Coraggio Consulting
Albemarle County School Board Regular Meeting, Thursday, January 11, 2024

Date: Thursday, January 11, 2024
Place: Albemarle County Public Schools / School Board meeting, Virginia
Length: 3h 40m (video)
Official meeting video (YouTube): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ARKKyL1W0AM

Machine transcript (speech-to-text) produced by Coraggio Consulting. Not an official county record. Names and numbers may be misspelled; check the video at the timestamp before quoting.
Speech-to-text: whisper.cpp, model large-v3-turbo. Produced 2026-10-14. Timestamps are [HH:MM:SS] into the meeting video.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

[00:00:00] I now call to order the January 11th meeting of the Albemarle County Public Schools Board. And so at this time, we'll have item two.

[00:01:33] Yeah, Ms. Lee, I'm sorry. Yes. So moved. Motion carries. Sorry, Ms. Thompson. I've obviously thrown you off tonight. All right. And so at this time, do we have another motion coming out of closed meeting?

[00:01:48] We do, Dr. Haas. I move that this board approves the hiring of employee candidate A, pending acceptance of the offer. Do we have a second? Second.

[00:02:05] Any discussion? Okay, so we'll go ahead and do a roll call for that, Ms. Thompson. Yes, Dr. Haas, who is the second on that motion? That was Mr. Page. Mr. Page. For approval, Ms. Osborne?

[00:02:21] Yes. Mr. Pace? Yes. Mr. Page? I keep jumping in on mine. Pace. Yes. Okay. All right. Okay. All right. We're getting to know each other again.

[00:02:36] Ms. Spillman? Yes. Dr. Acuff? Yes. Dr. Berlin? Yes. Ms. Lee? Yes. So moved. All right. So at this time, we will have our introduction.

[00:02:52] So beginning with legal counsel, would each person please introduce yourself and your position? Good evening, everyone. - Josiah Black, School Division Counsel. - Judy Lee, Rivanna District. - Allison Spillman, at large.

[00:03:09] - Graham Page, Middle District. - Rebecca Berlin, Whitehall. - Patrick McLaughlin, Assistant Superintendent. - Matthew Hall, Superintendent. - Kate A. Koff, Jack Jewett District. - Ellen Osborne, Scottsville District.

[00:03:24] - Chuck Pace, Ryo District. - Fernanda Cisneros, Student Representative. - Chandra Hayes, Assistant Superintendent of Instruction. - Rosalyn Schmidt, Chief Operating Officer. - Christine Thompson, Clerk of the Board.

[00:03:41] Thank you. And so at this time, if we could please rise for the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

[00:04:00] At this time, let us please pause for a moment of silence, and in so doing, let us all remember that the reason we are here is our students and doing what is best for all of them.

[00:04:18] as eleanor roosevelt said when we all do better we all do better thank you and so now we will

[00:04:58] move on to the organizational meeting and just quick explanation each year in january i i have the role of just starting the meeting and as soon as i can get out of this seat and uh but in order to do that we need to elect a chair for the school board and so we will begin this process item 2.6 with the election of the chair for the acps school board dr haas i have a motion um so i'm going to

[00:05:34] do so dr acuff i uh if everyone would be patient with me i have i have my marching orders from my script. Thank you, ma'am. Would any board member like to nominate a board member to be the chair?

[00:05:50] Yes, Dr. Haas. Okay, who do we have? I would like to nominate a Ravana District School Board member to be chair of the school board for 2024. Judy Lee took over the gavel admirably last year when Ms. Colson stepped down. I've worked with Ms. Lee for the past four years, and I have found her to be exemplary professional. She's always prepared. She asks piercing questions sometimes and always makes decisions based on the best interests of our students, their families,

[00:06:26] our staff, and the community. I support her serving as school board chair without reservation. Thank you, Dr. Acuff. Would any board member like to nominate another candidate for the chair? Okay, having no other candidates.

[00:06:46] We need a second. Our candidate for the school board chair for Albemarle County Public Schools is Ms. Judy Lee. Do we have a motion to elect Ms. Lee to be chair of the school board for 2024?

[00:07:04] So moved. I second. And we have a second. Any discussion? Okay. So at this time, we will do a roll call vote.

[00:07:20] Ms. Thompson. And our second was Dr. Haas? It was Dr. Berlin. Dr. Berlin, thank you. Mr. Chuck Pace? Aye, yes. Mr. Graham Page?

[00:07:36] Yes. Ms. Spillman? Yes. Dr. Acuff? Yes. Dr. Berlin? Yes. Ms. Osborne? Yes. Ms. Lee? Yes, and thank you very much, Dr. Acuff, for your kind nomination. So moved.

[00:07:52] All right, it has been a pleasure. Thank you. Good job, man. Congratulations, Ms. Osborne. Congratulations. Thank you very much.

[00:08:15] I believe our next order of business is to nominate a vice chair. Do we have a nomination for vice chair? Chair Lee, I would like to nominate Dr. Acuff. I'm sorry I didn't have an eloquent speech prepared as you had for Ms. Lee.

[00:08:32] but one thing that has been obvious to this board and to this community during your service on the school board is your dedication to what's in the best interest of our students. And we certainly appreciate that and expect the same going forward and would be honored if you'd be the vice chair.

[00:08:50] - Thank you. - Do we have a second for that motion? - Yes, I second. - Any discussion? Thrilled with that nomination as well.

[00:09:06] Can we have a roll call vote, please, Christine? - Mr. Graham Page? - Yes. - Ms. Spillman? - Yes. - Dr. Acuff? - Yes. - Dr. Berlin? - Yes. - Ms. Osborne? - Yes. - Mr. Pace?

[00:09:21] - Yes. - Chair Lee? - Yes. - So moved. - Fantastic. - I put one in here to see.

[00:09:37] - Do you need an agenda, I can give you an agenda. - I have an extra one. - Can we give you an agenda?

[00:09:51] - Okay, next we have approval of our agenda. Do we have a motion? - Well, committee appointments. - Oh, we have committee appointments, I'm so sorry. Next we have our committee appointments. So we all have our committee appointments for the next year.

[00:10:07] There's only one that is a three year term, but it's ending this year. So that will not be, we don't have to worry about that for the three year term. Actually we do. That's the one, the KTEC that's ending for three more meetings. I cannot make any of those three meetings due to a schedule change.

[00:10:22] So if you could appoint somebody in my place. Ellen, when are the meetings? It's the KTEC. They're Tuesday evenings. Tuesday evenings. Okay, and it's January the dates were on your brain sheet right there. Oh, I see. Yes So if someone take take my place on that, I would appreciate it. How many people do we want there?

[00:10:41] So I am and so there are three people who serve on KTEC And I am serving on it currently. Yeah So we all need two people for KTEC for those last three meetings. I can do it Okay, I regret this. Okay. I can do it Chuck. You can do it. Yeah, okay I just don't want to load up too much.

[00:11:09] Okay, so we'll go back to our first meeting, our first committee, ACES, Accountability Committee for Environmental Sustainability. Last year we had Kate and Katrina serving on that. I actually call it the Advisory Committee instead of Accountability Committee.

[00:11:25] Okay, advisory. Yeah, it's Advisory Committee for Environmental Sustainability. This committee is two years old. it was something that Katrina and I launched but the board heartily approved it's a really good committee but and I've been the liaison for the board but I'd be happy to step down Lindsay Snoddy runs it and it's very informative about buildings transportation landscaping it meets I

[00:11:57] think it needs I had it written down the second Wednesday the second Wednesday from like 5:00 to 6:30 I'm interested in that one I'm also interested in that one but if someone else wants to do it like well arguably Katrina and I were on it but oh do you want to know I don't want it I'm happy to seed it it's just a really good committee and I think it's one where having the information helps us

[00:12:30] make decisions about our buildings and such so so I'm happy to step down okay then I will take that one so so Chuck and I'll be on that one Albemarle Education Foundation Kate yes I'm open to some of these shifting a bit after we do all of them in case someone has too many a few or whatever but for right now yes Chuck and I are on that one Albemarle Education Foundation Kate and Rebecca have been serving on that one and i think there's a good argument to be made to have continuity

[00:13:07] since it's a new one i would very much i think it's at a really critical is too strong a word but an important part of launching this organization so i would like to stay on it is that on can people hear me when i talk yeah okay and rebecca rebecca would you like to say yeah i can stay on that one audit committee i enjoy that one you have served on it for the entire time your entire i want to do it my whole school board career okay unless somebody else is dying to have it no i was on the audit committee uva for years

[00:13:47] so i'm happy not to i know it's fine no okay all right ellen is selfishly taking the audit that's fine um for k-tech uh allison and chuck will be and i will be on that for the rest of this six months five months CIP will just keep as an ad hoc committee since it's changed the way that it's worked with the Board of Supervisors has changed unless anyone's interested in being at the front of the line for that as it is needed one thing that happened after the county unilaterally ended the Joint

[00:14:26] Committee was that Jono Alcaro and I met with staff here at ACPS and talked about capital issues so that is one way it could go for and yeah we met with with roslyn matt uh maya and uh i thought that was useful to meet once a month especially now that we're building two schools and we've got another one in the pipeline so it's it's so while it's ad hoc i think we should put kate's name down there i like that idea kate do you like the idea Great plus ad hoc.

[00:15:04] When do you do that meeting, Kate? What time do you do it? We haven't done it for several months now. We used to do it like Thursday morning. I can't remember when we did it. Like Thursday mornings. It's a flexible time. We can decide that time. Okay. Okay, you want to be part of it?

[00:15:21] Okay. Well, give me a, yeah, let's table it right now. Okay. Yeah, or I mean, if you would like a second. That is one of the things on the top of my list right now. Capitalism rates. That's right. Policy is where the money is.

[00:15:38] That's exactly right. I'm interested. So we'll come back to that one. Collective Bargaining Resolution Committee-- Rebecca and Ellen have been working on that. And I think continuity is good for that also.

[00:15:56] Communications Committee-- we have not been as active as we should be. I would like to be on that, if possible. OK. I also would like to be on that, just as a-- But I don't want to take your spot.

[00:16:15] OK. Discipline committee. Jono, Graham, and I did that last year. Graham, are you interested in that? I'd like to remain on the committee. OK. And I would like to also, but if other people are dying to be on it, then I can step down.

[00:16:34] And then we need one more person. What does it mean? It's the third Monday of the month, depending on if there are cases. Some months, not at all, at 5:30. I could stay as the alternate, or I could move on to regular-- - All right, I'll do that one.

[00:16:55] That's on my list. - Okay, so you'll say the alternate? - I'll say the alternate, that's really good. - Yeah, Rick Dallison wants it though. - So you're moving it. - What, no, so it would be Chuck Pace, Judy Lee, Graham Page, and then I would be the alternate, right?

[00:17:11] - Is that what you want, is that, okay, yeah. - Okay, Diversity and Equity Committee is monthly in the evening, but I'm not sure exactly when they're meeting currently. - It was this week. was yeah somehow I get invited to those meetings I didn't think I was on that committee but I'm going to some of them okay is it prescient do you know it's always zoom if that helps people know okay or it seems to always be zoom and I know Allison you would yeah I mean I'm interested in that if somebody else isn't

[00:17:43] okay sold evac board members will attend on a rotation so we'll just Christine will have those on our calendar and then whoever can attend

[00:18:01] those will attend. Legislative committee. I would like to do that one. Rebecca you had talked about that one too. I'd be interested in doing that one and that's definitely one that I want to a couple of us have talked about making sure it's not just preparing for the legislative discussion but that it is more active. Advocacy. Advocacy both at the local as well as the state. That sounds great. New school board member orientation as needed.

[00:18:34] i don't think i'm qualified yet um i know we have uh our retreat coming up and i don't think we've when i was new the person who did it did not give you much orientation i will say so i don't know i mean is that really a necessary yeah committee or is it just something that i don't think it's an ad hoc committee whoever that ad hoc person is got a lot on their plate okay um i believe those

[00:19:08] are are they wednesdays they were fridays and i believe they moved to wednesdays okay um in the past we've had a person and then an alternate so is anyone interested in prep anyone would like to do it before i can stay super quiet call that ad hoc guy okay so we'll put you i'll be the

[00:19:42] alternate for that oh that'd be great awesome internet um public education foundation of charlottesville albemarle we didn't have anyone last year and since we have a fe now it seems like we don't really need that so i'm going to cross out the list and then tj ace regional board ellen you have been that's i would like to continue my streak of consistency there all right okay so here is what i have right now aces chuck and judy afe kate and rebecca audit ellen k-tech allison

[00:20:20] chuck and judy uh cip kate and rebecca um oh we're gonna come back on that and see if um chuck wanted it looks like i have room for it i guess okay um okay well we'll come back for that collective bargaining rebecca and ellen communications allison and judy discipline graham chuck and judy with rebecca as alternate diac allison evac all of us on a rotation

[00:20:55] legislative rebecca and allison um new member ad hoc as needed prep rebecca with graham as the alternate uh pef we're just gonna take off the list and then tj ace ellen the only thing i would add and i know we've kind of went back is um seac um i think we've had a much better relationship between the board and seac um i have been going on to meetings on a regular basis i know

[00:21:31] um allison has talked about that um other jurisdictions have an official seat i don't know if we're ready to do that um and that was brought up by the seac chairs um but i think for now i don't know what the kind of policy protocol would be but i think it would be beneficial to say like that is an important piece for this board and that we would um commit to in a similar way to the to evac we would commit to having um someone there and i think it's helpful for it to be someone or two people like consistent alternating not kind of circling through seven people yeah i totally

[00:22:08] agree i agree with that um christine could you please make sure that those sea act meetings are on our calendar so that we can do that organize around that yeah i think in the past what we've done is each of us you know we've all tried to get to one or two meetings but then it's a little bit like you're jumping in and you don't really have a consistent yeah i think the consistency is really important yeah okay um so i the last thing we had was what we're coming back to cip advisory committee

[00:22:39] so right now kate rebecca and chuck are interested they want to really express strong interest or step back remind me remind me of the time again it was kind of it's not been meeting but so the time can be flexible we don't have a time we were meeting maybe once like the first thursday morning or something is that about right ms schmidt yeah it's just a meeting with staff so we can negotiate the best available right timing so it doesn't have to be Thursdays it could be

[00:23:17] a different day I mean if it's okay I'm I'll do it it's okay oh I know but we have three people and we have slots for two oh so I don't think this has ever happened before the CIP Advisory Committee oh I've been doing CIP for years and I like it I think it's incredibly important but I'd be willing

[00:23:45] yield if you know you all wanted to do it okay so yeah I do really appreciate your institutional knowledge okay so Kate and Rebecca will be on our CIP advisory committee and I think we're all set does everyone feel good about their committee assignments all right fantastic Christine is that

[00:24:23] okay fantastic thank you next we have the approval of our agenda Mr. Chair Blee we need to take a formal vote on those committees oh okay yep do we have a motion to accept the committee assignments as we determined so I move we accept the committee assignments that we just discussed I second okay

[00:24:51] All in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? All right. Thank you. And Chair Leader, we also have to appoint or approve the board clerk. Oh, yes. We do have to appoint or approve the board clerk. Thank you very much, Mr. Page. It really does on this first day. It's a new year. We're just getting started does anybody have a motion to accept to appoint our board check I move to appoint Christine

[00:25:30] I'm sorry I just did I just said her last name oh yeah sorry Thompson yeah I second all right moved by Ms. Spillman seconded by Mr. Chuck Pace any discussion I would just say that she is an amazing asset to us and we could not do it without her so I hope she accepts the appointment yes Okay, all in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Nope. So moved. Thank you so much, Ms. Thompson,

[00:26:06] for your service as our board clerk. Is there anyone else we need to elect or anything else before we get to this approval of the agenda? No. Okay. So next we have approval of the agenda. It's back up. Does anybody have a motion? I move that we approve the January 11th agenda.

[00:26:28] I second moved by Dr. Acuff seconded by Mr. Graham page any discussion chair Lee yeah may I just make a suggestion we I neglected to add a break in this agenda for the board would can I recommend we add a break after 9.2 amend the agenda enthusiastically accepted okay 10 minutes yes ma'am okay Thank you very much. You're welcome. So can we move to adopt to approve the changed agenda?

