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

Date: Thursday, July 11, 2024
Place: Albemarle County Public Schools / School Board meeting, Virginia
Length: 2h 49m (video)
Official meeting video (YouTube): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Op-kV1ZbLag

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 2026-10-13. Timestamps are [HH:MM:SS] into the meeting video.

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[00:00:03] I call this July 11th meeting of the Albemarle County School Board back to order. Do we have a motion? We do, Chair Lee. I move that the board certified by recorded vote that to the best of each board member's knowledge, only public business matters lawfully exempted from the open meeting requirements of the Virginia Freedom of Information Act and identified in the motion authorizing the closed meeting were heard, discussed, or considered in the closed meeting.

[00:00:30] Second. Moved by Dr. Acuff, seconded by Ms. Spillman. Could we have a roll call vote for that, please, Christine? Mr. Graham Page? Yes. Ms. Osborne? Yes. Dr. Berlin? Yes. Dr. Acuff?

[00:00:45] Yes. Ms. Spillman? Yes. Mr. Chuck Pace? Yes. Chair Lee? Yes. So moved. And then I believe we have two motions coming out of closed session. We do. I have another one. I move that this board deny the petition to grant an additional year of preschool to student A.

[00:01:07] Second. Moved by Dr. Acuff, seconded by Mr. Page. Could we have a roll call vote for that, please, Christine? Ms. Spillman? No. Ms. Osborne? Abstain. Mr. Chuck Pace?

[00:01:26] Yes. Dr. Berlin? No. Mr. Page? Yes. Dr. Acuff? Yes. Chair Lee? Yes. With a vote for yes, two, no, one abstention, the vote carries.

[00:01:46] Thank you. We have one other. All right, I have a motion. I move that we approve the appointment of Candidate 1 for the role of principal at Albemarle High School. Second. Moved by Mr. Page. Seconded by Dr. Acuff. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed?

[00:02:06] No. All right. Motion carries. Thanks very much. Next we'll have our roll call. We'll start with Josiah Black. Good evening everyone. I'm Josiah Black, School Division Counsel. Matthew Haw, Superintendent. Allison Spillman, at-large representative.

[00:02:22] Ellen Osborne, Scottsville representative. Rebecca Berlin, Whitehall representative. Judy Lee, Rivanna district. Kate Acuff, Jack Jewett district. Graham Page, Miller district. Chuck Pace, Rio district. Roslyn Schmidt, chief operating officer. Daphne Kaiser, assistant superintendent.

[00:02:41] Christine Diggs, chief technology officer. Christine Thompson, clerk of the board. Chandra Hayes, assistant superintendent. Claire Kaiser, assistant superintendent. Officer Justin Gibson. Thank you very much. Next, we'll rise for the Pledge of Allegiance.

[00:02:59] Pledge of Allegiance, signify the United States of the Republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, the liberty of justice. Next, we'll have our moment of silence.

[00:03:37] Next, we have approval of the agenda. Do I have a motion? I move to approve tonight's agenda.

[00:03:54] Second. Moved by Dr. Berlin, seconded by Mr. Page. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Nope. All right. Agenda is approved. Next, we have approval of the consent agenda. Do we have a motion? Chair Lee, just a question. I just want to, so as we are going to vote or move on the consent agenda, we have already pulled, okay, we have already pulled item 4.5 out of it.

[00:04:21] JGDA, yes. Okay, so when we move to approve the consent agenda, we're moving with that change already in, or should I note that? It's already in there, so. Okay, I move to approve the consent agenda for tonight. Second. Moved by Dr. Berlin, seconded by Ms. Spillman, noting that the item JGDA has been removed. All those in favor? Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Nope.

[00:04:46] All right. Consent agenda minus that item is passed. So we will be discussing that after the September SEAC meet. Next we have announcements. School board and superintendent's business. Dr.

[00:05:04] Dr. Hayes, you had an announcement? Yes, I wanted to share some great news that's taking place here in ACPS.

[00:05:21] Four competitive swimmers from ACPS community recently competed in the Olympic trials. David King participated in the 100-meter backstroke, 200-meter backstroke, and 100-meter butterfly. Sarah Cesarjak competed in the 200-meter breaststroke, finishing eighth in the finals.

[00:05:38] Gray David competed in the 100-meter butterfly, and Thomas Hillman delivered an outstanding performance winning the men's 200-meter butterfly. This remarkable achievement qualified him for the U.S. Olympic team, securing his spot for the Paris 2024 Olympics.

[00:05:53] We are proud to have such amazing students compete in the Olympic trials. We look forward to watching Thomas not only represent the United States in Paris, but also Albemarle County Public Schools. In addition to the great things happening in the water, we also have some amazing things happening as it relates to space exploration. For over 15 years, Northrop Grumman has supported students from all over the United States to attend the annual space camp in Huntsville, Alabama.

[00:06:18] This year they wanted to choose a school division capable of sending 23 students and five adults to the camp. The opportunity was communicated with our middle schools in late November and five teachers showed immediate interest. ACPS was fortunate enough to send 22 students from Henley, journey lakeside and burley and four teachers from those schools as well the teachers had to either teach science or engineering those teachers were julia weed from burley karen ackerman from henley melissa thaxton from journey and jessica miller from lakeside on saturday july the 5th our students left albemarle for a six-day space camp focused on space travel and solving technical

[00:06:57] challenges they will participate in activities that include communication practice engineering challenges and learning about rockets and the space program and space history they will also learn about astronaut training and will explore robotics rocketry and astronomy there are also activities for our teachers while at the camp the teachers will participate in a space academy for educators where they will learn new ways to present stem concepts in classrooms to improve stem instruction and career awareness our participants will return tomorrow night when they return we hope to have the teachers share their experiences with their peers during their dplc meetings as well as at making connections and our communications team will help determine the

[00:07:37] best way to share student experiences with the community congratulations to the congratulations to these young scholars and their teachers and thank you to their families for allowing them to participate in this experience and we will be thanking northrop grumman as well for um sponsoring our students that's wonderful news dr hayes thank you and then we have i believe dr kaiser good Good evening, Chair Lee and school board members.

[00:08:09] The 100 Black Men of Central Virginia, their organization's purpose is to improve the quality of life within the community and advocate eliminating the achievement gap of African American male students through mentoring by its members.

[00:08:25] This summer, the organization has supported scholars from Albemarle County Schools during the 2024 M-Cubed Summer Academy and the NSBE Junior Summer Academy. M-Cubed Math Men Mission aims to increase the number of African-American males who enroll in and complete algebra while in middle school.

[00:08:46] The organization focuses on developing students' social, academic, and leadership skills in a safe and challenging environment. The program models the philosophy that learning becomes a natural process when real-world problems and culturally relevant resources are integral to curriculum and instruction.

[00:09:08] The M-Cube Summer Academy is an algebra readiness program that supports the group's mission to eliminate the achievement gap of African-American males in grades K-12. The National Society of Black Engineers, or NSBE, is a nonprofit organization owned and managed by its members, with more than 30,000 members worldwide.

[00:09:31] NSBE is dedicated to advancing engineering students and professionals' academic and professional success. Its mission is to increase the number of culturally responsible black engineers who excel academically, succeed professionally, and positively impact the community.

[00:09:50] NSBE offers its members leadership training, professional development activities, mentoring opportunities, career development services, and more. NSBE Junior is NSBE's main K-12 program, providing activities to help students discover firsthand how engineering and technology relate to the world around them, and discover the excitement of academic excellence, leadership, technical development, and teamwork.

[00:10:19] For the past 16 years, the M-Cubed and NSBE Junior Summer Academies have led focused efforts to support students who are historically underrepresented in STEM, advanced science, technology, engineering, and mathematics courses and careers.

[00:10:38] These academies, along with their year-round components, provide safe, affinity-based spaces designed to encourage and empower students of African-American descent to self-advocate and excel. This evening, we have with us -- and we thought -- oh, he's here!

[00:11:02] We have with us this evening Mr. James Watson, 100 Black Men of Central Virginia President. We have teacher and educator leaders and M-Cubed and Nesby Junior Program coordinators from Albemarle High School, Ms. Lanika Barnes and Ms. Pearl Early.

[00:11:21] And from Walton Middle School, we have Dr. Pamela Venable. Mr. Watson, Ms. Barnes, Ms. Early, and Dr. Venable, and special guests that we have with us are here to tell a little bit more about the Summer Academy programming.

[00:11:45] Good evening, everybody. How's everybody doing? thank you all right thank you thank you dr kaiser great to see you mr page so my name is james watson i'm the new president of the 100 black men of central virginia um this summer was very unique because my own son was a member of the mq program um it had been a program that i was admiring even before being a member you know for several years um so this year was different you know he was there and i was actually not there the first week because i was away on a business trip but um it really is a phenomenal experience as you all know in our area when you look at sol scores for

[00:12:24] african-american males historically they've been they've been lagging but this program truly is one of those types of opportunities that will close that achievement gap and i mean these these young men work so hard and they're just they love learning they truly love learning and you You mentioned the safe space.

[00:12:43] This is a space during M-Cubed and beyond because we continue along with the young men beyond just that two weeks. But it's a space where you can go in and you can truly be smart. And they test each other. They play chess. They worked with robots. As you know, as you're going to find out a little bit more about, we're working with the engineering school.

[00:13:03] It's amazing. I'm so thankful that my own son is a part of this program and that all the great teachers we have that are dedicated, know to make this work and the future is bright there's more we can do we need your support thank you for having us and again i'm looking forward to the future all right thank you hello um again my name is lenica barnes i am a science teacher at albermore high school i'm also very very privileged to be embedded and a part of the planning execution of both

[00:13:42] the mq summer academy and the nesb junior summer academies um and as president watson from the 100 just stated um i just wanted to give everyone just a glimpse into what we do um at both of these summer academies they both start on june 17th or the the monday following the week break that we get from school um nesb junior i'm sorry the mq summer program runs for two weeks um so this year they hosted we hosted at journey middle school the m cube summer academy

[00:14:16] over 40 students uh participated some of the students that you see behind us and we also have our parents here we want to make sure that we highlight families because we couldn't do what we do without them participate both in m cubed and nesb so this year over 40 students in grades five through eight for m-cube summer academy received standard-based vertically aligned math instruction from certified local educators in small classrooms with with a one to ten teachers to student ratio beyond academics the students and teachers explored their cultural identities

[00:14:52] through the daily circle of brothers which continues throughout the school year virtually book readings literacy and math discussion shared meals and even learn to play the jumbes and shakers with the African Dance Company. Shout out to Miss Lily and Mr. Witt. And for the NSBE Junior Summer Academy, we host that Summer Academy for six weeks. And that Academy this year is on grounds at UVA, which is one of the partners. And thank you Miss Early for everything that you do for not just NSBE, but for students throughout our community over the years. But NSBE stands for the National Society

[00:15:29] black engineers and the nesb junior summer academy um hosts students from both the all the comprehensive high schools and middle schools so where m cubed serves our students from grades five through eight they then can continue on with engineering science math technology reading and art through the mq i'm sorry the nesby junior summer academies this academy runs through um for six weeks. This year we are studying car design and Mr. Miles Speed is a math

[00:16:09] teacher at AHS alongside of us so he's the lead math instructor. Mr. Dante Woodfolk is also a NSBE junior instructor and he is going to be at Journey Middle School this year. He was at Burley last year teaching special education. And I'm not, I don't want to forget Dr. Venable, so I'm going to come back to Dr. Venable.

[00:16:32] Also in the back we have, I'm so excited because we, at Nesby Junior Summer Academy, we have graduates who have gone on to college that come back every summer and serve as instructors. So they didn't want to get up, but in the back we have our Nesby Junior students. Can y'all stand up?

[00:16:51] Alexis Hunter is a graduate from Albemarle High School, and she currently works at Albemarle high school mr clifford ayers brown is a graduate of western albemarle high school alexis is attending pbcc and she'll be transferring to george mason university in the fall mr clifford ayers brown is a student at howard university and he's majoring economics and political science and graduate from western albemarle michaela michaela jackson i'm sorry michaela jackson is a recent graduate from the university of virginia with a degree in

[00:17:27] biomedical engineering and she's um transferring to she will be attending getting her phd um this fall in delaware and miss layla barnes is a graduate of albemore high school and she is attending virginia commonwealth university and double majoring in political science and criminal justice and both clifford and layla plan to go to law school and i want to highlight the students that are in the back they're kind of shy um but savion fourth nail jada and jesua is here right

[00:17:59] and dr pamela venable is a part of um she is the lead coordinator i am uh education chair for mq um for the summer academy and she is we're a team and um of course mr will schaefer who is a parent and principal assistant principal albemore high school and we also have dr deborah mcdowell who is a huge supporter of both m cubed and nesby jr um jeshua who he is um do you want to say

[00:18:35] anything okay so jeshua is is an amazing reflection of both the programming from the 100 black men of of Central Virginia as well as in the SB Junior. - I'm currently in the, I'm in NSBE.

