Coraggio Consulting
Albemarle County School Board Budget Work Session #3, Thursday, March 5, 2026

Date: Thursday, March 5, 2026
Place: Albemarle County Public Schools / School Board meeting, Virginia
Length: 2h 18m (video)
Official meeting video (YouTube): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2VX2YAhQB0

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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[00:00:01] Good evening. It is my privilege to call this March 5th Special Budget Work Session No. 3 to order. Do I have any motions coming out of closed session today? Yes. I move that the board certify 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

[00:00:33] in the closed meeting. Second. Moved by Mr. Beard, seconded by Ms. Lee. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? We now move into our regular open meeting. We always start this with a roll call and part of that is because we know there are lots of people listening and watching remotely and this will help identify a speaker with a face. So I ask that we go around starting at Dr. Kaiser to introduce ourselves and our position. Daphne Kaiser, Assistant Superintendent for School Community Engagement.

[00:01:13] Kate Ako, Jack Jewett District. Judy Lee Rivanna District. Ellen Osborne, Scottsville District. Rebecca Berlin, Whitehall District. Allison Spillman, At-Large Representative. Jim Dillenbeck, Ryo District. Bob Beard, Samuel Miller District.

[00:01:29] Matthew Hawes, Superintendent. Josiah Black, Chief Legal Officer. Erin Stone, Assistant Division Counsel. Christine Thompson, Clerk of the Board. Dan Redding, Chief HR Officer. Patrick McLaughlin, Assistant Superintendent.

[00:01:46] And as always, thank you to our safety officers who are here to protect us. We will now stand for the Pledge of Allegiance. To the states of America, to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice.

[00:02:11] We will now pause for a moment of silence as we begin our meeting. Thank you so much.

[00:02:39] Agenda 3.0, approval of the agenda. Do I have a motion for the approval of tonight's agenda? I move we approve tonight's agenda. Second. Moved by Ms. Lee, seconded by Ms. Spillman. All those in favor? Aye. All those opposed?

[00:02:55] We are now moving forward with today's agenda. 4.0 is the consent agenda. Do I have a motion for the approval of tonight's consent agenda? I move we approve tonight's consent agenda. Thank you, Ms. Lee.

[00:03:11] Do I have a second? Second. Moved by Ms. Lee, seconded by Dr. Acoff. All those in favor of tonight's consent agenda? Aye. Any opposed? Thank you so much. We are now moving into 5.0, our agenda item, which is a discussion and questions regarding our policy, IGDA, interscholastic and extracurricular activities.

[00:03:38] Before I invite Dr. Russell Carlock to the podium, I just wanted to read a brief statement. There has been a lot of misinformation about why this proposal is coming forward today. I think it is important that we provide clarity so the public understands where we are in the process and how we arrived here.

[00:03:58] On November 13, 2025, the school board unanimously agreed in open session to direct the superintendent to review and update all policies and administrative regulations governing student extracurricular clubs and outside speakers to ensure both robust protections for freedom of speech and safe, inclusive learning environments.

[00:04:17] The school board initially requested that a staff recommendation be presented on December 2025. However, staff requested more time to ensure a full and comprehensive review of policies to make certain the goals of the board, along with federal and state legal requirements, were fully considered before making a recommendation.

[00:04:37] Tonight is the first reading of that staff recommendation. We, as a board, agree that this should come forward in this way so that there is ample time for public and the board to review the recommendation. We also wanted to make certain that this policy decision was developed with a full transparency with ample opportunity for public comment.

[00:05:00] We may have some clarifying questions this evening to make certain we understand the proposal fully, but we are not debating this issue tonight. The public deserves the right to hear what staff is recommending and to provide their input on this policy before we make any decisions on this policy.

[00:05:18] Next week, we will bring this matter forward for deliberation and ultimately for a full vote of the school board. I encourage those who wish to make their voices heard to send us an email or to sign up online to speak during public comment at the March 12th school board meeting.

[00:05:34] Following public comment next week, the school board will bring this policy forward for consideration. At that time we may offer changes to what we see proposed here tonight. We will deliberate on the merits of each recommendation and each recommended change and ultimately we will create a final draft and vote on whether to adopt the final policy. I hope that provides some clarity on this process and I'd like to turn it over now to Dr. Haas and staff to present the staff recommendations. Good evening, Chair Berlin, Vice Chair Spillman, and members of the school

[00:06:14] board. Tonight, we are bringing forward a review of policy IGDA related to student activities. This work was undertaken to better understand how our current policy compares with peer divisions across Virginia and to identify areas where additional clarity could strengthen guidance for schools and student organizations. As part of this effort we conducted a comparative and policy analysis and gathered feedback from students, staff,

[00:06:47] and families across our schools. I'd like to now invite Dr. Russell Carlock, Educational Equity Data Scientist with the Office of Community Engagement, who led this work to walk the board through the process, findings, and suggested revisions thank you mr. Clark welcome just a note for my fellow board members I ask that we take the time to first listen to dr. Clark's presentation and then after is completed if we have questions regarding either what he found

[00:07:25] or the policy itself and we can bring those forward for clarification thank you so much school board thank you dr. Kaiser for having me this evening I'm excited to talk about student activities policy IGDA and the review that we conducted and what we learned. So first I want to talk a little bit about the process that we used and then I'll discuss a little bit about the comparative data analysis that we used in terms of looking at other peer school districts within Virginia to find where we lie on a spectrum in terms of tightness around certain issues within the policy or looseness and sort of understanding where Albemarle County Public Schools finds itself on that

[00:08:02] that spectrum also talk about the interview and the focus groups that we conducted in order to understand what the proposed recommendations may mean in terms of student experience in our student activities programs in our secondary schools and then finally we'll go through the major revisions that we're suggesting within the policy so we are here tonight because of that November 13th board request for review that was unanimously voted on by the board and moved forward and that led us to begin the comparative policy analysis I'll go further into detail about what that comparative policy analysis looked like, but that was a way for us to look at our particular policy and how it