[00:27:06] I move that we adopt the agenda as amended. Second. All right. Moved by Dr. Acuff. Seconded by Mr. Page. Any further discussion? Nope. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Nope. So moved.

[00:27:29] All right, next we have approval of the consent agenda. Do we have a motion? I move to approve the consent agenda Second moved by Dr. Berlin seconded by Ms. Spillman. Is there any discussion?

[00:27:46] Can I pull the approval of minutes and have a little discussion about that? Certainly, so We'll go ahead and discuss 4.2 approval of the minutes. Yes, I noticed that A lot of what we say is is on the transcript verbatim, and I wondered if that is what we want, or do we want summaries?

[00:28:09] Of course something else or just motions and approvals. I'm not sure how other institutions do it Sometimes the verbatim reads awkwardly because there is no Punctuation the way we talk we don't you know include the always pauses in the right places And I just wondered if that shows up awkwardly Josh, do you have any input on that?

[00:28:41] I do. It's been my experience that most private and public entities will use summaries in their minutes rather than verbatim transcripts, and I also believe that the attempt to make it verbatim can be awkward, so that's my input.

[00:28:59] I would support that as well. I would support that also. I know that it's more labor-intensive. I assume that it's more labor-intensive. and if someone wanted to get the complete verbatim of context that we do have videos now so it's not like all of that is lost i mean i think that would be just helpful for the public because not everyone has time to listen to three hours or read for two hours and so i think it's a way to continue to improve our communication and our transparency i think if we could provide those

[00:29:34] and you know if we if someone from the board needed to kind of help you kind of translate and summarize that we could figure out a way to kind of support you um so rebecca are you saying that we should summarize in the minutes i think we should summarize should summarize yeah i think we should summarize it so i so at this point i guess we can uh direct staff to move toward summarized for future i'm not sure it's worth going back but for future yeah um can you make

[00:30:13] a motion around that can i have a question or do we direct ordinarily the minutes are not verbatim for the entire meeting if someone makes like a resolution or something like that that might be verbatim but very seldom i think all right our discussions verbatim so i don't think that we need to make him any more summarize than they already are because they're not verbatim for per discussion in most cases but this last one was okay and it just read awkwardly so

[00:30:44] which made me think is that the correct way to do it um so it sounds like we have a consensus that that um summary would be better for the public right and there are times when we know we're going to say something we could always give that to christine if we know we're going to the intent of I'm going to say this about this subject go ahead and give that to Christine we could save her a little bit of work by doing some of us who know we're going to say something but we could do that

[00:31:19] just to help her on the workload so I guess my motion would be going forward I move that we use summaries instead of verbatim transcripts in the minutes is there a second I was just trying to decide whether to the degree it makes sense i mean there may be time where verbatim may make sense

[00:31:51] you know i don't know how to state it in that way in general i mean i think at least um to evaluate going to that um and uh yeah look and see does this like how much of the meetings would need to be summarized um because this is a fresh idea right i mean we're just sort of talking about it now miss thompson could try it for the and we'll see and we'll evaluate it as we look at the minutes

[00:32:25] in the future christine does that sound like something that's doable um yeah i mean i i i guess i don't quite understand what you're asking because right now i don't summarize i well i do i summarize your questions um i do you know i i i take the the outcome of your motions um i don't see the difference in what you're asking me to do what i already do i guess that's my that's my

[00:33:01] dilemma i don't see the difference in what i'm doing now and what you're asking me to do can we pull up the minutes that you're talking about ellen maybe if we can actually show what you're describing it might make it a little easier thank you we can also have this discussion offline i mean obviously these minutes in here are fine uh and we can just vote to approve them and move on with the consent agenda and deal with this issue later as well that makes sense yeah i mean yeah

[00:33:37] it sounds like we have a pretty good idea of what we want the minutes to do um it's just getting there so we can discuss that right further okay let's you're gonna discuss that offline go ahead and improve this and then discuss okay yeah so let's go ahead and prove the consent agenda if that's we already have a motion and a second and we have our we've had our discussion so um all in favor? Aye. Any opposed? No. Okay. Consent agenda is approved. Ellen, you're talking about this, right?

[00:34:15] Okay, next we have our Spotlight on Education, and it'll be read by our student rep. And first I'd like to introduce Ms. Fernandez Cisneros. Tonight we have the pleasure of introducing a new student representative for the Almaral County School Board. Fernandez Cisneros, a junior at at Elmoral High School has joined us on the dais in that role.

[00:34:37] Our goal for our student representatives is not only to provide them with the opportunity to learn about the work and policy making that happens on a local government level, but also to gain insight from their voice as members of the student body that we serve. Ms. Cenaro's application to this role stood out to us for many reasons.

[00:34:54] Her top goal as student rep, as she stated it, was to be the voice and the change that my classmates want in our school environment. I want my peers to feel like they have someone they can go to present their problems. This statement perfectly captures our hope for our student reps.

[00:35:10] Fernanda, thank you so much for serving in this role. And if there's anything else you'd like to say, please introduce yourself. Tell us a bit. Thank you once again for the opportunity to be here tonight. I'm just happy to be here.

[00:35:30] We have the privilege this evening to recognizing Donors' Choice, a national nonprofit organization with over four million donors across the country whose mission is to make it easy for anyone to help a teacher in need. Invites members of the community to support a classroom and build a future. For more than two decades, the organization has made it possible for teachers across the country to design and implement classroom learning experiences that have enhanced the way of children's learning. Over the years, our Royal County public schools teachers

[00:36:06] have raised more than $300,000 for nearly 700 classroom projects. This year, in collaboration with the division's Family Council, which includes a parent representative for every school, the division established a formal partnership with Donors' Choice that has provided new opportunities to advance the division's strategic goal of thriving students.

[00:36:35] The strategic plan commits the division to facilitate learning experiences ground in high expectations, networks of care, and student curiosity to ensure academic and social-emotional development for all students while eliminating opportunity, access, and achievement gaps.

[00:36:57] By supporting teacher projects, every member of our community can join with our teachers in adding authentic, challenging, and relevant and inclusive learning experiences for students.

[00:37:14] Community members can support teacher projects seeking funding in total amounts ranging from $140 to $1,700. Requests range from helping to expand learning sources to providing food for students in need to combat bullying or eliminating chronic absenteeism.

[00:37:41] Donors have an opportunity to contribute any amount. In many cases, a contribution can be matched by another donor, increasing the value of even a modest gift. The formal partnership offers special and targeted matching funds for equity schools, which includes schools that have populations of 50% or more students who qualify for free or reduced lunch.

[00:38:08] Partnership with Donor's Choice offers another pathway to fulfilling all four of the school divisions' value, equity in excellence, family and community and wellness. Community members can gain more information about the partnership and its objectives on the ACPS website.

[00:38:28] This evening, we are happy to have Ms. Heidi Gilman-Bennett, Family Council President, who will share information about the progress of the initiative and introduce ACPS educators, Ms. Bridget Sears and Brandy Orshoki, who will highlight Donors' Choice Projects that have offered unique learning opportunities for their students.

[00:38:50] Thank you, Fernanda. Good evening, Chair Lee and school board members. In Albemarle County Public Schools, we believe in strong connections between our students, families, and the community. I'm excited to share that the Office of Community Engagement has been working passionately to support and uplift our families and students, striving to remove any gaps in opportunities and achievements.

[00:39:17] ACPS educators develop many creative projects that fuel teachers creativity, providing diverse learning opportunities that allow students to access the curriculum in new and exciting ways. Participating in DonorsChoose allows teachers to give life to their passion projects while also encouraging the community to join in their work. The engagement from the community reignites teachers through knowing that the community supports their work in the classroom. The partnership between ACPS and DonorsChoose is a fantastic example

[00:39:57] of how our community can make a real difference for our teachers and students. Now I would like Miss Heidi Gilman Bennett, Family Council President, who's been a key part of this initiative and ACPS educators, Miss Bridget Sears, school counselor from Burleigh Middle School, and unfortunately Ms. Sears could not be with us.

[00:40:23] She is ill this evening. However, we do have Ms. Brandy Oshowski, a classroom teacher at Agner Hurt Elementary School, to come forward to provide you with more details and to share about her project.

[00:40:39] Thank you. If I may, while Ms. Thompson's doing that, I just want to take a personal privilege to say that ms orshawski was my son who's uh he's 23 now he was her she was his kindergarten teacher that's awesome she's an amazing teacher and also she was my daughter who's 20

[00:41:14] she was her first grade teacher amazing elementary school teacher in every way thank you all right so i am heidi gilman bennett i'm the chair of family council our mission is to connect and inform families and amplify our voices to promote a public education system in which each child thrives we have representatives from or co representatives from every school in ACPS who engage not only in our council's monthly meetings but also maintain relationships with each school's

[00:41:49] PTOs which are our parent teacher organizations at a school level families are very active in supporting our fabulous teachers regardless of whether there is a PTO or there is not a PTO. PTOs in well-resourced neighborhoods locally provide generous classroom grants of a hundred dollars or more per teacher and up right annually and locally families and schools with less resources to in the community that surrounds the school including resources

[00:42:26] both money and time to fundraise and to volunteer still prioritize supporting the teachers but are less able to provide classroom grants like the ones that we will show you. So this year Family Council decided to tackle these inequities and supplemental funding in part by supporting the launch of DonorsChoose. We're grateful for the support of Ms. Osborne who has been our advisor I'm personally supportive for Louise Wyatt who has led the launch effort and couldn't be here today so it is my pleasure to tell you what donors choose

[00:43:05] is if you don't already know first of all teachers ask teachers post a special project that requires materials or supplies then donors choose donors the community say wow that's amazing and they donate money it can be small amounts like $5 or it could be larger amounts but small amounts are great this is the crowdfunding so mostly is small amounts and finally students learn so teachers are shipped the items that are requested they send quick donor thanks

[00:43:39] and off they go with students so for example the one project you see up on the screen if you can see it is dragons and dreams which is a project posted by mr. stalker at Center one it is a current project he's asking for supplies for a Dungeons and Dragons Club I love this example because parents at Center one it's not a school per se there's no PTO there so there's no organized way to provide these kinds of supports to the teachers at that school and it's a

[00:44:18] student club so it's not something that necessarily falls within a school's instructional budget yet the projects are also highly related to the curriculum so students who are studying cybersecurity are learning problem solving and strategy with the Dungeons and Dragons not to mention video game design requires you know character development and storytelling so he is asking for purchasing figurines handbooks game boards dice for a cost of

[00:44:51] nearly $350 on average nationally teachers spend $479 every year out of their own pocket this is normal and it can be much higher than that for a lot of very passionate teachers so in this case mr. stalker got his principal's approval which is in alignment with your policy on crowdfunding the principal was also notified when the project went live on the website and Family Council we are watching for all projects when they go live and we're going to amplify the reach of projects that aren't fulfilled

[00:45:31] in a timely way and as well as projects that are at kind of the more equity focused schools that have fewer resources so for example this project there's a current match it's a three times match from a social venture fund so if a community member today hint hint donates five dollars it'll turn into fifteen dollars so to launch this Family Council led sessions for teachers and educators at the making connections event this fall we rallied PTOs and families and spread the information by social media

[00:46:10] We worked with ACPS to get media coverage for these projects, and I am so excited to report that since our launch on Giving Tuesday, which was only six weeks ago, we have had 37 projects fully funded to the tune of over $19,000.

[00:46:31] That is super exciting, and with that, I'm going to turn it over to Ms. Orshawski, who you have heard already glowing things about and who has been um incredibly successful with donors shoes for many years not only that but she's also been a champion amongst teachers so i can even trace back a lot of the teachers who post projects directly because it's very exciting so thank you all sorry you're a little taller than i'm used to speaking to so please forgive me if i'm nervous

[00:47:08] um first miss sears was unable to be here since she's sick so she had a few words she would like us to share um she said when within the past seven years i've had a washer and dryer installed in a local elementary school to help with the homeless population so students can wash clothes rather than miss school for not having washed clothing and just recently i had an unused room at burleigh middle school revamped to become a mindfulness space for our students she has had over 120 projects funded she has had over the last seven years excuse me she's had eight projects funded

[00:47:44] since the launch of this collaboration and five currently posted she has been able to do things as in put new bulletin boards in her school things to show visual representation of colleges and armed forces both near and far she's also has current projects focusing on incentives for attendance for our students in Elmoro County. For myself I have had the great opportunity to work with my families and my students to come up with projects that help support their learning. None of us learn in the same way so having the opportunity to talk to them and ask my second graders what

[00:48:21] they need to be successful and work with them to find materials, manipulatives, books, games, activities that help support their learning has been a huge eye-opening experience for me going through this process and having them help me research things to write proposals as to what we should vamp for our next project they are excited we just had a project funded and it was sent to us on monday they said mr shosky we love that you have books for us but you're getting older

[00:48:53] and we like cooler things so we sat together and we found new chapter books new reading books new books to correlate with their reading folder so they have opportunities to take books home so they can read to themselves or with their families and if the book gets lost it's okay we know that that happens and I've had several kids come and ask if they can keep the book and it's in your backpack and it's yours so i think it's huge for them to have a voice and for them to be represented and

[00:49:27] this program and through donors shoes has been huge i personally have had 59 projects funded for almost 20 000 and a lot of that goes to things that my kids get to keep and they get to take home and they get to use to be successful learners within our classroom so thank you so much for this opportunity and for allowing donors choose to become a bigger part of our county I'll just give you a few other examples of the range of projects that have been recently funded there have been friendship bracelets which for calming

[00:50:05] at Burley these were related to Taylor Swift there was some media coverage on this sensory games and a bird sanctuary for special education students at Journey snacks to lure in potential first-generation college students at Western beatniks and bongos at Ivy Elementary School glazes for the pottery program which has supposedly taken off at Monticello lots of books including some that were funded by a famous comedian from Agner for Agner hurt so in summary why donors choose matters first of all it's teacher driven school

[00:50:43] improvement right from an operational perspective teachers are the frontline workers and they know what kids need research actually has shown that with donors choose even though they're small dollar amounts the projects tend to result in significant gains in achievement for students and also retention for teachers from a PTO and Family Council perspective we want every school in ACPS to be resource rich there should be no better schools in terms of resources we love the equity match that provides extra funding to schools with

[00:51:22] high percentages of lower-income families and greater student diversity from a community member perspective it allows anybody in our community to take a peek into the fabulous things that are happening in our public school classrooms so if you remember can you remember who cares about arts that's great you can find projects if you love science that's awesome you can help the science teachers reading that's there too so I encourage everybody to go

[00:51:52] to www.donorschoose.org/engageacps and I'm happy to take any questions I just want to say it's really incredible and well job well done to Family Council and I'm just blown away by how successful it's been so far in such a short amount of time and how important it is so well done thank you yeah and i mean i think the the great thing about this is it really allows your point like you can do five dollars like anyone can support a teacher in the community some so many times people feel like i don't have the funds it's like

[00:52:32] you can your five dollars can go to fifteen dollars because i think in with donors choose there's often matching or there's you know there are funders who literally on a certain day just clear out everything and and fully fund them so where people want to help and don't know how and this is such a great way to get so many people involved in our kids education so it's amazing is there a date that the um multiplier will end like uh they haven't publicized a date for this one but they there are matches that come and go um from different funders like once a year the the Gates Foundation has their big matching day and that's one of the

[00:53:11] benefits of the new division partnership for example that now our teachers will get advanced notice of when that day is happening that's super helpful that's awesome I've contributed to DonorsChoose for years and I'm really happy to meet you Ms. Arshawski because I think I must have contributed to at least a dozen of your projects like the most prolific project poster I think in our whole school division so good job and I'm glad it's even going to be more robust with the work that parents council has done for it thank you Heidi - do you have any

[00:53:49] information on donor retention or how many repeat donors you have or or is that is are we too soon in the process I think we're too soon in the process at this point the I mean it looks to me like yeah people get hooked I mean Miss Acuff knows that once you sign up for even to say you're interested even if haven't donated you'll start getting emails and reminders like oh you're interested in funding arts hey ms osborne here's 18 art projects i think that's the power of donors choose if

[00:54:22] you i mean i always just focused on uh alberwell county schools but primarily elementary schools and reading but science geeky stuff too because that's my background do you have any examples of the science projects that have been funded i can speak for my class um we love project-based learning in our classrooms so my class worked together and we created a maker space area so that we have the whole back side of our classroom there's different things from you

