School Board Meeting: August 16, 2022

001[Music] Good evening I would like to call to order the regular meeting of the newport news school board for tuesday august 16 on behalf of the members of the school board and the superintendent I welcome each of you watching a quorum is present to transact the business of the school division we will begin tonight's meeting with the invocation and pledge to the flag here to do the honors is michelle nordine president newport news council of ptas welcome thank you madam chairman um thank you matt sorry nervous speaker thank you madam chairman members of the board and dr parker um I am honored to give the invocation and lead the pledge of allegiance I would like to share a poem that I found online that shows how parents and teachers working together shapes a child's education

002unity I dreamt I dreamt I stood in a studio and watched two sculptures there the clay they used was a young child's mind and they fashioned it with care one was a teacher the tools he used were books music and art one a parent with a guiding heart hand and a gentle and a gentle loving heart day after day the teacher toiled with a touch that was deft and sure while the parent labored by his side and polished and smoothed it over and when at last their work was done they were proud of what they had wrought for the things they had molded into the child could neither be sold nor bought and each agreed they would have failed if each had worked alone for behind the parent stood the school and behind the teacher

003the home author unknown um at this time would you please stand and join me in the pledge of allegiance I pledge allegiance of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for us thank you for the opportunity thank you so much the next item on tonight's agenda is skin board recognition so dr parker excellent good evening oh thank you i have the honor of presenting this month's school board recognitions each year the virginia school boards association invites local school boards to nominate businesses and organizations to the vsba business honor roll newport news public schools has numerous partners at support education however this year three organizations stood out to select the 2022 business honor roll nominees the school board and administration looked at organizations that have

004distinguished themselves in an extra special way this year or over the course of many years this year the school board voted to name community knights anthem health keepers plus and the newsome bailey project to the 2022 vsba business honor roll in recognition of their ongoing commitment to newport news public schools anthem health keepers plus and the newsome bailey project were honored at a previous meeting but tonight we are excited and pleased to honor the community knights we've invited the co-founder the co-founders of the community knights to be present with us this evening please join us in thanking and welcoming jennifer brown chief executive officer ms brown [Applause] and theresa michener chief financial officer ms mitchell the community nights organization represented here miss brown and miss michener are receiving a resolution of recognition from the school

005board and a certificate of recognition from the virginia school boards association the resolution reads in part newport news school board resolution of recognition naming community nights to the 2022 virginia school boards association business honor roll whereas public schools and local businesses and organizations are an integral part of the community and whereas many local businesses and organizations play a critical role in supporting our schools and whereas the economic health of our community state and nation depends on a strong public school system and whereas collaboration between local public schools and local businesses and organizations strengthens schools and the business community alike by providing a well-trained and highly educated workforce and whereas an excellent public school system is vital to the quality of life in this community and fundamental to preserving a strong democratic society now and in

006the future and whereas community knights a non-profit organization based in newport in newport news supports public schools and local nonprofit organizations to address community needs collaboratively and whereas the dedicated staff and volunteers of community nights are helping to cultivate a vibrant interconnected community by investing in it through a continuous loop of volunteerism and community driven fundraising and whereas community nights as of the spring 2022 had awarded 817 grants worth a total of 1.6 million dollars to 199 public schools and non-profit organizations with much of that amount going to support students families and staff in newport news public schools whereas the virginia school boards association established a business honor roll to recognize local businesses and organizations that play a key role in supporting our communities and our local schools now therefore be it resolved that the

007newport news school board placed community nights on the statewide virginia school boards association business honor roll calling attention to its ongoing commitment to newport news public schools and the students we serve be it further resolve a copy of this resolution be spread across the minutes of this meeting for all to acknowledge and it is signed by all the members of the school board and the superintendent ladies on behalf of the entire school division we thank you for your service and your dedication to newport news public schools our community and our students all right [Applause] six million dollars all right we have an additional recognition this evening that is a bit of a surprise so I'm going to ask all the members of the school board would you please come down front thank you so our

008next recognition this evening is an acknowledgement of service and appreciation for douglas brown [Applause] he's being presented with the resolution and it reads the newport news school board resolution of recognition and appreciation presented to douglas c brown in honor of dedicated service as school board chairman july 1 2020 through june 30 whereas the newport news school board a duly elected body is charged with establishing and maintaining a system of public schools within the city of newport news and whereas the newport news school board's operational goals are to develop policies which promote student achievement and the wise management of financial resources and whereas the members of the newport news school board hold an office of shared power and responsibility guided by a chairman who presides over meetings of the board and whereas douglas brown was unanimously

009voted chairman of the school board on july 1 2020 during the school board organizational meeting and was subsequently voted to a second one-year term as chairman during the july 1 2021 organizational meeting and whereas mr brown guided the school board during the challenges of the covet 19 pandemic while continuing to ensure public access and input during school board meetings whereas mr brown provided sage advice and support as newport news public schools prioritize the health and safety of students and staff by adhering to covet 19 mitigation best practices implementing a one-to-one device rollout to support continued teaching and learning launching meals to go service to ensure all families had access to nutritious meals and reassigning employees to other duties as needed to ensure continued employment for all employees during the pandemic whereas mr brown got at

010the school board through the master board professional development process resulting in the school board earning designation as the virginia school boards association master board only the second school governance team in virginia to earn such recognition whereas chairman douglas brown devoted himself to furthering the mission of ensuring that all students graduate college career and citizen ready and whereas the newport news school board established excuse me I jumped ahead now therefore be it resolved that the newport news school board acknowledges and extends its gratitude to douglas c brown for his dedicated leadership and service as chairman of the newport news school board from july 1 2020 to june 30 2022 and be it further resolved that a copy this resolution be spread across the minutes and the resolution is signed by all of the members of the

011school board and the superintendent in honor of your service [Applause] pictures speech again we thank the community knights and we thank mr brown for his service to the school division at this time we'll take a six-minute break so that our honorees and their families may leave if they choose to do so during this time our viewing audience will have the opportunity to view this month's school board spotlight so we'll stand in recess for about six minutes thank you [Music] for the first time in newport news public schools elementary students have the opportunity to showcase their talents on the basketball court normally reserved for middle and high school student athletes four elementary schools participated in the very first elementary basketball invitational at dewson park elementary before summer break began co-ed student teams from dutrow hidingwood newsome

012park and riverside elementary schools played in a single elimination bracket style invitational to ultimately crown a winning squad for the whole city in the opening round hidenwood defeated newsome park's home team while dutrow whose team was playing their very first game won a well-played game against riverside's talented players before the tournament final woodside's varsity basketball coach stefan welsh spoke to all of the young players about working hard every day both on the court and in the classroom to achieve their life's dreams in the championship round dutrow and tidenwood played hard through the final minutes with dutrow narrowly winning the first city-wide tournament at each school coaches spent the season focused on building foundational skills and teamwork while emphasizing important character traits that carry over into all aspects of life student athletes also had to complete

013their school work on time have excellent attendance and no discipline referrals to continue playing while winning was on the forefront of every young player's mind the memorable experiences gained and life lessons learned were clearly more important than the final score newport news public schools has started a new annual tradition by formally recognizing the administrators that lead our schools every day our principals along with assistant principals and administrative assistants set high standards through their multi-faceted jobs by caring for students promoting inclusive learning environments empowering their teaching staff and offering genuine support to parents superintendent dr george parker wanted to acknowledge our dedicated school administrators so the school leadership team organized and hosted an nnps leadership deception at kiln creek golf club and resort school board chairman douglas brown and vice chairman lisa Surles-Law offered their heartfelt

014words of thanks to all of the school administrators who have kept our schools on track especially through the difficult years navigating a global pandemic dr parker announced the winning principles and assistance principles representing all three grade levels the elementary school assistant principal of the year is sanford's suzanne ramirez based on her commitment to building a positive school culture that has resulted in strong student-teacher relationships and reduced discipline infractions the elementary school principal of the year is sedgefield's jackie barber who has brought her dynamic vision to life helping to positively change the school's culture while increasing student engagement along with reading and math test scores at the middle school level the assistant principal of the year is gildersleeve's doctor victor griesel who has a long history of sustaining a wonderful middle school experience for students by

015creatively celebrating academic success and creating opportunities for student leadership the middle school principal of the year is lisa gax-daniel who strives to make heinz a school where the heart is by personally connecting with students and families to promote student achievement while also dramatically decreasing discipline referrals by 50 among our high schools the assistant principal of the year is terry fenner a dedicated leader and mentor who is fully committed to connecting with the students at heritage by building lasting relationships that helped keynes navigate school and life and the high school principal of the year is warwick's dr kelly mason who developed creative solutions for all students to succeed while building solid relationships with her staff through strong communication since these dynamic leaders have been formally recognized they can now be nominated for state awards to be

016honored among the best educators across the commonwealth [Music] students across newport news public schools are emerging as future global leaders this coming school year juniors and seniors at all six high schools will receive immersive training and participate in comprehensive professional development through emerging leaders a new youth development initiative for 122 upperclassmen the journey started last school year in early june select students were invited to a day of exploration and training at james river country club with school leaders and dynamic community partners the students were selected based on their demonstrated leadership potential with many candidates having already participated in established student empowerment programs such as bloom flourish and rise the emerging leader candidates spent time learning about the new experience and what would be expected of them in terms of serving in their schools volunteering their

017time and talents to help others and improving their community through service projects during a networking lunch students were joined at each table by elected officials school administrators and community leaders who shared their own life experiences and fielded questions from the high school students about educational and career ambitions since many business deals are sealed over a game of golf some candidates spent time with golf pros perfecting their short game and honing their networking skills other candidates partnered with school board members and educational leaders to tackle a team-based challenge activity that required planning creative thinking and problem solving as emerging leaders is just getting started it's exciting to see what the future holds for these highly motivated and driven students [Music] i hope you enjoyed this month's school board spotlight during our regular meetings we provide time

018for the public to address the school board these opportunities are scheduled in the early part of our agenda and also towards the end of the meeting the school board recognizes that during the pandemic some members of the public may not be able to join us in person as advertised citizens may submit comments via a web form email or voicemail up to 30 minutes prior to our meeting time to be included in the official meeting record for those of you joining us in person the board considers this an opportunity to listen to your comments please understand we will consider your concerns we ask that you comply with our three-minute time limit as you begin your comments a green light will come on a yellow light signals that you have 30 seconds remaining and a red light

019and beat indicates your time is up do we have any comment cards you do not okay thank you [Laughter] we will now move on to section 3 the consent agenda which includes 3.01 minutes from the special meeting june 7th 2022 3.02 minutes from the special closed session on june 7th 2022 3.0 minutes from the work session on june 21st 2022 3.04 minutes from the regular meeting on june 21st 2022 3.05 minutes from the special closed meeting on june 21 2022 3.06 organizational meeting on july 1 3.07 financial reports including the revenue report for july 2022 the expense report for july 2022 3.08 the personnel report and 3.09 hampton roads sanitation district easement 3.10 virginia department of education authorization of signature and absence of division superintendent 3.11 bdoe authorization of signature in absence of division superintendent

020enterprise academy and 3.12 eighth lease excuse me amendment newport news schools madam chairman I would like to ask that item 3.09 hampton road sanitation district easement be pulled from the consent agenda and considered separately because I have a conflict of interest in the hrsd is a client of my firm jones blackman-waltz and kelly which is located at 701 town center drive suite 800 newport news virginia 23606. i believe I have to state all of that thank you ms eamon appreciate you noting that so we will um approve the consent agenda minus 3.09 and then we'll circle back and we'll do 3.09 I'm out jared I second and uh when we have to approve the motion to restrict 3.09 and then um make the motion on so we have to we'll do that okay so um

