Coraggio Consulting
Albemarle County School Board Regular Meeting, Thursday, September 12, 2024

Date: Thursday, September 12, 2024
Place: Albemarle County Public Schools / School Board meeting, Virginia
Length: 2h 30m (video)
Official meeting video (YouTube): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6OeEHaLYy8

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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[00:00:01] call this meeting of the Albemarle County School Board back to order. Do you 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. Second. Moved by Dr. Acuff,

[00:00:30] seconded by Mr. Grampage. We need a roll call vote for this, please, Ms. Lexus. Dr. Berlin? Yes. Ms. Osborne? Yes. Mr. Pace? Yes. Ms. Spillman? Yes. Dr. Acuff? Yes. Mr. Page? Yes. And Chair Lee? Yes. So moved. Fantastic. And we do have one motion coming out of closed session. I believe Ms. Spillman has that. Yes. I move to direct staff to proceed with negotiating architectural engineering term contracts with Firm A, Firm B,

[00:01:05] Firm C, and Firm D. Second. Moved by Ms. Spillman, seconded by Dr. Acuff. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Nope. All right, motion carries. Thank you very much. Next we have our roll call. We'll start with Josiah Black. Good evening, everyone. I'm Josiah Black, School Division Counsel. Matthew Hawes, Superintendent. Allison Spillman, at-large representative. Ellen Osborne, Scottsville District. Rebecca Berlin, Whitehall representative. Judy Lee Ravana, District. Kay Dacuff, Jack Jewett District. Brian Page, Miller District. Chuck

[00:01:44] Pace, Ryo District. Musa Ahmed, Student Representative. Chandra Hayes, Assistant Superintendent. Roslyn Schmidt, Chief Operating Officer. Christine Thompson, Clerk of the Board. Daphne Kaiser, Assistant Superintendent of School Community Engagement. Officer S. Grell, Upmark County Police Department. All right thank you very much. Next we'll stand for the Pledge of Allegiance.

[00:02:20] to the republic which stands one nation under god indivisible next we have our moment of silence and i want to mention jose norberto lopez jojoa who is the night custodian at burleigh middle school

[00:02:42] who recently passed thank you um next we have approval of the agenda do we have a motion i move

[00:03:20] we approve tonight's agenda second moved by ms osborne seconded by mr chuck pace all those in favor aye any opposed nope all right agenda moves uh next we have approval of the consent agenda is there a motion i move we approve the consent agenda second moved by ms osborne seconded by mr graham page all those in favor aye any opposed nope all right consent agenda is moved next we have announcements first we're going to start with our new student representative to the school board

[00:03:56] Mr. Moussa Ahmed from Monticello High School. Thank you. Hey everyone I'm Moussa Ahmed and I'm honored to be representing Monticello High School this year. As a senior at Monticello I've engaged in different activities like running the Muslim Student Association Club and being a part of the Student Senate. I've developed a strong understanding of the diverse perspectives and concerns within our student body. My main goals are to ensure that every student's voice is heard to foster an inclusive environment and to work collaboratively with both students and the board to address any issues that arise. I believe that with open communication and proactive approach we can achieve this goal. I'm excited about the opportunity to serve and make a positive

[00:04:32] impact on our school community. Together we can make a difference and make learning for all a reality. Thank you. Thank you so much Musa. Welcome to you. Also I just wanted to note that this year we're doing a slight change to our student representative program. So we have a student, we have four student representatives actually. Musa is our first one to serve today.

[00:04:55] and then so we'll be seeing other student representatives at various meetings throughout the year so thank you so much next we have our spotlight on education and i believe dr dunn good evening madam chair members of the board and staff i'm really excited to introduce tonight's spotlight because you can already kind of probably identify our space camp group and so i'm actually kind of introducing them as a group and primarily katina dudley the lead science

[00:05:32] coach. She's going to come up with them and kind of help them explain and guide them through that process. Quickly, just honoring Northup Grumman for the incredible generosity that they showed us by giving the grants that paid for this program. So it really wouldn't have been possible without that. And I mean, this opened up an opportunity that our students just wouldn't have had and our employees just wouldn't have had otherwise. So I think that's so wonderful. And so this was Space Camp in Alabama. And like I said, they're going to tell you a little bit more about this momentarily. Four teachers and 21 students attended the space camp from July 6 to 12.

[00:06:08] And it's a really exciting six-day overnight occasion. You know, it's a camp in Humbsville, Alabama, where students get to experience the future of space travel, trained to solve these really kind of exciting, technologically challenging, interesting engineering, all the different kinds of STEM things that go into a space camp. They get to engage with that hands-on.

[00:06:31] so uh communication is a part of it everything you can imagine so um miss dudley's going to come up with the group and y'all come on up when you're ready and um look this is like we don't usually get this much visual with our spotlight so i think it's so great yeah all right thank you good evening i said tonight was an exciting opportunity to be here and share with you all um so this is our crew on july 6 believe it or not they all met at the airport they arrived before 4:00. We were supposed to meet there at 4:00 a.m. They arrived before 4:00

[00:07:09] a.m. and Northrop Grumman provided a criteria for what teachers were to do as they selected students to participate. And our teachers added two other criteria. Can you stay away from home for six nights and seven days without your families? And are you gonna get on that plane? Because many of our students haven't flown before. And I started getting calls at 3:45. The students are already here come so I live I can walk to the airport anyway I arrive the kids were very excited to board and the families were very nervous for their

[00:07:48] students to board but here's what you're gonna hear a little bit about tonight that I think is really exciting when the students came back and the teachers they talked about simulated space missions teamwork exercises and stem activities that bring the wonders of space exploration to life and they also talked about how we have this idea of what space is like and what space trainings like and they actually got to see current space training and current space simulations so I just want to recognize a couple of things Northrop Bremen called us in December and a lot of teachers have already planned their

[00:08:25] summers at that point so we needed five teachers and we had 24 seats and we filled 24 we filled all four of our teacher seats and we filled all but one of our student seats that was really very exciting at such a last-minute time and the other thing that I think you're gonna hear a little bit about that's really great that the teachers didn't know about until after they had all agreed is when you arrive at space camp the students go this away and the teachers go this way and they don't really run into each other until graduation maybe they crossed each other's paths at some point but we have a couple of students here I'm going to introduce our team so we had four

[00:09:04] teachers Jessica Miller Karen Ackerman Melissa faxton and Julia weed and then some of their students that are here tonight Peyton Henschel Axel Sanchez Perez Ishmael al-Abdulla Dara adekun lay Elliot Lopez Shangri-La Marragan and Neelofar Farhang and miss we it's going to talk to you a little bit about what's in the slides but Peyton Henschel and Elliot Lopez have prepared a

[00:09:41] a few words about their experience. - They've all got space suits. - That's awesome. - Oh, that's cool. - Good evening, my name is Peyton Henschel and I am in the seventh grade at Henley.

[00:10:01] I am also a proud Space Camp alumna. This summer I was awarded one of Alabama country's student scholarships from Northrop Grumman to attend Space Camp in Huntsville, Alabama. Tonight I will be sharing some of my experiences with you.

[00:10:18] At Space Camp, there were kids from all over the world. We went to presentations, we did team building activities like making and launching a rocket, and completed simulated missions, most successful, and ate meals together.

[00:10:34] We did simulators like the multi-access trainer and the 1/6th gravity chair. We visited museums and saw giant rockets, played at the theme park, and got Kona ice. I'm grateful to Northrop Grumman and the U.S. Space and Rocket Center for wanting children to attend their space camps.

[00:10:52] They know we are the next generation of space scientists. They gave us the experience of a lifetime. I know I will never forget the week of fun and learning at camp. This concludes my space camp speech thing. Hello.

[00:11:15] What I have to say is that I had a great experience at space camp. My favorite part was being pilot, because I want to be a naval aviator when I grow up. I also liked staying there for the week and making new friends. Thank you for your time.

[00:11:37] I'm going to speak a little to the teacher experience. As Katina said, we got to move and go do our own thing. And it was really camp for adults. It was great. And by the way, there is camp for adults. In case any of you are fired up to do this, you can go. There's also an educator camp that is geared a little bit more towards educators.

[00:11:54] So some of the things that we got to do, this is a view of doing the missions. These are real trainers that they have used for astronauts. Do you all see the slides? Are they on your, okay. This is our teacher group. The Northrop Grumman brought people together from six countries, US, four or five places in the US.

[00:12:14] Oh, more than six probably. No, six, England, Poland, South Korea, and Australia. And those kids were also mixed in with our kids. Our kids have friends now from all over the world. and that by itself is a really special experience. We got to, this is the student one where it has a lot of information, but I'll skip through.

[00:12:34] This is the 4 o'clock in the morning airport. This is much, these are some of the things that we did. Bouncing around the 1/6 gravity simulation, very difficult for me. Building rockets, that was a really interesting one, frankly. The teachers from South Korea said, "Do you get to have gunpowder in your classrooms for this?"

[00:12:56] And we're like, "Yeah, in the United States we do," with some rules, but we did the rocketry. We did roles, so the space missions involved the roles, the ground control, and then the various missions. And the various missions were very based on science, so we never lost sight of the science aspect of this.

[00:13:15] That machine is a beast, by the way. So these are some other pictures. We met astronauts. Woody Spring is a shuttle astronaut. And we got the teacher diplomas from Charlie Duke, who was an Apollo astronaut.

[00:13:33] That's pretty cool. So here's some other pictures. Basically, one of the goals of Space Camp is to really get people excited about the mission of NASA and the space exploration. And it's a really, really neat time to have been able to go because the Artemis missions going back to the moon are just beginning.

[00:13:50] and the manned missions are coming up very soon. So it's a really fantastic time to be in this, for our kids to see it, because we haven't had that many manned missions except to the space station. And as they grow, they are going to grow into these possibilities.

[00:14:07] And a lot of space camp alum go on to become people who work for NASA. And they also did a really wonderful job of showing that NASA is not just about rocket scientists and astronauts. There's artists involved. There's food people involved. There's communicators involved.

[00:14:26] There's lawyers involved. There's weathermen. And there's just a wide range of opportunity available with NASA. So it was really neat to see that variety and for our kids to have such a great exposure to it, as well as ourselves. So we came back fired up to do some labs.

[00:14:42] We have at Burley, we're going to do the one where you make a really thin heat shield, like the heat shield tiles on the Challenger, and then you put it in front of a blowtorch, and you put an egg behind it, and you see if the egg will explode after three minutes of full-on blowtorch.

[00:14:59] And none of ours did, so we were pretty successful with our heat shield. So that's, we're excited to do that. We good? Thank you.

[00:15:20] - Oh yeah, are there any questions or comments? - Actually, yeah, can we go back to the slide that had the countries and the states on it? I'm curious, is this something that we, It's not something we can do annually, right?

[00:15:38] I have a call from Northrop Grumman. Northrop Grumman has done this before. This is the largest group that they've sent to Space Camp from Almar County. We don't know, but we're really hoping that they'll call back. And these teachers did a presentation to all of our middle and high school science teachers, and we have a lot of people excited to say yes if we do get this invite.

[00:16:02] These are all places where Northrop Grumman has locations. Right, it makes sense. It does make sense. I have a question for the students, did this make any of you want to go into science or engineering or become an astronaut, like to open up several, yeah, space is terrifying right?

[00:16:26] You have to get all your vaccinations back, all the vaccinations go away so once you come back you're like, oh really? I had no idea. When you go up there you go, and then once you come back you have backpack because you went back to the same height.

