School Board Meeting: August 17, 2021

001well good evening I'd like to call the order the regular meeting of the newport news school board for tuesday august 17 2021. on behalf of the members of the school board and the superintendent I welcome each of you present and watching a quorum is present to transact the business of the school division the COVID 19 pandemic and now the delta variant continue to affect how we conduct business personal barriers are installed between the members of the board and our staff and visitors are masked and socially distanced in the auditorium we are taking steps to ensure the health and well-being of our staff and the public we value and appreciate your partnership we will begin tonight's meeting with an invocation and pledge to the flag here to do the honors is naisha white a rising ninth

002grader at woodside high school thank you for joining us miss white please come to the podium tell us a little bit about yourself before you deliver the invocation um my name is natia white and I am an uprising 9th grader at woodside high school for the theater magnet and um this year I just had my first experience at SIA also for theater um so today I'll be sharing my experience from SIA right as I came in I could tell that the environment was very welcoming and that it was like the perfect place for me to be miss sheehan smith was the perfect person to be leading the program because she always had something unique in store for students to complete um there was also mr kearns who was the first teacher that I met I

003enjoyed him very much he was my favorite um then there was also miss rice miss eason and miss hunter who all had something interesting to contribute to our learning experience I learned almost everything that you could learn about theater in just 12 days which was pretty amazing I learned everything from script writing to choreography which was amazing and the atmosphere again was very welcoming everybody was so supportive of each other and they all enjoyed everything and I got to make a lot of friends who started to slowly feel like family so the last day was really hard um and if I could recommend this experience to like all the students everywhere I recommend it 10 out of 10. this was the best thing ever that I could do so as I conclude I'd like to

004thank everybody here for listening to me and having me be able to have this experience so I can share this with you all and just thank you to school board for letting this opportunity still be available for us students to complete because you can learn so much and have so much fun at the same time and the arts really are something that you could use like for your daily lives it's not just something that's useless it makes us happy and it keeps us entertained and thank you for listening to me so now could everybody please stand for the pledge of allegiance [Music] I pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you well

005thank you miss white for those words of encouragement from our summer institute for the arts program so glad that it touched you and had a meaning for you joining miss white this evening are members of her family I would ask them to please stand and be recognized at this time I believe we have katie sheehan smith as well the magnet program administrator woodside high school and other members of the woodside family if you could stand and be recognized at this time [Applause] wonderful the next item on tonight's agenda is school board recognitions this evening we are formally welcoming welcoming this year's student representative to the school board Dr. Parker would you please join me at the podium yes sir fish all right miss patterson would you please come forward to receive your oath of commitment

006your family members are welcome to join you uh up here behind me as well miss patterson as the school board chair i have the honor and privilege of leading your oath of commitment if you would please raise your right hand please repeat after me i emailed c patterson do solemnly affirm the affirm that I will support the mission of newport news public schools public schools and will faithfully perform my duties as a student representative to the school board i will attend school board meetings and participate in board participate in functions functions i will serve as a facilitator to the superintendent's student advisory group on education i will contribute to school board discussion i will strive to fulfill the responsibilities of this position while excelling in my studies according to the best of my abilities ms

007patterson congratulations and welcome to the school board [Applause] yes so it will ask you just say a few words miss patterson a reflection and then we will stand in recess oh yeah we do floor is yours miss patterson please go ahead fill this position for the upcoming school year of course these um past couple of years have been unexpected and a challenge but it's been amazing to see how people especially behind the scenes have adapted and done as much as they can to make the school year beneficial for everyone and I'm very excited to be a part of that in some way and just learn the ropes around here and do as much as I possibly can to help and be supportive and next time I come here i will not get lost trying to

008find a bathroom so once again I'm very excited thank you wonderful [Applause] thank you miss patterson and now at this time as we normally do so at this point in our meetings we will take a restore recess so that folks who have come here as dignitaries can recess if they choose to do so at that time members of the public will be able to view the school board spotlight [Music] as the school year came to a close five newport news public schools were honored for their efforts to promote a positive school culture nelson riverside and sedgefield elementary schools along with hines middle and warwick high were the winners of the prestigious stand award this is the highest honor earned by schools for demonstrating a commitment to student involvement encouraging professional development for educators creating opportunities

009for students to build leadership skills and promoting a positive school culture by discouraging bullying and harassment based on these four qualifications a diverse committee of independent reviewers scored all submissions with these five schools earning top grades throughout the school year each of these schools went above and beyond in their efforts to creatively keep students staff and families engaged whether it was online or safely in person these schools are committed to offering opportunities and resources to ensure students reach their fullest potential academically socially and emotionally the stan prize patrol personally visited each school and surprised school leaders and staff with the exciting news schools received a banner to proudly hang along with fun gifts to recognize their ongoing efforts nelson and riverside elementary are now three time winners of the stand award warwick has earned the

010award twice while sedgefield and hines are both first-time winners this year and sedgefield's principal jackie barber is the first school leader to earn the stand award at two different schools congratulations to each of these schools as they continue preparing students to be world leaders and contributing citizens [Applause] at gildersleeve middle school teachers became the students for some fun physical activities while at the same time earning valuable professional development points towards their teaching license gildersleeve's physical education teachers adapted some of the great lessons normally taught to their students and offered staff members two four-week sessions covering bike safety and overall wellness through sports and play twice a week educators were welcome to participate earning one professional development point for each day they attended during the eight day bike safety course teachers learned how to inspect their

011bike properly fit their helmet use hand signals to safely communicate ride in groups and techniques for starting and breaking safely with more people riding bikes this was an important course to help teachers stay safe on the roads newport news public schools realizes physical wellness outside of the classroom is important for teachers to continue doing their job effectively as staff members increased their confidence and abilities they extended their rides into nearby neighborhoods as they geared up for a safe summer of bike riding with their friends and family before the end of the school year gildersleeve's pe teachers also hosted a four-week course focused on small group and lifetime individual sports along with other fun physical activities many educators they were experiencing these sports for the very first time including golf racket sports archery fishing and rock

012wall climbing the goal was to have fun playing with co-workers while providing social emotional and physical wellness one of the byproducts of these experiences was increased confidence and empowerment for the teachers as they shot their first bullseye or hit the perfect golf shot a living legend gave a recent newport news public schools graduate the opportunity to further her own legacy through stem dr christine darden one of the four human computers made famous in the hidden figures book presented recent heritage graduate morgan moore with a 500 scholarship the dr christine mann darden stem scholarship was created last school year in partnership with the nnps bloom empowerment initiative and the newport news chapter of the lynx incorporated bloom focuses on encouraging female champions to see themselves as world changers while the links sponsors the local junior chapter

013of the national society of black engineers morgan moore will be attending north carolina a&t state university in the fall with hopes of using her stem skills to become a data analyst the same job that dr darden first held on her skyrocketed journey to success getting children to attend school during a global pandemic was a major task for families to reward the dedicated preschool and kindergarten students who earned perfect attendance marshall early learning center hosted the great bike giveaway each week one student was randomly selected from those who are attending classes virtually or in person regularly the winning student from each week was able to pick out a brand new bike and helmet which were generously donated by community partners businesses and educators at marshall one lucky student even received the exact bike he fell in

014love with while browsing at a store students who submitted attendance through their nudge card were also rewarded with a gift card to through this creative initiative marshall's attendance numbers saw improvement as the year progressed families were overjoyed with the gifts but mostly proud of their students for staying dedicated to their own academic success by showing up to learn [Music] well welcome back we hope you enjoyed this month's school board spotlight during our regular meetings we provide time for 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 pandemics some members of the public may not be able to join us in person as advertised citizens may submit comments via a web form

015email 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 not to respond please understand that we will consider your concerns and get back to you at a later time we ask that you comply with our three-minute time limit as you begin your comments you'll see a green light will come on over there to the to the clerk's side a yellow light signals that you have 30 seconds remaining which means please wrap up your comments and a red light beep indicates that your time is up because we have a lot of speaker cards tonight we want to make sure that everyone respects the three-minute time rule so

016please uh comply with that as you cause you come up and as your name is called please come forward we do have more cards than then is a lot in this this 30 minute session but we'll uh we're going to try to accommodate as many speakers as we can with that in mind we've bundled the cards into the folks who wanted to speak specifically on our action item that's going to be coming up in an item four we wanted to give them a chance to make sure that we heard from them before we held our vote so the first card I have is guy and robin levy please come forward we may need to allow for a little time if some folks are in the hallway um to come come forward and we'll do I'll

017go I'm going to hold this card we'll go to the next card and if that as a speech and so while we're waiting for mr levy we'll go to uh john wright and then come back to mr levy john wright is here I believe he's coming okay and mr john wright you'll be you'll be next john wright will be next take your time I know it was a long walk sorry uh good evening and uh to the school board thank you very much for the opportunity to contribute these comments as the newport news school board considers transgender and other person defining policies please consider the purpose of our centers for learning growing good citizens this is not the first time and it will not be the last time that the school board is confronted with

018establishing policy related to inclusion based on students identity appearance ability belief and or social status the unit of measurement for assessing any of these policies should be kindness does the policy encourage kindness acceptance and respect for all students does the policy discourage exclusion disrespect isolation and bullying specific to human sexual anatomy and identification there are no clear binary pathways as we may have been taught in school our sex is determined by genetic coding xx for girls and x y for boys right what about x x y x y y x x y y etc there is also other genetic coding that contributes to the development of our sexual anatomy and identity from within our own human genome as well as from the genome of our microbiome our microbiome are the multitude of bacteria fungi and

019viruses that live and thrive within us and significantly influence the expression of our own genes our resident microbiome is more populated than the human cells in our body all of this is influenced by chemicals in the food we eat the water we drink and the air we breathe what do we know we know there is a systematic balance in our bodies which includes a combination of male and female attributes which contribute to our sexual anatomy and identification for many people some aspects of both male and female characteristics are expressed both mentally and physically our brain processes this information through millions of proteins that are exchanged and transmitted throughout our bodies leading to a status where there are people who do not align with what some consider are societal norms some people look male but are

020actually female look female but are actually male look androgynous and are male female non-binary any combination of the former sexual depravity has absolutely nothing to do with sexual identification just as sexual depravity has nothing to do with appearance ability belief and or social status we humans are complicated we are the children of god made in god's image we are closest to god when we do not judge our children but treat them with kindness and love please create policies that build a safe inclusive respectful and non-violent learning environment thank you very much thank you mr levy mr john wright good evening john wright I've raised three sons and three grandchildren and as of 10 days ago I have a great grandchild coming it upsets me that we may teach rather than just inform people about crt

021I believe all of us are created equal in the sight of god we don't need some professor 50 years ago coming up with a theory that changes that as to the transgender issue I've thought about this long and hard my bottom line is if my granddaughter were to come home and tell me that she had been in a bathroom with a man or a boy and had seen what he had I would have been very upset I hope I don't have to go through that but if we continue to give credit to this transgender issue we may all have our daughters and or sons subjected to something they should not be subjected to in the early years of their lives thank you for your time thank you mr wright our next card is neveret yarbrough

022and the card after that will be uh pastor russell evenson thank you my name is yarbo I'll be quick across virginia the rights of non-transgender students are being infringed upon the example of that is if a male teacher can be transgendered in sexual organs physically intact and this person can use the girls bathroom or locker room forcing a female student to see his private areas this is simply wrong the transgender believes he may be she or vice versa it is what he believes there's no science behind that it is his faith but his faith should not supersede any other there must be another way to protect all rights we made a pledge of allegiance this this morning we started with this I'm sorry this afternoon this evening I'm sorry uh we had a pledge of

023allegiance I listened to it we made a pledge was what is a pledge of loyalty to the flag into the republic of the united states of america and the states that one nation under god that's what it says that's what the baptist minister wrote many years ago and that's what they believe our forefathers believed if it is not so they should take it out and that's how I feel thank you for your time thank you mr yarbor pastor russell evanson my name is pastor russ stevenson I'm senior pastor at world outreach worship center here in newport news I reside at 103 wrestling ridge in yorktown I represent a congregation of approximately 1200 members many are here tonight filling these rooms and I'm proud of them I thank you for the opportunity to address you tonight

024with some concerns that we have with the virginia department of education transgender policies first I'd like to say that we believe I believe personally that all people have a right no matter what their skin color is or their sexual preferences they have a free will that has been given to them by the creator but our grounds for opposition to uh the model policies for the treatment of the transgender students in virginia's public school they have some real concerns for us number one it encourages the school system according to the law and the the policies of that to keep secrets from parents that thereby not informing parents of their child's best interest in the form of that while a child is at school they can choose their gender identity unbeknowings to the parent and as the

025school would have to deal with a parent they deal with the child according to the parents according to the child's birth sex gender on their birth certificate I realize the board you already have policies in place I've looked those up and I've read them most of them word for word and they're very good I encourage you tonight to stick with those policies that are already in place that guide you that direct you I think they're good I won't go through them because I think you're very well aware of them the family education program actually part of that says it it's based on the premise that parents should be the primary providers of the information and the values of family and human sexuality we believe that these children and youth they really belong to the parents

026they don't belong to the state or to the federal government number two parents should be not be parents should not be punished as abusers because they don't identify with their child's choice of gender identity we all know parents and we all know families have conflict within them parents and children I went through it in the 70s with my parents wanting to have long hair and then it was not cool and I got plenty of uh trips to the barber shop against my will to get my hair cut like my dad wanted it cut I rebelled and I know that happens in families and so you know this could possibly I'm not saying it would definitely it could possibly cause parents to be put in a bad light as abusers bringing child custody agency against parents

027for unnecessary causes and reasons thirdly the policy could possibly jeopardize the privacy and physical safety of all students as has already been mentioned tonight it's just not a good thing that they're allowed to do that draws more attention to uh the differences in people rather than the unity of them thank you for your attention tonight thank you pastor russell evanson the next card I have is effie ambrose ian bohr and the card after that will be frank broadwater good evening everybody thank you it's um efe ambrosi yimbo um I'm here to talk um on the transgender model policy I'll just highlight a couple of points um as a parent I would say adopting and enforcing and implementing this policy is akin to normalizing perverse sexual behaviors and lifestyle choices that are plain wrong um can

028you stand by and you know tolerate this I want to speak to the community in love but I wouldn't I would not stand by to tolerate perversion in the form of education to the detriment of our children and the community like a child allergic to certain substances availing the child any substance or item which the child is allergic to under the guise of a tolerant policy is tantamount to implementing this policy that we're about to adopt where do we draw the line do we allow it to reach such a level that the right hand becomes intolerable and we are banned from stating what is right so as not to offend would we as a community consider discussing this policy if funding were not an issue I know this federal funding that we're receiving the education

029system if we're not lacking funding would this even be considered in the first place um I'm not here to debate um a greyish um area issue where um relativism is in contention here this is simple it's clear it's plain for all to see our physical and morphological traits are not in question here it is very obvious or is there anyone in doubt as to what their gender is if you end up go to the bathroom in your bed they suit and you can envision what you created us I'm requesting an appealing that this policy be eradicated for the sake of the mental health of our children and words when we enable the wrong thing and embrace the wrong thing for so long amending it becomes a difficult um issue but it's not too late to

030turn the corner and turn the tide so I'm appealing to us this evening thank you and I hope you consider this thank you frank broadwater and next card will be colette munn good evening oh my god this lady and I we've had three daughters we have now 17 great-grandchildren 10 grandchildren and I tried to make my children street wise without them ever getting on the streets never to go to jail for any of them I educated them on the facts of life and I depend upon just the public school system but I'll say this here even though I'm a product of a public school system I know one thing that has become a great disease in america that's a disease called ignorance and it's based on choice we choose to be ignorant now unfortunately I

031believe many parents have abdicated their responsibility and ensuring their children know what they need to know otherwise we'll need to have better trained cops we need just better training students because their parents trained them well my point I oppose the transgender education because in my educational time in life I have done a lot of research and guess what I found I found that the first textbook this nation ever had was the bible I found that the law that act called the guess what the luger satan act 1647 in massachusetts they didn't wanted any student to be ignorant of the principles of the bible they're not but it required the parents to make sure the students learn how to read and to write unfortunately that's not being taught anymore that was in 1600 but guess what

032happened in 1800s we developed a form of education called the prussian form of educational system where the state dictates what's being trained at the public level so since then we've never had a public school in a sense we've had a government school run by the state managed by the public or local student cities unfortunately I don't think it's working that well do you guys might be doing your job well you are being directed to teach and provide information that the students have hence as a former educator temporarily I didn't pass my great so I didn't get my master's degree i was at a school not to name it that unfortunately there was some failure there they weren't promoting the republic the reporting the democracy which our nation was not built on unfortunately that's being taught

033and the more you hear a lot that lie becomes the truth I'm gonna close this comment here one great person says all motion is not forward just like all change is not progress and I would say this here if it ain't broke don't fix it the transgender education is taking rights from parents and now instead of a school where our kids go for education they have been indoctrinated please refuse except jiren ginger thank you mr broadwater next part of it is uh colette munn and after uh miss munn you'll be susan youngbluff good evening I am here to um represent my five-year-old granddaughter who is bright intelligent well trained at home and to find out that the doe wants to teach this agenda to our children I can't believe it I raised four girls that

034graduated from the new news high school high school system and so did I and I would like to say that I'm asking you to vote no for the lgbt agenda being taught to our children the majority of our students identify with their birth as their birth sex that we're born with why take this privacy and physical safety rights away from those that identify with who they are and give the rights and confirmation to the few who do not accept their birth sex some of those students identify even as others today I'm she tomorrow I'm it and tomorrow I might be a him and um I I can be a girl today and a boy tomorrow if they have um if they have their birth sex anatomy then they should use the bathroom of their choice

