Coraggio Consulting
Albemarle County School Board Regular Meeting, Thursday, July 10, 2025

Date: Thursday, July 10, 2025
Place: Albemarle County Public Schools / School Board meeting, Virginia
Length: 1h 31m (video)
Official meeting video (YouTube): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OLUCkvNasEY

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

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[00:00:07] Good evening, everyone. This meeting, July 10th, 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, and considered in the closed meeting.

[00:00:33] Second. Motion made by Ms. Spillman, seconded by Ms. Lee. Ms. Thompson, can you call the vote? Mr. Page is absent this evening. Ms. Lee? Yes. Dr. Berlin? Yes. Ms. Osborne? Yes. Ms. Spillman?

[00:00:49] Yes. Ms. Pryor? Yes. Chair Acuff? Yes. Motion passes. Next, roll call. Let's identify ourselves so people at home can know which voice attaches. Rosalind Schmidt, Chief Operating Officer.

[00:01:05] Judy Lee, Rivanna District. Allison Spillman, At-Large Representative. Kate Acuff, Jack Jewett District. Rebecca Berlin, Whitehall. Ellen Osborne, Scottsville District. Leslie Pryor, Ryo District. Daphne Kaiser, Assistant Superintendent for School Community Engagement, sitting in for Dr. Haas, Superintendent.

[00:01:26] Josiah Black, School Division Counsel. Christine Thompson, Clerk of the School Board. Officer, do you want to identify yourself? Ray Lilly, Apple Campus Department. Thank you. Next, let's stand for the Pledge of Allegiance.

[00:01:57] We'll now pause for a moment of silence. Now, we have approval of the agenda.

[00:02:24] I move. We approve the agenda. I second. Motion made by Ms. Lee, seconded by Dr. Berlin. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Motion passes. Next item of business are announcements. First of all, school board and superintendent business. Do we have anything? Playing with your microphone, huh? Okay. Dr. Kizer. Good evening, Chair Acuff, Vice Chair Berlin and school board members. I'm pleased to provide an update.

[00:03:06] ACPS Summer Programming, which continues to offer a wide range of learning experiences designed to support student growth and engagement across the county. Our extended school year and high school courses, our ESY programming for select special education students is still underway and will continue through next week at Lakeside Middle School.

[00:03:33] Our high school students have been participating in initial credit courses, including Health and PE and new additions this year, English 12 and Government 12. Our K-8 Summer Program, our largest offering, the K-8 Summer Program, was redesigned this year to fit the shortened break and delivered over two weeks with extended daily hours.

[00:04:01] Approximately 900 students attended for at least one week, consistent with last year's participation. The Office of Instruction developed structured grade-level lesson plans for all K-8 classes, including a new Algebra Bridge curriculum aligned with the Bellwether recommendations to promote continuity and readiness.

[00:04:22] Lessons were interdisciplinary, incorporating hands-on science, art integration, and social studies connections. Initial teacher feedback has been positive, with most citing the clarity, relevance, and helpfulness of the provided materials.

[00:04:43] We are grateful to families, educators, and administrators who supported this effort, and we look forward to refining the model using feedback and fall performance data. Our Star Hill Pathways program, which is a collaboration with the Center for Community Partnerships at UVA, provides college exploration tutoring mentoring and other support to our students and these students are rising seventh graders through 11th and they

[00:05:22] provide support through high school graduation we had 269 students in grades 7 through 11 that participated in this year's Star Hill pathways with 192 from ACPS. 74% of the students are first-generation college-bound and 44% multilingual. Rising seventh through ninth graders spent two weeks on the UVA campus exploring career pathways and participating in wellness and college

[00:05:57] readiness programming and this was free of cost with transportation provided by ACPS. Our career exploration was led by partners including Computers for Kids, UVA Data Science, Charlottesville Ballet, Morvin Farm, and many more community partners. Rising 10th graders are completing paid internships through CAEP, which is the Community Attention Youth Internship Program, gaining hands-on experience at local businesses and rising 11th graders are engaged in

[00:06:36] college prep activities residential programs jobs and campus visits aligned with their career goals the M cubed Academy M cubed math men and mission summer Academy took place June 16th through the 27th at journey middle school the program supports algebra readiness for African American males and integrates academic, social, and leadership development.

[00:07:06] And you'll hear more about M-Cube during tonight's Spotlight on Education. Now in its 16th year, the NSBE, National Society of Black Engineers, NSBE Junior Pre-College Initiative Summer Academy is a longstanding collaboration between ACPS and UVA.

[00:07:29] The program engages students of all backgrounds in STEM learning, engineering, and leadership development over an intensive eight-week summer experience. The team this year would like to invite the school board members to the culminating student showcase on July 31 from 10:30 AM to 1 PM at the UVA Rice Hall, room 130.

[00:08:04] So those are all of our instructional updates. this time i'd like to do recognition of our student achievements this evening i'm honored to recognize several remarkable student achievements that exemplified the excellence determination and teamwork we see across albemarle county public schools first we celebrate neil handa who recently completed eighth grade at henley middle school in june neil was named the first place winner in the

[00:08:41] 2025 National Civics B Virginia State Finals that was held in Williamsburg, the National Civics B challenges middle school students to deepen their knowledge of civics, sharpen their critical thinking, and engage thoughtfully in exploring how they can help improve their communities. After winning a regional competition, Neil advanced to the state finals where he participated in multiple rounds of civic questions, presented his essay about the effects of excessive screen time

[00:09:16] on children's brains, and shared his ideas for helping students understand the risks and make healthier choices. His preparation, poise, and commitment to making a difference earned him Virginia's top honor. This November, he will compete at the national level in Washington, D.C.

[00:09:36] We commend Neil for this impressive accomplishment and for representing Henley and our division with such distinction. We also want to recognize that Neil is here tonight with his parents, Samir and Savita, along with his civics teacher, Pam Corey.

[00:09:58] If you would please stand. And Ms. Corey encouraged Neil to take part in the Civics B and helped ignite his interest in making a positive impact on his community.

[00:10:22] And so we thank you all for joining us this evening. Also in June, two Western Albemarle High School teams brought home state championships. On June 11th, the Western Albemarle girls soccer team captured the VHSL Class III State championship, completing a remarkable playoff run without conceding a single goal. After two consecutive years as state runner-ups, the team was determined to finish on top. In the championship

[00:10:59] game, goals by Chloe Gates and Sadie Bruton, along with a steadfast defensive performance led by goalkeeper Casey Walker and the Warriors' back line secured a 2-0 victory and the program's first state title in four years. The team was led by head coach Christy Bronston and assistant coach Eric Meyer. That same day, the Western Albemarle girls lacrosse team claimed their third consecutive

[00:11:32] VHSL Class 4 state championship. Facing a strong Rockbridge team, the Warriors broke open a close game with a second quarter surge. Goaltender Mazie McCarthy anchored the defense, while Annie Olson led the offense with five goals. Senior G.G. Hathaway added four goals as Western earned a 14-4 win, capping an extraordinary season in which the team lost only one game. The team was led by head

[00:12:09] coach Peggy Williams and assistant coach Jordan Dudley. Four Western Albemarle High School lacrosse players are here tonight. Gigi Hathaway, Maisie McCarthy, Ann Halson, and Millie Weger, along with their principal, Jen Sublet, if you would please stand. These accomplishments reflect not only the

[00:12:43] talent of our students but also their resilience commitment and sportsmanship on behalf of the school board and the superintendent's cabinet we extend our heartfelt congratulations to neohanda and the western albemar girls soccer and lacrosse teams and the dedicated coaches teachers and families who support them every step of the way so again congratulations to all of our students and I think we have one additional announcement okay Dr. Acuff from Ms. Smith yeah I just have a

[00:13:21] business item and this is not good news compared to all that exciting things I just wanted to give an update on federal funding as you know the bulk of our funding is both local and state but we do have a small percentage that's federal you've probably seen the headlines around some of the from the Department of Education cut.

