associate director of Elementary instruction and academic progress is now going to provide you a summary with um our 2025 midyear student performance on the Virginia language in literacy screener system this it yes good evening so tonight I will share the kindergarten through second grade data from our midyear vs Administration with our new early literacy screener um called vals so with this presentation I'm going to give you an

142overview review of the vowels assessment and then I'll speak to the differences between the midyear and the fall um assessment and I'll also show you the changes in The Wristband ranges between those two um fall and midyear assessments and then I'll show you the data dashboard that will have the midyear data but also has the fall data so you can see that comparison and then after I show you the data then I will tell you about some action steps at the division level that are taken with this data and also at the school level with teachers and what they do with the meteor data and so you might recall back in November I did a presentation about this new literacy screener and those data results from the fall Administration but before I share with you

143the midy year I just want to provide a quick re recap for you and and our community um on the specifics of this new literacy screener um it is a state provided screening tool that is called vs which stands for the Virginia language and literacy screener system and it's administered in the fall mid year and the spring to all of our kindergarten through second grade students and some ID identified third grade and it measures the critical literacy skills and it's really designed to help us identify students that are at high risk for reading difficulties and then it's a valuable data source for our teachers so that they can use this for instruction and also for intervention and so the student scores from this assessments are calculated based on performance um across these code based assessments

144that you see on the left and the different weighted scale scores for each grade level indicate a students overall vals band of risk and there are three bands of risk the low risk moderate risk and high risk and so the students scores will all fall within these three bands of risk and all have um instructional needs and so let me remind you about the vows bands of risk so students with scores that fall in the low wristband they are on Target and should continue to receive high quality um grade level instruction and those that have scores in the moderate wristband they need targeted and explicit um instruction in certain areas U of their need and then students that are at high risk they are identified for significant um reading difficulties and the state requires them

145to have a student reading plan and also the state requires an additional 2.5 hours per week of intervention and so with the midyear assessment um well you may recall back in November the fall vows assessment had a wide variety of subtests that the teachers would test the students on but the midyear um vows assessment which window opened for testing right when the students returned from R break and then that window closed at the end of January but this assessment is much shorter in length because it only assesses students on the code based subtest and then you might predict the midyear assess assment is much more rigorous than the fall assessment as students are expected to have learned some key literacy skills since that fall assessment and then the wristbands ranges those score ranges change at

146midyear for each grade and so let me show you an example of that how that wristband changes so here's the wristbands for first grade um for both fall and um midyear so let's take a look at the moderate risk bands so here you can see that the fall all the risk f for moderate risk was 604 to 629 and then in the mid year those increased to 630 to 645 and you looking at the same um wristband ranges let's think of a sample first grader so a sample first grader in the fall that first grader scored a 635 which falls in the lowrisk band range but at mid year that same first grader scored a 643 three which does show growth and progress but because the wristbands move and change that student is now in

147the moderate wristband range and has certain areas to shore up um with their literacy skills um to be successful so now let's take a look at that um data from our midyear assessment starting with kindergarten and so here you see the dashboard that I showed you back in November um you can see at the top left there's the division um results as well as the middle you can see the school's results and below that the the demographic groupings um results from fall but then at the bottom left you see here is our midyear results so you can see 807 students were tested in the midye which is more than the fall and 76% of our kindergarteners are now at low risk at the midyear Point compared to 39% in the fall and then 10% in

148the moderate risk and then 14% at the high risk as compared to 24% from November and so then on the right side of this dashboard you can see the school's results and the student demographic information at the bottom here so look at all that green that's that's all that is low risk it really made some improvement I'd like to note again that for kindergarten that fall window closed at very end of October October 31st so the growth you see here was a result from great instruction and student performance from just November and December because the testing went to open right after the break so that's that's a lot of progress you can see with our students um and our majority of our kindergarteners now have the building blocks that they need for encoding and decoding

149um through this for the second semester and with our first grade data here you can see the same dashboard for first grade with both fall and midyear results and 9919 students at midyear um which is a lot more than fall took this assessment and 74% um were at low risk compared to 55% in the fall and again you see the the student progress that the green is increasing and the pink is decreasing and 14% moderate risk and remember moderate risk the blue it does not mean they're below that just means that they have specific reading skills they need a little bit of extra um instruction instuction explicit instruction and 11% high risk compared to 16% in the fall and again on the right side of the dashboard you can see the performance by the each

150school and um our our demographic information at the bottom so this is also great progress for first grade and I have to note that at mid year we noticed with this assessment because it's new remember we weren't sure what was going to be on this assessment because it's new um students in first grade were asked to no longer um de put a simple word with like a short a these words were more complex and required some deep word attack skills for first graders such as s Blends and diagraphs like CH and th they had to really do a lot of thinking in addition there was also one subtest that starts in first grade called the ORF and that is reading fluency and it tests students on their fluency and reading and it really the data

151shows that our first graders are on track with fluency and they'll spend the next um semester really in text in decoding books with decodables I have a question on this particular slide um and I know a lot of it it may have to do with demographics of the particular schools but looking at bethl Manor Mount Vernon and that Seaford Elementary they are significantly fewer at you know high risk is is something different going on there or have they have they figured out something that's really working that we need to share with well betham Manor for example at the very in the fall they were only had five kids at low risk and so they still have five five kids at the mid year um but they are also very transient um in in their school

152system in their school individually so this data is very confusing because it's very much of of the students scores from the fall and the midy year could be compared but if they weren't here in the in the fall and we don't have that score so with bethl maner being very transient it's very very hard to you know attribute to that success there with them well and then but still looking at then Mount Vernon Elementary and seford Elementary they are also very low with the the high risk so that's great right um is there something you know looking at that how do we get that incredibly low score for the other elementary schools also well it's very individualized so the student scores are very specific to each student so they have specific are where they might

