001My name is Can't feel Heat. You got a chicken ring. You can feel me. Yo, [ __ ] ring. Make it rain. ring. You are Data. Hey. Hey. You are. Rain. You are hey. You are perfect. Take it away. You are the ring. Oh my god. Let me do. Here are you. Let me keep it. You are We call this meeting of the Nelson County Board of Education to order on February 17th, 2026 at 5:30. Please join our board team as we recite the pledge of allegiance. >> I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. In the Nelson County Schools, we unite students and staff with people, place, and purpose to thrive and work
002in life. All right. So, tonight we will be discussing staff priorities for the 26 27th school year, review staff benefits from the 2526 school year, and evaluate demographics and enrollment next steps. So, next up we have Miss Arnold to talk a little bit about fusion in math and science. >> Good evening. Tonight, we're fortunate to have some special guests with us from our uh Fusion Micro School. So, it's a school that is for our seventh and eighth grade students who are accelerating in math and science. And I'm not going to take a lot from the group. I'm going to let our students, teachers, and uh community partners talk a little bit about Fusion, but to kind of introduce how this school came about. I believe it was three years ago, we started on the journey
003of micro school design teams. So, we brought about 25 teachers from across the district together to really start thinking about the future of school and what is going to drive um what the future of school looks like. And it was really around the idea that we need to create smaller learning communities that are driven by our teachers, our students, and our families. And I think you're going to see tonight that Fusion is an example of how the school system can come together with families and community partners to create great experiences for our students. And on this deck, you'll kind of see some of our different micro schools that have come about over the past three years. And this year we have our uh largest participation yet in our micro school design teams and really recognizing
004that when we come together, we're smarter together and that it also takes action to learn and grow as we go through this process. When we talk about our micro schools this year, when we've been coming together once a month as a team, we've been focusing on this quote that nothing is more powerful than an idea whose time has come. And um Fusion kind of went on a journey and you're going to meet Miss Landers in a few minutes, but she was a part of this journey two years ago when she was a part of our second cohort. and she started thinking about what STEM experiences could we have for females and it kind of led to some exploration around a STEM school really focused on some non-traditional participation in fields where we could challenge our
005younger females to get engaged. So she came on for our second year of the design process and she teamed up with Miss Van Dyke, our math content lead, and they started thinking about where could we really target this experience and what could we do to really make something happen. And that led to the opening of Fusion this August. It's located at OKH with seventh and eighth grade students from Bloomfield and OKH. And I'm going to ask Miss Van Dijk, Miss Landers, and Mr. Richards to come forward. And you're going to learn a little bit tonight from our teachers, students, and families and partners. Thank you so much, Miss Arnold. Um, so I am Lyanna Van Djk. I am the math design lead for grades 6 through 12. With me, we have Cameron Richards. He is
006our science teacher and STEM teacher through the Fusion program. and Miss Landers who is our math specialist in that program as well. Um, and like Miss Arnold said, this started a few years ago with Miss Landers. Do you want to speak about that for just a minute? >> Um, thank you all for coming and this has been such a neat experience. Um, I really wanted to see what we could do to promote um, females in the uh, STEM careers in Nelson County. um I saw some of the data coming through and I didn't see a lot of females through the school system that um were in engineering classes or in collabs that really promoted STEM. So it kind of started with that and through that we started seeing a need of um offering some curriculum
007that could promote uh kind of an engineering mindset for our students. And so we got to open fusion and it's been so wonderful. We've got to partner with community um and he's going to come up and speak in a minute, but it's just been the support that we've gotten uh and the students that have just shined through this has been phenomenal. Okay, so just to tell you a little bit more about the program, this is a picture of all of our students. So this is a mixture of seventh and eighth grade students. We have about 30 kiddos and we are in this picture at Three Rivers Energy in Boston where Mr. Martin is from. So as we were developing this, we really kept in mind those three core values that Miss Arnold talked about. Um
008no, it was in our mission and vision that you all read is really uniting people, place and purpose. So through the uniting people, we wanted to figure out how can we give students networking opportunities, opportunities to really work with industry professionals and community members to help ignite some sort of passion in them. Um, and we've done that. We've been super excited about how often we've been able to bring other people in to our space and go into their space as well. So, we also are going into their spaces and this gives us some on-site experiences to help bridge the learning that's happening in the classroom with some real world application stuff. So far this year, uh we have been able to partner with Three Rivers Energy. We also partnered with the engineers uh with the
009city of Bargetown and right now we are partnering with Peterson Farms. And of course, we wanted to give those students a purpose by showing them how they can actually use the things that are happening in the classroom, out in the field, in the workplace. It's applied every day, and this is how you do it. So, here's some data from um the program this year. So far, all students have been united with three employer partners um through three community challenge projects. So we do have a project each quarter where the students again they go they go onsite to the industry partner. The industry partners also come to us in our classrooms. They give the students some feedback. We work together to work on this project. We do have a student with us tonight that's going to
010talk to you a little bit about one of those projects. Um in our place again we were talking about connecting the academic learning with the real world um application and we were trying to figure out like what kind of data can we show and we see a 14% increase in students scoring mid or above grade level as indicated by their I already diagnostic. So we're seeing a ton of growth. This happened in January. This data is from January so it's fairly recent. Uh but that's only halfway through the year. So halfway through we've already got a 14% increase in um students at or above grade level and all students did score at an empowered level on our community projects for quarter 1 and quarter 2. So we have a rubric that we've developed around communicator