[00:54:57] know wires we have circuit breakers we have things when we use for simple machines so they they built their own incline planes we've done several things too when we did magnets like we're currently doing in class the kids wanted different types of magnets to see how they could work whether it was to build speakers since we know magnets are in our computers our cell phones different things so we've used it in that ways for our animal projects we did fanimals so our kids learned about different concepts to go with the animals whether it was camouflage mimicry and they created their own animal and its own habitat so

[00:55:36] they we use things like clay and the different tools to build we wanted just boxes so that they created their own habitat to go along with that specialized animal they received different type of like books so they could write what adaptations it would have what its process would be to find food or to live so it could be a simple project just like we were talking about or it can be a a more expansive project where like we ordered books and different things to go in our classroom so we also were very lucky UVA sports a lot of times in December funds all the projects in the area so we've gotten several projects in

[00:56:15] our space funded through the athletic club at UVA so there's a lot of people within our community and I do have several individuals who have repeatedly funded different projects from any amount I know there's one person who works on every project who's contribute to every project that my colleague and I have placed on the site so it is you do kind of feel like you're a part of a community so when you get to respond or thank them you kind of feel like you have that relationship already built which is really nice any other questions

[00:56:52] or comments thank you so much for coming and telling us about that thank thank you thank you I do now that that's we do have other now another announcement and I want to ask dr. Kaiser to come to the podium even and again cheerily and board members we would like to ask that Albemarle County School Board join with Albemarle County local government and the Board of

[00:57:26] Supervisors to issue a proclamation in honor of the dr. Martin Luther King Jr. national holiday on Monday, January the 15th. The County of Albemarle and Albemarle County Public Schools proclamation celebrating Martin Luther King Jr. Day, whereas just a century after the Emancipation Proclamation in 1963, Dr. King and Allied Forces marched on Washington and delivered the revered I Have a Dream speech, advocating for the end of racial segregation and societal

[00:58:04] inequality. And whereas Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and other civil rights leaders devoted their lives to the expansion of civil rights and public service to all Americans. And whereas in honoring his legacy, MLK Day is the only federal holiday designated as a national day of service to encourage all Americans to volunteer to improve their communities. And whereas Albemarle County has invested in creating a more equitable and inclusive society by centering community as an

[00:58:41] organizational value, which states that we expect diversity, equity, and inclusion to be integrated into how we live our mission to serve all members of our community. Albemarle County Public Schools mission is working together as a team. We will end the predictive value of race, class, gender, and special capacities for our children's success through high-quality teaching and learning for all.

[00:59:07] We seek to build relationships with families and communities to ensure that every student succeeds. We will know every student. ACPS values are centered around equity, excellence, family, community, and wellness.

[00:59:23] And now, therefore, be it proclaimed that we, Albemarle County Public Schools, join Albemarle County Board of Supervisors, do hereby recognize and celebrate January 15, 2024 as Martin Luther King Jr. Day and encourage our employees and residents to work towards his vision for a more equitable and inclusive society. I'm signed this 11th day of January

[00:59:53] 2024. Last evening, Mr. Graham Page, school board member, retired Albemarle County educator, and lifelong Esmond resident received the proclamation award from Albemarle County local government and board of supervisors in recognition of his devoted community service in numerous charitable and service organizations. Mr. Page has lived through some racial history himself. Growing up in Albemarle County, he attended school during segregation. Originally

[01:00:31] born in Charlottesville, Mr. Page grew up in the Esmont area in Albemarle County. The town within Albemarle County originates and gets its name from the purchase of an old plantation, and the area's population has been predominantly black. Mr. Page went on to earn his bachelor's degree from Hampton University, a historically black university and college before earning his master's degree from the University of Virginia.

[01:01:02] He spent much of his career in Albemarle County Public Schools as an earth science and biology teacher before becoming a school board member. He was first elected during a special election in 2015 and later re-elected in 2017. Mr. Page is currently serving in his third term on the Albemarle County School Board. He is an officer on the National Odd Fellows Board, church trustee, and active board member on several boards in the community, including the Scottsville Museum,

[01:01:39] the Charlottesville Albemarle NAACP, the 100 Black Men of Central Virginia, the Yancey Community Center Jabba Seniors, the Yancey Community Center Advisory Panel, and also a member of the Southern Albemarle Martin Luther King Jr. Day Annual Celebration Committee. In his many years of service on the MLK Committee, Mr. Page has served as chair and administered the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Scholarship Award for Youth. We appreciate Mr. Page's commitment and dedication to upholding

[01:02:14] the mission and vision of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Albemarle County Public Schools through his service and work with the students families and community to promote equitable opportunities and outcomes for all we encourage the community to volunteer and we invite the community to attend the following mlk junior day events on sunday january the 11th beginning at 2 2:30 p.m., Yancey Community Center will host a community program to celebrate the legacy

[01:02:54] of Dr. King. This is a long-running tradition in Southern Albemarle that has been coordinated by the MLK Day Committee. Woodbrook Elementary School invites the community to walk for a cause during the 10th Annual Martin Luther King Jr. Day Walk held on Monday, January the 15th from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. on the Woodbrook track. Participants will walk and record their mouths for a cause of their choice. They will also engage in a poster-making contest, enjoy hot cocoa,

[01:03:31] tasty treats, and socialize with members of the community. Thank you so much for allowing me this time to honor and recognize Mr. Page. Thank you. Okay, I'm completely caught off guard by that.

[01:04:03] Thank you very much, Dr. Akhazer, right, yeah, so got off track, Dr. Akhazer for your research with that, and also thanks for the recognition really from the Board of Supervisors and now from the school board. And maybe just a little bit about the program at Yancey on this coming Sunday, Commonwealth Attorney Jim Hensley, back in June, I think, had performed some research that

[01:04:37] showed him that a black man, John Henry James, had been lynched in probably about 1898 or something, just near Farmington here in the county, and that he had been accused of assaulting a white woman.

[01:04:52] It appeared that that was a false accusation, and so Mr. Hensley did expunge the record and removed that from his record. So he's going to sort of present what he did here at the county courthouse out at Yancey, sort of going over the court case and talking about that court case.

[01:05:11] So that should be a good program at Yancey on this coming Sunday. What time is that, Graham? It's 2.30, 2.30. I gotta say, Mr. Page is definitely the king of Esmont.

[01:05:27] He walked me around there during Esmont days, and he literally knows every single person in that community, and every single person adores him, so it is well deserved. Thank you very much, Ms. Kelvin.

[01:05:43] Should we accept the resolution? Should we move to accept the resolution as stated by Dr. Kaiser? I move we approve the resolution honoring Martin Luther King Day, presented by Dr. Daphne Kaiser. Second. Moved by Dr. Acuff. Seconded by Ms. Spillman. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? No? Fantastic. And thank you very much, Graham, for all of your service on this board.

[01:06:13] You've really helped us a lot. Thank you. Do we have any other announcements at this time? Nope. We did not have anyone sign up for public comment today, so we don't have that. So next we have school board superintendent business i just have a few items thank you miss lee uh one thing i do want to do is let everyone know that we do have several principals with us tonight uh visiting us and also assistant principals we have nancy mccullen from red hill maureen jensen and her

[01:06:47] assistant principal from stony pointe jim kiner from brownsville leslie wills who was the initiator of uh the martin luther king jr walk at when she started at woodbrook it was called walk a mile for martin i think this is the 10th year now is that yeah and um i'm uh she invited me to come out tomorrow first thing tomorrow morning to uh read about martin luther king jr to her students so i'm super excited about that and we also have john hobson assistant principal at murray elementary

[01:07:22] school. We have Seth Kennard, who I think he's also assumed to be an architect. He's spending so much time with the architects here tonight. We have the whole team from Baker Butler, Brad Handrick, Ashley Redmond, and Tanya Carter. And I do, I really want to encourage board members especially, because I know over the years many of you have come out. It's very low-key. You just drive up to Woodbrook, you walk around, greedy people, talking with

[01:07:54] people and and i'll be there and i'll be inviting one of my beagles to attend with me um i get speaking of school visits i had a great visit today at scottsville elementary school they are like all the rest of our schools they're also doing the school level spelling bee so i got to sit in on the spelling bee and i got to see the winner his name is ulrich and um as i was leaving the school i i happened to be able to talk with his father he's just he was so proud of him so excited about taking it to the next level and i thought that the way the school handled the

[01:08:29] spelling bee was just wonderful um in the library uh it was a great morning i got to see a lot of staff and talk with a lot of staff but the one thing i focused on when i visited was offering students choice in their learning and i had the opportunity to talk with the music and talent development teacher mary erwin and she shared with me that while the whole class often learns a piece of music together or use one set of instrument the same instruments every day she offers students choices about which instrument they would like to use during practice time and what music they would like to play including even something they wrote

[01:09:09] fifth grade teacher matt bond uses both the classroom and technology tools to offer choice matt told me that once students are engaged in working on a problem or project they get to choose where in the learning space space they would like to work as long as their work outcomes reflect positively on their choices further his students use seesaw it's one of our platforms as a portfolio and they periodically curate their work samples to choose exemplars demonstrating their mastery of competencies that they can share during student-led conferences

[01:09:45] And finally, I visited Kim Gentry, teaches physical education at Scottsville, and the whole gym was set up with several stations for students to choose their learning journey in terms of the activities they would do at the stations, what kind of physical activities, and then also which stations they wanted to go to.

[01:10:11] and they were super excited about that. January, as we're about getting close to halfway through it, is National Mentoring Month. Of course, Martin Luther King Jr. Day is January 15th. Coming up in February is Black History Month, Career and Technical Education Month, American Heart Month, and mark your calendar. The first full week in February is National School Counselor Week, So it's a great chance to recognize the counselor. Thank you, Ms. Lee. I appreciate it.

[01:10:45] Thanks very much, Dr. House. Next, we'll move on to our school division business, 9.1 ELA adoption with Dr. Hayes.

[01:11:31] I think it's up at the... Good evening, Chair Lee, Vice Chair, board members. Thank you for having me tonight.

[01:11:55] I am here to present to the board the final recommendation for the K-5 core literacy program to be implemented during the 24-25 academic year. In the fall we selected a adoption steering committee. The members of that committee are listed here on the slide. The committee was headed by Mrs. Michelle Kastner, the executive director of elementary schools, and Mrs. Karen Hethcock, the lead coach for elementary ELA. I want to say they did a phenomenal

[01:12:30] job with this process, working with various members of our school community and our local community. One of the pieces of feedback that we received early in the process was that our community wanted a authentic process and they did not want to feel as if a program had been pre-selected or that anyone from central office had influence over what was selected so I made sure I was removed from the process I was there on the first day to welcome everyone and then I stepped out of it and until the end when I thank them for their participation so I have asked Mrs. Kastner and Ms. Hethcock to be here

[01:13:08] tonight if you had detailed questions we also have the principal of Mountain View Elementary Elementary School and his assistant principal here as well as they were instrumental in the initial review of the program that was selected. So as you can see here as we shared this fall this is the timeline that we used that we decided on to make the decision. It was a very aggressive timeline but we felt that it was imperative to make sure we were out in front of this and that we could get this process completed so our staff could have the opportunity to get their hands on the materials before the summer so they felt comfortable with

[01:13:46] them when we returned in the fall. So the state approved six programs that we could choose from and so those programs were then narrowed down to two by the committee. The committee was comprised of, like I said, representative from each of our 15 elementary schools. It was teachers, reading specialists, assistant principals, principals, as well as members of our community, our parents, caregivers and local community members community representatives from there it went down to two selections and those selections were then kits were ordered

[01:14:24] for those selections and then they were placed in all 15 of our elementary school for a thorough review it allowed teachers and staff members to give feedback we had a wonderful response rate over 85% of our teachers elementary teachers responded to the survey that we provided about the programs and 200 over 200 caregivers responded. After that we had the two top two programs those vendors came in and presented to the committee and gave them the opportunity to ask questions or to get a better understanding of what those vendors could offer and then after that process the committee came back together to put

[01:15:03] forward one recommendation that I will bring that I'm bringing to you tonight. night. That recommendation was HMH into reading. HMH stands for Houghton Mifflin Harcourt and the VDOE provided a snapshot of that program which is available. There's a link there. It's on the VDOE website and then there's also a link to HMH's website if you would like to view all of the curriculum resources and programs that they offer. Some of the highlights of the program that we

[01:15:40] received from the teacher survey were that the the one of the main ones that was that the content is aligned to the Virginia Science and Social Studies as so well which was extremely important it focused on phonics and writing components were embedded the program is available in Spanish everything is translated into multiple languages it provides EL support and differentiation and it there's an opportunity for training and coaching available through the curriculum and so teachers felt like those things were important along with other items listed there on the slide. In terms of our caregiver response survey

[01:16:17] our caregivers and families felt that they liked that the family letters were available in ten languages. Ten languages. There was a strong home and school partnership which is very important that we continue this work outside of our school walls and that families feel comfortable using the resources and the materials with their students at home. They felt that it was easy to understand, participate in, and support. And one of the other key pieces that the caregivers appreciated was that this program is also being used in Charlottesville City schools and so as we know sometimes our students transition between our school division and Charlottesville City and so this would

[01:16:54] eliminate, you know, gaps in their learning. They could just continue on with the same program. So as I stated earlier, we wanted to make sure that if this curriculum is approved we wanted to really make sure that our staff had the opportunity to interact with the materials to look at them to to learn how to use them and so the committee worked with the office of professional development to develop a plan that includes training on evidence-based literacy instruction beginning in March there will also be ongoing professional trainings throughout the spring with HMH trainers throughout the summer and

[01:17:33] And then our ACPS team will have the opportunity to receive letters training, language essentials for teachers of reading and spelling that teaches the how, the what, and the why of literacy acquisition. And this training will also continue throughout the 24-25 school year.

[01:17:50] And then also HMH has committed to providing ongoing professional development to our schools as needed throughout the school year. One of the things that I asked the committee to do in order to make sure that we had a robust literacy plan for the division is after if you also choose to approve this program after that I've asked them to create a pre-k through 12 division literacy plan and this plan is to ensure that our community knows what ACPS believes about literacy and how we are going to support this literacy initiative

[01:18:27] for all of our learners from our earliest students in pre-k all the way through 12th grade and for their pursuits beyond. This plan will include how we will address literacy through the curriculum, through assessment, technology as well as professional learning and our goal is to begin this immediately after a program is approved in order to have it completed prior to the end of the school year so that in the start of school in the fall we have this plan that can go out to each of our families in hand as well as being uploaded to our

[01:19:00] webpage. The comprehensive survey that results that were collected from our caregivers and our teachers is has been compiled and was made available this morning on our ACPS website under surveys but at this time I will turn it over to you all if you have any questions and like I said Ms. Kasner, Ms.

[01:19:24] Hethcock and our school representatives from Mountain View are here as they were integral in this process um i just wanted to sit to say thank you to you and to the entire team for this process um i had the opportunity to sit in the first meeting kind of then recuse myself because in a similar reason um to make sure this really was a decision of the teachers and for the teachers um and i just appreciate how inclusive it was um and i think um it is an example of acps

[01:20:00] listening to teacher and family concerns about process in the past um and putting a different process in place and so um you heard me gasp and you said you had an 85 percent response rate because that was great i mean that's amazing i'm a huge thank you to all the teachers who spent their time um and then thank you again for making sure that we have a professional development plan because as you as everyone knows curriculum is only a book and what we really need to do is is invest in our teachers.

[01:20:28] And the only thing I would say on that is also to make sure, and this, I think, probably comes in the budgeting process, but I'd love to-- I should say I'd love-- we have to figure out a way to make sure that it's not just our teachers, but our assistant teachers and our special education assistant teachers who get that training.

[01:20:43] Because we all know that oftentimes, for many of our kids, they are on the front lines. And they don't get the teaching-- they don't get the support that they need. So making sure that they get the professional development and the paid days to be able to take that professional development. and thank you so much for for that um like i said they did they did a phenomenal job and i appreciate you being there that first day um and that is something that we did look at with the professional learning team to make sure others can be trained in the process so that it can be a continuing and others can support outside of the teachers are we compensating teachers in that july training window

[01:21:21] to come in yes and we will also we have also compensated them for their work on the committee throughout this process. I had one constituent reach out and had some concerns about worries that there wasn't enough diversity.