[00:08:39] compared to other policies throughout the state. After that, we were able to make some ideas around the direction of potential revisions to the policy that we took to the ACPS Policy Committee for further input. That committee includes members from the Department of Strategic Planning as well as our legal counsel for Albemarle County Public Schools. Once we got approval for that general direction of those recommendations we then wanted to get feedback from multiple stakeholders across a variety of different student activities from the caregivers perspective as well as a student perspective as well as our faculty and staff members who are involved in student activities to get a

[00:09:16] further understanding one of how is the current policy being implemented in our secondary schools and two if we were to make these revisions with a specific focus on some of the financial discussions that we're recommending as well as some of the chartering process details how would that if at all impact our student experience in those student activities once we did that we got another round of feedback from the ACPS policy committee input we were able to go ahead and begin drafting what our revisions would look like and we were able to get input from that policy committee on that draft they were able to make some suggestions to the direct edits that we were making to the policy

[00:09:56] and that's what you have in front of you today and so here we are looking at that recommendation and the ideas that hopefully we'll be able to soon come to consent with public deliberation around what those final revisions may look like. So a couple of the questions that led us in this process. The first was around how our policy compared to peer divisions, specifically looking at what the school board was was asking us to look at. So we wanted to look at creation of student organizations, facility use, safety, viewpoint neutrality, and guest

[00:10:30] speakers. We also wanted to understand where areas of convergence and divergence were within the constellation of policies that exist in the state of Virginia, and then where do we fall within that constellation. And then finally, based on that comparative analysis, we wanted to get feedback from our students, our faculty, and our caregivers around the recommendations that we were providing.

[00:10:52] So first, our comparative policy analysis. These are the school districts that we looked at. This was our method. So we searched policy databases for the following school districts using keywords clubs, extracurricular, and student activities. There we performed one round of open coding on 12 district policies. And open coding just means that we went through line by line taking notes on what the policy said without considering the school board themes yet. We wanted to make sure that we were trying to understand these policies, just how they exist, and what are the themes and the connections across them that are there in the text.

[00:11:30] We noticed there were a few school districts listed here that we looked for. Using this method, we were not able to identify policies that were public that we could find. We did use a couple of districts from Massachusetts, not for the coding process, but just for comparison.

[00:11:46] We wanted to look at one state outside of Virginia just to see how does Virginia compare to another state's policies in these regards. And we picked Massachusetts because historically they have had the strongest educational outcomes in their public school system going back for some time So that led us to finding codes that came out of that process But we also had a school board theme So we wanted to put those together and see okay What is in these policies and what did the school board tell us to look at and how are those things alike?

[00:12:16] And how are they different so we were able to find most of what the school board already asked us to look for But there were a few things that we thought were also important, and that is definitions of clubs. So our other school board policies very much are defining what is a co-curricular and a non-curricular club, and we found that that is very important, especially when we look at federal law around this.

[00:12:37] Also, funding was very prominent in other school divisions' policies. Ours did not mention funding very much. And then supervision of clubs was also something that came up in the other district's policies. So we performed an additional round of thematic coding using all of those codes together just to make sure that we had captured everything that was important within the policies.

[00:13:01] Once we did that, we brought to our focus groups. We wanted to conduct semi-structured interviews and focus groups with a variety of staff, students, and caregivers. This was not to provide a representative sample of public opinion.

[00:13:19] Rather, it was to answer two specific questions. One, we wanted to know, how is our current policy being implemented in our schools? We wanted to really understand that. And then secondly, we wanted to understand, okay, if we make potential changes to finance policy around student activities in secondary schools and a chartering process, if we were to include some kind of a chartering process, how would that impact our student activities, especially from the student perspectives?

[00:13:46] We really wanted people to think about what do we get out of student activities for our students AND HOW WOULD THESE THINGS IMPACT THAT EXPERIENCE OF OUR STUDENTS? SO WE DID STRATIFIED SAMPLING ACROSS OUR THREE COMPREHENSIVE HIGH SCHOOLS. WE WANTED TO MAKE SURE THAT WE HAD A DIVERSITY OF STUDENT ACTIVITIES INVOLVED.

[00:14:02] AND SO THE INTERVIEWS INCLUDED REPRESENTATION FROM OUR BLACK STUDENT UNION, OUR MARCHING BAND, MOUNTAIN BIKING CLUB, MOCA WOCA POCA, TURNING POINT USA, NATIONAL HONOR SOCIETY, STUDENT GOVERNMENT, THESPIAN SOCIETY, FUTURE FARMERS OF AMERICA, ULTIMATE TIC-TAC-TOE CLUB, Future Business Leaders of America, and the Jesus Club.

[00:14:23] We transcribed these interviews and conducted one round of open coding, then triangulated these with our comparative policy analysis. So again, we wanted to go back to what the students, caregivers, and our faculty and staff said, and just start with their words and kind of work from there and see what do they say is important based on these questions that we're asking.

[00:14:43] And then we compared that to what the school board asked us to look at, and then what we also found looking at other districts. And all of that we put together to begin to make the recommendations. Before we get into the specific recommendations, I want to highlight the importance of student activities.

[00:14:59] And this comes from some of our interviews. I have one from a student, one from family, and one from staff. So one of our students said, "Clubs give you a sense of place. In my club, our community is very tight-knit. We're very passionate about keeping it alive. It's dear to our hearts, and it makes us want to come to school.