011collaborator critical thinker and our community partners actually evaluated our students based on that um rubric. So now we are going to share with you some perspectives from a couple of other people. I would like to first invite up Mr. Alex Brown. He is a seventh grade student in our Fusion program and he's just going to talk a little bit about what uh Fusion has meant to him. >> Hello everybody. So Fusion has really given me a excellent experience. It's helped me with my hands-on activity, hands-on experience. It's helped improve really just improve me myself. Um, we've done hands-on activities. We've gone field trips to different areas like Three Rivers Energy and the Bargetown Water Treatment Facility, which has really helped me get a hands-on view on how um, when I get a job and I
012need to use my hands-on experience to benefit myself. I've also made friends that have helped just really improve my life in general. It's given me a more advanced uh advanced experience because I've always been looking for a advanced experience when it comes to math, science, and all the subjects. So, it's really helped me push myself to my limits and I really am happy that I've been able to do that. You will also see their projects over here on the wall. So, this was the most recent project that we have completed and presented if you want to look at those later. Um, I would like to now invite Miss Jamie Miracle up. She is a parent of one of our Fusion students and she's going to talk about what Fusion has been like from the parent
013perspective. Hi. Um, just to give a little bit of background, my son is a middle schooler at Bloomfield Middle School. Um, seventh grade year was not a great year for us. Um, my son has always been one of those students that has always tested and distinguished or at or above grade level for things like math. And uh, what we started to discover in the seventh grade is he was not very happy at school. And it he let me know every single day that he was not happy at school. Uh, to the point he even said, "I hate school." Um, this time last year, we were even thinking about alternatives, if I needed to pull him out of the district, if we needed to homeschool, what we needed to do because I knew that we couldn't
014go through another 8th grade year the way we were going through seventh grade. And then he got the opportunity, the invitation to go to the uh fusionformational meeting at Bloomfield. And when the presentation was over, he turned to me and said, "I want to do this." Um, so he's been in it this year, and I have seen a complete change in my child this year. Um, I know Miss Arnold has asked me a couple of time in past how he's doing infusion, how he likes it, and all I can say is I haven't heard a single complaint. And if you know my kid, that's a big deal in our household. Um, as a parent's perspective and getting invited into the classroom to see their presentations, uh, and to walk in and see these posters and
015the work that has gone into this, to me, it almost looks like college ready work happening. Um when the last presentation with Three Rivers, I told her, I reminded him that I'm going to come see your presentation the next day. I'm excited. He's like, I don't know why our biodester we it didn't work out. Ours failed. It didn't do what we wanted it to do. Um but when I got there and listened to his group and asked them, you know, what would you have done differently? All three of them start naming off all these things that they would have done differently. So, as a parent, I'm seeing problem solving skills, critical thinking skills, communication, basic public speaking, being able to stand up to a group of people that you don't know and talk about what
016you've done and the work that you've done. Um, and one thing that's important is they're taking standards, math standards, and applying them to real world situations. Um, Three Rivers is doing something that benefits the community, and our kids are working on that stuff and solving real community problems. I don't remember which group did it, but one estimated the the amount of food waste in Nelson County, which was surprising, and how we can take that waste and do something and hopefully maybe even benefit Peterson Farms. So, what these kids are doing is uh it's exceptional. It's beyond that traditional classroom that my child was not striving in. Um if you handed him a packet of math homework, he would lose it uh in a backpack or even lose his mind over it because he just was
017not like that. Um, and when I asked him, you know, I told him I was going to speak tonight. I got permission to say all the things I was going to say, so I didn't upset him, but I asked, "What's your favorite thing about Fusion?" And I was surprised by his answer. He said, "Freedom." That he didn't feel micromanaged. He didn't feel like he had to sit in a classroom and be on zero and work on a packet. He had the freedom to work within his group and to move around his classroom and to be engaged and empowered to do the work in the class. And me as a parent, I've seen I can say that I've seen my child change by having this opportunity uh to get out of that traditional classroom setting and
018really and really do some important work. I think and I I appreciate it and I encourage the next presentation that you all do that they do if the board members if you have an opportunity if your schedule permits to come see it because it really is inspiring to see. So, like Miss Van Djk said, my name is Mr. Richards. Um, I am the, uh, science teacher for the fusion program. Um, and it has been such a truly an honor and a privilege to be able to be a part of this inaugural year for Fusion. Um, when I was brought on board, I was told that this was going to be a small micro school with a limited number of students that were, you know, the best of the best of the best in math and
019science, that were going to be able to really push the envelope when it comes to what we're able to do in the classroom. And that has been absolutely the case. Um when Miss um Landers and I sit down to try to develop the uh community um project for each quarter, um I try to think about what will these students be able to take with them whenever they leave middle school, whenever they leave high school, whenever they go into the workforce, whenever they go into college. Um like has been mentioned, one of our projects for this past quarter were uh academic style um conference posters. Um I'm a doctoral student currently and so I go to many national conferences and these are modeled after posters that you would see at an actual research conference. Um our
020students have developed um experimental methods, experimental models that are based um around what they've seen, what they've learned through our community partners like Three Rivers, um like Peterson Farms, like the um water treatment plant and the uh city of BStown um civil engineering department. um they've been able to learn the theory in the classroom and then apply it to things that apply here in our community um and get to actually act on their learning in a meaningful and engaging way. Um we are actually working towards putting together a um research article that we intend to publish or uh attempt to have published in the journal for emerging emerging educa um investigators which is a uh peer-reviewed uh academic research journal for middle and high school students that is peer-reviewed by PhD students across the country.