035whether it be a girl or boy in the locker room in the gym room not only that so now the school staff becomes the parent with all the rights and teaching of the deception and lying keeping secrets they become the watchers of the parents to find out whether the parents are mistreating the identity that the child is told that they are when they're at school and when they're at home there's somebody else um you can't even concern I mean you can't even be concerned with a boy going to girl's bathroom you don't ask you won't be able to ask him what is he doing there he just get the right to go there and we already know that you opening up a candle it would open up a can of worms all boys that might

036go in the girl's bathroom or vice versa will not be going in there for the reason to use the restroom so and to start this at k kindergarten level these children are innocent and they love everybody that brings on the part of teaching them that crt agenda that will only mask and bring out more hate and separation we already see what the separation is doing even with these masks that I'm struggling to keep around my ears you know how it's dividing the people this is not good the word um the our constitution gives us god-given rights god himself gave us god given rights and we as americans we're not ready to give up our rights we are still parents thank you next card is mr eric olenberger and after that will be todd gruber my

037name is susan youngbluff I ask that you do not vote yes on either proposed gender policy or procedure tonight this policy rammed through session and the model policy issued by the virginia doe was done without any thought or guidance as to how it will be implemented by local boards that was left up for you to do much like any recent legislation you did not get allowable time to thoughtfully contemplate your thought process hear from your constituents engage your teachers and staff or the public in general it rings a bell we'll pass it and then we'll deal with those particulars not any way to govern nor make vital decisions affecting our communities children my major concern with the policy is the delineation out of the myriad of gender-related terms added to the discrimination policies and procedures

038if passed this will be taken to court and the question will become why are not the other classifications delineated out do we need to list all the religions all the races all the colors that your children might be why does every classification not have pages of specific procedures unique to it this issue is not more or less important than any other parent or child in the school who may be discriminated against because they might be catholic italian or short this is political correctness you were elected by the people of newport news to oversee the education of our children so that they will become productive members of society and someday give back to a community I will guarantee you that no parent elected you to dictate the policy a legislature has passed or developed procedures about

039a personal issue that honestly is none of any of our businesses if there is no policy on a non-transgender child why is there a policy for a transgender child my second issue revolves around the fluidity of gender in your procedures and the implication for teachers who merely want to teach our children how to read how to add how to write how to learn science history and delve into arts the burden placed upon these teachers to not only face reprimands if they do not use the correct pronoun but also upon them to notify a parent not notify a parent of a child as young as four who may say they want to be a sex for a minute an hour or a day is unconscionable to me who in their right mind would teach and put

040themselves in that position and what parent would knowingly give up their right to be informed of the most personal matters for their own children perhaps at your retreat meeting last week you mentioned eight sessions of training for teachers another burden placed upon them taking them away from educating all our students I urge you to vote no on the proposed policy doing so would have no negative ramifications to the district like losing funding then the district can take the time to work out reasonable policies if necessary I implore you to look inward and not to politicians do what is right by all the parents and children of newport news because you believe it is right not because it's been dictated and that we should think and feel about any issue they tell us thank you for

041your time that you give to the community for stepping up to serve us thank you mr youngblood [Applause] all right just ready for me to start go ahead yes all right well hello my name is eric lenberger and I am here to address the model policies for treatment of transgender students coming up here I first want to say thank you for serving I know that especially in times like these it can be very difficult to serve in a public any type of public entity so I don't envy you that said I'm coming up here I'm a father of a little girl and no one in the entire school system loves her more than I do that is where I am coming from and that is why as I look through these policies set down from

042richmond I have several concerns three main concerns popped out to me those include the policies are vague making it hard to enforce uh the policies take control and consent from parents hands and in the policies I see a little evidence to show that affirming a child's transgender identity actually helps the child so I'm just going to read excerpts from this policy uh describe that emphasize my point and that's just how I'll roll so page 13 of the policies for the um confusing bit of it this is an excerpt for many transgender students their daily emotional and psychological wellness are dependent on receiving support and recognition from their gender identity a transgender student may adopt a name that is different from their legal name on their birth certificate and use pronouns reflective of their gender identity

043many transgender students will adopt the gender pronouns typically associated with their gender identity for example most transgender girls will use she her hers pronouns while most transgender boys will use he him his pronouns there may be a less common pattern of pronoun usage among non-binary students non-binary students as well as neutral pronouns such as they them there or z her hers you may use multiple sets of pronouns interchangeably or use their name in place of any pronoun school division should accept a student's assertion of their gender identity without requiring any particular substantiating evidence including diagnosis treatment or legal documents a student is considered transgender if at school the student consistently asserts a gender identity different from the sex assigned at birth this should involve more than a casual declaration of gender identity but it does

044not necessarily require any substantiating evidence nor any required minimum duration of expressed gender identity I am an engineer by trade and I would be floored if I had to follow rules like that um all right just 30 seconds remaining okay the second is policies uh taken sent from the parents and I will leave it at this in here it states there are no regulations requiring school staff to notify a parent or guardian of a student's request to affirm their gender identity so unfortunately I took too much time but I appreciate you having me up here those were two of the concerns I had and but I appreciate the time you gave me thank you thank you mr todd gruber after mr gruber we'll have deidra hayden hello uh thank you my name is todd gruber

045I have two kids in newport news public schools and a third that will be there in a couple of years I'm here to express my support for adopting the transgender model policies um transgender students have some of the highest suicide rates of any kids and there is a large body of data that suggests that supporting those students in their gender identities is very helpful for avoiding suicidal ideation and for good long-term outcomes and from my perspective it's a pretty easy thing to do if somebody if I meet somebody and they say their name is bob I call them bob if I meet somebody and they say their name is janet I call them janet and that's a very easy thing for me to do I've been thinking as I hear these comments about uh comments

046about you know stuff going on in bathrooms I've been in a lot of bathrooms uh in my life including some with my daughters we have never seen anyone's genitals and so I don't understand the connection or the worry I would have no problems or concerns whatsoever if there are transgender people in the bathroom with me or with my children thank you very much thank you ms deidre hayden and next we will have sandra timonello thank you mr brown and board members I'm a concerned citizen I'm a mother I'm a former school teacher and I'm the mother of a gay son to quote from your agenda document each student will be given equal educational opportunity also educational programs and services will be designed to meet the very needs of all students and not discriminate against any

047individual for reasons of race color national origin sex and the list continues unquote biological males and females should not be discriminated against by forcing them to be on single sex teams with another student who identifies as the opposite biological sex biological males and females should not be discriminated against by forcing them to share a locker room a restroom or a hotel room on an overnight field trip with another student who identifies as the opposite biological sex that is discrimination against those students those students with sexual identities other than their biological sex should be accommodated and cared for and loved and encouraged but they should not have their rights override the rights of so many other students the parents in the community please vote no in closing I'd like to say those who do not learn

048from history are doomed to repeat it let's not go down that path thank you miss sandra two-minute nello hi I feel almost at home I was a guidance counselor in newport news for 45 years a math teacher so I've been in this room many times times have changed and not for the better I'm afraid and I don't envy you in your job and I thank you for your time and consideration transgender mandates are causing a lot of discussion arguments and anger in virginia a few years ago this term was non-existent now all students have been by affected by this push that's fueled by political motives and the most part and ask yourselves why working with thousands of students for 45 years I never encountered anyone with a serious problem with this transgender issue there were

049a few students who had were going through conflicts with their sexual identity but it was work through and I'll give you just a short example when I was a counselor at gildersleeve one of my last years there there were six or seven girls who were calling themselves lesbians I mean the talk was out people were going nuts over because this was long enough ago that wasn't so accepted and it was crazy so they were they all these girls often came into my office for lunch just to eat and talk about issues and I welcome them anyone who wanted to come in just talk about anything because I was very open and they talked about the fact that they were uh you know people were talking about them and what was wrong with them one of

050them said well what is what is you're a christian what does the bible say and I said that's a good question I said what what religion are y'all they all said they were christian I don't know if they were not but um I said well what do you think the bible says about it and the girl said I've got a bible in my locker I'll bring it in and show you so they passed it around and each of them read a passage and finally they said I don't think that's god's will and I said why hadn't our preacher ever told us that and I said well you go tell your preacher that the school is having to do his job because y'all at least need to be discussing this regardless of what the answer is

051and I had those parents of all those girls individually came in to thank me for that because it opened up discussion at home one of the girls thought she was lesbian and and you know I didn't cast any judgment on that but her father wanted to know and wanted to work with it and get suggestions for that so I think that that's really important but now it seems that that all of us and of course as as a christian I believe that we're created male and female and it's only been in more recent years that this has been coming up like this I'm old enough I've seen the difference and I have two master's degrees so I know what all the literature says and the experts and this is a new phenomenon which I think

052is brought out a lot by hollywood sports team blah blah blah but I want you to consider all this seriously and think about it because the parents and ministers and teachers can work together to help these kids thank you thank you [Applause] at this at this time I have uh reached my 30-minute allotted time for this session and so in order to uh continue the session I would need a motion uh in order to continue the session so mr chairman I make a motion that we continue this session for 15 minutes thank you man vice chair is there a second second second about mr harris any discussion all right there being none madam clerk would you please call the roll early for harris for hunter for Surles-Law for for best for brown for motion carry

053seven zero all right thank you all so much for your cooperation we have been able to get through 13 cards in our a lot of 30 minute time period so thank you all for your cooperation that we're able to hear from so many folks so hopefully we'll be able to get through the rest of our cards in the 15 minutes that we have remaining uh the I'll call these in order the first next two cards I have is pamela ayers and shawnee graf cheese thank you so much for hearing our hearts and our minds my name's pamela ayers I am a mother a grandmother and a great grandmother and for the last 21 years I've been a children's ministry but in the past year and a half I've added a work with the youth in

054our church and I began to hear as I was talking to these 13 to 15 year olds a pressure a constant need to discuss something that felt very pressured to him them so when I came up with this book two weeks ago it's only been published in the last few months it's called irreversible damage because I kept hearing it as though they're talking about something so serious like it was a fad which I had fads in the 60s but we got over them but this is very serious it's called the transgender sick craze seducing our daughters so I want to use my three minutes to read you just a short passage john hopkins university distinguished professor of psychiatric psych psychiatry and behavioral sciences paul mchugh has an answer to gender dysphoria gender dysphoria is an

055overvalued idea or ruling passion this is an idea held by many people in the world but held intensely by the patient or the person who is making a life of that idea dr mchugh said many people believe that is good to be thin for instance many adolescent girls believe it's better to be a boy but for anorexics and those with gender dysphoria those ideas become all consuming one key difference between this and past psychiatric crazes is that the transgender epidemic seems primarily induced by peers and the media and schools today's teens don't wait to talk to a therapist to find out what's wrong with them they simply park themselves in front of a screen and google am I trans and self-diagnosed from the list of symptoms if anything therapists are merely exasperating or encouraging a

056problem already begun but dr mchugh believes the transgender craze will likely end as the multiple personality craze did in the courts with patients suing their doctors some of these teenage girls he says will wake up at age 23 24 and say here I am I've got a five o'clock shadow I'm mutilated and I'm sterile and I'm not what I ought to be how did this happen this is a journalistic book there's 33 pages of references for it and I really as a teacher for the past 21 years want to remind us all that john no excuse me james 3 1 says not many of you should be teachers because we who teach will be more severely judged [Music] thank you all right miss cheeseman and next card will be mark linton thank you so much

057for allowing us to come out here and express our opinions on all that is going on and thank you for listening with the pandemic and everything going on and you guys being exhausted to come here and listen so we thank you I just have one question and you're not able to answer this but I'll answer I'll ask it anyway you have a policy that is revised and it's a sol policy standard of learning social teaching equal educational opportunities i know you can't answer that but what is that in its totality what are you teaching in that what type of learning social teaching is that will it be all of what everybody's talking about if it is please take it in consideration that we as a people mother grandmother aunt some of them uncles of women

058and men we want you guys to take in consideration that these are children that need to be teached and learned about academic learning art how to realize that we are all created equal that they need to learn to be able to play with each other and that these teachings are teachings that are for someone that goes to college that is more mature and able to understand and how to decipher how not to be in cringed or infringed on their way of living for the children that are growing up their minds are still young they cannot process this it will damage them they will be damaged goods with this type of teaching with this type of learning not sure what this is and you can't answer that right now I'm sorry that you're not able to

059but if you can be transparent on this revised policy equal educational opportunities sol standard of learning social teachings can you please let us know what that means can you please send out a transparency on what it is that you want to teach our children grandchildren nieces nephews all of that we would really like to know what that means and is it any of the what these people are talking about is it you can't answer me right now you can't answer them but we just want to know what is it is it that and if it is please take it in consideration please leave it for the censorship that we have for video games movies entertainment music there's a censorship for that let it be a censorship for this too and leave it to the older

060mature children or should I say the elderly thank you mr cheese no adults I'm sorry thank you so much i appreciate you listening now next we're going to hear from mark linton and after that will be tom eamon I'm ready i can't breathe these were the final words of the man that the law enforcement warned not to resist I'm grown and I realize the harm and suffocation suffocation i can't imagine what hell it is for children to struggle for breath i want the school board to step up to the plate if you allow our children to be forced to mask up for class you will have succumbed to government entities that have acted on bad information newport news citizens need for our leaders to follow our rules if parents want to mask their children then

061that decision should be a family matter and god will judge the family if we allow the government which is supposed to be for the people by the people of the people to mask our children then god will judge us our governor has acted on bad information and isn't this governor the one who would make the baby comfortable if he survives a botched abortion comfortable while he discusses the fate of the child with the mother who's in pain from childbirth or into stress from pain medicine I think the governor has lost his moral authority to think clearly on medical issues our cdc has only recommended that state laws dictate this masks mandate pardon me but isn't this the same agency that recently wants to mandate that landlords cannot collect rent from tenants they've changed from center

062for disease control to self-appointed center for rent control I believe they've lost their focus and are now no longer qualified to dictate health policy law enforcement went on trial for murder when they ignored the man who couldn't breathe this school board has the opportunity to do the right thing and push back on this government intrusion or you can fail the citizens the children and all that is right with our educational system you do the right thing or will you be able to ignore the child who says I can't breathe thank you mr tom eamon and next we'll have after that we'll have charles fegen good evening my name is tom eamon and I live in newport news virginia I am chairman of the newport news republican party I represent thousands of families with children in

063the public schools in the north central and south districts I also am a father of a child at gildersleeve middle school it saddens me that we are once again having to deal with issues that have nothing to do with educating our children critical race theory transgender policy and masks they do not benefit our children in any way first off crt teaches that you're either a victim or an oppressor and that the u.s is a systematically racist country it forces children to view things through the lens of race not content of character this is fundamentally wrong all of us know that our past has not been perfect but I believe we are working towards a more perfect union and that the good the bad and the ugly need to be taught so that we can move

064forward towards that perfect union transgender policy being discussed pits parent against child and permits the school administration to keep secrets from the parents this is not a healthy thing to do it should be a family issue not a school system issue allowing a child to decide what gender they feel they are that day poses issues for the rest of the children with regard to the use of bathrooms and locker rooms it will also be a major distraction for teachers as they try to teach and at the same time worry about what proper pronoun to use to discuss something with a child please respect the parents should know if their child is having gender issues and they should be involved in any of these conversations last but not least here we are again political theater several

065of you wearing masks all of you vaccinated or have had the disease you do not need to be wearing it you should not be forcing our children to wearing it it should be a parental decision and option I believe you should as a protest vote vote and say to the governor we hear your mandate we disagree with it we're going to empower our parents to make the decision for their children because they know their children best once again thank you for your time thank you for your service it is not an easy decision that you all are facing have a good evening [Applause] all right mr charles vegan I'm a father of a 16 year old in the ninth grade when he just went to the tenth and um uh uh I know that you

066guys stand on um the law of separation of church and state uh one thing that came across my child while he was a virtual learning uh maybe just go straight to it it says um he received the uh assignment it says please provide a response in the reply box be sure to provide three grammatically correct and spell check sentences and one correct one comment for full credit says what would you do if someone told you at a young age as a prophecy that you would kill one parent and marry the other how would you live your life what would be different read at least one person's reply and leave a comment come to find out this is a greek mythology story that's of written of a prophecy that they they are trying to um personalize

067my child and while he's he's gonna set foot inside the school he's solely inside of my home these stuff are going through my airways into my home okay for one greek mythology it's only a myth because certain people don't believe in it but once you go ahead and take it up in college it becomes weak religion acid to kill parents that and that and um that uh insinuates homosexuality because you can choose which parents you want to want to want to marry it's incest and it's pedophilia okay looking for looking for a child to find a way to normalize something that's so heinous because at the end of sand respond to a child which my son did right I'm um we are a blended family I have uh two by my uh my ex and

068two by my wife and my oldest is the one that's by my my ex he responded to a another person's um answer the little girl said if I killed one of my parents I would be I wouldn't be where I am today but if I had killed one it would be my mom because my dad do more for me and he is always there when I need him unlikely unlike my mom who ain't never home if I killed my mom and married my dad that would be weird I mean very weird but if I had did but if I didn't have a choice then how that's how I would go I would live my life distant because I wouldn't want to be around the family anymore or my dad after I've done killed my mom

069and my dad's wife my wife is not his mother and he replied one word that spoke volumes and said facts okay greek mythology doesn't have any place for a child because it's morally incorrect and it is breaching the church and state the separation of church and state thank you mr fegin thank you all right at this time I have exceeded our 15-minute extension and I do have three additional cards here so in order to accommodate those cards I would need a motion to extend to further extend our public comment period is there a motion yes there's a motion uh mr chairman to extend how many do you have three okay we'll extend for 15 minutes all right thank you uh there's motions our second the second all right seconded by mr hunter thank you is