021uh do we have a motion to restrict 3.09 i second uh I move that same emotion okay and so we'll call the roll for that motion all right dr best four mr brown four mr ely four mr harris mrs amen or mrs Surles-Law or motion carry six zero okay and so now we need a motion to approve the consent agenda so I'm sure I'll move to approve the consent agenda for items 3.01 through 3.08 and 3.10 3.11 and 3.12. second a second okay any questions um man I'm sure I just have one question uh on the eighth lease amendment if dr parker could expand on um certainly it's great uh adding additional space to the point option program that's wonderful uh we had talked about uh some other land options uh this last year in

022the past in terms of um I believe this south morrison site we were looking at could you just expand for the board why the the now the strategy behind a 10-year agreement for the point option site vice we were considering some other land options oh yes sir so we actually had a lease for the two different spaces for enterprise and point option were on different year ex terminations so we wanted to put them on the same termination add the space in between because school is starting in two weeks and we needed a space south morrison would not be ready to house either of those programs at this particular time and we want to engage with the uh the landlord there to ensure that we will be able to transition one of those programs out seamlessly

023we can use that space for other things up until that termination date we do still fully intend to move into south morrison once that facility is is ready to accommodate an instruction a larger instructional program as well as cte programs eventually so that that is still a plan we just needed that middle space in between and while we while we were making that arrangement we also needed to probably pull the landlord back to a more reasonable agreement of a 10-year um lease and uh mr fairhart is here to answer any further questions or expand on that I think I did I cover everything okay on that one yes sir so it was negotiation to get that done thank you dr martin any other question all right let's call the roll okay i want a clarification

024whose second the consent agenda without three point zero nine did some one second one okay dr best for mr brown for mr eley for mr harris for mrs aman for mrs Surles-Law for motion carry six zero thank you so now we will um do approval for 3.09 hampton roads sanitation district easement without uh miss eamonn joining it so do we have a motion mount move to approve item 3.09 hampton roads sanitation district easement in a second second any questions all right let's call roll dr best four mr brown four mr ely four mr harris four mrs Surles-Law four motion carries 5-0 and mrs buffalo if the record needs to stay the same all right at this time may I have a motion to approve the superintendent's personnel recommendation madam chair I make a motion to

025approve the superintendent personnel recommendations for michael bellamy for assistant principal of operations woodside high school lisa igor for principal menspure high school tabitha evans assistant principal and achievable dream academy candice foster assistant principal riverside elementary school catherine garnett assistant principal detro elementary school tanya harris administrative assistant says bill elementary school scott jenkins administrative assistant carver elementary school dr lakeish parrot director elementary leadership amanda mccauley assistant principal yates elementary school shayron pernell administrative assistant stoney run elementary school dr katie smith assistant principal split for denby early childhood and marshall early learning center dr jennifer jennifer tindall administrative assistant for haddinwood elementary school and vivian bertullo director of special education [Applause] any questions all right let's call the roll best for mr brown for mr eley for mr harris for mrs eamon for mrs Surles-Law for motion

026carries six zero [Applause] so dr parker can you please share with us who has joined our ranks absolutely it is always a pleasure to bring on new staff and uh and also see some of our superstars in our division get opportunities for for future for for greater leadership uh so I will uh start with introducing uh mr michael bellamy for as the new assistant principal of operations for woodside high schools billy [Applause] and mr bellamy has a master's degree in education from averitt university and a master of business administration from strayer university he has a bachelor of arts and paralegal studies from hampton university ms bellamy currently works as an assistant principal at crittenden middle school he also worked as an administrative assistant at crittenden middle school and a ct lead teacher at warwick high

027school congratulations mr bellamy and do you have any friends or family with you this evening that you'd like to introduce as you uh welcome introduce yourself to the board yes sir um first good evening dr parker all members of the board I'm thankful for the opportunity I look forward to great memories of woodside high school with me i have my beautiful wife cedi um also my proud principal mrs smith and one of my mentors and also my new family dr nicholson smith so I'm really really thankful for everyone and if I could give a quick shout out to the staff faculty and fellow admin at creating the middle school as well as my supporters in the newport news school district awesome [Applause] and next uh mrs lisa egolf as the new principal of menchville high

028school miss eagoff has a master of science and educational leadership from western governors university and a bachelor of science in biology from christopher newport university she was pre she has previously worked as a school improvement specialist with williamsburg james city county public schools and she also has worked as an assistant principal for six years at dozier middle school and currently she is at heritage high school as the api congratulations miss mrs eagle missy golf and uh let's let's go ahead and do some introductions with your friends and family as well sure I have my parents with me I have my writer diabetes and i got my new squad looking forward to good things from you and your team as well uh next introduction is uh tabitha evans as the new assistant principal for achievable dream

029academy good evening mrs evans has a master degree in uh educational leadership and supervision from old dominion university she has a bachelor of arts in elementary education from niagara county community college she currently worked works as a team worked as a teacher for suffolk public schools or she's currently working in suffolk public schools and she also previously worked as a teacher for hampton public schools wake county public schools and marine joy charter school in north carolina ms evans also has worked as a behavior specialist of culture and climate for teach for america so welcome to the newport news family [Music] they're here to support and at home i have my loving husband and my children who are my wife my husband has been very supportive throughout this entire process and my entire support system with

030my friends and my family who are calling all the time and I am just looking forward to learning and growing with this uh new family and importance so thank you for having me congratulations our next appointee is candace foster as the new assistant principal at riverside elementary school good evening ms foster has an edu uh has an educational specialist advanced certificate in educational leadership from old dominion university a master's degree of arts from edinburgh university of pennsylvania and a bachelor of arts degree from penn state erie the bayern college that pronounced that correct she currently as she she's currently a teacher at dutrow elementary school she has previously worked for uh for hampton city public schools as well congratulations and welcome aboard do you have any friends and family joining you this evening also congratulations

031sir [Applause] our next appointee is catherine garnett as the new assistant principal at dutrow elementary school there you go congratulations ms garnett has a master of science degree and bachelor of arts degree in special education both from western governors university ms garnett currently works at sanford elementary school as a lead special education teacher congratulations and looking forward to your new leadership how are you this evening great thank you for this opportunity all right and uh do you have any friends and family joining I have my husband and my daughter and my stanford family our next appointee is tanya harris as the newest administrative assistant at sedgefield elementary school ms harris is working on her doctorate of education from liberty university she has a master of arts degree from liberty university and a bachelor of arts

032degree from christopher newport university ms harris is currently a teacher at sedgefield elementary school she previously worked as a teacher and science curriculum writer with petersburg public schools congratulations uh miss harris thank you [Applause] all right and who's joining you this evening so first and foremost hello everyone I am clearly very excited to be here I'm trying to keep from crying but with me I have my mother um I have a lot of people guys my sister my grandmother some of my greatest friends um extended family my mentor some of my best friends my previous petersburg family my current principal wow so you're going to clear the room [Laughter] awesome well you haven't you have enough folks let's give her another round [Applause] and our next appointee is mr scott jenkins that's the new administrative

033assistant at carver elementary school and mr jenkins has a master's degree in educational leadership from old dominion university and a bachelor of science in early childhood development from east tennessee state university mr jenkins currently works as a teacher at hilton elementary school mr jenkins has also worked as a teacher for suffolk public schools as an elementary summer school principal and teacher with williamsburg james city schools he also worked as an interventionist for norfolk public schools and a teacher with hampton public wow you've been with everybody all right congratulations mr t thanks for staying at newborn so who's joining you this family over evening my daughter and my daughter and then my son bryson and then my wonderful principal is here also of course [Applause] our next appointee is dr laquish parrott as the new director

034of elementary leadership dr kira dr parrott has a doctorate in educational leadership and policy studies from virginia politec polytech and institute university a master of teacher program in educational leadership and bachelor of english from regent university she currently works she has worked with the virginia department of education as a school quality specialist dr parrott previously worked as the director of diversity equity and inclusion in the office of the superintendent for virginia beach city public schools she worked as an elementary principal and assistant principal for gloucester public schools and a teacher and has been a teacher with sussex county public schools welcome board we know doc we know you've already started so welcome aboard but I'll also have with me dr parker my husband david and um again just grateful for this opportunity look forward to

035working with the leaders here in newport news public schools and so just thank you for the opportunity thank you dr herman and so I'll sit down now well thank you dr perry we all we are already uh blessed with your presence and thank you for being available this summer to get the work started our next appointee is amanda mccauley uh the new assistant principal of yates elementary school good evening miss mccauley has an eds in administration from old dominion university her master of arts degree in special education and bachelor of science in human development from virginia tech ms mccauley works as an administrative assistant currently at newsome park elementary school she also worked as an administrative assistant for denby early childhood she previously worked as a teacher for public for public school 72 in brooklyn

036new york she has also worked as a teacher at the elementary and secondary levels at dooley school at saint joseph's village villa in richmond lee davis high school in mechanicsville virginia and brian and craft elementary schools in hampton and bayside middle and point of view elementary schools in virginia beach congratulations mrs mccauley and do you have any friends or family joining you this evening my lovely family is at home because I have four boys and they will be tearing me down i have my new partner here miss ramirez awesome [Music] congratulations and our next appointee we're getting to we're getting somewhere on we're almost down there is miss sharon pernille as the new administrative assistant at stony run elementary school good evening [Applause] but I do have some special friends here i have tj and

037he is and then a very special thanks to my mother who graduated with me this past [Applause] so spring read a little about a little bit about you here miss purnell has a master of science and educational degree from oldham university that must be recently passed and a bachelor of arts degree from randolph-macon college miss purnell currently works as a stem teacher for hampton public schools so welcome to the newport news family all right and uh at the last board meeting we did appoint dr katie smith as the new assistant principal um she will be a split between denby early childhood and marshall early learning center good evening ma'am and dr smith has a doctorate in educational leadership from liberty university her master's of education from cambridge college and her bachelor of arts degree from

038christopher newport university she currently works as an assistant principal at churchland elementary school for portsmouth public schools dr smith also worked as an elementary school teacher for newport news in the past so welcome back also she has worked as a teacher for matthews county public schools welcome back dr dr smith and do you have any friends and family joining you this evening yes thank you so much wonderful to be back home and on this side of the water I have my amazing partner brian with me and my son cameron and both of these phenomenal men i have from marshall mrs keller so thank you for being here they were just ready and then of course mrs waxman at uh I'm blessed to be yes I'm at opposite ends of the city but so thankful to

039be with them thank you we appreciate you and we're so glad to have you back yes ma'am all right our next appointee is uh um is dr jennifer tindall as the new administrative assistant for hiding wood elementary school awesome good evening and dr tyndall has her doctorate degree doctor of education and policy planning and leadership from the college of william and mary her master's degree in lib in library media and and bachelor of arts from longwood university and dr tyndall currently works as the principal of s p morton elementary school in franklin public schools she previously previously worked as a curriculum specialist library media specialist and instructional technology resource teacher for franklin public schools additionally she worked as a principal assistant principal and library media specialist for sussex count sussex county public schools dr tim

040tindall welcome to newport news thank you for joining our team thank you very much for this opportunity I'm very excited to be on this side of the water and a much larger school division so well you're you're going to a great place with a great principal I absolutely agree and I have my council mr lieberman and my assistant principal mrs gibbs with me here today supporting me they have been phenomenal at home I have my parents who are in wyoming and my 18 year old getting ready to go to college spending the day at busch gardens before and welcome to newport news and unfortunately uh mrs vivian vittullo will not be able to join us this evening she was not available unfortunately for the for this um to meet the board this evening she will