[00:18:53] And I just joined like about a week ago because I was working as a TA at MQ. And I think both programs, they help in different ways. And NSBE, I learned how to, I learned teamwork skills.

[00:19:12] And then I've also, we've been working on a microscope in NSBE and I've never really worked with a microscope. So I got to see different things. that was pretty cool um i really don't know uh i didn't have anything prepared i wasn't i wasn't planning on speaking today but um thank you all for having a good job but thank you for having me up here thank you and this is gabriel shaffer he is um a participant in the mq summer academy jesse gabriel can you tell them what school you go to my name is gabriel

[00:19:50] and i go to Greer and um i'm going into fifth grade um in mcube we learn about like fractions and we also um did like balancing tests and um we played chess i know um we also um

[00:20:29] and steam stem lab um we all worked on different coding to um make stuff move on the computer that's awesome thank you and i know we are on a time um time slot so i want to make sure i just want to just to remind and just say thank you um to the abramar county school board to dr haas and the superintendent's office, to Dr. Kaiser and the Office of Community Engagement, also

[00:21:07] to our local high schools and to UVA for always supporting our programs. And I just want to just leave you with this. Our collective goal is to eliminate the cheap and gap for Black and African American students in stream subjects, science, technology, reading, engineering, art, and math.

[00:21:24] We celebrate and highlight the cultural wealth that Black and African American scholars bring to our classroom and communities through supported cultural affirmations we aim to encourage provide resources and support scholars and their families in self-advocacy confidence building and navigating educational and academic environments but most of all we aspire to grow our own by fostering program former program scholars to return as teachers teachers assistants and volunteers and like i said the most important aspect of what we do is standing right here behind us and beside

[00:22:01] us and so i will say thank you and miss early would like to close us out thank you it is a pleasure to stand before you this evening with two most very strong organizations um that continues to do wonderful things in this community and in this school division for children of color i want you all to know that dr house has been the backbone of nesby from the very beginning and that's been

[00:22:39] over 14 years and i want you to know this because when we have our event on the 31st you all may not be there so i want you to be much aware of his support his his sincere support and what we have to do as a community and you all you are community is to make sure that every student in this school division receive an equal opportunity of to an education that's our job and we need to do that

[00:23:18] so we need to make sure that these black students will have the opportunity to do things in our school division where in the past 30 years they weren't even considered so let's stay on this track that we're on and let us make things better for our black children and our white children our hispanic children our middle eastern children and i have and and also children from across the world

[00:23:52] okay thank you thank you thanks so much to everyone especially ms early and i second everything that you said and i think we all up here agree that's those are our uh goals and we need to accomplish them so thank you very much everybody all right do did um did we have anyone

[00:24:28] sign up for public comment no okay so next we will move on to our school division business first we have our southern feeder pattern elementary school name recommendation ms karen waters

[00:25:23] so nice to see so many friends from nesby junior hello everybody thank you for letting me uh be here and share with you this evening i'm karen waters wicks the project manager for names and names reviews and i'm here in my capacity as the superintendent's designee uh to report our recommendation for a name for the new southern feeder pattern school. So as you know you will all approved on May the 23rd of this year for the staff to move

[00:26:00] forward with plans for building a new elementary school which is in very close proximity to the existing Mountain View elementary school for students in grades three through five. So in accordance with policy FA the superintendent is recommending a name for that school for your approval. So we come to this name in alignment with our strategic plan, our values of equity, excellence, family, community, and wellness, and the goals of thriving students, affirming and

[00:26:38] empowering communities, and equitable transformative resources. Just to refresh you on the policy, with respect to naming of new schools, the school The school board reserves the sole control and authority over the naming of any school and the right to rename a school at any time the name is deemed by the school board to be inconsistent with the current mission, vision, goals, and values of the school board.

[00:27:08] It is the intention of the school board to involve students, teachers, and interested in citizens that reflect the diversity of our community in the process of naming schools. And the board shall name schools in recognition of the geographic area in which the school is located, or any entity, quality, or ideal the school board deems worthy of recognition.

[00:27:34] Our process in arriving at this recommendation includes engaging the community through the design process of the building, receiving feedback, doing some research, an internal review of staff, as well as a survey of the community.

[00:27:52] These are some examples of the many times that the design team touched the community. And the Mountain View Elementary School PTO also held a meeting and got feedback.

[00:28:10] And these are some of the quotes, "A split school sounds like a great idea. A lot of schools in the north go by this model. I like the idea of a continued community feel. We love the community we've created." It was apparent that the community wanted to see both schools as one community.

[00:28:32] With the current school having grades K-2 and the new school being grades 3-5, in doing some research, we learned that many schools are paired in Virginia.

[00:28:49] Fairfax County has a number of them, Chesapeake Public Schools uses this model as well. The example that I'm giving here is the Western Branch Primary School and Western Branch Intermediate School. As you can see, they share a name, a different descriptor, but their mascot is the same.

[00:29:10] The little bear just grows up a bit in the intermediate school, and so we expect these two paired schools to also share mascots and colors and things of that nature. An internal review was done of the department heads in Albemarle County and not a single department expressed any concern about having school names that are very, very closely aligned.

[00:29:37] And so we went ahead and launched a survey on the 17th of May and closed it June the 7th and asked the community to help us choose between Mountain View Primary School and Mountain View Intermediate School or Mountain View Primary School and Mountain View Upper Elementary school we did avoid the term mountain view lower school because it does not translate well into spanish and in other languages there is a sort of connotation that it's lower or less than and so

[00:30:09] primary is pretty well universally understood in many languages the results are as you see here both students and community uh three to one uh liked the name of mountain view uh elementary i mean mountain view primary and mountain view uh enter upper elementary school so on the behalf of the superintendent i am pleased to recommend that the new southern feeder pattern school be

[00:30:46] named mountain view upper elementary school with the revision to the descriptor of mountain view elementary school to Mountain View primary school thus pairing these two campuses which will be very very close together and which the principal of Mountain View primary school would love to see a path and I keep telling him I will mention it as many times as I can and with that I leave you with that recommendation for your consideration and I'm happy to answer any questions you

[00:31:21] i have so just for clarification the current elementary school would be primary and the new school would be upper yes yes ma'am so i'll look forward to your um response to this in your next meeting thank you so much what is the mascot of mountain view now the colts be a little a little bigger cult one question so that would the name change not take place officially until the new

[00:31:57] school opened or does that name change typically our name changes start july the first but because it is dependent on the new school it would wait until the new school is open so you may choose july 1st after the new school opens i don't know or or try to time them similarly and then at that time i'll go through the same checklist of logistical uh things that we do with all of the schools thank you very much thank you so much for your time thank you so we'll see this on consent for the next meeting yes ma'am okay wonderful thank you very much miss waterswix thank you

[00:32:34] thanks karen next we have our instructional technology update with mr foreman mr todd

[00:32:41] ms whelan mr paul gas leak or something yeah yeah yeah um just did when it came down is there

[00:33:21] someone to check so apologies for people hearing murmuring where there are a few of us who are smelling a gas leak so i don't want to cause any alarm but i would like to figure out who could check that out it looks like roslyn is helen are you on it helen so it smells like chlorine to me kind of smells like chlorine too so that's it it's a weird i i think flicker the flame would have us mary can you smell it out there okay um the alarm will probably go off

[00:34:11] So we'll just continue with this and then we'll have to talk to you. Well, this is, okay. Oh, I don't think you need this. Yeah, I just want you guys to be able to see it. Yeah. I'm going to call Trevor.

[00:34:27] I know right there. Dr. Haas is going to call building people. Okay, great. I'll just go outside and call. Okay, thank you. Go ahead and proceed. Yep, go ahead and proceed. Thank you. If any of us drop, then we'll just stop. All right, fingers crossed.

[00:34:43] Then we'll open the door. Yeah. So good evening school board. My name is Jamie Foreman. I'm the deputy chief technology officer for Almar County Public Schools. Our department is grateful for the opportunity to share our work this evening. Just like ACPS, continuous improvement is a key focus for us. Over the years we've strengthened our approach to collecting data and feedback from stakeholder groups about the quality of technology support we provide and the systems and resources and tools that we make available to our different stakeholder groups, particularly as it aligns to our division's strategic plan. Tonight's presentation will cover our approach to collecting feedback, some of our findings, and important steps and actions to be taken.

[00:35:22] Next up is Clay Todd, our Assistant Director for Technology Integration. Good evening, everyone. As Jamie introduced, I'm Clay Todd, Assistant Director for Technology Integration. I've had the pleasure of meeting many of you, but not quite all of you, so it's nice to see some new faces on the board, and I look forward to working with you. My role is to supervise the Learning technology integrator team for our division we are a set of 14 learning technology coaches out in the field assisting teachers with healthy

[00:35:57] technology integration and so on and so forth are we good we're going and I will let the rest of my team introduce themselves I'm Kelsey Whelan I'm the manager for digital equity and learning I work with clay and the learning technology integrator team and you'll also hear about some of my work with the Digital Equity Report and some of the learning technology projects that I manage.

[00:36:24] I'm Brian Paul. I'm a learning technology integrator assigned to Western Albemarle High School and myself and the other learning technology integrators helped put together this tech survey.

[00:36:40] So tonight we're here to share a little bit with you about how we use feedback from our various stakeholder groups to make decisions within our department at large. Tonight's presentation mostly aligns with the goal of equitable transformative resources, However, much of what you hear will also sort of cover the other two goals.

[00:37:00] You'll certainly hear, I think, quite a bit about affirming and empowering our communities tonight as well. So tonight we're going to discuss briefly what our mechanisms are for gathering feedback from our stakeholders, specifically our technology survey, our digital equity report, our listening tours, and we'll leave some time for questions at the end.

[00:37:24] Specifically, our division survey is designed to evaluate the systems and process that we have in place in order to get feedback from students, staff, families, and admin around how those work. Our digital equity report is an approach that we use to identify any digital equity gaps within our division along with resource recommendations for filling those gaps while we're listening towards our sort of spots, like captures of how people feel based on data that we realize we may need more of.

[00:38:00] So the technology survey, more specifically, this is an internal survey used to strategically gather feedback data from students, educators, and families regarding our implemented strategies and systems of support, all in a way which can be directly disaggregated with the demographic and academic datasets available to us.

[00:38:22] This allows our division leaders to make more informed decisions about the impact of technology on our mission. And it's captured several themes listed there. Digital citizenship, equity of access, technology standards in place by the VDOE, engagement with our core tools, many of which have been adopted by this board, efficacy of communication and support from our department.

[00:38:46] And more recently, we've been collecting some data around artificial intelligence and the impact that it may have on instruction moving forward. So how do we get here with this survey? Those of you that have been on the board for a while may recall the Speak Up survey that was used in previous years.

[00:39:04] This was a nationally normed survey that we more recently, last year specifically, moved away from. The reason for that being that the Speak Up survey, while nationally normed, did not allow us to specifically know which students were responding.

[00:39:21] And therefore, we were unable to actually tie that data back to our demographic data set. So of course, in a division whose mission is to close achievement gaps, we need to know how the services that we have in place are impacting various groups of students.

[00:39:39] So for that reason, we moved our survey entirely in-house in 2003, and you're going to see a little bit more about that data. I'm going to turn it over to Brian though who has served on the committee for creating that and implementing that survey. He's going to tell you a little bit more about our process. Okay, so in terms of survey participants, through our process of creating the survey we designed a unique survey for each of these stakeholder groups. Our elementary survey is for grades three through five only as we're mindful of developmental concerns and

[00:40:18] considerations and appropriateness for younger students. However, we do still get data from those younger students in the form of the family survey. Our secondary survey is designed for grades 6 through 12 and we also have the separate surveys for families, teachers, and administrators. While there are some questions that are shared across all of the surveys, each group has also asked questions that are unique to their specific experiences and perspectives. So So in terms of the creation of the survey, we started, we began with a focus on our division

[00:40:54] strategic plan to guide our topic and question creation. So these three kind of items were what we really kind of leaned in on, providing grade level appropriate tech experiences aligned with our SOL standards, implementing our digital citizenship curriculum, and ensuring baseline digital resources for all.