[00:16:44] Oh, my goodness, that's maybe I need to go to adult camp. That's fascinating. Thank you. That's awesome. OK, with the teachers, how many other experiments do you think you would be bringing back that we could use in our classrooms from this experience?

[00:17:02] They purposely make sure that every experiment that we did there is something that's replicable in our classrooms, as well as showing us lots of other opportunities for partnership. For example, there's a high altitude weather balloon they're currently taking applications for student ideas which what kind of experiment should we do on these what sort of things should we be doing on the space station so lots of opportunities both to do labs in class and also kind of guide what we think what should the astronauts be doing up in space I will add I'm just starting a robotics club at Henley because robotics like the rover

[00:17:37] missions so I think it's very inspiring I just wanted to really thank our pioneers for going out and taking on this project I really want to thank Ms. Dudley for your quick action to make this happen and getting people on board you you have so many partners in the community and you're able to make great things happen for our kids and I want to thank the teachers because I know it was a cool experience but great educators in my mind make themselves vulnerable and open themselves up to new experiences because that's what we want our young people to do and for their parents to do and I just really think you typified

[00:18:17] that you already do I know all of you as teachers and that's what you do every day but by attending this camp and experiencing the same thing the students were you really were a source of inspiration for them and students you're just courageous to take this on and I hope that inspires you to get into stem and whether you want to be on a rocket or you want to support one and I don't know what the ratio is but I assume it takes hundreds of people thousands to to support a rocket launch and to make it successful.

[00:18:48] So thank you to all of you. - Nobody was scared to ride the plane home after that. - Can I share one more thing? 'Cause I thought someone here might share it. I was reading some papers when they returned from space camp and one of my favorite papers that I read was about their space mission, because they all had a role and they all had to like do their role well so that they could have a successful mission.

[00:19:16] i saying this right and i just thought you know you get in there and you're so curious about what everyone else is doing but you can even see in the pictures that they're focused on their task because they know that that is something that they have to follow through with for this whole mission to work and so i really loved reading about that from one of the students that sent me that in the paper so anyway i hope i said that one if you have anything to add before we sit down feel free anybody else want to add anything you had your hand raised at one point do you want to share anything are you good yes you good all right thank you guys for letting us be presented tonight this is great

[00:19:54] thank you thank you thank you so much for coming thank you i know i feel jealous i very i'm very jealous of that next we have our school board and superintendent business um i i do have one item um i am nominating katie walker to be the rivana district representative on the long-range planning advisory committee so i guess i move to nominate katie walker i second all right moved by me

[00:20:28] seconded by dr acuff um all those in favor aye aye any opposed nope all right thank you very much um and then miss lee the other piece that we were going back and forth on today you're going to do that one during other business don't run around the letters training no i think that's coming now -That's gonna come with Chandra. -Yeah, Chandra, no.

[00:20:52] -You wanna do that now, Dr. Hayes? -That's fine. -Good evening, Chair Lee, Vice-Chair, board members. In light of the recent adoption of HMH literacy curriculum and the new mandates associated with the Virginia Literacy Act, our teachers have completed professional learning on the HMH curriculum and will soon start professional learning through letters, a program based in the science of reading.

[00:21:15] You will hear more about this tonight as we outline our plan our plan and our timeline in our presentation later this evening. Moving forward, our elementary teachers will also be required to participate in professional development around the new elementary math curriculum, which our division will adopt in the spring and implement during the 2025-2026 academic year. Given the scope of these changes, we have been exploring ways to mitigate the potential stress placed on our elementary educators. While we cannot modify the Virginia Department of Education deadlines and mandates, we We propose amending the completion deadline for the culturally responsive teaching micro credential or certification.

[00:21:52] We fully recognize the importance of culturally responsive teaching and its significant impact on our students. Therefore, while maintaining the program and its accountability measures, we seek to offer greater flexibility in the timeline for completion. This adjustment will support our staff in managing current demands and allow us to better plan for supporting educators in obtaining their micro-credential of certification beyond 2026.

[00:22:17] Our policy does not detail a plan for how we will continue to implement a culturally-responsive educator program in ACPS beyond 2026. In addition, amending this policy will enable us to alter the language around the culturally-responsive teaching program to reflect the evolving needs of our division.

[00:22:34] For example, many of our recent college graduates have completed coursework in cultural competency we want to ensure that our CRT programming accommodates both those who have completed coursework as well as those who have not had this exposure or opportunity to become culturally responsive educators. With the board's approval I respectfully propose extending the completion deadline and updating the policy to better align with our division's current and future needs.

[00:22:58] Thank you for your consideration. So I just wanted to have for us to have a conversation around what I see are two things right so one is in order to accommodate the HMH and letters training to give some flexibility around the CRT training requirement for elementary school teachers who are in that training and then the second part of it to me is whether that requirement that's very

[00:23:33] specific requirement would be in board policy or would if it would be in operational policy that's correct so to me those are two things and i just wanted to get the board's feedback on it because next steps would be we would see a new policy at the for information at our next meeting and then we wouldn't vote on it until even the next meeting but i just want to get a sense of where people stand on both of those issues so we can start with the relaxed CRT just some flexibility around CRT for specifically just for those teachers yes ma'am so thoughts I think that's

[00:24:12] a great idea yeah I think it's a great idea we are hearing from just a number of teachers who have a lot on their plate and we're really taking everything seriously and just want a little bit of flexibility so it it's hard they're all very important things but i think because we are we are not able to change what the department of ed told us um we have to follow that um and so we're going to have to give flexibility on the latter i guess i have a question dr hayes i mean as a practical matter what do we have 600 elementary school teachers all of whom have to do this

[00:24:49] most of them have already completed their crt so how much of a actual um how much is that flexibility i mean we we require all new teachers to complete it within three years we have what 30 new teachers a year um no i guess we have 175 this year ish i'm just questioning how much actual flexibility that's going to translate to i mean it will be a little but is that really going to

[00:25:22] to alleviate the burden very very much so currently we have about 550 elementary teachers that have completed the book study which is the foundation for being able to move into micro-credential or start full certification and about a hundred and sixty-seven of those completers of those completers can start the micro-credential but about 275 have not started anything so I have not started so there is quite a few teachers that would benefit from having

[00:25:59] additional time because even if they've already done the book study portion there's still an additional portion that they have to do and with the with the training with with letters the initial plan that we had in place for our staff was to help accommodate some of that workload within the school day and year with professional development time but then in August the video we made an update that said we now have to do for those that are going through letters training letters one they now have to do an additional capstone course and that could be done at any time but that's additional hours that we had not

[00:26:36] accounted for when we created our PD plan and so while you know we don't want to lose the importance of CRT at all we just know that this on top of having to go through a math adoption and providing professional development for that will be additional hours as well so we would be probably pushing completion of CRT the next step for CRT at least two years like a year well because right now it's 20 the end of 2026 so we're thinking at least the end of 26 27 okay how many extra hours do you think for the capstone I'm not exactly sure

[00:27:15] just approximate maybe 14 ish 14 to 21 hours for the capstone portion is there any way that we could have um like summer training for we probably already do but for our own requirements with um crt um there's opportunities for certain portions of it you know but the goal is really to

[00:27:54] put the processes in place and the practice with students in the classroom so some parts they could do you know start in the book study doing some work groups with other staff members but the actual implementation pieces we would prefer our staff to do with students in the building you know we we can have a lab school in the summer i mean i ran a couple of them in the past so that could do that but and that's that's definitely a possibility one of the other pieces is really thinking about programming because as i mentioned a lot of of our newer teacher younger teachers are are coming out of college, or not yet so younger, but our newer teachers are coming out of college, and they are taking courses in cultural competency, and so the way the program was designed

[00:28:33] may not necessarily meet the needs of our staff now and moving forward. So it sounds to me like we have a pretty strong majority, if not unanimity, around adding that flexibility. So this, my second question is whether school board policy should dictate the deadlines, or if that should become operationalized and so if people have thoughts on that i really think that deadlines like that

[00:29:07] shouldn't be in in policy um to me that's an operational decision i mean i understand why because it is an important piece that the school board wants but it does tie the hands of administrators when we have situations like this where we we get requirements from the doe so my preference would be to keep those types of dates out of our policy so i generally am a fan of not having operational stuff and and governance policies however because

[00:29:39] it's crt i feel like anything we any change we make to that program should be made in a public setting um just because i don't i don't want it to be thought of oh we don't think this is important anymore so we're pushing it off i think that a change to this needs to be done in public and i would keep this particular one in here for a while another couple years i guess i would ask if there's any budget implications to extending deadlines or things like that that would come

[00:30:16] under board questioning and if there's not then it seems like it would be an operational thing but i don't know the answer to that um for the crt i mean possibly if you know if we think about you know re-evaluating the program as it operates um we do purchase books for our staff to use in the book study so things like that could change um as we reinvent you know reimagine how the program can look to meet our needs but in terms of larger numbers i don't see where there's

[00:30:53] a large impact in the budget i tend to agree with miss osborne's view i mean crt was sort of a integral part of our anti-racism policy and to I mean I can go along with increased flexibility in terms of both the content of it and the timing of it but I think we should still keep it on our roadmap and if at some point we realize that it doesn't meet our needs anymore we can come back and take it out of policy then so just because it stays in it for now doesn't mean it's in it

[00:31:28] forever but I do think a change should be very public I tend to believe that it's really pretty operational I think that our job on the Governance Board is outcomes setting outcomes and this and operations does the inputs to determine what the outcomes are and I think at the time that this policy was put into place it probably seemed like having everyone trained in CRT was an outcome at that time. But to me, it really feels like an input now. To me, it really feels like our outcome

[00:32:07] is making sure that we have, we close our opportunity gaps. And of course, you know, this, the HMH and letters training is, we're both coming at the same goal. And I don't think anyone, obviously no one is disagreeing with this flexibility. But to me, it really feels like things change, situations change. As Dr. Hayes said, we have a lot more teachers, new teachers coming in with cultural competency, not that we would get rid of CRT like I'm it's very important to me. But it to me, it just feels like these are inputs. And that's not our job.

[00:32:45] I'll also say that I do want a much deeper dive for us into what our equity work looks like. And I would like a work session on that. Because I will also say that even though we've had these deadlines we have schools with a very high rate of diversity where you would want the crt especially and they have some of the lowest percentages of crt so i don't know that necessarily it having been in policy meant that much to that i i really want to discuss that in our work session um that

[00:33:21] i would like for us to have so i i to me it it's pretty strictly an operational thing so i mean we We can take a vote tonight on where to direct staff in working on this policy that we will see in two weeks.

[00:33:43] So I'll open the floor for a motion for that. And what I would say, Ms. Lee, is that that would be appreciated by staff, because then instead of just bringing back a red line and then putting it on the consent agenda, it would be better to know what the direction of the board is before we bring back a product.

[00:34:05] i'll open the floor for a motion so i'm just going to get things started by um moving that we make one change and that would be within the first three years of employment or by 2028 for teachers leave the rest as it is for now could you repeat that again versus 2026 in the policy move it to

[00:34:30] 2028 i will second that motion um but also um in a nod to chair lee agree that perhaps looking at all of our policies and trying to determine what we should be looking at but i don't think we need to confuse the two today feels like this would fix this current problem right now i mean somewhat

[00:35:03] but if um videoe then has other requirements of us then i guess we can come back and vote on it again it seems to me to be a little bit um it does not leave the division nimble to the other forces that it has to it's accountable to and i have a clarifying question on that too is it just extending for elementary school or are we extending for all teachers right my understanding was this

[00:35:37] This was simply for anyone who is involved in the HMH and letters training? That's correct. Would the date in that motion affect the DOE policies in any way? Would there be any conflict between that and that motion?