041be the new director of special education uh miss futulo is currently working on her doctor of philosophy of special education research and advocacy from virginia commonwealth university she has an educational specialist degree in educational leadership and administration from george washington university she has a master of arts in education in special education from the college of william murray and a bachelor of arts in psychology from christopher newport university and what what we're really proud of is miss patulo has spent most of her career in newport news public schools and she will be definitely a great addition to the special education team in her new capacity as a special education director so we'll get a chance of course to meet her in person well if she is viewing tonight we wish her well and congratulations and madam

042chair that includes our board appointments great well thank you all for bringing your talents and special skills to us we're going to move on to our action items for the evening the next item on the agenda is section four first is 4.01 rules and responsibilities handbook dr parker yes and for those uh who appointees if you uh have a dinner waiting for you or just or if you just have a burning desire to stay for the entire meeting you are welcome to do that yeah there goes everybody wow have a good evening everyone so madam chair we will call up uh mr ransom to the podium um I appreciate the board's input on the uh on the r r handbook as soon as he can work his way up way to the front yeah i

043met [Music] yes [Laughter] right mr wright if you uh know where mr ransom you can come up to the podium we'll go and get started with our with the action items will say again I appreciate the board's attention to the r r handbook and I also appreciate the board's patience as we looked at some new information coming from not only from the state but also just revisiting some of our disciplinary procedures uh dr ransom has been very diligent in pulling together some information and responding to any inquiries from the board uh he's available this evening if you have any questions regarding the r r handbook but we asked for the board's approval of the document so we can finalize that and get it to staff and students in an expeditious manner and I i believe

044the handbook was sent out electronically to the pool and the uh additional attachments as well yes okay as well okay thank you so much all right thank you do we have any comments or questions i don't know I see the green font just for you just for me it was perfect okay so there is one item in the uh handbook uh madam chair that um that will not be on the approval pathway this evening but dr mitchell and her team will were working on some adjustments to our attendance policies and we there is one item we do need to revisit we we may bring a policy for the board in september um we currently we do not have any uh policy from the board that addresses a high number of unexcused absences whether it um

045whether there are any academic implications so we would like to while some other divisions have a policy that addresses that we know that chronic absenteeism will be an issue this year and we need to have a stronger we feel we may need a stronger policy to address student attendance um in schools to ensure that our attendance is continuing to improve so with that being said uh that is some of the something that we will be working on uh we will have some standard language in the um handbook at this time for that addresses our current attendance policies but we will we may want the board to reconsider that that policy in our in september once we have had a chance to look at some uh take a better look at it dr park have a

046quick question with that sir i knew in the past when I was in school which a long time ago 2002 if you was caught outside of my age if you if you was caught outside a police officer could pick you up and take you back to school is that still the case or no the um it depends it depends on parent involvement but mr uh dr ransom do you have any um have you had I mean it does depend so the students are stopped if students are out during the school day they're stopped and they are questioned and there's there are follow-ups given us to us throughout the day so it's no more you get in the car and they take you to school um uh not necessarily that's not like a standard practice but

047there is communication made back to whether school leadership or to the school thank you yes sir i have a question just for a point of clarification because I noticed on the excused absences there's not one for sports and I know some sports have for example golf has you're out for the most of the day of school because they start at 10 a.m random areas around the region so i didn't know if that was something we were going to look at putting in as a or does that even exceptional circumstances seems a little bit that'd be a little bit of a stretch there so I think that when they're um on school activities they're accounted as present so we actually have an attendance code for activities okay yes ma'am and again we will go back and

048look at all of our procedures and I believe that policy is validated so we're in new times right now where we do have to um both uh chronic absenteeism is 12 12 absences whether excused or an excuse over the course of a semester however if a student misses eight seven or eight days unexcused and there's no documentation that some some divisions actually have some um consequences for that um and that that means that you need to make sure that you are in good attendance and if you're out of school it is a documented reason for you being out um but we do need to kind of refresh and look at our procedures now that we're at a time where we need our kids in school coming out of the pandemic and and unfortunately some have

049picked up's bad but that would that will not be for the board's decision this evening I just wanted to share that miss madam chair um because there was an attachment that was sent in uh on attendance related matters um that uh that made it to the board's attention madam jobs make a comment uh echoing uh mr ely's commentary about students being off school property uh because I did actually I had spoken with that was another similar question I had spoken with dr parker about last week and I have spoken with some police officers in the past and they've it is they've told me that it's not their procedure to bring a student back to school I know that like mr ely said back in our day I could hear the bell when the bell rang

050you started running if you were close to school because the police officers would actually pick you up you know if you didn't if you didn't make it in time and you might they might take you to school they might take you to the police station you know depending on what kind of move the police officer was in but they're no longer really doing that so I bring that up because we'll have a chance to have some conversations with city council these are kinds of these are the types of things I think that in partnership with our city council members we can open up those discussions about the police helping us with truancy and making sure that we have kids at school during the school day because a child wandering wandering around the streets is something

051that we want to try to address if we can without necessarily having to take a child to court take a family to court just to get them to not skip school for a day and in my neck of the woods in in virginia beach and chesapeake they actually had staff for that so they were truancy and abatement officers they were specific officers that served that purpose i believe a lot of localities have downsized and do not have that those personnel on their staff I'm not aware of any truncating abatement officers in newport news um as well so that's uh that's probably why there you don't have that service being provided but again um it's worth the discussion uh I do believe we need to put some more teeth in our policies to make sure that

052there is some accountability around attendance and this is the year to do it since we know we that that does factor into our accreditation status so speaking of putting teeth in our policies uh dr ransom and dr parker would you just review a little bit about our cell phone policy yes ma'am so we took a look at the cell phone policy and what we've done is we still have our three offenses for students so the first offense um it was originally this the cell phone is confiscated um and it's returned back to the student at the end of the day after the the expectations are reviewed by an administrator now the first offense is the cell phone policy um is reviewed the student receives a warning from the administrator and the cell phone the cell

053phone is not taken from the student the second offense is uh the first offense the old first offense has become the new second offense the cell phone is uh now confiscated by the administrator but it's given back to the student at the end of the day the third offense is the cell phone is confiscated by the administrator the student will receive one day of his school suspension the parents are contacted by the administrator and the phone is given back to the student at the end of the day now any further offenses the student will receive any consequence from level two to level four additionally we've added to the um the expectations of uh electronic devices so now um we wanted to address the um misuse of cell phones when there were rule violations and uh

054events being recorded and shared on social media so we have clarified our stance uh on that so that's you will see that written in there and we direct families to um to what our code violation is in our handbook and then another piece that was always in our handbook was that we do not um students are not permitted to photograph or record audio record excuse me photograph video audio record students um without the permission of the other person um and uh permission from a school official so we definitely make note of that as well and those those offenses will be handled as cell phone violations so um so we we want to make sure principals are well aware that uh that that will be enforced this year um when when a student is uh pulling

055out a cell phone or recording other students or recording an incident um with the intention of david either sharing it or putting it online that will be a violation of our student code of conduct and will be handled appropriately i was a question of clerk dr best a question it clarifies for step three when the phone is confiscated and the student for offense three and the student has to attend one day of iss is the phone returned after they serve the one day of iss so that did receive some discussion so um right now the phone is returned and the student is assigned in school suspension so before so it's uh it could possibly be before it could possibly be after but right now it is written as before thank you i just have a

056couple questions are you unless dr best did you have a follow-up no no um I guess I'm curious that we took the parent away and then jumped straight to the in-school suspension it seems like we kind of basically took out the second level in the sense that the first became a warning and it but then it goes to the student and then you jump there i think it might be appropriate to we may want to consider having the parent involvement and then in school suspension but my main question is we talk about a school student in student violation shares i think we would want to have an exception if they shared with school leadership or the authorities that sort of thing i wouldn't want a student if a student received a video from somebody and

057say someone says hey look at but then they realize oh they should feel comfortable sharing it with the school authorities or law enforcement or pa do you see what I'm saying and we we did talk about that we do get a lot of information from student video that's not our primary but that that's not our intent is to uh incorporate student video in our investigations but in many cases when a student records something that on school grounds that shouldn't have taken place um an administrator can search the phone or ask the student to cooperate we don't ask teachers to search phones collect phones store phones um I think that that it's uh that's something we should avoid uh but it was it is something that would happen if a student has video that if that

058video could be used at that particular time um obviously deleted not placed on and if it's posted online then we definitely would use it um because it's already out there but in many cases we're not encouraging students to record other events and bring that information into to uh to administration um because the goal is to minimize the use unauthorized use of cell phones in the school uh regarding the uh cell phone confiscations the second offense administrator should contact the parent let them know they have a cell phone violation or have a means of notifying them of writing but i believe once a third offense occurs that parent should be aware that students already have to reach their cell phone violation so we'll make sure we have procedural pieces in place to make sure a parent

059is aware that a student has reached their second second incident i believe parents will be a little bit a little uh pleased that we did not want them to have to leave work in the middle of the day to come to a school to grab a phone um I think we're communicating with them letting them know what the policy is and procedures uh hopefully they will support us and ensure that they're speaking to their students um because this policy was adjusted within the mind and making sure that we are holding students accountable for their behavior but not having to hold parents accountable for their behavior additionally in the policy I do believe it states that that it says shared with other students or on social media so it was specifically talking about students sharing the

060information with each other it talks about others so we may want to clarify that sort of in how we implement it yeah note it note it yep another challenge make a comment and then a question so I want to thank dr parker and his uh and dr ransom for um addressing these words uh especially in regards to cell phone these were specific concerns that I had and I do feel like my concerns were addressed very well here especially the part about sharing on social media i do see that in the last four years that is really for me seems to have ramped up I'm not saying that all but there are some times when I've seen some videos and it looks like a fight was staged for social media clout students are engaging in various

061behaviors to gain attention and gain um notoriety on social media and so I think that this is something that we needed to address and i appreciate that we're addressing it directly in our cell phone use policy because i think it's it's it's important to the extent that we want to promote smart and safe schools one thing that harms our reputation is when someone is doing something specifically to disparage the reputation of the division especially recording something that potentially is staged and the question is in regards to this is certainly going to be somewhat of a cultural shift there was already our culture not to allow cell phone use during the school day but now this this being a point of emphasis i certainly would appreciate seeing some data on the number of violations expecting that

062probably at the beginning of the school year that's going to be a challenge and then but then as we uh get into the first and second nine weeks hopefully this will ramp down so i appreciate seeing some additional data or report on this as the year progresses okay are we satisfied yes uh so uh so I'm sure I'll say to to my to my end I'm satisfied uh one you know my major concern was cell phones and my concerns about cell phones have been addressed my second concern which was actually my primary concern uh we're addressing the community charges uh section that was added I want to appreciate dr parker that was you're very specific um appreciate the specificity that you gave to the community charges that where we would consider it a student to

063be a safety risk to to others in our general population and we actually listed one through 14 here of firearm offense homicide felonious bodily wounding criminal sexual assault uh schedule one control substance distribution uh arson burglary etc that we were very specific in the behaviors that would warrant someone being placed in alternate in our alternative education environment and that that that person that student would be automatically placed in that alternative education environment uh and then have the ability to go through due process and appeal so my earlier concern was that the student may be at their home school and then in the process of appealing and that that's a safety concern that's a safety risk for us and so I appreciate that that was very specifically addressed there and I want to say thank you