[00:41:14] Those were our three kind of main strategic plan focuses. we kind of identified that we brought in some of our own department tech department improvement plan focuses and for those we were specifically looking at continuing to address barriers to quality support and developing and organizing support resources that are more accessible to to all after this we met as a group of learning technology integrators to begin drafting the questions we've

[00:41:47] linked our drafting process to in in these slides and once we had a good draft of questions for each one of these groups division leadership in instruction and our equity specialists were able to take a look at it give us feedback and kind of give a final seal of approval so once we had our survey ready it was time to push it out into the world and in terms of engagement we We had to have different strategies for the different groups.

[00:42:19] For elementary students, they all take their surveys during their scheduled library time with teachers and librarians acting as the administrators of the surveys. For secondary students, they complete their surveys during middle school advisory and during their seminar classes in high school.

[00:42:38] For teachers, they were all emailed a link to the survey in LTI newsletters, in principal newsletters, also through the division compass, and we also put up posters in various faculty workrooms with the QR code encouraging participation in the survey. Families were sent the survey through links with Bright Arrow messages and text and email, also through principal newsletters, and there were also several LTIs that spent significant time going to the car lines of different schools and handing out flyers with QR codes, because what better time

[00:43:14] to take a survey than when you're sitting in the car line. We continue to work on ways to increase the amount of diversity in our responses in particularly for families as compared to only this year as you can see we had over a thousand families respond as compared to only 674 last year so we're happy that we are continuing to increase that and we're always trying to come up with new strategies for that. Our divisions director of accountability and research has shared that these current participation rates can be effectively used as samples for decision-making. So once we have this survey out there and

[00:43:52] we're starting to get the data in, I just wanted to kind of go over our data analysis process. Each of these groups that I have listed over here in the data review, each of these groups went through their own data review process.

[00:44:08] These data reviews help to inform the selection of digital resources. They help to inform our digital equity report which you will hear a little bit about later they also inform development of curriculum the way students and teachers and families are responding to how our digital citizenship curriculum is being taught that helps kind of us pivot and shift and they also inform development of our computer science curriculum as well and finally with our teacher surveys and with student surveys too. We're able to kind of identify

[00:44:47] professional development needs that teachers may benefit from. I'm gonna pass it back to Clay. Thank you, Brian. In front of you, you see a screenshot of our survey data dashboard. You do have access to this dashboard. It will be, we can share it with you later if you're not sure how to get to it. It is possible, however, though through the filtering to sort of narrow down to a point where you might be able to identify specific students, so we don't have it directly linked in the presentation. What I'd like to point out though in taking a look at

[00:45:24] this screenshot are a few things. Most importantly is over on the left-hand side you see those categories. This allows school or admin to directly target responses from specific groups of students. So we are able to drill down to whatever a school's simple school improvement plan might be or whatever the divisions goal might be in terms of again that mission of closing achievement gaps we can look very specifically at what groups of students think about the technology that they're using the support they're receiving I'd

[00:46:03] also like to point out briefly that first we grabbed this particular page there are many pages to the data for a reason and that's just to point out our digital citizenship data that you're seeing there that nearly 95% of students report receiving digital citizenship instruction that's something we've been working very hard at as a team over many years and certainly you can see some categories are stronger than others and so there's room to continue to grow there but we are quite proud of that we attribute that to some of our efforts around attaining the common sense media certification that's the curriculum that

[00:46:41] use and this is sort of a badge that a school can earn by engaging in a certain amount of digital citizenship instruction and also community outreach. A lot of that we recognize too through our family field guide which you all have many of you have seen a copy of. If you have not seen a copy of that in the past I'm happy to provide one for you and we are currently actually in revision of that field guide and our curriculum actually we've learned from Common Sense Media is under revision to update it as well to be just a little bit more modern.

[00:47:15] The next slide I'd like to show you is just a screen grab of what some of our data that we collect from students around tools looks like. It may look a little confusing that there's this window right in the center. What that effectively is is a pop-up. So if you were to hover over any of the responses on those pie charts, you're going to get this pop-up that's going to bring up the SOL pass rates for that specific set of students so in this case what you're seeing is that the students in who do not enjoy using snap and read achieve these pass rates so this is where we're

[00:47:52] starting to try and get it how effective are the technologies that we're implementing and actually moving instruction obviously there's more and more that we can do here but if we're just starting to scratch the surface of what's possible when you take a look at this year's data we are still working to get the SLL data pulled in so you won't see that pop up in quite the same way but it will be there soon you might also wonder why do we ask the question you know why do how much do you enjoy using these tools we don't just ask if they use the tools we ask if they enjoy using because we believe that's the question

[00:48:29] that gets closest at engagement and I'm gonna now pivot over to Kelsey who's going to talk a bit about what we're actually doing with all of this data and some of the steps we've been taking. Thank you, Clay. So here are some takeaways from last year's survey data and what we as the Technology Department have implemented as a result. First, you'll see the data shows that resource use varies by school building. So we have implemented summer meetings with school administrators to review their survey data. We also work with instructional leads to ensure that our division adopted resources which support the

[00:49:06] guaranteed viable curriculum, including our digital citizenship curriculum, are used with more fidelity. Second, our division adopted accessibility tools like Snap and Read, which is a read aloud text-to-speech tool, are heavily reported by students who fall into achievement gaps as tools they enjoy using. We will continue to fund these tools while also researching additional supports to close achievement gaps as recommended in the digital equity report, which you'll hear about on the next slide. Third, our teacher's preference for professional learning delivery varies widely between virtual synchronous and asynchronous, so we have implemented a learning technology program

[00:49:44] that offers all of these options. We have in-person virtual synchronous meetings on Zoom and completely asynchronous self-paced options through professional learning Schoology courses for teachers. Finally, our family survey data indicated that respondents prefer to receive information about digital citizenship in bite-sized pieces, so we have made a department goal to have a a presence at more school-based family nights to help parents with just-in-time support and get them connected to our systems. In the previous school year, we also started a department committee around community engagement, which creates monthly newsletters called the techno for families,

[00:50:21] staff, and students around common technology topics. Hopefully some of you may have even received a techno in your inbox. Cool. All right. So as mentioned in the previous slide, much of this data is used in identifying needs and developing recommendations in our annual digital equity report. The report's purpose is to inform strategic decision-making in the pursuit of digital equity. Our definition of digital equity shown here is adopted from the U.S. Department of Education as the ideal state where every student has the access and technology skills necessary to fully participate in learning experience and their school community. Ideally,

[00:50:59] these efforts then carry over to ensure that our students after graduation have the capacity needed for full participation in the society and economy of the United States. That report at a glance is also linked in the last slide and then our resources at the end.

[00:51:17] So here's an overview of that report process at a glance. It starts with the collection of data and analysis of trends from multiple sources such as the technology survey you just heard about. It also involves school equity tours in which Clay and I walk every single school in the district and talk to staff about their needs.

[00:51:34] And I also look at Connect Hub data, which is the platform our LTIs use to capture coaching data from their work with teachers. From there, we perform an evaluation of our baseline technology, ensuring that every learning space has access to baseline hardware, as well as internet access in school and at home.

[00:51:51] Then looking at themes, identified gaps, and other trends, we evaluate potential solutions to ensure that they are instructional valuable, compatible with our technological environment, industry compliant, meaning that they can scaffold to real-world tools to support relevant learning experiences for students, that they are developmentally appropriate, safe, and meet the needs of our community.

[00:52:11] We also review usage data where available to see who might already be using some of the tools and systems we are considering. Finally, the completed report is presented to multiple groups in and outside the technology department. Each group completes a prioritization activity to help us determine how and when to implement recommendations.

[00:52:31] This year's report had 18 different recommendations, so we're just going to stay at a bird's eye view here and look at the five themes that emerged. If you'd like to see the specific recommendations, again, they're linked there. The first theme is around program evaluations. This set of recommendations requires additional input from other stakeholder groups to further define current state and collaboratively make recommendations. The second theme contains two instructional resources that would fill existing identified gaps. The third theme is entirely around professional development topics, including things like AI training for teachers and continuing PD around using our baseline technologies.

[00:53:06] The fourth theme of access considers family access to our core technology systems like parent portal, as well as educator access to innovative learning technology like virtual reality. And finally, the fifth includes recommendations for improving access to baseline technology like our interactive panels, as well as doing additional work to further define what baseline technology looks like in some of our specialty learning spaces like photography labs and digital media studios.

[00:53:31] oops I clicked on the report there it is all right the pursuit of digital equity is an ongoing iterative process so the annual report will also include updates from the previous reports recommendations this list shows all the recommendations that were implemented in the previous year's report like the implementation of class link our one-stop-shop resource portal for students and teachers and things like our secondary broadcast refresh where new equipment was installed in every secondary school to support student broadcast programs. Now I'm going to pass it back to Clay to talk about our

[00:54:10] listening tour. Thank you Kelsey. So we don't always get it right. Sometimes the data we sometimes all the time the data is only as good as the questions that we ask right and sometimes we find that maybe there were questions that we missed. This year that was very much the case and that we started hearing through our LTI team through word of mouth from teachers that there were some questions that we really needed to be asking our staff particularly at the middle school level in regards to student behavior and device use and breakage so we put

[00:54:47] together a set of questions that you do see in front of you and did a tour with each member each team in our department represented to ask the following with respect to technology and what's going well for you and what's not going well we've heard feedback about challenges you might be having with managing student behaviors and choices with technology what strategies may have worked for you in your classroom, and what do you think about student laptops going home, especially in terms of age, and what else do you need? How can we help? From this tour, several themes emerged, and we're going to share just a couple of those themes and some of the actions that we're taking

[00:55:25] and next steps for us as a result. We found overwhelmingly that there was a lot, there were a lot of reports of distracted tech behaviors, particularly in the classroom, interrupting instruction so we are implementing a system this year it is called light speed classroom management that allows teachers to effectively create allow and block lists for students as well as get a capture of what students are up to in their classroom this is just in an effort to empower teachers to have a little bit more choice and say in the way that they are structuring their

[00:56:04] instruction. It's another classroom management tool. This one just happens to be for technology. We have heard and seen in our data and in talking to teachers a lot of device breakage, particularly at the middle school level. So we are working with administrators to provide some specific guidance around addressing device damage and coming up with some systems to mitigate those issues. And And finally, we received some quite a bit of mixed feedback across staff regarding the appropriate age for devices to be going home.

[00:56:39] So we are effectively doing more research there. We are reevaluating that, possibly doing some piloting to take a closer look at really when should devices be going home. And is sixth grade, is seventh grade, is eighth grade the right time for that to be happening? There are obviously a lot of other takeaways.

[00:56:57] we could spend a whole other hour talking about them and I'm not going to bore you with it, but you are certainly welcome to take a look at the findings that are linked here on this slide at the top. It's also linked towards the end. The following resources are also here for you. I mentioned the field guide. If you haven't had a chance to take a look at it, it is available in English and Spanish as well as more digital citizenship resources if you want to take a closer look at our curriculum and of course the digital equity reports that Kelsey mentioned and the executive summary of our listening tour uh that is all that we have for you and we really

[00:57:33] appreciate your time and we welcome your questions um i actually i have a few questions um so you know a lot of feedback we get is parents really concerned about too much technology use which um you know i guess it's a catch-22 right because we're all using technology all day long um so um i would love a little more information on this light speed um one program that i had looked into was go guardian is it similar it is it's basically the same thing the reason we're not going with go guardian is that light speed works with our web filter that's

[00:58:09] already in place okay but it has the same feature set effectively there might be some very small nuance differences but it is effective um because that's something that we hear a lot is that um and i have mentioned this before totally forthcoming i one of my teenager was spending money um to get a um a different ip address so that he could get around all the blocks and whatever super proud right um but um you know you hear that a lot where um i mean these kids are smart and they know what they're doing and so they are accessing youtube they're playing games during class they're accessing really inappropriate material and it's also just super distracting for the teachers and

[00:58:49] for the other students and so um i would love just more information on light speed and what which of those products, if we're using all of them and how they're going to be implemented in the classroom so that I can get back to a lot of the constituents that have asked me those questions and I don't have the answers. We could most certainly talk about this for the rest of the night. It is a very complex and layered platform. To speak more generally about it, it is going to allow teachers to create allow and block lists. What you're speaking to in terms of VPN use or proxy use, some of you may have heard that before.

[00:59:24] It's a type of software that allows a student to get around some of our systems. This will help to clamp down on some of that too, because effectively, if a student's using that, a teacher is going to see that they're not in the system.