070there any discussion all right there being none uh madam clerk would you please call the roll early at this time I do have three additional cards and I'll ask the clerk if there are any other cards that are passed up please pass those forward and we'll we'll continue our our public comment period our next card I have is sarah kleinman and after that will be philip guiness yes sir miss kleinman come on in hi thanks for having me my name is sarah kleinman I am the parent of a hilton elementary school student um all of the parents I'm friends with are firm supporters of mask mandates and any social distancing or any other mitigation efforts we can put forth to keep our kids safe our children cannot be vaccinated yet and we are all heartbroken

071and just freaking out about this school year and so worried about our kids being in school so um I'm not on facebook a lot of my friends are quieter and not on social media but we are out there we fully support the science we fully support um the governor's decision to do a mask mandate um that being said I didn't come here to talk about this but also all the parents I do know and I'm friends with um also support transgender and non-binary kids and we want them to feel safe in school just as safe as cisgender kids and straight kids feel um whether that means asking them their preferred pronoun or allowing them to use the bathroom of the gender they identify with the vast majority of parents that I know support that so

072thank you for keeping that in consideration even though we're not very vocal on facebook and things like that we are out there thank you thank you miss clement all right philippine nest and after mr ganesta we'll have steve mackin steve mckean good evening school board good evening my name is phil gernast um I have two black children in my extended family and I'm here to talk about crt crt has three basic tenets there is no absolutes only competitive narratives and uh lived experiences are more important than hard facts I would hate to use that trying to go to the moon like we did in the sixties individuals are either oppressors or victims and it is an immunitable characteristics that is based off of your race so how am I supposed to deal with my family

073if I follow this I can't treat my kids the same I'm supposed to treat my colored children differently than my white children this is what crt does what this leads us to is america's basically systematically racist by its very core so we're supposed to dismantle our entire country wait a minute I'm scratching my head here this was the land of the free people would do extreme things to leave other countries to come to america because america was the land of the free you had the opportunity to become what you wanted to become it was about sweat and blood and effort not your color but crt is bringing this all forward why because army ants are powerful because they unite as one when they have an enemy you divide them and they're not a threat crt

074is designed on dividing us making us not a unified body that is what the globalists want because if we are united they can't make a one world government if they separate us they can walk over us and change our entire way of life please keep this in mind I understand there are a lot of politics here but I prefer my country over division thank you [Applause] mr mckean hello my name is stephen mclean the constitution of the united states was not written to restrain the citizens however it was written to restrain government I'm speaking for my own heart mind and spirit I'm not only standing for both my daughters but I'm standing for all the children in this city this virus has been detrimental on too many levels all day real virus we are also

075experiencing manufactured fear through media government and corporate entities it is sad when anyone passes away but we must face the facts we have about 330 million people in this country approximately and they're saying suppose it's 650 000 deaths from covid where where's the flu gone pneumonia I have seen from multiple sources that the flu has practically disappeared from masks and social distancing if we have 330 million people after 18 months 650 000 deaths claimed from covid that means we still have about 329 million 350 000 people alive and breathing and out of the 650 000 what are the ages pre-existing conditions okay so why and there's so many recovering naturally is a vaccine a vaccine that's experimental now becoming mandatory and it's not even fda approved if the vaccine should remain optional I'm fine with

076that after 18 months and 99 survival rate optional is understandable why does governor ralph northam claim to be concerned about the children wearing masks even though he was recorded stating he supported third trimester abortion even up to delivery so the four chambers of the heart are already developed developed within the first trimester so I mean he must be a heartless man i know a lot of people want to continue wearing these masks all right my fight here I'm standing up against when flu and the new covid strains come fall winter my stance is no lockdown as far as making mandates virtual learning mandatory you can keep it it was optional at the end of last year just keep it optional I can already foresee this coming okay so I mean I'm sure a lot of

077people are tired of losing essential liberty over temporary safety this birth life and death is a never-ending cycle of all people on the face of the earth so in this time we must keep our spirits high reconnect with the source of all creation and stop allowing these systems to treat us like human cattle herd immunity has failed the experimental jab in a free country if it's if it's it's experimental if we're free right and this crony capitalism no longer allows alternative views perspectives uh alternative treatments and discourages anyone to think outside the box yeah and when you do you get blocked censored and completely ostracized so I where I'm at I get it so the system is their way or the highway I stand for liberty over lockdowns I stand for things to be optional

078thank you vaccine optional and soviet y'all have a good day thank you all right well thank you that was that was our last card madam clerk are there any additional cards no sir all right there being no additional cards at this time then we will move to our consent agenda item three on the consent agenda we have 3.01 minutes from the regular board meeting on june 15 2021 3.02 minutes from the work session on june 15 2021 3.03 minutes from the special meeting on june 15 2021 3.04 minutes from the organizational meeting on july 1st 2021 3.05 financial reports revenue and expense july 2021 3.06 personnel report 3.07 budget transfer and 3.08 the 2021 22 school board norms and protocols mr chairman I make a motion to approve the consent agenda as presented thank you

079madam vice chair is there a second second second one mr harris any discussion there being done madam clerk would you please call the roll for harris or hunter or Surles-Law for aman thank you and at this time I believe Dr Parker we have a personnel report to include some administrative appointees at this time I'm going to ask for a motion to approve the superintendent's recommendation for some administrative appointees okay I'm making a motion that the school board accept and approve the superintendent's personnel recommendations for the appointment of christopher sorensen as interim chief of finance and operations michelle stevens as the supervisor of hearing impaired visually impaired and speech language pathologists with special education and anika holden as assistant principal for heritage high school thank you man of our share is there a second second second

080by dr best any questions or discussion all right they're being done by clerk would you please call the roll for harris or hunter or Surles-Law for eamonn for best for brown for motion carry seven zero all right congrat thank you and congratulations Dr. Parker would you like to introduce your appointees thank you mr chairman um at this time I'd like to introduce the three appointments for this evening um in uh in no necessary order but I'll introduce mr christopher sorensen as the interim chief of finance and operations would you stand mr sorens uh mr sorenson has a bachelor's degree in urban studies and planning and a master's degree in public finance both from virginia commonwealth university um he started his career as a budget analyst with the u.s department of agriculture in 1988 I'm sorry

081to date you there he has worked as a financial analyst for the u.s department of housing and urban development senior budget analyst for the city of richmond budget division director for hanover county director of budget and risk management for hanover county public schools associate budget director and budget director of for virginia commonwealth university assistant superintendent for business and finance with chesterfield county public schools and chief financial officer for henrico county public schools currently mr sorenson is retired and he has given up his walks on the beach and and strolling sunsets to come here and fill in a vacancy for a future vacancy uh as we um uh congratulate our current budget and operations administrator and her retirement we appreciate him for agreeing to help us continue to recruit for this position as we look for

082a replacement mr sorenson as you can tell is well equipped to keep the school division financially sound and fiscally responsible as we transition to new leadership we thank you for being here mr sorenson and we'd like to welcome you to newport news public schools so mr sorenson I think I met we had lunch earlier today I don't think you're a company this evening but would you like to greet the board in the community thank you all right thank you Dr. Parker mr chair members of the board thank you for your confidence and uh let me serve this position until it's built permanently I look forward to working with staff and getting back working with students and improving students and working school division so again thank you for your confidence and I look forward to serving

083thank you sir look forward to your leadership thank you I'd also like to introduce michelle stevens as the new supervisor for hearing impaired visually impaired and speech-language pathologists with special with our department of special education uh ms stevens has an educational specialist degree and a master's degree is she in the room there she was there you go hi a master's degree in education with an emphasis in special education and a certificate of autism studies from old dominion university she began her bachelor her career our bachelor's de she has a bachelor's degree of arts in psychology from christopher newport university and she began her career as a special education teacher with newport news public schools in 2012. during her career with the district she has worked as a spark summer program administrator response to intervention specialist

084and currently as an instructional specialist congratulations mrs stevens on your on your new appointment and we'd like to give you first a round of applause and then you can introduce any you so much I'm business here today with my husband david stevens for just serving our students with disabilities across the district thank you and we look forward to your leadership and thank you for joining us this evening I'd also like to introduce our annika holden as the new assistant principal at heritage high school ms holden earned her bachelor's degree in mathematics from norfolk state university woohoo and her master's degree in educational leadership from old dominion university ms holden began her career as a teacher with newport news public schools in 2012 during her career with the district she has also worked as an assistant

085testing coordinator lead math teacher secondary instructional coach for mathematics and a virtual jump start site coordinator congratulations ms holden and thank you and congratulations on your new appointment and do you have it as you introduce yourself do you have anyone joining us this evening and some of my friends please stand please stand there you go let's get them all around the claw [Applause] and I see your husband's embarrassing you by filming you during this moment but we want to say welcome and we look forward to your leadership and uh thank you for pursuing to continue your career in newport news public schools all right congratulations and mr chairman that concludes our uh our appointments for this evening thank you Dr. Parker and congratulations again to our appointees all right so now two action items the

086next item on our agenda is section four uh action nine four point oh one a revision to the equal educational opportunities policy Dr. Parker I believe we have a presentation before our vote yes mr chairman we uh we asked that mrs brooks come back to uh we've made some revision to the um policy that's going before the board this evening for consideration so we asked ms brooks to come back to give an overview of the uh policy uh in general for the board's consideration thank you yes thank you good evening as michelle pulls our presentation up I'd like to say good evening mr chairman madam vice chairman members of the board Dr. Parker I'd like to thank you for the opportunity to come before you this evening to share a policy revision that we are

087proposing for your consideration as you are aware the policy committee typically begins each school year by revising our current policies or developing new ones to ensure that we meet the most recent state and federal mandates so in keeping with this approach we are I would like to provide an overview of a policy revision that the state code is requiring school divisions to implement at the start of the school year the revised policy and procedures that we are developing address the treatment of transgender students and reflect the eight components that we are legally bound to address in keeping with the state code and I will share those with you in the next couple of slides the eight areas that we must address through our policies and procedures pertain first to complying with applicable state and federal

088non-discrimination laws to ensure that our policies and procedures align with mandated legal requirements second maintaining safe and supportive learning environments that are free from discrimination and harassment for all students third preventing and responding to bullying and harassment which as you know is an ongoing initiative with our youth development department fourth maintaining student records as required by law fifth identifying students to the extent possible that reflects the students expressed identity six protecting student privacy and confidentiality of sensitive information seven import enforcing gender neutral dress codes and lastly the state requires the school division to address student participation in gender-specific school activities and events as well as with the use of facilities now when the general assembly passed legislation over a year ago regarding the treatment of transgender students it also required the department of education to

089develop model policies and guidelines to assist school divisions in developing and updating their policies and you've heard references to that document this evening so to do this the vdoe did convene a statewide committee to review policies and resources from across the country pertaining to the treatment of transgender students in public schools so that committee worked for over eight months to prepare the model guidelines for the treatment of transgender students in virginia public schools and we used that document to update our policies and procedures so before I go any further I wanted to share our working working definition of transgender which is a self-identifying term that describes a person who identifies with the gender that is different from their sex assigned at birth now to comply with the legal requirements of the state code regarding the

090treatment of transgender students we've updated our current policy on equal educational opportunities to add that the school division will not discriminate against any individuals based on their gender or gender identity our school division as was mentioned earlier is committed to providing educational programs and services designed to meet the varying needs of our students to ensure that all students have stayed supportive and inclusive school environments now next the school division is developing implementing procedures that are consistent with the code of virginia requirements and are aligned to the department of education model policies document the procedures will address the eight areas in the state code that I just mentioned to you but in greater detail the procedures posted online are an initial working draft that we will bring to a larger implementation committee to develop more thoroughly

091using best practices that will support our school divisions work and will be consistent with the statutory requirements now I would like to briefly review each of the sections in the draft procedures that are aligned to the eight state code components and work to address the requirements of the law the first section is on bullying harassment and discrimination our current school board policy on nondiscrimination prohibits discrimination based on gender and gender identity so we are working to review other related school board policies to ensure compliance with the state and federal laws and we're also working on an equity policy that will be aligned to our strategic plan which is journey 2025. our second session addresses student privacy and confidentiality all school staff must adhere to the legal standards of confidentiality relating to information about a student's

092transgender status legal name or gender assigned at birth and in adhering to confidentiality the school division staff will only disclose a student's status to other employees if it's of legitimate educational interest now regarding the identification of students schools will allow students to use the name or pronoun that reflects their gender identity and in working with school staff to support the students gender identity our major focus will be on ensuring that non-discriminatory practices are put in place next are school records as requested schools will use the student's assertive name and agenda on some school documents such as student work however a student's name and a gender designation on official permanent records will be changed only if verified with the submission of a legal document such a birth such as a birth certificate a passport or a

093court order now according to state legislation student dress codes are to be gender neutral or without references to gender-specific attire for classrooms school-related programs activities and events and our school leadership staff has already conformed our student dress codes in the students rights and responsibilities handbook to reflect the state requirements now regarding access to school programs events and activities the school division will allow students to participate in a manner that is consistent with their gender identity and in addition activities that are regulated by the virginia high school league such as athletics will comply with that organization's policies and roles next access to facilities such as restrooms and locker rooms that correspond to a student's gender identity will be made available to all students and upon requests single use facilities will be made available to any student

094who seeks privacy now the last of the eight sections addresses professional development and training all school mental health professionals will be trained annually on topics relating to lgbtq plus students including the safety and support of our students professional development for other school division staff will be provided in compliance with the virginia department of education guidance and through the eight staff training modules that the department of education is developing and should be available to school divisions before the end of august so in terms of next steps we are requesting your approval of the revisions to the educational opportunity opportunities policy this evening and next as I mentioned earlier we will form a committee to develop our school divisions implementation plan and professional learning timeline related to the treatment of transgender students our equity policy and cultural

095competency requirements and our title ix procedures now the implementation committee will include our internal stakeholders that are representing departments such as curriculum development school leadership school counseling some of our mental health professionals our planned services staff to really develop thorough procedures using best practices and reasonable solutions that are consistent with our statutory requirements and really support our school divisions work to ensure that all students have safe supportive and inclusive school environments so this concludes my report to you this evening I would like to thank mr len wallen our legal services director and dr jaron ransome our youth development supervisor for their work on our initial draft policies and procedures but joining me this evening to respond to questions are some of the experts who are currently working in the areas that we will that we

096will address in our procedures and that we will flesh out in the work that's upcoming in terms of developing those procedures that work best for the school division they are mrs linda askew our student support supervisor mr wade beverly our planned services executive director dr shameka gerald who is the director of equity assessment and strategic operations mrs amy jones our health and pe supervisor and again mr len wallen so thank you all right thank you miss burke so I know that there are lots of questions and there's going to be significant discussion um here so what I'd like to do first before we take questions as I mentioned uh previously in my update memo we'll take our questions one at a time is I'd like to have a motion first the main motion and then

097we can go into our discussion to address all all questions so is there a motion uh yes mr chairman there's a motion to approve the revised equal educational opportunities policy as presented all right I heard the motion is there a second second all right the second by mr hunter all right so at this time then now we'll go into discussion and as I mentioned we'll try to do this one at a time so we can bring the expert up to answer that question and then the next board maybe we'll have an opportunity to ask their question and we'll go around each one of us getting a chance to ask one question and we'll continue until we exhaust discussion all right so I believe mr eley had his hand up first so go ahead mr eley

098I just want to say thank you for the presentation and the research researchers took to bring this information for um presented to us um kind of a question just a comment I'm kind of disappointed at the virginia department of education to be bringing up these issues to the school system and to the board while we're in the middle of a pandemic you all have to take your hard-earned time to discuss matters that's been around since I've been in school and for us to have to go in this direction when which when we have kids that are failing that are dropping out who didn't get a great education as other kids did doing a pandemic to discuss um a gender policy there's over 52 genders so what do we do address each gender I believe god

099loves us all and he loves all our children and I believe that in this situation of transgender we need to do what's right by the person and I believe god created male is male female is female and if like when I graduated school in 2002 menchville high school we had transgenders in there they went about their way nobody bothered them they went to the bathroom but just to this whole this whole um hype around this I think is really not necessary while we're in the middle of a pandemic my focus is not on this I mean if we have transgender we need to treat all kids fairly whether they transgender bad journey ex gender k gender d whatever gender they are all children need to be treated fairly and given the same same um equal

100across the board we don't need to be pointing out these different type of genders what if we've got another another group coming to say okay well I'm trying um um bi-gender so we got to go through this again you know I just think the direction is being and I'm very and it's not you it's not the board it's very it's sad that the virginia department of education is doing this when we we're in a pandemic you know so I'm just I thank you for your presentation I just feel like this is not the appropriate time to to be even dealing with this I know we're doing with the stan the state mandate but I believe god cr loves us all I believe he created guys guys girls girls if you're a male go into the

101male bathroom if you're female goes to the female bathroom and if you are anything else that you identify you can go to the nurse's bathroom that's the audience please please don't respond to the board members at this at this time this is our uh time for our discussion all right thank you mr eley uh ms aman you have a question um I'm sure I'll have several questions and comments but if I could start with a couple questions on the process because you know we're looking at very limited proposed changes to a policy but very significant procedures for a specific group that we don't have that level of procedures for any other group and I certainly have my own I certainly have legal and practical considerations and I'll probably show those next time we go around