021So hopefully by the end of the year our fusion students will be published authors in a um national uh research journal. Um it has been just such a privilege um as an educator to be able to watch our students grow and develop um and be able to really uh shine and excel in ways that they don't always get to in the classroom. Um so I'm looking forward to cons continuing to see uh where Fusion goes from here. Thank you all. >> And you'll notice that um we don't have a community partner perspective on the screen, but I'm going to hope that Mr. Mr. David Martin won't mind coming and speaking just a minute about how this has impacted him if you mind. >> Mr. David Martin from Three Rivers Energy. >> Good evening. Uh I'm
022David Martin. I'm the site manager for Three Rivers Energy in Boston. We're anorobic digtor. uh when I was approached to have the students come and visit our site, it was it was very interesting for us to have this type of site visuals for the the plant because not only did the students learn from us but we are learning that as well. So we learn with the students and we learn every day. So uh it is it is new technology. Uh my guys along with me uh were learning quickly. It's obvious that the students learned right along with us. So it's very interesting to me and honored to have that happen. >> All right. Thank you all so much for um welcoming us tonight. Are there any questions for any of us? >> Well, I want
023to thank Mr. Martin for being here and we probably put him on the spot just a little bit having him come up there and speak, but um what you're doing to bring these students in is impactful for them, too. So, we really do appreciate that. And I would like to ask Alex a question if he's willing. Um being in a traditional classroom, you know, you're typically on your own doing your work. What does it how does it empower you working with other classmates on a project? And time management I would best comes into play in this stuff stuff too as well because you're you're really on your own. uh which again we commend you all for creating a space to allow them to grow in this in this way and really just changing the direction
024of what learning looks like and the experience they have. It's incredible. >> I'd like to thank our teachers for all that you're doing to challenge our students and um I'm encouraged to hear about the real world connections and um even down to the academic posters and the um efforts to do the peer reviewed journal. That's that's remarkable and um I think that that bodess well to the bridge to postsecary and in the future. And so um Alex, I have a question for you too. How has this experience um made you think about your future and helped you understand about what what you may want to do? >> It's really opened a lot of opportunities to me whenever it's coming to science, being a mathematician, things like that. So, I really I really want to be
025in the science field and I've been able to participate in activities that go on with hands-on experiences that involve science. So, that's really helped me think about the job I want to do or what I really want to pursue as my career. >> Very good. Thank you. And you're very articulate and well spoken. Thank you. >> Thank you. I don't want to take up any more time, but I do have to say this team is amazing. I was in Miss Lander's room yesterday at lunchtime and most of the OKH students that take part in Fusion stay to eat lunch with her. And um I think Miss Van Dyke says they're a community and they truly are. So, just want to celebrate this team because they are doing amazing work that will have a long-term impact
026on not just our students but our community. Thank you. >> Absolutely. >> All right. Moving on to guest comments. Thank you for attending our board meeting. Any person wishing to address the board may do so by following these rules. Guest comments are limited to three minutes for individuals and groups. Please step forward. State your name and address and if you represent a group, state the name of the group you are representing. We don't have anyone signed up and I'm assuming there's no one here that wants to jump on board. All right. Thank you guys. Not that you don't want to speak. I'm happy to hear, but we'll move on to our consent agenda. Um so, um as always, the board was presented this information prior to tonight's meeting. Um, do we have any areas of
027discussion on the consent agenda? >> If we do not, um, then we will need a motion to approve the consent agenda as presented. >> I'll make the motion. >> Thank you, Dr. Lee. Do I have a second? >> I'll second. >> Thank you, Miss Deon. All in favor? >> Any opposed? All right, motion passes. And moving on, we have um Dr. Dr. Shearhorn for grant application and acceptance. >> Good evening. So, it's pretty fitting that this grant um is getting presented tonight with the focus on the the CTE programming and looking to the future. So, we were recently awarded the um CTE innovation and support grant from KDE. It was a highly competitive um grant. They only awarded five in the host state. Um it was for $100,000 and um thanks to the visioning and
028work of our CTE programming especially Miss Arnold and Miss Barryman and also got to work with Matthew DS for the first time uh in crafting this grant. Um so thanks to their powerful visioning uh for the advanced manufacturing pathway, we were awarded um the grant and looking forward to getting that work in motion. And thank you for your writing of the grant. >> This is incredible. >> I just got to do the the uh fun explaining part of taking what they're doing and and crafting a story out of it. So, >> well, this is incredible. So, is there any discussion around the grant? >> Dr. Sheerhorn, I just want to say how much I would like to commend you for honing your skills on the grant application process. >> Thank you. And um I don't
029know if if folks always understand the amount of effort that goes into this and and it's a lot of it's coordinating folks too. So um good work to be um one of five among many many applications is is remarkable. >> Yeah. She didn't tell me the exact number because she's always used to me asking tons of questions, but I asked uh the KDE lady that's in charge of grants. I asked her how many applied and she was like a lot. >> Awesome. She didn't give me an exact number though, but she said it was highly competitive >> and it speaks to also to as you mentioned the the skill of our educators and um our leaders in terms of what they provide for our students. >> Fantastic. All right. If there's no more discussion, we
030will need a motion to approve the grant acceptance um as presented. >> I'll make the motion. >> Thank you, Dr. Lee. Do I have a second? >> I'll second. >> Thank you. All in favor? >> Any opposed? Motion passes. >> Um, and then we are seeking approval to apply for the AED grant. This will be our second year applying for this grant. The first year we were awarded $45,000 worth of um, AED grants. Um, which uh, helped us not only put them in locations that were high need, but also to replace some of the ones that were aging out. Um, and then working with Felicia, we have a few more that we want to replace um, that are aging out. So, we would like to apply for this again this fiscal year. >> All right.