[00:59:40] And so that's just a big ping for us that, oh, hey, there may be some VPN use. We're also taking some other steps around that too. So is it incumbent then on each individual teacher to create a block list? Will there be a general block list for the division or for the school? How would that work?

[00:59:55] So we do have a filter in place already that blocks the worst of the worst stuff. If we see the VPN, in some cases they're able to get around that. But the filter is getting the majority of what would be considered inappropriate material. The filter is maintained by light speed, not by us directly, but we are able to go in and as things pop up, make those tweaks and changes.

[01:00:19] But what that will do-- a teacher, yes, they will at least initially have to create custom-- their own custom block and allow list. But we've just purchased the product. I can't-- Kelsey, do you know if Lightspeed allows us to create division? I just wrote that down as a question.

[01:00:35] I'm on the implementation team. And I think it would be useful data to see if something is commonly being blocked by teachers, we can then move it to the division. don't know if the platform will allow us to do that okay but another feature that i think is worth mentioning is that a teacher can also just turn off the internet for a student so if things have really gone awry they can just pause internet browsing for that for an individual student and so this will be in every classroom that has technology and will it be this upcoming school year yes we are hoping to implement it we're we're preparing the training that the ltis will will deliver during pre-service and it will be on all laptops so third through

[01:01:12] 12th grade and that's great what about tablets we are investigating some solutions for that we haven't heard as much of a need there but we we recognize that there is still a use case for it so we we have some options that we're investigating but it would have to be a difference sure that would have to be a different system because of how just technically functions so we're gonna focus our energy on getting this right yeah and then we'll I love that that's really great news. Thank you. I have a couple more questions. Just bear with me. What about typing? You know, we're having all these kids learn to use technology, but we don't actually

[01:01:48] teach typing. And I mean, I'm dating myself, but I like learned on a typewriter, right? Like how to actually type. Are there any plans for teaching that to our students? I wouldn't say that we currently have any plans in place. That's something we would need to partner with our Department of Instruction on, of course, if that were something that the board were interested in.

[01:02:08] It is, I can't speak to every single set of standards, I don't believe that it is specifically noted in the computer science standards, although those were just revised, so I'm not sure we'll have to take it. We would have to do a little more research and just have some conversations.

[01:02:25] Yeah, I would love, Chandra, if you don't mind, just some follow-up on that. I would love to note too, your adaptive technology is fantastic, as the mom of a sped kid who relies heavily on it, I'm really impressed, and then my niece is nonverbal autistic, and technology that you provided actually helped her learn to talk this year so kudos on that and then last thing is these surveys seem to really rely heavily on opinion do you like this how you know what are we doing to gauge academic success or improvement based on individual software or

[01:03:02] technology pieces to make sure that it's really worthwhile and that we're getting you know it's actually helping the kids not just do you like to use this program right that's a great question so that's why we tie back to those academic data sets in the survey I would definitely encourage you to take a look click through you'll see there that pop-up that yes we're asking about do you like it but when you hover you can see okay but how did they perform on on their assessments so yeah I'll definitely dig into that in addition to so Lightspeed is the company that That provides our internet filter.

[01:03:38] That's why we're purchasing the classroom management tool. But we're also bundling it with this platform called Digital Insight, which is going to show us usage data, which is something that we can then tie back to the survey and academic data. We don't currently have a really good way of capturing all these tools that we've purchased.

[01:03:54] Are they actually being used, other than surveys, some class-link data? But this will be a really better view of what's actually being clicked on by kids and teachers in the classroom. Yeah, I think that would be really helpful. as data driven as this board seems to be I think that that would be really helpful in you know budgeting purposes and things like that you know we're making sure that the money that we're putting into technology we're getting you know we're seeing improved results in so all scores and achievement gaps and things like that as well so thank you this was wonderful awesome any other questions um we'll have to have you come back sometime to talk about ai but um love to that's

[01:04:33] Right, but I'm interested in access and I know during COVID there was about 600-ish students that could not get access to high-speed internet and there was also in one of the results a concern about family access. So it's sort of a community family supportive. What are your recommendations for that? Do we still have that many families? I'm going to let Kelsey take this one as manager of our ACPS at home program that's a great question I think you'd be really pleasantly surprised that the County of Albemarle the broadband office is

[01:05:09] looking to achieve universal broadband by 2025 I think we work closely with that office so when they can't provide service for a family that doesn't live in the Comcast service area we provide a hot spot hot spot to those families and we are seeing those requests go down we're not sure if that is related I'm thinking that has something to do with people increasing in their connectivity but we're also going to increase promotion of that program and just make sure that it hasn't sort of fallen to the wayside because we're not in COVID times anymore did did we ever tie any of the date the SOL or achievement data

[01:05:45] with access to high-speed internet at home I don't know that we've done that I can certainly we we really have not because it was very difficult to get accurate data about the high-speed internet access and it was surveyed during COVID and it's a question that's asked on enrollment forms but at this point we're not surveying about it anymore but the percentage of students without high-speed internet has gone down considerably thanks to the

[01:06:15] broadband office. Outstanding, that's good to know. Any other questions? Some of my questions were certainly just dealt with and appreciate that from the colleagues um so does would lightspeed serve a function of um allowing teachers to have it sounds like it but some direct control over what students might be doing on a device like like i know apple classroom for instance will

[01:06:53] allow a teacher to just suspend a device or and actually see what's going on on all the devices in the classroom is that the kind of thing lights people that's exactly what it does yes okay and and then um i i um i know that uh i also hear from constituents about the appropriate use of technology and making sure that uh students aren't you know watching youtube basketball videos and might happen to me too in my class you know you go behind somebody and say yeah no stop but um

[01:07:30] it sounds to me like we've got some with light speed we're going to be able to have a lot more control over um that behavior where students move away from what they're supposed to be doing into something right and you know we know that especially in middle school it's a time where students are are testing the waters they're learning who they are they are not it's it's natural to want to engage in distracted behavior and it's our job to help them learn how to manage that and so that's how we'll be framing use of this platform you know what are the best practices for thinking

[01:08:06] through and helping students to think through their own use and you know paired with our digital citizenship curriculum and whatnot yeah so if we do have tablets deployed are they ipads they are ipads yes so so would lightspeed cross platform over to ipads unfortunately no it does not it does only it has to be installed on a laptop which is why it does not work on an iPad but as Kelsey mentioned we haven't heard as much we do know that there's maybe some research to do there though and we'll take up we'll start taking potentially take a look at some of those options

[01:08:37] once we've done our 312 implementation right yeah I'm sorry I had one more I just forgot to ask one thing will there be communication going out to families about this as much as I would love to think that every family is watching this um feed of our meeting since there's so many people here um i would imagine that this would be something that parents would be very excited to hear about and encouraged for the upcoming school year and um so if we haven't talked about it yet i would really encourage something to go out to the families absolutely be a full full-scale communication

[01:09:13] plan for teachers students families awesome thank you i just want to thank you for this report it feels very thorough and it's very clear that this is a superior department thank you thank you very much thank you all right next we have our transportation update miss jamie gellner

[01:10:07] christina is my birthday twin so we're simpatico good evening school board members my name is jamie gellner and i'm the director of transportation these first eight weeks have been a flood of information from drivers and staff principals and parents and we're already coming together as a team to start seeing what we can do together to continuously improve transportation and it's it's really been very exciting here's our agenda for tonight we want to highlight a few things about our department and celebrate some successes then we will jump into a quick update on

[01:10:45] a project before discussing hiring in our current state our employees connect strongly to the mission of ACPS particularly to know every student you You can see us primarily in goal three, equitable transformative resources, ensuring transportation for students who require bus service to attend school.

[01:11:07] We have four major functional areas, long-term routing and planning, day-to-day operations, or administrative function and maintenance. These staff members across each section stay busy all 12 months of the year between regular and scheduled maintenance of fleet and county vehicles, regular home to school routing, summer school and future years planning or redistricting, hiring and maintaining compliance with videoe and dot regulations for training the department services school buses every 45 days as required by state code and 565 county assets are serviced at least twice a year this is on top of

[01:11:44] the things that come up for service with our aging fleet our department can certainly improve on on time arrival but we did end the school year at 97.6 across the division with ranges at each school between 96 and 99 percent we performed 1669 activity trips just from january to the end of the school year we have four electric buses that avoided 35.2 short tons of greenhouse gases and 121 pounds of pollutants we're currently at over 18 million safe loaded miles meaning that no students have been injured our average employee time in service is nine years and last year all

[01:12:23] of our home to school buses had air conditioning which is something that has not been true in past years and probably feels pretty good this summer we support a number of division programs including career learning communities chronic absenteeism in the form of second chance buses vans for schools and saturday schools or after school support guaranteed field trips the newcomer learning center and much more while we may be short-handed in our department the people who are here are working hard every day to support our students and our schools i want to take a moment to focus on

[01:12:58] the bright spots and celebrate what the department was able to accomplish last year we have an amazing staff in transportation and it's the number one reason why i wanted to take the job we celebrated five members at the end of the school year who were selected for their great work throughout the year ronald wingate was our mvp so ron has been an invaluable asset to his team he's our lead driver at murray elementary and his peers by providing unwavering support and leadership he's a consummate professional who consistently goes above and beyond his duties to

[01:13:36] ensure the success of his team he's demonstrated a strong commitment to personal and professional growth by supporting the transition of lead drivers in the western feeder pattern so many of our lead drivers were all a very strong team out there um and three of them retired this year kind of all going out together and i was so happy that ron decided to stay our staff member of the year is rich tish levitz rich is an all-star in our routing department handling an increased amount of responsibility with our restructuring and making himself

[01:14:13] available to help cover dispatch in the afternoons he's always an effective communicator he works closely with our lead drivers and supervisors to get the routing and driver assignments streamlined and his level of communication with parents and schools is unparalleled he handles all of our alternate bus stop requests and he's also been with the department a really long time alan sipple is our driver of the year alan has come in as our first flex driver and has done an exceptional job in the flex rule um the flex the flex driver is someone

[01:14:51] who's a dedicated sub so they know that they will drive a different route every day this person needs to be a good student manager a great driver and a good communicator our assistant of the year is beth powell beth is an outstanding assistant demonstrating exceptional dedication and commitment in her work and lisa martin is our van driver of the year she goes above and beyond to support her students and parents her students adore her and parents trust her to provide the highest level of care for their children so this is a quick update on something that will be changing to

[01:15:31] start this school year because we have more substitute bus drivers than ever before we've had more challenges with our afternoon supervision process for all pre-k and kindergarten families we require an adult to meet them at the bus stop in the afternoon for grades one through five it is parent choice. In the past, we've required that adult to show up with an ID card to show to the driver so that they know they are the adult who's supposed to meet the student. Sometimes at large bus stops, this can be challenging and people sometimes forget their IDs or they're not on the manifest. Mountain View Elementary piloted a new program this school year. The main goal with the

[01:16:10] new process is to make sure we can safely and quickly get each student off of the bus to their designated caregiver. We will be providing four bus pickup cards to each family with a number on it. and students will have matching numbers on their backpacks caregivers will show their cards at a stop to match students and adults if they forget the card they can continue to show ID and the driver will verify with the manifest this new process provides additional ways for families to show identification and they can manage who gets the cards it should be quicker at large stops and for non English-speaking families and we're coordinating with schools to get this

[01:16:48] done and we really appreciate their help shout out to all of the office associates who will probably field some of the calls and help us. I want to give a really big shout out to the human resources and communications teams. They've been working really hard. I think they've really, when we talk about working together as a team, this has been a really big team effort and they've just, they've done really great work and I appreciate it a lot. Communications has gotten

[01:17:23] our message out on the news, on social media, and elsewhere. We've got new posters and flyers we're passing around. Human Resources held a transportation specific job fair in June. We've got a larger one for the division next week. We have implemented sign-on bonuses and referral bonuses. And to date, we've had about 66 applicants since the springtime for the bus driving position. We're seeing a result of about one out of eight applicants who actually follow through and get to training. Right now we have nine actually had eight but we have nine full-time bus drivers in training and we have

[01:18:01] four who will start next week i've got 16 who are in various states of in processing whether it's having to redo their physical needing an additional eye exam several who we just got in the past few days who were just starting in processing um and some of those do just become responsive which you know unresponsive which sometimes happen they just change their mind so starting next school year

[01:18:34] One thing that I heard when I started this position is that we wanted to notify families sooner if we would have open routes. We are in the middle of our training process of all these drivers I just mentioned, and also our routing process, so there are still a lot of adjustments to make.