[01:21:41] In particular, she was mentioning the first grade readers that she was looking at. And I was just wondering if you had any insight on that and what your opinion was on that. I do not, because I was removed. But I will ask-- Well, it might be a good question for the Mountain View people.

[01:21:59] Yeah. Just wanted to clarify, Jenna is actually a teacher and a reading specialist.

[01:22:15] Okay. And so, we said she just had a promotion. That's it. Congratulations. She made it very clear she did not want to be an assistant principal. I can speak on, I was one of the subcommittee directors during the process, and one thing we did look at as we evaluated the six approved curriculums from the state was diversity, not just of characters in books, but of authors who wrote them and experiences they talked about.

[01:22:40] And this series did rank towards the highest of those six. So given our options, I thought that the diverse representation was better than many things that we've seen. And this series actually uses real textbooks that you find in libraries. These are not created for HMH.

[01:22:56] There are things that you can go and get online, at the library, on Amazon, things like that. - Great, thank you. Does it allow for like supplemental materials from the teachers or are we talking just strictly using is laid out in the reading program well i think it's made to be a comprehensive reading program so what i've heard from another teacher who's used it before she says you know how you come up with a unit and then you have to go here and get this and then you go and you make this and you find this she said it's it's all there okay it starts with sort of a good guiding

[01:23:32] question and then there are read-alouds and student books um there's interwoven phonics or grammar or handwriting um it's sort of all in one place so i'm sure there are opportunities for teachers to supplement but it's really made to be a comprehensive program thank you and all of those resources are going to be available to us completely with the program and with the training yes one of the things uh that the team worked on with um finding out the cost and things that would come with it was that we had a a contract that would cover a length of time we reached out and

[01:24:12] and ask for about seven years, and locking in that price, if this is the program that's approved, that would be locked in for seven years, it would include consumables that students would use, and it would include that for each year, based on the projected number of students we have this fall, and so the only additional funds that we would have to cover outside of this one-time fund would be if we allotted for 500 elementary students and we have 502, so we would have to pay for the two additional kits.

[01:24:42] But other than that, everything is involved in this comprehensive plan, including professional learning. Dr. Hayes, in terms of the consumables, I mean, are those something that H&H updates or varies from year to year?

[01:25:01] Or do we know yet? I don't think we know just yet. I know that they are committed to providing them for us. I mean, they may have to, I know as standards evolve, because the state can change the standards, They said that they would work to quickly bring their products up to speed to align with Virginia's standards.

[01:25:20] So I assume that if something in one of their materials or consumables changed to align with the state standards, then they could. I was just sort of jumping off of Ms. Spillman's comment about diversity, wondering if we gave feedback about wanting more, you know, whether that could be reflected in the consumables.

[01:25:40] That's something we can ask when we reach out. I really appreciated the thoughtfulness and intentionality around all of this process. And I especially, I know that I've mentioned this before, I think it's, I know that's not the reason that we did it, but I think it's good that Charlottesville has the same, so, because we do have so many students who go back and forth, so I think that's a real plus.

[01:26:06] I just want to second what everyone has said about really appreciating all your work on this. Thank you. Yeah, thank you. Thank you. so procedurally this would be on the consent agenda next time how would this work so um i'd want to also add that uh you know i think we want to recognize that dr hayes joined the school system just this summer and and normally you know when someone comes on board they have an opportunity to get the lay of the land and figure out what they want to do and she's been doing all that and leading the largest department you know in terms of instructional staff principals you know

[01:26:45] know all the work that she's been doing so in the middle of all that adopting a new ELA and you really have done an amazing job with it and very patient and putting making sure that we were had fidelity to a process that would be inclusive of voices from our staff and from our families the other thing I was really excited about is the consumables that because we want our families to be partners in the work and the caregivers. So I was really excited to see that. And in terms of process, this, you are recommending that this be the adoption by the board. So what will happen is

[01:27:25] it'll be on the consent agenda at the next meeting for your approval. And a kit from HMH will be available here outside of the auditorium for families and community members to come in and you over the next 30 days. Dr. Hayes, I probably should have asked you this before, so I'm sorry, but do you think you could have a kit for the board as well up outside my office that if they want to just come in and take a look at it? Yes. Okay, great. Dr. Haas, just for clarification, it does need to be out for 30 days. Oh, okay. I apologize. So it'll be on the consent agenda at

[01:28:02] the first meeting in February. Yes, sir. Thank you very much, Ms. Thompson. And that'll give you time to kick into gear the March 5th PD yes yes okay thank you thank you thank you thank you so much okay next we have academic calendar 24 25 and early start discussion 25 26 with Jamie Gellner sorry it's been a million years since I

[01:28:42] use powerpoint there you go good evening my name is Jamie Gellner director of special projects program evaluation and department improvement and tonight we're to talk about the 2024-25 calendar recommendation specifically we will review the process for the 2024-25 calendar and then the proposed calendar then we will have a discussion about future calendar options the calendar team can mean for the first time in april 2023 we started earlier because we were considering options that included an earlier start and an earlier end to the school

[01:29:21] year as well as looking at year-round school and changing our breaks we had 24 people on the team not including patrick and myself they varied in roles across the division from at least 13 of our schools and seven departments with at least one evac rep and a parent some people changed roles over the course of the year and a half for example brad handrick is now a principal some of these teachers have served in multiple roles and many represent parents including myself we had guiding principles that we considered throughout the process and the bottom two were new for this

[01:30:00] year that we were looking at. So we did focus on the start and end of the school year and shorter breaks and trying to end at winter break. We started off the process with the idea that we would adopt a two-year calendar and we would seriously consider starting and ending the school year earlier. We held two calendar meetings in April and reviewed five different calendar drafts with early start and ends, shorter breaks, a year-round concept, and different breaks in different weeks. We reviewed the Charlottesville city calendar as they had already declared for an

[01:30:35] early start and end to the 24-25 school year and we traditionally try to work together. The calendar team narrowed to two drafts that went out in a survey to the school community in May 2023. We reviewed these draft options with parent council and a student group to get additional feedback.

[01:30:51] The calendar team met again in October and December and we decided not to do any more surveys. Based on the information that we have we did not recommend adopting a two-year calendar or an early start for next school year some of the reasons are because of the ela adoption for example and the need for professional learning throughout the summer bellwether projects all in Virginia and a number of other sort of variables we will be presenting on the logistics required to move to an early start and early in tonight for the board to make a decision to consider communicating the change well in advance of the 2526 school year we do feel that

[01:31:29] it would be important to let our families and staff know well in advance so that they can plan their summers accordingly the survey strongly favored calendar draft one which was the more traditional calendar comments included ensuring that we keep the same spring break and two-week winter break based on the calendar comments and other feedback we did change the days labeled as division professional learning communities and professional learning days as non-student days this allows for a lot more flexibility to use those days for division or school professional learning or other training required by the state other project planning or

[01:32:04] just additional teacher work time we have one more non-student day for next year making it six in total but we have had six non-student days in past years we have five this school year and we also created a colorblind friendly calendar this calendar has the same number of student days as this school year which is 176 and that's 10 156 hours there's one more non-student day making it 195 contract days for teachers and we added one more day for new teacher academy based on staff

[01:32:41] feedback. Do you have any questions about the recommendation from staff? I actually have two quick questions. One, going back to the people that were on your committee, I noticed there's only one parent rep, it seems like, and I think she actually now is a TA at Woodbrook, if I'm not mistaken. I would suggest and highly recommend that you have more parents on the committee itself.

[01:33:20] think that there's a lot of parents that have a lot of input and we've received a lot of emails and input about that and I know we have survey results but you know I think that that would probably be beneficial going forward just a suggestion and then I'm curious about the teacher work days specifically the one that is asking teachers to come back the Monday after all the students are out I wonder where that came like and maybe it's just because I'm new but I don't know who decides those teacher workdays and what the benefit to having

[01:33:57] teachers come back the weekend after all the students are out so typically we assign a teacher workday at the end of a quarter for teachers to complete like report cards and work and things like that I don't know if anyone else wants to speak to that day but it's not a change it's been like that for a while I think there's principals in here too I don't want to say anything that's not accurate but I do think if teachers are done with their work that that may be a green day or work from home day when they come in and check out that day and

[01:34:33] from my experience as teacher if you could get yourself checked out before that day you didn't have to come in this building so did it kind of just gives a day it gives a breather day for everybody to get things done that they couldn't get done when the students were there but all schools have a master checkout sheet that it kind of covers all the bases of putting up supplies and clearing your room and like validating your grades things like that and teachers are able to work through that and if they if they don't need to come in that

[01:35:13] day we consider the work done yeah I think that something we should also consider is like the effectiveness of teacher work days and what they need you know something we hear a lot from teachers is they need more planning days they need more work days that they can actually get work done you know the last day of the school year the following monday is not serving that purpose so um it's not really a recommendation for this calendar but in general i think that that's something else we need to consider in calendar development is the effectiveness of those work days and how they can best be used by our

[01:35:46] teachers one of the changes that we made for this calendar recommendation is to those orange days that are marked on there are non-student days so if there is pull the calendar back up for us thank you if there is not division or school-based pd on those days it could be used for teacher work time where in the past we've had it pretty specifically designated as division professional learning community time or plc time professional learning time yeah i think that's also something

[01:36:22] that is under discussion as well okay thank you any more questions i think this calendar looks good for next school year okay i would just um i think it's a great idea to have additional parents um in the future years on the committee i think that's a great idea to include we did invite other parents and i did take it to parent council afterwards but i will ensure we have more next

[01:36:57] time around as stated previously we feel that if we would like to start early and earlier in the 25 26 school year it would be best to communicate the start and end date out now for families and staff to begin planning and then we can do the non-student days in a normal timeline like next fall in our most recent calendar survey 45 percent answered with a four or five to start the year earlier um it's kind of cut off but this this was the second calendar option which got a weighted score of 3.01 and the percentage of the staff who live outside of acps is 36 and about 24

[01:37:34] of our staff live in charlottesville city so i think there's always going to be a percentage of folks who answer that they want to align with surrounding counties many comments on the survey indicate that they would prefer to align with surrounding counties and so eight out of the nine of the counties that actually touch acps geographically do start earlier but you can see that they don't all align so some our communities used to starting in the middle of week on a wednesday so whenever we try to move it to the monday people don't like that other counties just go ahead and start on the monday and many counties start earlier rockingham starts traditionally the

[01:38:12] same week as us and as we said before charlottesville city was the same as us for this school year but they will be starting august 14th and ending at the end of may next year so these are some potential benefits for lack of a better word positive things you could consider to start early and end early there's closer alignment with neighboring divisions people always talk about childcare I think you receive emails that talk about that a lot we could end the semester at winter break AP students would have more days for the test air conditioning access mm-hmm and

[01:38:51] to specifically align with Charlottesville City there are some logistics that come with moving to an earlier start and after the first summer we could you know mitigate most of these or they would go away but in that first summer you would have the new teacher Academy would start in July which backs up a lot of other staff coming back to work early in July facilities we traditionally have blackout dates and things like the first week of August so the facilities would have a difficult time that first summer completing all

[01:39:26] they're required maintenance and other projects when we moved to our time and attendance system we created 26 pays and so we have that on a schedule so it wouldn't necessitate some manual payroll processes that would have to change moving to it that would probably be like something somebody would have to calculate and do by hand there might be overtime costs just in that first year to open earlier the hiring timelines are different everybody would have a short summer obviously and then summer school might be challenging so again these are things that we did

[01:40:04] not want to do this summer coming up but we would be open to it if that was the direction the board wanted to go staff does not have a preference there's not an academic benefit to an earlier start i do think that you will hear from people about not aligning with charlottesville city next year when that actually happens because typically we do align with them but our winter break and our spring break does align with their calendars so we made sure that the breaks did and we would we staff and our calendar team would like

[01:40:40] to continue to move back towards more student days and fewer non-student days so what guidance or what discussion with the board like to give about the 25 26 calendar development do the other days align with Charlotte so the other days off or just the winter and spring break? Some of the professional learning days do but they don't have as many non-student days as we do so in some instances it does um but no we have more. Okay do

[01:41:14] we have any input from our teachers or staff about uh whether they would prefer the early start or not? There's really not a strong preference to go either way there's there's not a strong preference not to do it I think our calendar team didn't want to do it this this coming up school year one of the reasons is if we've already started planning all the ELA professional development for the summer if it was something that we wanted to move towards we could we could do it but we

[01:41:50] couldn't think of any academic reason to do it but we are an outlier now and if you look at the other counties although they're starting earlier that doesn't ensure exact alignment either we just be more in tune with what they were doing

[01:42:05] My sense is since there's not a strong, there's no academic or instructional support, and there's very little, there's not strong preference by staff, I would not take any action at this point.

[01:42:33] I had a question. You suggested not adopting a two-year calendar. Why not? for this same reason to have this discussion if we wanted to move to an earlier start or Make any other if you had any other feedback about future calendars So we just just kept it as well We've always had a one-year process this year We thought we might try to make our lives easier and do two years and convene the committee by annually

[01:43:04] But we decided not to if we did move to an early start date for 25 26 How many days would that shave off the summer, like 10, two weeks?

[01:43:22] If our express purpose was to align with Charlottesville, because that seems like the strongest case right now. Well, it's really only the week in terms of the business days, but I don't know how long logistically to complete all those tasks, how much staff time that would be.

[01:43:45] This was kind of our best effort at identifying those things. I think the biggest challenges really would be building services would be the biggest challenge because we do a lot of work in the summer and they always have like a blackout week so that would be that would impact if we still had a week of blacking out that would certainly impact our summer school or we would have to back up summer school a lot more so it just backs everything up earlier into the year and staff planning in time the thoughts or questions I guess if we're

[01:44:23] to if we could get calendars out quickly it would be better for the for the public and um i the early start i you know i think it's probably fine except people will find reasons that they don't like it yeah if we don't change it though people will find reasons that they don't like that i've done the calendar committee before yeah yeah i mean i think the issue right now is because just about everyone else has done it we're kind of in this place because we could to your point of this data that we have of where teachers live so you have you

[01:45:03] know teachers and leaders and school staff in bad situations because they have their children going to another school district and so I think do we still have to apply for a waiver to start early no we have Patrick can speak to the technicality but no we don't we're not one of the divisions that has to do that because because i mean prep used to be the what saved us on that we were in prep so all those schools north of us were out all the time piggyback i mean i feel like if we're going to do

[01:45:42] it we're related to your point is it's almost like you have to start thinking about next year's calendar already because so that it's probably i don't know you probably know better than i do you know are we going to approve it by september october maybe um because i do think i mean i think that is the concern it's you know the logistical pieces you know particularly as you said with maintenance as well as with summer school and just with kind of as well as i would just say mental health of of teachers staff and kids right like that natural break is sometimes needed so

[01:46:17] um the more we can begin to prepare for that the earlier the better yeah i mean i think the most compelling reason is to see what charlotte city does and i can keep working with them to see if they continue to start earlier in the 25 26 school year um but i am certain you're going to hear from people when we're different from them next year and so if i could jump in so thanks jamie if i could jump in for for a quick second about that uh one of the thoughts that that i'd also like to share with the board is that while uh charlottesville city is shifting their calendar next year

[01:46:52] We don't know whether that's going to cause a big influx of our constituents saying, hey, this is really causing some significant issues for us. I think sometimes in the past we've made some decisions based on what we think is going to happen, and it hasn't really happened.