031Any discussion on this application? All right. With that, we need a motion to approve the grant application as presented. >> I'll make a motion. >> Thank you. Do I have a second? >> Second. >> Thank you. All in favor? >> I. >> Any opposed? Motion passes. Thank you, Dr. Sheerhorn, for all your work. All right. We have Mr. Martin. >> All right. Good afternoon. So, we have tentative staffing um discussion and approval for today. So, this really kicks off many of the staffing discussions that'll take place throughout the spring and into um really early summer. Um and again, I'm just trying to provide a high level overview of some of those conversations we're having with principles and directors, talk to you guys about the process, and then we'll also uh approve some staffing ratios that'll
032kind of help with with that process. So, uh, first just kind of a larger conversation that we continue to have. Uh, we are leveraging this effective and efficient storyline. Again, I think it's it's easy for people to understand. Um, really when we think about staff support in our buildings. Yes, we as a parent, we would love lots of support uh small group settings for our children. We also want uh to retain people and continue to to push staff raises, but really there's balance in that and that our revenue obviously is not endless. So we have to find balance in really achieving great experiences for kids but also doing that in an efficient manner. So when we speak about that with our principles really these ideas kind of stand out and I'll start really with the
033effectiveness side. So we want to continue to prioritize frontline staffing and really what that means is continuing to allocate the majority of our resources closest to our kids and continue to prioritize that. also continuing to work at uh to establish K12 programs and really look beyond a one-year experience and even a four-year experience, but how do we create opportunities where one thing can then lead to another and really uh help students establish pathways so that they are prepared for life after high school. Um and then the bottom left, agile teaming and shared leadership. I think the fusion program is is a great example of that. But we are seeing lots of pockets of opportunities to where programs are growing. People are really leading those programs are passionate about it. Able to create agile teaming and
034getting folks to collaborate together. We're seeing a lot of success with that. So those are kind of some effective ideas. From an efficiency standpoint, it's important for us to look at staffing. Yes, a lot of time is a one-year contract, but for us, we have to look longterm and how might these roles lead into the future. Um we are going to experience quite a bit of change in 27 and 28. So how are we preparing for that? Uh also really just giving ourselves opportunity to re-evaluate roles and continue to clarify them. If we feel like you know we need to uh get more out of that role or clarify it further, we need to take that opportunity. Uh, and then as a board, you guys have continued to kind of push the envelope and we've
035made lots of strides in competitive compensation, but you know, we want to continue to uh compensate our people and take care of them so that we're able to retain local talent. So, these are many of the ideas we're going to leverage. Uh, one conversation we're going to continue to have is again working to build the bridge into the future. Uh so the staffing conversations really are for this upcoming school year. But again, we're going to see lots of change over the next couple of years. So we need to consider that so that so that we're really not backing ourselves into a corner and and how are we staffing today to make for a more effective transition. Some of these ideas uh I think we'll definitely take advantage of and leverage. For instance, when we see
036opportunity, there's obviously natural movement of people uh each year. So when we see opportunity to leverage that and a natural transition occurs, we want to do that. Uh we also know that there will be different folks working together into the future. So we want to if we see an opportunity to connect teams together, we want to do that. Um and we also want to find additional opportunities to connect people together and then of course continue to staff with students in mind. So that bridge over a two-year journey will be important for us to discuss. So from the logistical side, when you think about people inside the school, again, there's different pots of money uh that we use to kind of pay for people that that range from certified employees to classified to uh spending money
037per se that local schools have to support instructional programs inside the school. Uh we also have special programs and then we have diverse learning. So these are the different sections of money that are available. Today I mainly focused on really the ratio around section four staffing. So the the majority of your you know regular classroom type educators uh it's based upon a by enrollment ratio. Uh and these ratios are the are what we've used the last couple of years from a staffing standpoint. So at the K level for as an example every 22 students the local school would receive a teacher is how that ratio works. Uh and then section six again is spending money that local schools have and the recommendation for that is $100 per student. Um one other larger conversation we continue
038to have at the 612 level uh we do have lots of movement of students and staff. And as you think about a this this enrollment ratio conversation is a uh you have 200 kids in your building so this is how many teachers you have. But really those 200 kids are moving throughout our campuses. So that's a conversation we continue to have at the 612 level and really thinking about how do we staff by program allocation uh because kids are moving. Uh we may not necessarily be ready for that this year, but that is something I think as we get into the future that's a more efficient way of staffing. So really large largely over the next couple months I'll be talking to you guys about this these items. So tentative allocations today and then these
039phase conversations are really meetings with principles uh HR finance myself we will connect with them in February March and April to have these discussions uh students are beginning the scheduling process we'll have online registration open and openhouse events and then in April is another big month where we'll look at final allocations, job descriptions and salary schedule. So really today I'm asking for you guys to approve the ratios in this section six um spending allocation. Are there any questions? When I look at the ratios, um, I'm glad to see that most of these are well below what the state mandate is. The like the maximum the state gives a a maximum number of ratios and that's just to make sure that's kind of worst case scenario really. And I'm really glad to see that Nelson County
040um, pays attention to that for our students. So, one question I do have is why are the ratios slightly higher at sixth and eighth grade, sixth to 8th grade than say high school? Yeah, great question. So, and this is a good reminder. A couple of years ago, we the K5 level, we worked to lower those ratios a bit. That was around a I estimated a $400,000 allocation to lower those, which gets more teachers and creates smaller class sizes. Um, so we did spend some energy around those. The question is why is the 68 higher? Again, the answer to that is is the local school has lots of other um personnel that's able to support beyond just this. This really doesn't paint the full picture of what the local school has. They do have these other
