School Board Work Session - October 14, 2024

001[Music] even iy work session session everybody here ton and starting to en of this I do before to Dr sh might have resed on Friday afternoon let me statement start and polic discuss is good evening even mad chort for the mon of October first they're very close being the entire roof coed they just have the very edges of the roof that's not done and they're waiting for the metal siding to be able to install the metal siding and then finish the roof coating so the metal siding uh is going to be done for the most part on second shift uh we have got we just got some emails from the contractor they that the sighting material is supposed to be delivered on the 28th of October and the 1st of November so finally that sighting

002will be here uh their plan completion is fall of 20124 and that's weather permitting once it gets too cold the they're not going to they won't be able to app the coating on the roof if it gets below 60° so this is what the roof looked like last month and you can see in the distance there they had didn't have it completed now it's fully completed except for along the very edges this is also the solo tubes over the art room we had removed some uh some old skylights there that were cracked and yellowed and put in some new solo tubes there and this is what the roof looks like around those now so they're they're ready they're just waiting for the siding uh tab middle School HVAC replacement is the next project all the

003equipment is running there they are in the process of doing testing balancing on those on those units I don't remember if I explained that before but testing and balancing they'll make sure they have the proper air flow through the units and also these units are water water uh water goes through these units since they're geothermal and they just make sure to have the proper water flow through them and make sure everything works in the unit the commissioning is checking all the equip all the controls to make sure the heating air comes on when it's supposed to and also checking the thermostats in each of the rooms so that's the next step uh and all the old equipment is removed from the site next project is Mount Vernon and the equipment is also installed there and

004operating they have uh they were up on the roof working on a couple of things this this morning tweaking out a couple of things and they have they're waiting on parts for one unit there but everything else on that unit is running on that roof is running so testing and balancing there and commissioning as well as next steps uh while we did the HVAC replacement there they had to take some of the units off the roof where they were and they had curbs in the roof where the units were sitting and they had to remove those and roof over those openings and so there was some roof work done on this building as well and so here's uh over the gym roof here they took you can see in the center there there's kind of

005a bump little and that's where they took out one of the old units there so this is over the last this last weekend they were up there working and also some new siding they replaced last week tab high school now we're going into the locker room makeovers and the locker installation complete drinking fountains everything's done the students are using the um using the locker rooms normally uh they were scheduled to install a wire partition today but they uh the crew that's done doing the wire partition is also doing the lockers so what they decided to do instead of spread uh splitting their crew up they put all their crew on York Middle School installing lockers today right so they did not do this wire partition today so this is what the lockers used to look

006like in New York High School scho thank you very orange very used uh and this is what they look like now so we took took out benches in the center and put them benches underneath the lockers gave them more space tap middle school locker room makeover uh so lighting's installed drinking fountains lockers are all done so again there's a wiring partitions That was supposed to in be installed today same thing same story as your tab High School these are uh actually orange lockers painted black this is what the boys locker room lockers used to look like at tab Middle School you notice the floor and then a wooden black bench there in foreground and this is what they look like now so with all new lockers new benches and then the beautiful new floors and

007the girls locker room used to look like this and now it looks like this so again the new beautiful new floors and benches and everything York high school locker room makeovers lighting everything's done there students are also using those spaces this is what York high school's locker room used to look like and now it looks like this it's a little bit of change little bit of change this is the team room at the boys yeah it needs a little bit of love there so it looks like that now and then we have the girls locker room same thing same treatment as we had the boys so it looks like this and then we have the girls team room look like that before and now it looks like that so a lot of changes there now

008the last one we're doing is Yorktown Middle School and we was there was a few things there hurdles we had to go over uh we had Jack Hammer up part of the floor and the girls locker room about half of it and replac that new floor we had to tear down some old walls in there and build some new walls um and then we had to some Ada changes in there so there was some hurdles that we had do at York middle that we didn't have to face at the other schools and it slowed us down a little bit there why did the floor have to be there was some problems with the floor settling so we wanted to take the floor out find out why it was settling and repair that we put new

009stone in there and then we put new put a new slab of concrete back in there so we wanted find out what that what what the cause of that was before we went back and did all the nice stuff we wanted to find out what what was going on so CMU walls and benches are complete ceing ceilings lights everything's done there they did start installing the lockers this morning and the flooring is scheduled to start at the end of this month they should have the lockers done this week we think uh but the flooring contractor his schedule's booked up and we can't get him until the 28th and then it'll probably take about a week and a half to two weeks to get the floors done had to sand them down and then put the

010chips down then put the coating down so it all takes every every uh step takes a few hours or a few days for it to secure so this is what the boys locker room looked like before I mean we were taking it apart this in this picture here we already had the benches taken out but notice the floors in here and you know these are the lockers and this is what it looks like today so it doesn't look fantastic because it's not done done uh but this is what it looks like now it's painted out all the rooms are painted out and the lights are all done um and then once they get the Lockers in actually the pictures this was taken last week the lockers are actually sitting in the room or on top

011of the benches now uh in various various configurations right now and this is the girls locker room you see in a very back distance there the walls we had to tear down and rebuild and that back half is where we had to tear all the the flooring out and rebuild the flooring so that's where we're at now and that's the last project for this evening do you have any questions for me I do um the flooring for York and tab the epoxy yes is that a commercial grade aoxy so you'd have to contact if one wanted to do something like that you yes I know if my husband's watching he's cringing right now um you have to contact a commercial person for that yes they're really beautiful that's why ask it's really I I don't

012think your husband could make it look like that not with the Lowe's okay yes I did have a question on the picture of brutin high school the solo tubes now there was a large section of orange looks like rust my guess is it's probably just dirt or something that just got up there but everything else is so pristine white I don't I don't remember what that was right there I'm not sure it's it's not rust on the roof it might be rag or something leaves I'm not sure is not rust it all it all is all white like that okay that that's what I thought it was I just wanted to make sure that it wasn't something that no that got missed or there was a problem that no one spotted I think I took

013that picture and didn't catch it when I took the picture there was something there good job thank you thank you sir yeah I appreciate the board's support on these projects it has been a long time coming um after being here for 10 years we have pushed not only me but previous superintendent and probably Dr Staples who was here well before these are those projects that they're you want to say they're the nice to have and they have to get pushed back sometimes because you have a roof or you have a HVAC system you have bigger bigger issues so um I appreciate Mr sheer heart's work with getting these done um we still have you know still have a lot of work to do with those but they look a th% better than they were absolutely

014M Mr Schaefer your your locker rooms don't look like that what your locker rooms don't look like that uh no my my locker rooms do not in fact they don't look as good as the before pictures okay that's next just say yeah they're coming they're coming all right so our next presentation if you would like Miss we can jump Safety and Security yeah yeah so um the present ation you're going to see this evening um I know many of you board members have seen this presentation we presented this with the Sheriff's Office a few weeks ago um we did want to share it this evening as well we actually spent some time with our teacher advisory Council um last week they got to hear and see this presentation we really wanted feedback from teachers they

015did a great job of giving us feedback by Level Elementary men were High um and what they saw so um but we wanted to make sure that we continue to um push out the work that we're doing with safety again we will will work through that now all right so obviously we have a wonderful relationship with the sheriff's office um sheriff Montgomery has worked very closely uh with myself and um the leaders of our team with major West uh and Dr Carol we've all worked very closely together for a number of years and the main reason we did the presentation when we did it uh two weeks ago we wanted we wanted to make sure that this was a shared responsibility that safety is a shared responsibility it's parents who were working closely with us

016kids who are taking responsibility and then obviously staff members but the data you see in front of you I believe Dr Butler is from the first 20 days of school so you see in the first 20 days of school we had roughly I want to say um eight verbal threats and then eight on social media and it's pretty clearly you can see the elementary threats are were mostly verbal and um our secondary were mostly on social media so just really quickly this is I'll give just want to share with the board and with our community this was sort of the root of at least three of our situations so the situation or the uh the slide up there on the the let me start over the image up there on the left um caused Great

017concern for our School Division as well as several others throughout the country um this this is a list that originated in the UK and K Han who is sitting here in the room with us um went through I think it was 500 the list is about 500 and there were some familiar names there was a brutin school for the girls that was on there and I believe there was a York a York high or a York school um but those schools are located um obviously in the UK but that spread a lot of and that image alone and that um social media post spread a lot of anxiety throughout um School leaders and you know police and Sheriff's offices throughout the country the next one that's on the right is a screenshot and this actually

018originated from a school in Arkansas so we had students who you know were screenshotting and and sharing these types of things and it went to one of our students who um unfortunately chose and sent it to another student at about 1:45 a.m. and we had some students get it in the morning and then you know kids are kids and it gets it just gets dispersed and it caused us some not some it caused a lot of work with a lot of people trying to figure out where this thing originated from um and it caused some of our military parents to sh military some of our Middle School parents excuse me to show up at bus stops because they were concerned about this image but we do appreciate um our students that had this and brought

019this in we had parents bring this into the school to share it with us so that was very helpful the next one that you can see actually originated in James City County and this I it it's blurry up there and I read it during the activity with the um with our families um but I won't do that this evening but I'll share the context with you we were sitting at the um anxious generation presentation uh I believe it was around 9:00 it was almost over and now the anxious gen generation conversation was with the first lady and around 9:00 one of our principes who was in the session with us received this text we were able to contact ypso and within 30 seconds they were working on this with us out in the uh cafeteria

020at Grafton High School and we quickly found out that it wasn't a York County situation but you can see um it was finally deemed not credible at 250 a.m. in James City County it was a situation up there and what they shared with our Sheriff's Office is that their um police force or Sheriff's Office they had to visit 55 homes from 9:00 until 2:50 they visited 55 homes to determine that it was an uncredible threat so so again this was sort of the reason why we wanted to make sure we put some of the stuff out there what you see in front of you now basically on the left side of the screen is from the Sheriff's Office and and if you skim down Midway through the paragraph It's talks about a class six felony

021however any person who violates the subsection with the intent to commit an act of terrorism as defined by as you can see the numbers on their um is guilty of a class five felony so the sheriff really went into detail related to this on the right side of the screen during that um during that session with families Dr Aaron Butler and our team in in student services reviewed that's basically our code of conduct which is in our handbook all right I'm going to turn it over now to Dr Carol who is going to take us through the next several slides thank you Dr shandor so um in the public a lot of the time people just think of what you do to harden uh the schools in order to protect students but and staff but

022there's a lot more to we have uh a tiered approach and I'm going to walk you through five areas of work there okay so the first one is we have to do proactive planning and we have processes for that and they're not all just our processes the state puts some things in front of us also so every year we do the annual school safety audit and their related inspections and those those are prescribed by the state and so we go through that process and then evaluate our results and every school does that for their own selves and then we do inspections also also you know things like having student super Vision you know teachers in the hallways uh during during Duty periods or being at your doors at at the beginning of a a class

023period so that you're you're out you have a adult presence in the in the hallways and then it would be important to um highlight the fact that we do school climate surveys every year and working condition surveys every year and in both uh respects with the last last data we have we're still waiting for last year's but in previous two is that the answers from our staff and our students are clustered around the answer of agree now there's also a strongly agree but that's the top of the scale and they're clustered around they agree to the question I feel safe in my school and so we start from that that uh everybody that's working in our schools and attending our schools or the average is feeling feeling good about the the practices that we have

024in place generally all right so that's uh those are some of our proactive processes um then we also have things like our crisis management plan that's been developed over years we update that every year every school has a copy and so do we up at the school board office we have multi- agency collaboration not just with the sheriff's department but also with Fire and Life Safety I'll talk about that a little later we have a variety of mandatory employee trainings that aren't just about the worst case things that we think about but other ways that we keep students safe and student conduct codee assemblies are a common practice with our school administrations with students at least once a year if not twice sometimes more now preventive measures here the these are the things that we