[01:47:09] I think we're still paying some costs around Walton redistricting, you know, 20-plus years ago when we thought Biscuit Run was coming in. so so one thing you may want to consider is is seeing what the first year next year is like when we do have a shift between uh the city and albemarle uh see if that does cause some significant concerns and uh and make a i think that would allow you to make a more informed

[01:47:37] decision uh about the process that sounds reasonable to me also so i think just kind of just to summarize what I'm hearing from the board is that you're ready to move forward with having the calendar for next year on the consent agenda at the next meeting and then the next part would be to adopt a wait-and-see approach with the city shifting their calendar but in the meantime I would also

[01:48:13] ask board members out you know if there is information that we can bring back to to you you know at the next meeting or in the future that you think would help you deliberate more about what you want to do about the starting and end date for the school year just please send Jamie an email and we'll do the best we can to try to put that together for you does that sound like where we are yeah I think so and one thing Matt I think you mentioned earlier this week that we know 24% of our staff work or live in Charlottesville but I don't know how many

[01:48:49] of them have school-aged kids who are in public schools and we would and to do that we would have to like we'd have to trust just surveying to do it we'd have to send something out and ask about that right but also aren't they able to bring their kids they are and for many years it was it was quite expensive it was the local share of the per pupil expenditure so you know at this point I think that's in the ballpark of it would be like $13,000 and then half for each additional child after that and I think that it was this board most of you on

[01:49:29] the board now in 2019 I think something around that time changed it to a really a nominal cost I think it's about a thousand dollars a year and you know so is that what it is 500 so it's a it's a nominal now to have your children attend the school system if you work for the schools if that's what you choose to do too if it becomes a real extreme hardship for working in a different district community yeah I think that's the that's where we are okay thank you

[01:50:08] Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much, Jamie. All right. Now we have a 10-minute break. That clock says 822. So we'll see you back at 832. Christine? Thank you. Okay. We're back. Next we have 9.3 FY25 budget development with Maya Kumazawa.

[02:02:23] Good evening. I'm Maya Kumazawa, Director of Budget and Planning. And this evening, I'm here to provide you with updates as we are in the midst of our FY25 budget development process. The material will look largely the same from December with just the updated data. As always, our budget development process aligns very closely with our adopted strategic plan. In particular, we focus on Goal 3, equitable transformative resources.

[02:02:55] Back in December, I spent a lot of time talking about our stakeholder engagement process. I failed to talk about our budget advisory committee, so I thought this might be a good time to thank those committee members.

[02:03:11] This is a group of appointed community members. They are business professionals appointed by the superintendent who meet regularly to provide guidance and advice as we move through our budget each year. Those members are Julian Bivens, Scott Jeffries, Paul Mathern, Dennis Rooker, Alan Swinger, June West, Jason Handy, Mary Hufford Kegley, Charles Lewis, Gerard Smith, and Sarah Strasheim.

[02:03:36] So I just want to thank these members. I know that this group is meeting throughout the year to help us with the process. Our local government transfer, as you know, makes up a bulk of our revenues each budget year.

[02:03:53] Just a few hours ago, they provided us with an updated forecast, which is unfortunately lower than what I presented in December. The increase is just a little less than $7 million, and we were anticipating a little more than $10 million about a month ago.

[02:04:11] So we appreciate the timely updates, as we typically don't get this many updates during this time frame. Again, this will be updated again as they continue to work their revenues and we'll get another number closer to the end of January.

[02:04:29] On the state side, this also is a similar slide from December with an updated forecast for FY25. This is not great news. It is somewhat anticipated due to our local composite index increase for the next biennium.

[02:04:49] But right now, according to the governor's introduced budget, which we will use for planning purposes for our draft funding request, is showing a decrease of about 11% when compared to the current year's adopted budget.

[02:05:06] As the state budget process moves forward, there will be changes made by the General Assembly, and we hope to incorporate any changes that are made throughout our budget process as the timing parallels that of the state budget process.

[02:05:25] As a reminder, this is again a history of our local composite index, which is our locality's ability to pay. As our LCI increases from this year to next, from about 0.64 to about 0.69, the inverse is how much we receive from the state.

[02:05:45] So the state this year provided 0.36 of what they deem to be the cost to run a school division, and that will drop to 0.31. And this is the primary driver for the decrease that we're anticipating from state revenues.

[02:06:03] This is a closer look at what was provided in the governor's introduced budget. As you know, our enrollment budget to budget will be decreasing. That's about 98 students that we're anticipating, and so that does impact state revenues as well.

[02:06:19] As I mentioned on the last slide, the local composite index is increasing by .0517. And the impact of both of these, plus re-benchmarking that the state has done, they've also re-forecasted sales tax revenues and incorporated the new costs, including any past compensation supplements have been included in the FY25 budget.

[02:06:45] So the combination of all those items, there are many changes within the items I discussed, they're also intertwined so for example sales tax if there are changes in the sales tax estimate that does impact what we get in basic aid or soq funding so what i've done on this slide for simplicity's sake is merged soq sales tax and re-benchmarking together because you can't necessarily separate those out and that net impact is a total of a negative 4.38 million dollars when when you look at the current year's adopted budget

[02:07:21] going into next year's draft funding request. As I mentioned, the primary driver of that is the local composite index and ADM with some other changes as well. The reason why I'm showing the FY24 projected amount on this slide as well, is that the governor also proposed amendments to the current year's budget that will impact the revenues we receive from the state when compared to what we have currently appropriated.

[02:07:49] So we will get more into the details of the projection for the current year when we present the second quarter financial report and talk about that call. Next is lottery funding. This is also driven by ADM and local composite index, so we're seeing a decrease there.

[02:08:07] And then the next item you see is the grocery tax hold harmless. This is a hold harmless amount that was provided for the last couple of years due to changes in the tax policy. that whole harmless amount is going away entirely for all school divisions.

[02:08:23] So the impact to us for that is about $3 million. And then finally, I wanted to call out the line for Bright Stars. In the proposed budget, we used to be capped at 0.5 for our LCI.

[02:08:38] So we were funded about 50% of the cost for Bright Stars. They, in the introduced budget, have removed that cap. And the impact to us is about $200,000. that also will need to be considered as part of the budget process so flipping over to the expenditure side as i talked about previously the pie chart here shows how much of our budget goes towards salaries benefits and other wages so expenditure drivers are really are what we're paying our staff

[02:09:13] and in the current year in fy24 we had a mid-year salary increase taking place this month for two percent for all regular staff and then we also had unbudgeted calendar year health rate increases our premiums went up faster than we had anticipated that were unbudgeted for so we will need to manage those expenses in the current year but going into FY25 we need to build in a full year's cost of both of these decisions that have been made for the current year and then starting in FY25 we're anticipating inflation and other non-discretionary increases a further

[02:09:51] calendar 2025 health rate increase the continuation of our programs bellwether audit recommendations and a July 1st 2024 compensation increase so those are the expenditure drivers we're looking at now so we're starting off the process with a pretty significant gap and we hope to dig into this further with you all and to really get into the more details of these drivers both expenditure and revenues we do have a work session planned before we present the draft funding request so we can work on that and you all can have a better

[02:10:27] understanding of all the items in here so with that I wanted to see what clarifying questions you have about these updates and what are those topics you want us to really get into for the work session that's planned for the next meeting we do already plan on doing a deeper dive into the state budget and looking at what happened there and what to anticipate moving forward as the state moves through their budget process but if there's anything else you want us to focus on and plan for this would be the time to provide that so what is

[02:11:03] the total gap right now that we're looking at is it over 10 million in that ballpark. Good times. I would request I was looking for and could not find can I get an org chart of central office broken down by all salary and benefits and also with a designation of which of those central office employees are student facing because I know that some actually do work with students that would

[02:11:39] just be hopeful to look at and help us with figuring out how to make up this gap. There is no hope that there will be a change in the LCI that we could revert.

[02:12:01] I know there were some discussions. My understanding is that the LCI would not change, but you could request or advocate for additional hold harmless funding as a result of certain impacts.

[02:12:18] the LCI is doesn't change I think that this is a good opportunity for the public to recognize how important it is to advocate to your Board of Supervisors and to our legislators in Richmond how much we need funding our hands become tied when there's not enough money to pay for all of the things that we need to do in our classrooms and with our teachers and so you know we do as much as we can up here to

[02:12:52] allocate those funds but it's really important that people are out there advocating for those funds from our board of supervisors because that's where our money comes from as board of supervisors and from richmond and so i i just want to take this opportunity on behalf of the board that it's really important that people recognize that and and we need to make up this gap so that we aren't taking anything out of our classrooms and from our teachers and so you need to be emailing and calling and knocking on doors of those people and tell them that we need more funding for our

[02:13:26] schools helen dunn um i do the lobbying for the school division and i just thought it would be worth mentioning that the lci there is an appetite for changing the lci it came out in the jlark report that while this is a good way of determining you know locality's ability to pay there excuse me there is an appetite to change it in a variety of ways so one of those is maybe to make it instead of a biennial making a triennial calculation another is is you know to hold some school divisions harmless so

[02:14:05] there is still something some there are some things that can be done matter is you know there's is it gonna happen this fiscal year for the next fiscal year yeah hold harmless is a possibility it would require a lot of advocacy as Creed's always says they're winners and losers in this formula which is to say legislators don't have much appetite to take away from you know it's all one big you know bucket of money so the question is more if there other ways that can you know accurately portray locality's ability to to pay that don't kind of

[02:14:40] shift it to where poorer frankly you know localities are taking on and i think there was also talk about um changing the soq equation correct that that's one of the things that we could really push is um making improvements on that so that it better reflects what we need as a school division that's right and that's a that's certainly a different you know approach to changing some of the funding formulas but that would basically pull some positions that are that we know to be very integral to our schools um that would pull them out of what's you know what's unfunded and

[02:15:19] put them under this sort of funded on right because right now it does not include like central office positions and that's like that that are um obviously expensive but necessary to run our our school system exactly yeah thanks Maya I just thought I would pop up like facilities and transportation and all those things that we talk about all the time is you know integral to our school system but that does not get included in that equation for funding that's right and then that kind of transitions into a capital conversation which is a whole different bucket of money so it is a very complicated yes a very complicated funding formula okay yeah but anyone who wants

[02:15:57] to advocate should come with me there yeah it's important all right thanks is there and not to bring more than more bad news but is there any other covet funding that we had on the federal side that will go away I'm thinking I mean I know we had some mental health stuff that was a grant that we then transitioned is there anything else that we at the top of your mind that is like was included in this in fiscal 24 but won't be included because I know I know there's like COVID monies so our biggest COVID grant was ARP funding right and that will run out in this year

[02:16:33] and so we will need to find a way to budget that in right that's what I meant by continuation of programs got it so if we want to continue that as a priority we'd have to find new funding for it I know it's a small number on there but explain to me again how even the bright stars funding has been decreased um the bright stars funding is provided based on lci but for that program in particular our lci is capped at 0.5 which means that um currently the state provides 50 of the

[02:17:10] funding if they've removed the cap they use our actual lci next year of 0.69 so um we are now paying for that yep and while that is a special revenue fund in order to keep that program whole it would be an expenditure impact for us as we would need to transfer funding to the bright stars fund to keep that program the way it is running now and it may not be very effective but the capital conference is on january 22nd and 23rd and those would be the days that we would have

[02:17:48] a chance to talk to our legislators your board of supervisors are available anytime on the expenditure side is there anything you want to see how we in particular for the next work session that we should prepare just the one thing that I asked okay thank you I can't even yeah I mean with 86% of our budget going to personnel I

[02:18:27] mean obviously the the the surest way to make cuts is to increase class sizes which is not something that many people want although I had a conversation recently with a supervisor who claimed that through the kids per class wouldn't cause any harm in elementary school so I'd love to have them come and visit some schools so that we can show them Seth I know so yeah I'm sure Seth would like to it would love to show some people around and show what class size looks like yeah

[02:19:01] how it impacts thank you for being the deliver our yeah and thank you for all work down and i would encourage anyone on the board if there are any further questions that you'd like illuminated at our next work session that's a great time to do it and as i always say there are no dumb questions i ask a lot of them so there's some questions and also miss kumazawa thank you very much and what's the email address board members could use budget at k12

[02:19:36] just keep them coming and we win for new board members what happens is when we get a question from one board member, they compile the answers like if there's a batch and then they all just the answers come out to all the board members so they keep shooting them. Thank you. Thanks very much Maya. Still learning. Next we have the High School Center 2 Schematic Design. Lindsay Snoddy will be presenting. All right good evening. I'm Lindsay Snoddy, Director of Building Services and

[02:20:14] here tonight to present with Quinn Evans our High School Center 2 Schematic Design. So we'll start with an overview of our community engagement in the program. I know if the board's heard about this before we'll reiterate and go over what we did as part of this design. We'll talk about campus planning because the this high school center too is on the Lambs Lane campus near Albemarle High School so looking at how that fits into the puzzle was a big part of our schematic design. Then we'll take a look at different sections of the building and the schematic design for the site and the building and talk about project logistics. Can we start with our vision and our mission and I think this facility in particular really touches on

[02:20:51] all the goals of thriving students affirming and empowering communities and equitable and transformative resources with the capability of any high school student in our county to be able to access this high school center and community members. I think it is a really good example of hitting all these goals. I'm going to introduce Kylan Shirley. We're also joined by Charles Tilley to go through the schematic design with you. Thank you. Good evening and thank you for having us. My name is Kylan Shirley. I'm with Quinn Evans Architects. I'm a project manager leading our team of designers and engineers and

[02:21:27] and we've been collaborating with a group of really wonderful folks from ACPS the design committee for this project really heavily since August of this year so just briefly what is high school center to to kind of set the table for what we're talking about it's a new school building it'll serve 400 students per day it will be planned to be expandable to 600 students 60,000 square feet and two stories and expandable to 90,000 square feet to serve that expand future potential expansion to 600 students but most importantly the idea is that it's a really adaptable flexible and innovative building that can change going into the future as student cohorts

[02:22:06] change and future learning pedagogies evolve and continue to change in the future so we have worked with the design committee hand in hand to engage in a lot of community events partnering and and engaging with teachers parents students faculty members from a number of schools neighborhood groups almost anyone you can imagine to gain feedback on what this project needs to be and how it'll it'll be shaped to serve these goals that the county has for the building we've been this list that you see here is really everything we've done since august and some of

[02:22:44] these items will continue to occur in the future so the feedback we gathered resulted in this diagram's representation of the core values of high school center 2 which came out of all the conversations we have these varied groups those core values are community collaboration and mentorship authentic experiences and equitable access so to be successful this project needs to embody and facilitate encourage and support all of those ideals so they kind of come together these ideas overlapping and result in the character and nature of the spaces that make up the building so what are those spaces as you all may know this project started originally in

[02:23:23] 2019 and we came up with a space program to serve these these needs for this type of space and we refined that program as we went through this engagement process and went through our schematic design process working closely with the design committee as we did so so the items in blue on this list are things that changed we had developed a type of learning spaces that we were calling project studios learning studios and specialty studios learning studios being kind of a basic flexible classroom project studios being a little bit more high intensity classroom with sinks and more storage and specialty studios being focused on very specific educational requirements

[02:24:03] that would serve more career-based or clc-based classes so what we determined was that a culinary lab culinary arts lab an advanced manufacturing lab and then a few advanced science labs for for instance, chemistry labs would serve the three CLC programs that are planned to be in the building at this point, and then also a career center and mentoring spaces that would serve the partnership goals of the project so that outside community members can come and engage with students to mentor them, talk about what the future of their careers might be like based on their interests and the CLCs that they're pursuing.

[02:24:39] So those were very direct changes and results of the feedback we gathered through all those community engagement activities. So as Lindsey mentioned, this is on the Albemarle High School site. It's right there in red towards the bottom of the aerial image where the building services building is now.

[02:24:57] So there's a lot of moving parts on this campus and a lot of future plans. So we have spent quite a bit of time working with Principal Bonham and his staff and the athletic director there to consider how this project can not just serve the high school center 2 building, but how it can improve a lot of the challenges that exist already on the Albemarle High School site those challenges include parking vehicular circulation and traffic during the parent pickup and drop-off times and then the resulting pedestrian safety issues that come from that kind of traffic scenario that happens there are a lot of access points to the site there's a lot

[02:25:34] of people moving around and it's just a very very busy place so we think we can make some improvements to a lot of those challenges as well as meeting the needs of the new building at the same time so if you zoom in to the uh just albemarle high school site here you see the high school center 2 building footprint down to the right of course the footprint of albemarle high school right there in the middle and the stadium off to the left and the proposed site plan includes new parking space a parking lot of about 200 spaces in between the stadium and the what's really the back side of the cafeteria and the gym of albemarle high school that's right where the

[02:26:13] tennis courts are now this would then shift the tennis courts there'd be eight new tennis courts that's how many there are now they would shift out to where one of the practice fields are to the north the tennis courts are represented by those green series of green boxes up to the left of the new parking and then the practice fields would be slightly reconfigured as they need to shift back a little bit but maintaining two full-size practice fields which are critical to all of the teams being able to practice at the same time during the sporting seasons so this also would shift the parent drop-off pickup over to that new

[02:26:49] parking area right now it's jammed into the north parking lot along hydraulic road and so there's only one way in one way out and the cars double stack in there and everyone has to wait for that light as Lambs Road hits hydraulic to get off the site so it takes quite a bit of time and it keeps teachers that parking that lot stuck there until that's done. So the red line on this plan that starts up along Lambs Road and comes across the front of Albemarle High School and back along the new parking lot is will in this in this plan be the new drop-off route and pick up and drop-off route for Albemarle

[02:27:23] High School families. It gives quite a bit of queuing length. It gives students a pretty long swath of the building to come in and out. There's a lot of doors there so people can move quickly And then parents can loop around and come back to that intersection at the corner of the building in between Albemarle High School and High School Center 2 and kind of exit in multiple different directions, which will help people get off the site a little bit more easily, having more options.