[00:35:53] No, sir. And we're talking about going from 2026 to 2028? Is that what you said? That was my suggestion. Yes. Yeah. But your motion would not affect CRT training at all, just to make sure that I'm with you on that.

[00:36:12] we're just giving teachers more time to get it done so your your motion is to is for staff to bring back a policy with those changes where then we would we would get that for information next time and then we would vote on it in october yes but the motion needs to be explicit on what who that extension is for right if we operationalize this somewhat then part of that

[00:36:47] could be giving the principal the necessary leeway to work with those teachers who may have already completed this training there's no reason for them to use to have this issue of this this compensation from us of time when they could do the work that they are supposed to do for letters is that what we're talking about here it will will our um change give that kind of

[00:37:20] flexibility to principles and it would just be exactly what you said right ellen just just giving everybody two more years because it's in the policy 2026 i'm only suggesting changing that to 2028 just for now so we can move on along madam chair i i do have a possible compromise all right which um first i would say that having a date like that in our policies is an extreme anomaly i was i was surprised to see that and especially to see it in the pd policy

[00:38:00] so i'll just say that i mean i review all the policies i look at them but i must have been a but i was just surprised by that what we can do is we many of our policies have regulations attached to them and they are they they are with the policy and so like when you you've noticed over time you'll read a policy and then it'll have regs that are you go to that and it's attached to it it's a public facing document and when we bring revisions to the board on a policy those regs are also looked at for revision as well so and what they do is they allow they do allow us a little

[00:38:39] more to your term to be more nimble because we can do something different than what's in the regs there is policy that allows me to do that in the absence of policy and then come back to the board and say hey we need to make this change because there was an issue we're gonna bring the policy back to you and the regs to look at to make that change so one possible compromise could be for us to add regs to this policy or add regs to the anti-racism policy and have and just have the regulation be this information that the deadline for us to achieve success with

[00:39:16] that input of our teachers completing their CRT. So we can bring that back to you and then that way you're not enacting in policy something which is operational. However, the operational doc will be attached to it and the board will, the public can see it, everybody can see it and when we bring it back the board's going to look at that as well. So that to me seems a good compromise. Yeah, that seems practical okay so I believe because of Roberts rules I need to bring a vote on that first motion that was moved and seconded and then we can have

[00:39:52] a motion around your suggestion unless we want to withdraw it I would like to amend my motion okay to for the details around that to be included in regulations instead of the policy itself does that mean all the requirements of yes she'll that's appropriate but she'll need a new second second okay moved by Ms. Osborne seconded by Dr. Acuff the amended motion to add this information into a regulation attached to

[00:40:28] policy the I mean right now it's attached to the PD policy which I don't think makes sense either oh so what we can do is bring the bring both the policies back red line on the next consent agenda And we'll talk with staff. I'd like to see what Chandra, Daphne, or Dr. Hayes, and Dr. Kaiser are thinking, as well as just run it through cabinet a little bit.

[00:40:49] But I thought it was an anti-racism policy, the deadline. Yeah. OK. So-- Oh, I'm sorry. Oh, go ahead. Couldn't we say within a reasonable period of time and not have a hard date on either the regs or the code?

[00:41:05] Who's going to define reasonable? Yeah, I don't want to. Well, you go to law school to understand what that's about well is there any further discussion on this motion are we ready to vote all right Ms. Thompson could we do a roll call yes I just want to be clear that everyone voting is clear of what the motion is I believe that we are voting on a motion to attach a regulation to our anti-racism policy

[00:41:40] that would detail deadlines for achieving our CRT goals that we put out, and that we would also amend, so we would take it out of the PD policy, put it in regs in the anti-racism policy.

[00:42:01] I believe that's what we're voting on. Does that seem right? Yes. Okay. Okay. Just wanted to make sure. Thank you, cheerily. Ms. Osborne? Yes. Mr. Page? Yes. Ms. Spillman? Yes.

[00:42:18] Mr. Pace? Yes. Dr. Acuff? Yes. Dr. Berlid? Yes. Chair Lee? Yes. So moved. I feel pleased that we got to that compromise in public, and I think it was a good and robust discussion.

[00:42:38] So thanks to everyone on the board for that. Do you have something? I have something? I have more things, I think. No, go ahead. go ahead. So Ms. Schmidt, would you mind please providing a verbal enrollment update for us, please? Good evening. I'd like to provide a brief enrollment update. At the October business meeting, we will provide a more formal update. At that time, we'll present our September 30th enrollment.

[00:43:07] That's a key date because that's the date we submit to the state. This will include details by each school. But in the meantime, I know you're curious. So I can share that as of today, we have about 300 more students k5 student or k12 students more we start over as of today we have 300 more k12 students enrolled as compared to last year we had projected growth but that has exceeded our projections by more than a hundred students so in response we've worked closely with schools who've had more students than anticipated and provided additional staffing where necessary again more details at the next business meeting so if there's anything specific you would like

[00:43:47] us to cover in that presentation, please let us know. Thanks. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Schmidt, and if you would indulge me, I do, I just want to share that I did visit Crozet Elementary School on Monday and it was a great visit with Stacy England, who's the principal, and I was there for about an hour and I really saw some genuinely inspiring teaching and learning. Our first stop was Jenna Hall's fourth grade class where students were deeply engaged in reading The Year of the Rat, Using HMH materials and a Promethean board, they followed along with the story, answered

[00:44:22] comprehensive questions, and seamlessly transitioned to a seesaw activity for sentence dictation. During this transition, Ms. Hall took time to check in with individual students, and we had a chance to chat with one of the students about her weekend Pokemon tournament, showcasing really what I thought was an amazing, thoughtful relationship that Ms. Hall is building in her classroom.

[00:44:46] We also visited Gary Grassi's fourth grade class, and the students were doing something he called a working snack, and I was impressed with the snacks, by the way. Students were focused on mastering long and short vowel sounds, but what stood out was Mr. Grassi's creative approach to helping students express their feelings at the outset of class.

[00:45:08] so he had a he had a magnetic whiteboard each student had a name had their name on a placard and they could slide it into what zone of regulation that where they were at that time red blue yellow or green and he pointed out to me because I was like well that'd be great if everybody was in green but he said no you want them to put that where they are because that's where they are and that's I thought that was a great way for him to work with with the class And then the final stop was Hope Kaplan's fifth grade art class, and the students were working on color wheels, and they were designing personal cubes that represent their identities.

[00:45:48] And if you visit Crozet sometime in the near future, they're making a large mural for every child's cube in the school. So hundreds of students, and they're combining them all together into one mural. And overall, just the visit was great.

[00:46:05] The school looked great. It's very well maintained. I want to salute the custodial staff and our cafeteria staff. Every area of the building was really well managed, and I want to thank the staff for having me for a visit.

[00:46:21] So, thank you. Okay, I have two things. One, I've had a lot of questions on lockers in our secondary schools, and Dr. Haas, I appreciated your update yesterday with the list of locker availability.

[00:46:38] I think it it came as a shock one I'm a mom of kids in the schools and have always been told that lockers were not available especially in the Western feeder pattern turns out that they are available upon request and so I would just ask that this information be shared widespread because there is a lot when I posted it yesterday on my page and I got a lot of feedback that they were told from the school that there weren't lockers available or that they had been told for years that there were no lockers and all the other in the Western

[00:47:14] feeder pattern especially Henley and Western but Henley it says that it's available upon request and all the other middle schools they are assigned for sixth grade so there seems to be some inconsistency with that so I would just like to make sure that that information is made available to all families and and also the consistency with the administrations and the schools that they're getting the right information out to the families.

[00:47:41] I think our students and parents would really appreciate that. Thank you. The other thing I wanted to just bring up, I guess, go on the record with my frustration on the community and schools. I apologize that it's two months after this was brought up.

[00:47:58] I had COVID at last month's meeting, or I would have brought it up then and I didn't attend the meeting. But I was frustrated, I would say, that it was not brought up during the budgeting process when we are going to be spending a significant amount of money over the next three years.

[00:48:17] And I understand after talking with Dr. Haas that it's not something we would vote on because it's money that had already been appropriated, some COVID relief funds, But those funds were never discussed during the budgeting process when we were talking about making cuts and looking at how we were going to appropriate funds throughout the school division.

[00:48:39] So I found that pretty frustrating. But I also am curious as to you provided a list of how we were going to fund it over the next three years in combination with the organization and grants.

[00:48:55] But in the fourth year, ACPS will be responsible for this program. And we've talked about Albemarle Education Foundation providing funding for that, but that's not guaranteed either. And so I feel like we need a lot more information on what the plan is for this very large program that seems wonderful.

[00:49:15] Truly, I am really excited about it. But from a budgetary standpoint and from a board standpoint, I'm frustrated that it was kind of brought up to us after the budget was finalized and pushed through also I would like to say that there seems to be a lot of overlap with the Office of Community Engagement and with a department that we are already spending a lot of money on that is really important to our division so I would like to ask for a report on where the overlap is between community and schools and the Office of Community

[00:49:50] engagement, how they will work together, where there is some overlap that may not be necessary, and how we could better utilize a department that we're already have that I feel is extremely important to our division. And if community and schools is going to be serving a lot of those roles, then how can we better utilize that department to make sure that we're meeting all of our student needs. So I just wanted to get that out there and ask for that report.

[00:50:20] Thank you for your comments and would be happy to provide further information for you. I want to assure you that communities in schools model is in direct response to some of our challenges around social issues that our administrators have voiced that they would like more support around those issues so I'm happy to provide you additional

[00:50:55] support around the information for how this connects to the work that we do in the Office of Community Engagement and I thank you for bringing this forward. Thank you for that and I do I think it sounds absolutely wonderful I am very much excited about the program I just would like more information to make sure that we have all the information we need to make decisions in the upcoming years and going into budgeting season right after the holidays again I think it's really important to have all that information and I thank Dr. Kaiser and I just want to say that we did send the board on July 12th a detailed report

[00:51:33] that included all the costs of the program and how they will be managed it only goes out to year three because that's all we felt comfortable projecting it's not the plan for the school system to take over all the expenses of the program so I apologize for not going out beyond year three but that's pretty much the best we could do when we do come across programs that can meet a need we what we do is we use one-time money for it and then what we do is and we've done this with other things in the past and then bring it back to the board during the budget season because we're gonna bring build

[00:52:11] it into recurring funding and so then the board we would have to do we would make a logic model for it it will come in during the budget process and then the board will decide as to whether they want to continue to do it I would look at it as perhaps a pilot program like we did with the SEL coaches we did those for three years we did it with one-time money it was very expensive and it did meet a need in the schools meet a need in the schools and then the board did decide to go ahead and adopt it into the operating budget I don't foresee this but I do think that as we make progress with it not only will the board want to

[00:52:49] continue it and continue what we're paying is about 25% of the cost right now that the board will not only want to do that but expand it perhaps to other schools because of the success that we're getting from it so I do appreciate you bringing it up and I will resend the report that I sent on July 12th to the board that talked about all those pieces that I just mentioned thank you what happened to the book study we were doing I participated in like the first one and then I got busy and I couldn't follow up apparently the book study continued and so I don't know if there'll be another book study but if

[00:53:26] you would like to do one we can certainly yeah because that was it was helpful to read about it I think so yeah dude and we can provide some more background with that too thank you thank you is that all of the superintendent and board business. I know we have some other business at the end but next we will if there is no other announcement from board member or superintendent we'll move to we don't have any public comment either tonight so we will move to school division business. Up first we have more about the pre-k-12 literacy instructional and implementation alignment with Dr. Hayes.