041allocations available. So, as an example, the the middle school setting will receive a section 7 allocation. That's really additional teachers that that really lower that ratio. The high schools do not receive section 7 allocations, but they also have more opportunities really at the up center. That's kind of special programming that's not necessarily accounted here that helps with those high school ratios as well. Lots of students engaged in PBE and the workforce that that also helps with those class sizes. So, I guess the answer to that is is the middle schools would get additional section 7 allocation that the high school would not. >> So, I'm going to repeat back what I've heard. This is just for section 4 money. So this is just like how it's allocated out to our schools. And there will be
042additional staffing provided outside of those ratios or outside of that money that the school then uses and decides. >> Correct. >> Okay. >> The bulk of our allocation >> it'll effectively lower that. >> Yeah. The bulk of our allocation is section four. So it kind of is the first step to set the framework that then allows us to have the other puzzle pieces come into play. So, one of the questions that I have, if you kind of go back to the bridge um slide, you talked a a lot and I appreciate you saying, you know, bringing up the fact that, you know, we want to align the priorities of our staffing to the board's priorities. And one of the things that we talked about last year is really creating a competitive region of for salaries
043in our district. And moving forward, I know we're not you don't have an answer for it today and but maybe in the coming months you'll be able to kind of give us an idea of what that would look like so that we can maintain that priority and that we can really stick to that um what staffing would look like as we bridge um into that and give us some ideas of what that would look like. >> Okay. Also, I think back um over the years in Nelson County since I've been connected here and many districts give a a cost of living adjustment, which is typically 1 to 2% annually. And something we did that was unique a few years ago was to give a 10% increase across time. And so I would like to see
044us explore, do we have a plan that will cross gears, not just, you know, let's make a decision because this year we have a some extra allocation or whatever. Um, just instead of just making it in the last moment, what can we do? because it's important to keep our professionals um at a good level where we're competitive with other fields and with other districts because we want to retain the staffing that we have and we want um our folks to know how valued they are. >> Okay. >> Thank you. >> Looks good. All right. Any other discussion? So I just translate that a little bit to we would share longitudinal salary and compensation opportunities that exist kind of a floor and a ceiling based on different uh revenue and staffing models. >> Yes. >> So
045that's something as we think about April with the salary schedule. So I think in advance of that in March we'd want to share some beginning conversations knowing we are always evaluating this but we've not necessarily put a number when we think about 10% is generally $5,000. $5,000 times this many employees is approximately 1.5 million for classifi for certified. It's probably at least another half a million or so for cert for classified. So we're looking at probably $2 million. That's a that's a as an example we just as we think about that wouldn't occur in one year that would have to occur over right >> a time I share that because it gives us a window to consider how much time does it take to achieve that in the context of the model staffing models that
046exist currently. >> Yeah. And I think this is a prime like this is a really good slide to sort of look at how are we bridging those gaps and so I think that's great. It's a good good start. Thank you. All right, with that we need a motion to approve the tenative staffing formulas as presented. I'll make the motion. Thank you. Do I have a second? >> A second. >> Thank you. All in favor? >> Any opposed? All right. Motion passes. Thank you, Mr. Martin. >> All right. And then moving on to staff benefits and data and teaming with Miss Hogan. >> Good evening. So roughly a year ago, I came and talked to you all about benefits teaming and what we were doing to bring together staff across the district to look at the
047benefits of working inside Nelson County Schools. And I'm going to give you an update shortly on what has happened with last year's benefits teaming group. But I wanted to share with you too that we've started another benefits teaming group this year and again we're working with a diverse group of engaged professionals from across the district. So we have everyone from bus drivers, cafe, um thrive mental health, nursing, certified classified all rows across the district. We have five different teams. Each team has anywhere from six to eight people on a team and those teams are all focusing on the same things. Um so each team this time will be focusing on questions that center around uh professional networks and professional development. um feeling a sense of belonging within the school that they work at and within
048the district and then also feeling valued, supported and how we celebrate staff across the district. So we have a group of uh people who meet three to four times during um about a two-month period of time. They're focusing on on focusing on questions related to those three categories and uh providing us feedback to look at things that we need to enhance or change within the district to improve in these areas. So last year you'll recall the benefits teaming group came together and um they gave us a list of things that they wanted us to look at. We asked them to prioritize the things that they were interested in Nelson County Schools offering. And the four things they really wanted us to focus on were bereavement leave, paid parental leave, gym memberships, and other discounts and
049staff child care. So you all as a board approved those things, and I wanted to give you an update on where we are with those at this time. So bereavement leave, I'm looking at July 1 to February 13th in each of these categories. Under bereavement leave, we've had 38 employees who've used bereavement days. As you know, they can have either one or two days based on the relationship of the person who has passed away. So there's been a total of 59 bereavement days that have been used during that period of time. and total spending for the district related to bereavement days has been about $17,000. Uh under paid parental leave, we have 22 employees who have used paid parental leave. Um there have been 590 paid days that have fallen under parental leave and total
050spending for the district under paid parental leave has been about $190,000. uh gym memberships and other discounts. Uh we partnered with three local gyms in our community to provide discounts to staff if they're interested in using those gyms. We also added an all-in perks page that provides discounts that are local, regional, and national to different places that they might shop or attend. And the total cost for that has been $0 to the district. Uh we also added staff child care. We have 37 students or children currently enrolled in staff child care. Uh we're also looking at offering year round. When I say year round, I mean including summers, not breaks at this point. That might be something we look at later, but we're not looking at that currently. We have 35 staff members who are
051using staff child care. 31 of those staff members are parents and four of them are grandparents. And employees do receive a discount compared to other child care facilities in our community. So we're not doing staff child care. I want to remind you to make money. That's not the point of it. It's to support our staff in taking care of their children so they can come to work and not worry about their children. We are breaking even on staff child care. Um, if we do make any money that that money is put back into the program, but it would be very little money. We're not making a lot of money off of that. Um, I did want to take a moment to recognize Hope and some of the staff at the early learning center. They've invested