064to dr parker dr branson for specifically addressing those all right with that do we have a motion to approve the handbook all right manager I would like to move that the board approves the rights 2022 2023 rights and responsibilities handbook second any discussion let's call the roll dr best for mr brown for mr eley for mr harris for mrs aman for mrs Surles-Law for motion carry 6-0 thank you the next item on the agenda is section 4 action items and it is 4.02 approval of master facilities plan so dr parker yes ma'am so we asked our last meeting in july we uh wanted to have gift cooperative strategies yep opportunity to finalize their deliverable which is the comprehensive communication tool which is the master planning document that we will use uh and launch and work

065with the community on to move make make future decisions regarding capital are the capital needs of the school division uh mr mr fair heart is available if the board has any questions I think i believe that document was uh delivered to the board and uh we are asking for your approval of that master plan uh he'll be happy to share next steps once that uh once that plan is approved okay question I'll just I'll just make a comment um prior to it imagine we're going to take a motion now and I just want to make a comment that um mr harris sincerely I appreciate your leadership uh in this regard I believe this is essentially a dream come true for yourself because it's been a number of years i think since you first came on

066the board we've been talking about this and I'm very glad that we finally are at a point of looking at our master plan and approving it this is uh I believe long overdue in terms of what our division needs we have now a road map for a future it it will matter of course getting the funding uh to stay on the road but whether we get the funding or not we now know where we need to go and we'll know how far we need to go when we don't necessarily get all the funding that we need so I appreciate that we are now in a pro the division is now in a proactive stance in accordance with what we need for our capital and I'm looking forward to this really paying off uh when we

067passed our capital budget this year so I'm very excited about having this plan thank you all right do we have approval for the master facilities plan so I moved to I'm sure I moved to approve the facility master plan second any discussion let's call the roll dr best for mr brown for mr eley for mr harris this is aman for mrs Surles-Law for motion carries 6-0 and I'd also like to thank mr fairhearts uh for his leadership and and then the entire team for the meetings um that we we've attended making sure that um that this this came to fruition and uh we had now have a plan for improving our schools and uh and we will move forward with getting that committee formed uh and I think the council mr ferhart has given us

068a deadline of september 20 september 16th to enter our ci24 cip and to munis okay much earlier than we've had in the past but I will remind everyone right now our current cip calls for zero dollars uh for this upcoming year so I'll take the september 16th now that we have a master plan and we will make sure we fill in the dots for uh and and zeros for everyone and get that get that to the to the council by the 16th I will communicate with the board um via memo uh on that on that submission since we will it'll be a little bit before our next sport meeting and I'd like to also dr parker thank your staff and and and a lot of hard work that you individuals put in um and you

069know this product will work and the reason I you know was really pushing for it because it let everyone in the community know that the school division has put our best foot forward we have made it public to the public that this is not just our desires but this is our requirements and when you can present your requirement then you know we let the chips fall what they may uh but I'm very proud of the school division that we do have a roadmap that citizens can look at so um you know in this age now someone will say you know why is that building a hundred years old and no one did anything about it and everybody look at this road map they said well you know the school division put it out there you

070know years ago that this is what they needed all right so that's the reason thank you well thank you mr harris yeah and if I can just uh acknowledge two folks um scarlet mento and wade beverly their teams did yeah a lot of the heavy lifting any of the data points that you see in the presentation and the plan itself came with their teams thank you thank you mr spearhead right the next item is item 4.03 we have some new and revised policies dr parker we will take these individually so yes uh mrs brooks is available uh to uh respond to any questions and uh obviously mr wallin is always available the board has asked for some adjustments some adjustments and considerations for these policies so um if we're here to assist the board with

071any questions you may have okay i think we will start our approval process thank you i think that's the first time that brooks has got him I said it [Laughter] [Music] [Laughter] all right so the first one if do we have a motion for ija provision of textbooks to students uh yes madam chair I propose adopting uh policy revision ija provision of textbooks to students all right any questions please call the roll best for brown for eley for harris For aman for Surles-Law motion carry 6-0 okay and the next one up is ijl media center materials revised madam chair I propose adopting ijl with additional language that the superintendent would add subject similar to the following establish a procedure for one identifying all instructional materials with sexually explicit content to ensure a parental notification of

072any instructional materials with especially explicit content three proving parents to review all instructional materials with sexually explicit content and four ensuring alternative instructional materials that do not include sexually explicit content are provided in a non-punitive manner for a student whose parents will request and I've lifted this language from the legislation that has been recently passed that we will that I believe will have to adopt anyways and I will provide this a copy of this to the clerk but it's adding that I think that language adding language uh similar to in terms of the revision so I make that motion that we have you have a second for that motion I'll second that question procedural or point of order question should we move to consider the motion and then make a motion to amend the motion

073well douglas made the motion um mr oslot just simply asked about the policy but douglas made the motion so if there's a second to that motion with the adopt with the amended language then you can vote on that if it fails then you can look to them certainly if my motion fails then we would be back to the policy as written so I'm I'm but I'll second that I'm asking for an amendment so we have a second from the segment and discussion i have a question sure um what do I need to do to table it until we get the information from the state so we can look at that and then put it side by side and so I would um so if I'll just respond I would just argue that we already have

074the information the law has been passed there is specific guidance from the virginia department of education which may change because the guidance from the department of ed is in draft form at this time but either way the law has already passed and there already is a deadline that we would uh adopt a policy similar to what I'm proposing before january so what I'm just asking and i cannot speak for me um I'm just not as familiar with it because I would just like a minute to see a moment too just look at it the only question I have is correcting what you're saying i guess I would ask where then why didn't that amendment come from the administration or did it come to the administration yeah the school administration school divisions yes administration yes yes

075yes the law was from the administration we are just reviewing draft information from the vdoe we also are waiting for uh guidance from the vsba which is our policy providing body we actually pay the vsba to give us recommended policy for approval so without that information uh we don't know if this um if this guidance or or suggestions from either body will generate an additional policy or a separate policy so with that being said uh that is why we have not made a recommendation either through the policy committee uh or or a revised draft to make amendments based on the senate bill that was passed yeah it's not the fact that you you know you're not in good standing with the statement but uh for me uh madam chairman I would rather you know get

076the recommendation um you know from the uh school division and it's my first time actually hearing this so but it's just for a point of order you know I just want to make sure we're in in in order in order to uh you know to move forward now if it's mandatory then sure I expected us to come back and make the amendment and to my knowledge just by january 1 so yeah so we will make that we will make every effort to make sure we are in compliance as we always well I mean I don't think it'd be an effort I think it'll be if once once the law is passed then you should make the amendment you know if mr brown's uh motion doesn't pass or if it does it does but if it

077doesn't and you know it's law then we should make sure we set a date to amend it i mean bottom line we have to amend it in this case I think we'd be really prepared to do it soon because we we're having this conversation now okay so any further question before I would just like to add madam chair um we're in that sort of middle area where it's been passed but has to be adopted by january so we do want to be prompt one thing I have this kind of goes to the underlying motion but we're looking at you know them together I have been impressed with looking at the procedures that underlie the policy looks like we're really getting a comprehensive approach to if community members or parents object to materials in the library

078system we're going to have a very hopefully smooth concise process to do so and to have things reviewed which I'm very pleased by that and I think that's going to be of great benefit too but I do think we want to as soon as anything be it tonight or as soon as anything's finalized you know get those you know adopted okay further discussion so we'll take um a vote on the motion that mr brown made to add additional language at this time yes and seconded by miss eamon best against brown for eley for harris yes aman for Surles-Law against uh we have a tie so the motion fails what happens in that case so we go back to the original motion yeah all right so do we have a motion for the original language or

079as um dr best wanted to do as table we might need guidance on that but that is definitely an option that we can do at this point we can table the discussion uh and bring it back in september and make a motion that we table it and bring it back in september okay um can i offer a discussion point on that I don't know how quickly the administration you were planning to roll out the process for contesting materials but I think that is an important process to get in front of the public so if there are concerning materials that's a very good comment the procedure was written was revised and as I met with staff to review the initial proposed policy but the procedure is is the procedure we will follow um they are based

080on what we currently have have in place we just made adjustments to the procedure for handling a community concerned or or concerned with written material the pro the procedure can be implemented without the policy okay I was going to make sure we could do that yeah yeah that's going to be more common yeah and i also again I appreciate the board's input on the procedural piece too because I do believe that it's definitely improved I think it's a really good version of course so I wouldn't worry about that if we and we do have one concern I think that was outstanding that was reported that needs to go through that process so that will not slow down the process um okay with uh with this with this policy adjustment so do we need a second

081to do a table second okay i believe so second seconds we've got some seconds okay so johnny lee second this dr bass formally did uh she moved to table yeah I j l until september until september ijl till september and mr ely is second yes okay any more discussion I'll just bring up um as a yeah as a procedural uh concern if uh you know if we don't have the if we're wait we presumably we're waiting because guidance from the vdoe is not finalized at this time so I'm not sure that september is going to change then that picture and so if we're yeah so I'm so I'm not sure that uh waiting until september is going to is going to change that picture i believe that we're essentially in a position of either taking

082a um either taking a leadership position which we which we i moved away from there to now adopting a policy and then potentially having to revise the policy in december but um it would give us a little more time to just review um and it might be that in that discussion with dr parker and leadership then we could move to be able to adopt and adjust adjust and adopt in september and I'd like to say that as well I'm very um very happy with the procedure i think the procedure we have done a lot of great work has gone into the procedure and I do believe that the procedure is going to have us where we need to be but my underlying concern was that the will of the board is the policy and the

083board has not as has not explicitly stated what we intend for the superintendent to do regarding sexually explicit material in our in our media because that's lacking from the policy itself and that that's that's my that's my concern there thank you okay all right any further discussion then we will take a vote on table table until september best for brown against eley for harris aman for Surles-Law four motion carries 5-1 all right we will move on to section 5 reports and information here we are five point zero one mississippi school ready report did we have one more problem oh we have one more I'm all excited about getting us back to school all right we do have one more is ijk supplemental materials revised do i have a motion to adopt yes manager I'll make

084this one easy for you um i make a motion to adopt uh policy ijk supplemental materials revised second thank you both any discussion please call the roll best for brown for for harris or aman for Surles-Law for motion carry 6-0 all right thank you now to 5.01 the back-to-school ready report dr parker yes ma'am madam chair it is time to get back to school and it is customary for our departments to report out on our progress and readiness for uh for uh for the next school year uh so with us you'll have uh several of our presenters this evening it is a fairly extensive report but as always it has been customary to make to ensure that the board has uh information good information on our readiness for the start of school so we'll go

085ahead and get that presentation started uh with human resources like uh staffing this year is uh obviously something that has been in the spotlight so this is ferris thank you good evening madam chair Surles-Law vice chair dr best board members and dr parker as we know and as dr parker has stated staffing for teachers and bus drivers has been an ongoing challenge for many districts we had an increase in turnover this year which increased the number of vacancies to fill for some areas keep in mind that instructional allocation numbers will be a set reassessed once students return and we know and then we will know true enrollment once we have those numbers this will adjust staffing needs also not reflected our bus drivers for bus drivers we currently have 12 new truck train excuse me

08612 new bus drivers in training once they have successfully completed training they will reduce our vacancies from 92 to 80. accordingly increasing our percent staff to 75 percent for bus drivers additionally we are continuing still to give offers some of our staffing efforts include social digital media yard bus signs retirement solicitations international recruitment agencies job fairs sign-on bonuses which have been very successful referral bonuses incentive pay military partnerships and we have been also working to make ourselves more present and stronger in the local events in the community in closing I want to say thank you to the human resources staff for their continued hard work at this time I am we'll answer any questions you may have mad I'm sure I have a quick question um thank you for the update I just want to