[00:13:40] So unfortunately, with the exception of Title I, Part A, federal funding for the remaining title programs are being impounded or withheld from states. This funding typically flows through state agencies to local school divisions such as ours.

[00:13:57] And the VDOE informed us last month that they were only planning to review and approve the Title I, Part VIII grants per usual, so they would not be reviewing the remaining title program allocations. So that's Title 1C for Migrant Education, Title 2A for Professional Development, and 3 and 4, there's more than that.

[00:14:17] So what that means for us is that this impacts our budget by about $660,000. It's about six FTEs. The programs we typically apply for support migrant education, English learners, and teacher professional development, including some of our instructional coach positions.

[00:14:35] We also transfer some of the money for some intervention funding. It's our goal to maintain these programs, our field positions. We knew that this was a possibility, and so we're enacting our contingency plans, which include utilizing some budgeted contingency staffing.

[00:14:53] We hold back some staffing that we typically release for other needs. We'll be using that. We'll be increasing our reimbursement requests for Title I, and we'll also be increasing the central office. you know we're increasing the central office freeze pool so we're freezing positions there just taking advantage of some vacancies that we will not fill at this point because there's such uncertainty in federal funding in general we are not planning on touching our we have a federal reserve a federal revenue contingency fund and so that is not touched yet because there just

[00:15:26] remains a lot of uncertainty thank you mishmit and it it was a downer after dr kaiser's uh Accolades for our students. I just want to say on behalf of the entire school board. I really congratulate our student scholars and our student athletes You're the reason that we do this work. So bravo And I think Dr. Kaiser may have a second career as a sports announcer. I think she did a really good job with that

[00:15:59] But with that, thank you. Is there any other school board business? With that then we move on to the spotlight on education. All right, I'm up again Good evening again, Chair Acuff, Vice Chair of Berlin, and members of the school board.

[00:16:17] It's a privilege to shine tonight's spotlight on education on a program that exemplifies the power of mentorship, academic rigor, and culturally affirming education. M-Cubed Academy, supported by the 100 Black Men of Central Virginia, the mission of the 100 Black Men of Central Virginia is to improve the quality of life in our community by closing the achievement gap for African-American male students through meaningful mentorship and leadership. This summer, their impact has been powerfully evident through

[00:16:55] their support of scholars from Albemarle County Public Schools participating in the 2025 M-Cubed Summer Academy. M-Cubed, standing for Math, Men, and Mission, is a bold initiative designed to increase the number of African-American male students who enroll in and complete algebra while in middle school.

[00:17:19] The Academy offers more than just academic enrichment. It builds social and emotional intelligence, cultivates leadership, and nurtures confidence, all within an engaging, affirming, and intellectually stimulating environment.

[00:17:34] The M-Cube Summer Academy is rooted in a core belief. When learning is grounded in real-world challenges and culturally relevant content, it becomes meaningful, transformative, and enduring. Through this lens, M-Cube fosters not only academic readiness, particularly in algebra, but also cultivates self-advocacy and agency in every scholar. In addition to its summer component, M-Cube's year-round programming continues to provide safe, identity-affirming spaces where African-American males are empowered

[00:18:11] to strive, excel, and lead. We are honored to be joined this evening by several individuals who bring this powerful mission to life. We have Mr. James Watson, President of 100 Black Men of Central Virginia, and we have Dr. Pamela Venable, MQ program coordinator and educator at Walton Middle School, and along with several exceptional scholars-- Jacori and Amari Keyes, Tristan Holland, and Jude Dickerson.

[00:18:46] At this time, I would like to invite Mr. Watson, Dr. Venable, our M-Cube scholars, and special guests to come forward and share more about the transformative experiences and outcomes of the 2025 M-Cubed Summer Academy.

[00:19:14] Good evening, everyone. - Thank you for having us. Like Dr. Keiser said, my name is Pamela Venable and I am an educator at Walton Middle School. The presentation that you have in front of you is just for your perusal, for you to read at any other time.

[00:19:34] I just wanted to make a general comment and then I want to turn this session over to the young people that participated in the summer program because they are the reason that we're here, right.

[00:19:49] With that said, there was one young man. Oh, big into the mic. Okay, and there's one young man, Jude Dickerson. He could not be here. And he shared an email with me to share with you guys. And I've asked Xavier Watson, another one of our participants, to be a part of the conversation.

[00:20:11] But as Dr. Kaiser noted, We had an awesome summer program. And some of the things that the students engaged in, other than the academics, was we had a Juneteenth cookout.

[00:20:27] We visited Ivy Creek Farm. There were a lot of hands-on art and math activities as a participation point for that day. The kente scarves, the Juneteenth flags, identifying with their heritage and their culture.

[00:20:45] had stem labs uh mr trey barlow did an awesome job with the stem labs with our students uh as well as we had book talks and again uh miss barnes lenica barnes i want to say lenica i know she's a science teacher at albemarle high school right uh she does the literacy piece for us uh just amazing book selection we had book talks we had challenges for both literacy and math and then we had some amazing presenters to present to our scholars Mary Coleman of the Red Cross came in and shared about blood donation and the misconceptions and myths that

[00:21:25] are tied to donating blood and then sickle cell awareness Michael Carter of Carter Farms if you've never heard of Carter Farms you got to check it out very unique farming methodology black farmer he shared with our young people Mr. Darryl Rose, African Drumming Sensation. He came and he spent several hours with us during our Juneteenth celebration. Dr. Shaheed Muhammad out of Chicago, Illinois. He's called the math doctor. Google him. It was just an amazing presentation and he clarified and brought home to

[00:22:03] our young men the fact that math is in everything. Life, death, everything that you do there, you can find math in it. And then we had Dr. Gomez, Jose Gomez, a retired structural engineer that has been coming for years and sharing with our young men. Ms. Deja Paschal of WeGrow shared her business and then the idea of entrepreneurship, as well as a contingency.

[00:22:32] We had Community Day, and I'm going to let these guys tell you about it. We had Community Day where they met community leaders that came in and shared their experiences and who they were with our scholars, right? So this is for you guys. The other thing that I'm going to share and then I'm going to call them up to share with you, these young men, the comments from Jude Dickerson and this is me reading for him. Good evening, my name is Jude Dickerson and I am a rising fifth grader at Mountain View Elementary School. I had a great experience at M-Cube this

[00:23:08] summer. We did a lot of things such as math challenges and literacy practice that I think will help me in my fifth grade year. We also read two books, one called I Am Every Good Thing and The Holler of the Fireflies. I think I Am Every Good Thing is a good confidence booster for young black boys like me. My teacher this summer was Mrs. Muhammad, and she taught us about black mathematicians like Benjamin Banneker, and she also taught us about the order of operations in math.