[01:18:53] We ended last school year with six open routes, and we've had additional people retire, resign, or leave the position. We also started last school year utilizing a third-party vendor for seven of our special education routes. For many reasons, including that these students really need consistency, we will prioritize reducing our dependency on third-party vendors.

[01:19:17] This means that we will be covering additional sped routes to start this school year. We also are just seeing a rise in service requests for special transportation. I don't have all of those numbers with me, but I have hired a special transportation manager, yay, and put together a team this summer to start digging into our current state.

[01:19:37] Katie Compel, our director of special occasion, and I and our teams have met twice this summer and we'll be working together to collaborate on any improvements we need for our students. Specialized transportation can occur for several reasons, and one can be for our unhoused or foster care students.

[01:19:55] This, they may be residing in another county or further, and we're required to provide transport. So we do have a student in Newport News. We've got some in Richmond, you know, these are where some of our vans go when you're asking, like, what are we doing with our vans? um and we have more of those types of requests so for all of these reasons we're estimating nine open regular school bus routes to start this school year meaning that we don't have an assigned driver for that set of elementary and secondary runs another complicating factor right now is that we have not finalized the routing process this usually happens the first week of august

[01:20:31] and our school division completes its data rollover on july 29th and while we have enough data to start routing things are kind of finalized on that july 29th process with student data so in order to notify families who may have open routes sooner we need to pick routes now my staff met and we did identify nine routes together our process was this first we sorted all of our regular routes by gap group one status which represents our economically disadvantaged students english

[01:21:07] language learners and special education students then we eliminated all of the routes that were open last year and we just took them off then we eliminated agner greer woodbrook and red hill routes from our list these are schools that are federally designated for targeted support and improvement from there we started picking routes across the division trying to spread them more evenly across schools but not necessarily among feeder patterns and once we started landing on those choices we looked at the distance and the length of the route so that if they had similar numbers of gap group one students we may have chosen a shorter route or one that had more

[01:21:45] portions that were closer to the school after tonight i will brief my lead driver staff and then consult with print principals and barring any major reasons to change something we will notify the impacted families by july 22nd we hope that things shift and change and that many drivers complete training by august 10th we're trying to be realistic and to communicate sooner to families if we're able to cover any of those open routes we will certainly keep the board updated and those families and students will be notified by august 16th of any good news even with taking the open

[01:22:22] routes from last year off we cannot guarantee that the same families won't be impacted if students move schools or upgrade i know that was a lot to take in and hopefully it wasn't surprising news we have tried to keep our community abreast via emails and news stories and i think our awesome communications department is preparing a message to go out for tomorrow so do you have any questions you made the comment understand in our understaffed in our office so is it both

[01:22:56] driver and um non-driver positions within your office that are um unfilled does that make sense yes ma'am yes we did hire an awesome trainer this summer she's going to start next week i'm very excited um i lost an area transportation supervisor he went to another county at the end of the school year and he um he was great he he was only here for a year people really liked him but i have hired a new person she's not going to start until the end of july first week of august but she's She's new to Albemarle, so she'll be learning.

[01:23:36] I have another area transportation supervisor position open, a routing position open, a dispatcher position, an assistant director I need to hire. Yes. So if I were to ask what you're most concerned about, what would it be?

[01:23:56] You know, I feel really good about things. I think when I'm trying to get a new position of an operations manager posted, when I start Getting these people that we have hired in and there's more people to delegate to, I think things are going to start rolling.

[01:24:17] You know, I wasn't kidding when I said the reason I applied for the job is, you know, I worked there before in 2015. And there's a lot of people that still work there. And they're the reason I went back. I mean, there are people that I know that I can rely on. They've worked hard for you through COVID these past couple years and they're still there.

[01:24:36] And I know I can go to them and say, can you do this? they they're getting it done um so i'm not i'm not worried i i'm hopeful with how much work our human resources and our communications team have done that this pipeline doesn't dry up it will it's going to stay um and so my biggest focus next school year is to really you know the summer was listen to the drivers they talked a lot about student management and parents and that's why you see this pm supervision change to try to help with that we're going to focus a lot on

[01:25:12] our student management process training to make sure all these new drivers feel supported i have a supervisor retreat scheduled for august 9th and for all of us there our main focus is hey i'm new half of us in our department as leaders are new including our lead drivers how are we going to work together to support each other ensure that we all you know my leaders have the right training they feel comfortable they feel successful in their job so i want to make sure that all of these new leaders and drivers i'm hiring stay and feel supported and i think if we

[01:25:51] continue to collaborate with human resources for one um we can we we can do that yeah i'm excited thank you so much um i really appreciate the proactive communication i feel like that's a theme tonight but um the message that went out even before the school year was over warning parents that you know this could be an issue i think that that's really helpful so thank you for that um i don't know if i missed it but do families have to register for transportation this year the way that they did last year we kind of wiped the slate clean and started over if you're registered for transportation and you're keeping it there's nothing you need to do is that correct no yeah

[01:26:30] we did not do that okay um i've tried to just continue to ask if you want to change your transportation no go ahead yeah but we didn't wipe it clean no okay so if you're registered and you're keeping it then you're good yes all right thank you jamie thank you for taking this job first um in terms of the turnover i mean we we've had a human resources report a few sessions ago um have you done stay interviews or exit interviews and you know we're now paying more

[01:27:02] than any of the other transportation uh entities in our region um why are people leaving or staying so i have done nothing but our human resources department has done great work and i have a lot of qualitative data on my desk i also have the you know our gallup data um and we talked about it a little bit at the end of the school year but that's one of the things we're going to start looking at to make our department plan at our supervisor retreat um and i think the qualitative

[01:27:35] data shay um what's shay's last name again carter shiflett she is um we she's got a great protocol that i'm going to steal from her and see if some of claire's people can help me out to facilitate that conversation but i think gallup gave us a protocol that um really shows when when employees answer this question this way here's what they're asking for and then looking at what people are saying i think it will help us really try to identify where we need to focus as a team my gut

[01:28:09] is that it's um training and with again new people that if we're putting them in these hard jobs that they they know what they're supposed to do and they feel supported it's not an easy job um you you know, I didn't want to, you know, be negative, but the impact has not just been the driver shortage over these years. You know, when I worked here in 2015, I was over the routing department and we had 160 buses. You had 129 on the road last year. We got more kids. We got more

[01:28:42] spend. What that means is you're doing a lot more with less. Those rides are much, much longer. There's more kids on buses. Our buses are going, they're driving more mileage and it's impacting their wearability.

[01:29:00] It's more than just the nine open routes. We have 11 stacked routes. We need to get people to hire for those. And then we really need to get 10 more after that to get back to service levels because our mission isn't to get kids to school, it's to get them safe and ready to learn.

[01:29:18] And if they're on the bus for an hour or more, you going to show up really at your best we don't we we got to ask the right questions to get really you know to the improvement that we're really looking for and it'll take some time but yeah i mean i rode on a bus last year where there's so little wiggle room if someone calls in sick and so they were the constant communication between the two drivers making sure that they could pick up all these extra kids it i was tense just being on the bus so i mean it's a tough job

[01:29:55] and but any feedback you can give us i mean we've increased the salary we have a signing bonus how else can we as a school board help would be useful i think i've been looking at i don't know if you've heard of zoom but zoom is a this private company a mom in like california said i'm going to solve the school bus crisis and out there what she did is she got a bunch of school buses and she paid him 40 an hour now roanoke they have always outsourced all of their transportation they just hired zoom as their new contract so i looked at what they're going to pay them how are they

[01:30:30] going to get drivers if roanoke can't get school bus drivers um and they're offering 25 dollars so i think we're in that right ballpark you know and you know the other thing that's hanging out there is what's happening with the city so we'll you know i went to my first regional transportation meeting with diantha and everybody and it's we all compete with each other so we have to wait and see what everybody else starts doing around here I think it's a great number right now but if somebody else has a higher one then that's going to be the great number just keep us posted

[01:31:07] Jamie this this might be something that we would deal with later and I'm sorry if I'm asking it too soon but are we deploying 14 passenger buses that our coaches can drive at the high schools for these uh small team athletic trips is that something that we can look into well we're not allowed to use 15 passenger buses but i happen to see somebody back there that might

[01:31:41] know the answer to that question well it's yeah and it's i mean i don't i'm not i don't know the answer that's the cut off you're right 14 14 to 15. um it's really about how many seats over the bus this is bill morse and he is one of these people who i know i can rely on So my name is Bill Morris.

[01:32:05] I'm the program manager for Routing and Trips. So I oversee our routing department and I've been doing the field trips for years now. We have four A buses in our fleet, which we use for home to school.

[01:32:21] And in order to drive one of those, you have to have a special endorsement on your driver's license. So it's not a CDL, but you have to go through all the same training that our CDL drivers do. So they would have to be available go through that training with us and we we have done that but it's um it's a lengthy process and not every coach is really interested in doing that how many seats are on this bus so there's there are 14 passenger okay and you really have to do that yes because the state requires anything above 10 passenger that you have a school bus endorsement okay i must have been doing things

[01:32:58] wrong um they change they changed some laws over the years yeah okay and maybe ignorance is a good excuse this time and and what about field trips are we able to cover those um so uh absolutely uh we have a very dedicated driving staff that loves to make a little bit of extra money during the midday and drive field trips for all of our schools uh the number that that jamie put up there is fairly typical we've done a lot this year we've expanded into the guaranteed field trip program

[01:33:35] which provides guaranteed experiences for right now up through eighth grade two trips a year about half of them are covered by our buses and half of them are charter buses so we've been doing a lot of field trips there's a lot of interest in that and so far we're able to keep up with that a lot of good trips jamie you had a um a field trip number earlier i think it you went by it kind of fast i can you say that 1669 but that was only half the year yeah how many you have that 16 69 that's huge but i think that's kind of you know i just came from the strategic

[01:34:14] plan because i'm like got all these guaranteed field trips in our plan and we're making it happen and you can see it in a lot of other places and it's exciting it's exciting i want to also just call out um we that was sunday right that we had the extra transportation service for the students oh yeah so bill helped me so tell matt called me on sunday in my coveted state and i was like oh man i'm already having to work on a sunday and he said um billy hahn and a neighboring school division had called their bus had broken down i think it was virginia beach city and they were like a

[01:34:51] wrestling team and so um i reached out to william and bill and just said hey can you see if we have any drivers that can help this team out and so ryan king he's he drives at agner hurt right yes and he's a he's a crozation he's got a daughter that's the same age as my daughter um he stepped up and he met them picked up the kids because it was very hot and just took him to the vhsl office while they waited you know to get transported so very helpful bill knew just what to do

[01:35:27] he needed his own slide on here okay jamie i have i have a concern um one of our retired bus drivers also mentioned this too i've noticed quite a few buses and i'm not sure whether it's just in certain areas or not but they have like peeled paint on the hood cram i've noticed it too right so what can we do because it's really not a very good impression of our county at all yeah i think another thing people have mentioned is just the sign in front of our offices it's pretty old if you don't don't look at it graham um yeah i think that's something we'll we'll have

[01:36:04] to dig into i think dan megan is our fleet manager and he has he's doing some of that maintenance over the summer when we can kind of get a little bit more touch points with our buses um and i i can get back with you about what the specific plan is okay all right thanks um i think you know we do have to see the buses every 45 days and we see them for other regular or not regular maintenance but that kind of stuff it's like we've got to make time and plan for that and so i'll get back with

[01:36:38] you okay thanks um jamie i i believe last year at the start of the year when we had our 12 open routes with our 996 students I believe that was out of 10,000 students who had requested transportation that might be not a number that you have off the top of your head but you said that we had nine open routes you're anticipating possibly nine open routes this time do you know what like the number of requests if that's about the same as last year 10,000 I know that uh you

[01:37:12] mean the number of students who won't receive a bus is that similar the number is not that much lower than 996 but we haven't finalized all the like i said i'm going to talk to the lead drivers and the principals next week there may be some slight tweaks but it's it's it's maybe a hundred or so fewer students and is that out of the same basic number of students requesting like it was like 10 last year i haven't looked at the request do you know if we're seeing a decline in requests

[01:37:43] okay 9 000 so people are just checking now for us which is good right okay okay thank you all right thanks very much jimmy thank you jamie thanks thank you all right next we have a scheduled break um i think it smells a little bit less like gas in here a little i was going to move the

[01:38:12] break but we made it through okay so it's 8 07 so we'll be back at 8 17. 8 17 we're back um

[01:48:35] next we have dr kaiser and mr brennan all right good evening chair lee and school board members the office for community engagement is thrilled to share information regarding the launch of the community in schools model for our school division for this upcoming school year um tonight our agenda includes my brief introduction to discuss our road to communities

[01:49:10] and schools model that supports the division's mission vision and strategic plan with feedback from families, staff, administrators, identifying the specific needs of students and families and the rationale for why CIS was selected as the model for the school division.