153be stronger and specific areas or subtests that they're weaker in so it's very student specific and even you know we we look at the reports that vs provides and they don't really they don't provide us a report that shows where students are moving back and forth or trying to create one in inous but they really don't have that information because they really want you as a student or as a teacher to look at those instructional indicators on each student so they may be different for each school and each student very individualized okay so moving on to second grade here you can see our second grade um dashboard showing second grade we're 924 students um were tested which was more than the fall and 71% at low risk compared to 46% in the fall 15% moderate

154risk and then 14% high risk which compared to the 19% from the fall and remember this is just midpoint of the year so this is good that they're making that progress and continue the second semester and on the dashboard you can see here the results for second grade um by school demographics at the bottom and we did find that the second grade midyear assessment was much much more um rigorous than we expected um we would we really noticed that the it was really a strong heavy emphasis on vow teams vow teams are our long vs when they're together that's why they call them a team so in order to be low risk those students had to quickly determine and what that vowel is and how to really decode that word quickly um but we really

155noticed that was a heavy emphasis so we know that now and these tests are all digital they're all computerized some is some's on some has it with paper but it's really one-on-one with that student and some is on the computer screen that they Flash the words or decode and some is on paper is that based on if they've been identified to need paper or can a parent request it it it's really um only certain tests can be paper at all and it's really when they have to write and then they have to um most of it's on the computer okay and then the previous assessment the pals that was the previous assessment we noticed in second grade they really gave students in second grade additional points on those lower skills and Bows does not so

156we really noticed that with that midyear second grade assessment and so this slide here is the same data but this is just high risk so you can see the kindergarten um first and second grade percentage high risk um and as previously mentioned that students that are at high risk are required by Virginia Department of Education to have that 2.5 hours per um um week of intervention and also that student reading plan and so those students that had that plan in the fall may need adjustments they may this data may show that they have different learning skills or they might have to change the intervention so they have to meet with those um the team that supports the students so it's a students with ability that special ed teacher will be there or an English learner

157teacher will be there and they all meet to include inviting the parents and so they meet and they make adjustments if needed and then if a student was not at high risk in the fall but they are at midyear a plan has to be developed a plan of what they're going to do how they're going to progress Monitor and that 2.5 hours of intervention added and then if a student was at in the fall high risk but then they're not any longer right now say they're at modate or low risk which is great that student reading plan has to continue the state requires it to continue and to um really check them so they don't fall back down to that continue for how long just that year the whole year just that year that particular

158gr which is good yeah because it'll be uh evaluated the next year yes the next fall okay and so at the division level we really use this fresh data to dig in and look at that by the schools examining um the data by student all the way down um but we also had um our English coordinator Molly Brown she really looked at immediately met with schools on that data if we saw something like you mentioned Miss bman really change or as she met with that team immediately and she really provide further guidance or further training and to really help them with that data this new data they've never had before and then we recently um asked the um Regional coaches from the Virginia literacy partnership who created the the spous um at a UVA we

159asked two of our region those Regional coaches to come and train our reading Specialists on how to really interpret this midyear data and to really so they can help teachers so they can really revise those plans that they're in charge of and really understand that midyear data and it was so good that we asked them to come back to do it for our teachers optionally it's not it's not required but we really thought it would be valuable for our teachers so they're coming back this month to do that training with for any teachers that are interested in in seeing and hearing them I have a question with the 2 and 1 half hour you know the intense intervention are they pulled out of a class for that or is this after school no this is

160during the school day good question this this during the school day but it's outside of the Court instruction so they're not missing core instruction so it's within their school day it's an additional additional instruction so like maybe during art or no no they're not missing that either it's usually within close to the literacy block but we have our our literacy block is much longer than required so it's sometimes it's part of that usually they usually have a time where it's called you know it could be called something specific for that school or that grade that each grade has a specific time where students can be pulled where they're not missing anything okay some sometimes it's called when what I need stands for what I need but it's a specific time that they have so they're

161not missing core instruction right and also that the readings excuse me not only they're pulled for intervention making sure that the teacher also pulls them for small group within that time period and they don't miss that it's not to replace that at all and then in addition Molly our English coordinator she um really reviewed that data with our School principles so that they could understand it and really help to support those teachers with those um um targeted intervention in as well and at the school level that's where the real work happens so the schools really analyze their data from the midar pals they focus down from the grade data they look at the class data and most importantly specifically they look at individualized student data as you can see here this is a example student

162and they really modify and update their in interventions and approaches according to that data that that they received from this midar um assessment and then teachers also um and teams they meet on a at mid year for the student reading plans making those adjustments as I mentioned and they also include the parents so they can provide any additional or new resources that they can use with their student at home but then all students or all parents receive a report from the midye Val um student report and so lastly because this is a new assessment um the VP who created this they have recently posted a link on their platform where the teachers go to put their data in for a survey to get feedback on this assessment you know last year they just piloted it

163with a couple of school divisions they really want to hear from teachers to know like hey how did this go what would you change what do you want to know more about so we really appreciate that um in addition last Thursday video announced that they were going to have a webinar this Wednesday um from the VP leaders to tell um division leaders key components and understanding of the vows test development and how they came up with those ranges those scaled score ranges so we really look forward to Wednesday hearing about that which is good and then additionally video of announced that they're going to finally give us all from the fall Statewide data so we can see how we compare to other school divisions in the state so we're looking forward to seeing that and