025that people think about a lot with hardening our campuses obviously we want a a sealed building envelope locked exterior doors we also want our locked our interior doors set to lock so that they can be uh closed quickly if we had to go to a lockdown drill uh staff do a quick sweep and then close their doors that are locked and then we've added security vestibules and we now have a security vestibule in every school in our division also a couple years ago we put in some measures at Bailey field in the pit uh we have a clear bag procedures there that and that helps enable the metal detectors and wand procedures now we did these at these outdoor venues because we have a lot of people that aren't part of the school Community they're

026coming in they're in a confined space and uh emotions can run high at those athletic events we also have a criteria for certain indoor events where we could use the metal detection and the clear bags if we needed to we've also added a lot to our security Staffing over the just the last few years uh Dr shandor mentioned the coordinator of school safety Mr Han who we're glad to have with us his years of experience with York County York Mosen Sheriff's Office his experience with being a part of our uh SRO Pro program and leading that and he brings fresh eyes and really helps with quality control to make sure that the procedures that we put in place are consistent we also have added school resource officers at the middle school level a few years

027ago and so now we have Sr row at every secondary school we also last year added school security officers add two to each high school and one to each middle school so we have an increased human Presence at those buildings and then when it comes to elementaries uh the sheriff and Dr shandor have worked together to have Road deputies check in on a regular basis uh at the uh at the elementary schools uh sometimes they check in just uh check into the school check in with the administration sometimes they'll be sitting outside doing their paperwork and that's an irregular thing it's not it's not on a predictable pattern we also employ technology to help us uh we have 896 security cameras in our 18 buildings school buildings and we have three or four cameras on

028every school bus and we run about 120 buses a day so we have a good presence for cameras uh we also run the ien kid visitor system that does kind of instantaneous background checks we have the access control you've seen the badges that that we used to get into the for staff to get in and also for uh people when they come to the front door community members that want to come in we were an early adopter of the access control system on the peninsula we also have the 800 megahertz radio that uh every school has that has Keeps Us in constant contact with the School Board office that's also what our buses use and so they they reach well outside of the county they have that type of power and then the last thing

029on this U slide I'd talk about is the reported feature which has been something we've had at this uh division for a long time it also uh it works with in collaboration with let's talk also but when someone uses that hotline phone number or reports in uh using the app or uh the website there that immediately goes to a number of our uh administrators at the Schoolboard office and so somebody's always available to answer those and to give them the attention that it deserves and then we also do student and staff drills uh the lock drown lockdown drill requirements in the first 20 days we have to do a couple and then after the first 60 we have to do some more we have to conduct four annually and that is also coordinated with the

030Sheriff's Office and this is my third state third School Division and I've had I've experienced good uh collaborations with law enforcement in the past never seen a sheriff's department that's out at nearly every drill that we do uh we just did them on our own in my previous School divisions as a principal you would just do it and document it and then you were done but uh we always have almost always have a presence from the Sheriff's Office office and they can give us feedback on how we're performing and that's a great comfort and these are important because as I've said before people don't rise to the occasion they rise to the level of their training and so drilling on a regular basis is important and uh a big drill that we did a two-parter

031over not this past summer but the two before that was operation Falcon and the first one we did a lockdown simulation uh with uh real actors in the building with our administrators after they did some tabletop work then we did this simulation and uh it was very successful and really brought uh to life what we'd be dealing with in one of the worst situations in a in a building and then the second summer we did the same thing with the addition of testing out our centralized family reunification that we had designed so if we were to have a need of a reunification for any reason not just not just um active shooter situations but it could be weather it could be an event natural event gas leak airplane crash that type of thing um then

032we have agreements with a number of local uh facilities where we can take students make sure that we can take the time to and have a methodical procedure to reunify families so that we can account for everybody that was in the building and uh so we tested that out and that went very well and I'll turn over to Dr Butler to talk about our threat assessment procedures thank you as a School Division we utilize a multi-tiered approach when it comes to threat assessment and that's based off of back in 2007 when they had the tragedy at Virginia Tech um I was at brutin high school at the time and so the general assembly in response made uniform policy that every higher education institution had to have threat assessment team there were several of our school

033psychologists who said you know what that would actually probably be a good idea for our schools to have a uniform process for how do we look at a threat how do we manage the situation and then how do we report that information out so in 2013 the general assembly then passed legislation that all public schools have to have a threat assessment team and so we have policies and guidelines that govern that and part of that process is that you must include someone with law enforcement experience someone with School administration someone with instructional and then someone with human resource if it's an individual a lot of time we think about threat assessment is about students but it could be for anyone that's a threat it could be an individual a contractor that's on school campus that

034shouldn't be there it could be it's a random adult that's on the building as well so we have processes in place for that and it starts off with just very simply we're trying to gather facts and so we have the team together to identify information we look at all the factors in certain cases the threat assessment team is authorized to get criminal records on individuals as well as medical history because they're trying to make sure they get a good picture of what is what is the nature of the threat and is it is it on the pathway to violence and then it goes into inquiry assessment and then finally the management stage and so by using that methodology we've been able to work as a team again at all of our secondary schools the school

035SRO is a part of the threat assessment team and then our elementary schools we have a Layon with the yorkos sheriff department that goes and provides support support to the teams at elementary level I think on the next slide I can show you so you can see since the beginning of the school year and this has just been as Dr shandor shared uh the first 20 days of school you can notice that we've had substantial number of threat assessments that were done and it's not just threats to others um when anyone has a threat itself that also has a process that's gone through with the assessment process and you can see that we had 16 at the high school 13 at the elementary and six at the middle school but when you start looking looking

036at the range the majority of those have all been low threat or no risk and that's what you want to see and then those that were higher risk we have certain procedures in place to manage those many times we work with our local community service providers we do referrals U to clone Behavioral Health and some of our other agencies to try to help us with the mental health component in addition to the discipline component that school staff are required to do by law um as well and response to these behaviors and then finally for some of our safety procedures we try to make sure that we're using uniform language so that we can communicate with the sheriff depart Sheriff office and also with our school staff Dr Carol mentioned earlier that we had the megahertz

037radios that we use between all of our buildings and with law enforcement so by having uniform language using the hold in place the modifi lockdown lockdown and EV evacuation everyone on the team including our partner agencies fire Life Safety when they hear that on the radio they understand what those are uh we have put that in our student handbooks also so that families and students are familiar with those terms and we do practice these different um drills throughout the course of the year as Dr Carol showed as well thank you Dr Butler all right so um Dr Carol did mention the reunification uh part of this again we had uh sheriff Montgomery actually did this slide if you recall from the session with the community um and basically what he was trying to um remind

038parents if there is a situation at your child's school as you can see number one up there is please stay home um because we are in the process of trying to transition students to another location and if if the school is rushed with cars and whatnot that could just delay the process of getting um Everybody um reunified um we obviously need to have people stay informed and we will work through our communication channels to do that during that situation and again he encouraged our our families to be ready as well all right so homeschool Communications you can see our priorities um go ahead you have a question yeah I had a question back on the statistics page for this one that one could you describe just in general what's considered low threat medium threat High

039threat imminent right so when anything say imminent threat or critical that means that that student is an immediate need of hospitalization and removal from campus because they pose a threat to themsel or others and there's a battery of questions that our teams go through so we get our guidance from the Department of Criminal Justice and they have like a list of different questions and when you start hitting certain thresholds then it escalates to that point where that student needs to be removed and get immediate help uh moderate means that there may be a risk that's still there but it's just not so the student is starting to express some concerns but there's not like a detailed plan there's not the methodology to do it mean that they don't have access to weapons but they have

040some type of um anxiety or to answer questions in such a way to make the team say that there's some additional interventions that need to be put in place so that that person can go back to a um a good State and so because of that that's the difference in the level so log just means that it could have just been someone had accidental comment they got mad or situation they were upset with someone and they made a comment but then they showed remorse um there was no History of Violence there was no history of any type of disruptive behavior what about the high threat you said the imminent and then you went to moderate the high threat the reason I'm asking is that I know there were two instances High School wi that personally

041I would consider High threat the the ones that were in the media um with the children charged and so high threat so imminent would mean that you need immediate hypol High means that there is um that there has been an escalation behaviors that the person has not been able to stop prating on trying to do something it's just that they haven't reached that threshold where they need to be immediately taken to the hospital or they need to be immediately taken to be seen by a professional but that still means that there's a serious threat that that they have every intention of doing harm to someone else and so that's typically why we don't let that student back in the building um anytime there's a high threat we have to work with law enforcement and many

042times I'll have to require to that student get a clinical evaluation from someone outside of our area who focuses on you violence assessments and once we get that clarification from them and clearance then we talk about transitioning the student back into a school environment um but that's different anything that's higher imminent it takes to a different level when it comes to the division level thr as te I guess I was looking at it more of U the two that I know the the threat of shooting tab high school and then threat of shooting at uh York event what are they considered in here because I'm looking at high school and it's only showing medium uh medium low and no right so I I can answer that question and okay um we're not going to talk

043about the individual events tonight because we don't want to reveal that information absolutely but I will share with you because something makes it on the news doesn't make it a higher imminent it doesn't it could be um a situation that may have um gone to social media and has got a lot of traction and when they went and they review a situation with the team that there it could be low but because it's still out there it's still going to the Sheriff's Office is still going to work through their process but that does not mean it's higher imminent okay just because so just because the Sheriff's Office may be directed by law they have to address certain things certain ways that doesn't mean that it changes the Threat Level here right that's separate the threat

044level is separate from any charges Andor any school discipline right so all three of those things are factors right in fact I mean because you have a situation A Child may get charged because of a social media post because of you know making a threat on the score whatnot but when they do as Dr Butler mentioned as they go through those steps there's no history of anything no um no means they had there are no weapons in the home there specific plan no plan no nothing it was child made a bad decision okay they either said it or they posted it so again that's why that could be a low or no threat but they're still subject to oh yeah yeah with the schools and with the sheriff's office absolutely just a quick question while

045we add this uh all of these threat assessments are related to students related threats uh like members of Community are they falling into these categories at all are they count it or not yes so we have a separate process so at the division level there is a threat assessment team it includes um Dr WS from our HR department myself usually the SRO supervisor at at the sheriff's department um our coordinator for health services and our lead school psychologist and what we do is if there's a threat happens because it could be um it could be the spouse of a staff member because that's happened before since we've been in this position where that person was making some threatening comments and so we had to work law enforcement to try to make sure that the staff

046member was safe as well as the school Community because we didn't want that individual going on the campus and making threats of violence towards the staff members so we do have like a different team it wouldn't be the school-based team that they wouldn't have expertise in that but that's why we have the oversight team at all right is this where I was sorry about that no you're fine I just don't want to make make sure I don't skip a slide all right so um School home Communications as we know is is critical um as we're communicating to our families when things happen in schools so obviously our priorities are are student staff safety but before we send any Communications we want to make sure that we gather the facts as I told the principles and

047and we meet with them quite often told them today again um we're not going to send a communication out until we have all of the facts because the last thing we want to do is communicate information out to 700 parents in elementary or you know a thousand or so to high school and not have the accurate information um we want to obviously make sure it's accurate and then um as we're working through our situation whatever that situation may be um we want to make sure that we're making an informed decision and that's not just one person making that decision it could be a number of our elt members in the room who were contributing to the information um as we're receiving information from the uh School whether it's an administrator on campus or typically when

048we have a situation at a school we send an elt member so we may send Mr dolac to a particular Elementary School when there's a situation going on and he can help um share information with us related to what's going on at the school and then Mr Han can share as the liais on with us and the sheriff's office so that we're making the right decisions moving forward you can see our processes as well determining the scope of the situation um sometimes these things are really really complicated um we love it when they're simple um but unfortunately um a lot of the time they're they're pretty complicated and again when we're going to communicate if there's two kindergarteners arguing out at the swing set um we would communicate to the identified impacted families you know