[02:27:49] At the same time, the blue line here shows how the parent drop-off and pickup will work for High School Center 2, much fewer cars, of course. And the ideal route is to come in through the southern entrance to the site along hydraulic and come up along the side of High School Center 2 in between Albemarle High School and High School Center 2 and drop off there right to the curb and then be able to exit either to Lamb's Lane or back to hydraulic there from that central exit.

[02:28:16] So this keeps those two pathways as separate as we can and gives people more options to get off the site. We think this will have a pretty significant impact along with providing the 200 additional parking spaces which covers the required additional spots for high school center 2 and additional spots for Albemarle High School and serves athletics as well in the off hours of the school. So this is the plan now and I think I mentioned we spent quite a bit of time working with a lot of staff at Albemarle High School to develop this plan. Now zooming in a little bit to high school center to the building itself, we'll talk a little bit about how it's oriented and why. The entrance to the

[02:28:56] building is right in the center of the plan right where the high school center two words are facing the entrance to albemarle high school this is kind of the central entrance to the campus here it's what you see from hydraulic road so the building faces that direction additionally there will be a number of students quite a few we think coming from albemarle high school to high school center too so creating some campus space that is real clear pedestrian connection between the buildings was important and creating that campus space between the buildings a shared space right the middle of the campus there to create outdoor an outdoor environment the building is a little bit of an l shape it cradles this courtyard we heard a lot from students that outdoor spaces and

[02:29:35] access outdoor space was really important to them so creating a courtyard an outdoor space was a big part of the project additionally on the right side of the building you see a pathway coming from the corner of the site that'll be a new pedestrian and bicycle pathway right into the center of campus that's separated from vehicular traffic to create a safer route for pedestrians and then along the bottom of the plan there you see a reconfigured entry driveway from hydraulic road down and around the back side of high school center two and connecting to reconfigured driveways that come down across the front of albemarle high school that new entrance driveway from hydraulic will

[02:30:13] will be the start of the potential future campus loop road that may eventually loop back to the boys and girls club creating that full full loop that was part of the lambs lane master plan so we're setting the stage for that and allowing that to happen in the future and then service access to the building will be on the left side this is it needs refinement but right now we're planning on dumpsters and loading dock and kitchen serving on that side of the building allowing that to be the back of the building while the forward-facing parts of the building face towards albemore high school and hydraulic road going to the building plan here as i mentioned

[02:30:52] the main entrance is up towards the top the kind of gold colored spaces are administrative and reception clinic counseling wellness there bookending or bordering the entryway putting that administrative space right there at the front door then as you move down the sheet into the building there's a common space for dining as well as for events after school activities and gatherings the darker yellow color there's kitchen and back of house spaces and then across the bottom of the plan oriented left to right is the academic wing of the building

[02:31:27] where classrooms are arranged around kind of a more central learning core of learning commons which i'll talk more about in a moment as we zoom further in the academic wing has a second story which is pretty much a mirror image of the first floor again it's project studios learning studios grouped around learning commons and then there are some common resources for students in purple there at the center of the plan uh space we're calling the idea lab a mini library fabrication lab with digital technologies and then the career center space that we mentioned we were talking about the space program where business partners community partners can come and engage with

[02:32:04] students on the projects they're working on and the types of internships and mentoring programs they may be a part of there's also a basement level to the building in this proposed plan that basement level works well because of the way the site slopes down away from hydraulic road so we can provide grade level access to that space for mechanical and electrical equipment and right now you see the data center and the plan there that would be a new data center for the entire school division that's tentative at this moment it's planned right now but there are other options be considered that may locate that elsewhere but for the moment it's included all right we'll

[02:32:43] continue to zoom in on different areas of the plan here looking at the front door the admin and clinic counseling wellness areas these spaces are grouped together here to keep those those functions together security of course is a major design factor when we're designing schools and right here is where that really manifests itself with the main entrance it's where visitors come and go throughout the day and access is controlled so the reception space is adjacent to the secure vestibule which kicks visitors right right to the reception space so they can be manage throughout the day there's a lot of visibility there and views from reception you know into the building and out of the building and up to the parking and pathways around the building

[02:33:22] so that the folks sitting there kind of know what's going on and can manage visitors to the building very well the clinic counseling and wellness space on the right are spaces that were developed based on a lot of really great feedback directly from students that we gathered the wellness space was a interesting development that is intended to serve a lot of the social emotional needs of students throughout the course of their day whether that be you know telehealth visit with a health professional or a place to go and do your prayer during the day so working closely with students on exactly what they need to do during the day was critical to developing that

[02:33:58] space you see the commons just off the sheet to the left here it's sized for 400 students the full student population in kind of an auditorium set up with tables and chairs or with just chairs and and then for 200 students for two lunch periods throughout the day for half the student population at a time, tables and chairs.

[02:34:18] So it fits the whole school. Now shifting down to the academic wing, I mentioned the learning commons. Instead of just narrow corridors, the access to the classroom from, we've grouped the classrooms around, I'm calling it like an ecosystem of student-owned meeting spaces.

[02:34:37] So we have a variety of sizes, shapes, of spaces for students to engage with each other, collaborate this is a very project based learning type of environment so the variety of the spaces will be more closed more open different types of technology more quiet more loud and give students a lot of choice in how they work together in the types of spaces they have to do that looking at the learning spaces themselves I described the learning series and project studios the lighter color blue green is learning studios you can see they're a little smaller much like a typical classroom but planned for flexible furniture to

[02:35:15] support different types of learning modes and preferences. And then the blue are the project studios, a little bigger, lots of project storage. Again, flexible furniture, but more of a work environment, like a makerspace or a science lab. And in red here, we have the specialty studios, culinary arts there in the center, and an advanced manufacturing lab.

[02:35:35] The culinary arts lab is not intended to be the same as, like what's at K-Tech, it's not a full-on commercial kitchen, but will serve the earlier level culinary arts classes. And the advanced manufacturing lab, Think of like a light wood shop with some maybe CNC machines and it's kind of tabletop type projects.

[02:35:53] So some spirit image on the left there that describe what those spaces may be like. And then the central spaces for common resources for students. The idea lab is, as I mentioned, a mini library. This building doesn't need a full library, but you have some common resources, computers, etc.

[02:36:12] The career center there is on the left with a series of different size meeting spaces for students to meet with the outside community partners. And then the Fabrication Lab is a technology resource with digital technology, 3D printers, laser cutters, and the like.

[02:36:29] Looking closer at the courtyard, I mentioned how important that outdoor space was to students. We've situated the building kind of wrapping around it so you get a lot of views to that natural space from inside the building, and a lot of access to those outdoor areas for things like dining, social experiences, and outdoor fabrication for those messy projects.

[02:36:50] This diagram, it's quite a bit to digest in a short period of time, but we're trying to illustrate how a lot of the kind of campus connections connect here to shape the building. On the bottom right of the diagram is where the main entry faces Albemarle High School, where several pathways, both pedestrian and vehicular, come together, orienting the front door right there.

[02:37:11] One of those pathways continues on into the building through that common space and directly into the academic wing, so it's a very clear pathway into the building. yet we create a separation where the at the back of the commons you can clearly delineate between kind of the public and then the school only space to allow the building to be segmented off for after hours activities or public use in that common space the building wraps around the courtyard to kind of contain that space keep it secure during the day and then a fence or wall and landscaping will continue to contain it and then we've oriented windows and spaces in the building to hopefully get some views out to the mountains on the back side there beyond the

[02:37:50] albemore high school stadium from the second floor sustainability is also a really big part of the project we are targeting a lead silver certification if you don't know lead is a third party kind of certification which tells you how sustainable you are in your building so lead silver is quite good some of the features we're incorporating are extensive daylighting so that the internal spaces can be lit by the sun without glare and have you know be able to use less energy from electric lights big roof overhangs help reduce that glare and allow us to daylight the spaces well and also provide a lot of roof area for solar panels we're also planning to manage

[02:38:28] rain water through a series of native landscaping and bioretention gardens as it's collected and heads off towards the ravanna river watershed which is right down right down the ravine here and then we've oriented the main academic wing the big the big chunk of spaces uh east west so that we have optimum solar orientation to again daylight the building and not contribute too much the solar heat into the building we can shade it adequately from the sun during the hotter months so a few renderings here to share this is standing right in between albemarle high school and high school center too looking at the front door the front door is kind of a tall space to very clearly

[02:39:05] delineate the entry and provide that visibility to manage the comings and goings of folks throughout the day you can see on the left side that pedestrian path which follows the current driveway into the site along the front of building services it won't be a drive aisle anymore it'll be for pedestrians so people can come into the site safely on foot or on bike we'll add some stairs down from that parking lot there's a little bit of a hillside there we want to create easy and accessible routes for people coming from the parking lot down to that pedestrian route here we are standing just inside the entry looking at that common space it's a two-story volume and And then you can see the stairs up to the second floor.

[02:39:41] And then that career center beyond will be very visible. So guests to the building very clearly know where they need to go as they come to work with students. Here we are on the opposite side of the commons with our back to the serving lines, looking back at the entrance. And you can see the views out to the courtyard from that space and a presentation wall and the distance on the far wall there.

[02:40:01] Here we are in the courtyard in a covered area. So you can have dining, regardless of the weather, looking out at some of the vegetation. And then you see beyond some fencing and a wall that will contain that space during the day, keep it secure for students. And then here we are on the second level in the academic wing looking at some of those smaller breakout meeting rooms and collaboration spaces for students.

[02:40:24] And then to the left, looking back out through some glass doors there out to the where it opens up to the two story commons. That's the design now shifting gears to project logistics. is our schedule we're right here in january 2024 of course presenting to you on the 11th and we're kicking off our design development phase that will continue to april where we'll come back and share the design with you again construction documents will be detailed out through the summer at the end of july we will shift gears and put out bidding documents to contractors and plan to receive bids sometime mid-september construction kicking off in october

[02:41:04] and extending through the summer of 2026 with the building being occupied for the 2026 school year by students along the way there's a lot to do of course first thing though is working on the cost we received a cost estimate from a third-party estimator that's working on our team to understand what we've designed and how it fits into the budget so the first line at the top here is the cip construction budget of 32 million 650 000. and as you can see the second line is our estimated construction costs that includes the building cost and all of the site development around the

[02:41:39] building as well as parking lots tennis courts all of that reconfiguration that is intended to improve the overall campus uh function that's 42 million 677 thousand dollars or 839 dollars So it's just over a $10 million budget gap there.

[02:41:57] Some of that I think is, you know, it's the market and kind of how the project scope has encompassed quite a bit of the campus to make it all work. We are looking pretty intensely at cost savings options and how we get the most value out of the project.

[02:42:12] So at the moment, we've identified between $3.8 and $5.4 million worth of cost savings that are being considered. And we're working closely with the design committee to understand where the best value is. there's still of course a funding shortfall after that which we're working on so the range in cost there represents something important and that is that you know the big part of the project cost is the tennis courts and parking lots right so we're looking at several other options the what we presented here tonight is the preferred option that we think works best for the campus there are some other options that reduce the cost but you know have some downsides so that's a big chunk

[02:42:50] right there that we're working through with design committee to understand as well where the best value is the last the lowest box on the sheet here in gray gives you a little bit more breakdown in detail the building only cost if you take all the site costs out is just over 32 million that works out to 468 dollars a square foot the total site improvements cost related specifically to the building as well as the other campus improvements is about 10 and a half million and then if you break that down or the next two lines just around the building about 5.4 million and if you just look at the tennis courts and parking lot costs it's just over five million so kind of an equal

[02:43:29] split there between the two parts of the site now to put this into bigger context we've collected data from other school projects bid over the last two years picked new new school projects that were comparable got a half a dozen here we looked at their bid pricing on bid day which goes back to december 22 and then the most recent two were in september 2023 and we've used an escalation factor to escalate that cost based on kind of accepted industry numbers out to what the midpoint of the construction for high school center 2 will be and that same factor is applied to the cost

[02:44:04] estimate we have for this project so the numbers we're trying to make apples to apples here and we've looked at just the building cost for both these other projects and for high school center 2 since the site cost could vary so much so if you total up those numbers on the far right column the average is $457 a square foot and you can see our $468 a square foot for this project is fairly close for the building only we feel good about that but it doesn't doesn't change that we have the funding shortfall so our next steps for the project are of course to continue working on the budget working with design committee on that as well as continuing to work with different user

[02:44:43] groups teachers and students to continue to refine the design and move through the next phase design development before we come back to see you again in april so thank you very much i'd love to answer your questions um thank you the building looks beautiful um just like to remind the public and my colleagues that the original decision by the board to go to the high school center model was because building a brand new high school was going to cost about 140 million dollars

[02:45:16] So our solution, for a variety of reasons, was to go with a high school center model, plus renovating the existing high schools for a bargain price of about $90 million. Unfortunately, we've not received the funding to upgrade all of our schools, and the number that we had, the $32 million that was approved by the Board of Supervisors, was approved in 2019 so surprise surprise costs have increased and also having it flexible to

[02:45:54] expand you know 600 students i think that is probably a cost factor in there as well i think it's unrealistic for i would like us to ask the supervisors who approved the 32 million dollars in 2019 then froze it because of covid and are largely contributory to the increase in costs i mean we can't we have been burned every single time we've cut back on plans and built

[02:46:30] smaller or less and this community supports improving our school facilities so the question as you know do we negotiate against ourselves in terms of reducing the cost or do we do a second-level ask for what we actually need by code we are obligated to ask our funding request is based on our needs so I am very I love the plan sure there's always efficiencies but I think we need to be

[02:47:10] realistic with our community and our supervisors about what it costs to build a first-class facility and this is not I mean they didn't even allocate the funding to upgrade our other high schools so thank you for listening to me vent no I mean I agree is like we need to continue to tell what the actual cost of total implementation of this work is like people want world-class schools and is what it costs so how do we this is a bargain i mean this is this is what we did to save the

[02:47:43] community money and be creative and innovative with how we allocate our our capital dollars and to get nickels and dined instead of building 140 million dollar high school this is a bargain and i'll add that you know this is a progressive direction that we're going to center to as opposed to a comprehensive high school which you know is an older model Could you go back to the one of the earlier frames that showed the overall plan of the school?

[02:48:18] Absolutely. Okay, wait a minute, I'll tell you when. Next, still keep on. No, more. Okay, that one. On that, the proposed loop road between Lambs Lane and Hydraulic is not showing up. And with the practice fields and the stadium and all of that there, How would that be put in? I mean, it looks like it's going to be difficult to have that road connecting Lambs Road with hydraulic Yeah, and putting it in after the school is built when you're gonna have major infrastructure

[02:48:59] Issues with traffic already on hydraulic and you know, you know You hear from teachers that the traffic is already bad back at Journey and Greer to get out of their schools because it gets backed up from the high school It seems like chicken and egg may need to do the road Yeah, so I can speak just a little bit to that. Can I get a mouse to point on the screen here?