[00:15:17] it speaks to school beyond academics and i think it's very important that non-curricular clubs don't get undermined because they speak volumes to our school community a family member said clubs enabled my student to meet new people and explore a new side of herself they expanded her worldview and skill set and one of our staff member who monitors or supervises a club says i think that clubs and activities play an important role in developing our students and giving them a full well-rounded education i want to state that because the federal law that dictates a lot of this says that schools don't have to have a student activity program it is not required

[00:15:55] this is something we choose to do for our students for this reason and when we look at some of the legislation around why we have student activities in schools it really is about creating a space for students to find who they are to be passionate about things that aren't necessarily in the curriculum and to express themselves, their identity, and to find themselves as leaders. And that was very true within our interviews with our students, our families, our staff, that that is happening in these spaces in our schools. So that's something we really want to preserve while making sure that we're also addressing some of these lacks of clarity within our existing

[00:16:30] policy. So some of the themes from our interviews. So there was fairly wide agreement of the benefits of a chartering process across diverse groups and perspectives they saw value in taking the time to say what their student group is for what the purpose is of their student group within the school and they saw creating a constitution or going through a chartering process is something that was useful for them many of the student sponsors or monitors said that they believe that that could be a great beginning of the year activity for student activities to go through that process and just kind of revisit if this is what we say we stand for is this what we stand for what are we trying to do

[00:17:09] within our school community what is our purpose also there was a lot of confusion at all levels in the distinction between co and non-curricular activities so students faculty and staff and administrators even we're saying that sometimes they weren't really sure whether some activities were considered co-curricular or non-curricular based on our current policy generally people agree that they want to protect the ability to associate with outside groups but they also wanted clarification of the role there are a lot of outside groups that work with our students and our schools through student activities

[00:17:45] and there was a lot of confusion sometimes about what the role of those outside groups should be within our student activities people agreed on a general establishment of groups that promote the welfare of the school and promote understanding among groups that have diverse perspectives amongst themselves and this was something that's true across different groups saying that sometimes they feel like other groups within this school don't understand who they really are that they're making assumptions about what their group stands for that isn't what they see themselves as standing for and that was true across different types of groups and then people also expressed a

[00:18:23] lot of confusion around fundraising student activities what's okay what's not okay what do we do with the money there was a lot of confusion around some of the fundraising questions and activities for for these groups so So putting all of that together, the key findings are there's ambiguity in our current chartering process.

[00:18:43] So there's not clear answers on how do student organizations form, what record is there of active organizations within our schools, there's a lack of financial governance, how do student organizations manage funds, what is required for a fundraiser, what is the role of external funders to student organizations, and there's little guidance on external involvement.

[00:19:01] So what roles, if any, do outside organizations play in student organizations? going to go through i'll go through now the the key revisions there are some minor revisions that won't be in this presentation but they're in the document that was shared publicly and you all have access to so if you have questions about that that's fine too but i wanted to highlight the really big ones and the ones that the school board asked us to focus on so the first is around safety and you can see that there's existing language in our school board policy prohibiting student organizations that are engaged in any activity that's contrary to law school board policy or school rules or disrupts or clearly threatens to disrupt the orderly operation of the school.

[00:19:40] We added some base language from Chesterfield that goes a little further in describing some other kinds of activities that could be prohibited. And this language also comes from some pre-court cases around student expression in school that could substantially disrupt the school's learning environment or hinder the school administration's maintenance of order and discipline on school premises.

[00:20:02] second part is ported from our student code of conduct policy. So asking our student organizations to have the same standard of conduct that individual students do. And this is around a promotion or endorsement of violence or hatred toward identifiable groups. And those identifiable groups are also located within our student conduct policy and also are in the Virginia Human Rights Act. This is really important, the definition of co versus non-curricular activities. It's important based on the federal law, the 1984 Equal

[00:20:38] Access Act that was passed around these kinds of questions. And a little bit of context on that law, that was passed in 1984 to protect the rights of students to create prayer groups in schools at a time when many schools were banning those groups because they said it was against the Establishment Clause within the Constitution. Congress passed the law, and it was passed and it still is an existing law that says that non-curricular groups have to have the same access to school space as co-curricular groups they have to have the same physical resources that the co-curricular groups do and that

[00:21:16] includes groups that could be prayer groups or political groups it has to be a viewpoint neutral in that sense and what is interesting is 15 years later that same law was used to protect the first gay-straight alliances in public schools in America. Kentucky was banning some gay-straight alliances in schools at that time and the ACLU took those school districts to court and won that court case based on this same law. And so this law has protected the rights of students to form prayer groups in our schools as well as the rights of students to form gay-straight alliances within our schools. Part of the reason

[00:21:56] that that definition is important is because the law does allow the schools to treat co- and non-curricular activities slightly differently in terms of funding, in terms of what the role of the adult is in the room who's monitoring that activity. However, it requires equal access to the right of students to meet and use physical space within the school. And part of that is creating this idea of a limited open forum the idea is that this is a limited open forum because it's limited only to students who are enrolled in the school it's not about outside adults telling students what to do it's not about inside adults it's not

[00:22:34] about faculty or staff telling students what to do or think it is about students having a space to express themselves and figure out who they are and what they care about and creating that space in our school and so that's where the non-curricular piece comes in. That's what those groups are for. A co-curricular group can have a staff member or sponsor who is directing or leading student activities. A non-curricular group is not supposed to have an adult who's telling them what to do. They are supposed to be leading it. It's supposed to be student-led. So that's why this definition is important. Our previous

[00:23:10] policy did not have a definition and that would led to some of the confusion we saw so we added definitions based on different language from different school divisions most school divisions did have some kind of a definition so this one we used a lot of the language from Henrico that defines a co-curricular organization as academic honor societies language clubs student government academic course related clubs career and technical education organizations yearbook performance groups related to the fine arts and other similar activities. The basic requirement is the club subject matter must be taught in a regularly

[00:23:46] offered course within the school or connect to the overall curriculum. So again, something that is taught within the school. So what is a non-curricular club? Non-curricular club is everything else. It is a very wide net. Okay, so if we look at the examples that we pulled and this one comes from Chesterfield a non-curricular student organizations are initiated by students with recreational community religious political or other interests that are not part of the school curriculum and you can see one addition there and this is really important as part of that idea the

[00:24:23] limited open forum concept in federal law is they must be open to all students right so these a club can't say you can come in you can't come in these clubs or activities have to be open to everyone in order for them to meet what this definition is of the limited open forum. So the board also asked us to look at facility use. We found that existing policy was sufficient in outlining facility use, that all non-curricular student organizations must have access to school facilities and physical resources equal to the access of co-curricular