087make sure I understand the numbers yes so for example if there are the bus drivers 92 vacancies and 22 and there were 19 hires there's 92 vacancies after the 19 hires like there's 92 vacancies remaining we still have 92 vacancies current and then the 12 will bring that down to 80. correct okay so we hired and so then we hired 230 teachers but we still have 280 vacancies it doesn't bring the vacancy down to 50. correct so remember and what's figured into this also is allocations so that's the other number that's not up here is allocations and also remember too when school closed we were we still had open vacancies that carried over in addition to the turnover that happened so that's also what increased that vacancy but I just want to make sure i

088understood how the hires and the vacancies and replays yes me thank you you're welcome we ask uh just in terms of uh what we're offering what is the starting pay for our bus drivers and what's our bonus this starting pay for bus drivers now is twenty dollars and sixteen cents an hour and we do have a two thousand dollar sign on bonus that we're offering and our starting pay for teachers and our sign-on bonus uh for because we do have a recruitment bonus currently still absolutely we actually have a few sign-on bonuses for teachers so first the entry level with no experience for teachers is the fifty thousand dollars and in terms of sign-on bonuses for certain critical areas such as special education english math and for school psychologists we offer until october a six

089thousand dollar sign on bonus that has done quite well we've actually offered 46 hires from that and outside of that in the other teaching positions are three thousand dollar sign-on bonus and that is through october the end of october or to the beginning of october so the six thousand is through the end of october the three thousand continues okay and then three continue so if I'm if I'm a teacher in another division and I'd like to come over no it's too late it's too late it's too late it's too late for that so anyone new to the area or anyone coming into the area military we've hired on some military spouses and they have teaching credentials yes they can we can hire them why thank you you're welcome at this time nancy carlson will come

090with the covert report good evening I'm going to talk briefly about covid in where we are for this school year as you can see our community level is still at medium we have 246 cases per 100 000 for newport news and we've stayed in the medium range we've been there for quite some time and the our surrounding areas with the exception of york county everyone in our area is also in the medium range moving on to kovid some of the changes that we're going to talk about we still of course have masks as optional for students and staff anyone who chooses to wear a mask may do so the only exception will be if students or staff develop covet like symptoms while they're at work or school we will ask them to put a mask

091on and students will be taken to an isolation room wearing a mask to wait to be picked up by their parents some of the changes that the virginia department of health has implemented for contact tracing and covid um right now quarantine is no longer routinely recommended for asymptomatic individuals who are identified as close contacts and this also of course aligns with the most recent guidance from the cdc that just came out we are still asking individuals who either test positive for covid or have code-like symptoms to stay home for five days on day six they can return wearing a well-fitted mask the change that vdh put in for that is that at or after day six an individual who is unwilling or unable to wear a mask may present a negative covid test and return

092to work or school without a mask if they're unable to wear a mask and willing to wear a mask and they do not have a negative coveted test then we would ask them to stay out for the full 10 days another change that again vdh and cdc both are aligning on now is that routine contact tracing will not be done on all cases we will work closely with the peninsula health district to decide with the local epidemiologist if we do need to do full contact tracing if we have a cluster of cases or an outbreak of cases in a classroom work environment or in one of our school buildings prevention strategies remain the same uh the best prevention strategy is to promote vaccinations for everyone um continue with the physical distancing to the greatest extent

093possible we are still offering the bionx now at home test kits to our families and staff that has went over really well um I just received a shipment today so we're going to be set for the beginning of school so that anyone who would uh request to have one will have those available of course ventilation hand washing and respiratory etiquette and staying home if anyone doesn't feel well and cleaning and disinfection and then my last slide uh briefly addressing monkey pox these stats are as of yesterday 190 cases in virginia as you can see the eastern region we have 28 the mean age is 32 and the uh under 20 really is the stats today said that really applies to 18 year olds doesn't affect school-aged children at this time and of course we will

094watch it and and address it as as needed any questions any comments i just have a clarification question if somebody needs to do the negative test result can I know a lot of families have a number of tests at home can they do a home test and take a screenshot of it do they have to go to a clinic how do you know they can do a home test and take a screenshot and and send it to the nurse we did that last year when students or staff go home with coveted like symptoms and they test negative they can return earlier than the five days showing the negative test to the nurse or to myself if it's you know somebody outside of the school building okay thank you you're welcome I'd like to introduce mr

095wade beverly executive director of plant services thank you thank you good evening indeed this part everybody's waiting for plant services okay so uh we are having a record year this year plant services is currently engaged in over 110 projects that's a lot of projects uh they range from foreign to gym replacements to contracted projects to paving as you can see hvac casework at two schools uh we're still working on solar projects at three sites and doing a couple renovation projects so I'm going to kind of share some of those with you uh hvac replacements as you know we're doing eight esser project or sr funded projects uh bc charles should come back with bid in two weeks that will go on the list and saunders is not as a project it's on the list because

096that's a cip project for this year so uh the gatewood work senior center project is coming along so as you know with lead times and materials and getting them delivered there has been some challenges with this summer's workload uh huntington middle school cottage I'm going to talk about that in a little bit I've got a slide for that gem floor refinishing replacements at woodside and ella fitzgerald casework replacements at greenwood and katherine johnson are complete we've done a punch list and so the great thing is everybody all classrooms have all new fixtures with bottle fills and the place looks great uh restroom renovations at deer park sedgefield carver as you know that project was kind of put on hold last year we're doing it this year uh just it's a time and thing if we

097can't start and finish it probably best to move it forward and uh deer park is done and we're in the process of doing uh walk throughs and punch lists at sedgefield carver paving projects uh as you know we do a lot of them every year one that's kind of been in the limelight is yates we're going to be putting in an additional drive out to uh try to help with traffic congestion there it's it's just it's a it's just deadheaded you know when teacher parents come in staff's coming in buses are coming in so we're going to try to split that up so it's a smoother flow solar installations are in progress at woodside heritage and the gildersleeve admin proj solar has been approved engineering is done so we'll be starting you'll start seeing progress

098with that back there and just a bunch of electrical panel replacements uh tank on-demand tankless water heaters and our continued initiative to save energy uh roof replacements at rich neck and macintosh uh they're going well uh rich neck if you go in the back of that you might want to take a four wheel drive with you storm water upgrades at rich neck and mcintosh and if you go by there you'll know why we need to do that uh so just to share some pictures uh this is hide woods uh jumpatorium and as you can see the old is on your left and the new is on the right major difference it just looks different brighter uh some summer projects around the division uh that's hot woods cafeteria ceiling replacement in progress and in the middle

099is debbie high school track resurfacing we did this one and we did the one at woodside and we're going to continue our efforts to get around to all the high schools to get the track as we can get to them and afford to do it kiln creek that's what the 400 section a lot of people know it as the outback wing and so here we have the rich neck roof replacement in progress a picture of the new hand wash in the restroom at deer park and that is solar on katherine johnson and the learning cottages and heritage um power gets hooked up tomorrow at one o'clock we like kind of you know i think all the time we can get uh but everything is kind of back on track the trailers were about a month

100late getting delivered due to truck driver difficulties and then we had issues with electrical and so we worked all that out and it appears that everything is going to open on time and that's great so electrical will get hooked up tomorrow cleaning will take place thursday furniture will move in friday and teachers will walk in hopefully monday morning so right on time and with that being said is there any questions how many trailers is it again it is ten ten classrooms actually it's uh it's eleven it's nine full classrooms and two uh splitting in the middle so it gives them kind of an administrative site uh a smaller breakout room and then nine full size classrooms and will heritage I mean huntington that's where all their classes be taking place at I know the eighth

101grade just eighth grade um and so if there's not any more questions um one one just one thing okay i like I like being transparent did you speak to that that project I think we were delayed am I correct the yates uh yes the yates due to you know when we got the funding and everything else a lot of engineering works got to be done surveying work's got to be done there was just no way to start the project this summer and so what we're going to try to do is to work it in if it doesn't have an impact on the parking lot itself we're going to try to go ahead and get the drive aisle in before winter gets here and then right after winter we'll hopefully get the the additional section poured

102and get it in and then try to open it up if we can spring break but worst case scenario it will be completed by summer of next year but that's our goal right now is to try to get most of it done and get it in by spring break or close to that thank you if there's no more questions I'd like to introduce dr barnett with school leave [ __ ] thank you good evening madam chair madam vice chair members of the school board and dr parker i am extremely excited to share some exciting news about the new happenings at huntington middle school please mr wade walk away with my flicker so maybe you're gonna have it thank you michelle i appreciate it as I said I'm extremely excited to share the new happenings at huntington middle

103school for the 2022-23 school year with the addition of the eighth grade level huntington middle school will now house sixth seventh and eighth grades the addition of several new courses gives huntington's eighth graders a unique opportunity to earn several high school credits these new courses include jrotc french one principles of business marketing and digital applications in addition to the courses already offered such as algebra 1 geometry and spanish giving our huntington middle school students a great jump start with the expansion of the principal's leadership team student support team and security team each grade level at huntington middle school will have an assigned assistant principal professional school counselor and security officer additionally a student support specialist and family engagement specialists have been assigned to our middle school viking students to support social and emotional learning as

104well as engage families in the academic programs during these critical transition years for our middle level learners in addition to the expansion to the three grade levels at huntington middle school it brought forth the need for additional classroom spaces as mr beverly shared in response to the needs secured learning cottages with nine classrooms and two office spaces have been added the learning cottages will be equipped with the security swipe card system for entry and exit and to continue providing a smart and safe learning environment the security team has been expanded to nine officers assigned to the heritage huntington school campus with three officers dedicated to huntington middle school finally huntington middle school continues to make family and community outreach a priority to keep families informed this summer of the new happenings at the school the

105huntington viking team has participated in the southeast community day has made a community bus tour with stops at the boys and girls club and dory miller and neighborhood bus stops have communicated on their websites and social media pages and hosted meet our team events at local businesses also I'd like to share some information around back to school student schedules orientations and open houses for our k-12 students as we approach the new year students and families will be able to access student schedules in parent view and student view by monday august 22nd schedules will also be available for our students at orientations and open houses families and students will have the opportunities to meet teachers at our open houses that will take place in our elementary and middle schools on august 25th additionally our virtual learning

106academy students and families can visit with their teachers on august 24th and 25th as well as our point options students on august 26th we're so very excited to offer an opportunity for our students transitioning into middle and high school to participate in student orientations our middle school orientation for our sixth graders takes place on thursday august 25th and our orientation for our 9th graders takes place on friday august 26th finally back to school information can be found on our divisions back to school web page at that web page our families and students can locate registration information supply list open house and orientation information are school calendars and schedules bus stop information and breakfast and lunch menus this concludes my report are there any questions yes yes okay I have two questions um for the courses

107the new courses at huntington uh how is the sign up looking are students taking advantage of it absolutely our principal uh mrs griffin shared that news with the then seventh graders who will now be eighth graders of the opportunities for the um high school credit courses and so during the sign up time back in the spring our seventh graders already knew the schedules that would be offered the courses and were able to sign up for those high school credit courses so all of those courses made and we're very excited to be able to offer that for them okay good and my second question for the elementary and middle school orientation I see us on the same day what was the thinking kind of behind that yes our open houses did fall on the same day

108this year um however it is a window of about three hours and it is truly an open house format so families can just kind of flow through schools meet teachers and if they have students in other schools they'll have an opportunity they'll have chances later in the school year during the first market period to return to a back to school night format which is more of a formal program where there is actual presentations by teachers and by the school administration but during our open houses it's just an opportunity to flow through and see your teachers and so you're able to visit more than one school if you need to and just one more and I'm kind of asking for teachers what's kind of the thought to accommodate teachers because that was just some of the