[02:49:21] When you go back one or two frames earlier, it shows up, but then on this one it doesn't see right there It shows up a future loop. Yeah, well, okay. It's going like to the west of the stadium. So, okay All right, but it doesn't show up on that other plan That's right. We haven't shown it on this plan Just a few dashed lines showing it extended but yes we we plan to accommodate just the very first section of the road adjacent to the new building and it would just continue on kind of back around the back side of the stadium as shown in this we're talking about the red line here going around the white dash line future loop road

[02:50:02] don't we have a proposal in this snotty to vdot with the county in terms of the loop road the county funded a study for the loop road so that has that's nearly complete it's not completed yet and then it'll go to vdot for a couple of different funding options as i recall the funding options potentially involve some revenue sharing but that is years down the road at this point in time so we're talking about the road being years down the road yes the road the loop road is not

[02:50:37] part of this project budget yeah like 10 years down the road at least i would say ish seven the house school center would be constructed before the loop road was completely there correct but we are um in this drawing you can see we're starting a portion of where the loop road would run so this it's right near right where it says yes right okay yeah and maybe i just don't know this since i'm new but was there a traffic study done um as to how this would impact already congested area there was a traffic study done as part of the loop

[02:51:14] road study yes okay and the Lambs Lane campus study was it I think there were there wasn't there traffic study with the Lambs Lane the long-term proposal for the Lambs Lane campus to remove transportation I mean that's way down the road but there wasn't a traffic study done as part of the master plan but there was a very detailed one done for the loop road study okay just one question on the it said is it 60 000 60 000 square feet and with the expand possible so what's the

[02:51:54] remind me with the impossible expansion to 90 90 that 90 000 square feet for another 200 students but that would that be a third floor that i guess that's a question where would that go i mean is that i mean is you're just saying that you're you're building with a possibility we're not building it up to like at this point we're not at some one of the supervisors would ask about like why wouldn't you just add a you know add a third floor right so we know we're not building any empty space we're leaving space on the site so we could add another i think it's nine classrooms

[02:52:31] i mean i have that number wrong but leaving space to build in the future okay and building in a way that that would be an easy expansion like you've done it's okay and we did have the third floor empty shell as part of our cost estimate if they would like to fund that yes we have the cost ready yes oh good thank you we should i think we should send that to um on this um it basically shows straight traffic between ahs and high school center too and you said in the next one that there was a pedestrian connection yes my brain doesn't work with that i don't see how there can be

[02:53:08] pedestrians and cars right so where you see the number one right here on the plane oh good my mouse does work okay so you know the the different colors here are intended for something different paving types so what what you see here uh from a you see my mouse from back here to here would be a raised what we call pedestrian table so you're driving along and kind of ramps up and the bollards along the side so the the sidewalk surface continues flat without having to step off a sidewalk and go across a painted road so it prioritizes the pedestrian walking surface the sidewalk so visually that is the primary kind of hardscape if you will uh through there so yes

[02:53:47] Yes, there's a road that travels through there. The majority of the day, there's not heavy traffic through there. It's really like the beginning ends of the day. So students move back and forth between the building. We anticipate that that traffic table kind of creates a better visual connection, better pedestrian connection, while still allowing the driveway to pass through.

[02:54:04] So the pedestrian space is really, you know, the plaza that already exists at the front of Albemarle High School, and then those pathways and green space that exists across the driveway in front of High School Center 2 connected by this pedestrian table. So it's a bit of a compromise to kind of put cars and people in the same place, but not at the same time.

[02:54:22] In my memory of previous centers is that since students are bused there from their home schools, then there would only be AHS traffic at once and then center two traffic separate, right? They would be at different times. Well, I think the busing plans are maybe a little bit TBD, but I think ultimately maybe you ought to answer the question.

[02:54:45] the way it currently works is students are transported on routes that are integrated with routes already at Albemarle so they would utilize the same bus route they would operate on the same time schedule but a lot of those operational things could change by the time this opens okay I think the other thing to remember is so yes we say 400 students but if they if the attendance were to be proportional to our base schools 200 of those students are Albemarle students and because it's located Albemarle I would expect an even higher percentage so it's not like you're bringing 400 new students to this

[02:55:20] campus I have a question about the green spaces I know in the advisory committee for environmental sustainability we're talking about native plant materials talking about low have I turned off I think when you get too close and I think when you talk too much perhaps talk to me about the landscaping I mean i know that we're having we're having no low areas and sloped areas i mean i do like to have

[02:55:54] green but i also know that the tiny little bit of green space in front of albemarle is almost always semi-desert or it's a great question so we have to find the balance between um you know good robust landscaping and easy to maintain landscaping and as you know just running around is the easiest fastest thing to do so we'll work closely with the facilities groups to to pick and choose plants that are really hardy drought resistant all native and what we'd like to do kind of as a learning opportunity is with not everywhere but within the courtyard space is kind of pick pick plantings that are representative of what the

[02:56:31] natural Piedmont ecosystems are around Charlottesville to kind of illustrate that for science classes and things may be happening here so that's definitely a level of detail we haven't gotten to yet picking plants but the intention is native drought resistant easy to maintain while still kind of achieving this bigger bigger purpose and goals for using as a learning tool thank you I know that we have the other capital improvement we want is the data center and I know that there's still

[02:57:07] conversations about locate co-locating it versus standalone and I wonder if I think the original cost for the data center in our capital budget was like 1.7 million dollars that we kept not being able to fund but is is that within that 42 million dollars or is that something something else it is and as part of the cost estimate we estimate a few different options what we are forced into now with the relocation of building services to accommodate this site is we have to move the data center first so we're looking at while the initial plan was to have it as part of the facility

[02:57:45] it may be more cost-effective to have it as a freestanding building we're still evaluating that and we'll be working closely with technology to figure out the best spot and the most efficient place for that to be we'd like to not move it twice but if that is the most cost-effective it could be a temporary solution and I am delighted we would be losing some of our trailers but um do you need anything from us sorry this is for information only so we'll be back we will continue to study ve options and we'll bring back a short budget update at the next meeting and ask for action at that time to move to design

[02:58:20] development. Thank you. Thank you so much. Next we have probably something similar. The Southern Feeder Pattern Elementary School Schematic Design with Matt Wortman. Good evening members of the board. My name is Matt Wortman. I'm the Deputy Director of Building Services. I'm here to provide you with a budget update on the Southern Feeder Pattern Elementary School and to request subsequent actions related to this project. I'm also joined tonight by our

[02:58:57] our project manager Gerald Harris and current Mountain View principal Seth Kennard should you have any questions about some of the items you'll be considering tonight. So just a quick overview of what we'll cover. I will provide a quick update on where the project budget stands and then request two separate actions. One related to the grade configuration between the existing Mountain View elementary school and the new southern feeder pattern elementary school that Seth reviewed at the December 14th board meeting. The second requested action is to

[02:59:34] direct staff to proceed to the next phase of the design process. This item is directly related to the board's third goal of equitable and transformative resources as outlined in the board's strategic plan. Okay, so a budget update. As a quick reminder of where we stood when we first presented this project to you about a month ago, we had just received our initial schematic design cost estimate, which as you can see, was approximately $11.3 million over our CIP construction budget. At that time, we had identified some preliminary value engineering

[03:00:12] solutions that were still being evaluated by our consultants at BMDO as well as the design committee. However, we were still projecting a $5.7 to $7.6 million funding gap at that time. Since then, we have continued to study potential savings opportunities with a key focus on trying to limit impacts to the original CIP scope and ensuring high-quality learning environments for our students. This first proposed value engineering solution is a series of changes that do not have a substantial effect on the student learning environment. Just a few highlights

[03:00:50] include pulling two of the four stairwells out to the exterior of the building, eliminating bleachers from the gym, reducing the amount of landscaping, several materiality changes, and many other miscellaneous changes valued at less than $100,000 each. In total these changes have a total estimated savings of just over 4.1 million dollars. The second proposed value engineering solution is not ideal but the design committee feels must be strongly considered to ensure that the project can move forward with our current funding. This includes moving three classrooms from the southern

[03:01:29] classroom wing from the base scope and bidding them as an additive. This would reduce the square footage of the building by about 2400 square feet, which has an estimated value of just over $1 million. I want to be clear here that the committee's intent is simply to move these classrooms as an additive, which would mean that if bids were favorable, these classrooms could still be built. This slide also shows the impact that all of our value engineering solutions will have on the proposed square footage, student capacity, and the associated square footage to

[03:02:06] pupil ratio. You can see that with this solution, the student capacity of the new school does get reduced to 456 students. The third and final value engineering solution is to downsize the remaining classrooms from 1,025 square feet to 800 square feet. As a little background, we had previously been adhering to the VDOE guidelines, which recommend a 1,025 square foot classroom with a 50 square foot toilet for grades pre-k through two excuse me pre-k through

[03:02:43] one and an 800 square foot classroom for grades two through five this proposed solution is based on the assumption that the recommended grade configuration for this school would be adopted and has an estimated savings of just shy of one million dollars also shown on this slide are the average classroom square footages from some other recent acps projects since publishing these slides our office was also able to collect classroom size data for about two-thirds of our elementary schools. Of those schools that we sampled, the average elementary classroom size for a classroom

[03:03:23] with no bathrooms was 804 square feet. About 30 percent of our elementary classrooms contain bathrooms, and of those, the average classroom size is 926 square feet. However, I will note there are two schools that have no classrooms with bathrooms. Those are at Red Hill and Scottsville.

[03:03:46] Additionally, Stony Point only has one classroom with the bathroom, and Hollymead only has three classrooms with bathrooms. I'll now quickly take you through the revised floor plans after implementing these value engineering solutions. While we did make some minor adjustments to the site plan, the majority of value engineering recommendations were related to the building itself. We'll begin here at level zero, which is where students would enter the building if they arrived by bus. This level contains the kitchen and dining facility. I want to make a very important

[03:04:20] point. We have made no changes or reduction in size to common shared spaces. This was a very important point to the design committee as we wanted to maintain the ability for the school to accommodate its original intended student capacity. Major changes on this level include the relocation of two classrooms that were originally, hopefully that shows up on your screens, but originally embedded into this hillside and repurposing them into these two classrooms, which originally were the pre-K classrooms. The committee viewed this as a

[03:04:58] favorable change because it meant that all classrooms within the building would now have access to natural daylight. It also reduced a significant cost that was necessary for a retaining wall in that hillside. This level also includes the elimination of one of the three classrooms that I referenced in value engineering solution number two. Those classrooms were all here along the southern classroom ring and were stacked on top of each other. So it was one per floor, which was effectively where this exterior staircase is now shown. So there was another

[03:05:34] classroom here on all three levels. Moving up to level one, this is the level where students who arrived by car would enter and leave the building. Again, there were no changes to common shared spaces on this level. The only major change on this level includes the elimination of one of the three classrooms that are previously referenced in the southern classroom wing. And finally, moving up to level two, we have reconfigured some of the student spaces in this part of the building to improve circulation and student support services needs. However, there were no reductions

[03:06:13] to this area from a programmatic perspective and again there was a reduction of one classroom on this level. One benefit that I will add about these revised floor plans is that assuming the grades three through five configuration is adopted there would be an equal number of classrooms on each floor which would make it easy for grades to be configured within the spaces. Finally here's a very rough early rendering of what the school would look like along the north wing under this new the revised design with the value engineering implemented. You can see where we have moved the

[03:06:50] clustering wing stairwells to the exterior of the building which breaks up the massing that had previously existed. These stairwells are still protected by a roof and it is also worth noting that there are still two interior stairwells in the central core of the building for main circulation. So what do all these changes mean for our budget? One of the things that we did is we worked with our design team to determine the amount of funds that would be necessary to administer the sustainability requirements that we have on this project and to remove the remainder of those sustainability funds into our construction budget. This increased our available budget by

[03:07:29] about $1.4 million. When factoring in all three proposed value engineering solutions, we are left with an estimated schematic design estimate of $36.9 million, which still represents a funding gap of $3.75 million, which is less than where we were a month ago. The committee feels that there is not much more that can be eliminated from the scope of work without significantly affecting capacity or the student's learning experience and environment. This gap is reflective of the market trends that we previously reported on in December, as well as what you heard earlier

[03:08:07] tonight from the High School Center 2 presentation. Moving forward, staff are requesting your authorization to proceed to the design development phase to be able to maintain the overall project schedule. We will continue to seek ways to reduce costs where possible without sacrificing our standards and quality. We will receive two additional cost estimates at the end of the design development phase, including an independent cost estimate. And we will report back to you sometime in March or April. Just a few potential risks as we enter this next stage include rising

[03:08:45] construction costs, including some preliminary reports that we've started to receive of rising geothermal costs due to the Inflation Reduction Act, site plan approval, and any major last-minute changes to the site plan or overall building layout. So that's everything I have for you in the form of an update. I'm happy to answer any questions that you may have, but we do have some recommended motions for you, the first of which here is related to the recommended grade configuration for the existing Mountain View Elementary School and the new Southern Feeder Pattern Elementary

[03:09:21] school and as i mentioned seth canard is here this evening should you have any questions about that can you go back to two slides the uh recommended changes the law of that first one and then i also also the student enrollment just let me know when you want me to flip so is that exterior i mean i think this kind of comes it comes back to kate's comment earlier right like don't want us to get into a situation where we can't move forward because that is we have got to open some of these

[03:09:59] schools i also don't want to make cuts that are like don't make sense right like the number one thing we hear from student and teacher surveys is we need more windows and kind of reducing light is like one of the last things i do and two of those things are and then this exterior serial just seems bizarre to me like why would i want my kids personally or my community kids or if i'm the principal like seth being outside unless that is just an escape in case of emergency like i would never want my kids to go outside that seems like a huge security risk i mean i

[03:10:35] see why you did it right like i get it the situation we're in but like this is what we're gonna do for our kids like well and also just like to go down to the bottom floor you have to put your coat on on days like the last few days i mean i hear i heard you say that there were two internal staircases is the purpose of these to be used more in an emergency situation that's right so um i'll just go to this floor just so there's there's this this stairwell here hopefully i hope you can see my mouse um towards the front um and then there's also this stairwell back here towards uh you know near the gym and near the cafeteria um with these being really kind of along this

[03:11:13] central spine it's the committee had discussions and and really feel that these are the two stairwells that would be utilized the majority of the time anyways particularly with these stairwells being at the end of a classroom uh corridor wing we figured the only time these would be used say if if a class is going to recess or something or in an emergency setting but the committee really felt that the the two central spine stairwells are the ones most likely to be utilized and and therefore saw these as an opportunity for saving money yeah that makes more sense i think yeah and and i could comment to the the windows and i apologize i don't remember the number but our architects uh calculate

[03:11:51] a percentage of the buildings elevation in terms of how much of that uh is is window i don't remember the exact numbers i think they actually quite as mike tell me i think they they've left never mind i think the ideal number is like 30 percent you know between 30 and 40 percent and we're still in that ideal range um for uh for classroom settings so this is just um it's a cost savings measures while still being able to maintain that ideal range of percentage of window to building surface are the solar tubes in the hallways is that where you primarily put those yeah that's right yeah

[03:12:28] i mean i would like to hear from the principal if you know these are all changes that are acceptable to the community and to the school you know at large um or if you know like kate and rebecca were alluding to that we are you know taking out things that we want or need sure i'm I'm Seth Kennard, the principal of Mountain View.

[03:12:51] As a member of the design committee, there's a lot of discussion over the value engineering. It was a very passionate group when it came to that. And I think we all kept student safety and student experience and staff experience at the core. Things like the exterior staircase, knowing how a school runs and how this is designed, the two internal staircases are very wide.

[03:13:12] And one of them is called ceremonial. It's so wide and grand, which would be the primary point of movement during a school day. The exterior case not only allows us to have students come and go for recess without disrupting the rest of the school, it also provides easy areas for future expansion, which is part of our discussion.

[03:13:29] So we're kind of thinking ahead, knowing the growth in the Southern feeder pattern. None of the cuts of the capacity really gave us a lot of heartburn. I was very concerned about the reduction in natural light and the architect showed us that really the places in which we're moving solar tubes were places already had large curtain walls of light anyway.

[03:13:49] one situation the solar tubes and skylights were non-standard size and the change just made it a standard size would be cheaper to develop so it was thoughtfully done I have concerns about the changes with reducing those three classrooms really sets us up to have to expand earlier than we might want to but when it comes to student experiences and common spaces I think we're a really Good place.