[00:54:06] Good evening again. Chair Lee, Vice Chair Acuff, and members of the board. As you all know, Dr. Hayes, and I'm here tonight with members of the Department of Instruction and Professional Development. With me is Ms. Michelle Kastner, the Executive Director of Elementary Education, Ms. Karen Hephcock, the Curriculum Coordinator for Elementary ELA, and Ms. Megan Wood, Director of Professional Learning.

[00:54:47] Tonight, we'll be providing you all with updates around the three topics you see on the screen, how we are working through ACPS's vision for literacy and our pre-K through 12 literacy documents, how we are leveraging high-quality instructional materials through our adoption of HMH and implementation, how that's going so far, and some evidence-supporting evidence-based literacy instruction and decision-making through the letters training. So at this time, I'll turn it

[00:55:18] over to Ms. Michelle Kessner. Thank you, Dr. Hayes, and good evening, Chair Lee and Vice Chair Acuff. First, I sincerely want to express my deep gratitude to every single elementary teacher and principal and vice principal in all 15 schools for the heavy lift of actually getting HMH started.

[00:55:47] We know it was a huge lift, but Karen and I have been in all 15 schools and been in all classrooms and it's really incredible to see. You would think that they had been teaching it for years. So they're making it look very seamless and I know all the work that has gone on behind the scenes.

[00:56:06] So I just want to express that publicly. So I'm pleased to provide an update regarding the Virginia Literacy Act requirements. And the first requirement stated that every K-5 student will receive core instruction grounded in science-based reading and research, and we are doing that in Almar County.

[00:56:25] The second requirement is that every K through teacher will assess student learning using approved literacy screeners, and we are doing that in Almar County. And every family will have access to online resources to support literacy development, and we'll go into that a little bit further later.

[00:56:43] And then every division will develop a literacy plan and also staff reading specialists to support intervention. And we are just in the beginning process of providing professional learning to support our teachers. So I will hand it over to Karen Hethcock, who's been an incredible leader during this whole process.

[00:57:02] Thank you. I was here in the spring and we shared a comprehensive literacy document with you that we have in all of our schools and online. on feedback that we received from that we realized that we needed a pared down more accessible version that was friendly for families and so we do have I worked with Lauren Hunt and others to get a two-pager for k-5 and also a preschool document that is really accessible to families in terms of what is the literacy act how is instruction changing and what supports are available for

[00:57:36] families to help with supporting their students' literacy at home. So those are online, they're in schools, and we have enough copies in English and Spanish to go home through literacy nights or back to school night, however the schools choose to do that. We also are really trying to make sure, and this is included in the two-pager, there is in HMH a lot of family support built into that program every grade level has family letters in 11 languages based on what the structured literacy pathway and the knowledge building piece is and some

[00:58:12] ideas for parents to support that learning at home we have requested from HMH three more languages and we're talking they are looking into seeing whether they can translate it or whether we need to have that translated ourselves there's also a feature called HMH family room that if parents actually actually access their student's account from home through ClassLink.

[00:58:35] There's a family room which has lots of tips and videos and then parents can see what assignments have been given, a copy of the student, my book, so they can read passages at home that the students are working with at school. So it really will, if there are assessments done online, parents can get in to see the results of those assessments in real time.

[00:58:51] So that feature will be working with families. We are in day 13 of the seven year. So we're just making sure that like, as teachers kind of acclimate, we're introducing new pieces of it for them too, to share with parents. And then of course we have the VLP, the Virginia Literacy Partnerships has worked a ton this summer on really updating a lot of support for the VAL.

[00:59:14] So when parents get VAL's reports home and they have instructional indicators on there, they can go to our website or to the Virginia Literacy Partnerships website, and they can actually access things that they can be doing at home to support any, kind of subtest where it showed that that student could benefit from additional support.

[00:59:34] So two of the prongs that are involved in ensuring that we're following through on our commitment to providing high-quality literacy instruction for all students is that implementation of high-quality literacy materials, which obviously is the HMH into reading, and then the professional learning for teachers to be making really evidence-based instructional decisions as they're working with students.

[00:59:56] So I am going to focus right now in on the HQIM or the HMH and what we're doing to kind of try and wrap around teachers to provide as much support as we can with that. So obviously last spring we had HMH coaches here who did a three-hour kind of getting started. It was just like dipping a toe in the water of what HMH is and all that it offers.

[01:00:15] Obviously one of the strengths of HMH is there is a lot of material that comes with it. When we're first learning the program, that's not necessarily a strength. I think teachers are seeing that as overwhelming and it is. And that's why we're really trying to reassure, you know, let's get good at the core stuff and then we'll start bringing additional components in.

[01:00:33] So over the summer, we did do some PD sessions. Some were open work sessions that are all optional. So teachers came in and we worked together to plan for what would it look like to plan for a week of instruction and what assessments are we looking at and what do students need to know and what are the learning objectives.

[01:00:49] So we had good turnouts for those sessions. We also had Dr. Conradi back and she did sessions over a couple of days on scaffolding complex text and managing flexible skills group, which is what feedback we had from teachers is what they were most interested in focusing on over the summer.

[01:01:05] So those were well attended as well. New teacher academy, we wanted to make sure that our brand new teachers to the division had the same opportunities to get those getting started sessions. So HMH coaches came back, did that during NTA so that all of our teachers were on kind of equal footing as we went into pre-service week and did grade level three hour sessions on just honing in on the very first week of instruction and what it looked like to plan for that.

[01:01:30] The beauty of HMH is it's very, very cyclical. So once teachers are already saying to me, like, oh, I saw it in the first week, here it is again in the second week, now I know how to find it in the third week. So the modules really do spiral and are very similar. So once we get good at one or two modules, the rest are structured the same.

[01:01:49] So in order to continue that support over the course of the year, we're having HMH coaches come back three times. once in October because teachers wanted to kind of get time to get good at the program and so that they're asking for the feedback that they want, that they know that we want to be looking for.

[01:02:06] So October, February, and April, an HMH coach will come back. We're going to do walkthroughs across all 15 schools over the course of the year, but we're inviting instructional coaches, reading specialists, HMH champions, who are teachers in the school and school administrators. We will walk into classrooms and look at practice and share learning across grade levels and schools.

[01:02:27] We're going to be doing one day of a learning walk. The next day will be a debrief with the HMH coach so that we can provide teachers and PLCs with feedback. So the supports that are kind of in action every day are the HMH champions. Those are teachers at each elementary school, one teacher per school.

[01:02:46] They actually also are the content advisory team that I work with. We meet monthly. I'm in communication almost constantly with HMH champions almost every day, but as a group, the 15 teachers and I meet and we just talk about what's going well, what are some barriers, what are something, things we can be doing centrally to support teachers who are, if we're running into problems that more than one person is experiencing or several schools are experiencing.

[01:03:13] Those HMH champions have what we call a coachly license. So they have access to an HMH coach all through the day and into the evening. So they can either book a half hour Zoom an HMH coach or they can hop on the platform that they've already logged into to teach and just send a chat to an HMH coach. So some of our teachers are working with HMH champions to ask just really specific questions that they can get answers to quickly. Our instructional coaches have that same coachly license so they're all working together pretty seamlessly to provide support within the schools. The school-based literacy teams are I think really exciting because the school

[01:03:51] School administrators, I was just at one of these two days ago, they bring together some of the literacy leaders across the school and just talk about what are we seeing, what's going well, how can we share success so that if third grade is doing something really well, how can we replicate that and make it easier for other grade levels.

[01:04:06] And they're just really trying to hone in on what is it as a school we can be doing to support this rollout. So each school is going to look a little bit different with that, but they're going to just kind of react to conditions in real time. and then obviously I just talked about the learning walks.

[01:04:23] I'm going to hand it over to Megan Wood to talk about letters training. - Thank you. - So I'm going to talk to you a little bit about letters training and what that looks like. The Virginia Literacy Act gives districts options for professional learning.

[01:04:40] And so our district chose to go with letters and I'll explain why we made that decision in the next slide. But right now, the pathways that teachers have to meet the requirements for the VLA is that teachers that do not have letters training will be able to complete letters this year.

[01:04:58] And then as Dr. Hayes mentioned earlier, we found out in August that the VDOE added the requirement of a UVA Canvas course that will be at the end of letters. Teachers who, when we have about 40 teachers in the district that have already completed letters volume one, they have had the option to either choose to complete letters volume two and then do a capstone course, or they had the option to do the VLP module.

[01:05:25] And the majority of the teachers that have already completed Letters 1 have chosen to go with Letters Volume 2 in the capstone course, rather than just the VLP module. And then teachers with-- - EPA or VLP? - VLP, the Virginia Literacy Partnership are creating the state modules.

[01:05:41] - I see. - Yeah. And then teachers who have already completed Letters Volume 1 and 2, which we have a handful, like maybe 10, just have to complete this capstone course. So these are the requirements, if you chose to do the letters pathway, which we did, these are the requirements that teachers, depending on where they are with their training, these are the requirements that are outlined by the BDOE.

[01:06:07] Again, we chose letters for a variety of reasons. These are the highlighted reasons why. Letters is directly aligned with HMH into reading curriculum. So when you think about that slide that Ms. Hethcock just showed with the high quality instructional materials and the instructional decision-making, these two align really well.

[01:06:27] That's most evidenced by the scope and sequence of the structured literacy component into reading. Both HMH and Letters follow that same scope and sequence. So as teachers are learning about science of reading, they're seeing it happen in their classroom. Also, evidence suggests that Letters has shown impact on improved teacher knowledge and practice, and implementation is linked to improved outcomes.

[01:06:48] It's really important when we're talking about professional learning and the research related to professional learning that drawing a direct line to student outcomes is really difficult because of the variables that go into play when executing the professional learning. But we can draw links into improved knowledge of content and instructional decision making.