109conversation when do we go with our child teachers that will be in middle school or elementary is that some conversation well often times when teachers have events for their own children they're able to work it out with their school leadership so that we always put our teachers as well first for attending events for their own children and so school leadership at particular schools will work with teachers if they too need to attend open houses for their own children thank you you're welcome hi thank you I have a quick question it just the french one kind of came to my mind because it's being offered to the eighth graders are they going to be able to get a euro french one in eighth grade is it going to be double blocked for them they are able

110we do offer french one in spanish one to eighth grade students we also in newport news for our middle schoolers offer either spanish 1a that they can begin in seventh grade and then take the second half in eighth grade spanish 1b in the same for french but the french one or spanish one course is a full year course offered to eighth graders okay and is there a thought i want to say at some other middle schools that wasn't necessarily available for say the french is there a thought of maybe giving an option for getting it all in one year depending on how this goes at huntington yes well the a lot of times we build a course offering based on the request and so based on the request there are enough requests for fridge to

111be offered and so because this will be the first year is often in the one year course and there are a few other schools that may also offer that we do offer spanish one more frequently in our middle schools but it depends quite often on the request that students make at that particular school and how we build the courses that are offered at the middle school thank you any further questions at this time it is my pleasure to introduce mr wayne santos executive director of technology evening manager vice chair boarder dr parker so real quick like to highlight some of our technology initiatives as we get ready to roll out and go back to school uh top of the list is the one-to-one device rollout as we continue with the devices each device for uh

112for each student what's new will be our synergy device integration uh with our roller devices we look to harden and button up how we do accountability of these devices and I'll speak to that a little more as we get into the presentation um our online learning system metrics uh what we're doing simply is uh being to take a look at what top application students are using uh during school hours and after hours so we can get a gauge of what they're using more frequently some cyber security improvements as well in terms of how we harden up our policies with passwords mfa just making sure that we're buttoning up what we're doing from a cyber security lens to make sure we're safeguarding data our cloud migration and then our interactive flat panel installation with the view

113sonic flat panels that are going into elementary schools so one of the key initiatives is our one-to-one device rollout so I'll just start with kind of july what we wrapped up so our summer school device collection out of the 949 devices issue we've collected uh 890 um and I'll speak more to those metrics I'll give you a further breakdown here shortly when we get to the next slide what we have going on now is how we're going to plan to do our device distribution plan and this is our tentative schedule that we've put in front of school leadership so they're tracking we've let the principals know the date that we plan to roll out these devices so they can anticipate when we'll have tss on staff to pull the devices and allocate the resources as

114needed to ensure that we have the devices to issue on day one of school you see the high schools the 30th through the first middle school and elementary will be taking care of the 6th through the 9th the light blue areas are what's new for us so as you look at the synergy device integration uh synergy's not new the system has been doing it but the device integration now we're allowing to use the one to one plus which is our device accountability metric is how we uh inventory each device what we've done is built a plug-in that allows the one-to-one device to speak to synergy then what that will do is provide teachers and building administrators access to the device information so they'll see what devices students have how many devices students have have they

115been lost and that's new for us to speak to some of those benefits of synergy the plan is to make it part of the withdrawal process partnering with the registers and the tss is to push alerts via synergy uh when they're alerted that a student will be uh disenrolling from the school and our end state with going in that direction is hopefully that we can minimize the amount of lost devices at least from the withdrawal portion and I'll speak to those statistics so we've also let the principals know that as well so not trying to push an additional task to the registers but partner with our tss in the building that way we can get out in front of losing devices with regard to that also what's new is the cyclic inventory uh in the

116same direction with buttoning up how we do inventory process with one-to-one devices we'll be doing our cyclic inventories one in december just to see where we are from a metric perspective one in march before spring break and then our final june completion to just make sure we're staying in line with making sure we have accountability for these devices of note our virtual learner academy students because it's not allocated there for distract device distribution uh they will receive their devices prior to the start of school because they'll need those so the anticipated day is the 26th and they come back as well summer school collection I just want to highlight these numbers a big win for us um as of 8 august because so I think it originally ended on the first when we looked at

117the dates and I think we we had raised it six percent from there so originally I think we were around 87 percent uh we we pushed out some letters we made phone calls for the students that didn't turn into devices got it up to close to 94 uh of the devices that were collected so a win for us of the devices that were missing majority are returning students to new news public schools so what we've done is develop a process where we'll be uh issuing letters to the parents that are missing the devices encouraging the students to bring those devices back to the start of school for the refresh and then also kind of coupling the invoice if they don't plan to to bring those back so I wanted to just kind of key in

118on those numbers the next slide is the holistic chromebook inventory for the end of school year so that was the end of 22 we collected 92 percent uh similar to the summer school breakdown uh that we have identified the students who did not turn in those devices so as we do our one-to-one rollout the plan will be to verify or validate that they brought that device back and the ones who didn't we're issuing letters to the parents right in terms of how we're approaching how we're hardening up and buttoning our inventory process so we are pushing our device letters to the missing devices pending any questions I'll be followed by uh kathy alexander with child nutrition mr brown yes uh one question is uh of course now that we're tightening up our inventory process and

119I think this is probably very similar to child nutrition where there's just at a certain point there's a percentage of students or families that we've worked with but we're not going to get the device back and so can you speak to do we have a policy already or we started thinking about what our procedures are going to be for either recouping the asset or recouping the money for the asset so we have invested in insurance uh for loss and stolen devices um that was something that we uh anticipated uh as a uh as an invention we we're very pleased to see that we have high percentages of device turnover and allowing to refresh um but we also understand that at some point you have to be accountable for damaged um just like a textbook when

120we gave out textbooks if you know you dropped it in the mud or kept losing books or those kind of things they they do accrue some cost uh that is the ac that is the device that's used to access instruction uh similar to what a textbook would be so there will be um will be um collection efforts made to that and with with any collection efforts whenever you run into a family that has some financial constraints you can do several methods of payment you can actually set up payment plans you can do other methods to try to collect uh collect uh some some or all of the that funding um but that's going to be uh the challenge moving forward is to to put that level of accountability in place the insurance is there because

121we obviously have to cover our losses okay uh to make sure that we um that we are our uh are being fiscally responsible with our with our funding is there anything I'm missing there yeah so this will be the first year we actually issue invoices and the hope for the invoice is really not to have the parent pay for the device but to encourage them when they see the invoice to encourage them to have that student return the device so this would be new when that comes in the mail then now they know a lot of times from a lack of just a break in the communication channels that maybe they don't even know that that student still has the device at the house right so as we look as we talk about buttoning up

122that process part of that those processes are us issuing that invoice as well okay and then that'll go into the my payments plus app they could they could because they could pay it that way or um is it were we doing the regular check in the mail type of not necessarily oh that's a that's a good question we have anything yeah several questions check it check in the mail last question just just a logistical one you know in terms of like the you know find my phone do we have that technology on these devices where it could be a long period of time right but eventually say hey you know what i did I know you can't find it but we can see it's at your house yeah right so you just bring it back

123the battery has to be operational yeah yeah so so we don't have to find the chromebook device but we do manager do the uh you don't you know it's not on no not but they're not apple devices okay so all right but we do manage it right so do the google console essentially if they don't bring it back then just paperweight because they can't use it right so it would be off the network so unfortunately we don't have that to say we can ping this and this is where this device is which would be excellent for digital transformation we're just we're not there yet all right guys um we would definitely like to move in that direction we're just not there [Laughter] additional questions uh mr santos just one question I think a board member

124had it for me that I wanted to just make sure you mentioned this publicly there was a concern that students may be accessing uh inappropriate sites at home when they're on their own website could you speak to that concern yeah absolutely so like I said because we're issuing all google chromebooks we manage that we have access control lists in place through the google admin console so we manage what they can and can access so the parameters are in place to prevent them from accessing any type of inappropriate websites at least to the to the level of which we can right so we know what you can see so you can't get to let's say a porn site or things that nature but you can get to youtube and i can't govern if youtube isn't coded

125correctly right if it says dance song and then the dance video that you watch is inappropriate we can't govern that but there are controls in place that prevent students from going to inappropriate websites and just to follow in that a parent could request lock my child from youtube on this device could they make that request if that was something that was a a problem for the family they could make the request um we'd have to see how we do that and just put a we'd have to talk to our team our information team to see if we can put a particular access control list out to individual students I mean we control the mass list and youtube is on it because what we can govern is are they using it for educational purposes see what

126I mean so it's kind of how they're tutoring yourself in certain ways so we could d we can do a deep dive on that mr brown and see you know what it would look like in the event that they want to have a specific website addressed or blocked and see how do we get to that point if that's your question thank you yes just to tack on to that I think you can set youtube up so you don't get explicit material but again if it's indexed raw right it's sold and it's set up that way so we don't even have to set it up where it has to block and appropriate because we've already set it up that way it's just based on the index that it could be inappropriate where you talk about tying

127the threads between what's on the actual video and how it's titled and that's the part that we don't control questions thank you for clarifying that thank you thanks for getting us up to speed thank you thank you good evening i first want to start talking about our summer meal service that we did this past summer we served breakfast and lunch at all of our summer learning sites we served lunch and snack at all of our park parks and recreation sites which included five schools and four community centers and these were all open sites so folks from the children from the community could come and take a meal as well on january 18th we were granted the waiver to do grab and go so we quickly got that up and running and we launched that at

128where parents could come and drive by and pick up meals they did the breakfast and lunch or lunch and snack whichever site they went to and we also implemented three bus sites in the community so what's happening this year for the last two years due to covid we've been serving under summer program which means all students are free that will continue because we're under community eligibility provision under the national school lunch program but what happened in summer that's different is that we could just count children with a clicker now they're going to have to put their numbers in um and run under the national school lunch program so for elementary and middle middle schools we are doing a grab-and-go breakfast where they can come in and go right to the classrooms they don't have to

129punch their number in for that but for all schools for lunch we'll have to and then high school meal service they will come to the line for both breakfast and lunch and we've encouraged that for breakfast because we saw a large decrease in participation and we're offering more choices that we can't do in a grab and go and so all students will have to put in their id numbers we are piloting the car those cards that the kids are going to have to wear in the lanyards we're piloting that and two schools where they come to the line and we just scan it with the scanner and so we're hoping that will be successful and we can get that up and running soon in all schools that way the students won't have it'll speed up

130the line service quite a bit and then we're off trying to offer some more choices this year last year we did an offer we scaled down quite a bit due to covet and we were delivering to the classroom and those types of things so we're hoping to kind of get back to um pre-codedness with our meals can I answer any questions yes thank you so much for your presentation um we get this I know I don't I'm sure other board members do too about the the the food being attractive the food being tasty and I know we they had the initiative with the government with healthy food are we doing anything to make the food more attractable for kids to want to eat it or more tasty I know sometimes i was talking to one

131of the cafeteria workers and they were saying that it's the way the food is pre-packaged or pre-cooked where it may look burnt or maybe look tasteful and as a result of that a lot of time the kids especially the pizza the cheese doesn't look like cheese it looks mild so is that have we looked at other vendors or other ways to make the food more attractive I mean we have area supervisors that are out in the schools every day you know helping our managers I mean I i think they do a pretty good job with their specific examples you know we can always check on that um we are implementing our salads again which we did not do you know coded um we're not doing salad bars again not yet but we are doing salads