102but a couple questions just to sort of clarify where we are procedurally serving on the policy and procedures committee my experience typically has been that we might recommend a policy change together with some drafts on a procedure so we look at them holistically at this point we're looking at minor policy change but there's going to be some significant procedures and we need to flush those out it's enough of a heart issue for our community I'm very concerned about jumping the gun and if our standard procedure is to flush everything out um why are we rushing at this point have we had other examples where we have been so limited on what the procedures are going to be and after we pass a policy and are there any negative impacts if we don't my knowledge there

103aren't by not there aren't there aren't financial or other impacts so I guess my question is how does this compare with what we have done in the past and just to confirm we're not aware of significant negative impacts if we choose to focus on education in the pandemic at this point mr simon is that a question or a statement um probably a little bit of both but this is a little bit outside our usual process correct we usually have a flushed out procedure right and this given the time period we were really waiting to get the final guidelines and to really pull together once the board approved a procedure to work on approved a policy excuse me to work on the procedure so there is still work in place and as you know the the

104procedures that we have now truly reflect the guidelines and we really want as we said to flush through those and to pull together people who can really help us do that work so that we will be ready for the start of school in terms of implementing these guidelines so that's why we're proposing a larger committee to bring some of the staff people who are with us this evening to work to do that work and some of it has already been done because we've been working on these issues for years so they're bringing that experience to this particular item agenda item this evening so we will need more time and we want to do a thorough job in doing that for our students and staff and typically am I correct the board approves policy but the

105board does not approve procedures correct so we're looking at a policy that we don't know what the procedure is going to be all right I think in terms of in terms of what the procedure will be you have guidance in in the law that of the eight areas that we have to address and the model policies give you guidance on how to address those those eight areas um you have a draft procedure in your in your that was provided that um that shows the guidance on those eight specific areas now there's areas that um we're prepared to respond to tonight in terms of restroom use those types of things how do you get from the from the legal and the and the the law into practical application and that's where where we have to make

106sure we're legally sufficient in those areas because you can also cause problems when you think you're helping people um so with that being said we have always provided students access to to alternative restrooms um since I've been in public education we've had kids using the nurses restroom we've had kids using the clinic restroom we've had kids going to the alternate locations to change for for various reasons depending on what that may be now we have a law that that's come forward that says that hey these kid uh kids have a choice and they they actually have to we cannot make them go but we still will provide choice so while the video we developed procedures that are very generic and purpose they are setting us on a track now we have to determine what is

107applicable and practical we will still provide choice and that our building leaders work with students who may not be we're making an assumption that that transgender children will will want to go to the boys restroom or girls restroom many of them choose to go to the nurse, to the clinic the to to other places and we have always provided that access since since I can remember and we've always provided had a student a few students who went to the nurses room had passes to go to special locations to for restroom breaks or a change of clothing we have to make sure we put the practical in our processes to ensure that that we're doing that we still have to deal with it folks it's not going away so um so with that being said now

108that we have to make sure we're doing it in a non-discriminatory way the other thing that we um in our procedures that we really need to address is the whole is the big issue of parent notification we still can ask a student would you like us to help you to facilitate a meeting with your parent or to help you communicate with your parent this choice that you're making there's nothing illegal about that but the video guidelines say that we can't mandate it we can't make it happen we can't do those things that's not best practice because there may be fear there there may be fear of repercussion from the parent there may be some parents who may handle it a different way so we have to make sure we put procedure in place to address

109things that are come to us naturally anyway we deal with these issues all the time in our schools is not you know it's it it's our mental health professionals deal with deal with these personal issues all the time and facilitate these discussions all of the time with students now there's just mandated actions that we may or may not be able to do and there are legal requirements that we have to make sure we meet so with that being said mrs amen yes we have eight guidelines we have to meet in our standard procedures we've provided a draft of that document and we still need to make sure we put the rational common sense and practical application into the things that we do to make sure that students and parents are comfortable moving forward with any

110with any legal requirements that we have in place thank you and other questions for the board members question yes dr best can you just expound on what Dr. Parker said about the parent notification like where is it right now can you expound on that just a little bit mrs you are an expert thank you I'd like to first send greetings to the board and for allowing me the opportunity to speak when we do have conversations with parents we do have ways of communicating with parents not exactly telling them the situation that has occurred but letting them know that a conversation may need to be held with their child to find out what their needs are what their concerns are what their issues are we also help children to have those conversations with their parents so

111that they don't feel that they're alone in this process of identifying who they are as a person so we support them fully whenever they need to speak with their parent we also again have ways of conversing with parents to let them know they may need to have a conversation with their child so I hope I answered your question you did can I actually let's let's uh let's go around and see uh if other board members have a first question any additional questions at this time okay so I'm going to ask a one question about curriculum uh so I recall that thank you so I recall that at our planning retreat um we did get a a primer on the gender spectrum uh as it was as it was briefed and so the question there in

112terms of the procedures is you know adopting this policy this evening going to necessitate changes to either our sex education curriculum or our biology curriculum in terms of teaching students that there's a gender spectrum so as you know thank you greetings board thank you for allowing me to speak as you know the standards of accreditation drive require us to teach the standards of learning in our virginia schools there will be changes that occur to our curriculum and they'll all be driven by those sols so as those standards change um so will our curriculum and our instruction around it regarding family life there have been in 2020 there was a mandate that did create some changes to the sols and so in ninth grade there is a sol 9.3 that does address gender identity sexual orientation

113gender expression thank you yeah so amount of vice chair please go ahead sure I have a question um for training for teachers so as I can imagine with all that teachers are having to do on their plate and them wanting to do things well what kind of support for professional development will be in place for teachers good evening chairperson brown chair uh vice chairs girls law school board and Dr. Parker um our professional learning plan um once the if and when the policy is approved and the procedures are developed we'll be working with our professional learning department mrs angela wreck to identify the dates and provide synchronous and asynchronous opportunities for policy and specific professional learning about implementation of procedures um for our school division prior to september 8th an addendum to that oh addendum

114questions so that's the same question i call it a dovetail who will be um designing that curriculum for for the teachers um so the information will the mod the if you're speaking specifically regarding the modules regarding the eight things that are listed in the statutory guidance we will be receiving guidance from the virginia department of education which on what will be included and it could be a module similar to what we do with restraints inclusion or with child abuse or with technology so there are modules that are developed for school divisions to use in terms of providing professional development prior to the september 8th on the implementation of newport news's specific procedures that information would come from our team and we will rely on the expertise of folks like mrs askew and amy jones and

115myself and dr ransom and some of our members of hr team to develop out what that would look like to ensure that using research and adult learning theory that we put things in place so teachers are clear and understand what this means for our school division okay thank you thank you miss mr harris you no I don't know no question the question at this time all right then uh I believe that miss eamonn had a second question I don't have a question I have more of a comment okay why don't we yes so while we continue through with our questions then we'll have a comment period uh right at the end of this before we vote so uh additional questions dr bess just get back to the parent um again where do you see or

116I've been trying to you know read up as far as what other divisions are doing or have done and I really haven't seen this yet but maybe you have because you have more experience with it where do you see it going if you have a transgender student and they have informed you that my parents absolutely not you cannot tell them I'm going to get a beating and I asked that because I'm wondering about the position it puts teachers in and and other school personnel but so just if you can you may can't like if there is concern about the safety of a child we are all mandated reporters and therefore whether or not we know it's a valid concern we would have to report that to child protective services they would investigate and determine the

117validity of the report thank you yes ma'am other other questions all right um I'm going to ask the I would like to ask a question this is the legal questions probably for mr wilde so presuming the the this requirement from the vdoe what is the penalty for not enacting uh what was the penalty for not enacting this policy this evening uh not and waiting to develop procedures uh at a later time because as was as has been mentioned uh there is a part there is a possibility that we would that we could see fully developed procedures and then revisit this at a later time what is that what is the legal implications for doing that as I understand the attorney general has opined that there aren't any financial direct financial implications for a failure to

118adopt the policy consistent with the requirements by of state law it does seem to me that the failure to adopt a policy when the general assembly has dictated that it be adopted could trigger an action for an injunction which would the purpose of that would be to force the school division to adopt something and if the school division didn't adopt that then you'd have the the implication of court sanctions not necessarily money from from the vdoe or the state but court sanctions so i think the the answer is that my advice as I've indicated to you before is that the general assembly in a statute has directed boards to adopt the policy they've said that the policy should be implemented by the start of this school year and so it would be unwise to not

119follow the state law and I don't know of any uh justification substantial justification for failure to do that thank you mr hunter so I'll do to follow up on uh mr chairman so we um don't adopt tonight okay or and then we have students in we don't have anything in place and we're we have an incident with a teacher and a student or a family then what is the issue right that we don't have a policy in place my concern would be and this is a little speculative but my concern would be that having been directed to create a specific policy that addresses non-discrimination against transgender students that the failure to do that might trigger the an argument that we were intentionally discriminating against transgender students i don't know that that would be a successful

120allegation I think someone which might try to make it because we are failing to do something that the general assembly dictated and it's described as an anti-discrimination step so I would I would be concerned that we would be putting the school division in a a difficult position based on a discrimination lawsuit thank you thank you mr william uh mr whalen uh other questions from board members all right I'm gonna then I'm gonna ask another question uh and this is this is regards to the going back to the parental notification so the procedure as it stands as as written today uh a child and the question is a child um in elementary school a child as young as seven years old could come to school declare uh a new gender identity and the parent and there's

121there's a circumstance where the parent would not be notified is that is that true right now from reading the policy outlined in the virginia department of education it does state that we do not have to notify the parent however as a mental health professional we would most likely encourage the child to have that conversation with their parent and we would support that child in having that conversation can I just add also that the pda policy does the model policy does school division shall not disclose the gender identity of the student so it's not a we may not we know it says you shall not to parents and and therein lies the um the correct discussion you have to um first of all we have mental health professions in our school division I've had this conversation

122um um with several members of our board that there's there just seems to be that piece missing that we have the supports necessary and we always have had the supports necessary to support the emotional social emotional um needs of our students so we would encourage any adult in our school to have that student speak to our school counselors our school socials our clinically licensed social workers and therein would lie the encouragement to work that student through a very very important decision that they're that they may in their mind be thinking that is a is the decision that they have made and part of that would be involved encouraging the student to speak to their parents and whether the parent would be supportive of that conversation um but we are mandated reporters we have to work

123in the safety of students under a variety of situations there are a lot of circumstances where we may feel the student may be in jeopardy with their um due to parent involvement and we have to make sure we manage that carefully and no I don't believe our teachers are the ones to have that com have that conversation and that level of support i believe our mental health professionals in our schools are the ones to have that support so while we have a model guidance from the virginia department of education the common sense an educator in me tells me that we have to rely on individuals in our school division who are trained to support the social emotional needs of our students and understand the value of parent support and that's where we have to make

124sure that we're moving forward in a logical and realistic way um because sometimes when things are written a certain way and you see you see it in black and white if not it doesn't play out in a normal school setting of the appropriate way so we would we would highly definitely support a student speaking to their parent and supporting that conversation and we would also understand and respect that if a student is afraid or uncomfortable with that as with uh with that level of engagement we'll have to find other ways to maybe work with them and support their their um their decision um in our school settings we have to deal with these matters eventually we deal with them already so it's not that this policy is going to create it the these are issues

125that we are dealing with and we have to make sure that we are not discriminatory in our practices with dealing with these issues now that come before us and we are currently dealing with and have dealt with in the past and I've mentioned to several board members here and I'll mention it publicly as a principal I told a young man who wore skirt to school one day not to wear that skirt to school anymore and um and I i still look back it was over 10 15 years ago and and I look at that young man was maybe making this gender reveal and I i was not it from me I was looking at it from a disciplinary and a disruption standpoint um and I told and I just I made that comment do not

126dress like that again in school do not come back to school in that in that in that in that outfit now i will say the skirt was a little short but but it was but it was still in my mind inappropriate and here I am 15 years later and I'm understanding that I possibly discriminated against a student uh back in the day when I was a principal because there was no policy and there was no procedure and that's the point that I think we have to really continue to to make him point and I do I have my own opinions but as a superintendent I also have to understand that we have to be a school division that have a high standard has a very high standard for non-discriminatory practices and we need to make

127sure we find those solutions all right thank you if there are no additional questions then at this time then we will go ahead and do comments and uh so I'll call you on you in no particular order so I'll just uh call on mr harris if you have any comments i have no comment and uh uh miss amen you uh mentioned uh comments earlier dude I wouldn't make a comment at this time please I can I'm sure um and just some general comments and i guess the benefits of being up here we may not have to be within three minutes but we'll see um I'll do my best um but as i understand it newport news is already a desirable desirable district sometimes for transgender students we've had i think a daily press article written

128in the past about students coming here from other districts where they didn't feel was as positive and environment for them so I think we're doing something right absolutely my big concerns here are the contents of the policy which well which will lead to the proposed procedures you know although we're looking at what's a seemingly innocuous policy to me this is the first time I've seen a policy without a flushed out procedure and if we are you know if we are legally to have to adopt uh in line with the model policy I have some serious practical and legal concerns with the model policy I don't know that I could support a policy or procedure in line with that at any time so I consider my vote on the policy as minimal as the languages effectively

129to be a vote on the proposed procedures because they will come with or without our vote if we adopt this policy so just to articulate some of my concerns one both the legislature and the virginia department of education issued these provisions as a model policy not as a model procedure meaning I think they believe school boards should consider them and vote on them or adopt them as specifically as the model policy is so I've got to consider not just the policy but also the procedure even though we've kind of looked at separating them I think I think our vote needs to be considered a vote on both and I do have serious legal and practical concerns with the proposed procedures to be able to say we were in compliance with the model policy um i

130would i would disagree you know I think there's some very I don't think this was necessarily well thought out through the virginia department of education when they came up with this uh you know parents rights as we've heard several times the model policy or procedures would require school staff to use the name and pronoun that corresponds to a student's gender identity at the request of a student or parent so that permits the school to hide from the parents their children's gender identity by referring to students one way at school and another to parents and as we were informed it also says in concerning situations the school shall not notify the parents and I think this over steps and I think it violates para parents fundamental rights to make decisions concerning the upbringing education and care

131of their children and that's codified in the virginia statutes too we already have a system in place that seems to be working well if there are complaints or concerns I'm not aware of them if we get to a situation where we can't notify the parent or the child tells us not to do their concern for their safety we already have to especially the mental health professionals notifies child protective services so there is a mechanism in place and I'm not okay with putting the cis the school division in a situation where the parents may feel like we're not being honest with them and we're not fully involving them in their child's decision in these situations um I'm very concerned about the proposed modules we haven't seen them we don't know what's in them um as we

132heard on our general stand um our general standards of learning there's there's one day or one class in ninth grade that deals with gender and actually that was the one class I got comments about from constituents last year video sent to me of the class that raised significant concern and you know family life is one students can't opt in or out of they can opt out of a particular day if they look through the curriculum and the division shall provide other things for them to do for that class period we're looking at putting out eight modules of teaching to staff and teachers on this we don't know what it's going to be i could see the content of the family life and I'm thinking eight sessions i think that can go well beyond just non-discrimination

133and treating others with respect and well into a very detailed explanation of gender expansive ideology i think that still remains con controversial I don't think it's necessarily settled and it is at odds with many of the major face in our community you know we're not willing to impose it on our students why are we unknowingly going to adopt this that we have to impose on our teachers and staff I think that may raise constitutional concerns with students staff and teachers their religious beliefs and their free exercise of religion and I also have very practical and i also legal concerns with regard to human resources as it was brought up the model policy requires school staff to use a desired name and pronoun without any substantiating evidence there could be claims or complaints of discrimination or

134harassment that is based on an individual's actual or perceived identity gender identity but the explanation around the model policy explains gender is fluid it could vary with time schools have to require more than a casual declaration of gender identity but not substantiating evidence these are such uncertain standards i don't know any hr department that could implement it without risking significant complaints so I can't imagine implementing it and then the model policy also says we'll follow the virginia high school league for for athletic teams we don't know what they're going to do i think that should be a school board decision I don't know that we should blindly agree to it I think we would need to have a conversation if they came out to let transgender females play on women's teams that's a conversation that

135needs to be had I'm not sure the science has settled that i don't think that would be appropriate and I think that prevents women and women's sports team from having equal opportunity to college scholarships and other opportunities so i wouldn't want the board to not blindly agree to that in this model policy but that would be something we'd have to have a very open and honest public discussion and debate on so those are my concerns I don't think they'll ever be resolved in a way that will follow the model policy so that's kind of where I stand on the policies and procedures all right thank you miss amen dr bess um thank you i can concur with ms ahman regarding the way that the policy came about because normally we do the with the way

136the procedures normally do the policy and then the procedures are blessed out so I can occur with that also um just would like to commend the school personnel that have worked with the um procedure and and board members and and everyone that came out and spoke because this is the kind of issue that we need to be absolutely transparent about no matter what side of the fence that we um are on so I'm just going to share with you um my experience that my background is a former school counselor as well and just like Dr. Parker I had some experience with um transgender possibly transgender um students and and two in particular that stick in mind and this was before we had official training on it just like he said as well but I had

137a first grader and she was born a girl but her parents said every since she could talk she said she was a boy and so they asked me to speak with her and when they asked me to speak with her they did not tell me what it was about they they just said we just want you to talk with her and make sure everything is okay and of course I did I just want to make sure she was a happy well-rounded child and she appeared to be exactly that but came from a two-parent family and so i shared that with the parents she asked me could I meet with the child again so i actually ended up meeting with the child twice but I wasn't pursuing anything because i didn't know um you know any