164when we get that we will share that in Friday notes okays all right and then I'll be back in in June with the spring results which are going to be fantastic thank you thank you miss this looks great by the way thank you we have uh one we have one presentation we always save the best for for last when it comes to program of studies Dr Kel and Dr Evans are here and they're going to talk to you a little bit about some of the proposed changes to the School of Arts course offerings for FY 26 Dr kagle get my well good evening Madam chair board members and Dr shandor um Dr Evans and I are tag teaming once again we told you we would come back multiple times this year and so we are

165hopefully on our last and final presentation for next year's program of studies so as we've told you in previous meetings the work that we do on the program of studies is is to support our students in their um post-secondary Endeavors and prepare them to be Future Ready graduates and I want to start tonight um as Dr shandor shared um a lot of what you're going to hear about tonight is related to our school of the arts program at Bru high school and I want to start by sharing the work of a steering committee that happened this year now if you remember last May I came before you at a present a for board presentation and talked about a group of school and division leaders school counselors and teachers who had met and done a program

166evaluation on our Middle School fine arts program the msam program which resulted in some changes to the courses at msam um it we also changed the locations and we changed the model instead of it just servicing a small number at each grade level it's now a whole school model at the middle school level and so this year we um we pulled another committee together and we expanded on that work to focus at the high school level on how we can grow our school ofthe arts program at the high school level and so we really wanted to emphasize um how we can provide more Fine Arts opportunities as well as give opportunities for um certificates and degrees um from you know after high school and so we the School of the Arts um the brutin high

167school administration pulled together a committee we had uh Fine Arts teachers from across the division administrators central office staff we had local um community members who are involved in the Arts or theater uh we had P some SOA parents former SOA staff from way back in the day when um the School of the Arts was was new and we had um one of our um former SOA staff is actually a director of a SOA program now somewhere else and we did a lot of research on others um Fine Arts programs and we had some former students as well in that committee so we we convened we met four different times and what you're going to see tonight is part of what they recommended with the program and that those recommendations went to our program of

168studies committee you've heard us talk about the process for that because they make a recommendation to you that at the end of this month you will approve um any of these changes so um I'm going to turn it over to Dr Evans and she's going to um start sharing some of those recommendations yes do you like the mouse better or the um so what you'll see on the left are our current literary Arts courses um the ycsd in advanced placement C English curriculum is currently taught in our Advanced literary arts classes you'll see in the middle our current English courses and So based upon low student enrollment and implications on transportation we are proposing that our students take their English classes that their zoned high schools um this will provide students with more instructional time

169in their English classes as well as other classes um students have approximately five to 10 minutes to change classes within their building it takes about 20 to 30 minutes to transport up to bruttin high school um so we believe that this will be beneficial for our students getting more instructional time in their classes next on the chart you will see our Advan Advanced Arts link and Writers Workshop and so just as a reminder that advanced literary Arts is our English course whereas the advanced Arts link and writer Workshop is an elective course so there are two separate courses taking over taken over two different class periods and so we are proposing to change Advanced Arts link and writer Workshop to advanc Writers Workshop one and two and this is so that way students can have

170more opportunities to take a ctive courses in our literary arts program so if you remember back in November we added script writing first stage in screen and so we're also looking at what additional literary Arts elective courses we can add in the future to encourage students in all grade levels to participate in our Advanced theater program um we are proposing to change the grade level from 9 to 11 to 9 through 12th grade and then for our Advanced technical theater program we are proposing to align this course with our other SOA programs dance and Theater Arts those courses um offer four different grade levels so they have level one two three and four so we are proposing to align our technical theater program with our other two courses next you'll see our proposed changes for

171our sea practicum courses um the steering committee really wanted to see how they could provide our students with enriching um opportunities within their post high school goals and So based upon that and to align with V's definition of work-based learning experiences um these are our proposals for the practicum courses so we're proposing to remove Advanced Arts link and Writers Workshop 12 with practicum we're also proposing to separate our technical theater theater arts program as well as the Dance Arts from the level four classes and then we're also proposing to add a music workplace experience course and now I will turn it back over to Dr K so a lot happened in November one of those things was that we expanded the School of the Arts to include a music course it hadn't had a music

172course um previously and you approved the m music performance lab for school of the Arts so we wanted to keep the ball rolling and um when our students back in November you may remember acent on academics we had a group of students and staff talked about our dual enrollment opportunities in York County that we have expanded we were thinking that well um when our students are trying to get a uniform certificate of General Studies or an Associates Degree for Applied social science which we spoke about that night here's a great opportunity to offer some de music classes at the school of of the Arts it makes it unique to the School of the Arts um and it really focuses on the fundamentals of music music theory music appreciation but again the students are getting those

173um dual enrollment credits and so this was kind of um our only concern with this is that we've got to find staffing so we're working on that and we've got to get those enrollment numbers up it may not take next year but we want to get it in the program of study so students can start thinking about it so we're really excited to be expanding music opportunities at the school of the arts music wasn't a part of of SOA before and so um and you back in November approved the music performance lab like I mentioned well we have updated that description because as we were writing the curriculum we realized some of our other courses will take care of the theory and the music appreciation this course the description will just focus on the performance

174part how they'll support the SOA um presentations and events and stuff through um vocal and um instrumentalist and so we changed that description that you approved in November we kind of clarified it a little bit you'll see it in the redline document that was included in board docs and you'll see what those changes are but it really streamlines that course a little more and hopefully attracts more students there's something about performance that's appealing rather than um Theory and I don't know concept the other thing we wanted to do was we want to build in some CTE courses in the school of the art so we've been looking at our um the Virginia Department of e education offerings in CTE we want our kids to be able to earn credentials with the new state accountability and