049we would have the administrator call those two parents if there's a situation on a bus which we've had a few of those this year um if it's bus just throw a number out 318 and and there was a situation on 318 where a child said or did something um that the um Sheriff's Office had to get involved with on the road or whatever then we would communicate directly with those kids on or those families on the bus um and we certainly want to be as transparent as possible um without causing any undue harm and when you think about school Communications um sometimes we'll hear that we're either you know you social media is great but it's not great because sometimes we'll have situations where folks will assume we're hiding information um we have to make

050sure that we are protecting the the students so there's legal and privacy considerations when we go to communicate um the scope of the situation again we have to make sure that we're what we're communicating that we are not um exposing the Integrity of a legal investigation or our investigation the school and then also avoiding disruption did I leave anything out there Jim Dr Carol sorry all right um when you think about direct School home Communications there's a numbers of a number of ways that we can communicate as you can see on the screen by phone by email by text message we've encouraged a lot of our folks in our community to get on the app the app is really really good because it has a ton of information I've said it in every session if

051you need to know if it's an A or B day after a holiday you can find out that way versus emailing me um but what what I'll share with you is um while we have various situations um Miss goof is involved in our team and again depending on what that situation is and how much time we have sometimes that dictates whether we do a if the principal does a phone call an email or a text so really sometimes it just depends on that situation um I did want to share that we have around I had some numbers with me as far as um communication so we have over 44,000 contacts to make for families and that could be and this is phone contacts so you know parents have uh you a desk phone a home

052phone a cell phone whatever um it's around 44,000 and we have about 2100 whove opted out so that's about 5% which isn't isn't awful when you think of the larger number of 44,000 text messages we have about over 20 2,000 cell phones um and we have about 3500 who've opted out and that's about 15% uh because we know that how the world is now people are communicating and receiving information via text email we have about 38,000 um opportunities to email parents and uh family members and we have about 307 so that's almost not even a percent so we talked about this at the event with at the Sheriff's Office and you know my my request is for families and parents to please opt back into this if you've opted out um it is critical that

053our schools are able to reach you and contact you and share that information with you have you seen any increase in uh downloading apps or op and in or out since the last meeting they're about the same they're about the same I will'll tell you where we have seen an increase thank you that's a great question um with our student handbooks that night at the meeting that was a couple weeks ago I think I announced we had 4500 students not have their handbook and their compuls compulsory education those are the two legal pieces that parents are supposed to um acknowledge in the first month of school so it was about 4500 so that's like a third of our families um Dr uh Butler worked with our principles we sent a communication out five or six

054days after that that was pretty consistent and it only went to the families who haven't um filled it out we're down to about 1,800 now which is which is positive um Dr Carol s another one 2 or 3 days later um and so they're steadily rolling in I know we're going to talk about we've had a few parents reach out you let's talk about you know please send me a paper copy and whatnot so so we'll work through that but again I'm glad that it went from 4500 to 1800 so at least folks are acknowledging that we have a code of conduct and more importantly the compulsory education or excuse me compulsory attendance all right so uh our goal in an actual Mercy situation is to make sure we share an initial message we try

055to get that without out to the community within hopefully 15 minutes or sooner um that just means you know here's the situation if you notice the the fire department or you know the Sheriff's Office presence increased we want to tell parents to acknowledge we're aware too we know and we're working through that situation the next part there would be um criteria for emergency communications if there's a credible threat to students staff um or the building we're communicating if there's an interruption to the schools School's daily routine and we've had a lot of those this year quite honestly um and board members you're aware because I send you the elt messages I think last Friday or Thursday we broke a record it was like nine in one day um and it's unfortunate and those aren't all

056for threats a lot of those are for we have a medical situation in one of our schools we have to put a school in hold in place so that our Fire and Life Safety people can come in and either take care of the child or a staff member so we have those processes we always let our parents know when those situations are going on um and then if there's ever a high level of discussion inquiry rumor or misinformation and we know that that's something that every school district in the country deals with with the the um the use of social media where somebody heard something instead of them calling the school or calling the sheriff's office they'll just post it on 911 and say does any is anyone aware of yada yada and it becomes

057a you know 80 80 people have chimed in and what we're requesting from the school Division and the sheriff's office if there's a situation you're concerned about call the schools or call the Sheriff's Office the sheriff's office is open 24 hours you can call them anytime if there's a concern of any kind that involves our schools we really want you to um go that route all right here's some challenges that we face and we had this conversation there as well um you our students thinking or our parents um saying that the threat was a joke and you we we know which what's going around that happened at Parkland which you know what happened at richneck um that we take every single threat or um any any sort of social media post we to take those

058serious the Sheriff's Office works extremely closely with us and the amount of time and effort that it takes to work through and find out to find these to be not incredible is is a lot of time so so we we treat them all serious U serious and they're not a joke um students reposting on social media res sharing via text message we had this conversation as well that night I uh you know I have children of my own who are in our schools it is our responsibility as parents to make sure that we are aware of what they're posting what's going on there and making sure that you're randomly having that conversation with your child or pulling what they have on there I'm guessing that most parents purchase those phones um reminding them that those

059are your phones so make sure that you go on there and take a look from time to time to make sure that they're being responsible and a good a good digital citizen so to speak fam is not sharing information with the sheriff's office or School Division I just mentioned that one families posting or sharing rumors that really is a big big challenge for the Sheriff's Office and us um potential threats being reported to school staff after hours via voicemail email or social media messaging again that's that's why we encourage folks to call the sheriff's office um we have had multiple situations where a family would report something to ypso or the School Division but would not cooperate meaning they wouldn't let an officer talk to the child to get more information or see how it

060was shared or where it was and quite honestly all that does is slow the investigative process down again we have call 911 there because we really want folks to um alert you know the Sheriff's Office we also have several incidents that occur outside of school being treated as a school matter we have situations that happen on Saturdays and Sundays we have situations that happened um we had one that happened I think on a Saturday before the homecoming dance I think Miss Miss Fairman that was the one you were referencing um you know that wasn't even a high school student unfortunately ended up being an eighth grader who was involved in that situation and it took the Sheriff's Office you know and the school was quite a lot of time to work through that situation on

061a Saturday Dr Butler I think we were on the phone from 6:00 to 8 or something working through that and then trying to assist one of our assistant principles to communicate during their homecoming dance to families so you know these things it's it's there's a lot of work that goes into it um fames not supporting appropriate levels of school discipline you know that's something that is I think in any school in America that's something you're going to encounter all right family responsibilities you know we talk about parent rights but but we also need to talk about parent responsibilities and these I think there's eight or nine of them up on the screen um those are all in our student handbook so I would encourage uh any parents watching or community members please uh read these

062they're extremely important meet with the school staff when uh you're requested obviously be respectful in all related interactions make make sure that School attendance is a priority for your child promote good decision making um review this stud of conduct code it is extremely important and then providing the updated information with us how can you help us so I've said this in several board meetings and I know that our principles talk about this all the time talk to your children about the seriousness of making a threatening comment talk to your children about what they can and they cannot bring to school we have a lot of issues and you know unfortunately our board members are put in the position at an expulsion hearing because we have children that bring things to school that they should not

063bring to school um let's see talk to your children about their use on social media in the phone we've talked about that um a ton uh let's see if you own firearms again the sheriff was wanted to make sure we had this one on there if you own firearms please make sure they're they're safely insecurely stored away so that your your child cannot access them in the event emergency rely on the official updates from the school division in the sheriff's office again we know there's a lot of different Facebook sites out there in York County that represent different groups whether it's 411 group or or other community groups but if you need information from the schools pay attention to the school division Facebook page and our communication methods or the Sheriff's Office and how how

064they communicate and then the avoiding rumors I think that's one thing that really again I can't say enough about spreading unverified information and um we really need the adults in the county to really help us with that so if they if there's a situation that they hear of call us immediately so we could look into it and make sure that we can find it noncredible or if there's a situation that we really need to look into we get the sheriff's office and our team together and make sure we get to the bottom of it so nobody gets hurt all right uh that concludes our presentation I want to thank Dr Carol and Dr Butler for their contributions to this we are available for any questions you may have I have um some comments and then

065have some questions so the first thing I want to say comment wise um so over the last month I've been in everybody pretty much all the schools I have a couple more to go to and then I'll have been in all the schools in the division um I will say that when you walk into a school you can tell a lot about the climate when you walk through the door there's just that air and I will say that the climate is very positive I don't see anxiety on people's faces people worrying um I've talking with the administrators during my walkthroughs um and looking myself at all things like entryways you know things posted uh making sure that kids aren't letting people in everything and uh it doesn't I don't sense fear and they've told me

066that you know they feel safe and your surveys back that up I didn't talk to kids but I know that from your surveys so I will say that and that's just from me on the ground in the schools um I know that we have another piece and it's it's it's a little but it's a big piece is that we have these connection coaches or success coaches I don't what sure with the right ter con coach is right that's huge because they connect those kids with uh who might not be coming to school or might be maybe flying under the radar or the one you might worry about and make sure they're engaged and when kids are engaged they're less likely to want to do silly things or or take you know an adverse reaction to

067something so that's a positive and then something else I noticed was I'm just really impressed with the administrators and they know these kids' names and when you walk through a hallway and I'm not talking about you know Joe athlete I'm talking about a kid who's walking down the hall who you know just head down who just maybe average kid they know their names and they'll they'll stop and say hey so and so how you doing doing okay today so their eyes are on kids like that too which also prevents problems and I I've never really seen that anywhere else that I've gone and I go through a lot of schools in other districts as well so I just want to put that out there for the board to know as as positives from my observations

068um question that I have um when we go back when we were looking at the slide about the metal detector for the um football game something that was brought up to me and of course I didn't have an answer for that so I will defer to you we have that for the football games why not for basketball games or volleyball games where you're going to also have crowds and people coming in and basketball can be kind of a high contentious sport as well so can you speak to that yep yeah as I said we have uh criteria for those indoor events if we feel like that's in place uh yes you do but you just don't have as many people and uh but you can have high emotion but we have a checklist of criteria

069if we feel like we need them then we could those are completely mobile and we can get that and we've used them for basketball before we've used them indoors before you know if there's a potential rivalry game or if teams are you know if there's some um Social Media stuff going on during theing that happen you might put one in just based on okay yeah so and they have a criteria for that and and I I need to say this too part of what we share we can't share everything we can't share all of our plans we don't want to share all of our plans for a number of reasons but I will say when we presented this to the teachers the other day so many of them were were we sharing it gives me

070great comfort that there is a plan that we have a reunification plan that we have a trailer that has everything in it um thanks to Mr dolak and his team and that SBO is going to come and run the reunification so again our teachers again a lot of our employes may not know that information but for them it was very reassuring that we have that that plan already in place yeah and I think I would say that I from the safety Forum that we we had I mean that was very eye opening to see all that is done from A to Z to make sure that we are trying to dot every ey and cross every T I guess my question to the board would be um from your perspective you know is there is

071there anything else that you know you've kind of thought of over the last you know I know we've been talking about this for several weeks that um you know that we might need to do to do our due diligence I don't know you know are we good where we are do we need to you know have further discussions do we need a committee to look at something I just want to make sure that we are because safety is so important absolutely kids are so important I would like to share the same observation as Kim did with the walking into the hallways in our schools how much our administrator actually do care and do know the children uh that that's very unusual like know where I'm coming from and seeing that it just brings really joy

072to my heart um what I want to ask Dr K just a couple of things uh we talked a lot about keeping the threat outside of the school uh just lock down I mean we do a tremendous job that's that's I'm taking hat off that uh with the drill that we have in place that we do four times a year do we exercise uh drills that something actually got into the school or it's like within the school behind closed door how do we approach those things well the lockdown drill would apply to a lot of that um are you asking if the threat actually got into a specific room it's like specific room or an instance like no student brought yeah you know Happ to the school and it went in behind it was nothing