[00:24:59] student organizations. And it gives examples of public address systems, periodicals, bulletin board space and fundraising a key revision is around role of staff and non-curricular we had some of this language in our existing policy but we tried to make it stronger and clearer and based on some examples from Fairfax where it says that non-curricular student organizations this is part of the existing policy they shall not have a faculty sponsor however a member of the school's professional staff shall attend every meeting Fairfax goes a little further to describe what the role of that person is saying that anyone any school employee present at a meeting of a non-curricular student organization, which includes

[00:25:38] political activity, religious worship, prayer or practice, or is identified as having a political or religious purpose, shall attend in a non-participatory capacity only. The board also asked us to look at guest speakers. There were not a lot of school divisions that addressed guest speakers and their policy. Fairfax did have a little bit, and so we used some of this language from Fairfax and we added some based especially and I should say one other forum that we use to get feedback was a student leadership forum in which we had student leaders from around our three comprehensive high schools discuss this

[00:26:15] topic for over an hour and gave great feedback and one of the pieces that was added in part because of that but also in part because of some of the other feedback that we got from families and safety was that in-person guest speakers during the school day shall be invited only by co-curricular student organizations and must present content related to the curriculum. In-person guest speakers shall not be permitted for non-curricular activities during the school day, and a request for approval for all guest speakers shall be submitted to the principal or designee for review and include the purpose, content, and duration of the speech. Again, partly to protect the student voice in the

[00:26:51] non-curricular activities as being the primary voice to be heard. The board also asked us to look at viewpoint neutrality. We found that the existing policy did have language around viewpoint neutrality, specifically saying that no student organization shall be denied equal access to school facilities during designated meeting times on the basis of the religious, political, philosophical, or other content of the speech at the meeting of such organization. There were questions from the board as well as from family members about messaging in

[00:27:27] schools and also some of the students also wanted more clarity around when can we put up posters when can I hand out flyers these are things they want to do they're not sure if they're allowed to they want to make sure that they do it in a way that's consistent with expectations and so there again there was some language around this but we tried to make it clear that student organizations may hand out flyers and post announcements and other materials only with prior approval of the principal or designee to ensure compliance with school board policies and school regulations some of our schools were already doing this this just makes it standardized at the

[00:28:01] district level fundraising I will say that fundraising ports over to a lot of other policies so there are a lot of questions around fundraising and we are trying to do as best we can in this revision to connect to the student activities policy to extant policies around fundraising in our schools whether it's a crowdsourced funding or old school going door-to-door collecting money for something funding so we do that here by linking to power policies kja kjb and jl say that all fundraising by student organizations both inside and outside of school

[00:28:40] requires prior principal or designated approval per those policies much of this is already in those policies we're just reiterating what's already said there one thing that is new is that all monies raised or collected by student organizations or clubs shall be school activity funds and shall be deposited promptly within the school there are several school divisions we use as our model virginia beats and chesterfield do this and this was recommended as part of the idea of having greater oversight but also understanding and having greater clarity around fundraising for

[00:29:11] student activities in schools another board priority was the creation of student groups it is my opinion after doing this work that this may be the most important revision and i will explain why so in our existing policy we have very little about how student groups get created much of that is being done at the school level we see that there's great inconsistencies across our high schools in terms of how this is happening and it's one of the places where we are farthest out of line with

[00:29:46] our peer districts most peer districts have some kind of a chartering process for student activity groups in their school currently we don't have a consistent one in our district so we added language specifying a group charter to include a purpose statement and activities so this is coming from chesterfield county virginia beach and york county and the proposal would be that all new student organizations must submit to the principal or designee an application for approval that includes a constitution describing the purpose

[00:30:22] type co or non activities membership or fee requirements if any outside group affiliations if any, and staff sponsor or monitor of the group. Approval will be based on criteria applied equally to all proposed organizations, including compliance with all school board policies, and may include a minimum number of students interested. The school will maintain and update approved student organization constitutions for as long as the group operates within the school.

[00:30:48] Non-curricular student organizations approved in this way will be sponsored only through equal access to use of facilities and will receive no public funding. The purpose and content of of meetings for non-curricular groups will not be considered as endorsed by the school.

[00:31:04] This was something that was popular across student groups and across sponsors of student groups. Again, they felt that having this process in place allowed them to bring students together to discuss the purpose of why they're coming together and have an opportunity to explain to their peers.

[00:31:21] And this connects to our next revision, which is the list of student groups. So the total program of activities in the school should be comprehensive and well-balanced. That's from our existing policy that's ported over here from a different place. The updated program will be shared by the beginning of the second quarter via an annual message to families and posting on the school's website and also shared with the assistant superintendent of school community engagement.

[00:31:45] This communication will include a brief description of each student organization based on the group's approved constitution. felt like this would be a way for them one to understand all of the activities that are in their school many students said I don't know all the activities in my school I would like to be able to find out more about that many of our schools are doing club fairs which are fantastic and at the same time it can be hard to go to every single clubs table and learn about what they're doing and so having something where it's not just a list but it's a list with a description from the students perspective of what are they trying to achieve in the school what is their purpose who are they the students said that they would appreciate

[00:32:23] that because it would one clear up some of the misunderstandings they feel like are there about what their group does and two it would help them choose hey I didn't even know this club existed maybe now I can learn about it and then families also thought that that was a good idea because then they could learn about what are the student activities that are available in their child's school it also creates a basis for us to understand what is the purpose of each of our students organizations and also have a much better understanding of which student organizations are co-curricular and which are non-curricular and that can become part of the process of that determination by the principal in collaboration with the district so those are key

[00:33:02] revisions that we are suggesting and now leave space for questions so again my colleagues this is time for us to ask questions specific to the policy any clarification that you need i just want to say job well done i know there was a lot of work that went into this over many months and um i know family council and student senate and a lot of other groups were involved and i

[00:33:34] can really tell the care that you put into this to make sure that it's fair and that it's consistent and i you know i know i emailed you a few questions earlier i think the biggest thing for me is the consistency across schools and that we make sure that a club at one school is has the same criteria at another school and so how do we develop that consistency and then we make sure that it's shared across all the schools and I think you know I think we talked about it would be a good you know project

[00:34:13] for the spring and summer to prepare for next year of having making sure that all the schools have consistent accountability for all the clubs and also you know you were talking about the creation of the clubs i think that our clubs will probably need some guidance on writing the constitution and how to apply it and so i don't know how we would develop that but i would give that some thought as to helping our students make sure that they're they're getting all the support that they need um and i i think not a question but i just think it's really important um how much you

[00:34:49] pulled in from other school divisions in the state um that it shows consistency across the state that we are not doing anything far out in left field that we're you know doing what's consistent um across the state which is really great um and i think the last thing is just you know this is not about a club, it's not about a speaker, it's not, it really is about making sure that all of our clubs, it's consistent across all the clubs.