138well I'm sorry I could because I didn't know anything at that time she didn't tell me about what the problem was until after I met with the child the second time so when I talked with the teachers well the teacher everything was fine and when the parent shared it with me and when I talked to the teacher after that the teacher said that she knew that the child said she was a little boy and the child would tell the teacher she didn't tell the other kids but she would tell the teacher at that time the teacher said she um the only thing she that kind of stood out about her was that free time or recess she would always gravitate towards the boys and so that's my experience with that child just kind of left

139it like that but no one in the child's life made it a big deal I didn't make it big to her teacher and she had a wonderful year for that year I don't know where that child is now so when I talk about this for me faces come to mind especially these two experiences so the second one was with a fifth grade boy who shared with me and they didn't use the term transgender they said that they thought they were a girl as well but they went on to share with me the child appeared to be very very sad all the time and so the teacher made a referral for the child to see the counselor and the child share with me that they um thought they were a girl and they wanted to be

140a girl those were their words as well they wanted to be a girl and that um they could not talk about it with anybody and they said and the child said when I talked about it with my mother she just cut it off and and shut me you know shut me down and the child also said I was afraid that I was going to get she was going to whip me but the mother also shared that with the she evidently suspected something even though they couldn't have a full conversation because she shared it with the people at her church and so the mother had some of the male members to talk with him in a very kind of strong way that was you know um the way the child described it it made them feel

141bad and it was kind of pressuring him and he just constantly looked very very sad and I was very concerned that this child was going to harm themselves so i tried to and the child just absolutely forbid me from telling the parents you know what was kind of going on but like I said I'm just being totally honest with you I didn't have any official training so I shared with the parent not directly but I was trying to go there to see if she would be open with the conversation and she knew where i was going and it was absolutely not and it was just absolutely not but my so it kind of it kind of just kind of left it alone and I just let the child know i was a safe haven when

142they would come and talk with me we loved him the teachers loved him that type of thing and my concern about this child I'll still see this child every time to this day they're still in newfoundland's public schools and I just breathe a sigh relief that they're still alive because they're really struggling and going through um a lot because of family um circumstances so that that comes to mind with me when I'm when I'm thinking about this I have two faces that I take into consideration as well and I just want to share that with you thank you thank you dr best all right mr ely i just want to um say that newport news has always been a school district to show love compassion and equal opportunity for all kids um never even having

143transgender and different gender in our school everyone always treated them fairly i don't know why we had a point now where we have to separate different classes of people what's the difference in little michael who's home who might be homeless who's getting bullied in school are we going to treat him a certain kind of way so i just feel like newport news does a very great job of treating all kids equally and I think that as long as we keep on our core values that we have as a school division we'll be fine all right thank you mr ely mr o's law would you like to make a comment um yes my constituents um almost equally contacted me regarding this issue um i think what I heard a lot of today that worries me or

144brings me to pause is as Dr. Parker said the policy doesn't create the concern and if we are not prepared to deal with the concern then we're doing our students a disservice there and um having unequipped teachers you know unfortunately as you know Dr. Parker shared and dr beth shared they were unequipped during those times to be able to successfully care for students who came to them what is our role as a school division is it to um try to make a safe place for all children to learn as someone said reading writing and arithmetic and it is but we also I think do clearly know that you don't get to that if you have other issues and that becomes our challenge here um i have to agree uh with um miss amen that I

145would really like to see the policy and the procedure be able to come as one it's unfortunate that the legislation did it to us this way it says that you need to have something in place by the beginning of of school that being said we've been in that situation before and i think making our concerns known regarding procedure i really have confidence in in this administration as um how they've responded in the past and implemented procedure and process in in full earnest with the support and the goal of educating our students at the heart of all that they do I do not believe that Dr. Parker and his team are going to take the policy that we vote on today and use it for bad for our students we have a ton of policies that

146could be interpreted many ways and newport news public schools interprets those policies such that it takes the care and consideration into great great concern for our students for our students who are going to come through our doors they need to realize that they they matter and so I'm very happy that the community came out today to speak on both sides of this because as a community that's what we need to do for our our students is we need to be able to be voices and they need to be able to see and hear us being concerned about those things that that concerned them so this is a hard one this is a very hard one it's a little bit of stepping out on faith um but I've seen newport news public schools do things right

147and that was well before I was on this board so those are my comments all right thank you mr roswell mr hunter uh thank you mr chairman um we've heard from lots of folks this evening and we have a lawyer on our school board so she gave us the very detail of some of our concerns one of my biggest concerns is really with the elementary school level and not telling the parents and things that sort give me some unrest however I have worked with I do live with educators at the elementary school level and we our goal our jobs here at school board is really to first to ensure the safety of our kids number one that's best number one number two is to ensure that our each and every child gets the best education

148they possibly can get here and be have equitable don't care about your race creed color sexual orientation we're not doctors that's not our job we were elected here by our constituents to ensure that we have a safe place and that each and every child even though you may not like all the things that's going to be in this policy I cringe out of myself but it's a mandate I'm quite sure each one of us on this board if we didn't have to vote we wouldn't not right now if we can pick and choose some of those things out we would but we can't we we can't and there are kids out there that are students out there that are suffering we just don't know about it I read the article months ago that many students

149are in newport news public schools because of our acceptance of their identity that acceptance of their identity and their don't make money but there are many times ago that as a black man I couldn't even vote even though they said I was a man that was not in my time and so I know I know I know this is a hard decision for us but we must pass you know a policy uh our vice chair says it we I must must we must rely on our superintendent and his senior staff and all the other staff that we have the counselors and the psychiatrists all those within our school system to ensure that when there is an issue that comes up that we handle it properly and there when I was chairman the board so I

150know we on the previous employment I had one of the parents called me I thought it was a work-related job or a question she says my daughter is now a boy what is newport news system going to do let's make a phone call three weeks later she came to me says oh gary what a wonderful school district have heard haven't heard anything that I know that child probably graduated this year last year so sometimes we make big issues that may not be a big issue I think that's we're already handling it here we are hence it but our job is not to discriminate against anyone at all I mean we're here to ensure the safety and you know the well-being the kid educated we don't want kids to be alone I don't want no columbine

151here I'm I don't I don't want it to grow into that I want you know there's other ramifications sometimes you know you have to look past the trees to see the whole forest and so yeah we're looking at one or two each one of us are probably looking at one or two different things that we don't like in this policy but I believe that we have the knowledge that personnel staff here to make sure that when a issue comes up that we handle it properly if not I wouldn't be on the school board thank you mr chairman all right thank you mr hunter all right I'll I'll try to be brief um because as as all of you I've got some things that I would like to say as well and normally I try not

152to speak my opinion but you know tonight on an issue like this I do feel compelled to to say something before I was a school board member I was a father first and it was as a father that really you know made me think about being a board member and one of the things that we talk about we have a policy that says that parents are essential and that the school division views parents as being the primary educators of their children when it comes to their gender and their sexual orientation their sexual identity so to have a policy that contradicts that I think that tonight what would be doing if we you know adopted this policy is we would have to throw that other policy out as well because those two things you know are

153in conflict with one another uh parents can't be essential and then you're then we have a set of procedures that says that we're not going to honor the the rights of parents um those two things uh can be true and then of course you know before I was a father I was a christian you all you all know me sometimes you make jokes make fun of me for being a very religious you know guy uh but you know as as also you know very religious I've been very private right we we talk a lot about or I practice not trying to impose my religious beliefs on anyone else right but this policy and this procedure imposes a set of beliefs on everyone it says it says that gender is a spectrum which I hey I'm

154I am as uh understanding and empathetic with everyone and and and always respect other people's beliefs I don't have as a religious person I don't believe that and then therefore I don't want that imposed upon me and my family and other children to have to believe that we and we know we heard tonight that you know this uh this notion what what follows the adoption of of of believing that gender is a spectrum then it moves into our curriculum which right now as as family life dictates you know kids can opt out of but if we adopt it as a policy as non-discrimination it's going to permeate into our curriculum as being required that everyone has to believe this and if you don't then you are a bigot or you're discriminating and I don't I

155can't abide by the notion that because I have a different belief that I'm a bigot I have a different belief and I respect your right to have a different belief as well and and then just you know developmentally uh you know my concern as always our mission is is children you know I'm I know that there's a lot of scientific thought and discussion I'm not sure that a child is really in a position to decide what their gender is when they're a child and I've always been in the opinion my belief is always hey do what you do what you will and our job is let's let's get them to be adults and they can make whatever decisions they want to make and and make their choices so the notion of a child being a

156child making that decision on their own and you know then then being on them being on their own and the parent that's being between the parents and them it's just that's that's a mess that that I don't it's a it's personally a mess that I don't want and that's you know that's and that's you know of course again that's just me the other thing that can you know the concerns in terms of the procedure as written today a child can make infinite changes to their gender so they come in one week I feel like a boy next week I feel like a girl next week I feel nonbinary next week I feel feel this now I'm not I'm not trying to make a cartoon or trying to say that people will do that but I'm

157saying the procedure as written allows for that and that's potentially chaos there has to be changes to student records and all that every time this this child says that and they can theoretically come in and say don't tell my parents I've changed this and I've changed my name and and there's going to be an impact on their student records and just you know it's a it's a you know as ms amen pointed out I think it's a nightmare to try to manage so we are as board members we are in a position to make a decision yes the general assembly passed a law they passed a bad law in my in my opinion but their law required us to take a vote which is what we're about to do tonight okay so the fact that

158we the fact that we have to take a vote means it does fall to us and I don't believe that we can actually defer this responsibility by saying well the general assembly made me do it when the general assembly so it's one thing I very much believe in following the law so I don't want people to take me as a hypocrite because I talk about following the law all the time when the law violates the constitution then it's a bad law okay in this case this law violates the constitution and we're talking about that well if we had more time we developed some different procedures we'd have something tailored to newport news there's nothing stopping us from doing that if we voted this down tonight there's nothing stopping us from next month after that developing

159instead of developing a set of procedures doing what we normally do develop some procedures put it out there to the public have some focus groups let the public look at it vet it come back and say hey here's our procedures that are tailored to newport news public schools and adopt that as we've as we've heard tonight um even even and I i would say this even if the liability for our school division was at a significant level which I I believe it's not I'd still vote against this and so that's that's my comment and that's my that's my perspective so at this time now I'll just ask um we have the main motion uh and I said I said it because I said I would um you know offer up this opportunity are there any

160amendments to the main motion okay hearing hearing none is there any further discussion that being the case that madam clerk would you please call the role eley against harris against hunter for Surles-Law against aman against best obstain brown against wow okay motion fails four two I'm sorry five to one one obstain all right so the motion fails all right motion motion has failed all right um with that then I want to thank the public for every all their comments tonight we're going to move on to item 5 which we have some media reports so we're going to be here a while longer listening to some reports we have our back to school ready report item 5.01 on the agenda right now all right I mean you're gonna come back but you're still gonna float again

161this is making sense well mr chairman while they load up the uh the presentation we are going to move forward with the back to school report we have one of this is this really is our kickoff to uh to to putting um some updated information in front of in front of the board and community we obviously have a lot of communication events coming up and later this uh this month so I wanted to in a similar fashion to last year we unfortunately we are beginning the school year under um somewhat similar circumstances although although some of the dynamics have changed we have more vaccinations and vaccinations available and other and we are a year into this so we obviously know how to uh implement safety mitigation strategies contact tracing many of the things we did

162not know a year ago we're starting we are a one-to-one school division now so all students have a device um so we feel that this will follow some similar protocol as last year when we talked about our back to school report and how to maintain safety in our schools uh knowing that we will um move welcome our students back to five days of in-person instruction on september 8th some folks are still thinking this the 7th it is september 8th which is a wednesday and we are looking forward to the arrival of students so this um presentation tonight will give a full understanding of our safety um safety challenges how we plan to maintain safety what our instructional program will look like moving into the new year and some ancillary information such as athletics and other

163areas so I will turn it over to mrs rousseau who's joining us um virtually who will start off with uh just an update on our most recent covet metrics because we have to monitor those as we move into the new year to make sure that we respond accordingly mrs Roaseau are you are you with us Dr. Parker I am with you but uh mrs carlson is going to take us through these tonight awesome is mrs carlson yes I'm here and we'll move to the first slide um I'm going to cover the updated cdc guidance cdh guidance and covid metrics as they stand right now and opening school this first slide shows the upward movement of covid cases here in newport news this is as of uh yesterday 8 16 at 5 p.m and as you

164can see our cases um are rising quite rapidly the 502.7 per 100 000 is based on the last 14 days normally we had been basing our counts off the off seven days which the next slide will show that as you can see for newport news we are in the high transmission rate at 235.5 cases per 100 000 uh people I would like to add to this that according to the uva projection we're going to peak the week of september 12th and for the metro area they're projecting that we'll have 30 912 cases of coded by that time and then the week of september 12 on the peninsula alone will have 7875 cases of of coded next slide please so in order to cut down on the transmission rate of covid in our schools as you

165know governor northam has issued the mask mandate for all public and private schools and that's to keep everyone safe of course regardless of your vaccination status you're encouraged to wear a mask indoors not only in schools but out in the community it's especially important for our athletes to wear their masks when they're not actually participating in their sport and also due to the fact that none of our elementary age children are eligible to be vaccinated at this time they all should wear a mask while they're out on the playground because they will not obviously be maintaining social distancing while they're outside playing now as our numbers go down this can be readdressed but right now with our transmission rate being high we do need to adhere to math squaring the next next slide and these

166are the changes to the cdc guidance that are new for us this year again math scoring for everyone ages 2 and older including teachers staff and visitors to all k-12 schools again regardless of the vaccination status one thing that the cdc has encouraged is that anyone who is fully vaccinated who has had an exposure to a known or suspected covid case should be encouraged to get tested three to five days after that exposure regardless of symptoms we should be promoting vaccinations for everyone who is eligible we should be monitoring the community transmission in our area vaccination coverage the screening testing and outbreaks and those will be based on how we will layer our prevention strategies in-person learning is most important and for the physical distancing we need to try and do three feet in between

167all students but they do stress that if three feet cannot be maintained that we will continue with in-person learning and we will do physical distancing to the best of our ability next slide so in order to prevent the transmission of covid in our schools again we're going to promote vaccinations with everyone which we have sponsored vaccination clinics at warwick high school where we have vaccinated over 200 school-aged children 12 and over of course we're in consistent correct math use the physical distancing to the extent possible one thing that we're discussing is doing screening for covid to identify cases it would be in those people who are not symptomatic it would be what they call school testing where with parental consent and with consent of staff members weekly we would do full testing of individuals to

168identify those who may touch positives and not be showing any signs of covid at that time ventilation is important hand washing and respiratory etiquette of course staying home for all students staff teachers and visitors when they're sick we do need everyone to complete the self questionnaire before they enter one of our buildings all health services staff members will be conducting contact tracing to include isolation and quarantine for and of course cleaning and disinfecting now for the contact tracing one of the changes that the cdc has made for what they're considering a contact among students only is if the students are wearing masks and they're maintaining three foot social distancing if the student is identified as a close contact they will not need to quarantine which will be wonderful news for our families because you know

169when we have to send that child home for 14 days it's a hardship on the parents if they work outside of the home next slide please um again this is talking about what the cdc has recommended which is the universal masking physical distinct distancing to the greatest extent possible and additional strategies which one thing that with our transmission rate being in the high transmission the vdh had indicated that we should try and do distancing in our secondary schools at six foot again that's guidance if it is at all possible but as the next statement says we would not exclude any students from in-person learning that we would do the best we could with the distancing and our goal would be three foot between uh students next slide the physical distancing guidelines uh anyone who is

170not fully vaccinated should maintain six foot distance beams from people who do not live in their household again the three foot is between students in a classroom six foot is between students and teachers and staff and then between all teachers who are not fully vaccinated while students are eating we should try and maintain six foot social distancing to the extent possible again if that can't be done we will do the best we we can cohorting is another way of trying to minimalize the extent of excuse me of disease transmission and with that if if we had an outbreak or one case I should say then the contact tracing would be easily done if the groups were together throughout the day next slide and again I mentioned this we've been holding vaccination clinics since june oh

171excuse me we've done over 600 students ages 12-18 I'm sorry i misquoted that our next clinic will be august the 24th at warwick high school we will continue clinics throughout the school year we are encouraging families to vaccinate their children the cdc has indicated that the pfizer vaccine should be approved for children younger than 12 hopefully in september and also they have said that the pfizer vaccine will have fda approval within the next few weeks next slide I think that yeah I think that's the end of mine okay so we'll move on to human resources um we uh well while we while um nina you come forward but what we'll do is take a moment to if they're mr chairman if there are any specific questions to that particular area we know we have a

172lot of ground to cover so I would say to please uh pace yourselves accordingly quick questions no questions questions about about mass I think in general just good question yes how many um vaccinations we did throughout the city i might never miss that oh um 600 over 600 students ages 12 to 18 and what they have done is you know we are asking parents to sign up ahead of time however they are taking walk-ins and they had tried to arrange the clinics where the first clinic was obviously for first time uh the third shot number one and then the second clinic that was two weeks later was for the second vaccine however if we had students coming in at that second vaccine clinic to get their first vaccine we were accepting them and that's what

173they've continued to do I was actually I was asking how many clinics have you had oh how many clinics we have had three and where were they where were they they were all at warwick yes they've all been at warwick high school do we plan to do some in the east end section of the city and as well as the denbigh section of the city uh in the beginning that was the plan but we are partnering with riverside hospitals for doing the vaccine clinics and my understanding was they felt like we were over planning how many students that that riverside was projecting that we would have come and so we would have had too many clinics going on at the same time without enough student response but I'm not sure honestly if they're planning on