073like that we could do to prevent that except the the metal detectors or like other things goad I'll let you answer that first and then I mean if the threat is outside the school then typically we would go into a modified lockdown because the envelope of the school is locked uh and they would allow students to continue to learn the lockdown drill is something's gotten into the building or or is very imminent and so yes we do do that now do we get to the level of something in a particular room or that type of thing that would be more along the lines of that operation Falcon where we enacted a specific scenario with actors so it through a falcon what year was that that was 20 last summer and the summer 23 is that

074something that we should look into doing yearly or on certain kind of schedule we certainly can I mean we we did it the the first um first summer was was really enlightening for all of our administrators I would say right for for our entire team a tabletop yes we did the tabletops first because you know part of it is I think that community and our parents this makes you feel good as a parent our officers know um wherever the situation is in that building if they that's why there's numbers on every door and letters everywhere and all those types of things these guys I keep looking at KY like you're still wearing a badge I apologize but they they know exactly where to go and um they know exactly what to do when they get

075there watching that cuz I I sort of stood outside of it that day as more than Observer and Dr Carol ran the um what was it called the division response the division Response Team um and we work through that but knowing their expertise meaning the Sheriff's Office expertise that they know our buildings extremely well there are some divisions in the state where the sheriff's office or the police department doesn't even have key or access to get in a building right I mean that's very true correct K so knowing that our our guys could come in immediately and go in immediately that's the response that's refreshing the other thing I'll share with you about the drills it's important that we vary the times of the drills right so what it might be lunchtime versus everyone's in

076first period it's the middle of first period it's comfortable there might be four kids on a hall pass and they look out and sweep and we come in and we do what right but we want to make sure we're doing that at various times of the day and you know during a transition is the hardest time during arrival during dismissal that those are really difficult because your instincts have to take over immediately to get kids and and get them where they're supposed to be also making sure we're hitting the button making sure we're locking down the school and making sure that we're contacting law enforcement to get them there so it it's this isn't something that's you know the typical fire drill right you walk outside in a line we know which door you're going

077to go out teacher takes role I have every lock out's completely different further to your question the the type of level of operation Falcon that's summer work and we're in we we're in open conversations with the sheriff and that was not just for us that was also for his staff and for fire Life Safety to H how would they operate in that environment and so we talk every year about what training do we think we need to have in the summertime they also use our buildings for different training which further helps them to know the buildings yeah the debrief the debrief part of those trainings is is the most powerful because the sheriff debriefs with his team we debrief with our team and then power and life safety they debrief as well and then we

078get together and we talk and figure out what went wrong what were some things we need to to tighten up on um it's really helped us I think it's really helped us have we look at the option with metal detection detection systems in place and like do we have feedback from other divisions that might use that I think I mentioned it that night that there were I think there's pros and cons to using metal having metal detectors at every school um it could possibly uh promote a false sense of security when it comes to those and I've I know that people may disagree with that but you have to understand at at a potential school at York High School how many doors are at York High School 30 exterior doors at least 30 so you

079have 30 some doors ex exterior on a campus at a high school you know if you it just Vic's opinion if you're going to walk through everyone through the front door of York High School do we really think that those 30 door I mean we can't lock them in we can't lock I mean I mean lock lock those doors because it's a fire hazard so you can't do that so you know to miss Goodwin's Point earlier the relationship piece and making kids feel safe and make sure you are in touch and in tune with every child in the school to me that's the most important part of this work but having a you know a kids walk through a gate in the morning um think about then again the questions that we had were who's

080going to man the gate for the community uh the community organizations that use our schools over the weekend who's going to man the security gate for wreck because we have parks and wreck in you know 10 ele schools we have various programs in the summer um we have PE classes that go outside and come in are we going to walk all those kids or Roc are we going to walk them all out through the front all the way out to the back at yorai and then walk all the way out back through the front so I just think there's a lot of things to consider are there Pros yes um but I think there's pros and cons the feedback that I got I received from a few of um my colleagues from around the state

081and around the country would be um knee-jerk reaction to rushing to put them in is not the best way to do it and that was something that came up with I think people just think that that's the Panacea right if we have that then everything will be fine if you're in a controlled situation like an airport with TSA one way in one way out that that's a totally different situation than you have with a comprehensive High School thing too um that's worth noting is that we take every threat seriously I mean if a child comes with a nail file and says yeah I'm going to cut you with with this I mean that's that's a big deal right we take that seriously so everything is taken serious and I think if you look around at

082other places that may have had issues I don't think that it was threats were necessarily taken that serious and that leads to problems so well and I'd have to say too that when you look I'd have to agree that um when you look at that connection with staff and the students that's a big deal but the other big deal is our community our parents and having that connection with their children um and and that's the big thing I think we have positive going for us in York County and to see something say something all of that's working right now and that's great I hope it continues and gets better um with parents cooperating as well um that and I understand they're reluctant you know they don't want to single their child out and you know

083have them uh you know be the brunt of something later on that oh you told this you told that and understand that but uh on the on the flip side of it this is pretty serious uh I think you just need to go oh sorry I'm Sorry Charlie Sorry Charlie uh we got a report this is pretty serious and to Mr um P just Point again about the metal detectors the sheriff made a great point that night he said you have 120 buses that run every day are we going to put metal detectors on the buses as well so it's it's a much larger conversation I think as we're moving forward with this but but to go back to your original question yes we have the the units we use them at the pit up

084at brutin we use them at Bailey field and we use them for sporting events because we have a team that works through a criteria if we need them I had a question from uh the teaching standpoint since I've taught full-time in York County and then I was also a substitute I've gone through the the lockdown drills the one thing that I remember that we never practiced was if what do you do when you have to evacuate that area the extraction of a classroom is that part of the training now or the possibility of having that I know you probably did that with the the scenario one but do teachers know ahead of time everybody knows the lockdown they know where to go but if the proverbial you know what hits the fan in that classroom

085do the teachers know what what to do and where to go in that situation well that's all situation dependent and they would be under if like you said if it was the worst case scenario that then is a crime scene in the sheriff's department is the one that's directing people so it's it's room by room you're being guided to where you would go it's not just that everybody go like like a fire alarm right and that's that's what I was thinking of I didn't know is that ever practiced of these are some of the areas that you may be directed to go just so teachers know ahead of time because they're going to be gathering their students you know in a group to Aid with the sheriff who is guiding them that I just know

086from being on that teacher standpoint I would like to know ahead of time okay if things go bad these are the possibilities that I may be directed to go the truth of the matter is there are too many possibilities to anticipate it we all depend on what's happening in that building what exit points are available to you okay and works the best for getting the students out of the building yeah I'll ask um Kyle and Mr dolak are here and they do they run these drills all the time so do you have anything that you'd like to add sure to reiterate with Dr Carol said um we don't necessarily drill the evacuation part because as Dr Carol said it's situation specific uh what what I always tell folks is if we are in a worst

087case scenario and there was an actual lockdown then as Dr Carol said it couldn't possibly be a crime scene but at the very least it's under the control of the sheriff's department so they're calling the shots they're going to they telling us where to go where to go yes okay so and and I'm sorry I was going to say in every situation is going to be different as to who goes when and where and things of that nature so I can add a little bit to that in years past uh principles will ask us to come in and Round Table some uh discussions or even do a tabletop exercise at schools and we will dive into the procedure once the officer comes and it's time to evacuate we'll talk through what it's going to look

088like how we're going to want you to evacuate and um not knowing really the area that you'll be going to but kind of they can go back and talk to their students when we're doing the drills like this is what to expect okay um and then when we have the Sheriff's Office do the drills with us there are times that they'll come in and we'll open some doors in the classroom and they have a moment to talk with the the teacher or the students as well okay it's very helpful thank you the last question I have briefly just want to you can let everybody know I know on some of the buses we have older video equipment that yield some fuzzy um footage and so just what's in the pipeline as far as placing that

089down the road right well we're still working on the U the stop uh stop arm bus was the name is escaping me now the company still working through that uh that contract that I presented to you last spring with that package are brand new state-of-the-art cameras Oh great okay the thing that I've noticed also in the schools is not just the administrators and the teachers knowing all the kids and all but the Sr Ros and the security officers they know everybody and I mean especially in the middle school they are role mods for the kids so they're very close to to just about everyone in there yeah all right anything else thank you very much I know that was long and a lot of questions but good thank you I appreciate that all right so

090I believe we are now going to move on to next presentation which is our per expenses Dr Shan yes thank you U Mr Bill Bowen we we're going to welcome Mr Bowen back I said some very unkind things about him at the last meeting and uh I know um Heather is somewhere watching this right now so we're really happy to have you back Mr Bowen the whole team is happy to have you back um he is going to present on per per pupil expenses and then he's also going to review some information related to uh fy2 24 Financial Audits and your audits so I will turn it over to Mr B thank you Dr shandor Madam chair members of the board and Dr shandor um thank you for the opportunity to present um this evening

091on the annual update of per on per pupil expenditures this evening's presentation focuses on the Strategic priority for supportive culture and when we think about supportive culture and per pup expenditures we have a we we ask ourselves a leading question and that is our our financial resources and other supports allocated effectively to ensure that our students are suc successful so when we start this it's important to understand how these calculation um for appropri expenses uh is is obtained here with a Department of Education so annually each School Division is required to report their expenditures to the vdoe and this is done through a process with the annual school report um this is in code is required to be submitted by September 30 of every year um the the Department of Education then takes this information

092and and uses this formula to determine what per puple expenses are for the division now we wanted to show this because VOE actually uses similar data like this for other metrics but um what they do for per pupil expenditures is total operating expenses expenses divided by the average daily membership at the end of the year now we have an average daily membership of March 31st that we use for funding but this is based on an IND of your ADM and it is it does uh include things such as F service summer school preschool but one of the more common exclusions in their metrics is to exclude Debt Service and capital outlay additions but we if but if you look at other metrics that the videoe uses they'll often exclude prek summer school and sometimes food

093service so on this slide what we see here is a table um of our regional comparators these are the group of schools in our region that we generally compare ourselves to um for this data and some testing data um please note that and this is the funding comparison is based on FY 23 data so we just submitted our annual school report for FY 24 that information won't be U updated and released by the Department of Education until later this spring so what we see here is we see a high in per pupil expenditures of 17329 and a low of 14,375 the difference um is $2,954 now one thing we also look at when we look at this slide is we want to compare ourselves to those School divisions that are more closely aligned with us

094um particularly with um student size that would be Portsmouth um it would be suffk and Williamsburg James City County and when we look at those School divisions uh Portsmouth has about 3,200 students suic 14,400 and James City County 11,500 and that compares to York County at 12815 um and if we just look at wburg James City County they are roughly 1500 I'm sorry 1300 students less but uh spend $527 more per student there's a lot of information on this slide uh this is the Statewide comparison of school divisions and per pupil expenses so we'll start up in the upper leftand corner and this is the top 10 of those School divisions so we we go from a high of $ 26,6 42 per pupil at Sur County and then contrast that with what we see

095um as the low in the lower right hand corner which is Radford at 10,540 so more than $166,000 difference in per P expenses the question because I will forget if I wa to the end is Sur that big no so there's a there's a number of factors that can um that account for these differences in disparities and disparities so um Siri for instance uh they have about 700 kids but the geographic uh outlay of Sur County it's it's it's about 200 square miles for those 700 kids so one of the differences could be just the operating cost to get those kids to school more buses um more bus drivers uh maybe more just general operating cost for buses that's probably one reason another reason could be um economic disadvantage population because in school divisions with

096a higher percentage they receive higher uh they receive more State funding and federal funding and it could be the locality the locality has to provide more in support for that for that smaller School Division so do you think these numbers are fair kind of compared to PR division um that's a great question um I've often argued and we certainly we argued about the Esser stimulus funding now the SR funding is playing a part of this too so of the school divisions that I showed on the previous slide slide of our regional comparators these are the ones in yellow um we received the fewest stimulus dollars um we received just over 16 million uh we had school divisions in our region receive an upwards of 100 million so that's certainly playing a part of that but