052a lot of time into providing this opportunity for our staff and it's been very meaningful. Um, I'll be honest, when we started staff child care, I was a little like, "Oh no, I don't know what this is going to look like and what kind of complaints we're going to get." And I wasn't sure what to expect. It's been very, very positive. I've only heard one thing that is not even really negative, and that is I'd like an opportunity to um either bring my child's lunch or pay for their lunch. So, that's something we're looking at. But other than that, it's been very very positive and we get great feedback on it all the time. Um, I also have with me tonight Jesse Brewer. And Jesse Brewer uh was part of benefits teaming last year. He's
053a person who was a part of asking for these benefits. We have a couple of people who were on benefits teaming last year who are back again this year. They asked to be a part of it because they enjoyed that experience and had some great feedback for us. And I'm just going to turn it over to Jesse for a minute and let him talk to you about his experience. >> Hello, I'm Jesse Brewer and I'm a Thrive therapist with the district. And um I just wanted to talk a little bit about what this experience was like um from the employee standpoint. When they first asked me to do it, I was a little skeptical because I' i've worked in many different agencies, many different things over the years, and it's like, ah, they want to
054hear your opinion and then nothing happens. It was different this time. Um, they brought us together with different disciplines all within the district. I believe in my particular focus group, um, there was two Thrive therapists, uh, some nurses, I think some folks from the ELC, so everybody a little bit spread out. Um, we we came up with some things that we thought would be great for the staff and bringing new folks in, new talent in, and you guys listened and some of this stuff is huge. Um, of course there's a lot of great things about Nelson County Schools, but this is that extra bonus that would kind of get me to come work here or to get me to continue to work here. So talking a little bit about the bereavement. God forbid I ever
055need to use that. It's just a comfort knowing that that's going to be there and you guys are supporting me through that. It's huge. I don't know. I didn't always feel that in other jobs. Big part of it. I haven't had to use it, but I know folks are using. We saw the numbers there where they are. Um and then as well as the paternity and attorney leave. Luckily, I don't think I'm going to have any more young ones anytime soon. Um but it this would have been huge for me. you know, when I was younger and we were having little kids and um just being able to have that extra time and as a therapist, I know that that bond and that development in those first few weeks is really uh important. But I
056love also how it's not just maternity leave, it's paternity leave, too. You know, that that's a huge thing. Um, I didn't have a lot of time uh to spend, you know, my my wife of course did spend a lot more time with the kiddo when they were first born, but heck, I needed some time to adjust to this too and be able to bond with that kid. And as a therapist, I know that's super important. So, just a wonderful thing. The child care, wonderful. I mean, we were paying over a house payment for like a decade in uh child care. I'm from Bullet County, so we used a local childcare agency there, but to have where I work at with the people that I trust. To be able to have a program like this also
057is very appealing to me. It's huge. Um, I feel like I have three kids in the district. They all go here. My wife works as a frisk in the district as well, and my kids are thriving in this school. It's really, really been wonderful. a buddy of mine's kiddo. I'm from Bullet County. Uh he's still in Bullet County and he's got a kindergartener and he was telling me the other day that um you know he he feels like my kids were so far along because they had the ELC and all these different programs and so um really appreciate everybody listening. Um we're going to continue working on it. I think we're going to focus more on culture this time um which is really cool and as a therapist I'm trying to throw in some of
058that therapeutic stuff for the the culture build. So just wanted to talk to you a little bit about that. >> Thank you so much. >> Thank you. >> On the childcare, you said you have 37 children enrolled. What's the capacity there for? Is it full? Is it like >> So we wanted to start out small and um that probably is a little larger than we really wanted to start the first time just because we wanted to get our feet wet and see how it went. But I will tell you, we have 20 on the waiting list right now. And we're opening another room so that we can accommodate that at the ELC. And we're also starting a small playground for the little bitty kids out back so they'll have an opportunity to go outside and
059um play with the other kids. Hope, do you have anything you want to add to that? >> So currently two of our capacities have a little bit of room in one of them. So I think 42 at this point. >> So, it's been really popular then. If you have a waiting list, you're doing good. >> As soon as they know, >> I was going to say looking at the um paternally part. Yeah, I would think that you've sort of got your people in waiting. >> No, that's incredible. Well, we're I'm grateful that our board is willing to be courageous in this and and sort of it is more than just about salaries. This is support that every family needs and I'm grateful that that our board continues to step up and do the right thing.
060So, thank you guys. >> Thank you. >> All right. And moving on, we have um Mr. Martin going to introduce um Mike Ford. All right. So, just just to recap some of our discussions uh over the last couple months. So, the board had some questions said you guys were getting some questions from the community around clarity with with uh school attendance and student transitions. Uh and really was asked that for us to engage in a kind of a current reality uh report and and demographic and population study. I presented that to you guys in January and then you challenged us to to find someone that could partner with us to kind of support us in this study uh and we were able to do that. So just just as a reminder in January, uh these
061are really some of the some of the maps and some of the questions that I really explored from where do people live? Uh where do students attend school and then thinking about the future development of Nelson County and and what is the county prioritizing among uh future residential development? These are some of our Janu January January discussions. Sorry. So we do have Mike Ford here. Uh Mike, I'll let you introduce yourself and kind of uh your expertise that you bring to this conversation. >> Thank you, Mr. Martin. Good evening, everyone. And first of all, let me say that I am very excited to be here. The work that we're going to start hopefully together uh the information, the expertise that I hope to be able to bring to you from my years and experience uh
062should be exciting for you. This is going to be an exciting endeavor. I promise you that. and uh I look forward to working with this district uh moving forward. A little bit about myself first of all. Um I walked out of Eastern Kentucky University in 1983, walked right into the classroom or I should say into the gym two weeks later and began coaching and teaching that summer. Spent 40 years in public education. teacher, coach, uh, athletic director, assistant principal, associate head principal, moved my way up through the ranks and finished my career from 2005 to 2023 as the director of people personnel for Boone County Schools where I got to know uh, Dr. Lee uh, from attending the DPP conferences together and knowing her as the DPP here in Nelson County. um did everything else