[01:07:06] And Letters has evidence that it does impact both of those with teacher practice. And then additionally, Letters has-- our goal is to build a sustainable professional development model around the science of reading in the division. And so Letters has an infrastructure place that allows us to do a train-the-trainer model that will that will allow us to continue this professional learning you know long after the VLA is expired and so that's one of the reasons why we went with letters as well additionally letters model modules and structures align to high quality professional learning the characteristics of high quality professional

[01:07:43] learning the fact that it's job embedded it has a component of what they call bridge to practice where there are activities that teachers are given through the units that say try this with your students and so because of those bridge to practices that builds in collaboration with grade level plcs that gives teachers an opportunity to talk and see how that's work that how that's working in the classroom that also builds in the collaborative component and it's also active teachers are engaging with the content in in the classroom and then additionally one benefit to teachers by going with letters is it provides teachers with a transferable certificate at the successful completion of the program and it it has a feature

[01:08:23] where teachers can seek graduate credit for the completion of letters so that's another reason we felt that this was beneficial pathway for our professional learning this this slide I'm not going to read it to you because it has lots of text on it but after our teachers completed we had a cohort in the spring go through letters training so that they could become the facilitators I asked them for some feedback on what you know how their experience was and you can see even teachers that have had received a master's in a reading program they said that they felt this was more impactful than that learning all of the teachers that have gone through this program say that is what we know it's time

[01:09:01] intensive they have said that it has been beneficial I think the fact that we have several people that had the option to opt out of doing letters to and take a more truncated learning experience opted for the letters too so I think that just the evidence that teachers and the anecdotal feedback that we're getting indicates that this is a really impactful and meaningful learning experience this is also like Karen had a slide about the timeline I'm just going to take it back to bring you forward a little bit in the spring we had 30 teachers go through letters training with the intent of becoming facilitators 29 of those teachers

[01:09:39] committed to becoming facilitators for the district they started the facilitator training in august they will finish that in about mid-october for the first in-person letters training which happens on october 24th we just today finished our last kickoff meeting with with our elementary schools so everybody has had the kickoff meeting where they've gotten their accounts and gotten logged in and then in november we will start letters volume two for that cohort that has that requirement left to do and then in 24 25 we will provide teachers with the option to enroll in letters too

[01:10:15] so that's our timeline for that and then as you know because you guys have already talked about this that time is a factor and it's a concern for teachers and I would like just as Ms. Kastner pointed out I would like to thank the principals for their support in this because they have really worked hard to build time into their schedule for teachers to be able to complete this work So we have allocated 50 hours of professional learning for teachers to complete this work.

[01:10:43] What that looks like is typically on Thursday afternoons in elementary schools, there's a faculty meeting. And the principals have dedicated two of those faculty meetings each month for teachers to work on their asynchronous work. In addition to that, four of the division professional learning days will be dedicated to the in-person training.

[01:11:02] We also are allocating time during making connections for teachers to work on asynchronous work. We're going to have rooms available for teachers to go to to complete this work. We're asking that teachers not spend all day in those rooms because we know that cramming isn't really an effective method of learning but we're going to ask them you know to attend at least two sessions. We're also going to have sessions that I think teachers are going to want to go to so they'll have the option to to go in and complete asynchronous work there. And so this is how we've allocated the time for letters training right now and I think the next slide is

[01:11:39] questions yeah I have a quick question actually um we received an email earlier this week from the teacher who said that they were getting having to do letters training outside of contract time is that accurate is it taking extra time outside of school to complete this and how are we addressing this so one of the things that we know is and it's interesting because we we did two kickoff sessions one on the fifth and one on the one today um and different schools attended and i

[01:12:14] had two different letters consultants in the session and i said to the teachers there's this graphic that's going around that where letters estimates how much time it takes to complete modules and they overestimate and i said it in in both sessions and both of the consultants nodded um and so that graphic I think is going around which is making people nervous about having time but we are providing those those times on that last slide are the times that we're providing during contract hours for teachers to work on it they have access to it outside of school hours so if they choose to log on they can but right now we've built in that so it's completely built in

[01:12:52] that if they only do it during the professional development time and the time that's allotted to them during the school day they can still complete it by the time that they need to that's what we've estimated based on the feedback from the people that have done it that they feel like that that is enough time i did ask people that have been through it i mean obviously we can't guarantee that everybody's going to finish it at the same rate because people learn at different rates but we do feel like that that time for letters is enough time for people to complete it and will there be adjustments if if you see that it's taking people longer and they're having to do it outside of contract yeah I think that that's something that we would have to

[01:13:28] revisit and look at are we still in negotiation with video II about the deadline for that I mean negotiation like request and not negotiation the last email that we got from the video II and you guys fact-check me but essentially they said your job is to do your best to make sure that teachers get this completed by the 20 by the end of this school year and if you can't meet that requirement then at the end of the year you you can submit for an extension because our goal was to present a plan to them and say this is how we're trying to meet it

[01:14:05] and then talk about potential if we don't meet it but they want us to go ahead and try to meet it by the end of this year and then if we don't then submit a request for an extension okay the family room sounds like a really good idea but um have there been any problems in some parts of the county in which internet access may not be that good where um being able to gain access to the family room would be a problem I have not heard that yet but this is something we're just rolling out to parents as literacy nights come around and as the module letters go home and the literacy

[01:14:44] two-pager goes home so I haven't heard that yet but I know I'll be working with the tech department and I are working really closely together because we've run into a couple little bugs for teachers that we've had to work in so if that's a problem it's something that we'll definitely have to address. Okay. Because it is, it's a great feature. Absolutely. Just back to my last question, could we have some tracking or some sort of data that shows how long it is taking teachers and maybe get an update in a month or something like that so that we can make sure that we're staying on top of it

[01:15:22] and not assuming that it's taking a certain amount of time and potentially is taking longer? And I And I ask this because we have received a lot of emails from very frustrated teachers who like the program but are having to spend a lot of time outside of work to complete this training.

[01:15:40] And so I just want to make sure that we are conscious of that. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Letters is -- it is very user-friendly, both for the teachers and for the administrators on the back end. All of the schools have a site, and then when the administrators log in, they can see all of their teachers and they can check their progress throughout so it'll show like unit one so-and-so's on session two so and it's a dashboard so it's really easy to check and monitor that I can see everybody for the division so we will be checking on that the one thing that's a little bit tricky about the time component is it'll say how long somebody has spent in that session but if you

[01:16:19] leave your window open it's counting that time so like one time I actually made a joke with Karen I was like why did it take you five hours to complete session four and she was like oh I left it open all Saturday so like looking at those times will be hard so really we have benchmarks where people should be by the in-person days so that'll be a like that'll be the best gauge on any people are staying on pace and how much time but the principles are have we gotten feedback from teachers specifically on on whether or not they agree with yeah the 30 people that took it in the spring I got feedback from

[01:16:56] them about how much the asynchronous time took and they felt like it was reasonable. The other thing that we've shared with teachers which I didn't know which I kind of wish I had known a long time ago is when Dr. Conradi came to visit and do a presentation for us in the spring from William and Mary it says that you can watch videos at 1.5 speed and not lose your comprehension so we made sure to share that with the teachers that they can you know increase the speed of the video to 1.5, which will also reduce their time.

[01:17:26] I wish I'd known that because I've been in classes for the last two years watching videos at regular speed. And the consultants also made the suggestion that have the text open while the videos are going so you're not watching the videos and then reading the text is pretty much identical to what you're being taught.

[01:17:43] So to have those open and take notes at the same time rather than doing reading separate and videos separate. So that can also save some time. principals are fully aware of the concerns of time they're building in time into their schedules we're building in time we're going to monitor it and not leave people hanging out I just love an update maybe in a month or so where we're at would that be wonderful thank you can totally do that thank you well I I guess Graham mr. page and I had similar ideas about the families accessible you know how accessible the health materials are I mean I know certainly by the time our kids are you know middle halfway through

[01:18:22] elementary school they have tablets or computers I can take home but what do we do we do provide anything I mean like computers for families or they're each left to their own I'm assuming that's the case I think at this point that that's a technology question we're gonna have to follow up with her with that because I mean Karen can't say for sure like what's happening right so what we'll do tomorrow in cabinet is Dr. Diggs will ask for an update from her and then we'll publish that back to the board so you can see where we have

[01:19:00] coverage and where people are able to access it if that's right. I wasn't trying to be unfair to you and I know the program is you know just launching but it's just a curiosity I have in terms of having access for as many families as we can. Right and the students each have their own my book we bought seven years worth of the student consumables and all of the reading passages are in there and the students take those home and they actually keep them okay like you first and second grade has five five of those um over the course of the year so as they're done then those are sent home so that the students and families can be reading those passages again

[01:19:33] outstanding thank you that's good thank you any other questions or comments making i guess i have a comment um i i still uh worry about the teachers making sure that we're not overwhelming them um and um i've one of one of the principals at one of my school what the principal at one of my schools was basically told me that they would have this would be it i mean they would be doing letters training this year and that would that would be

[01:20:09] the only thing they'd be able to get done uh does that sound about right i mean we are we basically going to be all in on this well as you know megan said of course people work at their own pace um but you know this is a video a mandate so it's something yeah that we have to do but i think that's a part of um while we wanted to provide that flexibility with some of the other things that we could control within the division um around like you know crt and also just looking at if there are other opportunities within the school year that principals may decide hey you

[01:20:45] know i see my staff is having some trouble or this particular person what supports they can provide on a building level um so as we get feedback from individual principals we can work with them on a plan for those teachers okay thanks yeah i would emphasize to your point this is really about supporting teachers um and i think that the goal is not to you know create a mountain that someone has to climb and then say you got to get up that mountain at the same pace as everyone else so the goal ultimately is to have this in front of students and have them be successful readers by the time they leave third grade and so i can see us cruising along here in a few years but

[01:21:26] what i was saying was that our goal is to support teachers so that if they don't finish it by the end of the year we've got more time we've got more resources and this is a this is something that the virginia department of education has gotten in a pattern of doing is throwing really hard deadlines in front of school systems you'll remember in the fall we were presented with a very really tight deadline to create a plan for all in virginia and then when all the superintendents complained about it then we were told well that's not really a deadline that's a goal we that's just a really

[01:22:02] great goal let's go for it and so this has become a pattern and that's why we've been pushing back and i really appreciate board members being part of that and really helping us out as a staff but we're going to do the best we can. I don't, I guess I just want to send a message from the staff side, from the superintendent side, that this is about supporting teachers. It's not about creating something onerous. And ultimately, the students will be the beneficiaries of it, as we've really struggled with teaching reading in Albemarle County Public Schools.

[01:22:36] Right. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you all. All right. Next, we have a break. I think We're six minutes ahead according to my computer, but according to up here, it's 7:55. So we will be back at 8:05. Thank you very much.

[01:32:56] We have, up next, we have our sustainability program update and ACES annual report, Mr. John Coles.

[01:33:39] Hi, good evening. My name is John Coles. I'm the environmental program manager with Building Services. I'm here with Katina Dudley, the curriculum coordinator for science, and Christine Putnam, an ACES volunteer, or ACES member and dedicated volunteer.

[01:33:57] She helps with our schoolyard gardens and with our composting program nearly every day. issues in one of our schools. And then, like you all said, I'm here to do an overview of our sustainability program and an update on the ACES committee and the annual report.

[01:34:15] This evening we'll focus on four areas: sustainability liaisons, composting updates, plans for reusable flatware pilot, the sustainable design of our two new schools, and an overview of the solar PPA, which is approved in our last meeting.