097just depends on the years that they spend and we had three years to spend those those dollars so uh 23 was a big year 24 is going to be a big year so I would expect to see s these similar numbers for next year because of the Esser dollars um and then they of course they tail off now um September of 24 the Esser Esser funds so we looking forward um this is where in the second column we start to see some of our regional um School divisions start to show up and we also see the state average at 16,67% expenses and so this next column is again just um our our regional group um within this column and then finally um selfic wburg and then York County so I mentioned that the uh the

098leading question um are our financial resources and other supports allocated effectively to ensure that our students are successful but just looking at the cost themselves doesn't really paint that picture for us so the best metric we can use is looking at our student test data now we've seen this information Dr Skinner and her staff have have presented this information um I think it was in September but we can take a look at it again uh our ontime graduation rate the state average at 92.85% and York county is second at 97.73% and York County leads the region at 87 and this is similar similar numbers for what we see with um English writing York County 87 State average 76 and then history we're ranked number one and then with math and science we also rank number

099one and then one final metric we can look at is um the niche rating this the niche uh just released their their updates on the top school divisions in the state of Virginia and if you're not familiar with Niche they're an organization that's considered a leader in the market for providing data analysis on schools colleges and universities and communities and what they what they uh reported is that York county is number three in the state behind Arlington and FSE false church and so when we look at the um at Falls Church that that School Division has about 2500 students um located in northern part of the uh State and then Arlington has about 27,000 almost 28,000 students again located in the northern part of of the state now when School divisions that are up there

100they certainly pay higher salaries they have higher operating costs so certainly that that can account for some of the differences but then when you look at York County we're about $10,000 off from those other school per student per student but I think it's impressive is more money doesn't necessarily equate to better outcomes as evidenced by where we are our scores right so we're spending less but we're doing well so the challenge so the challenge with reporting this data this looks great um York county is spending less um on its students um I know local government looks at this and say look at the high results that we have do we need to give sometimes these arguments are made by um folks on the county side or on the city Side um and and they look

101at that and they say well do we need to give more money to the schools because the the results are the test scores are so high the highest in the region and we seem to be doing well those are things that we can often debate I I will say that I'm very pleased with the support level of support that we get from y York County um not only in operational expenses but also in our Capital expenses so we um certainly we we will always ask for more and and we will have those uh those dialogues with the county but I I've always been pleased with the level of support that we received from from York County I think one of the big uh differences also is the uh parental involvement in our schools is uh

102is a lot higher and you're talking about yeah Falls Church in Arlington they have uh they are in very affine areas uh they have very involved parents as well um and uh but I think that yourk county is definitely uh a bargain you get more bang for your buck here and I don't think that we uh have a large waste of money like uh some other areas do uh and building schools and everything else I think that we we try and look at everything through a lens of being fiscally responsible uh and that we put the money where it's needed to be put in other words we invest in our people uh I think that you won't find any better uh teachers or administrators anywhere and I think to add on to your comment um

103Mr Bowen um the highly effective talent that we're going to talk about I think later on is one of the reasons why we have all this why we get that highly effective talent because of what we compensate our teachers for um so we do need to that's one of our arguments to to the uh County you know why we need money for raises and that sort of thing um is to retain and keep that highly effective Talent so yeah so I would say since we've been reporting this data since we've been reporting this data and this has been for several years now the one consistent uh piece here is that we have been the lowest in the region and amongst the lowest in the state for purup expenses and our test scores have been the

104highest in the region so that's been that's been the consistency with with this data and I do believe that um we are able to say that uh our our financial resources are allocated effectively with the resources that we have and I think that speaks to The Testament it's a testament of what the work that our teachers do the support staff and of course the success of our students there any questions any other questions the comment because I mean when I look at that I say okay well you're doing the numbers show doing such a good job relative to the expenses that should almost should be rewarded for that good work and in some cases you almost can get penalized for that when it comes to money which is what I think you kind of uded

105to kind of felt that way through Esser yeah which really shouldn't it shouldn't be that way but when the federal government was um putting out these funds I had a big problem with this a number of years ago that they were putting into the calculation the number of free and reduced or disadvantaged students that you have they were that was a part of the calculation and my problem with that was other we're all um we all receive dollars for title one so that's already captured so when Esa came out with these dollar amounts and they use the same calculation well our students who have we need HVAC systems just as much as everybody else right so a lot of this was for through covid and all those types of things about what were you going

106to do and changes you can make I had a really hard time with other divisions locally getting well over 100 to $120 million and we were sitting here with 16 talking about Newport News and Hampton it was well it was I wasn't going to name any districts but but there but they're not the only districts but again it should have been based on just the student numbers if they would have just based it on numbers and not added that we would have benef we would have received more funding which would have greatly assisted us and it would wouldn't have been as difficult for the last year especially when learning loss was across a board yeah that was consistent yep but that's water under the bridge that's right all right so we have a next presentation

107we have our our financial audits end of year fund Mr B is going to walk us through this presentation as well thank you again Dr shandor and Madame chair members of the board Dr shandor uh we have a finance update this evening um going to review the Student Activities fund audit report provide an operational audit update and then review our end of year um fund balances board members um if you look in front of you you were provided with two reports uh the first is a spiral um report this is the actual financial report if you look through this document you'll be able to see the um the revenues and dispersements for each of the schools um take a look at that what I really want to go over with you tonight is the is

108the insert the insert is the comments on internal controls and other suggestions for considerations so this is a required communication to the school board and I just wanted to review this real quickly I've highlighted some items in here um to talk about a little bit about their process and audit and things that they were able to find so if you look to page um two it's not numbered but there are highlights on that page of the conser uh we talk about the qualitative aspects of accounting practices and their their last sentence highlighted there is all significant transactions have been recognized in the financial statement in the proper period so um our principles well let me step back the Student Activity funds are not a direct responsibility of the finance department they are the responsibility of

109our principles this is the Virginia Administrative Code requires this so as part of that responsibility though they also have a design and that's the bookkeeper who is responsible for carrying out the day-to-day actions of of and of caring for the revenue and handling the dispersements what we do in finance is we provide them with the support we provide them with annual training with the bookkeepers and also and also with the Pres principles we are also um have access to all of the bank accounts so that we can see what the schools are spending and how they're spending so that provides some oversight because we do have some uh some comments some audit comments negative comments that I want to share with you tonight but I want to share with you also those mitigating factors that

110we have in place that provides us some assurances that we're doing the right things um the second item I wanted to bring to is difficulties encountered in performing the audit um there they their response is uh we encountered no significant difficulties in dealing with management and the Performing and completing of our audit so our principles our bookkeepers and our finance staff work well with with the Auditors the next one is we detected no misstatements as a result of our audit process um that that can happen if something's not accounted for right you have to back and uh restate the errors but there were no errors that were requ to be restated on the SEC on the the third page um dis disagreements with management and sometimes disagreements can occur um in that the financial accounting

111or reporting on auditing matter we may not agree to the degree or the level of severity in which they found um and they want to make an audit Comon about uh what they discovered so that can happen we I won't say we've had disagreements but we've had discussions where we've challenged uh they presented an audit finding to us and we've given them what we thought was um a reasonable explanation and the the point the audit comment has either been waved or it's been reported they followed through but what they're saying here is that they are pleased to report that no such disagreements arose during the course of the audit so on page five um this is the independent Auditor's report on comments and independent controls and other suggestions it just defines what um an internal

112a deficiency and internal controls mean and also a significant deficiency and so I wanted you to have that as we move to the next section which is where on page number seven um these are the general comments that were made by the Auditors the first is SE segregation of Duties um and they identify this as a material weakness now I will say I've worked in three School divisions and this is a common uh finding that you will find across all School divisions and the reason is is because we don't have the staff to properly segregate the duties now what they say the B basic premise of this concept is that no one employee should have access to both collecting the money and dispersing the money and that's what we have we don't have two bookkeepers

113we have one um and so we see this comment in in every year in our report um so what are some of our um material or what are some of our mitigating factors well again we have access to all of their accounts um to the bank accounts and we also have access to their accounting software so we can look and view the U the revenue and dispersements that that are taking place we also provide the training and we reinforce um the fact that we have this issue of segregation of Duties what I talk to the principles about is you're not a financial expert you're an instructional expert it's just that the code has put this responsibility in your lab so if there's something that you don't understand something you don't feel comfortable about that your

114bookkeeper might be telling you please call us because we will walk you through that and work through that process with you it's best basically trust but verify um we haven't had much of that we usually get those calls from new principles who are just unfamiliar with the with the whole process of Student Activity funds um where we work through them um early on and in their principal ship to to give them some level of comfort level of ease and being responsible for these funds and the second one was sign checks we had a a material weakness here where one of our principles um signed a check to themselves now what we used to have um with our bank is they we had dual dual authentication so we had to have a principal and then an

115AP or principal and a bookkeeper they could sign it but what the bank started doing is it's we don't we don't look at that second signature anymore however we do have a process in place and this goes through our annual training that principales should not sign checks for themselves um if they have a check that's be to be reimbursed to them then they should contact the Schoolboard office and either myself or one of my staff members who's authorized to sign the check would sign the check so we will work through that um with our um staff and we will work through that uh through through training um what's good to report is is that even though the checks were written to uh to the principal signed by the principal there was no indication that there

116was any any issue any fraud related to that trans transaction it's just that we don't want to see principles write checks to themselves it happened but there was no underlying issue or fraud related to that transaction and that is the update on Student Activity funds be happy to answer your questions that you may have it'll take a while I'll look through a the other thing I just I'll to say real quickly about the Student Activity funds um and when you look at the financial report you'll see that some of our high schools have $100,000 um in their accounts these Student Activity funds are funds that are primarily raised by the students it is fundraisers for every athletic team for every club we have school specific grants they may apply to the um the foundation where

117they're awarded $1,000 Grant those those grants are are um accounted for in the Student Activity funds there may be donations donations from the PTA uh you you can look through here you'll see a host of things we also run some um some of our accounts through there the the primary account being food service so our daily collections of food service are deposited in the Student Activity funds and then monthly those funds are transferred up to the Schoolboard office so if there was ever a severe economic downturn and we wanted to talk about budget cuts where could we find money we could not look to the Student Activity funds because these are students these are not school owned funds we are just the fiduciary um responsible for managing what the students have raised yes ma'am as

118funds come in for say the different sports say you know football and cheerleading and all of this as well as some of the the different organizations are those funds solid with those groups or can they be shifted within the school you said they can't be shifted to the overall budget but do things get shifted within a school um the individual clubs and the sports no they stay within the football team they stay within the basketball team what we what we encourage and strongly suggest is that the majority of the funds that are raised in a year should be spent in that year because those are the students who've raised it and so we we continue to educate in that purpose but sometimes what they're doing is they're saving money to help offset the cost of

119uniforms or help offset the cost of sweat sweats warm-ups um for those teams so we see we do see a little bit of that but that's known going into the fundraising events that this is going to be used for a specific purpose and it might take two years get marked yes okay thank you so I'm noticing that every school has their own categories for accounts the way how they code in it is that what's left to school to do kind of their booking individually figure how they're going to run it yeah so when when we started with this um we had given the schools some general guidance on setting up accounts um and particularly at the high school level it's just it's exploded because there's so many organizations so many clubs and so many teams

120that that's a good thing remember that's a great thing so is there a code to like what series one series two three four and six what are they representing no no there's just various categories within within there we we try to like I said we try to give them the guidance um series ones are generally um their primary accounts the ones that they use more on a daily basis um then they break them down in uh class so classes might do some individual fundraising um but but how they set them up we we've given them the the discretion to set those up okay thank let me um then move into the operational audit update um so one of the last things we had to do uh to to complete the audit is um submit our