[00:23:38] Once again, I think that this will really help me next year and in the future. I would like to thank the 100 black men of Central Virginia for having M-Cube, and I'm looking forward to participating next year. Next up, I'd like to ask Jacory Keyes and his brother Amari to come, and Jacory is a rising seventh grader. Right, Jacory, I got it right? Yeah, I got it right. And his younger brother, his first time this year, is a rising fifth grader, but Jacory is going to come

[00:24:08] and share. Good evening, everyone. My name is Jacory Keyes, and I'm a rising seventh grader at Lakeside Middle School. This was my third year attending the M-Cubed Academy and my experience at it was great. This academy made me feel welcome and even though you do a lot of math in the academy you do a lot of fun stuff like building rubber band cars in STEM. You also get to flip water

[00:24:41] bottles and solve proportions to see how much milliliters is the best for flipping. It helped the academy helped me um they've made me feel welcome and it impacted my education a lot and it also impacted me becoming a better person it made me feel confident and prepared me for next year and to this year my brother amari keys got to attend the academy and i'm glad that he gets

[00:25:13] to experience the same stuff that i experienced for the last three years and yeah that's a lot and this is amari i don't i don't know if you learned to be poised in in your time at m cubed or you came with it naturally but you did a lovely job so i'm like yes he did amazing right my first year at m cube jacore it was my first year in his first year we were together and he

[00:25:48] was shy kind of like his brother is right now and so for him to come before you all tonight is like yeah that's the impact and so what i'd like to do is do the order and then just let them flow so uh next up we're gonna have let's see tristan holland and then following tristan we're gonna have xavier watson right uh the two young men yes yes um and then um when the young men uh are no longer participants in the classroom they age out but they come back and they give

[00:26:22] their time and practice leadership and um previous summers we called them ta teachers assistants but this summer we switched it up and they're coaches they're instructional coaches they're coaches and so they're coaching and modeling for the young men that are part of the program right and so we have two young men with us tonight uh dalen and bradley um they've been with the program as a participant and now they're coaches or they were coaches and i'm going to ask our president to wrap us up right

[00:26:54] in that order y'all ready and any of the speakers were not scary i promise hello my name is tristan holland and i'm a rising seventh grader going to burleigh middle school and i really liked mqs for my first year because not only did it teach me a lot of math it taught me how to communicate with all my friends and really i learned a lot of things that can really prepare me for seventh grade and my teachers were great especially my coaches they really uh inspired me to do things

[00:27:28] when i get older and i'm ready to participate this camp for next year outstanding thank you

[00:27:48] my name is xavier watson um i'm a rising sixth grader i'm going to walker upper elementary school so i'm in the trussell city schools um i was in mr barnes class this year and we built um stadium out of cardboard and we made like juneteenth flags for juneteenth and then we did a field trip to this farm and we shared our flags and then we had like a tour guide and we also learned about

[00:28:24] PEMDAS and fractions and Mr. Barnes class and foil I think. You will if you go back next year. Thank you. My name is Dalen. I'm a teacher assistant or a coach at M-Cubed. I just wrapped up my fifth year there with the program. Being a student at M-Cubed has taught me to try my hardest academically and I've looked forward to every single year, especially being a student.

[00:29:05] and uh being a coach has really taught me to you know have a voice and it's taught me leadership and to you know really look out for my little brother this year and mqed uh but yeah that's pretty much all i have to say thank you thank you hello my name is bradley smith i'm also a coach it's my rising senior year at albemarle i'm gonna get a little sad with y'all when my parents

[00:29:37] separated i was kind of lost i didn't really know what i was doing it's really angry at the world But kind of what got me back on track was one of my teachers, Ms. Muhammad, at M-Cubed, actually, along with Mr. Sparks.

[00:30:02] They really helped guide me and set me on a better path for my life, where I was going. Amazing. Thank you. Thank you for sharing. Good evening. How's everybody doing? Great.

[00:30:18] My name is James Watson. I'm the president of the 100 Black Men of Central Virginia. I thank you all so much for being so greatly supportive, offering the Journey School. It's been a wonderful building. The first year we had to figure out the ins and outs. We had the lab school, which was also offered up by you all, so we appreciate that as well.

[00:30:39] I'm the president of the 100 Black Men, but I'm also a longtime community member. I'm also a parent. Xavier's my son. I've got a daughter that already went to the schools in the city. Dr. Kaiser was her principal many years ago. And, you know, one of the things I love about this opportunity is it actually brings the city and the county together, right?

[00:30:57] There's not a lot of times around here where kids get to be in an academic space, not on a football field or a basketball court, but a time where they all come together. And it's a very diverse mix, right? Because you have kids from the rural parts of Albemarle County.

[00:31:13] You have kids from the city. You have kids from Cherry Avenue. Everybody's in one place for that two weeks. And it's kind of like an experiment to some degree because it really forces everybody to kind of figure it out, how to get along, how to meet, you know, somebody from a totally different part, you know, totally different background.

[00:31:32] And the beauty of that, too, is we have that we have the coaches, right? They've been around. We have some young men that have been part of the program for seven and eight years. We have college students that come back. I mean, it's really phenomenal. Now, one of the things, so the neighborhood that we live in is actually a hybrid neighborhood.

[00:31:51] So half of the kids in my neighborhood is called Lachlan Hill. They go to county schools and the other half go to city schools, right? So your best friend can go to Agner Hurt and you can go to Greenbrier. And you can be 50 yards away from that other young person, right?

[00:32:07] Now, one of the things I noticed over the years is people really love Greenbrier in the city of Shaw. They love the school, right? And they love Agner Hurt, too. And we've done a lot of work in both schools, volunteer work, over the last few years. And when I look around, they are wonderful schools, but there's not one black male teacher in either one of those schools.

[00:32:27] No matter how many awards Greenbrier has won and it deserves, but there's no black male teachers. So these young men behind me who are all superstars, chances are if they didn't spend the time in M-Cube, they would go all the way through 12th grade and never have one male teacher that looks like them.

[00:32:45] Whereas my son, who had the great Mr. Chris Barnes, right, this summer has already had a couple of black male teachers and a STEM teacher as well, Mr. Barlow. So, I mean, they're really getting a magnificent experience. I went to the 100 Black Men National Conference a few weeks ago, and really there's nobody in this country that's doing what we're doing with this program.

[00:33:09] So, it's really special. I'm proud of all these guys. I hope they do well because one day I'm going to need to retire. So hopefully they look out for me when that time comes. But they're all incredible. Every day there's so much to learn. And, again, it's an unusual experience.

[00:33:26] It's not UVA basketball camp. You know, it really is an academy. I've compared it to Hogwarts because the young men get to go to a place where they see people like them that are interested in the things they're interested in and they can be themselves.