175also just to you know help them if they're going into the Fine Arts careers After High School so we already have sports and entertainment marketing in our program say so you don't need to approve that we just want to let you know that we're going to offer that course at School of the Arts with a focus on the entertainment industry and those students will be able to support the soo program through marketing activities and such and so next year we'll come back to you actually be in the fall for the following year with a second course of sports entertainment management course to be a sequential to this so we do have more courses to propose for fy0 27 but we felt like this was starting to expand the program and we can do it in

176incremental steps the steering committee will continue to meet we'll continue to have the um protocols and the discussions as we can continue to build this program for our students who are interested in the Arts um from across the division so um the other the last thing that I wanted to share with you these are just a couple of last minute um revisions that we came across process we were editing the document you'll see them in the redline document um our Des our definition for standard and um Advanced Studies diplomas did not completely align with VOE it said the same thing but we wanted to use vo's language so we put a link to VOE um in the document and we cleaned up the language to match the Virginia Department of Education and then we also

177fixed some typos and corrected some spelling and we tried to make some consistency if there was an acronym used in one place we have this we have someone working on this who has an Eagle Eye and they catch all those little things so they're very small they're they don't change the content any but they provide Clarity and consistency of the content for our family members and our students so those are all the changes that we're proposing last time I hope you see me this year that we're proposing for next year do you have any questions that we can answer for you don't no thank you for the update and giving us that uh information so at the end of the month you'll see these come before you for for approval okay okay at this time

178we are going to move into um policy B School Board governance and operations and our school board attorney Miss Barry will take over and tell us about that Madam chair board members Dr shandor tonight is chapter B for the board's review this is just for discussion um we have multiple minor revisions adding or taking away legal references and cross references uh as well as adding the bsba copyright where appropriate uh the substantive revisions policy BB School Board legal status uh we have language removed so it aligns with the Virginia code as well as VBA uh policy BBA School Board powers and duties has some additional duties that required to be added to comply with J Code section 22.1 79 as well as a definition of specialized student support position um bbfa conflict of interest and

179disclosures of economic interest language is added uh and removed to align with the state government conflict of interest act which is J Code 2.2 3100 that whole chapter um policy BCB School Board officers is updated language that will align with uh bdkd that is before you tonight during the special meeting for approval uh poliy BCC School Board clerk has language uh updated to reflect board practice and the terminology used at the organizational meeting policy BCG School attorney has language removed as this Virginia code does not require annual appointments for this position as this is now a contractual matter uh policy bdca calling in certification Clos meetings has language removed that is duplicative of language already addressed in policy bdda which is notification school board meeting policy B electronic participation meeting from the remote locations has

180a little bit of additional language referencing the ability of the board members to attend close sessions for your um advisory committees so if they ever had a close session which I think is fairly rare uh board members are are free to attend those um and keep in mind that bdd uh needs to come before you on a yearly basis so you'll be seeing that every year uh policy bddc agenda preparation uh dissemination has language uh the language format changed for clarity to align with board practice uh policy bdde Rules of Order has language added to add Clarity and specificity to align with board practice policy bddg minutes uh has language removed to align with the Virginia code uh as minutes are now posted on the website uh so you're not seeing minutes being handed out

181anymore and in aligns with the board policy and board practice uh policy bdd public particip participation Schoolboard meetings is what's coming before you tonight with KD um in the special meeting policy BFC policy adoption uh has language removed as it's no longer applicable uh since we have board dos and everything's posted on board dos policy BHB School Board member in service activity has language language added as to your required annual every two-year training um and that is it so it's open for discussion if anyone has any questions I guess I have one on I got this right page 16 bdb special school board meetings the uh actually first paragraph changing the pronoun his to their um and this is just grammatical I know in a lot of documents you'll have a a statement at the

182beginning of the document identifying that a masculine um pronoun is used but it's for everybody um why would we because it it's kind of confusing because it's talked about the chair on their own initiative it either needs to be the the singular or a repeat of and just say the chairs which is annoying you know you know called by the chair on the chair's own initiative as opposed to their because it's not a plural I don't see a problem with it way it's written I isn't this more for Content based this discussion on the content not on the grammar I mean correct and I don't believe we say anywhere that singular is the plural okay that's what I didn't know if we had that maybe we should or something like that so we shouldn't be

183going through the red line on changes tonight or anything that we had questions of this is just kind of a presentation of just general that's a board's discussion as to discussion as as to changes but related to content um not necessarily well I just I just went through going through and that that was one that I saw um you know when you go through pages and pages and pages of documents there were I think if you have specific grammar I would say put it email Miss Barry directly those grammatical yeah there was just one other one like that on page 24 it says following input form all board members I think it's supposed to be from which policy is that page 24 I forgot write down which policy hang on bdda thank you follow yeah

184it's a bddc following should be from yes okay thanks um and thanks a lot on page 25 for adding that we use robs Rules of Order so it just identifies that specifically um on also on that page 25 and I apologize I didn't write down what the letter was and going through this hang on I guess that's just a second maybe I got on the wrong page scrolling through all of these it was the one dealing with uh adding other forms of self-governance okay thank you that down my notes is there a code that is requiring that it is not required the board under I believe it's 20 yeah 22.1 is 78 um allows for any kind of bylaws so that would fall under that well if it already says that um why do we

185need to add other forms of self-governance because the board uses other forms of self-governance well so basically with that any outside entity or lobbying group Etc could have their governance implemented and mandated if a majority of the board members push it um I thought it was on page 25 um it's rules of order yes uh bdde Rules of Order thank you does any other board member have any input on that one I don't see an issue with it I mean we we can as long as the board agrees in the majority we could change anything whether it's the the um Rules of Order or any of the the topics listed here so I don't I don't understand what so the issue is with you're having an issue with where it says or other forms of