[01:49:31] Next, Mr. Patrick Brennan, founder and CEO of CIS Nova, will give an overview of the CIS Nova model, share information about the CIS network and partner schools, as well as provide an example of the family engagement work facilitated by school site coordinators.

[01:49:55] He will also discuss typical CIS programming that supports students' basic needs, attendance, social-emotional learning, and college and career readiness, with examples occurring at the elementary, middle, and high school levels.

[01:50:12] And lastly, Mr. Brennan will share data about CIS's impact on student academics, social support, and funding capacity. Then I will close with the next steps for the launch and implementation of Community in Schools, ACPS, on the Lambs Lane campus, Greer Elementary School, Journey Middle School, and Albemarle High School, and Red Hill Elementary School.

[01:50:45] So everything we do in ACPS is centered around our strategic plan, Learning for All. Our vision, learners are engaged in authentic, challenging, and relevant learning experiences, becoming lifelong contributors and leaders in our dynamic and diverse society.

[01:51:04] CIS's mission is to surround students with a community of support, empowering them to stay in school and achieve in life. Our mission, working together as a team, we will end the predictive value of race, gender, and special capacities for our children's success through high quality teaching and learning for all.

[01:51:24] We seek to build relationships with families and communities to ensure every student succeeds and we will know every student. Our values include equity, excellence, family and community and wellness. CIS believes young people thrive when adults care about them on a one to one level and when they also have a sense of belonging to a caring community.

[01:51:51] I'm consistent with our goals of thriving students, affirming and empowering communities, and equitable and transformative resources. Communities and Schools touches all three goals. However, the primary focus is on goal one, thriving students, and goal two, affirming and empowering communities.

[01:52:13] Over the last two years, we have researched and explored community schools as an avenue provide one-stop holistic support for our most marginalized students and families. Feedback from ACPS families and students indicate a need for basic supplies and hygiene products, dental and medical care such as dental cleanings, medical checkups, and immunizations, and mental health support. Families also identify food insecurity, child care, and enrichment opportunities for students,

[01:52:48] housing, transportation, access to jobs, adult education opportunities, and career pathways. If the basic needs of families and students are not met, then students are unable to come to school equipped and ready to focus on learning. As a result of our desire to meet families and students where they are and provides positive support to lift and enable them to have a level playing field in which to learn and grow, members of our central leadership team and school-based staff embarked

[01:53:23] on a community schools book study examining the various community schools models, the specific impact on students and families, and the creative, out-of-the-box strategies to support students and families as well as the entire school community.

[01:53:40] Using schools as hubs, community schools bring educators, families, community partners together to offer a range of opportunities, supports, and services to children, youth, as well as their families and communities.

[01:53:55] Community schools provide expanded learning opportunities that are motivating and engaging throughout the day after school and during the summer, offer essential health and social supports and services, and engage families and communities as assets in the lives of their children and youth.

[01:54:16] schools respond differently based on local needs and include the voices of students families and community members schools become centers of the community and are open to everyone beyond school hours including evenings and weekends after engaging in the book study and exploring the various models of community schools our team decided to pursue communities and schools models for several reasons, including CIS is a national model which provides access to

[01:54:50] their national resources and affiliate networks. CIS schools will have a site coordinator who has access to peer support across the country and all over the state of Virginia. There is a program manager on site to support the school site coordinators and ensure their success. The site coordinator is another adult in the building who will case manage up to 50 students and families which will alleviate some work from other staff the site coordinator provides tier one services that would benefit the whole

[01:55:30] school as well as tier two and tier three services for students and families they case manage cis has grant funding that will support 50 of the site coordinator costs for three years which gives us time to create sustainable funding streams for these integral roles. And CIS does have proven outcomes and a track record in improving attendance, behavior, and graduation rates, to name just a few.

[01:56:01] Our team decided to take a trip to visit CIS NOVA sites to speak with administrators and staff, tour the facilities, and see the model in action. We were able to see examples of supply and food pantries and hear about tutoring and enrichment programs, as well as programs focused on family engagement. We also talked with one of the site coordinators who was preparing to set up a market for families to pick up fresh fruits and vegetables. Through our visitation, we could envision how this

[01:56:38] model could be incorporated into ACPS, and we're eager to share this with the principals to see who might be interested in CIS. Red Hill Elementary School principal Nancy McCullen has been interested since the very beginning of our discussions of CIS because Red Hill School is in a more remote rural area. Sometimes there are challenges with securing tutors and volunteers and other community resources that are more easily obtained by the urban ring schools. Principal McCullen is is excited to have additional resources

[01:57:16] and partners through CIS connected with Red Hill. Also, in thinking about model expansion, it's great to have a school in the Southern feeder pattern as part of the launch. The diversity and identified need of the Lambs Lane campus-- Greer Elementary School, Journey Middle School, and Albemarle High School-- proximity to the Newcomer Center and the Boys and Girls Club and with the building of Center 2 and the opportunity for strengthening and expanding

[01:57:52] community partnerships such as Loaves and Fishes makes Lambs Lane a prime site for CIS and an incubator for innovation to grow community schools. We can see the potential of the model in ACPS.

[01:58:08] However, I would like to turn things over now to Patrick Brennan, a founder and CEO of CIS, NOVA, to talk with you more about the model. Patrick.

[01:58:45] Thank you. Thank you all for the opportunity to come. My name is Patrick Brennan. I am the Founder/CEO of the Community Schools Affiliate in Northern Virginia. I come to this position as a former classroom teacher.

[01:59:03] I started it in Arlington County where I was a teacher, where my kids went to school or still going to school there. probably very similar to your school system it's a it's a it's a good school system well resourced good teachers a lot of good service providers in the area but yet being in the classroom it was quite obvious that schools structurally have a tough time getting those resources to students that need them the most at the at the most appropriate time and so that sort of informed my journey to start this affiliate about 12 years ago and this

[01:59:39] affiliate is part of a larger network which I'll share with you and as your journey listening to the journey of you guys coming to sort of study community school models which there are several I believe that the growth of CIS communities and schools it was reflective of the strength of this particular model and up on the screen you see the bomber group Steve bomber from Microsoft last year just announced investing that's how we use the word investing 165 million dollars into the larger network of communities and schools because he sees the value of it he sees the measurability and the evidence behind it and so it's i think

[02:00:18] it's a it's a model that's ultimately separating itself from a lot of others community school models um let's see if i can move on here so this is the model um in reality it's it's all focus really if if for nothing else is it's the human being in the school it's the site coordinator that's really the difference for cis community school model versus some that sort of co-opt parts of other people in the building or come in episodically into a school our model is having a full-time trained supported site coordinator in the schools that we partner

[02:00:53] with it starts with a needs assessment and it's not just to find out what the needs are but it's also to find out a little bit more about the communities the school communities that we're serving so i had the opportunity a few weeks ago to meet all the principals from lambs lane and from red hill and your principles are sound they're great and they know what needs to happen it's just a matter of the the capacity to do everything that they want to get done so the needs assessment is not only to understand the need but also to understand who's already doing a lot of good work and because we don't want to replicate we don't want to duplicate the efforts that are already happening the investment the investments already happening and people doing

[02:01:31] uh the the jobs that they're doing already in the school so the needs assessment happens every year at the end of the year and it informs sort of a school-wide annualized plan for my psych coordinator at that school and as dr kaiser was mentioning it's a it's a tiered support system so there's school-wide goals there's sort of tier two which is sort of a cohort supports could be around a cohort of a particular student population and then there's sort of case managed or tier three supports that happen so we set these goals after these evaluations every year we sit down with the

[02:02:06] school leadership of every school we're in and we say this is what we see is this what you see is this is this our value add is this extend the work that you're doing and reaching more students and families and reinforcing the good work you already have going on here and with that comes quarterly sort of monitoring and support so we come to the principal whoever the the contact is at the after the end of the first quarter and say here's the goals that we set and you know a few months ago here's where we're at I think we're on track for these three these two I think we need to adjust because for variety reasons we need either more support or we need to sort of think differently about those goals but generally the

[02:02:43] goals don't change just the approach and the intensity of the resources that come in will change so it goes from a needs assessment to a student annualized to a school annualized plan and then monitor adjust and then evaluate and that's sort of ongoing so the plan is for the year but the but the work happens as you can imagine uh throughout the year for for me as a former teacher i know it's really easy to get co-opted when you're in a school when you're supplying support and there's a lot of flashing red lights that come through a school throughout the school year having a goal having set goals

[02:03:19] that have measurable outcomes it's a real good guard rail to make sure that we can be as effective as we possibly can in the work that we're doing in each school it doesn't mean that we won't support other things that are going on but that's really sort of the north star for our site coordinators and for the support that we bring that that complete that school system that school that we're in so this is the larger network this is what CIS looks like across the country we're going on to 50 years now we're now in more than half the states 2 million students who have been served this past

[02:03:53] year this has been a very slow and deliberate growth and it's really about sustainability and so we're very proud of the the model that we have we have a national office that sort of brings and all the sort of the student data that we have that shows a lot of the outcomes can show on a national impact what we do there are obviously in Arlington they're in DC and then we have state offices and an independent affiliates and I'm one of those affiliates in Virginia this is what it looks like in the Commonwealth the first affiliate that started CIS

[02:04:31] started when now Senator Kane was mayor of Richmond. He brought CIS to Richmond. Richmond was our was the first affiliate in the Commonwealth in the 90s. It's also I think one of our largest. From there we've grown based on really bipartisan state support for seed money to grow this model deliberately across the Commonwealth. CIS of Nova when I established 12 years ago part of it was from seed money from I think it was Governor McDonald at the time. So every governor bipartisan has been supportive of sharing this model because ultimately it's a locally owned at some point it's locally owned model it reflects the needs

[02:05:11] and the desires in the end and the basically the profile of the of the communities that we serve so right now there's seven affiliates managing and touching a little over a hundred thousand students this for me is my board these are the people that help me with partnerships with resources there's also a trustee council that i have one of the one of the benefits of my affiliate is the founder of cis his name is bill millican i don't know if anyone has ever heard bill he's a bit of a national

[02:05:46] profile he's retired now but he lives in arlington so i i have bill around which is fantastic and so my trustee council is really a series of people that he's been friends and supporters of him and CIS's work for the last 40 years and they're part of my trustee council they have been they're passionate about CIS as a as a model my board is passionate about CIS in terms of growing our particular affiliate organization this is our partner schools very much like lambs lane most

[02:06:24] of these schools are feeder pattern driven from elementary to middle to high schools we have just one school at Fairfax right now so obviously there's no feeder pattern there but in Prince William Arlington Alexandria and Alexander and Arlington have feeder patterns that really kind of help us with especially with family engagement follow the student and the families from the journey from elementary middle to high school to graduation and the expansion that we talked about here is Lambs Lane and Red Hill this is really important this again this goes back to

[02:07:01] really what i hope you guys take away from this this this is cis these are my site coordinators they are full-time every day in the schools in which they're they are serving they have a door they have an email address they have access to student data they are working as a team member in that school and they work and support each other they get support from the larger network and also from the school system that they're working in the profile of these of most of our

[02:07:35] you know of our site coordinators two to three years of uh experience uh either in school maybe peace corps uh bilingual many of them a little over half of them are bilingual a lot of them are working in neighborhoods and communities in which they grew up uh in arlington alexandria prince william the hires that we are bringing in charlesfield is the same way a lot of them are from here so they have a connection to your community um what just to kind of zero in a little bit on one one of our site coordinators who's been with us actually just left us she's serving the school

[02:08:11] she started and now as a social worker uh but it's really a good example of of of how i envision site corners coming into albemarle county into your schools um madeline quickly embedded herself and again it's the leadership to the school that saw her in that way embedded herself in the support and understanding of what what was needed at that school uh they have a really large um it's It's about 1,500 Title I middle school, 1,500 students.

[02:08:41] I think it's 80% free and reduced lunch. When we got there, the principal was her first year after a series of episodic leadership changes. And it was an unaccredited school at that point. So there was a lot of chaos as we started.

[02:08:58] But we-- and the principal, Perrette, actually was part of the introduction to the group that came, the field trip that came up to visit us. She leaned on us, and we leaned on her. And part of the investment that came into Madeline not only came from CISF Nova, but it also came from the school system and the principal.