[00:33:41] that's not always the case you know in the traditional public school setting so i thank you all for your continued support for many years this was our 17th uh mq which we're an all-volunteer organization for the most part so i mean it's just amazing and i'm thankful to be a part of it and i thank you again for your support and y'all have a great night thank you bye-bye thank you do we have any questions from the school board just does anyone have any questions or or comments. I would just like to ask the youngest student if he just wanted to say hello. He didn't

[00:34:18] have to do anything else, but we would love to hear his voice. Hello, my name is Amaro Keys. I go to Bagelbello Elementary School and then when I'm in sixth grade just like my brother Jaquari, I'll be in the same school he is in Lakeside. I'm 10 years old and I like math and stuff and I feel like this academy is very good for me because I learned a lot of new stuff and old stuff that I might have

[00:34:51] forgotten and there was a lot of cool stuff I did like make a board house or create things with Legos or make a rubber band card just like my brother. So overall I feel thankful that I was invited to this academy. Outstanding. Thank you. That's not shy at all. I'm going to have to challenge you on a rubber band car sometime. I won a physics award a million years ago for my rubber band car, so I'm going to challenge you guys. Maybe I'll come next summer and you can show

[00:35:26] me. Did you have any other questions? Just a comment. It seems that your students, the members of the academy, learn a lot more than math. They do. We have Circle of Brothers, and I shared it's called a magic movie that one of our administrative workers put together, and it's a series of pictures. I shared it, and maybe Dr. Kaiser, you could share it with him. It's just a bunch of pictures or a series of pictures of some of the events or some of the things that

[00:36:00] we did together during our Circle of Brothers. At the end of the day, we have a teacher. Let's see. Mr. Smith is Monticello. There we go. Brain Freeze. He led our Circle of Brothers, in the circle of brothers is a time where they come together and they have a conversation about their day. They learn team building skills. They learn how to have a conversation and they share out. But they also have an opportunity to write. What I read to you guys

[00:36:39] from Jude Dickerson is what he wrote. It's not something that we put together. And then they do literacy challenges where they're required to. Then this summer they worked in teams we did a count off and so it was mixed groups and the math challenges were created by shantron simpson she's a teacher in charlottesville city multi-level it wasn't just you know something simple they had to apply the math that they were learning it was very real realistic real world you're going on a vacation you have enough gas to get to a b and c but oh wait a

[00:37:19] minute your gas budget is reduced by 20 percent how much money do you have how much gas can you buy and of these places which one can you get to right and then it had opportunities to team bill and during our lunch and learn that's when our speakers would come in and we would have conversations about being a listener and then asking questions and a lot of times they would write their questions before the speaker would come so again we could have a

[00:37:52] conversation and so they had incentives some of the opportunities they were given incentives for and then other ones it was just a conversation I thought it was pretty awesome during community day we had community leaders from all walks of life young more mature I'm not gonna call them old right yet season right people from all young men black men from just different fields and the young men had an opportunity to sit down and have

[00:38:31] a meal and have conversations and it wasn't you know after they introduced themselves they had conversations so learning how to speak and engage in a conversation and then our closing ceremony is held at the Doubletree. Again, sometimes our young people, and I found this to be true just speaking to one of the young people that worked as an administrative assistant, a young lady, she was 18 years old and she had never been to King's Dominion. She has never traveled outside of the state of Virginia, outside of 50 miles away from home, and she's in college now.

[00:39:10] but sometimes they don't have opportunities to go out and do fine dining sit at a table with a tablecloth and it has silverware and a place setting and so again our coaches Bradley and Daylin and all of the other young men who have been through the program they sit with their scholars and they school them they model for them they assist them with you know here's how you do this so it's it's important that social piece because a lot of times our young people don't

[00:39:45] get it and if we don't provide it who will right right thank you all so much and thank you for the important work that you do and the partnership you have with albemarle county public schools it sounds like you're really building a network of people that will go across time thank you thank you thank you thank you so much the next item on our agenda is our public comment

[00:40:18] ms osborne yes we welcome public input at our school board meetings to sign up to speak during the public comment period you can do so in several ways you can do it online sign up is available from 9 a.m on the monday of the meeting week until 2 p.m on the meeting day or by phone call the school board clerk's office to sign up until 2 pm on the meeting day or in person you can sign up at the meeting that's available from 6 pm until the public comment period starts please note that public comment is not received at special board meetings unless specified on the agenda each

[00:40:57] speaker will have three minutes to speak the maximal number of groups or people that may speak at a meeting is 20. in the event there are more than 20 each speaker will be assigned a number and numbers will be drawn to determine which will have the opportunity to speak those who do not have the opportunity may sign up to speak at a subsequent meeting and or may submit written comments for the school board's consideration speakers should state their name address or voting district address comments to the school board as a whole limit comments to school board governance

[00:41:36] or school division operations provide written statements and supporting material to the clerk the school board will use a timer to track each speaker's time once the time is up speakers are asked to wrap up their comments maintain respect please refrain from clapping or other audible forms of support you may raise your hand instead and debate with the school board is not allowed and the projection system is for staff presentations only tonight we just have one speaker uh jennifer

[00:42:09] Price. Hello, my name is Jennifer Price. My address is 2549 Bybies Church Road, Palmyra, Virginia.

[00:42:25] I worked as a long-term substitute at Albemarle High School this spring for more than three months. I've also taught part-time at many colleges and universities in Virginia for more than 12 years. I'm here today to voice my opinion in opposition of the 50% grading rule in Albemarle County.

[00:42:44] This rule is harmful to student motivation. Many of my students chose not to participate in some assignments because they knew that missing several assignments would have a minimal effect on their grades. Some avoided assignments that built specific skills that they disliked, and some avoided learning topics that were not their favorites.

[00:43:06] Some did well in the first half of the class and then avoided doing anything at all later in the later half of the course. Others picked the easiest assignments and avoided doing anything challenging. This rule makes it easy for students to pass a class while only mastering or even attempting a few of many topics that are covered in the course.

[00:43:28] It discourages student participation and reduces learning. It is particularly harmful when students take sequential courses that build upon previous coursework. if a student takes algebra one and doesn't learn the concepts from the second half of the class they're not prepared for the work in algebra 2. virginia was recently ranked last in the nation for covid recovery and math scores meaning that we are further behind where we were in 2019 than

[00:44:00] any other state or district of columbia in reading we ranked 41st out of 51 states there's no doubt in my mind that the implementation of a 50 percent rule in many districts and our slowness to influence and enforce cell phone restrictions have played a part in our poor response to the COVID crisis. Students are also coming to college less and less prepared for rigorous academic work and I'm sure that low expectations in high school have been a contributing factor to this phenomenon.

[00:44:34] the 50 rule also hurt students who plan to enter the workforce right after high school if they're not used to meeting the expectations from a teacher they may not be disciplined enough to complete all important tasks on the job employers are now often hesitant to hire young people due to consistent declines in motivation and job performance in the younger generations teacher turnover is high and morale has been low since the pandemic the number one complaint i I heard from other teachers at Albemarle was regarding this rule and its effect on motivation.

[00:45:12] I'm taking a high school teaching position next year in a district that does not use this rule. Let's do our teachers and students a favor and raise our standards by eliminating this damaging practice. Thank you. Thank you.

[00:45:28] That concludes public comment. Thank you, Ms. Osborne. Next on the agenda is approval of the consent agenda. I move we approve the consent agenda. I would actually like to pull 6.3 for further discussion outside of this meeting.

[00:45:49] I have concerns over spending close to $6 million over nine years, but also it's committing to our center model for the next nine years, and I would like to further discuss that before we finalize this. Okay.

[00:46:08] Ms. Schmidt, what is the timetable for the lease? The lease is set to expire July 31 of this month, so you don't have another meeting before that lease expires. The lease itself, I'll just remind you, the school is a small portion of it.

[00:46:28] It's our entire technology department and child nutrition and EDP offices as well. Okay. So we're committed to, we're going to keep all of that there for the next nine years by signing this lease.