186self of self-governance but understand that you you were saying that that we do have other forms of self-governance we do currently have many forms of selfo don't we have that with the board norms and protocols as as one for example we have the um your self evaluation you're governing yourself through we would want it in there that but from what you're saying then we would want it in there form of self to cover to cover ourselves we would like to have that yes right so miss Barry I do have another question is this the appropriate place to discuss um bddc which is our uh agenda preparation which is how our agenda set up I have a one item in our agenda I think we need to at least look at yeah um comments by board

187members I think there ought to be some parameters in there with those comments because it could be comes lengthy at times um that wouldn't be bddc that would be for bdd z z preparate yeah bdd C is for getting things on the agenda gotcha okay and that one's not on this uh for discussion corre it is um it is towards the back agenda format yeah it's the actual agenda so format I mean I don't know how long it would take to come up with those parameters that we would have uh maybe we could recommend to suspend that from the agenda until we can get some parameters done well the the for just temporar yeah the format is what the board came up with years and years and years and years ago I mean I would

188say 1988 since that's the first yeah and there was times when I was on the board we never even had it on the agenda even though we had it in the policy we just never I guess we we did cover it I guess we did I'm thinking it's it was the committee reports we didn't have one there that we had so I don't want to get rid of the committee reports I think you know they're I do most of M on board docs anyway but um I don't know just just my thoughts I don't know what you other board members thing I think having parameters around it is is good um there's other you know if it goes out if something needs to go outside the scope of that there's other ways that that can

189be discussed you know you can put it you can put it up on board dos as a separate document you could put it um in a newsletter if you're doing a newsletter or town town hall meeting something like that that can be done that way so it's not like you're not getting your information out there but it would help to kind of streamline um that part of it because they can go and actually there have been a couple of people who make comments about the fact that that's such a long portion of it well matter Matters by board members um is designed to provide the board opportunity to update the public on what they did over the last month um now that we have board dos um which wasn't in place back when this was

190first adopted board doogs has a special area for board members to go in and put down what you've done over the past month and it creates a nice running tally for the board members so that you can keep track of what you've done and so when you do come back to that self- evaluation you have it all written down and you're not trying to scroll through all your comments for the last year it's a good point I didn't think about that so it's right there in front of you so that was added would brought on board docs years ago that was a nice perk that was added for the board members so okay so something we can further discuss because I know we don't vote here no but uh definitely discuss more and then maybe

191bring it at the next meeting or something as a a vote if we want to do that does that sound sure I want everybody to have time to think about it yeah I think so yeah and not just me I'll make it think about how you feel about that individual okay yep that1 removing distributed specifics it was a whole section that um under BFC policy adoption I think because were changes and policy regulations prepared and distributed to all concern now I understand that you know since it's all digital but there's nothing in here saying that it will be them you know updated by a certain time or by a certain date there actually is a sop that goes with this uh that I presented at the board retreat uh the whole sop on how policy

192is updated and the system well would it be would it be a good idea you know even to identify you know the the distribution is digital per um sop add that in just so there's actually an idea here of how it's supposed to be D I don't have anything else I don't have anything else anybody else okay thank you Miss Barry all right thank you for everyone who attended this evening next we're going to hold a special meeting after we take a short break this meeting's adjourned [Applause] good evening I'd like to call to order the March 10th 2025 special meeting of the York County School Board our first item is an action item consideration of approval of resol excuse me resolution 25-15 a resolution authorizing specific procurement is there any discussion before we vote

193would you like me to share the information yeah yeah okay yes so um there are four items listed and we have Annie services for tab High School editions and Renovations for 3.6 million we have CDW admin and student lab desktop replacement computers for 900,000 we're trying to get ahead of the tariffs etc for that also we have a Core Medical Group or CMG the additional funds requested for year round Services through June the original po amount was $49 9,875 we need an additional 42,000 and then we also have maximum healthcare additional funds requested for year round Services through June the original po was um amount of $244,950 75 we need an additional 34,000 so Mr bow do you have anything to add related to those just to add to the Core Medical Group that's for

194nursing Services um and for maximum healthcare nursing Services speech l language pathology and oral communication facilitator any questions uh this computers are they part of our budget they are they are those phones will be coming out of the tech Reserve fund Tech reserve and just so everybody else knows who's listening the um the A&E Services since that's such a big chunk if you could explain that and it's already in the budget yes the $3.6 million is in the budget and um as we talked a little bit earlier about the CIP and about that particular project there will be opportunities to um modify that scope of service um not only for the construction part but also we're looking to modify some of the scope for the thank you okay can I have a motion in a

195second to approve resolution 25-15 a resolution authorizing specific procurement Madam chair I'd like to move approval of resolution 25-15 a resolution authorizing specific per I will second okay thank you Miss Howard motion is by Mr Richardson and by Mr schaer to approve resolution 2515 a resolution authorizing specific procurement Mr Richardson yes Mr schaer yes Mr kich yes Mrs fman yes and Mrs goodwi yes motion passed 5 to zero okay uh next we have policy second reading consideration of approval of revisions to policy kdb DH yes there are no changes no changes no changes okay any questions or comments all right thank you Miss Howard we oh I'm sorry I'd like to make motion for approval of revisions to policy KD bdh second there you go okay now Miss Howard a motion was B by Mr

196Richardson and seconded by Mr Page to approve revisions to policy KD B DH Mr pich yes Mr schaer yes Mr Richardson yes Mrs Fairman yes Mrs Goodwin yes motion pass Five to zero thank you all right so um the next part of this is discussion um under enforcement of board and protocols before we proceed um I'm going to read something and ask for a vote a motion in a second to move forward okay so fellow board members in August of 2024 we had our board retreat and at that time we revised our code of conduct in board norms and protocols and we voted to adopt them part of our norms and protocols included a section for handling violations committed by Bo members as such we have come to a place where one of our board