[00:35:16] And so, you know, GSA is going to be held to the same standards that Turning Point is. And I think that that's really important to note that we just want to make sure that we're creating a safe environment for our students and also freedom of speech, that they can meet during lunch and discuss all their views, and I think that's a beautiful thing.

[00:35:34] And that the speakers for curricular clubs, that's great for during the day. And I welcome the extracurricular clubs to have their speakers after school and have people come. I think that that's great, too. So I just want to say, job well done.

[00:35:50] And I think you answered all my other questions that I sent before. The last one I think I had was about the fundraising and how do we, will there be an SOP or anything like that to make sure that we have oversight over those funds what does it look like when funds are received from a club and and what is the standard for getting those you know because it's not any different than our athletic teams you know when you pay for new equipment it gets deposited to the school and then gets allocated the school play is the same way I just wrote a check to Western for being in the school play or the robotics club so you know it I think it

[00:36:28] does create that consistency in that oversight and allows us to allocate those funds appropriately um while making sure that we're following the law which is also really important so i would like to see some sort of standard operating procedure for what does it look like when those funds are received and how they're dispersed um so that there's consistency from sports to clubs to drama or whatever it is so but thank you i think you did a great job i really appreciate it thank you miss bill i have a question related to your list of student groups would that be on the school websites or a division website or just because i think it would be really really interesting to be able to look and see how many elementary chess clubs

[00:37:08] there are across the division because maybe that's a popular thing so I feel like we'll get a lot of information about our student interest out of this as well yes like under the way it's currently written it's at the each school's website but it'd be fairly simple to aggregate those at the district level to begin to look at what our student interests look like across schools and I'm just gonna jump on that didn't we also say that there was gonna going to be a sharing a quarterly sharing or something about amongst the principals about what the clubs are or maybe it was at the beginning of the school year what clubs had formed at each of the schools just so that they know like hey we've got that club too or whatever I think that that shared

[00:37:45] information is really powerful yes so the way it's written currently it would be at the the beginning of the second quarter would be when that would occur and we would and there's there's further information we didn't go over here that was extant in the policy in terms of the how the activities program is created in terms of what you're saying Ms. Spillman around the implementation of the policy there's certainly going to need to be guidelines for how to implement the policy and one of those will be house how to collect data on student interest because that is in the current policy that we're supposed to be looking at what students are interested in informing helping

[00:38:21] students to form clubs around their interests there's not a lot of consistency in how that's done and there is some work that we could do to better make sure that that data is front and center of how we're making the decisions and supporting students to create the the clubs that meet their interests yeah and it's very obvious that you this was very data-driven which I really appreciate because you can't really deny what what the numbers and what the the data shows and so I think that would be a great thing to extend that beyond into making sure that all of our students feel represented in the clubs that are in their schools from elementary school all the way through our secondary schools.

[00:38:56] Yeah. Other clarifying questions? Not really, but thank you for your work, Rusty. This was great. With respect to those, if we implemented this, you know, if we passed it, all the existing clubs would need to go back and write charters that they don't already have them and you'll, will you have a prototype or something for them to provide guidance for that i think it would be important as part of implementation to provide some templates uh it's not in the policy that's more in the implementation of the policy but i do think that that would be important role for the school division and so all

[00:39:34] the existing clubs would need to go back and do that thank you one more for me uh professional staff shall attend every meeting or activity of such organizations how does that work in relation to what we're asking of staff and what we're promising them in terms of free unencumbered lunchtime how do we how do we juggle that yeah so the principal would have to be really careful and make sure that whatever we're doing in terms of supervision of student activities is consistent with the collective bargaining agreement and the other aspects that we have in terms of human resources and working with our teachers currently most of this is

[00:40:13] occurring during periods of time that are already within teachers contracted time some teachers opt to supervise for example study halls instead of a student activity and so that's really that if we start to do it during lunch which has happened in the past prior to the collective bargaining agreement it just has to make sure that this that the principal is following those collective bargaining agreements I've got a couple questions that I think I know the answer to but I want to ask them anyway thanks again for for the good work does

[00:40:48] this revised policy give principals an absolute power to shut down a club unilaterally within the no they have to do it consistent with the policy and the guidelines that are set up within the policy okay and does this policy prevent an outside speaker from coming to a high school after instructional hours no currently only during instruction during the school day the instructional hours Last question. Who is currently in charge of managing money, donations that come in to the club?

[00:41:24] Within the school? Yeah. There's a bookkeeper who is usually in charge in collaboration with the principal to ensure that any kind of fundraising that is happening is consistent with our fundraising policies. Okay. Thank you. Appreciate it.

[00:41:42] We've got a lot of emails from around the public. I just want to let everybody know, our constituents, that we're all listening. to everybody about this about this issue i'm just wondering if you could give some examples of non-curricular clubs and how many there are in our high school if anybody knows and how many students are in them i i don't know yeah to your second question i mean that speak the fact that we don't know speaks to the the point of needing some kind of revision because we really don't have a good record-keeping system right now for how many of these clubs exist which students are involved which is really important as we start to look at student engagement data,

[00:42:20] there are some districts that even measure that as a way to see, like, are all our students connected to something, right? We want to make sure all our kids are connected to something. Right now, we don't have a good way to measure that within our school division. To your first question, like, some examples. So the Ultimate Tic-Tac-Toe Club was one that I didn't know existed until I went through this process.