[00:46:44] You're committed to leasing that space. Leasing that space for $6 million for the next nine years. Okay. Well, I mean, I'm still opposed to it, but I mean, I don't know if it's worth pulling it, but it's a lot of money and it seems to, it would, when we're trying to do all these capital improvement projects, I don't know. Anyone help? Any other comments? I mean, we need, we need the space. We need some space. I mean, the issue is for me, I mean, is it possible to write a shorter

[00:47:22] term lease or these best terms we get because we're willing to sign the length of this lease? If you look at the square footage, I did the calculation, I've totally forgotten it, but you know, the per square foot cost is pretty low. I mean, it's about $13 a foot.

[00:47:42] I don't know that number off the top of my head. Well, $600,000 divided by $42,000. When we initially signed the lease back in 2018, we did a property search and it was the best option at the time, both location and financial.

[00:48:01] So I can't speak to the square footage costs. - It's just a division, yeah. - The length of the lease also matches the length of the lease we have for the building services location in the same building. Yes, we have a lot of capital needs. I would say our perpetual year 10 capital project has always been an additional administration office.

[00:48:22] It's hard to rank that above school needs. And so, but we do have a functional need for office spaces. So there's not an alternative a lot of those people at this point which is why we're in a i agree with you i've loved building and capital and not and be in lease space but that's our if we did we look at other options now to see if this was the best space and the best like the most cost effective we did not the space right now is working for us we put a lot of investment in it um we just moved building services to it if i may interject two brief comments one i was not involved in the negotiation

[00:48:59] of the lease, but it is generally true that there's a trade-off between cost and length of term. The landlord gives you more favorable terms the longer you're willing to commit. When I reviewed a draft of the lease, I noticed that it did not have very broad subleasing rights for the school division.

[00:49:20] So one change that we negotiated is to give us more flexibility if it turned out the school board decided we wanted to go a different direction and didn't need quite as much space. do have uh flexibility to sublease all or part of that space all right i guess we can not pull it then what what are the lures lease termination provisions if we sign this nine-year lease is there a way out if we decide to go a different direction other than subleasing it no i mean okay

[00:49:55] if the landlord is in reach of course we have right right certain rights i agree it's not ideal space um but we've not been able as ms schmidt noted we've not been able to get the financing to build another structure or expand spaces for these other functions and the space is pretty heavily utilized beyond the center the student part as well so ms schmidt do you know what

[00:50:29] percentage of the space covered by this lease is occupied by center one versus used for other purposes i don't know off the top of my head i when i said a small portion i was combining the building services which is a separate lease from this um i don't know either i mean it's in here as extending the lease for center one for the ace academy right so yeah we refer to that whole complex that way um but it's our entire technology department our pd spaces those two large meeting rooms on then on the second i'm in the first floor it's child nutrition and edp as

[00:51:04] well i don't i don't know the square footage the total square footage is yeah 42 000 yeah and what the whole part. And I would say if we if for whatever reason we don't use it for a school I think there's other needs a space too. We could get rid of a lot of trailers perhaps that we use for other functions. So Ms. Spillman do you withdraw your begrudgingly yes. Noted.

[00:51:36] All those in favor then of approval of the consent agenda? Dr. Acuff. Pardon? We need a second. We need a second. We had a motion by Ms. Lee. We need a second. We do need a second. Second. Thank you, Ms. Thompson. Motion made by Ms. Lee, seconded by Ms. Osborne. Do we need a roll call for this? I think your voice would be fine. Pardon? I'm sorry. Voice void. All those in favor?

[00:52:06] Even reluctantly? Yes. All those opposed? No. Motion passes. Thank you. Thank you for raising the issue. The next item of business, we have a break on the agenda. Do we want to take a 10-minute break, or shall we charge ahead and get out early?

[00:52:24] Pardon? We're going forward, but... That's fine. Let's go forward. Let's charge ahead. Then the next item on our agenda is an update from Ms. Jamie Gellner about our transportation department.

[00:52:43] MS. Good evening.

[00:53:05] How's everybody doing? MS. Good, thank you. MS. I'm Jamie Gellner, the Director of Transportation. Here's our agenda for tonight. We'll talk a little bit about our connection to the strategic plan, where we're at, give a hiring update, and take your questions.

[00:53:23] Our employees connect strongly to the mission of ACPS, particularly to know every student. You can see us primarily in goal three, equitable transformative resources, ensuring transportation for students who require bus service to attend school.

[00:53:42] One of the strategies under goal three is to remove transportation as a barrier to any division programs. We support our guaranteed field trips, our expansion of the studios, and we have supported our tsi schools with almost everything that they asked for this year including additional vans removing stacked routes and adding buses for after school or weekend clubs or tutoring we had four major department areas of focus this school year i'm not going to read you my whole department plan but i did spend six the last six years in strategic planning and spent a lot of

[00:54:19] time on it we looked at retention our gallup goal which focused on creating a positive culture a goal around our special needs students and a goal around student management we met and far exceeded all of our goals thanks to a strong and dedicated team i want to highlight our retention and gallup goals this school year we hired for almost 70 positions including 22 just in the building this department was severely understaffed before i arrived and you heard a lot about the driver shortage but we didn't have the staff to run the operations i'm really proud of the team that we put together this year and we focused a lot of energy and retaining our

[00:54:58] new driving staff in the 23/24 school year the department had a 40% retention rate probably because the rest of the building was short staffed and they didn't receive support and because bus drivers have a really hard job in the 24/25 school year we hope to retain 80% 80% of our new hires and we ended up retaining about 85% of our new school bus drivers our second goal was around improving our team culture specifically to increase engagement as measured by the Gallup survey we were the worst department in the division last year with

[00:55:35] a ratio of engaged employees to non engaged employees of 1.8 to 1 and the school division itself as a whole currently has a rate of 3.82 to 1 and my department sits at 7.4 to 1 which is almost double the division ratio and I'm very proud of that. I wanted to publicly recognize our employees of the year. Our administrative staff nominates the employees for the awards and the department votes on the MVP award. Lisa Minter won for being the staff member who hired all of these folks I just told you about. She handles the onboarding,

[00:56:15] physicals, drug testing, interviewing, and all of the other paperwork associated with getting people started and we kept her really busy. Mark Van Petten is our staff member of the year and handles all of our field trips in the department which has expanded greatly over the years with all of our guaranteed field trips.

[00:56:33] Dietrich Keyes is a lead driver at Greer Elementary and is consistently positive engaged in our department. Of note, this school year, she contacted me one evening about a middle school student who had left a suicide note on the bus.

[00:56:48] And we were able to work with Miles Nelson and his team to locate that student and make sure that she was safe that evening. And she just goes above and beyond. Stephen Badler is our Bus Driver of the Year, and he won for his consistency driving record in attendance.

[00:57:05] He's on our Agner team. Diane Kreitzer has served for over 33 years in the division as ATS, bus driver, and she retired as a band driver. She was our band driver of the year. Tanya Tyree is our assistant of the year and works tirelessly to ensure her kids are taken care of.

[00:57:24] She's on our Holly Meade team. Bill Morse, you met him earlier this year. He was already recognized as the division's classified employee of the year, and second to the left there is Eric Turner. He's our lead bus driver at Murray Elementary, and he won second in the state at the state rodeo competition, and they'll be giving his award out this evening at the Virginia Pupil Transportation Conference in Richmond.

[00:57:50] So up there, we have our two trainers. That's Don Euler, and then that's Eric Turner, Jennifer Green, and then Kevin Anstine. Kevin Anstein took me out this month, driving around on the bus. I do have my CDL, but I haven't driven in a while. So if you see something weird next year, it's probably me.