[02:09:19] So she went and got trained up in Harvard in a summer sort of series on sort of a well-known family framework, dual framework from Dr. Mapp, Karen Mapp, and brought that back not only to Hammond, but also shared it across all of the schools that we're in.

[02:09:38] it just really informed the work that's happening so when i think about the site corners coming into your schools at lamb's lane and red hill these are people that are going to be hopefully deliberately seen as an asset and part of the team not a sort of an extra so the investment that this the more investment that the principals and the school makes into them it'll come back the other part of it is as you saw that national map there's there's a lot of resources that come across and we have access to and Madeline was a part of a co-design a servant immigrant youth co-design group one we were on one of only 10 affiliates that were part of this national co-design

[02:10:16] right around COVID dealt a lot with the refugee population which in Alexandria there's a lot a lot of Afghani populations that came in so it was about national best practices it was also about resources where to find them both you know in terms of grants but also private resources so there's a lot of there's a lot of wealth of of information out there and resources that our site corners can ultimately get access to uh while they're with you what we do um one of the things is one of the most obvious ones i call it sort of a gateway resource is the basic needs right

[02:10:52] if you if you ultimately find a resource to somebody it starts a conversation with a student whether it's food whether it's clothing whether it's health care you build trust with with the the school and the students that you're with.

[02:11:08] Amazon as new H2Q headquarters is in Arlington, and so when they came in a few years ago, they were very keen to try to find partners, and we've been a partner with them since then, to really find ways to show genuine impact in the schools in which they had now the headquarters and a growing number of employees, kids in the school system.

[02:11:30] And if you talk to them, I think they would say that one of the values that they have my organization is they know exactly where their investments going they know so for them it was giving out digital codes for resources that that parents could sort of redeem online when schools were shut down so it could have been anything from headphones to desks to detergent to food and then when schools opened up again they kept the program going because they saw actually connected to the students that they were looking to serve and so for the last four years we've been been working with Amazon, not only in the schools that we partner with in Arlington, Alexandria,

[02:12:06] but also all the schools that have high needs. We work with the social workers across 54 schools in Arlington, Alexandria to get Amazon's resources to those families and students. And we can show the impact to Amazon. We can show exactly where and what schools and what dosage these resources are hitting and the other part of this is our my man Carlos up here putting on his eye glasses VSP is a is a national vision I like a mobile lab starts in California they come across every year and they sort of

[02:12:43] recruit a whole volunteer of a optometrist to basically dedicate hours to not only do screenings mobile like in this these RV pulls up to the school they they screen all the students and they make the glasses that day so it's all done that day and you know the payoff is watching that kid for the first time put glasses on that was something that there was very frustrating for vsp because they couldn't get a school system to really commit to it they just didn't have anyone that was going to own it right so they would knock on the door of a school and the principal didn't know great resource we needed but the the time and the hours

[02:13:18] to be able to identify the students to get you know sort of permission slips to be able to sort of organize the bus to come for those hours it's it seems tedious but it's it's a it's another thing that someone may or may not you know own and we have done it to a point where it started in two schools and this year we went to 11 schools and over 200 students and Carlos here for the other part of the story was somebody who has been we've been trying to get him glasses for two years. For whatever reason, he just didn't want to do it. And it was really that relationship with our psych coordinator, with Madeline, that ultimately she just said, look, I'm going to put

[02:13:57] you in a headlock if you don't come down here and take a look at, you know, so he trusted her enough to do it. So sort of the story behind that is the resources come to your door, but doesn't mean it's going to hit the right student. For a variety of reasons, resources don't always get where they need to be. And that's one of the values of having that sort of relational router, that sort of psych coordinator in the middle of the school attendance is obviously a big issue it's been a big issue since kovid there is no magic bullet to attendance it's a struggle but again it's alive it's based on relationships we've had the most success in this and the place we've been the longest because we know where the

[02:14:34] students are we know their families we do home visits in a lot of our schools so we go and talk to students and families before school starts during winter breaks school sometimes is a very complicated relationship with some of our students right they don't perform well they don't feel connected to it so attendance is a struggle but we have a variety of different approaches that we we we address attendance with and especially the students that we case manage we really make a deal with them in terms of creating a plan and a touch point to see them on a regular basis SEL social-emotional learning a lot of our

[02:15:14] students are first gen EL students a lot of them come when they come they don't come in September they don't even June they can come in March and so really the idea is how do you sort of connect a student to a school that they for a variety of reasons feel alienated from so we have everything most of the work that we do is during the school week day so when I think about Boys and Girls Club you know connecting them to resources afterwards is very important we also want to get them coming to the school and feeling connected to the school that they're in

[02:15:50] so we do a lot of things between art and lunch casual lunch language learning lunch bunches to sports a lot of it as you can appreciate is just based on the the site coordinators like for instance in our high schools we have at least two uh site coordinators we try to make we try to to make sure that there's a male and a female so gender so we can focus on uh you know some some aspects of scl is around sort of you know girls clubs and boys clubs language is another issue that we try to make sure we have a bilingual site coordinator whenever possible we create

[02:16:27] um a pre and post assessment but we'll use desa up in alexandria because that's the assessment they use for for um scl uh so whatever assessments that are used in the schools down here we'll use the same assessment so we're talking about the same things measuring the same things which is really important uh graduation seniors uh you see senator warner up there he is one of our co-chairs of cis of virginia him and governor allen were really instrumental in bringing uh cis growing cis across the commonwealth he lives in alexander so he likes to come up to alexander high school

[02:17:04] once in a while um the the work that we do with with seniors again there's at least two uh site quarter is at the high school level because the size of the schools so we tend to have some that are more graduation oriented and post-college oriented junior senior case managed students with one site coordinator and then you have sort of the transition from middle school to high school ninth and tenth grade it doesn't always break down that way but we try to make sure we spread and reach a variety of different students across the high school we have we've been doing this for 12 years so we have what we call CIS alumni so students that graduated from

[02:17:42] Wakefield and from Alexandria City and from summer high schools a lot of them went to community colleges a lot of went to George Mason a lot of them are in the area and so we bring them back and we let them basically have these you know lunch opportunities with a lot of our seniors to help them realistically understand the challenges they're going to face navigating everything from a FAFSA to college to working while you're there it's been really helpful it's a sort of a near peer and it's very powerful we do all variety different career panels based on the surveys of our students what they're interested in everything from tech to marketing to auto body whatever whatever gets them interested we're going to find people from the community come

[02:18:21] in and talk to them about it partnerships at the school level are different than an amazon partnership or a vision partnership partnerships with uh it with at the high school level there are a lot of really strong nonprofit to do some really great work and it's not a competition we make sure that they have the space that they need to be able to get in front of students that they need to so Liberty's Promise is one that's up in up in Northern Virginia they are very good at leadership for first generation first to go to college families so we help them with grant writing so we can tell them that we know exactly the students they're gonna be

[02:18:59] working with and even little things about just how to basically get a room in a high school for you know twice a week three times a week making sure the students know that this resource is there Harris secret foundation it's a small foundation but they're really dedicated to sort of paid internships or job shadowing it's a really passionate a couple people that sort of newly retired that really feel like they had resources that they want to bring to the school and that really worked out for us I'm sure there's a lot of that here in Elmore County that we can help deliberately bring to the schools that

[02:19:34] we're in our impact this was just this past year so we served over 25,000 students across 17 schools case managed so one-on-one management of close to 700 students half of them are English language learners 80% of them are you know economically disadvantaged there's a lot of outcomes and outputs here but the the success of our academic attendance social emotional behavioral and career those are goals that are set with the individual student so those are

[02:20:09] part of that 700 cohort the as you can see the attendance is a is I've never seen it that low it's 69 percent meet met their goals so the students that we had attend schools with only 69 percent met it honestly it's we added seven schools from Prince William this year and it's about relationships right and so our site coordinators were spent the year learning their students and getting their students to trust them and then working with the school system to understand what our role can and should be going through so I think it's one of those it takes a little while and so Dr. Kaiser talks about this idea of a

[02:20:44] three-year grant I haven't left the school I started in in the 12 years I don't I don't have any desire and don't ever want to break that streak I've been a teacher where I've seen resources come into schools and with a lot of good intention and dry up and go away the students aren't leaving so I've grown very deliberately and very methodically over the last 12 years because I want to enter into schools and school systems as partners for a long time so I think it's really important because the successes that we have in year one or two are going to get better and better and better the longer we're with you the

[02:21:22] longer that the trust between student and psych coordinator between psych coordinator in school between community in the school is going to grow this is through the I was mentioning this is sort of the long sort of makes me feel very old I started this 2013 so the last 10 years of growth again I've been really I found at this I wanted to be very deliberate about it and I think we've done a really good job navigating and and like the network itself become recognized from people like bomber and and that's been a sort of a real

[02:21:56] validation for us and this is our revenue this is where our money comes from so half of our money right now is public funding that means we're in the budget in the sub and most of the school systems we're in we also get some state money I was telling you we have bipartisan support from the state that gives us some money then there's some federal money that we've been able to get through Senator Warner and Senator Kane so that's to the public side the grants are only to get greater we have a grant writer who's fantastic and the longer we're at this as an organization as an affiliate the more we can show

[02:22:33] impact and the schools that we're in not just use sort of the national numbers but use the numbers of the students of the schools that were actually engaged in we do we do events and campaigns and fundraisers to get ourselves out there my board of directors is you know are part of that responsibility is to sort of help raise not just awareness but dollars to match the public investment Any questions?

[02:23:00] Last part. Oh. Before we get to the questions. Okay. So now, for CIS ACPS, our next steps in the implementation includes hiring site coordinators.

[02:23:23] One site coordinator for Greer, one for Redhill, one for Journey, and two for AHS. And the site coordinators are hired by and employees of CIS. The site coordinators will have training at the beginning of August with CIS.

[02:23:42] And they will also join their respective school teams and engage with the beginning of the year school and division-wide training. The site coordinators will conduct a needs assessment and gain feedback from administrators, staff, students, and families in which to develop a plan.

[02:24:03] And this plan is consistent with our division's strategic plan and strategic school improvement goals that drive the work that will be conducted for the year. The Office for Community Engagement will support the CIS coordinators with connecting to community partners and resources, and the Albemarle Foundation for Education will partner with and support securing various investments.

[02:24:31] Lastly, we will have a kickoff to launch CIS with the community event, including collaboration with various community partners. And this will be on the Lambs Lane campus for our students, families, and the entire community.

[02:24:50] And we look forward to sharing with the community this wonderful model and inviting even more community partners to join in this effort. And our goal is to expand out this model. And Patrick, we talked a lot in the beginning about, like, how many schools should we start with and just having an opportunity to launch the model, see how our results are after the first year, start building

[02:25:26] those relationships and then start adding on because we would want to have CIS schools and continue with the southern feeder pattern add more to the northern feeder pattern and expand out to the western feeder pattern so our hope is to have schools in each feeder pattern so again we're excited about this and we welcome your questions at this time I had I do have a couple of

[02:26:02] you're shocked um how is this different from our safety coaches and you know social emotional coaches that we already have in place and how will they be working together in those schools sure so it's a little different in that the cis coordinators um again they conduct this needs assessment in the beginning and they work with the school administrators and the leadership team at the school to really focus in on the needs of students as well as families.

[02:26:42] The CIS coordinators also collaborate and partner with community partners and gain resources and gain resources from the network to be able to support students and families in the schools.

[02:26:59] And then they also provide whole school programming for the particular school. And then they case manage up to 50 students and provide Tier 2 and Tier 3 supports to the students that they case manage.

[02:27:23] So it's a little bit different with the community partner aspect of it and also the alignment with the direct and intentional alignment with the school goals and making sure that their work is consistent and directly aligns and works together to with the with the goals of the school and their initiatives and moving this

[02:27:57] school forward um when you're thinking about basically three buckets of of of work um your tutoring your mentoring is one bucket your support for basic needs is another bucket um and social emotional learning and then also your family um and community engagement so those are the three buckets that they're working through will the social emotional coaches through acps be working with the CIS coordinators then on the social emotional stuff so that we're not you know kind

[02:28:31] of yes stepping on each other's toes or doing the same work I guess extra hands to do the work yeah okay um yeah that's great I think it's impressive that you know we're not recreating the wheel and we're using a proven model um for some you know really important needs in our community um two more questions how do we determine what kids get case managed in the school I mean I know you do do like the needs assessment but then how do you choose those specific kids that are going to receive the services so again that would be communication with principal leadership team and looking at looking at data for students in the

[02:29:11] building and also it coincides with whatever the specific academic goals or discipline goals or attendance that the school is is focused on so you're going to look at look at your students and look to see who would benefit from having that extra support.