[01:34:34] at how sustainability kind of fits into our strategic plan you know i think you know there's an obvious fit within our third kind of uh goal which is the equitable and transformative resources but i've really found that what's good for our planet when we think of sustainability is also really good for our people um and so i think it really fits in with all of our our goals and our wellness you know i think getting rid of you know our emissions from fuel burning equipment has been shown to improve the health of our students and so I think that really fits into

[01:35:07] wellness and helps you with our thriving students and all of that so we have we developed our focus areas for aces based off of the the county's climate action plan and there are four areas that the climate action plan breaks down which are transportation and land use buildings and renewables sustainable materials and management landscapes natural resources and agriculture and then we we determined pretty early on in the committee that we needed to also focus on tying all of this in with our students in our curriculum which is what also what the county the county's

[01:35:44] climate action plan calls for but we really want to put a highlight on that i'm going to go ahead and pass it on over to katina dudley good evening again so in the spring of 2024 we had our first cohort of liaisons in our school buildings and so we started with 10. these liaisons included teachers librarians and safety coaches and we have plans to expand that for

[01:36:17] this upcoming school year I will make a quick note currently this initiative is funded by a grant but we will need to be thinking about how this is budgeted for as we continue this program in the future we wanted to take just a minute to highlight three particular projects that came from our liaisons in this current year. Erica Goff is a teacher at Monticello High School and she spearheaded several sustainability initiatives including organizing composting and recycling with her environmental club. She also led a campus

[01:36:54] cleanup with the larger school community. She launched Save the Birds at Monticello High School. If you've ever been to Monticello you know they hit those clean windows that are all through the building. So they created window clings to put on the buildings to prevent the bird collisions and they plan to continue that project again in this upcoming year. She also supported fundraising efforts to plant a butterfly bush in the school garden in order to enhance the pollinator habitats. Demetra Allmiller is a teacher at Broaddus Wood Elementary School and she has been implementing composting and introducing

[01:37:31] vermicomposting into her classes with integrating the worms into their learning garden. this year she will introduce aquaponics to our elementary students this was a grant that she received through donors choose and she will teach her students about the benefits of using the nitrocythe nitrogen cycle as they grow tilapia and fresh produce and then she plans to take the produce that they create and develop and donate it to the earliest bill food pantry did you say tilapia i did wow that's the fish that does the best cycle there so they'll have tilapia growing

[01:38:09] well the tilapia will be there in order for the plants to grow and keep the cycle going we actually have that going on in like three of our schools right now which is really cool calder mclellan at murray elementary organized clothing and toy swaps to minimize community waste and they also implemented nude food fridays to promote zero waste lunches among their students and this group actually attended one of our aces meetings one night to learn about the conversations that we have and just to share a little bit about the work that they're doing at

[01:38:43] their school. Additionally, McClellan encouraged free-ducing vehicle idling in the student pickup line to further support our environmental sustainability efforts. Christine Putnam, our volunteer, is going to step up and talk to you guys a little bit about the composting happening in our buildings. All right, thank you very much for having us and I'm going to talk to you first about composting which is really exciting so you can see from this graph how just in the first half

[01:39:18] of 2024 the composting the amount of compostable material that was collected exceeded what was collected in all of 22 and 20 uh figure 2022 and 2023 which is pretty amazing so the there's more composting that's happening it's happening more not only in the kitchens but also with the students involved in the student lunch rooms and so and what does why is that important I mean one thing it's teaching the kids about not just throwing everything in the garbage can but we're also collecting that food

[01:39:55] waste and that has an impact on our greenhouse gas emissions because all that food is gonna generate methane gas in landfills and so I've been spending a lot of time just lately in a couple schools one is at Mountain View and I'm just really excited I want to give a shout out to fourth grade teacher Mary Morales and Chelsea Lundgren and they after this is year three and they went through a few struggles but now they have every single student K through five is composting in the lunchroom and they've got composting monitors so

[01:40:34] there's opportunity for student leadership and they did a big rollout with a lot of education it's helping the kids understand why they're doing it so they've done a great job and also at Walton middle school Heather Keppel who has helped to spearhead that and grades five six through eight are all composting they started last year and they just started from the very first day of school and they're doing a great job and so as part of that i just want to show you since i've been

[01:41:09] spending a lot of time at mountain view helping the kids sort through their trash because you can see there's a lot of plastic and there's a lot of packaged food that comes with their school lunches so when they come to sort their food they've got to go through all this and make some decisions and dump their food out but there's a lot so these two items right here right think about it most kids have a breakfast at school and then they have lunch so they're throwing in the garbage can at

[01:41:44] least two or three sets of utensils every single day every single child so that really adds up so this reusable flatware pilot program the students at Murray Elementary School are really excited about doing this you heard from them last year and hopefully this can get off the ground it will cost there's be some initial cost to buying the flatware and it has to be washed so that'll be some it'll take some labor to do that but I think it's well worth it and I hope that we can see

[01:42:21] that through. And I just want to talk a little bit about lighting because tonight you heard from students who were inspired by space camp, which is pretty cool. I watched them come in in their uniforms. But sadly, light pollution is increasing the night's brightness by just under 10% per year, which is pretty dramatic. Not only does this impact our ability to see the stars and connect with the universe but there's a growing understanding of the negative impact of light pollution on the natural world and human health but we can really make

[01:43:01] improvements and it's not that hard it's by looking at our outdoor lighting systems and not only if we can reduce the amount of lighting that we're putting out there will it have an impact on our dark skies but also energy use which has a climate impact so first no light should be left on there we shouldn't be any light outdoor lighting on during the day and so there are systems that can help us with that by converting lighting systems from photocells to building

[01:43:39] automated systems the photocells tend to go out so I don't know how many of you have gone to a school campus and see the lights on during the day it's pretty prevalent so i think that change would go a long way and also just making sure that as we have build new buildings and put in new lighting systems that they're dark sky compliant which means the lights are all fully shielded pointed downwards and that the light itself is going to be a low color on the amber end and so that it's not that blue light

[01:44:17] but so those are a couple of things that we've been doing so i think that's the end of my talk thank you so next we'll discuss the sustainable design of our two new schools mountain view upper and the center two both of the schools have a lot of similar features both will feature a geothermal heating and cooling system which saves a dramatic amount of energy compared to traditional heating and cooling and it's all powered by electricity which means we can offset it with solar these buildings additionally have been designed to maximize the rooftop space available

[01:44:54] for solar um it'll use that both will have native landscaping stormwater bioretention basins daylighting maximization and all of those sorts of things and they both will be designed to be lead silver or better finally i wanted to talk about the power purchase agreement that we are working on and hoping to make headway on the power purchase agreement works by a developer installs their solar on our roofs we lease the roof space to them and they do it at no upfront

[01:45:29] cost to us. ACPS then agrees to purchase that energy from the solar developer at a set rate, which is generally more competitive than the grid purchase energy and cleaner as well. Some of the highlights about this system that has been proposed and we're hoping will work out is it will involve 10 schools, 4.9 megawatts of energy, which is a huge amount. We're really excited about that. We expect $10 million in lifetime savings and 70,000 tons of greenhouse gases and then that should offset about 35 percent of our acps electricity usage and that's all we

[01:46:09] have thank you so much hi john um we have ppas already you're talking specifically about ppas you're negotiating for the two new school buildings so this actually this ppa currently um goes will go on 10 10 that i shouldn't say additional because in some cases it will go on additional parts of the roofs on the schools that already have ppas um this will put solar on all of our high schools all of our middle schools and a few more of our elementary schools including the two

[01:46:47] new schools the two new schools are not included with this we are hoping to um to be able to fund the solar out of the budget for the schools it will depend on how the bids come in for those projects and if not we will look to do another ppa at that time one of the things that we've been really working on is getting solar developers both for ppas and for self-owned energy or self-owned solar getting kind of cooperative contracts in place so that as soon as new roofs come on whether it's for a new school or an existing school we can come right in and do the solar and we don't have to have this big delay and missing out on the opportunity to put solar

[01:47:23] under a nice fresh roof thank you i just wanted to mention that the environmental club at murray sent a letter to the white house with their ideas and lennox meslar got a letter back from kamala Harris and she was very excited about it acknowledging her ideas for better way bettering our future environmentally which is very cool I just had a question also you had mentioned that this is funded by grants but that that ends when does that end and what is the estimated cost to keep ACES up and

[01:48:00] running anybody have that information so ACES is doesn't require funding it's It's just mostly community volunteers to serve. The liaison program, we pay the liaisons a stipend of $815 per year in line with our other stipends.

[01:48:19] And we anticipate that we will be able to fund that for another year. This is out of some grant funding I got that doesn't have any specific terms on it, but we have plans for most of the other money. So I think the cost 815 times 24 came out of something in the, I'm sorry, I'll get back to that slide.

[01:48:35] it was on there went too far i didn't put it on there somewhere in the ballpark of 24 000 a year a year okay thank you thank you um i i just have one question about the vermicomposting um is that the one where it's in the boxes or they're out in the garden

[01:49:07] so the worms are sort of free it's like a free range thing it's i looked into vermiculture from our house and i was like that's kind of mean to the worms but if they're out like sort of free range it makes me feel a little bit better so it sounds like they are free range a little bit okay great all right thank you very much thank you all right next we have our middle school master plan matt wortman

[01:49:53] good evening chair lee members of the school board dr haas my name is matt wortman director of building services in march of 2023 acps contracted with vmdo architects a local firm to develop a comprehensive study and 20-year master plan for all of our middle schools.

[01:50:21] We have provided each of you with a copy of the final report, and we are excited to be able to present it to you this evening. I'm joined this evening by Ben Thompson from VMDO Architects, and Ben will now walk you through the steps we took and the recommendations made within the study.

[01:50:37] Thanks, Matt. Good evening, everyone. It's good to be with you. Again, I'm Ben Thompson, VMDO architects. I'm going to walk you through tonight some of the processes and recommendations and outcomes of the middle school master plan that just concluded earlier this year. You're familiar with this slide. All the recommendations that you'll hear tonight are consistent with the ACPS vision mission values and goals and we know that there are a lot of factors that

[01:51:14] impact the success of the middle school student the adolescent learner and not least of which is the physical environment and that's something we care about deeply as architects and we know you care about you know that deeply as well so the facilities your school buildings your sites that you are currently maintaining and operating and the ones that you're planning for in the future are really critical for a successful learning for all model so this master plan was vetted through the lens of the strategic plan. And as Matt said,

[01:51:49] we were contracted back in the spring of last year to really look at some core issues facing the middle schools today, including capacity, growth, and equity across the district, and to do that over a 20-year plan. The impetus for this project you can see some of these master plan goals and objectives were centered around facing some issues that you're dealing with now countywide growth and enrollment that's projected out to the next 10 years we heard some interesting

[01:52:27] statistics about how even those projections are surprising in terms of what you're actually experiencing now so something that you're going to need to be addressing in the near term and long term facility equity so looking at the schools themselves relative to capacity and enrollment but also looking at parity across all schools and how that can serve to create the need for certain improvements at those schools what are the unique aspects of each and what are the community needs surrounding that and then meeting the county's goals for

[01:53:05] sustainability, and looking at educational programming, and how each of those schools are stacked up against what your goals are. We cast a really wide net for engagement for this project. We had some robust stakeholder engagements, a lot of surveys that went out, and met with divisional leaders, met with students in the community to ask the question to meet the needs of students, educators in community, a middle school facility in Albemarle County, must have. And so some of the top responses that came out of all of those surveys were exceptional learning environments, adequate

[01:53:44] space for collaboration, flexible spaces, that the school should be secure and safe environments for students, and that students have equitable access to resources and to staff for all age groups and abilities. We also met with a lot of students, over a hundred students that were part of each school's advisory groups. And what we really wanted to do there was parse out some of the unique aspects of each of the school and ask them, you know, what's working now? What do you

[01:54:19] love about your school? And what are some things that you could envision changing about your school or improving? And then what could you envision or imagine for the future of middle schools? So we got a lot of really great responses. All of these were collated and helped to establish some criteria that we could vet and discern from that list of criteria what would be the best approaches to each of these schools. So we really wanted to hear the voices of the community through this process. Three major scopes for this project as we engaged with ACPS.