[00:58:15] We, I'm gonna highlight a couple of initiatives. We did a lot this year. There's a few things on here that we did this year, and there's a few things that are coming that I just wanted to brief you about. One of the first things that I heard from drivers is that student management is a challenge, particularly afternoon supervision requirement.

[00:58:32] This school year, we started using a numbered system to match up families with their elementary students in the afternoon, and that helped a lot with language barriers and with getting students unloaded more quickly in the afternoon. So we are gonna continue that this year. I also wanna highlight that we started a partnership with Post High and had three students work at transportation during the middle of the day once a week.

[00:58:54] We're proud to support our students with their learning, as well as taking them to school, and it was really great to have them in the building with us. One student worked in the office. She was just lovely, Mia. One worked in the maintenance shop, and one helped as an additional assistant on a school bus.

[00:59:11] This summer, we're going to update our routing software. We're running two databases to open school. It's been a lot of work. But eventually, down the line, when we have full implementation, we will pilot a new feature, which is a parent app.

[00:59:29] And hopefully in the 25-26 school year, parents will be able to track the bus to see where their children are, just like if you're riding in an Uber. We consolidated all of the fleet vehicles across the division under our budget, and we're going to take on the repair and maintenance costs.

[00:59:45] We decided it's probably not a good idea to not still include the schools and departments on how we utilize those things. So we started a fleet advisory team that consists of administrators, department staff, and transportation staff to advise on the use of the resources that we have based on utilization data and to recommend proposals for purchasing vehicles.

[01:00:10] One thing that I wanted you to be aware of, you'll hear from the local government, but the local government is expanding their speed zone cameras to the Brownsville, Henley, and Western campuses starting this school year. And we welcome any additional support that keeps our students safe to and from school and we thank them for their partnership.

[01:00:28] We are also partnering with local government and ultimate to add 10 stop arm cameras to our buses, which will allow us to ticket any driver who passes a stop school bus on those buses anyway. And finally, my fleet manager, Dan and our whole staff, we want to say thank you for supporting us via the CIP.

[01:00:51] were able to order 27 buses with the money you allocated and they'll be arriving over the next 12 to 18 months so thank you so current recruitment efforts this is where we were last year we have much better news we had a job fair today and we will be making three offers to assistance and two bus drivers that came to the county office building so that was really great turnout because we really needed some assistance it's hard to talk about staffing without getting into the weeds on our

[01:01:29] operations so i'm not going to do that but i wanted to highlight that in a in 2019 before covid the department did have about 229 employees in total in the department and with all the hiring that we've done in the past 12 months and counting everybody we currently have in training we have about 214 employees so we're getting closer to being back to where we once were but with each additional hire we can provide better service to our students by cutting down route time alleviating extremely full buses not having to do those stacked routes and things like that so we

[01:02:04] still have work to do to continuously improve particularly with our on-time arrivals but we are looking pretty good with drivers we're still seeing a lot a lot of openings for assistance on our special needs buses and we've seen increases in transportation needs for special services in the past few years not only for students with special needs but for students in special circumstances like foster care or who are unhoused and they can be placed all over the county while their school might not be close by similarly many specialty schools have wait lists who are taking

[01:02:41] students farther and farther away to attend schools and we're driving farther and farther away to support those students so it's just something for the board to be aware of we anticipate having about three to five assistant positions open it really depends how everything shakes out we'll be able to cover that with our building staff we will be able to unstack all of the routes across the division that we had to start last school year and we will be able to add some buses to schools who are at capacity on their current buses so what i mean by that is

[01:03:16] like woodbrook for example we anticipate adding another bus there so that there's not so many kids on each bus it helps with student management and it helps bus drivers want to stay here and keep working here um it also gives a little bit shorter ride for them so um i'm gonna work closely with rosalyn to monitor our budget as we grow you gave me 219 fte this year and i'm currently at 214. so we'll keep a watch on it um i thank you for the time this evening i'm excited

[01:03:53] to share the news of our department and i really did want to publicly thank my deputy director william shiflett i asked him to come with me tonight um he's been with the department through all of the covid times the driver shortage and i just think that you know i thought a lot about accepting the job when i was offered it because it's a hard job but i think that he and i make a really great team and he makes really big things happen each day to keep us running so i'm happy to report that we're in a much better place to start the school year and i thank everybody on

[01:04:28] our hard-working and dedicated staff and i think the school board for making the compensation increases a priority two years ago so that we can get here i think it's really amazing what you've done since you've started and where we were and where we are now so first of all job well done it's really impressive um i have a question about our um scholars scholar studios um and how these improvements there have been two complaints kind of floating around the last few years one getting those students back to their base schools in

[01:05:04] time for after school and extracurricular activities and that parents had to provide transportation to the base schools in the mornings in order for them to get to the scholars studios have either of those issues been resolved with these improvements we meet with Katina and Megan pretty regularly um and there's there's things that we could do we haven't implemented those changes yet one of the things that we're adding next year is um we're adding a couple of satellite stops that parents wanted so there'll be more options for them to take and we're adding a midday route

[01:05:40] and some earlier routes that we can do so kids can get back for appointments or for other things earlier instead of being late but it is it is difficult the way that we do it now to get kids back for sports the way that it's been managed mostly is with on the athletics team to make sure they start practices a little bit later and things like that but we'll keep working with them as we keep getting more drivers we can keep improving and the other thing that'll change is a year from now when center two opens that will operate on a different schedule like center one operates on so students are able to ride their bus to their base school and then and then shuttle to center and i

[01:06:19] - I mean, that's what I've been encouraging on the instructional side from a logistics perspective, but how it is now, it's still continuing to be difficult. - Yeah, and I think that's been a deterrent for kids wanting to sign up for some of these is that fear of not being able to participate or being late, and so if we can somehow in the next year figure that out, I think we may see an increase in the number of students that participate in our scholar studios.

[01:06:45] And then I just wanted to give a shout out a bus drivers that you're here we I run a summer camp and for kids with special needs and we contracted with ACPS I had nothing to do with it I stayed out of it but Katherine Gonzales was absolutely amazing and the love and compassion she showed our kids so if you could just pass that along from me I would really appreciate it she was amazing yeah thank you I just want to say I think the job that you have done in collaboration with William Shifflett and and is transformative to the

[01:07:25] department and and kudos to you and your hard work and all the drivers and everybody but um this has been transformed from an annual headache waiting for the the news of how many kids weren't going to get bus transportation to something that we could be extraordinarily proud of and i thank you thank you bravo

[01:07:57] next on the next on the agenda is a presentation about communities and schools which is a joint project as you know between community and schools of northern virginia acps and the albemarle foundation for education just finished the first year in place and we have patrick sorry brennan and two of the site coordinators uh here tonight to give us an update they presented to

[01:08:31] the foundation last month and it was extraordinarily impressive so i look forward to it tonight thank you thank you very much i'm patrick brennan i lead communities and schools in other virginia grateful for the opportunity to share the work we've done for the past year our first year in partnership with acps i'll just give a little bit of a background just to give everyone up to speed to who we are and what we're doing and then I'll hand it over to my colleagues who I'm very grateful for them to come in in July and share a little bit of their perspective from the schools that they work directly in the schools the