197members Miss Linda Fairman has violated our norms and protocols several times leading up to violation four which states the school board may discuss the violation with the school board member at a public board meeting this involves open discussion for the public regarding violations and a public statement of the board's position regarding such behaviors by Miss Fairman as chair it's my job to bring this before you and vote on moving forward with such discussion at this time I ask for motion and second to proceed with such discussion regarding the actions of Linda Fairman Madam chair I'd like to move that we continue with the discussion of the violation of the board norms and protocols the fourth offense okay I'll second okay a motion was made by Mr Richardson and seconded by Mr schaer to proceed a

198discussion regarding discussion sorry I'm sorry discussion we have the first and the second I needed to out open for discussion on this particular proceed with discussion proceed yes proceed discussion to proceed with discussion I know it sounds proceed with discussion regarding violations of board norms and protocols no no no Miss Howard they they're not going to vote right now oh I'm sorry you're fine you're fine it was my fault because I didn't go and say or is there disc any discussion on the vote so it's a little confusing it's my fault okay any particular discussion on this before we vote I don't have any no okay now now proce otherwise I would have been out of order all right a motion was B by Mr Richardson and second In by Mr schaer to proceed with

199discussion regarding violation ofor organms protocols by Mrs Fairman Mr Mrs Fairman no Mr Schaefer yes Mr pich yes Mr Richardson yes and Mrs Goodwin yes the motion pass four to one okay all right so bear with me so I read this and then we will have the open discussion all right as Miss Fairman has already discussed at the January 27th 2025 regular board meeting the history of events leading up to this moment started with the first violation that was addressed via a verbal warning a warning was delivered in a letter format on September 16th 2024 stating a post was made on Facebook that was derogatory in nature towards the superintendent in a reminder that per board norms and protocols and code of conduct board members will always strive to demonstrate appropriate behavior conduct as a

200public school board member the second violation occurred honorable about 10:31 2024 and it was issued on November 15 for violation of the code of conduct number 4 number eight number nine and the sixth bullet of the board Norms protocols number four of our board norms and protocols I will delegate Authority for the administration of the schools to the superintendent eight I will refrain from using the board position for personal or partisan gain and avoid any conflict of interest or the appearance of proprietary impropriety nine I will respect the confidentiality of privileged information and make no individual decisions or commitments that might compromise the board or Administration and bullet six we will be focused on our work as a board and not interfere with the day-to-day operations of the school system which is the responsibility of

201the superintendent now I will make note that in the letter that was issued um number nine and bullet six were not put into that letter but they also that violation was also part of that we there was other violation in there so I do want to note that on October 31st Miss Fairman emailed Dr shondor stating that Senator Diggs delegate Cardoza delegate green and representative whitmann should be invited to the Blue Ribbon ceremony at bethl Manor as it would be a major protocol error not to invite them that same day Dr shandor responded declining to invite them as again this was a schoolwide local celebration and the state or federal level events were more appropriate for the legislators in addition as only Republicans were suggested there was the concern that it could create the appearance

202the division endorses the particular party over another and could turn the student celebration into a photo opportunity for political gain as this was a school-based celebration not a board event it was an event delegated to the superintendent for the Cod of conduct additionally on January 27th Miss Fairman stated that she contacted three elected officials cordoza digs and green to inform them that they were not invited to bethl Manor Elementary School Blue Ribbon award C excuse me award celebration apologizing for what she indicated was a misunderstanding however as an invited guest to a school based celebration she was not in a position I to invite additional guests in the first place that is the purview of the superintendent not an individual board member or the board as a whole this is a violation of our board

203norms and protocols as the board will be focused on our work as a board and not interfere with the day-to-day operations of the school system which is the responsibility of the superintendent additionally have the board wish to include elected representatives as additional guests to the school-based event the board as whole would do so not one board member and it would be the chair's responsibility to speak to the superintendent about it or extend the invitation the chair or design will speak as the official voice of the board a single board member will not represent the board without the consent of the board and board members making personal statements in any format including speeches articles social media posts Etc should clearly state that these statements are their opinion and not the position of the board violation 3

204occurred January 13 2025 during the board's organizational meeting following the meeting being called to order and my introductory marks but prior to the election of the 2025 officer officers you interrupted the proceedings with a point of information at that time you proceeded to read a three-page letter dated December 13th 2024 from Miss Amanda Maguire and the Attorney General with the attorney General's office allowed to the board pursuant to Robert's Rules of Order a point of information is a request for information relevant to the business at hand but not related to parliamentary procedure your recitation was not a request for information but rather an attempt to disrupt the meeting and undermine the board through a blatant breach protocol this placed the board in Peril of a violation of Boya there was no remorse on your part

205for this action and in fact a follow-up letter from your attorney tried to make it my fault because I chose not to gble you out of order however I will State for the record that once you place the letter into the hands of the board members the damage was done and the violation was committed you attempted to make the issue about technicalities instead of seeing that you committed a violation this is even more concerning as you often make everyone aware that you're a parliamentarian as a result you were removed from your committee assignments and your badge access was revoked vot however I would like to note that this is in no way has this in no way prevents it prevents nor continues to prevent your ability to visit schools so we are now faced with

206a fourth violation due to your actions this violation occurred on January 27th at a regular board meeting during Matters by board members you shared that I have heard from some teachers who supported president Trump that they are concerned they will be treated negatively since their reaction is opposite from what the Bea email presented you also stated I have heard from some parents that their children came home saying their teachers said a similar political statement to them in class and they were unsure how to respond since they were pleased with the outcome Additionally you mentioned I have received several calls about the time out of school for the recent snow all of these examples are violations of the board's norms and protocols as well as the superintendent's contract under the terms of the superintendent's Employment contract