121annual school report that was submitted on September 29th um staff uh were working through the weekend to get that done um audit field work has been completed as of October 11th so they are no longer um on site um but we are still doing some Communications with the Auditors to just answer some final questions we're also working on finalizing the annual comprehensive financial report which will be presented to the board at the December meeting and we'll have the Auditors there presenting that information to you and then finally um our end of year Balan is as of June 30 2024 um we have seven funds um we uh by code School divisions are not allowed to carry fund balances um any any funds that have balances revert back to the county by local government however we

122do have an agreement with the County that our Tech Reserve our food service CIP workers comp and health insurance funds um those funds are returned to us without without having to request um that the county return them to us the revenue stabilization fund is a fund that is um that collects our excess impact Aid that but it sits on the county side there is a memorandum of understanding um that if we want to spend those dollars it requires Schoolboard approval and it requires Board of Supervisors approval this is basically a rainy day fund for the schools we have not tapped into it um as a rainy day um since I've been here just before my predecessor left there was a step down process we were Bor we we borrowed 900,000 then the next year we

123went down to 600,000 and then the next two years we were at 300,000 uh that completed in my first two years there 300,000 uh but since then we have not used that for operational expenses what we have used it for is we've tapped into it to fund our Tech uh our one toone initiative during Co and we've tapped into it for some of our CIP and we've had some discussions at some of our previous board members uh board meetings that we want to use what's in the operating fund um designated as impact Aid reversion to the revenue stabilization fund for future capital projects and we'll have some discussions with the county later this month but uh let me focus on the operating fund we had $ 6.37 million at the end of the year and

124that's made up of 4.3 million or 35 million of impact Aid that will revert to the revenue St Revenue stabilization fund for a total of $12.5 million we have Allin Virginia literacy funds uh back in September of last year the state uh revised the budget for 24 and in that process they gave us a little over $3 million and as part of that appropriation the state said we're going to give you this money all up front however you have three years to spend it so we spent a little over $2 million that first uh in 24 and we have a little over a million dollars to carry forward so we that one will revert back and we will ask the county to to return those funds to us the security school security Grant this was

125kind of a surprise this came to us 85,000 the very last week of June so apparently the state had some money um and gave it to schools every school got at least $50,000 and um it's supposed to be designated for uh school security so staff is working through that process there's a federal piece to this too that's going to be on a reimbursement basis so we're not getting it upfront every time we whatever we whatever project we come up with we'll have to reimburse that Federal grant um every period And so um that's $85,000 and we'll have to ask for that fund that funding back but the one we always focus on is that unobligated fund balance this is what money we had left over from our from our general fund that we did not

126spend and historically uh we have asked the county to return that to us we've given them a plan of how we intend to spend that fund those funds and they have returned those funds to us and what I would suggest um as we work through this process is that that $915,000 that we will request come back to us be deposited um part into the health insurance fund and part into the CIP fund um the CIP fund is so we have two employees that are that are paid out of the CIP fund and we just need enough to cover their salaries so sometimes if we have if we have budgeted too high for a project we can use those excess funds to to pay for those employees salaries um but if ever those those funds are

127short then we may have to transfer money from our operating fund to the CIP fund to cover those salaries so we'd like to transfer at least 300,000 of the 900 to CIP the rest we would like to transfer to the Health Insurance Fund um I've talked a little bit about that through this year um about my concerns because what we've seen when we started this process last year we ended up 23 with almost $6 million in a in the health insurance fund balance right now we're a little almost at $2.5 million what we're seeing is that our Pharmacy costs have exploded and um it's kind of what's happening with the gp1s we talk about the the weight loss drugs the diabetes drugs now they've made a connection to heart um conditions so these are very

128very expensive drugs and we have a number of our employees that are own those drugs and it's not something that we can control it's something that because we have a plan and our plan allows for it we have to pay for those expenses but it's coming at an extreme cost to us and so we need to do something to kind of sh up that fund I'm not sure not I'm not sure 600,000 is going to sh it up but it's certainly gives us us a little bit of comfort that we're making some efforts to short up that fund now if that fund runs short it could be that we may need to tap into the revenue stabilization fund to make up the balance uh I don't anticipate that happening we do have pre uh health

129insurance premiums and general I'm sorry health insurance premiums that are uh going to increase uh this next calendar year so that was part of the reason why we built in an 11% increase that came on the recommendation of our consultant so that we made so we could make sure that we had sufficient balances in that fund would that 11% be enough or no we at the time that we made that decision we believed it would be enough um but um it just depends on utilization of insurance I mean just my own experience with it here in the past month has been costly so um certainly not expected but it it's it really comes down to what is the experience of our employees and and how that fund is utilized and on medicine on the pharmacy

130side expenditures uh the average that would projected like are we within the numbers or we're going to be at the end of last year we were running at about 96% um just under um what our revenue and premiums was was what what that was generating for the fund so we were about 96% of that cost so that's good you always want to be under that number but still it's it's it's to it's close correct correct and real quick the tech Reserve fund $4.8 million this is um this is a good balance for us um what this doesn't account for is it doesn't account for State Technology grants that we have in Reserve at about $2.7 million um what we're seeing here is this is the cash balance in those funds um the Food Service fund

131we're we're being really aggressive with this fund by vdo's guidelines we are only supposed to carry over three months of operations that's about1 and a half million dollars but what happened when we came out of covid the federal government was paying for everything so every school division now in the situation where they receed more money than what they typically expect because the federal government was reimbursing everyone so we had to submit a uh a plan a spending plan for that money um we're replacing all the equ kitchen equipment at all of our schools with these funds and it's going to take us we started it last year and it's going to continue into this year now the one the one drawback or the one kind of problem we could have have with this is that

132in 20 years or in 25 years when we start to replace the equipment it's all going to come in one or two years so um that's that's that's the one problem however we are very fortunate that we do have this money to upgrade our facilities our our kitchen facilities and then um the workers comp fund um this is a very stable fund of course we we maintain a fund that um pays for the on care ongoing care of employees who have been injured on the job and um one thing that the Auditors did recommend for us uh this year as we hit into next year is that we need to have an Actuarial study uh performed on this fund to determine the long-term liability of our workers comp claims and workers comp claims change all

133the time uh so um they they recommend that we get on a regular schedule um for review and that so that would be a little added cost because we'll have to contract with another group in order to do that actional study yes want to make sure with workers comp are we self-funded or we're we are self selfed we're self funded so what we do is we contract though with Versa Versa is our primary insurance provider so they provide our general liability but also our workers come and so we maintain the funds and then when an injury occurs we report that injury to them and they manage the care of those employees and then part of that management is working to get them off the workers comp and back to work some some injuries are more

134severe than others and and sometimes we have to settle um and separate with those employees and so that's when the cost uh that's when we see higher costs um occur uh on uh the workman's comp do we see more inst structural uh employees getting use this or it's on maintenance side custodial um we see a number of custodial because they're lifting and uh mopping floors there slips trips and Falls um we also see with our instructional staff particularly bus AIDS and um and some of our par Educators and our um special education classes and um just just in the first month of school we had five claims related to uh related to that yes one more thing related to the CIP uh you said two employees 300,000 for their uh salaries or they going to

135remain on CIP budget or they're going to be transferred to the general fund we we we we we pushed them to the CIP actually the one was pushed there um before I started so that's that's it's a common um practice practice amongst uh amongst schools and in localities locality does does the same um and so we also have an employee uh charg to the health insurance fund and their job is primarily to manage the health insurance program so we we do those kinds of things um the second one we just hired this employee he's been on our budget for uh at least four years but we've never been able to find somebody to to fill this position and and that position was just filled a few months ago yes question back on workers comp and

136this comes from personal experience um do we make sure I don't know if this rule is still applicable because this has now been 22 years since my accident um I was on my way to a Teachers Conference uh up in ashin was in an near fatal car accident at first they said workers comp was not going to cover it because I was just going up to a Teachers Conference then they found out that there was documentation from the magnet director that the three of us that were attending we were directed to take notes because we were going to be coming back and training at the faculty meeting because of that it was covered by workers comp is that still the situation and are we letting our faculty the you know the administrators as well as

137the teachers know that that's something they need to be aware of yes that can happen Okay we we are aware that that can happen when when when staff are directed to attend a meeting or a conference um they are really working for the School Division in that capacity and so that would be something that we would certainly um seek the advice of our of Versa um of our workers comp administrator and to guide us through that process but I would agree that if if we had directed them to attend a conference that more than likely we would be uh somewhat responsible um for that unless it was negligence on the employees part then we wouldn't be responsible right it was one of those things that was explained to me if if I had just been

138going for my own benefits say for recertification points or whatever it would not have been covered um but because it was specifically for uh the school and and training for other teachers that it was covered and that's something that as just a regular classroom teacher I had no clue about it was just because the magnet director had put it into an email that they had that documentation so that's something that you know let the teachers know let the administrators know that that's the case to have that just because when there is a catastrophic accident like that um the last thing that your spouse or your family needs to deal with is battling who's covering what and when along those lines yes ma'am thank you and that concludes the finance update all right so we are

139on to presentation by for highly effective Talent yes Dr wries our chief human resource officer is going to report on our um strategic plan priority highly effective Talent Dr Brites thank you Dr shandor Mrs Goodwin members of the board um tonight I'm going to present to you a highly effective Talent report I do want to say thank you Mr Richardson for setting the stage for this report I agree with you that retaining and attracting our highly effective Talent is the reason why we have such great School we are so successful so I agree so tonight's presentation supports two strategic priorities first pupil teacher ratios are one factor related to providing safe welcoming caring environments in which students and staff have a sense of purpose and belonging and secondly these ratios are contributing factors to ycsd

140being a destination School Division um as a result we attract and retain High highly skilled compassionate diverse and committed team members our two areas of focus our learning environment and our working conditions there have been some updates to the code of Virginia standard of quality so our presentation will be slightly different than what we've done years past the standards of quality set forth guidelines for assigning licensed instructional Personnel in a manner that produces schoolwide or division-wide ratios of students in average daily membership to full-time equivalent teaching positions excluding special education teachers principles assistant principles in addition grades K through six have individual class size limits this chart is a summary of the most current S soq Class siiz guidelines the state code of Virginia through the standards of quality require that school boards shall however

141annually on or before December 31st report to the public the following the actual pupil teacher ratios in Elementary School classrooms and the local school division by school for the current school year and the actual pupil teacher ratios in middle school and High School in the local school division by school for the current school year actual pupil teacher ratios shall include only the teachers who teach the grade in the class on a full-time basis and shall exclude resource personnel which include special education the teachers principls assistant principales school counselors and Librarians and so School boards shall report pupil teacher ratios that include resource teachers at the same annual rep report and any classes funded through the volunteer kindergarten through third grade class size reduction uh program shall be identified as such classes and at this time

142ycsd schools do um not have any of those waivers and any classes having waivers to exceed those requirements of this subsection shall be identified and school shall be identified however the data shall be compiled in a manner to ensure the confidentiality of teacher and pupil identities so this chart shows the elementary school pupil teacher ratio the First Column which does not include resource teachers has a range of ratios from 19 to 24 to 1 with a division average of 22 to1 and our division average for last year was the same 22 to1 an elementary school resource teachers include but not necessarily limited to our music our art PE stem and Technology administrators school counselors and Librarians are excluded um per our bdoe the column on the right shows the pupil teacher ratios with resource teachers

143and these re ratios range from 16 to 20 to1 with the division average of 17.4 to1 which is well below the limits of 24:1 in grades K through three and 25 to1 in grades four and five this slide is a summary of pupil teacher ratios at the middle school level so the department of education standards of quality require School divisions to assign instructional staff in a manner that produces schoolwide ratios of students in an average daily membership to full-time equivalent teaching positions of 21 to1 in Middle School and high schools in a division-wide ratio of 24 to1 for our English classes and secondary schools and higher education it is a practice for English course offerings to include opportunities in areas of English language such as literature public speaking creative writing journalism poetry philosophy theater with