[03:14:12] Is there... Sorry, go ahead. Remind me, this is set to open 20... 26. 26? The 26, 27 school year. 26. And what is the... What would you... Do we know with the reconfiguration what the current building would hose?

[03:14:29] Not this building, but the... In terms of enrollment, projected enrollment? Yeah. I don't remember the exact number. I want... We've looked at this a couple of times. I'm going to give you a round number, so please don't hold me to this. want to say a 10 year projection we assumed I think it was like 750 to 800 students at Mountain View so if if you cut that in half you're at 375 to 400 again don't hold me I think I would like to see that because that's the you know that's I have that concern too about like are we already gonna get like be in a

[03:15:08] situation that we have to build immediately you know we're setting ourselves knowing about where our projections of you know 17 growth just to clarify on ve solution number two and number three so number two uh no one on the design committee wants to build less classrooms right right so our intent is to continue to design and bid these classrooms so there is some opportunity in the future for this i would we would like direction from the board specifically on number three number three reduces the size of the classrooms we feel like that meets through the enrollment projections capacity for three five we're good what it removes

[03:15:47] for the board and the division is the future flexibility of this to be a k-5 school in the future right and one of the reasons we said three five was it makes sense right now but let's continue and early on in the design was every decision needed to meet both right this eliminates that option and it can't be changed later right even later in the design process it's a it's a decision that needs to be made now and so in terms of the ve options again i echo mr cunard number one it feels like cuts but each one were thoughtfully discussed and not as bad as they sound

[03:16:24] sometimes two again is a decision of how we bid doesn't put us in a certain situation but three is one of the harder conversations um in in three with regards to the bathrooms are we saying that there are no individual bathrooms in this design i was a little lost on that yeah no um so so the entire building is single user bathrooms okay um what we're saying is no bathrooms inside classroom

[03:17:00] that's correct okay so so the videoe i'll go back and that's regardless of reducing the class sizes or the initial one did you have individual bathrooms in the classrooms or it's not yeah so the original the original this floor plan that we presented in December to the board and the associate estimate with that had 10 classrooms that had bathrooms inside the classrooms okay and the proposal now in number three is to remove those classroom bathrooms but they're still individual bathrooms throughout the school that's correct the purpose of that is typically our

[03:17:36] kindergarten or first grade you design a bathroom and just another question I had are there elevators in the school for disabled students yes so they're not called out here but there there's two elevator shafts right here in the plans one of the one of the things I will say one of the value engineering options is to build install one elevator and to construct the elevator shaft for the second but not build the cab for the second I'm actually concerned that they're both in the same

[03:18:13] place again I'm just like that I don't want to throw you back but like something happened one goes out they're both well no potentially if there's electrical issues on that side of the school you could lose to that's exactly true but part of the school can evacuate you can't evacuate the other side of the school some kids can go down the secondary staircase but there's if those two elevators are together while you have redundancy you have redundancy in one part of the school right so i could be in the other side of the school there could be something blocking my access to an elevator that may throw out design totally because i know elevator shafts

[03:18:51] are impossible to design to buildings but there's a concern there that there's redundancy but the redundancy is next to each other okay we can absolutely uh take that back and study that was the elevator on this any of these three options the the not not installing the second cab would have been included in in option one option one but we talked about bidding that as an adult that's correct we were that was another additive that we were intending to bid um the other thing is you can always come back and install the cab at a later date and it that is a much

[03:19:29] less cost i mean we're not talking about it's still six figures but compared to the the budget gap we have it's it's one of those things that we we felt could be could be done at the later date i'm concerned that part of what mr canard's presentation about a k-2 versus a three through five was that this was sort of a pilot that we we thought it would work it works in a lot of other communities but we're being asked to consider structural changes that will preclude that

[03:20:04] flexibility altogether um i am very i was starting to feel pretty good about okay we can go to 900 800 square feet until i realized that would lock us into this particular model and i'm not opposed to the model i mean but and other school divisions do it but the whole perp the whole pitch was that let's try it and see we can always go back and what we're saying now is no if if we approve these changes that significantly decrease enrollment and now also lock us into this

[03:20:39] pedagogical choice yeah i don't see how we can do that i don't either well the one thing the one thing that we can consider is that the schools are right next to each other which is a so that yeah that's one way of thinking of it but yeah i agree with you the flexibility goes out the window know with with it with the cuts I mean we're basically looking at making our classrooms too small to accommodate younger kids removing three classrooms so there there goes another 60 kids and we're still four million dollars over I

[03:21:19] don't know I agree with that however so one thing one question is is Mountain view our mountain views classrooms configured like once some of them were 10 1000 some of them were 800 does that is that all configure that way yeah I have I made sure that we calculated mountain views numbers and not seem to find that I mean I'll take your yes I don't need those numbers right this

[03:21:53] second but my second point I think would be that it locks us into the most efficient thing being these as three through five right that's just the most efficient thing it's possible to put smaller kids in them it's just that it won't be as efficient so I think that it's not as locked in as as maybe that is presented but it won't be efficient Judy I think that's a great point as he shared with some average we do have schools that don't have a thousand foot kindergarten classrooms with a bathroom it's just if you were to build a new school right now that's how you would build a kindergarten classroom you're right there are schools and in this division that have kindergarten

[03:22:33] classrooms in 800 square feet without a bathroom. Yeah, so, and I can, I know they weren't in the slides, and I apologize. We had to publish the slides before we had the data. They're, 30% of our elementary classrooms have bathrooms. As I mentioned, there were two schools that do not, Red Hill and Scottsville. Mountain View specifically, the average classroom size for all classrooms is 804. Let me rephrase that. The average classroom size for classrooms without bathrooms is 804 for those bathrooms for those classrooms that do have bathrooms the average

[03:23:11] size is 928 square feet and there are 10 classrooms at mountain view with bathrooms yeah i mean again i think this is the issue like i'm not going to build a school that is not going to be what is needed like i've taught in a kindergarten classroom without a bathroom i've taught in a pre-k class with a bathroom it's terrible like it's terrible like i'm not going to put teachers in that like in that situation like it's just not the best way to move forward um and we're wanting this to last for 20 years well no one knows who would last for 50 years 100 years yeah and again if i'm

[03:23:50] getting upset like i'm you know i'm not getting upset at you like like it's the situation like that we are in because of some that we are in i'll just say that but so many times in the past we have been forced to settle into second place I have a real problem with us cutting or making these changes now without letting the Board of Supervisors know what our plan is and then if we have to do something go to this I mean I think the real challenge from what I hear is that the Board of Supervisors is

[03:24:30] not going to make a decision about budget until April maybe and if we wait till then we won't open in 26 we'll open maybe in 27 and maybe we'll end up right back where we are right now so we're yeah this is one where I don't want to be the decider but we make the biggie fry yeah but even if we make all these value ease and edits I don't remember what the east before we're still not going to be at the number of them so it's still have to have our begging cup out right

[03:25:10] so I don't I guess I would love to hear what the path forward is if we say okay well let's just make these smaller for bigger kids like and then what's the path forward there um make sure I understand your question so are you saying if if we if we move forward with ve option three what does that mean is that your question or if we move let's just say this is not gonna happen but let's just say we said oh yes one through three that makes sense to us we're totally pragmatic we still have this huge funding gap so what is the

[03:25:41] next step? Um there's there's okay that's that's the question right um so there well you're you didn't show the second motion our recommendation is to approve the schematic design specific we need specific direction on value three because that affects the design going forward and our second uh recommendation is to request the board of supervisors for additional funding for at least that gap whether that's three million or four million we're somewhere in between there um if that and so that allows us to keep designing right uh and if that fails uh i think the next

[03:26:18] tier would be to talk about other projects and where you cut from other projects we don't have a lot of projects to cut from but high school renovations um there's another one i'm blanking on um we could look at we could look at the maintenance budget and see if there's there's opportunities to to reduce projects there um they'd obviously be smaller scale but it seems to like the the first option though even before that though rosalyn would be to go to if you're gonna if you're gonna do the the first option you mentioned but you could back up even

[03:26:55] further and go just go and say we've got these gaps now due to inflationary costs go to that first right you could but and let but to meet project schedule schedule we have to keep designing and i think it's reasonable at this phase of the project to make changes or reductions you know we were in design committee without a cost estimate now that we have a cost estimate we can inform i think that helps the case to the board of supervisors too is you did make some concessions and changes and your scrub we scrubbed it as much as we could i think that's reasonable

[03:27:31] at this phase of the project and defendable to the community what changes were made i wouldn't go with your schematic design estimate and say give us it i mean that's my recommendation and so it's my understanding that the schematics or the planning could go with a three classroom add-on if money came from heavens but the big thing that we need to decide is 800 for a thousand

[03:28:00] versus 800 and that would put us into not being the ideal lower elementary school size but it could still be that i'm i'm really concerned about cutting classrooms i mean you know we always build too small and regret it and have to pay more money building something else and just for clarification this is for grades three through five is that right um that's correct okay so When we're talking about the classroom size,

[03:28:39] it aligns with what most 3 through 5 classrooms are like. We're not talking about a kindergarten classroom that needs 1,000 square feet, right? I think the issue is if we make that choice. If we make that choice, it just locks us in.

[03:28:55] Yeah, it just locks us in. Right. Well, I mean, our hands are kind of tied. And then 10 years later, if our needs are different and you need to use the school differently, you don't have this. Right. Yeah, you have flexibility. so it's really hard so we need to vote on number three and then also you're asking us to reach out to the board of supervisors a letter from all of us jointly we're requesting um two or three actions the first is on the grade configuration we need we would like direction and motion on that staff

[03:29:33] recommends um based on community feedback that this school is a three five so that's decision one and you'll stop there so let me just so let me just ask understand that so are we just voting on that is just for current time right because right now like this isn't this this vote does not affect design it's not the design it's just a project so that we don't plan a redistricting study and we don't know right and we can tell the community who's going to this school and who had a very strong community input process okay and then once that decision is made then we have

[03:30:10] some um yeah decisions on that money so what's the next one could you show us the next recommendation so this was the next one we had i'm hearing perhaps maybe a motion around um so that does affect design this one sorry because i'm hearing i'm hearing some discussion here i mean we can move it to three five and i'm all for that yeah but then the question is do we then when you're you're moving forward with design are you doing the 800 are you doing the thousand right so I mean I don't really think it's as separate as it seems right

[03:30:47] but what they were saying was that the classroom size that they're proposing is in alignment with what a normal three to five grade level classroom would be we're not making it smaller than other ones right it's in line with that and it's also in line with what many of our k through second grade classrooms already are right so i feel like we can easily do the first let's do the first one let's get some successes let's get some wins

[03:31:17] today okay uh where is it you go to the first motion yep sorry sorry i move to direct staff to proceed with a pre-k second grade configuration at the current mountain view elementary school and a 3-5 grade configuration at the new southern feeder pattern elementary school second okay moved by Dr. Berlin seconded by both Ms. Osborne and Ms. Spillman um I think we've had enough conversation on that so we can probably go ahead and have our vote all those in favor aye aye

[03:31:53] any opposed nope motion carries okay okay so now we move on to the VE options we have to talk about the ve options one one thing i would add um about this one it's not to say it would happen but just it's an option um if if there was ever a need to revert back to pre-k through five at this school um the design is such to where i'm gonna go to this one it's a little easier the design is such to where you could easily extend these wings um as an addition um as a separate project and you know if we did that those could be uh classrooms they could have bathrooms added to

[03:32:32] them at that time um so should you add on classrooms absolutely yeah if if that ever became a need in the future but like you know future school board is going to say how we're going to get the money to do that i mean right no i was just and we're still pursuing those classrooms that are going to be cut by one of these options right it'll be an additive additive or whatever it's called.

[03:32:56] Well, what's the likelihood of the bid being positive and us getting any of these additives? It's close to zero. I think there's two possibilities. The construction market is ever-changing, right? That's probably slim. But the second is, then that's when you're requesting more money.

[03:33:13] You may have more money to afford the additive alternative. I don't like negotiating against ourselves on those things. I mean, we built too small. We have a lot of people. We shove them in the classrooms. Yeah, we all know.

[03:33:29] But we can't, like Kate said, we can't wait until April to make a decision. Yeah, we can't. Like, we have to vote. Can you go to the second motion? Yeah, the second motion. What I'm hearing, a proposed path forward, is that you, so this motion is, we've presented the full schematic design last meeting.

[03:33:54] We presented three value engineering options. You could proceed with approving the, as presented, minus, because I'm hearing a lot of resistance to that third one. and and proceed from there that's all right so minus the one of cutting the classrooms right you're saying the size you're seeing this arms again the value engine the second one is just bidding it different you're still designing the classrooms okay um you're you're kicking that decision down the road but if we but if you don't choose to move forward with number three that like

[03:34:33] we can't go back you can't go back it's hard you can't go back yeah we really and just to explain the reason for that in order for us to be able to produce construction documents and to maintain our overall project schedule that specific change has a ripple effect on the rest of the building footprint and and the time and cost to make changes after this point on something like that are just too great um and we would we would we would miss our schedule and what's the cost savings on three nine hundred something yeah it's about a million yeah just shy of a million

[03:35:09] go back to the motion i think we have to hold our nose and then sign also do this additional motion yeah i mean i move to approve the schematic design of the new southern feeder pattern elementary school and direct staff to proceed to the design development stage phase or stage second move dr acuff seconded by ms spillman do we want to have some discussion

[03:35:47] So we're moving just so undeclared, this is with the smaller classrooms? Correct. That's with the smaller classrooms. I know. Surely there's a million dollars somewhere.

[03:36:03] Yeah, that's where I'm going to hold off. But then there's also the other four. But also there's not them not being able to move forward. They got to move forward. They got to move forward. And I would fight to try to fund the other three classrooms.

[03:36:22] Yeah. I mean, we can ask them to move forward with the bigger classrooms. Pardon? We could, but the funding for that is going to be $976 million more or $976,000 more. But that wouldn't be included in this motion that you just made.

[03:36:40] The motion I just made would have the design team proceed with the 800 square foot classrooms and with having the other three classrooms as a potential add-on, is that correct? Plus a lot of those other awful changes.

[03:36:58] one would include the other three classrooms added on right yeah the last schematic yeah it doesn't change the design like they can one thought that just popped in my head i don't mean to throw a wrinkle in it we could do the three classrooms with bathrooms as an additive ew is that also a million that'll be all right i mean still be an additive right so i'm not you've got a hundred grand a bathroom yeah it would cut down that savings probably a little bit but just just the

[03:37:37] idea just popped in the head apologies did we we did not have a second did we oh we did all right so are we ready to vote on this do you want to do a roll call vote yeah let's do a roll call vote thank you do you need me to read restate the motion or is everybody good i think we're all

[03:38:00] staring at it. Ms. Osborne? Yes. Mr. Charles Pace? Yes. Mr. Page? No. Ms. Spillman? Yes. Dr. Acuff? Yes. Dr. Berlin? No. Ms. Chair Lee? Yes. With the vote 5-2, motion carries. Did Ms. Osborne vote? Yes. Okay, now we have this additive motion. If anyone would like to move that. I'll do that one. I move

[03:38:43] to direct the chair of the school board to send a letter to the board of supervisors outlining the difficult construction market and conditions and formally requesting additional capital funds to cover the current funding gap for the southern feeder pattern elementary school project before we move forward i'm wondering whether the letter should also include the high school center capital issues agreed can you tell me to amend it yes please okay um i'm going to amend my motion um

[03:39:22] i move to direct the chair of the school board to send a letter to the board of supervisors outlining the difficult construction market conditions and formally requesting additional capital funds to cover the current funding gap for the southern feeder pattern elementary school project and center to high school high school project second moved by dr berlin seconded by mr page um can we get a roll call on this one too mr charles pace yes mr page yes miss spielman

[03:40:00] yes dr acuff yes dr berlin yes miss osborne yes chair lee yes so moved all right thank you i love writing thank you thank you very much thank you this is a tough issue and i know you did not create it yeah i'm not mad at you all right does anyone have any other business by board members or superintendent no all right i just want to welcome everyone who's new here today josh allison chuck and fernando i like go home at nine because it is late so i just want to say

[03:40:40] we can't stay this late every week chair chair lee it's not an auspicious beginning i agree all right thanks very much i thought they were all like

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Coraggio Consulting · aguyonx.com