063that you can imagine. I cut grass. I painted football lines. I um called games for baseball. I drove a school bus. Uh you name it, I think I've done it in my career. I'm not going to bore you with a lot of detail about that. I'm very proud of a 40-year career. I left education, like I said, in 2023 for public education. sat out my 90 days. I loved retirement so much that I went right back to work in October of 23 with the Kentucky Association of School Administrators. And that's where I work now. I work uh developing our affiliate organizations with KASA and I work with superintendent uh primarily in areas of education law. I am uh one of the people on staff at KASA that has the opportunity to review legislative bills as
064they are produced on Capitol Hill during the general assembly and provide input to our different committees and ultimately to the educational uh realm across the entire commonwealth uh from the Frankfurt office. So that's what I do now. And I've done that uh for going on three years now. But that's not what brings me here. What brings me here is what I saw when I pulled up onto this campus. I saw construction. And that tells me that this district is dynamically growing. I've listened to presentations today about an educational program, Fusion. That's an exciting program, and I applaud the staff that is making great strides for children like the young man that was here, Alex, and and this young man, uh what you're doing to incorporate a tremendously positive educational experience for them. Uh when we
065all know that education's changing. So that's that's growth, educational programs, building construction, just dynamics, logistics, everything that goes into a school district. And that's what you're encountering right now. When Mr. Bradley and Mr. Martin reached out to me, it came through a friend of mine, Dr. Randy Poe, who I worked with, who superintendent of Boone County Schools for just about my entire career when I was in Boone County. Uh he was upstairs, I was downstairs, and we burned the stairs up back and forth going to each other, working together. When they came to me, they were looking for someone who could assist this school district with looking at the impact of growth. And y'all are experiencing that firsthand right now. And ultimately the question becomes how does the growth that you are experiencing impact the
066most important resource that you have in your school district and that's your student body. Heard a little bit tonight about what you're doing for that student body moving forward. What are you going to continue to do focusing on that student body? Mr. Mr. Martin used the word expertise. In 2005, like I said, I became the DPP for Boone County Schools. From 2005 to 2023, we experienced within Boone County, I should say pre- pandemic, up to about 2020, pre- pandemic, we experienced growth in the neighborhood of 550 to 600 students every summer. That's no exaggeration. That's what we grew. Think about an elementary school. Our old adage was we grow an elementary school a summer. And we did. When I left Boone County, when I began with Boone County, where I should say we were the
067third largest school district in the state, they're still the third largest school district in the state. Only Jefferson County and Faget County are larger. And when you calculate in preschool through 12th grade, we averaged over 21,000 students a year. And we had to look annually at that growth and make decisions and plans on how to best meet the needs of those children. I saw your ratio for your teacher to student population per class. Imagine having to keep those numbers below the state maximum mandate when you're growing 600 students a summer and your allocations for the next school year were based on what you had in February, March, April of the prior year and then you grow during the summer. These were some of the things that we dealt with in Boone County, which I want
068to believe I I don't use this word uh for myself, but I want to believe it does make me an expert because we did it every year. We had to we had to figure out where to put those students. We had to figure out where the teaching population was going to come from. And we had to meet the needs of those children. So that's that's why I'm here tonight to work with your district on first of all understanding your population density and demographic data. It's changing. If you're growing, if you're building, if there's construction, if you're developing and creating new educational programs for your students to ensure that they are successful, then you're growing and your demographic data is changing. In some respects, the general assembly helps that change to come into play by creating
069laws where there's open enrollment. I understand that that y'all have um at times have students who live in Bargetown Independent who are coming to your schools. It's because your schools are doing great things. But that's all part of that demographic change that y'all are experiencing. Well, with that demographic change, you have to do what we did, and I challenge you and encourage you to do this annually. You have to evaluate how you can create better opportunities for your students within this demographic change that is ongoing. And you have to ensure equity of learning opportunities among your schools. I heard that tonight with one program that you've created, the fusion program. That's exciting. But where's the next one for the next group of students for the continued growth within your district? In Boone County, we had
070a tremendous partnership with one of our local agencies, the Boone County Planning and Zoning Commission. And there were two factors, two facets, excuse me, within the Boone County Planning and Zoning Commission that worked hand inand with the school district as a resource to the school district. First of all, it was the planning commission itself. The planning commission itself was important because the planning commission got firthand knowledge awareness of where growth was occurring within your school district as far as construction and residential and types of residential. When I was the DPP for Boone County Schools, I was also a commissioner on the plan and zoning commission for 12 years. So, I got that information really three times a month because I was either co-chair or chair of the planning commission. So, we met as officers, we
071met with staff, and we met as a board in our monthly meetings and it was ongoing getting that information about where Fiser Homes was going to establish a new community or Arlinghouse Homes was going to they just purchased a farm and they're going to put in 400 new homes and that was going to be, you know, we had to answer the question, what's that going to do to our student population? That's what the school district had to answer to our board. So, we had to create formulas over studies, longitudinal studies to get these types of answers. But I served on that commission as a commissioner. So, that was one of our resources. The other resource was the GIS office out of the planning and zoning commission. that was the office that maintained a lot of
072our student data for us residentially. So between the GIS office, which was a tremendous resource, and our infinite campus data that was housed within the school district, we could see not only where our students were, but we could answer questions about socioeconomic status of our students. We could answer questions about was our students was this student a special needs identified student, what grade level was the student in? Those were the questions we could answer. So that as we looked at these studies and created plans and strategies moving forward through our annual review, we had those answers. That's why I'm here tonight. I want to help y'all get started from my experiences with looking at your longitudinal informationational excuse me your longitudinal information your demographics information your growth information and think about what questions what challenges