[01:09:07] students they work directly with we are you know we are an affiliate that's part of a larger national network of communities in schools we have a sort of a standardized model it's been heavily evaluated about how to integrate student uh support services into into schools basically the the secret sauce to this are the two people standing behind me it is a full-time site coordinator in our partner schools what that looks like here is there's four schools that we partner with uh the three schools on the lambs

[01:09:41] lane campus uh greer journey and albemarle and then red hill um is the others the fourth one so we have full-time staff in those four schools the process is about the needs assessment working with the school-based leadership to a sort of map out a plan an annualized plan and then my staff works with the staff there and with students and families to uh to achieve a certain amount of goals around set goals that they have uh this are many of the faces of the people that are part of the communities

[01:10:14] and schools um we hire locally um so the people here are people a lot of them we were just walking into the into the building um and so there's there's just a lot of familiarity with uh not only the schools that they're working in but also the community here that they live in um i have as a structure i have a board of directors uh that work with me to sort of make sure that we go out and uh not only promote the work that's happening in the schools in the school system but also to generate uh stakeholders in the communities in which we serve so we have a board of directors we have a trustee council these are people that are dedicated to our mission which is surrounding

[01:10:53] students uh with this with the resources they need to be successful these are the highlights for the four schools in which we worked in this year again this is our first year we served a little over 3300 students with some resources that we brought in the schools and we case manage a little over 200 students across the four schools uh the case management means that they have an advised plan uh that they work with whether whatever their deficiency or whatever their challenges are it could be academic it could be behavioral uh could be social emotional but they set plans with our site coordinators and the cycle is there every day working with these students

[01:11:33] we have garnered a variety of resources i'm very proud of how many resources we were able to sort of coordinate. This is very similar and there's a lot of resources here at Elmore County and so for us to be able to sort of work with people that are already doing the very good work to make sure that they're reaching the students that need it when they need it. English language learners and 73 percent of them are free and reduced lunch students that we serve. I'm going to introduce you to Savannah who's in Miami. She's with Red Hill and she'll give you a little bit of a snapshot

[01:12:06] of what this really looks like uh within red hill hi thank you all so much for letting us present to you um i think i can speak on behalf of the whole communities in school staff here that we are incredibly proud of the work that we've been able to do in this first year um so i am the site coordinator at red hill elementary uh there are a couple things that i wanted to share with you all that kind of can fill you in a little bit on the scope of this the work that we do.

[01:12:39] So the first thing that I want to share that I'm really proud of is the drama club that I did. I did a drama club that was served almost 50 students. We met weekly and we did an end of the year performance that was fairy tales, fables, and folklore. So it was just a series of a few simple folktales that you would probably recognize but the kids had an amazing time and i am incredibly proud of the hard work that they put in the families and the staff at red hill were immensely supportive and i really couldn't have done that without their help we had parents

[01:13:18] volunteering to build sets and make costumes it really made things a lot easier for me um so again i had 50 or almost 50 students in the club itself but we had the highest turnout any of the family events this year with over a hundred people coming to the performance which for a school of 200 kids is huge so I'm really thrilled about drama club and I'm looking forward to doing that again this upcoming year the other story that I want to share with you is about this student here in my student spotlight I got permission from her mother to use her name but this is

[01:13:57] my good friend Greer and she this past year was in second grade and I started working with Greer back in October she was referred to me due to just needing some general emotional support she's had severe struggles with anxiety especially as it came to being in the classroom she had a lot of a lot of other students who had kind of high levels of support needs in her classroom and that was really stressful for her and very overwhelming so when I started working with her she was spending probably a third of the school day just doing her

[01:14:35] work in the hallway that was kind of the deal that she and her teacher had where when she was overwhelmed by the classroom she would be able to go out and work in the hallway and we didn't set a specific goal at the beginning of our time together that she would integrate back into the classroom so we started just meeting once in the mornings at the beginning of the day when she would come in and then right before dismissal and just kind of have a check-in at the beginning and the end of the day when she'd come in in the mornings sometimes she would have breakfast we would talk about what she wanted to accomplish that day what her goals were how she was feeling and then

[01:15:13] at the end of the day we kind of check in how things went you know what things we want to do differently tomorrow um we developed a really sweet relationship um and i've come to care for her so much as i as i do for all my students but i'm very proud of the relationship that we have um and i'm also very proud to say that greer by the end of the school year without it even being an intentional goal of ours was able to entirely reintegrate into her classroom and so by the end of the school year she was not spending any time in the hallway we had been working on specific ways to manage her stress we had worked closely with her teacher

[01:15:52] on areas within the classroom that she would go if she was feeling a little bit escalated and she was able to put all of those practices to use and i'm i'm so proud of the work that we did and the work that she did because she you know she she did it but but those two things i think kind of give you an idea for the whole school things that we do such as things like drama club but also the the effect that we have on individual students um and with cis relationships are really the point of what we do and we believe that that communal

[01:16:28] change comes from individual change and by taking care of those those one-on-one relationships that we have with our students. Thank you. Greer. This is Greer Elementary. This is Gabby. I know Gabby's couple of Gabby's students are now going up the journey and I can let Sonya talk about that.

[01:16:53] Please. Good evening everybody. How are y'all doing today? My name is Sonya Montalvo. I am from Charlottesville, born and raised. I'm very passionate about serving the communities that I grew up in. Somebody else shared Dr. Kaiser with their principal. She was also mine. So it's really awesome to see her here um i work at journey as a site coordinator which i always tell people is just really cool uh language for saying i get to hang with some awesome kids and help them achieve their goals um so i'll share a little bit with you today about some of the things we've been able to accomplish oh can you hear me now better all right all right all right this is better okay good i'm

[01:17:30] glad i'm glad i have 45 case managed students um this year uh nine percent of those students are English language learners, and 73% of those students qualify for free and reduced lunch. I'm really, really excited that we've all gotten to work together this year and accomplished some really cool goals, some of those personal for them, but some of those school-wide as well. So the impact that we've had this year, I'm sorry, I'm a little nervous, y'all are a little intimidating, but y'all look really nice. So 84% of my case-managed students actually increased their SEL assessment scores by five points this year. That's something that

[01:18:06] we worked really hard on this year social emotional learning as far as conflict resolution leadership skills and things of that nature have been heavily implemented in a lot of our programming both in school and after school we've had 39 volunteers this year to help with our tier one and tier two events as well as tutoring and then we've had six active community partnerships so i can share a little bit more about that as i go to my next slide awesome so bright success is actually one of our programs and i'll talk to you guys a little bit about all of these but tie that other stuff back in for you in a minute um so bright success is our academic

[01:18:42] mentorship group um you actually see two of our students um both start both their names start with the z so we'll say z and z they actually were fundraising to raise money for their end of year food trip and so they did that by running some of the concessions this year for albemore county's special needs olympic teams i hope i'm saying that correctly but we got to do that this year and the boys found that that was really exciting they raised those funds and we actually got to go to fun land this year so it's really exciting some kids never been before lots of laser tag and bouncy balls it was a really good time we also have girl code which is our weekly program for

[01:19:21] young girls it was really awesome that my entire group this year was sixth grade so we started together i always tell them you know we're going to grow and we're going to learn in this position together so they got to build bonds together create moments for sisterhood but then also learn more about each other so that they could have each other's backs in school hence girl code you never let your friend or your girl slip right so those are one of the things that we walk through the school year with as well as pin it up pin it up was our flagship program this year so we've had writers photographers singers songwriters they all come together once a week this program was