[01:54:58] first we went into each school and evaluated the existing conditions of those schools looking at both the physical structures but also kind of vetting them through a program at its baseline the videoe guidelines for schools but also kind of an ideal program that we developed with acps to assess the educational adequacy of each of those schools and then we we made proposals for each of those schools looking specifically at capacity and equity with each within each school but across the district and then we took those recommendations we applied costs to them and then

[01:55:38] applied an escalation over the 20-year CIP so that you could use those for your future planning ACPS owns and operates five comprehensive middle schools as you know and one lab school This is a map that shows each of those schools and their current capacities. That's the black number at the top and below that line we're showing the 10-year projected enrollment. This is the data that we had on hand at the time. So you can see those kind of comparisons of where these 10-year maximum enrollments will grow compared to their capacities. You'll also note the larger numbers there at the bottom of the screen showing the existing overall middle school

[01:56:18] capacity as we add all that up the current enrollment that would be last year's enrollment based on when this project was underway and then the overall max middle school enrollment maximum being at the total maximum enrollment for each school over that 10-year period as it's projected so a couple of observations first of all you can know pretty quickly that in terms of just overall capacity you do have adequate capacity district-wide it's just not necessarily in the right place based on where the enrollments are growing, right? So those 10-year max enrollments will grow and ultimately will

[01:56:55] exceed the max capacities at some schools. You're particularly seeing this at Henley, Journey, and Burley. They're starting to swell a little bit even now. But then if you'll note Walton's capacity, the enrollments there that are projected are not going to nearly reach that capacity, right? So as a result some these schools have received more improvements over time just based on where the developmental growth has happened and modernizations than some of the others. And that also includes lab school.

[01:57:26] Lab school's a program, an alternative program that's in really high demand, but it can't offer more than it's offering right now because it's limited based on its size. So this is where the equity and parity piece comes into play when we think about capacity and enrollment. This is the completed master plan and this is a lot of information i'm happy to answer questions at the end of it but i'll just kind of breeze through this you'll note that we're proposing a phased master plan for specific projects that have been prioritized this map also shows how the capacities and the enrollments will actually change you'll note that some of those capacities

[01:58:05] in these larger schools actually decrease and i'll explain that in a minute but overall big picture the master plan proposes that all schools on some level will receive improvements over time through renovations and additions and potentially redistricting studies should that be something that acps wants to consider with the recognition that at some point in the future a new middle school will likely need to be built somewhere in the north and somewhere around a 600 capacity school that will serve to alleviate those pressures of these northern schools

[01:58:46] but that's also a long-term solution that's not something you'll be planning for in the short term from a budget standpoint a better solution that we arrived at with this this study was to look at expanding the lab school as a first phase step recognizing that it's something that offers a program to all schools and so it would be an equitable way to think about how to alleviate the pressures at all of these schools but also provide more admissions and enrollment that would be an immediate phase one plan phase two would look at walton which has

[01:59:23] received less improvements and less attention over the years and consider some additions and renovations there primarily renovations but also that just considering its enrollment there may be a need for a redistricting study that can accompany renovations there and imagining that kind of being backfilled with some of this planned enrollment phase four would look at renovating and improving all the remainder of each of these schools our facility studies also looked at the sites of course recognizing that there's some unique features about each site some are larger

[02:00:02] than others some are on shared campuses with shared amenities others are smaller and located in downtown charlottesville like community lab and burleigh and all of all of our recommendations for the sites are part of the facility study that you don't have with you tonight but that is something that serves as an appendix to the report this is a pretty telling slide that looks at different vintages over time of all of these schools together this really probably best encapsulates the need for a middle school facility study we're tracking of course the overall building areas and

[02:00:39] we're comparing within each building what percentages of those areas have been additions and renovations you can kind of see that across each slide of what what which schools have received more improvements over time and in addition to the capacity and the enrollment that we're tracking at the very top we're also looking at a metric we use a ratio of area to student which generally for a middle school around 150 square feet per student is what you want to be looking at which is an indicator that helps you discern like how much elbow room you have in each of these schools so

[02:01:14] it's pretty clear as you look at the capacities versus enrollments which schools are feeling much tighter. Also just to point out you know Henley and Journey were built at the same time. Henley of course has received more additions and renovations over time to handle that projected or that growth that's happened. Walton was built in 1974 about nine years later and it has not received the same kind of additions and renovations. It's built as a essentially a carbon copy prototype of the other two schools. Burley is challenging in the sense that about 80 percent of its overall

[02:01:53] area has been devoted to additions or renovations and as a result there are a lot of challenging navigational steps to consider including the site as well so thinking about renovations there for the future and bringing that building up to educational standards is something that we've considered in our approach here. Lakeside is your newest school, but it's now 30 years starting to see some some wear and starting to show a little bit of his age.

[02:02:20] And then lab school has been, I think, the least invested in school and probably in the most dire need of improvement. So the recommendations to look at lab school as a first step were really critical. As I mentioned, we've identified a number of different additions and renovations at different levels for each of these schools that's what you see in the diagonal hatch there recognizing that some of the existing spaces are going to stay as is they've been renovated already so why would these capacities at these larger schools actually decrease

[02:02:52] is a so in concept and for just the purposes of this study with a combination of expanding lab school maybe backfilling walton with enrollment and also building a new school at some time within the next 10 years, these enrollments, in theory, will actually decrease. The numbers you see on the screen are just numbers, right, for the sake of conversation. But what that does is create capacity or creates flexibility within each school. And that's flexibility for swing space when these renovations come online, moving students to one side, renovating, moving them back and renovating

[02:03:31] the other side. But it also creates flexibility in modernizations where you're desiring larger in at more adequate spaces to serve your your curricular needs so imagine taking a devising ball out of two classrooms which are two teaching stations and turning it into a larger CTE lab something that's going to support your new programs that would in essence decrease the capacity and that would get back to kind of the overarching goal to better align the enrollments with their

[02:04:06] capacities district-wide. These improvement scopes in terms of cost, we looked at breaking them down into different tiers. The tier one are costs that you would essentially probably already be planning for in your annual maintenance budgets. They include like refreshes and new paint or a new roof replacement if a boiler goes down. That's something that we've planned for and we've itemized in the facilities assessments for you. The tier two and tier three scopes would be scopes that are largely would be funded by your CIP and would be part of these modernizations that we'd be looking

[02:04:43] to do and within those tier two and tier three scopes we would break down even further what would be considered light moderate heavy renovations and those can have costs associated with them the ultimate goal of the study is to provide through this kind of phased plan ACPS and Albemarle County with a CIP improvement plan that looks at these projects escalated out over the 20-year CIP. This is a chart. It's a deliverable that we'd hand over to you.

[02:05:22] It's intended to be read left to right and then also top to bottom. So all the phased projects are on the left. It shows where they're allocated across the fiscal years and then the numbers that are tallied to the right or each project's overall project cost that would be anticipated based on the decisions that were made during this study you'll see them phase four on this particular slide we put burley journey henley and lakeside all together just to compare their costs you know recognizing each of them are going to have different levels of need but there's also the reality that once you reach the point where you're building a new middle school over the next

[02:06:01] 10 years you'll be assessing what these future projects will look like and those will be escalated out in terms of priority all tallying to a total phased capital improvement plan number that you can budget for kind of over the long term but also year to year so that was a very fast overview a lot of information fire hose happy to answer questions there's a lot in the report a lot in the facilities assessments. You made a comment when you were talking about a couple of the schools said bringing Burley up to educational standards. Is that are there different architectural or safety

[02:06:38] standards for different types of buildings and what does that mean? So I'll just try to be clear that it was twofold our approach to assessing these schools. One was just the conditions of the school themselves right and so Burley as an example you know it's had different vintages of additions and renovations it's also challenging in terms of how you navigate through that building there are a lot of ramps and there are a lot of exits that take you to multiple levels of the

[02:07:07] site so that was assessed in conjunction with taking a look at Burley's current programming how each classroom is identified and then discerning you know where are where is burley deficient in terms of maybe what videoe might recommend as guidelines or what we have kind of developed as an ideal program for a future middle school so i think in conjunction with both of those just vetting you know how does burley stack up against those those things in terms of just

[02:07:45] standards of how educational programming works i think i think they're that's to be determined for each school based on their current needs and how they're allocating their classrooms did i answer your question well having a middle school study has been on our cip for years so i'm glad to have it finally done um i think i know the answer to this but do we have the demand at lab school to

[02:08:15] add 200 seats okay um on that question i i was curious why we can't meet capacity at lab school now right it's like set at 240 but we have it at 205 or maybe i'm reading your charts wrong or are we at 205 for middle school or lab school that's a good question we'll have to come back with you okay on that data thank you as part of this did you do an ada compliance um overview

[02:08:55] scope but not with the right audit i guess would be the right word um and do you have any of those details or could you share those details at a later date we could share with you at a later date we did have that in mind as we went through each school i think again burley is a good example of one that is a little challenging but with each proposal and you'll see in some of the narratives each of these proposals recommends some level of bringing the building up to compliance

[02:09:30] with local codes local ada and so those are factored in to each of these scopes in terms of cost and that may look different from school to school just based on what we've uncovered the cost of the new middle school of what 150 million is that includes playing fields and land acquisition and everything so probably not land yeah that's what I was wondering about and so that does include though so these are project costs which

[02:10:09] includes the hard construction costs of each project plus soft costs which would be a design fees and then any other owner carried costs and that also includes site and construction costs but I was just looking at that price tag because i know we we talked about a new high school several years ago and this is quite a bit more than that was that's right so the other thing to note the other thing to note is that all of these numbers that you see on the screen were priced in 2023 dollars right and then they were

[02:10:41] escalated out over you know 5.25 per year escalation right so these are just taking a current cost and then applying a value to it and it could be pretty shocking but that's where those numbers are coming from it's just very useful in terms of planning and thinking about capital going forward i mean right now we have these two two schools in the works and one going to be in the planning stages in the next couple but um all of these all of this data is very useful um what's

[02:11:18] the rationale behind having the redistricting study in 2032 why so far out so that the discussions around redistricting you know we looked at a lot of different avenues we could take for handling capacity of course redistricting is one of them looking at feeder patterns and moving boundaries the thought was rather than outright just propose that we should look at a number of different combinations of renovations additions you know another way to handle increasing capacity is just

[02:11:57] to continue to build on to your existing schools you could do that at henley you can do that a journey right so particularly for walton considering that the enrollments the projected enrollments there are so low compared to its capacity the priority for walton being a kind of a second phase centered around discussions about can we improve walton and also consider a redistricting study that would look at increasing its enrollments through redistricting from for the sake of of

[02:12:34] equity and parity so a redistricting study was what we we placed there based on the recommendations of acps to discern you know is this the right thing to do and that's something you can decide you know when you get there this is how we want to handle additions and renovations at walton and you know with that redistricting study and additions and renovations you would be improving walton maybe proving that improving it to the point where there's a desire for that enrollment to increase naturally but also through a redistricting study discern is this the right thing to do it would obviously be a redistricting study centered around any middle

[02:13:11] school in the fiscal year 10. So Matt, are we to just accept this as information? What do you need from us? That's correct. There's no action warranted. It's just it's a study that was conducted for the board to receive as information. Okay, and if I could chime in on process and next steps. At the October business meeting, we are bringing an update recommendation for CIP. It is long-range planning does a biannual report, so we're in the off year of that, so they will not