073do we have to prepare for for our students And you can probably tell I'm really excited about this. I've done this a few times and and this is something that I that I I really do like doing because you're it all comes back to one thing. We've got all these variables and factors that are coming into play that are all going to impact our students. Yes, they're going to impact staffing. Yes, they're going to impact uh operations, bus patterns, etc. But first and foremost, we got to answer the question, what are we going to do to ensure educational opportunities for our students as we face these variables? One thing that we did in Boone County, we reviewed data annually. We didn't wait five years, 10 years down the road. We did have a comprehensive school
074district plan that identified goals for the district out five years, but we reviewed this information through the committee that Mr. Martin just mentioned annually and then we adjusted those goals as needed. So, I do challenge you as you start to look forward in this process, make that a plan. Make that a priority. You need to hear this. If not from me, and I'm happy to come back every year and help, but if not from me, you need to hear from your staff as they partner with your local resources to be able to show you impacts on your district that are dynamically uh impacting student opportunities and educational opportunities within your school. So, that's a little bit about myself. Most mostly that's about why I'm here and I'm looking forward to this opportunity. Um, I know
075Miss Lee has heard me say this before at the DPP conference. I'm going to stop now because one of the worst things that you can do is give Mike Ford a microphone and I know she's heard me say that before. So, uh, I'm going to hand it back over to Mr. Martin and I think he's got some more points to share. >> I think that something just to clarify because I think that's what's what your message was very important is creating a process in which our district moves forward and I think that's something that we started with last year is really looking at priorities and establishing processes along the way that keep us in align with where we're headed. So you are absolutely correct sharing that that is why you're here. We need to understand
076what processes we need to be following when we're looking at this because you know through any you know four four years you're hitting an LPC up. We don't want to be looking at that data then we want to be looking at it all the time. So there's no question when decisions are made u while we're looking at it. So thank you for being here and taking part in that >> and I applaud you. >> Yes ma'am. Thank you >> and thank you and I agree with that. One of the things that I've learned in the past year very much has been we've got to be proactive instead of reactive and very future thinking. And so, um, my hope in any prog any process that we do, we want to build a process that allows us
077to know how to collect and examine the meaningful data in a way that honors parent choice because we have this data and I think I said last month, what do we do with it? And so that that's an an aim for us I think would be to um collect that and use that and so that we don't just wait until there is an LPC or um something that that we've got to decide right then let's think across time and build a better future for our community. >> So these are just a few of the ideas. You guys spoke about this already, but at the end of the last meeting in January, you know, you talked about maintaining parent choice, community schools, and then really utilizing this information to plan intelligently for the future. So, really,
078our next steps are, uh, I'll partner with Mike to really explore this data, uh, partner with local entities that can support us with this, and then really present another more thorough data reality at, uh, probably the April board meeting. It's really our next step. And this is no way is saying our team in this district are not capable of doing this information. We have incredible people that are trying to do incredible things. And bringing someone in that's looking from a bird's eye bird's eye view and an unbiased view is so beneficial and valuable in this position in the in this district. And again, I think that's got to be extremely clear when we're looking at this. This is a um a really an opportunity for plan for future for programming strength strengthening the programs that
079we already have and making sure that every student has a possibility. So we do we trust you Alex. We really do. >> Not offended. He's not as excited about this as Mike is. >> I am. >> I'm glad Mike's excited because you can rub off some of that on Alex excitement. >> Just keep it inside. >> You hold it all in. Yep. >> Oh boy. I just want to echo one on top of what you just said, one thing. I am here to support y'all. When I started my teaching career, whether it was in I taught in Louisville, I taught in in Northern Kentucky at Holmes, I taught at Beachwood, I coached I grew up in western Kentucky. If you're familiar with the Paduca area, far western Kentucky, that's where Granddad's farm was. My experiences
080has been across this entire state and the children here in this district are just as important to me as any child that I've taught or that I will work with in the future. So, I'm here to support y'all and I'm looking forward to I've already had conversations with this gentleman, had conversations with your superintendent. I'm excited about being here because what I'm seeing and it became very evident tonight was watching what this district is doing for students and I've already seen it firsthand and I so I'm excited to be here to support y'all in your endeavors to keep moving forward and doing what's right for the children within this school district and that's an exciting endeavor. >> All right, >> thank you very much. All right. So, moving on. Um board calendar for the rest
081of um the year so far. We have planned out. No changes, I don't believe, for the board calendar. >> No current no current discussion of dates or changes. >> Okay. So, do we need to approve that? It's no >> good to go, right? >> All right. Um I do have a question. I know that um where we've had some weather and such. Are we at a point that graduation dates, last day of school would be impacted? >> No. Thank you. But I want to piggyback on that. I I want to celebrate >> March. >> What >> we always said that we always said the graduation date in March >> because because by then we usually know that the snow days are down. >> I want to celebrate our facility teams. Um I'm sure most of
082you all um shoveled something off of your driveway or a sidewalk or car. these people and what they were able to do in the time frame that they did it is remarkable. And please, if you see them out or driving their car, buy them a cup of coffee, whatever they are drinking, buy it because they did an amazing job. And um you know, because again, I talked to um another district that's really close and um there was they were not as happy as we were with our school district. So, our facility team really pulled it off and and not an easy task. This was a unique snow, snow, ice, everything system and they did an immaculate job and I'm grateful for every sidewalk that I walked on in and out of the building. So, thank
083thank them if you see them. We had a challenging couple weeks certainly weatherwise and um I I would second that sentiment and also um celebrate our staff for keeping our students engaged and I think we struck a good balance between doing NI days um with some traditional snow days so that it kept learning fresh and engaged and I can say from seeing with my grandchildren that they were provided meaningful opportunities for learning so I'm grateful for that >> and we weren't out two weeks. >> That's a good thing. >> Absolutely. >> All right. So, anything additional? All right. With that, guys, we can have a motion to adjurnn the regular session of the Nelson County Board of Education. >> I'll make the motion. >> All right. Thank you. Any second? >> I'll second. >> All
084right. Thanks. All in favor? I. >> Any opposed? All right. Thanks, guys. Have a good evening.