[00:42:41] The Jesus Club is one at Albemarle High School that exists. We have the Mountain Biking Club. We have Ultimate Frisbee Club. We have Dungeons and Dragons Clubs. We have Magic the Gathering Clubs. We have Pokemon Clubs. There are quite a few. There's vast and varied student interests that are out there that students form groups around within this time.

[00:43:03] - Thank you. - And I think that also speaks to taking a lot of the weight off the principals by having a consistent policy where they're not having to make a decision without any guidance and then decide if, you know, we have that club of how it's going to run you know that's something that when i talked to all the principals that was something that they really wanted was guidance so that they you know it wasn't all on their shoulders to make these decisions um rusty i also wanted to just um this to me feels extremely comprehensive and i appreciate all the work that went into it and for me as a school

[00:43:38] member who every week or two weeks looks at policies that you know we're um reviewing policies um it just reminds us that there's a lot of work to do in our policies i mean this i sometimes think like oh well there must be a policy for that it must really be working but clearly this really needed your work so i appreciate that and i take it as a note for myself thank you other clarifying questions seeing no other clarifying questions just wanted to provide a huge thank you um for

[00:44:17] all of your work on this and for all the input that we have received over the last November, December, January, February, March, five months. Just to let the public know, again, kind of next steps in this is that, again, thank you, Mr. Beer, for saying this.

[00:44:35] Please reach out to your school board member directly or through our email, schoolboard at k12alimar.org. We will also have public comment on this next week at our March 12th board meeting.

[00:44:51] and you can sign up for that online through the system you can call miss christine thompson or you can sign up up to the time of public comment so that is that is available to you and then after that public comment the board will deliberate and take a vote on this any other clarifying pieces i need to make on that thank you so much thank you the next piece on our agenda is a 10-minute break and i'm going to look to my right and to my left to see if the board would like to take a

[00:45:25] break before we go into our work session yeah charge ahead what what charge ahead charge ahead urgent end yep okay i'm getting i'm getting from the from mr black a charge ahead so um uh you may see us getting up from time to time to um to get some chocolate or some water so um that's just just what we're doing so the next piece of our agenda is 6.0 our budget work session number three our director of budget and planning and she is here to

[00:46:04] share additional information and address some of the questions that we brought forward and again just a reminder for everyone online or in the audience any of the information that we have regarding the budget is also available online at k12albemar.org backslash budget and that includes all the budget documents as well as the powerpoints

[00:46:31] are being used tonight good evening i'm maya kumazawa director of budget and planning and i'm here to facilitate our budget work session number three this is our agenda for this evening we're going to first start with a presentation about scholar studios by megan maynard and katina

[00:47:08] dudley and then i will provide an overview about our per pupil expenditures and changes over time third jackson zimmerman will present the fy26 second quarter financial report and fund balance projection and recommendations for one-time funding and then i will come back in the end to help prepare for funding request approval that is scheduled to happen next week. So the first item is a presentation on Scholar Studios. I just wanted to remind you what that impact was on the FY 27 draft funding request.

[00:47:44] This proposal is 1.4 million dollars and it includes the addition of 11 new classroom teachers and operating budgets for field experiences, industry credentialing and promotion so i will turn it on over to the staff to tell you a little bit more about this proposal good evening good evening school board chair dr berlin school board members

[00:48:24] superintendent matt haas and the cabinet megan and i are actually really excited to be here tonight we wanted to begin tonight to kind of frame our conversations around the scholar studios instructional program with you all. These career-connected learning communities are operating at our three comprehensive high schools and at two of our career academies. These communities work to embody our ideals of high school redesign. As we look at our data and think about our next step, it's important to remember that we're not alone in our journey of implementing career-connected

[00:49:02] learning. These small learning communities integrate academic coursework, career exploration, and work-based learning to improve engagement and post-secondary readiness for our students. This is a model that has shown results for several decades and it operates in thousands of schools across the country. It is supported by research and resources which Megan and I have used over the years with teacher teams throughout the design process to align this work to best practices.

[00:49:32] Today, career-connected learning communities are no longer an emerging innovation but an established national model thousands of high schools across the united states many even here in virginia organize learning through through career and pathway structures we also continue to learn and grow with innovative school divisions around the state who are tackling similar challenges through engaging in the valen network we were part of this inaugural cohort six years ago and we have again rejoined this cohort for number six valen is a community of practices of innovative

[00:50:09] school divisions learning and growing together across Virginia focused on high school redesign and we currently have a team from our division that includes school leaders and division leaders in a cohort of leaders across the division this also includes leaders from Williamsburg James City Stafford Roanoke and others we've actually been studying reimagined high school examples from across the country from experts within the field here you can see here you can

[00:50:47] see a few of the examples that we have explored as future ready learning models it has been a pleasure for the both of us to be part of this journey with you as Albemarle strives to create high school systems that align with the needs of all students this slide gives a recap of various touch points we've worked through with stakeholders including the school board you can see specific points where we have formally engaged with the board through updates and feedback as they pertain to high school redesign. So high school redesign, Scholar Studios was a component

[00:51:24] of that larger picture. Conversations with the board, our community, our educators, and our students led us to the tenets of high school redesign that you see here. The first, we know through research that students are motivated through learning experiences that they value, fostering a greater sense of belonging and autonomy in their own education. The second, aims to mitigate persistent gaps by providing access to specialized learning communities for every student. And the third focuses on connecting students with pathways that expose them to work

[00:52:03] based opportunities and specialized skills guiding their trajectory towards college and or careers. In our conversations with students and families, we ask them, what makes this model valuable? Here's what we heard. Students appreciate being able to take a deep dive into a subject that they care about. They share that they can develop interest in real-world applicable skills. Two, studios give students an opportunity to learn with peers that

[00:52:41] share their interest. A lot of students in the program say, these are my people. We get to learn from teachers who are experts in the topic who care about us. Plus, we have the chance to connect with professionals working in the very spaces where we see our own futures. And three, the program gives us ways to learn through experience. We enjoy hands-on learning experiences through lab experiences, field experiences, etc. A lot of the learning is project-based, meaning that you can work and learn by focusing on real-world problems. And another responded, this roll-up-your-sleeves

[00:53:21] hands-on learning helps us build real-world skills. Based on community conversations, The scholar steering team built out the components of scholar studios. Students who enroll in studios enroll in a gateway course, two pathway sequence courses, a capstone course, and then a pathway plus course.