[01:19:58] actually done in partnership with newflix dante woodfolk who is a b-based teacher at journey middle school and so we did that together this year where our students came together created weekly projects so for instance one of our last projects was splash photography we had one of our students i don't know if you can see her in the back but she actually opened up for our black history month event which is our picture down at the bottom so all of our students and pin it up also the students are part of the drama team at journey middle school and some other students got to do their student performances where we had over 100 people in attendance but pin it up was the group

[01:20:35] to actually spearhead those efforts where they took pictures that would mock other black photographers or famous black photographers to show around the school i'm really really excited that we've been able to engage over 300 families in tier one events this year that's just been really awesome so below you actually see that picture from our black history month but we also had i don't know if you can see these pictures here on your screens but this is from our sol elaboration block party so to get students excited about sols this year we called out several different partnerships and had families come out get to have a good time we partnered with

[01:21:11] Nick Fegans from the Boys and Girls Club, Central Virginia Violets Interrupters, YMCA and the Music Resource Center and they all came out to be able to share about their programs just to allow families to see what we have to offer. In that program we had over 100 families attend and so it's just an awesome experience. I actually don't have a specific student spotlight but I have a short video where my students kind of share what their favorite thing about CIS was this year. Please bear with them as they are brutally honest and sound quality is not the greatest hopefully you can see that

[01:21:48] oh it's not gonna is it gonna play i hope maybe not but if you all would like to watch it i have an abbreviated version on that powerpoint slide for you all but then i also have um my instagram available for you as well so the full video is there along with some other things you get to see some of the cool things my students did this year so thank you guys so much for letting me share thank you Albemarle High School this is the the fourth high school of the fourth school that

[01:22:27] we're involved in this year in ACPS we actually have two site coordinators there because obviously the size of it which is very typical for our partnerships with high schools Michelle and Liz are great and they they really sort of attract and and complement each other in terms of students that they bring in I know one of the highlights that they wanted to make sure I share with you was having a student who came in the middle of the year you know I think a lot of people don't realize how many students actually come in the middle of a school year and to really integrate them into a school is can be very difficult and so they were sort of tasked to make sure that this gentleman I think he might they might be in here yeah here is a Taylor was made sure that he was you know not only sort

[01:23:06] of oriented to the building but also to find out what his needs his likes are to be able to get him into I think it was an all-male support group and he's thriving and he's looking forward to next year so they have done a really good job of complimenting each other and creating a wide range of sel and career college panels and workshops for the students fafsa all sorts of different ways for them to make sure that they're they're thinking about the next stage uh beyond high school and these are a variety of our partners

[01:23:44] that we've been working with again a lot of these partners have already been in our part of your school a part of your community i'm sure you recognize a lot of them we're not here to reinvent the wheel we're here to make sure that those resources reach the kids that need it the most and in a timely way and so we're really excited about year two coming in uh i did get confirmation that both sonia and savannah are coming back they're very excited about coming back and so i only anticipate us being able to reach more students and engage with more families next year

[01:24:15] any questions outstanding i was just going to say thank you for all the work um the cis's you and all of them have been doing i think you know everything is impressive but particularly the parent um uh connections i mean particularly in middle school i mean you kind of parent engagement you know it goes up in in elementary school and dips in in in middle school and for some families does actually go back up in high school but i mean having 300 family members coming to to something

[01:24:51] is just a huge thing with everything parents have on their plate um and i also love um the drama we We know oftentimes students don't have the opportunity to do drama until high school. And the fact that you've gotten them started early, I think really is important.

[01:25:07] And allowing them to see those outlets that we are not able to provide in a kind of traditional school structure because the resources aren't there, even though we would all love to have much more arts in elementary school, but the funding hasn't been there.

[01:25:23] So for you to be able to bring those, so appreciate all that work. i'm curious where we are on the fundraising for cis do we have an update i don't know if that's from you guys or from well we are hiring a an executive director that should be in place by certainly by september when we say we the foundation foundation foundation right right i'm sorry right so so under the model we are partnering with ACP at the foundation and ACPS are partnering to provide half of the funding we have a matching grant from

[01:26:03] CIS Nova for these first three years and I feel confident we can the foundation can do its part so and I think the more success we see the easier it will be I I mean, the real, from my perspective, the strength of CIS and the fact that it's evidence-based and you see improvements in achievement, in attendance, and a whole range of metrics will help us enormously in our fundraising efforts.

[01:26:39] Rebecca, Dr. Berlin and I are both on the foundation board, so we've been busy working to strengthen that. But having this partnership, I think, will benefit the whole project. There's also an opportunity for us to apply for a grant through the Virginia Community Schools Grant application.

[01:27:01] So we will be applying for that and a possibility of upwards of $250,000 if we receive the grant. We will be aggressively fundraising this fall with the new executive director coming on board that is the top priority to secure the funding we've done some preliminary talks with funders and understand there is interest in communities and schools and expanding the

[01:27:33] programming the model for the division so once we get our ED on board we'll really go to work and focus in on fundraising we will we will secure the funding for the model so the expansion into other schools is contingent upon that fundraising we don't have a plan for expansion into any of our other schools until right i mean i i think because we're interested in the results from this pilot that that will be the foundation for a decision to expand but there's certainly other schools that would benefit from this yeah it's been my experience working

[01:28:12] with school systems the doctor because you mentioned the sort of the community this community schools fund that was established that was through videoe the the metrics in the model which they're basing those awards on is the cis model i mean they literally have language in there about community schools model so having one year in and having like showing an investment of acps in it was also it's able to go after not only more public dollars but also to go after other grants and other private dollars so it's a it's a it will start to my experience is it really does pick up and I'm confident also and Dr. Kaiser I

[01:28:50] also want to thank you for the frequent updates and reports that we get I'm sure they come from all of you so thank you to it it really helps us keep an eye on what's going on and all the progress that's been made so thank you very much for those I'd like to echo that I mean not only is it evidence-based but you have wonderful wonderful information about the whole program the qualitative and the quantitative impact that you're having I want to thank both of our coordinators I know you're really off for the summer but thank you very much for coming tonight do we have any other comments or questions thank you and keep

[01:29:25] up the good work thank you very much is there any other business I actually have a report from one of my committees that I'm on I'm on the TJ ace advisory board I got a message today from the director and this also is kind of depressing because it involves the federal funds, but they are 70% funded by the feds and we are in danger of losing services for 900 adult learners in our region due to the impoundment of federal funds.

[01:30:05] So we're nearing crisis level here. these are these are parents of our students yeah some of these are parents of our students so anyway just an update on the tj ace advisory board what is that in dollars ellen what is that in dollars i'm sorry if you said that i'm not sure um i actually have a question that's tangential to that that i should have asked earlier on the funding um how do these medicaid cuts affect our schools because i um imagine that we get a lot of money from medicaid for our students and snap

[01:30:42] benefits and those are being paid to be determined I think it's I'll get you some information about how much reimbursements we do receive I think the impact of that is still hard to articulate snap you know it's worrisome to our families that doesn't directly connect to us with that with those cuts and programs will impact in their school meals program eventually a lot of times the reason we qualify for our CEP models is a number of directly certified families and so as that number reduces that will happen in fact over time but not immediate yeah I would be interested if you could pass that along as soon as

[01:31:21] some of that information so I would imagine the Medicaid cuts are gonna severely impact our budget as well right I hope not but I suspect you're right any other business tonight there being no further business this meeting is adjourned

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