174having a clinic north and uh in our southeast community I think that would be something good that we should maybe possibly look at with transportation being an issue with some parents they might can't get to work high school I know it's not that far but for some people it might be challenging for them to get there may want their kids to be vaccinated so if we could look in the future maybe doing one in the east end section as well as a denver part of this city I think that would be great just to make sure we're showing um giving everyone throughout the city a chance before before mr right response uh nancy um before we started offering our clinics we also had approval at other vaccine vaccine clinics for students ages 12 and older

175to become vaccinated so I know we're representing 600 on this slide but would you agree that with the uh once the approval was made for 12 12 and older to become vaccinated we did have families take advantage of available city citywide vaccination opportunities prior to our three clinics being offered am I correct yes that's true and as a matter of fact when we we're currently doing contact tracing and if it's if I call a family that is involving a student and the parent says to me hey I really want to get my child vaccinated we encourage them to seek out vaccination clinics out in the community of course we tell them about the ones that we're having at warwick but you know if the parent wants to go and try and get the vaccine now

176we encourage them to go out and do that mr wright school board and dr parking to your question uh mr ely we actually our initial plans uh did include a transportation plan for our school division which represented the the south also central and north and I want to thank shea coats and john payne who worked really hard to make sure that we had a shuttle system going when we first started on june 19th we only had three students take advantage of the transportation that day we had parents and family members that were bringing you know their students of family members to warwick high school and also I did want to mention there will be another opportunity at the community event on the 28th for vaccinations so and thank you nancy how do we how do

177we get the information out to the parents if their record's just so low at three and at night and then I know it might be just a stereotype I know it's been high especially in my community I'm not getting the vaccination but I just want to make sure that we are getting it out there to the parents that that they had the opportunity to get vaccinated but they just chose not to because with just three people taking advantage of it was like so did we send it out to the whole population and okay absolutely we did and we also send the live link that we received from riverside in preparation for every student vaccination clinic we send that out in advance through a blast to our community letting them know about the opportunity we've gotten

178great responses and we also don't turn anyone away so if families are showing up that day and we're well over you know 200 we continue to provide vaccinations at the riverside as they continue to you know pull those shots out and we'll keep pushing we plan to have clinics as we start the school year perfect thank you thank you miss amen yes yeah I had a mass question or questions um because I've had some feedback from constituents if they have a medical or religious situation where they're looking at one of the exceptions you know what do they do who do they contact what is their process here um and then also as someone who I can wear masks for a little bit but at some point I start to hyperventilate um you know that eight

179hours a day five days a week is a long time for students and um are we encouraging our teachers and staff to work with the students and err on the side of kindness I just have this vision of someone getting yelled at in the hall and um you know this this is going to be an effort of everybody and I just I get concerned especially the little ones or someone needs a break um but there's going to be you know a little bit of grace and kindness there um and nancy I'll let you uh if I miss anything I know we have fielded the same question regarding a religious exemption for mask wearing and we're working with our legal legal staff to get proper advancement on that um there are um there are considerations that

180have to be taken into place um with a student who comes to school without a mask and there are obviously in addition to legal to that to religious religious requests which we've received recently there are medical you know legitimate medical reasons why a student may such as severe asthma and other reasons why they may have some level of exemption with but we have to we're work what we're looking at right now one making sure we have adequate process um to validate the request but then also the there are the safety implications in the school we just went over some information where if one student's not vaccinated and another student's vaccinated and now you have you have mandatory quarantine quarantining for for for a majority of students versus if both were wearing masks you uh you

181may not have to send so many students or staff home depending on the circumstances so we have to take those into consideration uh whether we can socially distance the student um whether they are you know there may be considerations whether they would submit to weekly testing so we have to think about those things before we really come out with a proper response as we move together move forward with our safety and mitigation uh planning for the year so I know that parent who brought the question forward is waiting for a response but there's a reason why she hasn't received one is because we don't we necessarily have to work out the details of that of that request and make sure that we can accommodate and or what those stipulations of accommodation would look like nancy

182did you have any other uh anything to add to that response uh for the the medical piece if a child and a parent come in and they have a medical exemption mask exemption form from their physician they will present that to the nurse and the nurse will review it with them and that was in place last year also other questions one thing um also when we were talking about the vaccinations also for anyone who is fully vaccinated whether that they receive two doses of the mederna or the pfizer are one dose of the johnson and johnson then if they're identified as a close contact they also will not have to quarantine for those 14 days okay mr chairman we'll move on to the human resources portion of the presentation good evening school board and Dr.

183Parker as we look to start the school year we have challenges with staffing as also other districts are facing two critical areas for us are bus drivers in transportation and teachers we currently have 73 percent of our total bus driver allocations filled and 92 of our teacher allocations filled many of our out of the area recruitment efforts of course have been halted due to covid so we have been targeting social media radio advertisements drive up job fairs and flyers we've also been working with local universities to interview and make job offers to their december hires so that they can start in january so we are working diligently and continuously to um fill these vacancies to help with the school opening for the teacher coverage we are going to be using qualified substitute teachers in those

184positions that are not filled by the time school starts mr coats when he comes up with the transportation presentation will discuss efforts he's making to open that start school for transportation of the kids all right questions well I'll just uh ask a question as a sort of a psa for our bus drivers if you could just tell the public what is it what does it take if someone is out there listening tonight and knows that we you know we need bus drivers so what would it take for someone to be a bus driver for newport news public schools all right I know that they do need a cdl but we also have a class that if you don't have your cdl you can come and we will train you to get your cdl to become

185a school bus driver is that a clean driving record also yes it must be a clean driving record that eliminates that's the big piece but clean driving record folks clean driving records okay and wonderful and then uh our starting hourly pay for our bus drivers is what starting hours so 15 and 84 cents an hour starting pay for a bus driver and as I understand we are offering a recruitment bonus at this time could you tell the public what is the recruitment bonus if you sign up to be a bus driver so fifteen hundred dollars I'm assigned yeah there you go but can I quit tomorrow clean driving record so fifteen hundred dollars which I believe is more than other divisions are offering on the peninsula uh so that's a hefty bonus signing bonus of

1861500 plus it's 15.84 cents an hour to be a bus driver so please um folks out there in the public you're looking for work you've got a clean driving record come sign up because we need bus drivers this really will impact our activities our ability to um uh to run all the schools as we need to run all of our programs that we have this is bus driving is essential to our division operations absolutely thank you thank you good evening guest uh I'm here today to talk to you about what we've got going on at plant services we've had we've been very busy this summer uh we have a total of 102 projects going on from 11 florin as you can see 15 gym floor projects contracted projects paving projects hvac projects casework replacements at

187two schools solar projects in the mix one completed there's five of those and uh the relocation project for south morrison and also the debbie learning center so uh to get into that to take a look at some of those projects hvac replacements as most you all know that work around this building telecommunications and we also have one going on at kiln creek we're finishing up on our second phase at woodside high school and hopefully that will come to fruition here uh by the end of the week uh we've ran we you know naturally we've had some problems with hvac issues due to covet uh getting things delivered when they're supposed to get delivered so it's been a challenge the south morrison relocation most of this was done in the house with the exception of some

188aesthetic work at gatewood and down at newsome park we pretty much took care of everything the new katherine johnson adult learning center as we've kind of ear tagged it right now so that's uh hopefully they'll start moving in tomorrow at uh katherine johnson adult learning center and gatewood should be ready by the end of the week knock on wood uh casework replacements at palmer an achievable dream uh this is an ongoing effort I think this is like school number nine or ten now to uh receive case work auditorium catwalks this is something nobody ever sees but they're up there and our students utilize them so uh they were hazardous so we had to close them down last year uh mitchfield and work high school and demi we kind of put them off limits until we

189could replace them so that's a good thing happening there canopy replacements at yates saunders and sanford uh gym floor replacements at I think it was six goals yep and uh what that's doing is y'all have all been in gyms and seen the kind of cross uh pressed flooring system in there it's called a grand wood we're replacing it with a performance flooring so a lot less accidents easier on the knees for kids you know slip strips and falls don't end so bad uh electrical panel replacement at several schools and we're replacing overlaying uh we actually milled out an overlaid uh in the process of finishing up a workhouse goal and we're in the process of finishing up menchville high school so you know it would be unjust not to share some pictures uh as always

190so uh these are some hvac replacements the one on your left is the ceiling at uh telecommunications and then as you can see it's got a lot of new fancy duct work in it in the uh center where woodside and over on the right we are at kiln creek uh this is always amazing to see new refinished floors uh that's work and denbigh with their denbigh 's new logo and works new floor they look great to see him in person does justice so some flooring pictures I know a lot of y'all have seen these before but you know there's a picture of what it looks like while you're working on it and then when it's done uh this is south morrison we'll talk about that for a second or not south morrison but uh the

191gatewood facility we've kind of dropped the people on that and we just call it the gatewood facility now it's kind of what plant services ear tag that and so uh I don't know how many of y'all had uh visited the site when it was gatewood pete uh used to be pink birds all over the uh uh you know herons and everything else to kind of entertain the kids and so now you can see it's gone back to uh looking more like an administrative type site three of the classrooms there will be for high school ged and the an official testing ged testing center and the rest of the sites will be uh pretty much used for administrative purposes and so uh and just so that everybody's kind of on the same page the remaining part

192of the south morrison program is mainly the adult uh side of it is going down to uh newsome park and the denbigh learning center is going to the katherine g johnson so all that's worked out hopefully we'll start moving in this week and be prepared for school to start so this is the old actual sophomores and builder no no no I this is this I've got it labeled as the south morrison relocation project but uh this is actually looking at offices and down the hallways of the uh the gatewood facility okay which is uh connected to the wart senior center so if there's any is there any questions I'll move on and I believe mr jenkins is next yes uh good evening chairman brown vice chair Surles-Law members of the board Dr Parker um I'm

193going to be brief this evening I don't have nearly as many slides or pictures as mr beverly but we're pretty excited about our work in technology nonetheless our focus back to school this year as it was last year is on making sure that our staff and students have access to the technology and the internet connectivity that they need to that end our high school teachers and many of our general administrators principals assistant principals guidance counselors and other district folks will be receiving new laptops that's part of our our five-year computer refresh we try to make sure that staff have computers that are no older than five years old student devices in continuing our one-to-one we're working on transitioning some of our younger students to ipads instead of chromebooks in working with the folks in teaching

194and learning and school leadership we believe that our pre-k through first grade students would be better suited with ipads so our pre-k students have ipads some of our kindergarten students already have ipads we'll be working on the rest this coming year we should have them within the first few weeks of school and at that time we'll swap out their chromebooks those chromebooks will get repurposed for other students in the district and then next year we'll work on getting the ipads for all of our first graders and to make sure that everybody's devices are working properly for the first day of school we're hosting some we're calling them repair clinics they will be at our schools where students and families will be used to be able to come to any of our schools and if they

195have a chromebook that maybe needs some repairs or maybe it's not working at all it needs to be replaced they'll be able to come in we'll be doing that i believe it's four to seven pm to give families an opportunity to come in after work and the locations dates and times will be posted on our district website i believe they're in the back to school section and on the calendar yes miss amen oh I have a quick question as a parent of a teenager who I'm sure has not turned on this chromebook since the last day of school in june um are there any will there be any updates when they turn it on where there's automatically done any you know tips suggestions procedures for just getting it open and making sure it's all ready

196for this year that that's a great question so we're going to be working with our um our partners in school leadership at the schools to get out some communication to families about to let them know about the clinics and also to let them know if they haven't turned on their devices to go ahead and turn it on plug it in make sure it charges when it when they first turn it back on if it's been off for a while the chromebooks google automatically pushes out updates um so we'll get some tips out to folks that's a great great question all right and continuing on the theme in addition to the devices we're always concerned about making sure that all of our students have access to the internet we do we're continuing all of the programs

197that we had last year where we have partnered with t-mobile and cox primarily as two vendors who are helping us make sure that our students are served the district currently has over 4 000 hot spots out to our out to our families and we'll continue to support that program we're working with cops through two different programs to get broadband into folks homes we have about 700 families that we've registered so far with through the cox program to get broadband in the home and then lastly our call center our virtual learning call center which is the hub for all of this information is also able to provide information to families about the emergency broadband benefit which is separate from our program where families can apply through I believe it's through the fcc to receive up to

198fifty dollars in reimbursement per month to pay to help pay for their broadband service at home so I encourage anybody who has any questions or concerns or needs help getting connected to the internet to call our virtual learning call center the numbers listed on the screen they're also linked all over our website you can either fill out an app you can fill out an application online you can call and get your questions answered so does anybody have any questions about the technology section great I'm going to turn it over to you it's been a long night I'm going to turn it over to kathy alexander our executive director of child nutrition services mine is very short and sweet one slide so I just want to talk about how we're going to feed students this year

199to help keep them safe and in elementary meal service we're going to do breakfast grab and go off the bus which is what we did last year kids get off the bus grab their meal go to class lunch we will be delivering a hot and cold option you know last year they took home a cold option to go home so this year we'll be doing a hot and cold option and delivering it to the classroom for middle schools grab and go off the bus the same eating in the classroom but they will come down for um lunch they will come through the line but then go back to the classroom and in high school meal service they will come to the line for both breakfast and lunch but then ultimately eat in the classroom and

200a lot of that it has to do with packaging and the amount of food that we have to serve in the meal pattern that we have to use and that kind of thing and then we will have for our virtual students we will be feeding from 1 to 1 30 in all elementary schools virtual students can come by and get a meal a breakfast and a lunch so we are very excited about getting back to normal and feeding our kids in the school any questions okay thank you thank you and I'm happy to introduce shea coats good evening chairman brown vice chair Surles-Law board members Dr. Parker as with previous school years here comes the bus app and brett version will be free for all newport news other school families here comes the bus allows

201parents to get real-time location of their assigned bus and the capability for them to set alerts with regards to how close the bus is to the stop it here comes the bus app is available on ios and android devices bus stop information will be available on tuesday august 31st information can be obtained from multiple sources such as the nps website parent view student view and at school open houses if your student needs bus transportation to and or from a child care location within your zone we ask that you please complete the transportation child request no later than august the 20th to ensure you have the right transportation on the first day of school this can be done online or at your school we as the transportation eligible families do not that do not require transportation

202to please opt out of transport transportation by providing the student's name in school name and school to the email noted on the screen this information was also sent out by humanity relations on august the 14th this will help a great deal in our current environment we also encourage carpooling for those to drive their students to school this action can cut down on the traffic congestion that we will see at our schools with regards to safety the one thing i want to note is our highlight is our yellow yellow three card system these cards are required for our pre-k and our kindergarten students to exit the bus the person that is getting this student off the bus must have a course on a yellow card during the first week of school we will allow you to

203get your student off the bus with a government issue without id until everybody gets their yellow card because some people want to go to open house so we give them a little grace period but starting the second week of school we will require that you have their corresponding yellow card and some things that I'll come for transportation we have 31 uh propane fuel full ac buses coming in late september early october that'll move our fleet to 125 out of 340 buses as we continue to move our fleet to propane fleet also we got seven new activity buses that will come in late september those activity buses will be used for our secondary schools so they can help out with small field trips or coaches that want to transport their own students and we'll provide the

204training for them uh I also want to say though kind of the last part is the nnps t pass what this t-pass does is when a school student gets on the bus they scan on and off the bus we have here comes the bus we know where the bus is but sometimes the parent the parent doesn't know if their child is on their students on the bus so this allows them to know whether that child is on the bus works with here comes the bus app just to make sure we get the right speed on the right bus it also helps us with in our current environment with uh contact tracing um you can see the side the t passes the size of our id car cars that we have now uh so when we

205do roll this out we were supposed to roll out in september but the manufacturer we got caught by the manufacturer uh shortage and parts for the rfid readers for the bus so they won't be into november so we delayed the roll out of this that january we have a company that will be making all the cards initial cards for all our students up front and then we have uh printers available right now just uh that will go to our secondary school so they don't have that ability to uh to print costs for kids who lose cards and we'll work through those procedures before we start in uh january also as miss nina talked about the shortages some of the things that we've had to do without a large shortage of drivers is when they talk

206about the school schedule how we have to space out our tiers to give us more time in between for our cleaning protocols and also allow our drivers some drivers only do two schools in the morning we space it out so we might have some jobs do three or four schools uh three or four different schools in the morning to be able to do that so we spaced out and tears gives them enough time in between an hour in between of taking them so that's some of the things we're doing some of our support that we usually provide for after school and I talk with the secondary leadership of providing we sometimes provide three different times we come in with four different buses to take kids uptown downtown to town although we just can't do that

207this year so we're working on scaling that back and work with them to see what we can do but we will make sure all our sports teams are supported as far as games of that nature all right questions yes ms aman um I have a quick question on the opt-out um if a family said well I can take my kids to school in the morning but I can't you know bring them home would that be an appropriate email to reach out and say they don't need morning transportation [Laughter] is allows the parent to know I swipe the t pass the parent actually you can see on the here comes the bus stop I got on the bus then they can you know if they want you they can follow that bus ride and see hey

208when the kid goes off the bus yes that is and so I just want to comment that that is phenomenal that's just really wonderful and I hope that the public um how can we how can the board help get word out to the public about this um this wonderful invention this this wonderful thing that we're doing yeah I think once we you know we were ready at one point then we got to hold back so I think in the fall we'll be developing procedures and starting to push that out to everybody to have it because those kids will have a t pass even though you're not transportation eligible every school every student would have them because we also figured out that rfid the code in there you can also use at the library so we