[02:13:48] have a full report, but we will have an update to our CIP. So our plan based on feedback tonight is to incorporate these recommendations into that CIP. You will likely see similar timing on phase phases one, two, and three. We are having some staff conversations around phase four. The request and the recommendation on staff is actually to move those forward. There's existing needs at Burley and all the schools and there's no reason other than funding to do them more concurrently with the capacity project. So that's probably the only change that you'll see from this plan to our CIP

[02:14:26] recommendations. At that point, that's what you will need to approve and act on is the overall CIP recommendation, which will incorporate these. Great. Thank you. All right. Thanks very much. If I could too, I just want to give a shout out to Lisa Walker on her staff. She was actually going going to be here this evening unfortunately she's she's ill but she's been the point person that's really kind of spearheaded this this this effort for the last year and a half really so just want to give kudos and shout out to her this is really a great study thank you thank you certainly hope that the general assembly can pass a bill to help us fund some of this that will actually get through

[02:15:04] the governor thank you dedicated sales tax and then matt is back for building service updates Hello again. I'm really excited to be able to be here tonight to give you our annual summer update. This is always an exciting report to be able to give and to celebrate the great work our team has done. As Ben and John both eloquently said, everything we do is read it in our mission and vision and our strategic plan. Really kind of centered around goal 3, but I really think, as John really put

[02:15:44] really well I think the work we do really does have a huge impact on the other goals and making big strides to ensure that we're engaging and allowing for our students to really thrive all right so summer projects I should say to some of these are really the last fiscal year because some of these we were able to actually get done during the school year but of course we have our annual roof replacements projects every year we tackled three this year at Ivy Elementary, Burley Middle School, and Monticello High School. You can see we're just talking about our middle school so you can you can see really there we can

[02:16:23] actually see the leading edge flags up and so we really kind of did this whole section as well as this lower section and the annex just out of frame. So really extensive summer summer re-roofing program this this year. Lots of HVAC upgrades and replacements. You can see the list of schools there. We're in a period of our HVAC replacement program where a lot of these rooftop units are coming due for replacement. They've got a life expectancy of about 20 to 25 years and so we're just every year we're trying to get through as many as we can

[02:16:59] and in the process trying to upgrade and improve the efficiency from over existing systems in light of our sustainability efforts. But we have a lot of these these units that are coming due for replacement so we're trying to get through them as best we can um and we'll have a lot more next summer too um as we do every year we we renovate bathrooms um uh so this year we we were at greer um you could see there a nice uh nice new tile work uh new partitions uh really kind of i should have put it before photo i apologize but um huge

[02:17:34] improvement uh from from from before so um it looks it looks really nice it turned out well - Great. - That's right. Lots of athletics upgrades over the last year. You'll recall a year ago, we replaced Monticello's turf field.

[02:17:52] So between the football and fall and spring sports this year, we replaced the turf fields at Albemarle and Western. I'll just say too, anecdotally, we went with a different infield product this year in light of our sustainability efforts.

[02:18:09] A lot of turf fields are a chrome rubber. actually went with a natural product it's called Brockville it's like a fibrous material a natural product so it's a little bit softer and more sustainable and the other great thing that it does it actually reduces the heat on the field and so last last fall when Monticello was the only school that had this new product they were actually having football practice days on days where the other schools couldn't because of the heat on the field and so there's there's a a lot of really great benefits to these fields that and upgrades that we were able to make and

[02:18:47] of course we resurfaced the track out at Western this summer this is this is a progress shot so you can you can obviously see the line work wasn't painted when we took this photo but that'll be a great improvement for the track and field program out at Western Albemarle. Electrical upgrades we installed there on the right you see Hollymead's new generator at this point we only have one more school remaining that does not have backup of emergent life safety power. That's Burley, so that's the next school on our list, and then we will be going into replacement period of cycle. So

[02:19:27] we're getting really close to having backup power at all of our schools. The lead time on generators is still insane. It's about nearly two years from the time you order, believe it or not. So these are lengthy projects to implement. We also replaced the switchgear at Red Hill this summer. You can see that there on the left and that'll really kind of provide better more consistent power capabilities at that school. Western parking expansion. This was a this is actually outside the CIP Maintenance Fund. This was a separately funded project by the Board of

[02:20:04] Supervisors in response to requests that you all made. So we were able to get that work done. you can see the extension there from from the parking that was previously existing we added 50 i'm sorry i should look this up i think it's 52 or 54 spaces and here's just a few other close-ups we do still have a little bit of ongoing work for the stormwater detention pond but that work is expected to be completed in the next two to three weeks the parking lot is available for use however as we do every summer several building updates throughout all of our facilities

[02:20:42] lots of flooring and painting updates. We made a pretty heavy push at Stony Point this past year. You may recall a year ago when we presented our facility, internal facility condition assessment for all of our elementary schools, that Stony Point was the lowest scoring school on that list.

[02:21:05] And so we tried to do as much as we could at that facility with the funds available to us to at least try to make a small dent in the needs there. Just to give you a quick financial summary of the work that our team did. Again, this is fiscal year, the last fiscal year, so not necessarily just summer, but we implemented $13.9 million worth of work in all of our facilities. You can see the feeder pattern breakdown there.

[02:21:41] Approximately 9% or $1.23 million was in our Title I schools, and nearly $1 million went towards our transformation schools. And just to give you a few quick operational updates, as we do every summer, our custodial team waxed over 1.2 million square feet of floors in the 9 to 10-week period.

[02:22:07] In the last fiscal year, our maintenance team completed almost 7,500 work orders, and in summer alone we completed nearly 1,800 work orders and you can see in that pie chart there on the right the breakdown of how those work orders shook out. And of course our ongoing projects we are continuing to work on Mountain View Upper Elementary School, High School Center 2 and the Albemarle High School second floor corridor addition. I did want to provide one brief update to the board and I think an email may have gone out to the board but just so the public

[02:22:43] is also aware we did have to delay this project by one year the unfortunate reason for that was just due to timing relative to when we could get steel for the project and we have some really tight deadlines that need to occur in order to build this addition over an occupied facility and we just simply could not get the steel in time to get that done this past summer so we've unfortunately had to delay that the start of that work until next summer but And doing so I think we'll be better prepared, better equipped and we'll be able to rock and roll with it next summer.

[02:23:19] Those create a few complexities with high school center too that will be going on, but we have a great team and are working through that. And I feel confident that we'll be successful. So with that, I just wanna say thank you for your support. And then this is our capital team.

[02:23:35] All this work is really done by these folks. We've got a great team of people, our custodians, our maintenance crew, everybody works really hard the summer to make our schools look great and I think they did a fantastic job our schools schools looked excellent on day one so with that I'm happy to answer any questions you might have the parking lot at Western has really improved traffic flow significantly so I don't know if that was an intended bonus or not but it has made the traffic there much much easier to get in and

[02:24:10] out during the day so that has been really nice and the track is also really fantastic so throwing that out there great job my question is on the parking lot too um compared to the building where is the parking lot located up on the highway or you know on 250 or where yeah so let me go back to that slide see if i can point it out from the photo see that's it right there so two uh so this we're taking this photo from the roof of the building actually so you could see it so it's looking back towards 250 you can it's connected to the old senior

[02:24:49] lot yes so you there's kind of a drive-through now when you're coming in from 250 you can pull into the to the new lot and it connects to the old lot so it basically creates a loop for parents that are picking up their kids and seniors leaving it's made it a lot easier to get out in the afternoon okay you'll see okay thanks i was just gonna say thank you and your team for all the hard work i almost have this picture that like that bell rings and the buses leave on the last day of school and you guys all like jump to action and are like okay it's time to work that does happen they're like

[02:25:25] the santa's elves that like rappel down literally that's i have this picture oh go ahead i was just gonna say the schools look great so oh uh thank you very much for your work and um thank you to everyone in building services too. So with the Albemarle High School addition next year, so is that something that we should be considering when we consider calendar, the calendar for the next school year? Is that going to take as much time basically like start of summer when the elves repel in to very like to the

[02:26:02] start of? Yeah I appreciate the question and I know the calendar committee is is underway. Our position is, yes, we need all the time we can get. OK. Questions, comments? Thank you, Matt. Thanks very much, Matt.

[02:26:17] Thank you. All right, next we have other business by board members and superintendent. I know that, Dr. Berlin, you have an item. I do, Chair Lee. I have a letter that I would like to read, if I can. And then I'd like to move that we take a board vote on it, if you think that's appropriate.

[02:26:37] Since you sent it out ahead of time, I think we could probably go ahead and take the vote. - Perfect. - And then you can read and-- - Perfect, perfect. - Make a motion. - Perfect. I would like to make a motion to send a letter to the members of the Virginia DOE, families and community members about the board's, a statement of the board's feelings on the DOE's new school performance and improvement system.

[02:27:02] - Second. - Moved by Dr. Berlin, seconded by Ms. Spillman. Is there any discussion on this? - All right, all those in favor? - Aye. - Aye. - Not opposed, all right, please read.

[02:27:19] - Dear members of the Virginia Department of Education, families and community partners, the Virginia Department of Education's new school performance and improvement system, which was introduced earlier this summer, places significant emphasis on standardized test scores and graduation rates as key indicators of school performance.

[02:27:36] According to state officials, these measures aim to hold schools to higher educational standards and enhance accountability as detailed in the department's announcement. While the Albemarle County Public School Board agrees that accountability is essential, we have concerns that the new measures may fail to support students who require additional time and resources to achieve academic success, particularly students facing language barriers, disabilities, or other learning challenges.

[02:28:04] We are especially concerned with the on-track and off-track summative categories. With data modeling based on the 23-24 school year, the new framework suggests that over 55 of Virginia schools are either classified as off-track or need intensive support.

[02:28:19] While the school board firmly believes that all schools have room for improvement to ensure that every student can grow and thrive, both academically and social emotionally, we find the claim that over half the schools in our state and likely in our district fall into these two categories, difficult to imagine.

[02:28:35] We share the concern recently raised by the Virginia Association of School Superintendents that the state must take additional time to perform more accurate data modeling, which would fairly represent the true performance of the state schools. The current framework, as it stands, does not consider important variables and risks categorizing schools too harshly without the necessary context or support.

[02:28:58] Albemarle County Schools, like many districts across Virginia, has seen an increase in the number of ELL students enrolling in our schools. These students bring meaningful linguistic and cultural diversity to our classrooms, enriching the educational experience for all.

[02:29:13] However, these students also deserve both support and time to acclimate to our education system for which the current framework does not allow. We are also particularly concerned with two specific changes, the reduction of English language learner semester guidance from 11 semesters to just three semesters, and the reduction of the minimum end size to the student group identification under the ESSA, from 30 students to 15 students.

[02:29:41] These reductions will identify more schools as needing support due to lower achievement and/or test participation, yet no additional state resource have been allocated to help schools meet these increasing demands. We urge the Virginia Department of Education to revisit these changes and take time to refine this new framework, ensuring it's not only rigorous but fair and supportive of the diverse needs of all students.

[02:30:04] Accountability is vital, but it must be balanced with an understanding of our challenges our schools and students face. Without this balance, we risk failing that very students this framework aims to uplift. Thank you for your time and attention to this matter. We look forward to continued dialogue and collaboration to ensure that our schools remain places where all students can succeed.

[02:30:24] The Algemar County School Board. - Hear, hear. Thanks very much Dr. Rowland for bringing that forward. Are there any other board business? Nope. All right, we're adjourned. Thank you.

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