132and we're doing more choices so I think the quality will be a little bit better we were delivering some meals which you know when you're packing up 400 meals and delivering to classrooms it's bound to get a little cold um that type of thing so but you know I encourage everyone to come try school lunch and see what you think [Music] do you have to in your selections like can you go to another event I'm just asking or with for the type of funding that we receive you're limited well we're limited and that's a good point like what you're saying maybe like we can't add salt and butter today I mean we're limited nutritionally what we can do all of our products are whole grain um so you know that adds a different that some

133students aren't used to eating at home like our hamburger buns and that can be I mean I think it's come a long way but as far as your question if there's a pizza that is not going well we certainly can switch to a different kind of pizza i think I'll make one one comment as board members or I could just say as individual as a board member I don't get very many compliments in the community but surprisingly the one compliment that i have received from many parents and community members is they're very thankful for our their our lunch program and uh have actually thanked me for uh their child being able to breakfast and being able to eat lunch so i just want to say that that is something that has been um very well

134received by a lot of people that we have a no-cost uh uh lunch for a lot of students and that that's made a big difference for a lot of families that's actually one thing that parents are thankful to me about so well you know I think one good thing would be to show what we ate back in you know versus what they're getting out of here it's a pretty good deal you know you get oatmeal and and cheese sandwich and you know you only wait so no seriously uh you know you got doing a great job when I remember we started the program you know free lunch program a couple years ago I've heard nothing but great great things about it and whatever the case may be because I think at the end of the

135day you know parents want you to just have something now available you know in case they miss meals at home and I guess we can you know deal with the rest later but you know beats oatmeal every day [Laughter] thank you and I'm happy to introduce executive director jacob good evening madam chair Surles-Law vice chair dr best school board members and dr parker as you heard earlier from mrs farish we're still being still being short on bus drivers we will begin this school year uh like we did last year with some hours being much longer and doing playing double backs unlike years past we this school year we will mirror our routes uh to get to the greatest extent possible this will give students the same driver in the morning and the afternoon and we'll

136think that will help with the bus management for those students we will start the school year with 125 propane school buses out of the 324 300 turtle excuse me 300 total uh buses that we have 340 total buses that we have by the end of the school year we should be running 142 propane buses with the 17 that we ordered earlier this year when they come in as for services this will be our seventh year doing here comes the bus we encourage our families to take advantage of this free technology to be able to identify where their student bus is located the app is available on ios and android devices and also accessible on the internet bus stop information will be made available by the close of business on august 23rd families can access bus

137stop information through a variety of sources to include district website parent view student view and at their respective school open houses transportation personnel will be available at school open houses to assist with any questions parents may have routes routes are locked in starting august 22nd any bus stop change request submitted after if approved will not be changed until after the first week of school child care requests can be made online and at your school on a district page families can find multitude of frequently asked questions to assist them bus safety and rules are available on the district website we as their parents review this information with their student prior to school starting we continue to utilize our yellow card system for our pre-k and kindergarten students for the first day of school we will allow

138parents to use their id to pick up their students but will enforce the use of the card after the first day and without further delay on september the 12th we finally start the student ridership program called t-pass student ridership helps us helps us to identify real data for improved planning decisions provides opportunities for stop consolidation identifies ridership trends and provides data for state reporting t-pass will allow us to get the right students on the right bus as miss excuse me uh t-pass also works when in conjunction with here comes the bus app so it's not an added thing to them it's another free service so now you can locate the bus and also whether your student got one off the bus at the right location in addition to expanding the car use that miss alexander

139talked about this is the car she installed the t-pass using the cafeteria we're also able to use it in the library we did a pilot of the program in five schools last year and the principal from booker t he was able to use it in a library for kids to check out books so we're trying to make this not just a transportation solution but a total school solutions for some other things parents can go online to review frequently asked questions for more information on the student ridership program we ask you to ask for your patience as we deploy this program throughout the district there's not reefing any questions I'll ask what I think is the uh you know an obvious question all right I lost my t pass uh yeah yeah yeah it's a first

140day school already they think they lost we try to give a couple days grace so you may be able to find it so we're not over we're printing cards because all the schools have will have the have the capability of printing cards at their location so we give like a three day 72 hour grace period that student can you know in the morning you had a bus that we're going to put you on the bus in the afternoon and we would like them to have a pass to get onto the bus so the driver knows okay this student belongs to my bus and get them off at the right stop so I can go to the i can go to the main office yes and get another t pass correctly that day and then in

141the morning when I can put my student id number right the driver can plug you in that way also yes so it'd be like a scan a scanning card yeah it's like a rfid okay so they give you the thing that sticks up again is that student just comes right close to it and goes and then tying the the data together because of course in terms of absence a parent I can see uh parent view my child is absent but in here comes the bus child got on the bus yeah can you talk about how do we or are we thinking about marrying that day-to-day together I know that was something that I use as a parent myself in questioning my child making the connection so can you is there any plans to you know

142get that data together or just use those two different apps like attendance I think we talked dr wheat talked we talked about that how we can evolve the program as we start with the the bus the cafeteria in the library how we may be able to use this technology for attendance for schools so that's something we did throw out there and just see how far we can get with this program so something that has been thought about we use it with attendance two questions one uh thinking about this and how we might use it in other ways are we thinking about also giving it say a student doesn't necessarily ride the bus but they might be able to use it for all these other reasons so when we did the first start we're going to

143do the program and the equipment didn't come in last year but we had all the cards made for all the students in the division so every student during that time frame when we got the cards made last year they have cards there will be some kids because they they're new to the school system they won't have car yet so everybody that was on that list last year they all have a student they will have a card um that to use so I might the card is is also you can use it it's not germaine to uh you know denby high school it's for everybody so if you go to another school you might not be transportation eligible in this school but you go to the next school you can use it and then with the

144cafeteria that just kind of enforces to bring everybody needs to have the card so they can go it's almost like your student id right so you can go yeah and I guess the other question as a as a parent I got the notice to fill out the in parent view the transportation questionnaire to see if you're going to take and I was just curious um a you know what kind of response we're seeing to that to you know versus last year as far as a greater demand for busing versus last year but also just to sort of bring it up uh for anyone that didn't see the message or hasn't checked their parent view um you know it might be helpful if they are able to take their students to school with the bus driver

145shortage that might be over we got over 10 000 responses which really surprised we got that many responses 10 000 responses with the survey where people would go in and say whether they want transportation from to and from or just to school or from school so the sponsor that they helped us to when we're looking at who you know size and buses the right way to kind of get some of those kids off the bus or make sure they on the bus so it's just something we tried out as a pilot and it's something we you know in the future we would like to go to as we uh short resources and with drivers we have the buses just not the drivers looking at people to opt in to transport say I actually need it

146instead of planning for everybody who's actually eligible for transportation for the here comes the bus app yes if there is a substitute bus driver on another bus is the technology set up so I would still get the same message or the driver goes in and puts if they're going to do they need to do it before they start the route sometimes it happens when we're doing a double back or I have to split a route in half and that kid you know we got these many kids it's hard to put in the system i got two different routes on my bus so if if a driver puts in the the actual the route number into the system before they start the route should do if not the technology just doesn't catch up fast enough to

147let you know that's the bus and I appreciate that because I can share that now I can articulate that but i just want to say transportation last year summer school excellent job I had some special parents that called me like six o'clock in the morning when the buses do not come and I had to deal with your staff it was okay but they were always very professional very polite and gave me the information that I needed and even though everybody wasn't happy all the time I was satisfied and happy with the way that they did their job giving the resources that they had so i just wanted to let you all know I think they're doing a good job thank you yeah i got one last statement uh have we seen a decrease in the

148bus bandits passing buses no with the cameras that we haven't seen a decrease no no exactly unfortunately we have we unfortunately have not um and michelle price and the public affairs at newport news they're trying to do a campaign to kind of help us with that wow um we have some some parts when jefferson we have a bus stop in jefferson avenue that's actually the highest for this event that we use it's the highest in the country period so uh we've been uh we've been working with the company our vendor yeah and with our city partners to try to get different ways working with the police department right things we can do to get to bring down the recidivism of uh those people so bottom line we've been lucky that correct that nothing's ever happened

149yeah in our district so okay yeah um wow last question is just going back to the the ideas getting into I think are wow it's fantastic that we have this id that's going to be a kind of universal term behavior um in terms of our handbook or procedures that we've thought about what if I'm the student and I just I lose it every day so what about what about the i am just thinking about what the one kid okay you lost it yesterday you lost it again today so if we have some procedures in place for disciplining the child if you know at a certain point after five lost cards uh going to do something that's a you know and that's a good question what's going to happen as this evolves is we'll probably have

150um have to put additional procedures in places especially as we expand it right just going to the cafeteria alone is going to create um a whole new dynamic for them you know what happens to the kid who never comes to the cafeteria with d card he or she we're not going to deny the student meal but we have to obviously regulate it in some way so um I i think that's a question I don't know it you know and I don't know if there's a call but what kind of cost is involved in that but we're this is initial data since we're expanding this will be first year implement implementation as we move forward right yeah that i think at some point we will have to you know as it expands to other parts of

151the district and we'll look back on the and how many cards that we lose how many times we replace costs for students how much pull that out of the system to see and then we have to look at the cost that it takes us and you know once the card you know we got them for a certain cost but the cost of making cards keeps on going up so we have to look at maybe a replacement cost for students who repeatedly lose their card but you can't put one in terms of public service announcement because I think I think there's a considerable number of parents who contact board members like myself and they had not planned on they plan on driving their child to school but then change their mind right and then there isn't

152a bus stop for them then we kind of get into a back and forth of them being upset um can you uh articulate if it's october and we don't have a stop you know what's the time period if we were going to add another stop for it traditionally it's usually you go into school to put a bus stop request if it's a stop there of course they can get on there but if not we usually take 72 hours from once you request we get it and get in the system 72 hours for that bus stop to be activated with the with the um the t-pass can you input the number as well though uh the bus driver the bus driver can input the the student's id number if they tell them because I was their

153student like douglas in high school we had this car and I lost that id card probably about like eight times dementia said you know what mr ely well john no more you just got to when you go to the cafe at that time in the cafeteria i input six two five five three so would that be an option for that child if they repeat offender they enter six two five five three that's the number they have and they stick with them because I just can't imagine the school division keep placing cards time after time after time after time again that'd be very costly well I mean one one thing we're trying to do is make it make it a habit so you I know I need to when I get on the bus I know

154when I need to to eat and it's going to take I think some time within the school division to do that I still remember the number six two five five three but thank you so much thank you are we good yeah we're good all right thank you so much thank you I'll be followed by dr meg lamont i think I'm warming good evening madam chair vice chair um members of the board dr parker I'm actually really excited to be here tonight because this report means that our teachers are back and our students are on the way and I know that me and actually the whole teaching and learning team we know that we are just ready to kick this year off um our focus for this year is really staying the course we're not going

155to deviate we have set the direction for teaching and learning for the past school year and this year our plan is to continue on this track polish the skills that we picked up last year and ensure that we are implementing the vision and mission and teaching and learning framework that ensures student and teacher success as we look at our plan we consider the instructional model teacher capacity and then really looking at the whole child the students mind body and soul in teaching and learning our focus is on the alignment of the written taught and assessed curriculum while this seems simple it's actually highly complex and it requires strategic planning and partnerships with our teachers with our building principles with our community and with our families at home and due to the complexity it is important

156to take a few years to stay that course not deviate and not any add anything new and this is overall part of the strategy in and of itself we are looking at three big um goals for the c in the c in the in the a curriculum we're looking at curriculum enhancements this year balance assessment and learner competency development this past spring we had an audit done of our curriculum to better help inform the revision process as we move forward through teacher and administrator focus groups and surveys written curriculum reviews a deep dive into our assessment alignment and classroom observation results of the audit were presented in june as a division we are seriously very proud of all the glows that were presented by the audit team and were informed by the grows that were