144playwriting and psychology in addition to the traditional English language arts classes specific course offerings have some variability by school due to the student interest and the program of studies all classes that fall in these categories are considered when determining our teacher pupil ratio as you can see schoolwide pupil pupil teacher ratio range from 15 to 19 to one with a division average of 17.2 to1 this is below our s so guidance of 21 to1 schoolwide averages for English classes range from 17 to 24 with a division average of 21.4 to1 and this is below the S soq guidance of 24 to1 as you can see schoolwide average pupil teacher ratios range from 15 to 19 to1 for our high schools with a division average of 15.3 to1 and this is below the soq guidance of

14521 to1 and schoolwide averages for English classes range from 17 to 22 with a division average of 17.1 to1 and this is below the guidance of 24 to one ratio lastly this slide is a summary of the classes that exceed the pupil teacher ratio parameters outlined by the standards of quality and led to those families were mailed um from our department last week and so those classes on the right hand column we have band Six tab middle school and that is two students over that ratio and then we have um two PE classes at graft and middle one has one student over the ratio and the other one has five students over the ratio and PE one thing about PE is they are over the ratios but they a lot of times combine those classes

146together with other um teachers in Paris in that in that uh gym next I'm going to go into retention lateral moves and new hires and so employee retention refers to ycsd ability to prevent turnover so research shows it takes one to two years for a new hire to match the productivity of an employee who left and so ycs monitors overall the new higher retention rates as well as the reasons employees separate from the division I just want to note just based on the board is 82% of the operating budget which is approved by this board supports the employee compensation package and this kpi is very important because it reflects our efforts and the board's support for compensation leading to staff retention so for FY 23 we had 77% retention rate for FY 244 we have

14720 83% retention rate for our teachers hired within the first year and we do focus groups which Le which are LED throughout the year by the HR department capturing the new employee experience and this led to the changes we made this year for new employee orientation and this year we have already gone out to um two schools to sit down with our new employees and look and listen to their feedback already and so this is just an example of an ongoing highly effective Talent strategy of improving employee satisfaction and commitment which supports our plans for continuous Improvement can I ask a question about the the non-licensed uh when will they be LIC is there a time frame of when they'll be when they'll get their full license or no this this isn't not license or

148like our Paras okay these are ones who don't have a license correct and they're actually in um they're actually within our Focus Group too whenever we go out to buildings we do license and non-li all at once okay thank you yep I just got that shifted you're welcome sorry about that so this is vacancy by separation type and so more licensed staff reach retirement age um for FY 24 than FY 23 so fewer licensed and non-licensed staff separated from ycsd in order to work for another School Division and so um those fewer licensed and non-licensed staff separated from ycsd citing working working conditions as the reason and each year ycsd reaches out to our license and our non-licensed employees to help guide steps in supporting our staff the results of these surveys help schools and

149departments with how they can best support our working groups so ycsd for FY 24 um 42% 42.4% cited relocation personal and family reasons and Military as the number one reason for separation and 25.6 for retirement and noting that the co during covid many teachers who were eligible for retirement elected not to retire staying longer hence that is why this is our second highest um separation type research shows recruiting and retaining highly effective teachers is directly linked to students success as Mr Bowen uh told us earlier with those uh test results so data demonstrates the number of teacher applicants entering the field of education has declined significantly and ycsd monitors the number of employees on the teacher salary schedule hired annually annually and their average years of experience when hired as well as the regional employee

150Trends so the number of hires has reduced in fy2 24 is compared to FY 23 by at least 70 and this supports our highly effective Talent ongoing strategy for improving employee satisfaction because less are leaving one of our fy2 strategies is to continue to focus on recruiting and hiring and allowing us for better retention in FY 23 38 teachers had zero years of experience and an FY 24 29 um came to ycsd with zero years of experience again our strategies to retain shows fewer teachers are leaving ycsd so some of those strategies for fy2 is we have an intentional approach to attracting a targeted number of qualified applicants selecting the candidates best fit for the position and offering them employment and onboarding for employees by doing we have our mobile and our popup job fairs

151we have Workforce Solutions Community Partnerships and Military connections the highlights breakdown for teachers years of experience is as follows for zero years is 38 for FY 23 versus 29 for FY 24 and 1 to four years is 55 for FY 23 and 25 for FY 24 and another one to highlight is years of experience of 20 to 24 is 7 for FY 23 versus 15 for FY 24 so we continue to increase a level of experience with our new hires and we draw on more experienced teachers to uh due to Word of Mouth and um you know just us being that destination division that they want to come to for FY 24 61 of our new hires came from local school divisions and 25 left ycsd every employee who separates from ycsd must complete an

152exit survey as part of their separation process as part of this process employees have an option to select a face-to-face interview with HR staff and this information is gathered through a survey or interview is used to guide next steps with retention and employee satisfaction all right so this is my opportunity to brag a little bit on the HR department for our FY 25 strategy results for highly effective Talent so from July until present ycsd has hired 20 veterans and 24 military spouses ycsd is now a V3 organization which is VA values veterans helps employers develop and Implement long-term strategies and nationally recognize best practices in recruiting hiring and retaining our veterans our popup job fair we just had in October attracted 33 applicants for various positions and we've hired right now seven of out of

153those pool of applicants and in December ycsd is partnering with the county to do a joint popup job fair at the new Sheriff's administration building and that is it for this evening's highly effective Talent report questions comments so I see you had the licensed and non-licensed retention rate increased significantly in my opinion uh you give us a variety of reasons and what you guys implemented is there something specific that the the employes are actually reacting to that we didn't do in the past um I I just think that the efforts that we're putting into listening to them um being out there uh taking their feedback even this year we've done it for two months but just the opportunity to allow our employees to have more of a voice even through our survey that we're doing

154we're asking our employees five questions every month we're taking those questions and we're Distributing them out to buildings so that we can accurately address them in departments and so I I just think the opportunity for Word of Mouth gets out there and the attention that we give to our employees and arm them with the skills to be so successful and I know in the past I came to a couple of job fairs does that help for board members to come in and to be part of that job fairs like popup absolutely so the popup job fairs have been have we just started them just uh we weren't sure how we were going to be received and so they are are so successful now that we typically do a job fair in November um and this

155year we are not doing the job fair in November um we're going to do the popup one with partnering with the uh County and then we're going to February for our bigger job fair which um we're going to hopefully attract more candidates in that one so any popup job fair if you see it in the Friday notes when we advertise them pop on by I think it's good because I mean you think about a lot of boards they're just kind of figureheads and you never really see them out and about places enjoy here I mean that's what makes this different comments I've I've heard from other teachers coming from other divisions they go wow you're on the school board I've never met my Schoolboard member the place I worked out for the last 10 years

156yeah in fact the last one um Dr shandor popped in and um and Miss Goodwin you came to the first one we had over at Yorktown Elementary which was successful so it it's just a great opportunity to to meet these people and jump in and then partnering with the county they have job openings and we have job openings so we're going to see how that works out and um what candidates go where yeah than well part of our retention uh positives that I've seen in the in the schools is the uh camaraderie and the uh optimism in the schools on the all the school staff uh they are looking forward to I mean I was asking today about uh is there any negatives going on and vast majority said no and I mean these are

157teachers that I've known for years they're going to tell me the truth you know and uh and they say that things are just going so well now and they're so happy where they're at and they're happy with their administrators you know it's it's good all the way around it's good our culture is strong in fact I was meeting with um some members of my team HR team and one of them said today that she looks forward to coming to work on Mondays and so that's that's pretty big and so it's just you know the culture that we build good job thanks yeah she just happy to be out of all right so our last presentation is our cell phone policy yes Dr Carol has a the 67 slide presentation that he is going to he's

158worked for weeks on this presentation yes and I will attempt not to uh use any puns involving the word pop all right so board members yes just a brief update on the e33 work we've done because you're going to see a draft policy coming to you soon so just to remind you in August and September of this year the state issued both their draft guidance and their their they don't call it formal guidance but the guidance was issued uh in September and at the same time we were creating a stakeholder committee and also started to work on a stakeholder survey and that survey is out right now it uh the deadline is tomorrow at midnight uh and I've also started conducting focus groups I've met with the teacher advisory and use them as a focus

159group the bus driver advisory uh was with a group of high school students at Bruen high today then tomorrow I finish focus groups with the uh T tab High group and that's it's just been interesting to talk to each group and the stakeholder committee has just been unbelievably engaged in the work and very positive about this and trying to explore every every nook and cranny of of the uh you know things that are going to you know they're the implications of this uh so and we've also got a policy draft that now they will look at at the next meeting and that's going to be an editing uh process that's going to go over uh the next two or three meetings with them going back and forth with uh what they see in the survey

160results what I report back from the focus groups and then they're thinking about it and and trying to work within the parameters of the executive order and then that will culminate next month you'll have a you we'll end up with a final draft that will be brought to you as the starting point for you to look at for November 18th but then there a quick turn around with November 25th asking for an expedited approval with any revisions that you that you asked for U on the 25th and so that we can then get ready for in this slide you didn't see last month when I U updated you at that point in December there'll be implementation planning and communication so we're talking to all of our stakeholders especially our family staff and students and then

161there may be student handbook changes that are necessary uh depending on uh which route we take and um and that's why it's really nice to have an online student handbook now that can be refreshed uh in a as a real time uh document but we would need to come to you for handbook changes for you to take action there so that would happen at the December uh regular meeting and then in January then implementation so students are back January 6th and so that's when these changes will take effect and then uh you know we don't know there might be some unforeseen things or things that we didn't anticipate and therefore um you we'll evaluate that implementation in the spring and then see if there need to be uh through administrative discussion if there's anything that

162needs to be changed we look forward to starting the year next year and that that concludes my report happy to take any questions yeah looking forward spared you the other 35 slides just a comment I was just reading an article today about um it was a School Division I guess in Colorado that's been doing this for a while the no Sil policy and what they were reporting was very favorable um students are actually talking at lunch they're engaging the Halls are louder of course because now they're talking and looking um and they've just seen a decrease actually in amount of um discipline referrals and things like that as well so we've heard yeah we've heard similar comments from Miss Lugo at tab High School yeah that's right she's implemented at beginning of the year I

163heard the same thing through the state like whenever I was on a couple of meetings so the feedback has been pretty positive and I'm looking forward to the focus group tomorrow because it's going to be with tap High group that's already gone through a lot of this um you know compared to this group that has had less restrictions and the uh The Angst that is there the concerns but they brought up really really important things that we need to think about as we go into implementation we make sure we can account for any other questions comments right thank you all right so that was that was the last actual presentation now we have policy discussion sure we've saved the best for last so miss Melanie Barry our school board attorney is going to share recommendations

164for review of the policies included in uh book a foundations and basic commitments of the York County School Board policy Miss Barry thank you much Shand Madam chair board members before you tonight are the a policies uh I've broken down uh on the uh executive content minor revisions versus substan uh revision your minor revision going throughout the whole uh a policies you'll see that the word section has been replaced with Sy for Section just to be uh um consistent with C of Virginia addal legal references and cerence references have been added to fully support the policy sections and where appropriate the bsba copyright has been added as far as substantive uh revisions uh section AC you'll see uh additional protected classes have been added to comply with uh state and federal law section and I

165will point out the date on AC adopted has data policy manual adoption uh that's the way our um policy manual has read uh so I'm researching the date right now I believe it is June 20th 1988 uh that's the earliest date I found for any of our policies uh but I'm still completing that research section a uh we have uh removed some language as not required by law and is actually in some cases was a subjective standard that was not going to be attainable uh section AF uh this is code driven changes uh just to align the the policy with the Virginia code and then policy AG is the literacy plan that is a brand new policy that uh aligns with provision regarding having this lit literacy polic literacy plan um and of course that