209work with the library that we might be able to use that to check out books and how does that adapt to the library also in newport news public I mean in the city libraries also so just that technology starts in transportation but how can we roll it out through the whole division other places as we go along quick question yes mr e I know this don't happen in newport news but it's safe for instance um a child get on the bus and a child fall asleep and so this t-pass will let the bus driver know that there's still one child left on the left once we figure out how they should be they can go back and see if the child got the bus real quick and we can and actually if we had the

210incident we can respond very quick to know look in the system say okay this college never got off that bus so it showed like 29 checked in 28 checked out so it's one still up here yes oh that's amazing yeah that's amazing that's amazing uh curious uh how the students are gonna keep up with the cards though so with the initial package that we give out to the schools they'll have um our youngest students will have breakaway lanyards right so they're not you know somebody just wants to pull on it and then they have cars where you can secure them in which are pretty tight they really once you get them in it's almost impossible johnny for me as an adult trying to get them out so they have those and we we'll work through

211those procedures okay how do we place one if we have a kid who keeps on losing what do we do those things like that as we we get closer to that so yeah just curious curiosity on the cost of the card you know per card cost 1.55 some places it's three or four bucks so this is it's pretty good so they're making over 20 based on our population we'll get 23 000 cards all I had a question yes so did you say something about a printer will be in the high schools yes right now dr best each the hospital secondary right now as far as resources we could afford to get in in the high schools and for elementary school until we get we're able to afford to put them in all the elementary schools

212transportation will be taking care of those schools when they have a request there will be a process where they go into our issue track system request the card be made and then our supervisors for those schools they will make sure those cards are delivered to the elementary school but the secondary schools will have the ability uh on hand to do cards themselves so is there a quick turnaround time um you anticipate if the child doesn't have it to have it that after they don't have it that morning have it that afternoon and if not if you just ran the xerox copy with that barcode would that work it's a there is a rfid chip inside it's a chip it's a chip inside within the card okay so it's not that the barcode because all they're

213doing is walking by and they're scanning we we didn't go with the barcodes okay so we I think once we get a little mean on the bones and figure out the processes how long we expect it to take because the system has to update and then work with those kids who need to get on the bus and make sure they have some pass to get onto the bus i got one last question what if the child come to the bus in the morning without that car do we allow them on the yes yeah we never we're not going to turn away a kid to get over the student to get on the bus so we can get them and the driver can manually go in there and push push it if he has to you

214know you get some bus stops with 40 kids you know that's why we want the cars it's easier just to swipe from them to go in and he can he or she can go back and manually add that student in okay I'll be followed by dr tim mclemore our chief academic officer what's the meat that was done that was half time welcome ms patterson as you know last spring um we were very hopeful about where we were going with our code metrics but we were still forward thinking and the fact that we wanted to provide virtual options for both um our students and for our families um so last spring and actually all last year we worked on the virtual learning academy which is in place for this fall which is student virtual choice um

215there was a student application process taken up on may 26 2021 and currently we have 160 enrollments we had lots more applications but for lots of various reasons um students decided it wasn't a good fit for them because of class selections and sports and other various things currently we have four teacher vacancies that's a shameless plug so if you teach us history geometry art and world geography please reach out to us and um we're really hoping to expand over the next three years to k through 12. um and then we also wanted our family choice for a pandemic learning option you know that we utilize virtual virginia which is our statewide learning management or statewide virtual learning program and it was only through semester one and parents had the option to select into that by

216a certain date this is obviously a very student-driven type of learning which means it's mainly asynchronous and there would be some synchronous options for our students the registration deadline was july 15 2021 and that was set by virtual virginia so they could plan for fall as you know it's a statewide system but as you know we um we have the delta variant and we're looking towards fall and how we can provide more family options but we're currently facing some present challenges the focus right now because of the governor's mandate and senate bill 1303 is that we are mandated to provide in-person instruction for all of our students and as you heard from ms nina farish that we have a teacher vacancy for in-person instruction so this causes a little bit of a pickle for us

217virtual virginia cannot accept any more registrations as it's at its class size capacity and there's also another challenge that we face in newport news which is that we've learned from our data this past year that our students um really struggled to learn online not all of them but the majority of our students are really struggling with online learning so we have to take that into consideration as we move into fall of 2021. so the solutions for families that are seeking virtual learning right now because of the delta variants we are working with a third-party solution as we already have a teacher shortage we can't rely on our teachers to provide this virtual instruction unfortunately again it will be another a fully almost fully asynchronous option for our students meaning it's student driven and teachers will

218only be there occasionally to support our students the current virtual provider is requiring that if they sign up as a parent and your students in their classes that you have to have a literacy or a learning coach through k5 and the learning code should be the family member um so if this is still of interest to you and you're worried about the delta variant then we want you to contact your school to be placed on a waitlist as we're still working out all the details with our third party provider some considerations that I want our families to think about though before they sign up for full-time virtual learning for their students for the fall semester of course our priority is always on student safety we think of that first and we are making sure that

219we follow all cdc guidance um very very carefully we take it very very seriously and we also have to realize that there is a reality of learning loss that we're seeing in our data but there's also a social emotional wellness if we speak to our local pediatricians they will tell you that the cases of anxiety and depression have skyrocketed since covid um so and we have to be cognizant of the fact that the learning for this fall will be mainly asynchronous with some teacher synchronous supports the family will become the learning coach and learning will occur during the day monday through friday all division diagnostic tests and state mandated tests will still have to be scheduled and will still have to be taken within a school building so that is my update on virtual learning

220for this fall if you have any questions i can take them down questions all right well I'll just ask try to ask a summarizing question which it sounds like what you're saying is that right now students are set for in-person instruction if a family due to whatever their safety concerns are change decide they want to change their mind they can sign up for the virtual academy but there is there isn't uh there isn't necessarily space available right now they go onto a waiting list um how last year these decisions became final at a certain point you know as far as the first semester second semester is once you go on the waiting list for the virtual academy is that a final decision for the semester what is yeah what is the logistics of that okay

221so the virtual learning academy is open currently right now 9 through 12 and if we have the teaching space we will definitely take any 9th or 12th grader right now it is a full year option virtual virginia is full so this particular third-party option would be for the first semester unless the the the family chooses to go for the full year okay so first grade through eighth grade really it's in person is is what we have and for that um set virtual virginia's full as well as far as we know so really this is what this is what we have for families is is in person this year all right and for those students who are um in virtual the virtual learning academy or the virtual virginia program we are mandated by by the state

222and video if a student or family chooses to go back to in-person instruction we will accommodate that request but we obviously wanted our families that uh students who who enrolled in the virtual learning academy to commit to a time to a time frame of making that program work but we uh some but for some students that model is may not be the best model for their learning and we want to make sure we put students in a position where they can be the most successful all right thank you very much right now I'd like to introduce um mrs laurie wall who will give you some updates on elementary instruction for paul thank you dr magama if we were in an elementary classroom i would give you a wiggle break a movement break um so feel

223free if you need to stretch a little bit um I'm used to being in an elementary classroom so thank you I'm gonna share just um a little bit about our spark uh our summer stack spark that just ended and give you a little bit of information this summer we served 1114 students they participated in a five-week summer school spark program were they engaged in small group literacy scientific investigation and engineering and number talks to work on computational fluency we have data that will come this fall around the growth gained this summer and we'll share that at a later board meeting they rounded out their summer experience with a camp week in partnership with the flying classroom and the flying classroom is a stem based curriculum based on the global expeditions of captain barrington irving in

224addition to the in-person students who attended summer school we had 196 students virtually participate in the flying classroom camp so we just wanted to start with the learning continued through the summer for our students as well as a summer portal for any students to learn anywhere anytime so I'm going to share a couple of exciting hopefully still at 10 o'clock exciting elementary curriculum revisions while students were enjoying the summer spark experience the curriculum team spent this summer making revisions to support the return to full-day in-person instruction first and foremost in addition to implementing the sel curriculum caring school communities we've built in new supports for relationship and community building across all content areas so for example in math students will spend time exploring ideas and concepts such as perseverance the value of making mistakes and

225growth mindset and in literacy additional time has been allocated in the first units to learn to develop student agency through collaborative structures and establishing procedures and routines as well we've made curriculum revisions in our pacing guides and unit plans and they've been revised with a focus on priority standards these standards ensure deeper learning of essential content and another way we address essential content in math specifically is through the addition of a 30-minute acceleration block during which students will engage in adaptive online learning through dreambox as well as personalized instruction based on identified needs as diagnosed based on diagnostic and pre-assessment data in reading instructional routines have been created to support the development of foundational literacy skills needed to become a proficient reader and in science and social studies the emphasis of the priority standards is

226evidence through the additional hands-on learning experiences to include the analysis of primary and secondary sources as well as engaging in scientific investigation and engineering practices using new science tools that teachers will be getting this fall in recognition of being a one-to-one division we will continue to utilize canvas as our learning management system in grades k-5 in order to support blended learning canvas should include a balance of instructional resources and online activities it will also serve as the primary communication tool with partnering with families as we use this year and in preschool we opted to use seesaw this year as the learning management system but it will serve the same purposes for our youngest learners before I share a couple of examples of what blended learning might look like in elementary as a refresher I would

227like to revisit the blending learning visual that dr minglemon shared at the may board meeting as you can see blended learning it's a combination of face-to-face and virtual learning experiences so I'm going to give you an example of on the left on the left hand side this might be seen during the literacy block this is an example of a rotation model one group of students could possibly be receiving differentiated small group instruction from the teacher while another group could potentially be working online in canvas or using an adaptive learning platform designed to address student-specific learning needs and finally a third group of students could be working offline with a choice of whatever they would want to be reading or writing the example on the right could be used for example in social studies in this

228example the entire class could be studying the same content or concept however each rotation would approach the concept a little differently one group of students could be working offline analyzing a primary source while another group could be online reading a piece of text or watching a video clip on the discover education site while still another group could be extending and applying their learning through the construction of a product to demonstrate their understanding of the concept this model allows for the teachers to engage with all three groups throughout this block of time it also allows for the student choice with pace and path of learning so that should give you a little bit of some examples around what blended learning would look like in as it relates to what remote or hybrid learning looked like last

229year so before i turn it over to dr jones to talk about secondary curriculum and development does anyone have any questions yes ms aman um i have two questions one regarding the blended learning this doesn't does this eliminate like the classic t like where you might have a teacher standing up in front of the classroom teaching everybody we're going to do the initial class on audition and then they might go into some of this or does this is this complement it is complement so if we were to consider the math block that 30 minutes is in addition to the 60 minutes of the math block where a teacher would be working and with the whole class differentiated instruction kids could be working in pairs or group while the teacher could be modeling and doing explicit

230teaching okay um and my second question was back just when you were talking about the social emotional learning the new curriculum if we or parents or community members wanted to learn more about that curriculum that we've added where would they go to look sure so we can get information that will be shared at open house about our social emotional curriculum as well as a little bit of the information around morning meeting and the social emotional aspects of what I talked about within the curriculum so teachers can share that at open house with with their parents thanks leadership questions any other questions thank you okay I'm going to turn it over to dr jones who will talk about secondary education good evening I'm going to begin by basically highlighting a couple of the summer opportunities that

231our students had this year this is not comprehensive of all the summer programs but these definitely informed the planning for unfinished learning for the fall during our middle school spark we only had 286 students to attend however those students were very consistent with their attendance we had english and math instruction the english instruction focused on a comprehensive read 180 program that provided whole group small group and computer-based adaptive instruction for each student in math students focused on foundational skills while also incorporating goal setting and tracking their performance student learning was extended extended in the core classes but also during enrichment where they had the opportunity to participate in five strands the first strand was stem which focused also on computer science robotics and cyber security the second strand was scientific investigation the third strand was

232history and debate the fourth was health and physical education where students had the opportunity to participate in outdoor education activities and the fifth was visual visual and performing arts I was really excited to see the student share her experience about summer institute for the arts earlier so the students that attended middle school also participated in visual and performing arts activities this summer students rounded off the summer program by participating in local field trips this year we decided to offer a summer virtual extended learning opportunity that provided asynchronous skill extension with the opportunities for students to participate in newsela no red inc they had an opportunity to read to read and reflect and in math they focused on i excel we had a 155 students participate in this asynchronous program in english and participate in math

233we offered two new camps this summer something new that we had not done before which was our dual immersion camp it was held at getter sleeve middle school for one week for students in grades six and seven you know our seventh graders were there last year but many of them were not in school together so we combined our rising sixth graders and seventh graders together and we had a total of 45 students the students engaged in immersive language experiences they also created a community together because we actually mixed the sixth and seventh graders together so they could kind of mentor one another and they also participated in engaging engaging cultural experiences also we have the eager camp at wilm and mary eager stands for elevate engineering advance innovation guide learning affect change remove barriers to

234ensure equity for all so this was also a new camp this summer that students really had a great opportunity to participate in in grades six through eight i want to thank our curriculum um team instructional supervisors specialist coaches and teachers for taking so much time to revise the curriculum this summer um as laurie mentioned they also focused on the priority standards of course the standards to endure deeper and essential learning they also incorporated critical thinking and problem solving inquiry and investigation more formative versus summative assessments as well as performance assessments and curriculum compacting and differentiating for our gifted learners second aspect that our teams focused on was student agency incorporating social and emotional learning learning and of course the profile of a learner so in all their curriculums um and their curriculum maps they made

235a conscious effort to integrate social and emotional learning as well as attributes of a profile of a learner and then finally we focused on inclusion of diverse content just being very culturally inclusive of people and perspectives real world applications and connections across contents we really have a very hap heavy ins um very heavy emphasis on secondary unfinished learning we wanted to ensure that we were addressing all tiers of instruction particularly for our grades six through eight and also a tier one instruction for high school so we've incorporated programs and really made some strategic decisions so that we could support students at all levels one of the new programs that we will be implementing this year will be newsela which is used across contents and grades and it's also based on students lexile level so although

236it's a tier one resource it is very adaptive to meet students wherever their needs are so while we haven't quite um incorporated tier three resources for high school this is an area that we will be working towards this year canvas integration of course it will continue to be our learning management system to support blended learning laura gave you a really good overview of blended learning so I won't repeat that canvas also includes a balance of instruction and resources it provides equitable access for our students it is engaging it allows them to interact individually as well as with others and it also helps them create and to demonstrate learning and mastery in canvas teachers will develop lessons based on the 5e model engage explore explain elaborate and evaluate and that seemed to work really well for

237the teachers using that model this year do you have any questions okay for the um curriculum revisions are they in teachers hands now like and how not yet they're making final revisions but when teachers come back they will definitely be available they're offering new teacher sessions this summer but they're gonna roll it out in stages you know the new teachers will get some of it but when all the teachers return they will give them the full curriculum okay but they're working on they're finishing finishing it up any other questions thank you at this time I will turn it over to stenette byrd school leadership and felicia barnett thank you and greetings from the department of school leadership dr barnett and I are here to round off this portion of the presentation today you've heard a

238lot of good information and we certainly can address any questions you may have about the implementation of any of the items that you heard today but before then we do have a couple of announcements that we'd like to share with you as well as our families who are viewing from home students schedules will be available in parent view no later than winter wednesday september 1st so at that time parents and students can log into their computers go to their student and parent view and be able to see their course schedules also during the orientations that we have scheduled in middle and high schools students will have paper copies available as well and of course the first day of school we will have paper copies available for students as well but starting wednesday september 1st they

239can view online a couple of important dates we have open houses coming up and we have made the decision to go virtual with our open houses and so you'll see here on the screen that for elementary including pre-k open house will be held on september 2nd and we will follow similar processes that we did last year where we will allow our schools and administrators and teachers to do the creative and brilliant things that they did last year I think we've seen some facebook lives some zoom meetings we've seen some videos pre-recorded videos where teachers were able to speak to their students directly so we want to continue doing those creative things we also recognize that our younger students specifically pre-k in kindergarten they need that face-to-face opportunity so we are going to offer an in-person

240experience for our pre-k and kindergarten students where they can come and meet their teachers along with their parents so that's what we have lined for elementary good evening we're also excited to share that we have some similar opportunities available for our middle and high school students we'll have our middle school open house on september 1st it'll also be a virtual experience but we're also excited that we'll have in-person opportunities for our rising sixth graders and our seventh graders to enter their middle school because just like sixth graders this will be theirs our seventh graders first time in their building for most of them so they'll have an opportunity to ride their bus come into their school building get their class schedules uh meet their teachers and get a tour of the building and we'll be

241able to do the same thing for our seventh graders and for our high school students on september 3rd we'll have an orientation in person for high school students to visit their schools in the morning we'll host our ninth graders and in the afternoon we'll host our 10th graders and transportation will be provided for both groups we're also looking ahead towards the end of september where we'll offer our back to school nights for both middle and high school students this gives our families a more intimate opportunity to really find out about the curriculum about the schedule for the year some of the exciting things will be happening in the school as well as in the classrooms and also give our students opportunities to sign up for clubs and activities we also want to share some changes

242to our school schedule our time of day our operating day we have made some adjustments that place our tier a schools arriving about 10 minutes earlier than they have typically arrived and then this slight change is also impacting some of our c schools where they may remain about 10 or 15 minutes later this information has already been sent out to our families and it's also posted on our websites for families to see finally there are lots of information on our school divisions website and you can access information about registration supply lists open houses in our orientations our school calendars and schedules bus stop information and breakfast and lunch menus so families have a wealth of resources that they can access on our division website and our school web page pages also will provide many of

243those information as well and finally I'd like to share a report to you around our athletics fall sports have already begun with many of our teams conditioning and preparing for the year in july with golf and football and then in august the early august we started as well with competition cheer a sideline cheer cross country field hockey and volleyball um this year our jv and middle school sports will compete this year and this is something that we were not able to do last year especially for our middle schoolers so we're excited that they'll be able to compete this year and a full schedule of games will be played for our varsity our jv teams and for our middle school teams along the lines of last year as we continue this year with utilizing our mitigation