157offered we've been busy all june and july creating a strategic plan to enhance the written curriculum our overall year one priorities include clarity of language and the alignment of the written taught and assessed create and embedded embed instructional videos focus on essential question databases and we want to replace the current curriculum repository we've developed a balanced assessment calendar as we look to provide our students with learning experiences that expand farther beyond the baseline of state standards we understand the importance of assessment assessment for learning and assessment of learning our assessment calendar includes a variety of types of assessment including growth diagnostic measures predictive measures student performance measures and of course our state summative assessments instruction is a huge piece of the curriculum instruction and assessment model we are focused on many things but i will

158highlight a few few today we have an eagle eye focus on the profile of a learner competencies when we built our strategic plan journey 2020 25 we also created our profile of a newport news graduate we call this our learner profile we've made a commitment to our students to our families and our community to ensure that when our students leave high school they are prepared for work for college and for life there are seven characteristics we are focused on through the lens of foundational skills of creativity collaboration communication critical thinking and create in citizenship through a pk 12 educational journey our students will become leaders who are emotionally intelligent resilient academically strong equity-minded innovative in their thinking practices and reflective by nature we have begun a three-phase project in spring of this year we completed

159phase one we will finish phase two and phase three of the learner project by the end of the summer of 2023 the ultimate goal of the playbook is to create a toolkit for teachers and a communication mechanism to all of our stakeholders another exciting instructional priority this year is our istem or the stem expansion in newport news we have begun our first istem resource pilot where it's a fifth resource that will expand to eight of our schools this year and over the next years will expand to all of our elementary schools the resource edition is strategic in nature because it allows cross-disciplinary application and critical thinking that aligns with the learner competencies a designed to support core content while also giving principals another opportunity to reimagine the elementary schedule and hopes that we can give

160our teachers a little bit more planning and plc time there is a full curriculum for stem k-8 that was created and we have stem classes at all middle schools this year and we just updated our stem lab at ella fitzgerald there is a lot of planning and work also going behind the scenes to help our students gain those work-based learning experiences we have the expansion of our summer career pathways internships in stem library and driver's education we had newport news public school apprenticeships with our our plant services um we also launched our cooperative education that gave us a baseline moving forward cooperative education was pre-coveted it stopped during the pandemic and we're moving forward with that same project we have trained social studies and english teams that are providing service learning opportunities to our students

161and we trained our jrrotccc instructors on cte service learning as well currently we are developing a work based learning data collection to capture our work based learning experiences for students when we partner with our business community we will post those opportunities on one particular website for students to look at and they can apply right there and bypass all the other hoops of having to go to the counselor and things like that they can apply right online we're developing our first apprenticeship model and we're piloting that this year and we also have internship expansion to include many more departments and varied durations we have also expanded our gifted services to all of our elementary schools so in order to provide equitable services for students the gifted department is expanding the program model beginning in 20 of

162this year all elementary schools will have gifted classes for students in grades k through 5. as we transition the division wide gifted model the gifted service team will guide principals and staff with curriculum instructional and coaching support a phase-in curriculum integration will be provided for teachers throughout the year we've also partnered with average university to provide reduced tuition costs for their gifted education certification program newport news will take on 75 of the tuition costs and teachers will only have to pay 25 at the reduced price and lastly we know that we have a wide variety of magnet programs and specialty programs here for our students but the the most exciting or the newest i should say is our virtual learning academy we've expanded our enrollment to 484 students this year we are piloting at the

163elementary school and have full service in middle school and high school currently we have 217 high school students enrolled 170 middle school students and 89 elementary students the unique part I think the most unique part about the virtual learning program different than any other program across the street it's a hybrid model meaning that our students are online but they have that option for blended learning they can come in once a week to receive one-on-one tutoring small group intervention and remediation they have enrichment opportunities science laboratory experiments and they can be involved in clubs a strong professional learning plan we know is key to our student success so we focused last year on building a four-year plan we are in year two of this year the professional learning plan when you look at all the highlights

164and things we're going to cover it aligns with all of our instructional priorities we have four major areas that we're focusing on the rigorous curriculum social emotional learning blended and deeper learning and culturally responsive inclusive practices other opportunities we've expanded our new teacher model classroom which we're excited about and we have professional learning opportunity or communities that are continuing on for this year we also are having our first mandatory division-wide conference I know that i just want to give kudos to my team when i looked at them and said that I wanted to have a mandatory conference for 2500 people their faces turn white but never once did they say no and they have just it blew it up tomorrow we it begins august 17th and it ends august 18th and we have a variety

165of keynotes we have variety of sessions our sessions are delivered by our own teachers and leaders here in newport news we've brought in outside people outside consultants and we also have a surprise right around 10 15 tomorrow we have a comedian eddie i can't remember his last name but eddie b he is coming tomorrow to present to our teachers a little bit of humor to begin the year lastly we have many different ways that we want to provide supports for our students some of the major highlights that we have this year are academic and whole I've already spoken to the expansion of our gifted services we also have personalized learning available for our students through feb tutors which is an exciting model last year was for at home support this year it is high dosage

166tutoring they are taking our student data and they are looking at students who need recovery or intervention and we are going to do small group instruction in the classroom to maximize our learning time university instructors are also being utilized in a small group model at the elementary school to help our teachers with a push-in model so they go into the classroom and they support in small group we also are um just you know not practicing but really honing in on the student support team process we have all of that built into synergy to make sure that our sst-1 sst2 these processes are all streamlined and they are all documented for our students and communication with our families lastly we have the k-8 sel curriculum in place last year it was at the elementary school this

167year it's at the middle school we also have therapeutic day treatment in our schools for our students we have behavioral support specialists that are now k-12 at all of our schools not full-time in every school but they will be working in the schools with they will be assigned certain schools and then lastly we will have a rigorous attendance plan in place to make sure we have a mechanism for communication with families and making sure that our students find the importance of coming to school thank you that ends my report are there any questions i have just a quick comment and a question I really like the work based learning inventory it reminds me of almost a college career services type situation where you can go online and see i mean that to me is going

168to really benefit our students as we fill it and they can go into a counselor or they can look online so I'm really excited about that and then I just had a question on the maybe just to remind me on the virtual learning academy if a student is doing like like a remote class but then their other classes are in person are they counted as one of those students no those are our full-time students i actually don't I don't have the numbers on the number of students that are just taking a part-time class for the program with averitt university is there a target number of teachers that you have a goal for and are teachers currently enrolled or will that begin later in the fall or next semester yeah begins this fall um I believe

169we've communicated it don't quote me on that one we've put the communication together I'm not really sure if it's gone out yet that's through dr becker diet who's running our gifted education program and I believe there's students per cohort all right thank you so much and this concludes our back-to-school report for tonight nice job okay moving on we have the newport news of 5.02 newport news public schools employee handbook dr parker thank you madam chair uh so mrs as mrs ferris comes up to the podium this is not an item for uh necessarily needing approval this is basically a new product that we want a communication tool that we that human resources has led the work in emphasizing board policy state code and best practice making sure that we have a commun community communicated expectations

170for employee conduct performance professionalism in our and and obviously just giving them good information uh and a resource that they could use so uh hr has been working on an employee handbook for some time uh as the board approves new policy um as state code comes out a new new requirements come in place this this information will be updated periodically to reflect those changes mr church yes we are happy to announce newport news public schools has an employee handbook this handbook supports school board policy the handbook is a communication resource for all staff the handbook provides policy on ben provides information on policies benefits general information and direction to assist staff members with questions additionally it will increase staff learning to promote a cultural responsive environment and sets the stage for expectations of professionalism the

171handbook will be communicated to all staff posted under the employees link on the nnps webpage in safe schools ours training software on the hr webpage and in the next hr newsletter as dr parker said this is a fluid document so it will be updated on a regular basis and just as an example of some of the things in the handbook we have benefits compensation conduct attendance performance assessment and uh covet protocols just to name a few things any questions questions thank you sounds like a very nice addition one comment is you know thank you for pulling together a handbook i do think it's uh great to have in in most large companies where I've worked at there's an employee handbook and it's one thing to have our policies which are all on the web but

172another thing for all employees to have a tailored set that are copies in a handbook that they can reference so I i think as my you know my own experience as an employee I do find it very helpful to have a specific handbook and be able to reference a set of materials so i want to thank dr parker and his team for pulling that together and we and we hope this is a very good resource for the board as well as you sometimes you do receive constituent concerns uh you have an um employee obviously policies where you know it's it's uh drives uh dr drives many of our decisions but this is a resource not only for the poor for the employee but also for you in terms of sometimes addressing employee uh maybe employee

173concerns or guiding them to the right information yeah okay next on the agenda is 5.03 the construction report board members you've received copies of these reports are there any questions okay hearing none we're going to move on to item 5.04 comments by the superintendent yes mr chairman okay a lot of good information today and it's been a pleasure uh spending time with the board and uh hopefully uh you found some value in um many of the reports from staff I'd like to first start off by thanking our staff for the diligent work over the summer and and getting not only being prepared for school but also being able to communicate the great work that we're doing in terms of preparing for our teachers and our students and our families uh which we will be serving

174uh moving forward um as our leadership team has shared our division school and operation staff are working diligently and they're and we are ready for the start of school today our teachers and teacher assistants reported to work to prepare for the new year and last week we welcomed over 200 new and experi new and experienced educators to the newport news family across the school division schools are hosting welcome events orientations and team building activities this week to provide a festive return to staff for staff while the real work of preparing for the arrival of students is underway there's nothing wrong with having a little fun in the process congratulations are in order for our summer graduates the class of and on august 2nd over 50 students received their high school diploma during our summer graduation

175ceremony at warwick high school these students put in a lot of hard work over the summer to complete their graduation requirements our summer graduates are resilient and demonstrated a commitment to the completion of their studies we're truly we truly enjoyed celebrating with them and wish them well in the future I'd like to thank all of our students families partners vendors and sponsors who supported the southeast community summer celebration on july 30th at heritage high school newport news public schools joined the chief will dream incorporated ivy baptist church and the southeast community coalition in sponsoring this event for the community in addition to the activity zones the basketball tournament the gamer bus and community resources students received free school supplies and haircuts we hope to replicate this successful partnership in other areas of the city in

176the near future events like this really showcase the potential of partnerships between our schools faith-based organizations and community supporters again I thank everyone who made this event successful this year i also want to thank another one of our dedicated partners lifehouse newport news as part of their for our city campaign dozens of their members led beautification projects at four schools two weeks ago volunteers cleaned up grounds laid over 45 yards of mulch and used over 30 gallons of paint to spruce up walls and playground back blacktops at carver stony run newsome park and deer park elementary schools lifehouses also donated over 40 400 back-to-school bags to our students during a back-to-school bash at todd stadium thank you for for your generosity and support newport news public schools also was awarded recently a gun violence intervention

177program community-based grant of nearly 93 thousand dollars to support our two mentoring programs my brother's keepers and my sister's keeper the grant is uh presented was presented by the city of newport news in conjunction with funding from the virginia department of criminal justice services and the attorney general's office the goal of the grant program is to interrupt the cycle of violence among high-risk individuals in our community congratulations to our youth development department for earning this competitive grant just another reminder the new school year begins on monday august 29th i am looking forward to a successful school opening and I wish each of you a productive and rewarding school year those who are listening this evening and that concludes my remarks mr thank you very much and with that welcome back to school meeting adjourned [Music]