[02:29:35] Okay. Wonderful. And some of its data, like so for us, it could be a WIDA score, right? So the principal would say, you know, a low WIDA score at a certain age, we want to make sure that that person is getting support. It might be a support from CIS, it might be a support from your SEL, I mean, the idea that it is to do an evaluation, right?

[02:29:53] And then figure out where the gap is and how to sort of hone in on it. yeah okay yeah i mean it seems really exciting i'm excited to see the data on you know improvements that we see um on this slide with the cost um i see colors but what is the actual cost for acps and was that included in this year's budget and where did that fall just curious because i hadn't heard about this before so there were one-time funds that were identified

[02:30:26] to support this effort in in the division for the three-year investment from our three okay and then we also have to fundraise so that's part of it and then cis has the biggest bulk of the pie with the grant funding from the obama grant funding if i could just add a little bit to Ms. Spillman, Dr. Kaiser and Mr. Brennan also presented today to the Albemarle Foundation for Education.

[02:31:03] Oh, great. And so we on the Foundation Board are very interested in supporting this and planning together for this fall launch and do fundraising around this. I mean, it falls well within our overall strategic plan and our goals there.

[02:31:23] And we're very excited about it. I think that's wonderful I guess my concern is that you know we have to fundraise to support this but we're talking about getting into a school and not wanting to pull out so I guess I'm a little bit concerned that you know we don't have the funds all up front to support the program and that you know what if the fundraising doesn't come through or something like that I'm just a little cautious I guess but I think it's awesome I just hope that we can do that I've never started anywhere where we've had all the funding for three years I mean you got to prove it to the community right and so you gotta go out to the community you gotta tell them what you're doing you gotta show them what you're doing so far for 12 years

[02:32:02] and they've been able to continue to to garner that community support to match the public school so we have enough funding for one year or where are we right now to like support for our three-year investment for for the school division's three-year investment okay we have that funded yes okay Thank you.

[02:32:25] I have a question about the career pathways. Yeah. If the student is not interested in going to college, would you bring in partners that could maybe address some of what that student's need would be? Absolutely. Yeah, I mean, career pathways are just that, right? So it could be, you know, there's a-- I don't know what your CTE programs are like here, but there's also a lot of-- there's a lot of different industries around Northern Virginia that we bring in that want to create apprenticeship programs for students, that want to have opportunities for students to be able to sort of earn and learn.

[02:32:56] So yes, it's not just college. It is the idea that you have to meet them where they're at and be able to understand that there's a journey in terms of their educational post-secondary education. Thanks. And go into the fundraising part. Yeah. Do you think that Amazon would cut off their funding in Northern Virginia, or could they give us something here now?

[02:33:13] Oh, you want a piece of Amazon, do you? Is that what you're saying? No, actually, they only are doing Alexander and Arlington. Because when we went to Prince William, like, hey, we're going down to Prince William. I'm like, nah, they're focused completely. And so then they said, well, talk to AWS, the web service.

[02:33:30] And they don't talk to each other, apparently, though they have the same first name. So you just got to find regional support. And it's here. I know it's here. One of the reasons why my board was really supportive of this is because a lot of them have connections down here, and they feel like it's just a matter of getting them engaged.

[02:33:48] And I think this is a natural connection, too, to the Star Hill Pathways, you know, through the Equity Center at UVA, I'm seeing a lot, like when you talked about the career pathways, I just see that connection. There's a lot.

[02:34:04] It's like Velcro. We've got a lot of hooks in the school system and with a lot of the partners that we have that I think fit very nicely with the sticky stuff in the CIS program, so it should line up really nicely.

[02:34:19] Yeah, and Ben Allen from, he came up and did the tour, and we've talked a lot about that connection already. So, yeah, there's a lot here. So, I just wanted to get back to that question that Allison had. That one-time funding, where did that come from?

[02:34:38] Or I don't know if someone else can answer that. I don't remember the exact fiscal year, but sometime during the COVID timeframe, COVID brain, but at some point during that timeframe, the board set aside money into a learning recovery fund.

[02:34:55] and that we have been spending it through summer school and some other efforts, but there was a substantial amount of money still in that fund. And so we sat as a team and determined best use of that. And this was one of the strategies.

[02:35:11] The others are to support those TSI schools. So it came from that fund. Yeah, I'd also add the Bomber's funding is predicated on school systems putting some skin in the game, right? I won't get that money unless it's matched some public money because they want to see it go beyond with their funding so was this decided before we made budget decisions or was it after it was after um this was a budget initiative when we thought we were having a healthier healthier budget and so it was removed and never presented as a part of the funding request but it kept coming up as far as the school's interest in it

[02:35:51] and needs um and so we were thinking creatively of other ways to fund it could you talk a little bit more about the training for the site coordinators like both you've mentioned a tiny bit about kind of the crew but kind of what qualities you're looking for then how they're training and then where they fit in do they go to the ACVS program coordinator then kind of go up to Daphne through

[02:36:21] your team or do they report into the local school super for supervision I can tell you about our training CIS has a like an accreditation process to be an affiliate right and it's best practices both in terms of implementing the model itself in the school and there's also sort of the business side practices of being a 501c3 so for the for the training for site coordinators there's a series of trainings and modules that they go through to understand how to be a site coordinator in terms

[02:36:54] of implementation assessment setting and setting goals data is a big part of it so they're they're basically chronicling and and talking about how many times they work with students how many resources they bring in so every week at the end of the week there's sort of this time devoted to the idea of sort of capturing what they're doing in the school so there's a lot of there's a lot of sort of logistical pieces but then there's just a lot of just to understand it's a real challenge for somebody to come into a school and not be a school member, but you want them to be a school

[02:37:28] partner. And so they have to first be liking kids and getting in with kids, but they also have to deal with all the other different parts of the school. So it's a it's a real skill set that you have to sort of be really deliberate about. And we're there at the invitation of the school, right? So we have to have some deference to what the principal wants and when he went or she wants.

[02:37:50] so it's a there's some parts of it that just has to be a bit of a of a you know of a lesson and we have a program manager that's going to continue to support them on that so there's sort of a national modules and there's some state support where we bring a lot of the site corners together with everyone else from the from the commonwealth talk about best practices um and then those are ongoing support systems that they have throughout the year and then the site coordinators once they're here in the division they'll participate with the rest of our staff with their school staff and engage in professional development and become a

[02:38:27] part of the school team so they'll become a part of the school's leadership team they'll sit they'll be able to converse and talk with the principal and the different specialists and instructional coach in the building and SEL coaches and other staff members so they'll they'll be a part of that community in the school and all work together work collaboratively together are they ACPS employees or CIS or CIS employees got it thank you for that clarification but they get certified and sort of managed mandatory reporting background checks all the child abuse all that they have all of that too that

[02:39:06] comes with with them okay thank you for that that was a helpful clarification yeah I want to say just one thing, and I think Dr. Kaiser, this is probably pretty obvious, but this sounds perfect for Agner and Woodbrook, even more so, and those are my schools, so I want to put a plug in for them. I know you have to start with a small footprint, but I hope that actually Agner and Woodbrook are interested in the programming. So they're next on the list.

[02:39:41] Yes ma'am. Okay, the slide is not too clear. Will there be one coordinator for Greer, Red Hill, and Journey, or one at each place? One at each site, and Albemarle High School will have two coordinators. In terms of the Albemarle Foundation for Education's support of this, I mean it will be much easier fundraising given the evidence-based program this is, caliber of supporters that it has we will be able to say this is what the

[02:40:20] impact will be this is what we're trying to accomplish we'll have concrete plans or this because I can't even remember what you call them Patrick but assessments for each school and we will be able to see the needle move I am confident we'll be able to raise the money and I think this is probably the best program um that we could adopt at this point i think it covers you know the emotional and educational health of our kids but also much more broadly it is something to talk about with our

[02:40:56] entire community i say this because i've heard peter i've heard patrick's presentation three times but it's very good this time too and there's and there's state support for this so you know i think this past session they established an office of community school in videoe and they're going to start funding that to continue to reach more schools so having establishing it here and then showing it and then going at you know towards with your delegates and your state senators say we're already dealing with fidelity a model that you would deem to be the best community school

[02:41:34] model will there'll be public will be public dollars and grant funding for that also i believe there will be i look forward to it so when will boots be on the ground well good question i mean soon uh we hired i think four of the six already um so the idea is to have them come up to us and and you know we get to turn at them first and then we'll bring them down here to you guys and and get them to get them embedded uh in early early august will you invite us to the um thing

[02:42:14] on the 31st this was it the 31st so we'll have the kickoff event um and during the first um nine weeks so it'll be a little bit after school starts we'll get our needs assessments done and we'll be able to um really share with the community the work and they'll be able to meet all of the site coordinators and we'll have some special surprises as well at

[02:42:46] that event. Well we are certainly looking forward to that. So thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you for making the trip Patrick. Sure. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. So we're down to other business. Any other business by board or superintendent I have two quick things one mr. Watson from 100 black men of Charlottesville the event I think that you were referring to is their event on

[02:43:25] the 31st and he said that we will be getting an invitation to that digitally he just didn't have the specifics tonight so just keep an eye out for that but we're all invited so and then dr. Haas I just would like an update on the cell phone task force especially given the I guess credit where credit's due with Governor Youngkin's new executive order on cell phones in the schools so we had we have all the committee members selected and our schedule was sent out to all the members that we picked we've got families we got a parent student

[02:44:01] staff member administrator or counselor from each school as well as department members and so we had the the message that we sent out that was already ready to roll we were planning on sending it out we just wait when the governor came out with his announcement we added that to it so and that committee will start meeting and in addition to that we had a meeting today with one of our middle schools not going to name schools yet but we're going to start piloting with

[02:44:35] their sixth grade class using a technology called a yonder pouch which is you can it's y-o-n-d-r you can look it up to see how it works so we're going to start working on that to get out in front of the committee a little bit that announcement was just the first and then we're also going to push that announcement back out again to remind families again going into the school year of our current policy we're also going to put paper flyers in first aid packets so

[02:45:10] parents will see it again to remind them of our policy and the purpose of the committee will be to really establish go back to the drawing board and establish what is our vision in outlaw county schools for for one of a better term that the that was used to the governor's information around cell free cell phone free learning so what does that look like what's it look like at elementary school middle school high school and then establish the gap between what

[02:45:41] our vision is and then also uh and where we are and then work on ways including technology like the yonder pouch and other strategies to help us get to that vision so um that's that's where we are right now so would our goal be uh to hit the ground running with what we said we were going to do at the beginning of the school year and then because the governor has given us a deadline of january 1st 2025 would the committee's work be done by that point i i feel that uh what the governor is going to put out is going to be just a lot like our policy because it talks the the

[02:46:20] it's the same issues they talk about distraction addiction and mental health issues with students so I feel like those are the same goals roughly I feel like the goal is to eliminate the distractions caused by cell phones during instructional time and to empower staff to be able to deal with it and empower kids to learn like clay was talking about earlier you know we've the technologies here we might wish there was a world where it wasn't I for one do

[02:46:55] but things are the way they are and students young people have to learn to adapt to the technology that's going to keep evolving and so we want to we want to make sure it's a learning experience so I feel like we're gonna be right on track with that I'd be surprised if there's anything new in there that we're we haven't tried and I'm also looking forward to see how our pilot goes because if it's effective and we learn from it then we're going to roll it out to my plan is to roll it out to all of the uh middle schools sixth grades uh halfway through the year uh to to keep moving in

[02:47:33] that direction thank you awesome or maybe one clarification i think the program on july 31st is going to be with nesby up at uva it's not going to be through the 100 black men so it's going to be up in uva yeah they're like the end of the six week program they're like yes they're finals yeah um and then just last thing i had was um i'd just like to remind to send a reminder on the safe gun storage for the beginning of the year that something goes out again with the back to school stuff either first day of school packet or in an email um since it's a new will be a new school

[02:48:09] year and uh be good reminder please thank you um i just wanted to note it really um this isn't a special board meeting or anything like that. But it just really struck me how deeply equity was discussed and throughout the board meeting through so many of the presentations. And as you know, Ms. Early said, we have a lot of work to do. But also, I think we are moving in that right direction. So just because it's a July school board meeting, and we discussed

[02:48:45] it at basically every point i just i think it's important to call that out and i really appreciate that yeah i appreciate your work all of us we're on the same page it felt like there was a lot of really good things happening for the first time in a while yes it feels good so without any other business this meeting's adjourned

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