244strategies we will continue with those um that are already in place and so our student athletes must take a health screening questionnaire before practice and or gain personal protective equipment will be provided for our students that include masks and gloves face shields touchless hand sanitizer dispensers and equipment cleaner practice and safety plans are submitted to the school administration by our coaches um our during our coaches meetings they continue to cover topics such as face covering social distancing and practice plans um their parent meetings that are held that discuss mitigation strategies and team rules and then there are additional documents such as student questionnaire and assumption of risk and waiver that must be signed so finally what we've all been preparing and waiting for our first day of school is wednesday september 8th and we're excited

245to welcome our students and families to a great school year thank you this concludes our report are there any questions yes I'm saying um the open houses um at middle and i think elementary are those gonna be they're virtual are they gonna be in the evening so if parents are home after work yes they will be in the evenings we've slated sometimes between 5 and seven in the evenings and uh schools will post their specific links and uh specific times during that time slot for families um and you know we've talked about a lot of specifics this just hasn't come up are we anticipating lockers to be used like in middle in high school or is that going to be different than past years we haven't quite made our final decision around the use of

246lockers we'll continue to make sure we're utilizing a process that's safe for all students and so that information once it's decided will be shared with our students and families all right wonderful thank you I believe that that concludes our back to school that is the back to school report mr chairman and we will uh we are anxiously waiting to get more um while our website is up and running parents can uh use that as a resource we're also going to send out communication to families real soon and make sure we have a facebook live session uh just getting good information out and uh if anyone is uh contacted we would recommend directing them to the website where we'll continue to update information as it becomes available so uh Dr. Parker item 5.02 renaming the school's

247update is in board members packets within board docs there is a written report uh barring any objection from the board and we proceed to item 5.03 and board members can read the uh renaming schools update in their board packets it is if it's the will of the board we'll move on to the next to 5.03 which is a textbook adoption but mr chairman uh all right if that's the will of the board all right so uh we'll we'll move on to item 5.03 and thank you mr wright thank you so 5.3 is a science uh 20 2021 science uh textbook adoption uh and we will have dr jones come up and uh and kick it off thank you doctor chairman brown vice chair sarah's law members of the board and Dr. Parker tonight dr rodney

248culverhouse will present with you to you the science adoption process timeline stakeholder participation and feedback regarding the approval for the science textbooks for the 2021-22 school year I presented you mr koff thank you dr jones good evening chairman brown vice chair charles law distinguished board members Dr. Parker i would like to discuss with you tonight the recommendation for the 2021 secondary science textbook adoption so this process started when the vdoa actions were that they adopted new sol standards and that was in 2018 but because of the covid pandemic things were pushed back an additional year and so we had to back up and slow down and then it wasn't until october of 2020 that the state actually published their state approved list so the purpose in us taking this action now is to maintain a

249resource that supports the learning needs of all nnps students and provides teachers with a tool that will provide a useful and current resource that aligns with the district expectations of the profile of a learner the last textbook adoption for newport news public school science was 2010 and these resources have run their course and need to be aligned to better support a blended learning environment and I believe there's a few uh electives that were last adopted in 07 so you know that that has definitely run its course the current resource does not provide any of these supports since the contract for these ran out last school year and the uh there was a gap in last school year and I will talk to you in a couple of slides about how we compensated for that gap

250and found resources much more credible and advantageous to our students success so with the one-to-one initiative that we have now new resources and new doors have been opened and there's last year there was no current digital access for the textbooks we had in place but we did have digital access that I will speak of so our timeline so as I stated last october after video we published the state approved textbook list this information was released textbook vendors were contacted and samples were sent to all schools so that all teachers could evaluate the resources teachers were also given digital access because there were many of the staff members that were teaching from home because of the covered waivers so they did have a digital access to the products that we were evaluating for this adoption so

251leads compiled the results and placed them in a master document for the school and then the results were sent to me teachers had approximately three months to evaluate the material so it wasn't like you know typically you get a month or two everybody's in the building you have some meetings but because of covet and the lack of access you know at any given time they were given a three-month window basically from january to march 30th to evaluate the leads met with their teams the teams made their recommendations and the data was gathered to determine which books were most appealing to the teachers that they thought would be most successful to the students at this point in time the books that were chosen were placed out in the admin lobby which you probably have saw from

252may and june and once again because of covid there were some restrictions in place but you know we handled it the best we could to try to get as much public viewing as possible and the important thing here is that last adoption was 11 years ago now with expectations of profile of the learner we really need to move forward with new resources and better resources to best best equip our students the list of textbooks being adopted are presented here and of these books a minimum of 70 of the teachers chose the book that is on this list and of those that didn't choose the book that's on this list the typical response was it was their second choice so we didn't go from 70 choosing this book and then 30 choosing something completely different it

253was a it was a one-two race between the two probably about 95 percent of the choices and uh if you notice it's a it's a well evolved list of books but one thing that may stand out to you is that the only eoc book which is your sol courses is essential chemistry of the other books I'll talk about the resource that will use there and then for physics we already have a current physics book book in place for the last three years the t the physics teachers were involved in a grant through the office of naval research and they were given free books and they were given free technology to assist them with the books that opens the door for digital access for digital pro wear and just a really involved process for those physics

254teachers so the resource that is has really been a game changer for us last year I told you that we didn't really have any digital access for resources so we did a lot of research and ck12 kept popping up ck12 talked to other districts they're like yeah and it's actually a foundation ck12 has been around for over a decade it's not something that oh now we have a pandemic we're going to create something overnight this is a product that's been in existence for multiple years and what they were able to do was provide us not only with a digital resource they provide a textbook they provide simulations in that textbook they provide small videos they provide adaptive learning for students so if I have a student who is trying to master content they have to

255get 10 questions right with this adaptive learning as they get questions right it increases the difficulty if a student gets two of the more difficult questions wrong it drops them back down to the easier so once the student has done this a teacher can look at a student's report and it may say okay they got 10 questions correct but they were all at the low level so now as a teacher I'm automatic hey now's the time for intervention for the student we can build them to get those middle grade and get to the high level so this is a great resource and the beauty of this resource is that typically with textbooks you know you may get a virginia edition the virginia edition is not any different than the california edition all the textbook vendors

256have done is taken our standards and tried to figure out where they align with the product that they've already created with ck 12 we can take their pre-printed book we can add resources to it we can paste it to match our pacing guide so when a student is working on their first unit in science their textbook reflects unit 1 chapter 1 x that's going to exactly mimic what they are doing in class instead of okay for the first unit we're going to go to chapter 7 but then when we get to unit two it's chapter 12 and then a little bit of chapter four you know that can be really confusing and with this it aligns directly with our pacing guide and they can be printed as a pdf so if we need a student

257that needs an official copy we can get print shop get a nice little bound book or whatever and we can they can have an official copy of that as well so that's the beauty of the ck12 product and we will be using that product for sixth grade seventh grade and eighth grade and the amazing thing here only two teachers did not pick this as their number one choice they picked it as their number two so all of the 50 48 50 middle school teachers only two chose it as their second resource so it's a very powerful tool it integrates and embeds with canvas perfectly they don't have to bring links in they can just put the assignment right there and it takes them directly to the website and so it it I think it's great

258for differentiated learning when you've got learners of different levels they they it just puts it right there for them and there's not a lot of fumbling around in the textbook it has the interactives right there for them at their fingertips and then one other I think amazing thing about the oer open educational resource is that typically the past textbook adoptions when you're talking about content have have come in around 1.5 million dollars and because of our ability to use ck12 as a resource for our teachers our textbook adoption is coming in less than half a million dollars so because this we have saved approximately a million dollars and possibly more depending on how everything aligned and so all ap teachers will get the materials they need electives will finally get updated books that aren't 14

259years old chemistry gets an eoc book and then every other content it's a perfectly aligned paste textbook for their course and the beauty is that other courses they can build those too so it's not like we are limited with ck12 just for the contents that we're selecting it for it's still a resource that everybody can use still and it's not a resource that's going anywhere anyway anytime soon and then for the textbooks that we are adopting the vendors have already assured me that once the textbook happens they will provide professional development and we'll set up times that if we need to zoom we'll zoom if the teacher's not available most of them either have the resource on a video set or they will record the webinars that they present to our teachers and I'll have

260access and I can put them in our district curriculum google drive so having said that in a condensed amount of time is there any questions yes miss aman um I just I probably a couple they probably feed on each other the list of textbooks being adopted and purchased are the ones that were out there this past spring yes ma'am they're for high school correct those were all secondary yes ma'am nine through twelve nine through twelve so the open educational resource is more sixth through eighth well uh biology and earth science will also be using that okay uh but that has not been available for the public or for us to review to date correct true okay will there be a time that we can get our you know take a look at it or if

261the public wanted to honestly anyone can log in but I can figure out a way to make that accessible for you to for you to look at it has been in place is the reason I didn't and it hasn't okay and does it align with the virginia standards because I noticed their website they're common core derived yes it does but the reason it can is because we build and select the materials based on the sols that will be in our textbooks okay and so is this this is not new or it is new it's the same we were using it because we had a gap between our textbooks expiring and then having the adoption because the state had not put out a list so what we're essentially doing the textbooks that we have in middle

262school every we have enough still that every classroom will have a class set so they'll have the approved pearson books for a class set but they also have this for their digital access okay but it's something that the teachers have been working within yes ma'am a period of time probably about 16 months now all right other questions yes mr slaw um I find the admin standards pacing app to be one of the greatest things um in newport news that is available will the resources for um books and like say k-12 will it be aligned such that you would be able to kind of see where what you need textbook-wise um speaks to the criteria in the app oh okay 100 that's going to be very resourceful okay as a matter of fact i emailed you

263the copy of the sixth grade one for your class oh thank you all right any other questions all right let's all just ask one question similar to miss amen uh can we uh the board get copies of the digital copies uh and or the physical copies of the book between now and the I believe we're gonna be uh making an action item out of this in the next month um so can we get a version that we can all log into and see and I can also download a pdf and I can uh push that to miss buffaloe and speaking for that okay everybody wonderful thank you excellent so with that being said I just want to want to make a mention that he he was he was very apprehensive about doing this report himself

264and you did a wonderful job we rarely have supervisors come forward um thank you sir for your preparedness and uh and presenting this evening um I'd also mr chairman like to I know we finished our back to school report but my folks uh supervisors left before they before we had a chance to acknowledge their work but um I just I really will um wanted the board to to acknowledge the just a detailed work that our staff has done during this um this portion of reports now and I'll save any other comments to repo to my report time mr chairman I'm being bad here thank you all right wonderful so that moves on item 5.04 uh so similar to our item 5.02 board members have a written copy of this report in their packets are there

265any uh objections or quest objections to moving forward item 5.05 or are there questions at this time all right seeing none then we will move to comments by the superintendent item 5105 so Dr. Parker thank you mr chairman I just couldn't wait to say thank you before folks started leaving um for the great work that they're doing and uh we we uh it's a it's a one a um bittersweet and I don't know if she's still uh listening in but it was helping out with this back to school report but this will be uh mrs Roaseau's last school board meeting um and I know that she's not here in person today but her presence has always felt her advisement is always um given appropriately and accurately and and I just wanted to acknowledge the great

266work that she has done for the school division for numerous years and i think we'll find a more formal way to do that and I hope she's listening in because I want to I want to just embarrass her and say that you know she is one of she is really a cornerstone of our school division in terms of two important areas operations and and business services two areas where we also um exceed and excel other school divisions and are nationally recognized repeatedly for our business operations and I would just like to uh humbly give her a some kudos tonight and thank her for her years of service [Applause] and we couldn't we couldn't uh I know we we will try to fill shoes but sometimes you can't feel shoes too the shoes are very large

267that need to be filled and uh we just want to thank her for her work with the school division so mary lou if you're listening we appreciate you and uh we we will miss you sorely as you move on to bigger and better things in retirement and uh that's always a good a good thing um thank you Dr. Parker I am still listening I am appropriately embarrassed [Applause] well with that being said now that I've done that as uh as you've heard our back school report earlier this evening we are looking forward to welcoming all students back to school for in-person instruction on wednesday september 8th and I'm excited to announce the premier airing of our state of the school's back-to-school launch okay which will be held on monday august 30th at 7 pm this

268has been an ongoing work with a lot of folks many hands in the pot but we wanted to have something that would showcase our school division um in a positive way and what better way than to hear from some of our students our parents our teachers and around the time when school's starting to get folks back into the spirit of what newport news public schools is about so we hope we accomplish that in this uh in this little broadcast on august 30th around our um back to school happenings uh join us um to learn more about our strategic plan during this program and profile of a learner and we'll talk a little bit about some of the other academic and social programs that we have more importantly we'll hear reflections from some of our key

269stakeholders so with that being said that will take place on the following day we will do a facebook live session which will begin at 6 30 to 7 30 and get into the nuts and bolts with some of the information that was shared tonight and answer questions from our community make sure that we are responding appropriately to the information that's both posted online but also it's go will go out um electronically into homes so we invite family students and staff and the community to hear more about our back-to-school plans you may pose questions via facebook during that time and we respond to those questions live during this session so please mark your calendars for august 31st at 6 30 for our facebook live session um and uh that concludes my remarks mr chairman a lot

270of bitters again a bittersweet evening with uh with a very important a member of our team uh uh leaving us and uh I thank the board for your continued support of students and uh the leadership as we move into a new school year we're still excited about the great opportunities that our students will have this year so thank you so much mr chairman all right thank you dr carson uh we are now on item six and I know we took a lot of cards tonight but we'll ask are there any other cards no sir all right there being uh no additional cards and we are on to matters by the school board and I by my watch it's about 10 30. let's see if you all can finish this before 11 o'clock uh miss patterson

271is our student rep welcome we promise that every meeting is not like this uh not going this long but uh please uh go ahead and we'll let you have the floor to speak first if you have any comments I do not have any comments right all right she's she's already a pro wow okay mr eley just want to thank everybody for the major presentations and thank this board for working together and doing what's best for the citizens of newport news thank you mr eley dr best no comments all right ms aman um I'll keep it short and sweet uh thank you to everyone for the presentations and working hard on getting schools back open and back in session and I just want to thank the community members that came out and spoke on on different

272issues and both sides of the issues it's really encouraging to see the community engaged and involved in what we're doing here in newport news so thank you to everyone who came out all right mr harris ms Roaseau thank you for all your long service and long and dedicated service to the newport news public school system uh and enjoy your retirement uh well deserved also miss patterson welcome aboard to the school board I think you're a great addition I'm sure you learned a lot tonight and that was a good response for now all right yeah and uh and welcome back to school uh Dr. Parker thank you for your leadership and uh your staff members uh for their presentation today and uh just look forward to getting back to school and getting back to normal thank

273you that's it mr chairman all right thank you mr hunter uh thank you mr chairman uh again now miss Roaseauif you're still listening uh we're you're gonna we're gonna miss you it's gonna be uh some big shoes to fill but again thank you for your service here to uh blueprint news public schools over the years and the excellent um handling of our books um that's it again so hopefully we'll get the opportunity to do a really nice celebration for you on your way again thanks for all the folks who came out and commented on some tough decisions this evening um great things are happening in newport news public schools and we look forward to a phenomenal and exciting upcoming school year all right madam vice chair looking forward to a phenomenal school year um it

274the framework and the scaffolding are there as we can tell by the presentations we've had tonight I hope everybody's rested and well we promise not to do this to you frequently um but we had some uh some serious business to to step off with and I'm really glad that we were able to hear from the community and their feedback as well mary lou it's going to be really weird around here without you thank you for your many years of service your wisdom your patience your grace and your frankness I have really um learned to uh rely on that so I will miss you very very much mr patterson I'm glad to have you on the board it's nice to see a new face down there and um enjoy this time period with us and we're

275gonna keep you busy okay thank you mr chairman all right so I will try to close this out quickly I'll echo the comments that uh ms rousseau uh personally I thank you for your many decades of service and uh I've learned a tremendous amount from you I thank you for your patience and I know I actually I asked you a lot of questions and you were always willing to answer all of them uh and so I thank you for um helping me to be a better board member uh all the answers that you gave were very always very very helpful and we won recognition under your leadership for our books several times we've won finance uh awards and recognition so I want you to know that uh that we noticed the board notices and we're

276very proud of the work that you've done and have been appreciative of being able to work with you so we wish you all the best of retirement um thanks so much and uh to the staff I want to thank you all for staying with us a late night and staying with us all the way the board we set us through our planning retreat we didn't mind you know if we stayed here until midnight so we almost got it tonight so we won't we won't push it until midnight I won't keep talking that that long I just want to thank the the public that I'm very proud of of our public in the way that they conducted themselves this evening we had a very contentious and difficult issue we had more than 20 speakers we managed

277within an hour to get all 20 of the speakers in and allow them to speak everyone was able to be heard people were their views and opinions were respected so I just have my tonight my hat's off is to my hats off to our community for um taking some very emotional and difficult issues and being able to conduct themselves in a manner fitting of newport news and that's that's what we come to expect so we're very I'm just very proud of that I don't want that to go unnoticed because it doesn't go without saying that I've seen some some we've talked about over the summer boardroom board board rooms gone wild and and none of that has happened in newport news and I'm very proud of uh of the way that our public conducts themselves

278and proud of that's the master board training that we have gone through so I like to feel that uh some of the master board work that we've done that's the reason why we are able to conduct what I feel was a smooth meeting so with that thank you all and we will see you again next month [Music]