[00:53:46] A pathway plus course is another course outside of the pathway sequence that's aligned to the student's studio learning. Examples that come up often would be psychology courses, statistic courses, courses that would help prepare them for the next part of their high school experience and/or college and career.

[00:54:10] We heard very clearly from our community that they wanted academic core classes included, and so with this new model, we have added academic core classes that will follow the students through the 9th through 12th grade experience, and we've also aligned our coursework to kind of use the instructional framework for these core classes as well.

[00:54:31] We're also excited because students are really excited to have work-based learning opportunities and also to work towards earning industry credentials. And I'm going to turn the next part of this over to Megan Maynard. Good evening.

[00:54:49] Through the components that Katina just mentioned, we have woven together some learning goals to create learning experiences and environments that are engaging and preparing our students to be ready for life. We've resoundingly heard from advisory that we should be striving to support students with transferable skills and the skills that we work together to identify will help our students to be purposely self-aware curious collaborators confident communicators who initiate impact these will be fully implemented starting in each gateway course all the way through the capstone courses as many

[00:55:26] of you have seen and joined in we have an active and committed advisory board that meets regularly with industry professionals educators and students to inform and shape our model and that helps us to align the learning to workforce needs. The industry community partners shape our curriculum, provide mentorship and identify key skills for current and future job markets. Our advisories are helping us to stay connected to the fast-paced industry in our region and our world as ACPS is a key component to the talent development pipeline in central Virginia's innovation corridor. And Katina mentioned even

[00:56:06] though we just worked on this slide in the fall, there are already new innovations happening that aren't even represented on here yet. We work with industry and higher education partners, our amazing student ambassadors, and our teacher and instructional experts to incorporate their input in alignment with what we know is best practice for high quality learning.

[00:56:32] This has given us a living structure that helps us to support our learning goals. After each advisory session, what you might not know is that we continue together. have dedicated time for our student ambassadors and our scholar studio teachers to grow and develop and shape the learning. Here you can see our ambassadors and teaching teachers engaging in a community of practice where they're practicing, designing, and prioritizing learning with agency and shaping their educational experience. This slide shows our student ambassadors engaging in leadership programming with our very own expert Makaya

[00:57:12] Holly. Mentors help our students to grow in depth and complexity towards our expectations of being ready for life with those transferable skills, and in this case it was towards being a confident communicator. Last year we established an interdepartmental scholar steering team. It was made up of stakeholders from our high schools, our academies, as well as each of our departments. And working together as a team, our goal was to holistically implement high school redesign and to proactively address the daily challenges that are impacting our students and families and develop a sustainable

[00:57:49] support structure for high school redesign and the ace academies this has been really rewarding work and some of um in terms of my own profession some of the most rewarding work i've been able to be a part of to see everyone kind of working together towards a common goal an example of this collaboration includes work to mitigate the transportation barrier of providing access to high quality learning for all students regardless of zip code student and family feedback provided directly to schools through our counselors and administrators gave us the specific data that we we needed to problem solve collaboratively.

[00:58:23] The transportation team and building leaders worked with our technology department to create new forms and processes, and our communications department and instructional teams collaborated to provide timely information in various formats and languages to our students and families.

[00:58:40] We're really excited to share the increased interest so far from students and families in the Scholar Studios instructional programming. With approximately 25% of our 9th graders and about 40% of our current 8th graders requesting a scholar studio next year. As a caveat, we're only a few weeks in to our registration season and we still have several weeks to go. Looking at these requests across feeder patterns, we see high interest in our northern schools such as Albemarle High School, which comprises 50% of our high school students and 10 of our 12 scholar studios are located on its campus. For example,

[00:59:19] approximately 60% of our current Journey and Lakeside 8th graders chose to participate in a studio. We continue to monitor data to ensure access and success across our membership groups and have seen for the second year in a row our student interest closely mirrors that of our division membership groups.

[00:59:38] Katina and I wanted to take a moment to acknowledge and appreciate the board in helping to support this program with specialized staffing for our English learners and students with disabilities. Our counselors, case managers, teachers and families have shared with us that they felt heard. This has helped them to have confidence and credibility in this program to live up to its ideals of engaging and preparing all students for a thriving future in high-demand pathways.

[01:00:06] Scholar Studios supports Goal 1, Objective 3 of our strategic plan by expanding innovative learning models that promote deeper engagement and meaningful learning experiences for all students through personalized pathways, real-world application, and student agency and learning. This model strengthens students' sense of purpose and readiness for post-secondary success.

[01:00:29] After years of preparation, we, alongside our community, look to the future with hopeful anticipation, eager for the vision to come to life with the opening of our new ACE Academy as a hub of innovation on the Lambs Lane campus.

[01:00:45] It has been very exciting to be a part of this uniquely designed, state-of-the-art facility with new equipment, to meet the hundreds of students and families at curriculum fairs of the past several months who are planning to attend next year, to listen to the educators who are inspired by this vision and want to be a part of launching it, and to welcome our new principal and building leader, Stephanie Carter.

[01:01:07] Welcome to the team. Good evening, Dr. Berlin, members of the board, and Dr. Haas. As the newly appointed principal of Albemarle Career Exploration Academy at Lambs Lane, I want to thank you for the opportunity, and I'm happy to share a few closing comments and thoughts.

[01:01:30] ACE at Lambs Lane represents something truly special for Albemarle County students. The Scholar Studios model allows students to engage deeply in areas of interest while connecting their academic learning to real-world applications, field experiences, and the many pathways our diverse students may pursue post high school.