207the board both individually and collectively will promptly refer all criticisms complaints and suggestions concerning the York County School Division or its employees to the superintendent or his designate for investigation study review and recommendation by not sharing this information with the superintendent the board now could face potential litigation this would result in the division having to pay damages of of a significant amount as well as legal fees the board does not condone these behaviors and as such request that you refrain from making any further violations of either the norms and protocols code of conduct and Dr shandor's contract if you are not aware of the content on either the board norms and protocols code Code of Conduct or Dr shandor's contract please review them to avoid continued violations and I will just add just for context

208that nobody typed this for me nobody wrote this for me I did this myself it took me several hours yesterday to pull all the information in but as chair we are at that State of fourth violation and I'm carrying out what we agree to thank you I think you covered it I don't have any other discussion about it so then we don't have anything for a fifth violation on our board protol may we need to revisit that but I think if it continues we just need to continue what we just did so the public knows right so that is true this we only went up to four I think when these were originally done that we didn't see that we would probably ever have a need for that never thought um but my concern but

209we do my concern is at this point now we are you know litigation is expensive we're fast tracking right there and um you know I took I took an oath to be fiscally responsible and as chair I feel even more uh compelled to be responsible for the management of know dollars and I don't want to see us having to pay out money for litigation it's unnecessary it's a matter of agreeing staying true to what we agreed upon and I know you weren't there for the board retreat that was your choice but that does not mean that we don't if any member is not present and we vote on something it doesn't mean that we're you know it's no less binding no less binding we all have to agree to them and if there's a problem

210with one then we somebody you have to say like I don't agree with this and I'd like to come back to the table and I'd like to discuss it or have discussion about it um but we can't just none of us can just decide well I don't like that I'm not gonna adhere to that and we cannot violate a contract there's no if ANS or buts about that I mean it's it's pretty cut and dry I'll say that my attorney identified that the three supposed violations I was actually violated or prevented from my first amendment Free Speech rights that he laid it out pretty clearly in that letter um so the the idea that this is one two three and four uh number one is supposed to be that it's supposed to be a ver

211verbal discussion that did not occur it was via letter um it was a verbal warning I mean that a ver War I can speak to that because and I I you claimed you claimed I had not uh returned calls and I asked you on two different occasions I said let me know which things I have not returned when you've tried to reach out to me and I never heard back so you know that's that's what it is on that thing you did get hang on regarding the um the point of order yes that was a mistake it should have been point of personal privilege which I am allowed to do as a member of the board in order to identify that and you know once again that particular issue my attorney addressed that it was

212related to that first topic on well I don't know how what information if is your attorney getting all the information is he getting the full full um disclosure disclosure of everything because it's easy to to tell somebody your side of the story but not give them the full well it's it's easy it's easy for anybody to go and watch the recording that is true but these are the events these are the the different events that have led up to violations and they're like I said they're in our norms and protocols and we are adhering to those and until such time as anything is modified we have to adhere we can't just go Rogue because we don't like it or we don't feel it's accurate or right we have to process and we have to adhere

213to that process I mean if I don't like something I just I can't come in here and just say I'm not GNA I have to go about it the right way and that I think that all of this is about not wanting to go through proper protocol oh just like just like the Attorney General's office attorney who wrote the first letter that Mr Richardson then said it doesn't matter because it wasn't written by the attorney general and signed by him and then few weeks later the Attorney General himself signed a letter because he heard there was question about it and he heard one side of the story read that was and again what does it say though regarding that just say a opinion it's his opinion that opinion is not fact it's an opinion you

214can line up several attorney generals I don't think you're going to get the same he cites the Virginia code that you violated that a board chair and um uh I believe it's and the vice chair but the board chair's term is one year and you cannot remove a board chair before interpretation is there's two ways to look at it it it is what it says and you can't remove them which I can't believe that would be the case because there are cases where no way that was the inent of or it's a term limit it's a term limit meaning the every year you're going to elect a new board member for one year but is that a term limit where they serve a year but that doesn't mean that there's no exclusions no he he

215specifically says in there that um it identifies that the term is for one year and it's very specific of what the intent was of the general ass L and identifying that well I disagree my opinion is different than that my opinion is that he didn't hear the whole story about the issues we were having with the board chair at the time if he' heard that I bet his opinion would have been much different I mean that's that's something I guess then for the courts to decide you know I mean like I said there's the Virginia code is not specific in all things it doesn't outline like what if you have a board member who's doing some egregious things were you just supposed a chair are you just supposed to sit there and say okay continue

216on and watch your division fall apart yep would that be would that be smart so I have to question the logic in that but that's for some that's not that's not what I can do at this juncture I'm just reading the vi I've read the violations what's gotten us to this point how we've evolved to this point okay that's that's really all this is about is how we evolved to this point in a chance to discuss that because that's I think whenever we came up with the boards and uh norms and protocols that's a fair we we put a a lot of time in coming up with it and I think what Fair assessment for all of us and we agreed to follow it so I think it's not much to ask from any of

217us to follow to to understand follow it because it is reasonable it's not it's not something that's ages no as far as like the letter from Mr mies no I'm not attorney by that chance but like when I sign up for this job I think majority does Rule and if we don't like it that's again we rule as a board so whatever majority comes up with we have to stand behind it and do the things so I think it's important to maintain that status as majority as a board uh just for the benefit of all of us in our school Division and again I I don't think there's any more member here that would say if if you if anyone of us felt like you know what I I don't like the way this reads