166is completely tonight I'm recommending uh that Visions uh be moved on for first reading and our next per me make motion questions concerns I think the M most of them are Law changes and then there was the one on the literacy plan plan that was the big one um just more of a cleanup on policies so I have no questions right have have some questions looking at at AC um with this and I reviewed the um the the laws that were cited the 2.2 d394 that one's specifically facility usage and um I guess need the specifics of that 2.2 3905 is employment uh let's see 2.2 395.1 is dealing with um the disability um sorry wrote notes too small uh accommodations the uh 22.1 D 23.3 um that particular law specifically says that's a treatment

167of trans students and the law itself says it does not include Athletics with that do we need or I really think that we need to be specific in ours our statements because our statements seem to be very general and open um in dealing specifically with the sexual orientation and gender identity which is added in that because you know with the facility issue there's already litigation dealing with um the the locker rooms and the bathrooms we already know from Grim versus Gloucester that there have to be very specific things done by the individual student you know different basically boxes checked for that to go uh into effect as well as the issue with u facilities for overnight field trips um this is just the standard um non-discrimination policy and the 2.2 d3900 which is the Virginia

168Human Rights Act section one lays out all these protected classes and it applies to educational institutions so that's where it's coming from that is the the primary area um and then the treatment of trans transgender students uh refers back to the Comm laws on discrimination so that one then comes back to the Virginia human rights act so that's where it's required to include these these protected classes in the past we have just lumped it all into other requirements under the law but to just be specific uh to meet the code Virginia that's why I'm suggesting we add them all in okay I was just um concerned over because there's I guess conflicting laws going on dealing with compelled speech and against religious beliefs if we can I guess explain and specifically Define discrimination that we

169need to identify that um that is under uh jfh GB J FHA policy for discrimination J also cons UHS about discrimination um you said JB JB is discrimination um and um there's a Personnel one G GBA GBA and J FHA yeah against harassment and retaliation we discuss what discrimination is there what harassment it is um and then of course the superintendent regs can get more into specifics because the policy purpose of the policy is the broad Strokes superintendent R is to drill it down a little bit and then sop provide the procedures so generally your policy is going to be the broad STS I just I really think that we need to be specific in dealing with this and then if if the definition is identified elsewhere to actually identify that so people know where

170to go to look at it you know whether they're staff um we do have cross references sorry GBA GBA sorry yes I see it I was writing over on there J ha so J and JB is there um just I guess I guess I'm concerned with this um in dealing with one of the the law that's cited is dealing with facilities and with the the Court decisions have been coming out you know how do we handle the the overnight field trips the locker rooms the bathrooms along those lines um right now that's all dealt with on a case-by casee basis um so because there's you have to look at each individual's circumstance when that's decided uh that's why we have the broad non-discrimination policy because it is so case specific now the other question I

171have um is this something new that that's come as far as I know we haven't had anything new come out of the general assembly this is just cleaning up the policy uh because in the past like I said we've always just put it into um any other characteristics protected by law and so this is just cleaning it up to make sure that it's clear that we're abiding by the Gen I think it's like Miss fman said this is making it more specific right if I could just clarify something um because somebody had brought the question up to me just and I said well I would ask that by changing the terminology or adding the terminology I should say does this in any way pigeon hole or lock then the School Division into let's say you

172have somebody now that says oh I want to use the girls locker room because I'm identifying as a girl and you know what I'm saying does that allow them just because you have put this wordage in place this is sort of a this doesn't change anything that we've not heard doing uh because they were the sexual orientation gender identity ethnic or that was all already included in the other characteristics protected by law because they were already protected under the Virginia rights act so nothing changing virgin human act Rights Act what what are the specific uh groups that are because I know on federal under the sex it is but it's related to title 7 which is for employment it's not related to Title 9 which is schools so under um Part B of the Virginia

173Human Rights Act uh Safeguard all all individuals within the col from unlawful discrimination because of raised color religion ethnic or National Origins sex pregnancy child birth related medical conditions age marital status sexual orientation gender identity military status or disability in places of public accommodation including educational institutions and real estate transactions so it's basically word for word what's in here and like I said it doesn't change the way we've been operating because they were already included it's just being specific in the policy now so we're not lumping so since when is the was this policy enacted which the Virginia law the law let's see see 2021 was the last change but it goes back to 1987 so what the changes are it's been changed multiple times our policy or the Virginia law oh this was the

174law our polic policy yeah our policy I got dates on um I mean each one's a little different um but this one I think was originally 1988 went through multiple uh two revisions and this will be the third so the last was December 2015 so it hasn't really been updated since 2015 do you have another question and this isn't a part that's changed uh just if I could get some clarification of what it means the uh last sentence this commitment prevails in all of its policies and practices concerning staff students educational programs and services the educational programs is why I was uh concerned with the overnight field trips and individuals and entities with whom the board does business that vendors we can't discriminate against what people with procurement uh when we're hiring vendors we can't

175say we're hire we're not going to use your firm because uh we don't like your religion oh okay that's what thank you have we had any instances in the past that somebody filed a claim against this Onis criminatory Clause we get discrimination claims off and on um uh they fit into one protected class I mean legally you don't discriminate against any of the protected classes you work with the individuals on an individual basis those are the questions I had on that one is this uh how will this be affected with uh uh with a Title Nine executive order from President Biden and that's now in a court right well that's been stayed and so that's still no movement on that so any of the states that were in the the had like piggybacked onto the

176lawsuits we that's not being implemented so Virginia has not be impl so if that ruling is in favor of not uh G yin's case how would that affect this policy until the code changes it wouldn't so so we'd have to go back through the general assembly have to be changed I'm correct I mean if you read over if we read over this will we do the reading at the next meeting questions can still be asked come up with discuss yeah we dive into it more and you think because I know I mean I know for me I mean it's a lot you know dissecting policy and law I mean that's not my Val I so if we you know do that then we can certainly ask more questions at that time if you have questions

177before that meeting please reach out I've done that a lot well on a on a another note I like the literacy plan that we did and I appreciate all the hard work that our instructional people did to uh to get ready and up to speed with it and putting in the new curriculum on the turn of a dime and having the uh evaluation take place this year and I think that everyone's been jumping through hoops to try and get it all done and uh and I think they're doing really well with it so I I appreciate the work that was done for for the literacy plan that's probably the biggest part of this I would like to go back to the ad policy I'm I read it for educational philosophy um I I disagree with

178the maximum to be not obtainable I actually wanted to like know add possibly some verage that I think it just needs to be more inspirational so I put it like um the school board is committed to providing equal opportunity for every student to be inspired and empowered to achieve maximum intellectual social emotional and physical growth and ensure that each student be equipped to communicate effectively with other people to be competent both in a work workplace and in higher education and to feel confident and uh confident of the ability to make and to thrive creative and constructive decisions um so I'm I'm kind of feeling like that we kind of just shrinking the our beliefs in our children and I think we need to make it more empowering like more stronger that we are behind them

179and that we believe in our system that we believe in our teachers that they're going to give them more than just ma maximum well and the I think the the reason behind having these adjectives removed was because a maximum is it's it's it's very subjective so how you going to measure what the maximum is because always can be higher and higher and higher relative term yeah that and um when you're dealing in the special education realm uh you're not able to do the maximum you're that's it's it's a slippery slope um how about individual maximum this this focus is it actually says that each student uh achieve maximum that's their maximum that's not a maximum of some outside scale that's your maximum may be different than your maximum my maximum you know that I I

180agree with Mr pich that we need to be focused on excellence here and shooting for that and maybe a different adjective than maximum and Miss Hopkins could probably explain it better in the special education area of why maximum may not be the most appropriate word there um because she's the special education expert when you think of the definition of least restrictive environment right the definition is the children whatever look um replacement they're in they will be educated to the maximum extent possible yeah right so that's sort of your special ed language but so it still uses maximum for that particular individual something else to it we you know so it it's just making sure that we don't get into a slippery slope and trying to give it a more um objective standard is what I

181was attempting to do here so but it's something the board can discuss at first reading as well M be would you like for Mr pich or M fman to send you some of the some of the information um like Mr P what you read this evening want to s that and also one one more thing like you know I mean pardon me but I I a foreigner here so black language is my second of language but uh treats all members of the school Community equitably what does that word equitably means equally well no they're actually two they're actually different equity equality they're not and I kind of wonder that why not equally versus that but they are so the best way I I'll describe it for you and if you have a better example please

182chime in so if you look at two people who are trying to pick apples from a tree okay and they need a ladder to get up well this they give them an equal ladder this one is they're both up there but this person can get the apples this one cannot but they have the same ladder so you that's equality you bring in a ladder that's a little taller for this one over here now they can reach the apples that's the equity but it treats all members of the school Community equitably with a respect I'm not following right so I'm get that's the visual so I don't know how that translate that into I can't understand what you're saying like know in those things but like how does pertain in this instance in this policy what

183does it mean I you to just you know keep everyone on a even playing field so you're Trea everyone the same well Fair yeah fair and consistent I mean why say would be better I think than equable just because I think it yeah just have something respect kind be respect I mean the point of this is to be respect community members for each individual like I was just not getting it you want that's what I said yeah how about that what's that you're Fair consist try then I had a question on AF the comprehens hensive plan um the use of the the phrase Regional programs both for five and six an evaluation of the appropriateness of establishing Regional programs and then number six a plan for implementing such Regional programs I don't know if that's

184the case here that's why I'd like a definition or description of it but these Regional programs end up being unelected entities who make the decisions taking that away from the elected officials I know whether it's uh the Board of Supervisors a school board um other elected entities around the area when you have a regional program or project that's put together that Regional entity ends up making decisions without the elected officials and those bureaucrats or appointed individuals they don't answer to the voters so I think what this is referring to I think this is driven by code um I think what this is how how you can relate this to us would be new New Horizons so that's a regional program that is governed by elected officials the the board of directors which Mr pich is

185the we got an in here we have an in because Mr pic is the president of the chairman whatever to call it on the South Side there's the Southeastern Cooperative educational program cep which is a regional program for the south side so I think I think that's the is that correctly if I'm wrong is that the regional programs we're referring to okay that's how I read it yeah and just like whro which whro and and there's a number of board members who were on that that govern okay thank you anything else you sure Mr Page you didn't talk about the literacy program oh man I remember it's great um one thing uh M Dr SK sorry uh I went for the it's family night and I met my uh son's teacher English teachers they they

186struggling with it uh students actually Reading literature in long so like you know over here we were talking about evidence-based literacy instructions uh what exactly does that look like so the evidence-based literacy instruction is can you hear you okay it's based on um what the Virginia Department of Education has shared with us and there is a list of um first instruction like our hmh materials that we approve for all students K5 then there's a list of interventions that are considered evidence-based so one of the new interventions that we've brought to the high school level is Lexia and um Lexia is um endorsed by the Virginia Department of Education as an evidence-based Intervention Program um sips which we also use at the secondary level as an intervention for students who struggle with reading that's a secondary

187um type of intervention so whenever we provide interventions for reading we want to make sure it's supported through evidence-based reading instruction okay thank you that's sure yes you're going to yield the rest of your T are there any other questions good thanks everybody for the presentation and good answering the questions very informative uh next meeting will be October 28th at your call there's nothing further I say this meeting is adjourned join meeting yes so have that yeah I wanted to add one thing we are working with Mr Bellamy to finalize our agenda we have a planning meeting Wednesday or Thursday this week uh I think we have the agenda topics so we know what the topic we're working on we're working on um the order of the topics some of the time frames because I

188know you and Mr ran wanted to put things in time so yeah because if not we'll spend all time on one topic and then before you know it we there two hours and haven't gotten to any of the others so we're trying to put time frames around them yes so so once we finalize the language um I believe we have the date so I know that it's October 29th I believe from 6:00 to 8 at the sheriff's community Sheriff's Office Community uh meeting where we had the um shared responsibility session um we will I will send you more information once our planning session is over uh and we'll have some conversations with Mr Bellamy as well y good deal all right 28 I 28 29th correct 29th for meting 29th and then if you want

189to do anything on the 30th let us [Laughter] know thank you