218I'd like to revisit it and to discuss it and tweak it that we're going to be like nope we're not going to do that I mean we can do those things we have authority as a whole to do those things so if there are specific things then you need to bring them to the chair attention my attention so that I could say okay this is a concern let's convene and let's let's talk about it you know nobody's trying to be it's not about being authoritarian and saying hey you know nothing you have is valid or it's not about that it's about process and a procedure because if you don't have that then you have know what's the word for that chaos chaos thank you chaos and we don't need chaos I mean I don't think

219anybody operates well under chaos maybe there's a few people but I'm not one of them so I will say it was interesting um on the day of the awards ceremony that when I got home and checked checked my school emails there was an email from the vsba asking all Schoolboard members to make sure to reach out to their elected official and invite them to visit their schools in their District again yeah the vsba may have said that but we have a process okay of how we handle those things okay our board does again you don't like that process then we need to meet as a board and discuss that process and see if we need to change it but just to make clear at that time there are elected officials they were not running for

220re-election they were our elected officials didn't matter you know if they had all been a different party or they had all been independent it doesn't matter it doesn't matter you you for back to that was used as an as a reason why we should not invite them so I'm just putting that out there but there were several reasons that I read in there that being one of them because we didn't we don't want the perception we want to have the perception that we're not leaning one way or the other that clearly was not the reason there were there were several stated in here of why that was you know it could have the outcome could have been different if it was handled a different way you know and I think when you you don't involve

221any board members you just go out and and and take it upon yourself you're acting as an individual you're not acting as as a board a board yes and that's been a lot of the problem I think is is it's for board members trying to work together and one out here doing their own thing and that's I think where a big the big problem is need to try to work as a unit and I've said it before to you uh and I'll say it again when you came on this board you had a personal Vendetta and a uh political agenda that you wanted to see done you tried to be uh an executive like you were the CEO of the school division or whatever and that's not your job that's none of our jobs our

222job is to take care of the kids the teachers and uh parents of York County School District yes we are uh funded by all the county those with kids and those without but our primary objective is to have the best schools possible so that we can give the type of service that is needed here and all you have done since youve come on is question everything and and it's not right I mean this is one of the top performing School divisions in the state and it has been for a number of years and everything that you've done that you brought on has cre created confusion and chaos and we had teachers leave because of it and I think that's ridiculous we've we've had uh staff people want to leave we don't want that to happen

223I want to have the best schools in the in the state and I think asking questions is fine asking questions it's not asking questions it's how it's the the process behind it how you ask the questions and how it comes across but even more important ly I think it's a board and it might be just a a a you know the way you see a board versus the way I think the rest of us see a Bo we're not micromanagers my job is not to sit here and be a micromanager I I have a task I'm supposed to make sure that things are on the up and up and everything is being done as it should be for the safety of our students for the well-being of our community but my job is not to

224micromanage what Dr shander does on a day-to-day basis and tell him how he needs to run the school division we hire a superintendent and we have to have trust the person is doing their job until we see something that lets us know that it's not being done right and well and it's one of those things that the board is directed we are to be the oversight oversight doesn't me micromanaging I'm not micromanaging yes you are yes when you go out and you when you go out and you invite somebody without consulting your fellow board members or when you take someone off the the di because you want to put them down where they belong that's micromanaging and that's not what we're here to do we we have we have a lot of good things that

225we can do as a board and we can make some great suggestions and improvements and but we aren't here to micromanage or tell somebody how they need to do their job unless for some reason that person isn't doing the job effectively in which case then you have a a process for that we as a board have one employee and and it's Vic okay that that's we as a board he's not my employee he's ours right and it's our job to work with him for the betterment of the kids and parents and staff of ycsd I've been on I have been on the receiving end and I think I said this before working in an association where we had a board and the board did ex exactly that micromanage picking up the phone calling and telling

226me how to do my job when I had had an executive director who I directly reported to and it was awful it was the worst experience I didn't know who I was supposed to listen to it caused confusion it it you know and then I'd have to always go back to my hey this is what I was told what am I supposed to do now I'm in the middle so I can tell you from personal experience that is not the role of a board and you can find any good book out there on board governance and doubt you're going to find where it says the board should as a micromanager well just personal experience in my five years on the board there has not been a single time that I haven't emailed or asked fck

227a question that it wasn't answered I same here I mean if I ask a question or I say I need information I get it so I yet so and that approach seems to work I have no issues going through Dr shandor to get the information I need it's so that there can be you know we talk about in the military kind of chain of command right so we can keep things going in One Direction um you know that's probably why the division runs smoothly because there's that process and that procedure and I don't have any problem with it I'm not in a power struggle I you know I'm here to make sure that that you know the division continues to do good and to do great and you know we increase our numbers and you

228know that's that's our job and people move here because of our schools and our property values increase I just had I just had somebody today come out my physical therapist and said this is she said to me she said I wish I could live in New York County I can't afford to my kids go to school you know in Newport News but I would love to be able to have them go to your county but I can't afford it you are one of the best school divisions in the country just she's been looking at things you know schools across the country told him to come work for us and I said I said you know and I said you know what you're right we are we are very good and I told I would very

229blessed to be able to have my son go through the School Division so the word on the street is not this is such a a bad place it's quite the opposite and we want to keep it that way but if you start having you know doing your own thing and the board is dysfunctional well everything is going to flow from that and that's what we don't want to have happen so I hope I hope that you know this is the last time we even have to have these conversations because I think of all this time how can be spent doing other things that are important you know I know you have some great ideas on things so you know that that's what what I I'd like to see us move forward and not have to

230go through this that's my I've said everything I can say anybody else have anything they want to say I'm good covered at 100% and so did Mr pic and all right well thank you for being here our next regular board meeting is March 24th here at York Hall in the boardroom this meeting's Jed thank you