[01:01:49] As you saw in the presentation, this work is grounded in research and designed to prepare students not just academically, but for college careers and overall life after high school. The skills students develop over four years at ACE at Lambs Lane will serve them well as on whatever path they choose the level of student interest already emerging is truly exciting families and students across the division are clearly eager for hands-on collaborative and goal and passion driven learning experiences over the past few weeks as i've begun meeting with teachers and staff who want to be part of this work i've already been incredibly inspired by

[01:02:27] their enthusiasm and passion they see the opportunity to design meaningful learning experiences, partner with industry and community organizations, and help students build the transferable skills that will serve them well long after high school graduation. Opening ACE at Lambs Lane this fall is an exciting milestone for Albemarle County's high school redesign. I'm honored to lead this work and deeply grateful for the board's continued support as we build a school where students can explore their interests, develop their talents, deepen their understanding of core academics through application, and graduate truly

[01:03:02] ready for life thank you for your support we are building something exceptional and i am truly excited to come to see it to fruition and to be a part of it thank you taking questions questions from the board um i actually have a question about um since this is for the budget on the um staffing for the studios i got a text that um social studies um i hope i'm getting i know is

[01:03:39] at least social studies teachers were being riffed and then new teachers were being hired and there's some upset about this i was wondering if you could just explain a little bit more the decision on that and if it's a budgetary decision or what but there's some heat that i've been getting and i'd love to be able to explain it some more sure it's definitely a busy time of year i could probably give an overview to what i've been a part of but i would defer to dan redding if he wants to be more

[01:04:05] specific about how hiring process works okay as it relates to riff we typically riff by school when ft's in the school decline the school is then overstaffed in certain areas at the secondary school that's based on teachers who are licensed in areas that the course sections are no longer

[01:04:41] needed that number of course sections can be taught by fewer staff so those staff then go into riff they are in a priority consideration under school board policy for other areas of their licensure other positions in their area of licensure in the division so in the terms of ace i'm not sure whether anyone has been hired that's not a current yes teacher no so i and i can say too i have um i've been working really closely i've only this is what third i've been here seven days

[01:05:20] or something so and it's all running together but I can say I have worked really closely with the principals at all the schools because they have been they we have worked to try it incredibly hard to make sure to avoid any rift conversations with with potentially opening up positions by placing current ACPS employees we haven't we have not hired anyone external at this point and specifically for social studies I have a small pool of recently rift teachers that i am going to meet with before we open up anything external um so we have we we are filling the positions with internal hires only right now okay all right that helps thank you you're welcome

[01:05:57] do you all have any estimates of projections enrollment projections for center one at this point yes so we as i mentioned we are several weeks into collecting requests so we do have those numbers i didn't split it out in the data that i was shared and don't have it off the top of my head but we can provide you an update tomorrow and we're tracking that daily and we'll have more finalized numbers towards early April so that figure I think it was 790 of students that have enrolled that includes Center one that includes Center one that's helpful I do think the numbers are close to where we've been projecting someone else might be tracking that but I think they're

[01:06:37] very close to where we've been protecting great and is there any rough idea of the sort of for lack of a better term call it the dropout rate that you've seen at center one in other words just making up figures let's say there were 250 students that enrolled in center one by the end of the school year had that number dropped by 20 percent five percent fifty percent any sense of how that's happened at center one so i don't have that data at the top of my head

[01:07:15] we're tracking both how many students started at the beginning of the year and continued and how many students are choosing to continue next year yeah so i know jay thomas and his team is working through that we can provide the follow-up it would also be helpful if you include students that chose other scholar studios i know one of the things i talked to jay about the other day was that it's not just students just leaving the scholars program they just do are doing what we want them to do which is if they're not passionate about a particular pathway that they go on another one so they're entering the transfer portal that's right yeah we again we are

[01:07:52] having those conversations and so we're noticing some of them are like oh actually i want to try this which is exactly what that gateway course katina mentioned is about giving students an opportunity to kind of get a taste and then decide is this for me or is it not before they had often knew that was a concern board members had brought up was you know if you go into a program are you locked into it we wanted to be sure there was flexibility sorry so just so the public in here just that we've been we've encouraged students to do that we've had we get that question a lot at with our eighth grade students in particular and we tell them yes try one out if you

[01:08:31] want to try another one and so we're not only seeing that at link we're seeing that in a couple of others where we've seen students move from one studio to another so as we talk about overcrowding and we're talking about you know the need for cip funding dr haas and i have had conversations about if the scholar studio is not at full capacity what is the plan for using the space as a kind of rollover space from albemarle since albemarle is very um over capacity um so that we're making sure we're maximizing the space um that we've spent a

[01:09:08] bunch of money on so i've met with mr barfield several times and one of our initial immediate conversations was was that students at albemarle that are in culinary for example we're going to have a nice beautiful new culinary lab and we are working closely with them so that those students can come over and use our space even as ahs students i think right now we're looking at that we have space to bring over some classes for gis culinary and sports med so we i'm working really closely with him and the bell schedules align well enough that they can access their our building's

[01:09:43] second third and fourth block okay so we're definitely we're here to serve all um admiral county students so um if we have the space we we would welcome them i would love just to update on that as enrollment goes along and as we're getting closer as we are kind of prioritizing our cip budget that would be really helpful as to where those priorities lie if we are being able to make up some of that from Albemarle that would be great so if we could just get an update as you're finalizing those things that would be wonderful absolutely thank you happy to yes other questions i want to know how the vivid studio is going and are you going to have a

[01:10:22] ambassador student ambassador next year for that yes i believe there are those are already in the works and so our um our fine arts coordinator dama snyder is doing really good things with um with our arts teams they kind of joined on this year as a pilot to learn how the other ambassadors were we're set up and what that process looks like so they'll be ready to launch next year thank you for all of your time and dedication with that this is more of a comment I had the opportunity to spend some time with Loudon and which I would say maybe are I don't know five years ahead of us kind of on

[01:10:55] this on this path and it was very interesting and because I kind of listened but also kind of I said kind of you know one of the things that our board is bringing up is this question on enrollment and how long does it you know how long does it take to get this the word out about this right even though we feel like we've been done doing this for a while and they said one of the things they said like there'll be a question here but one of the things they said is it's not just middle school but they're actually spending some time with their their third fourth and fifth graders just not necessarily using the word career but kind of the you know interest areas and some activities that

[01:11:34] they're doing to get them thinking about you know where concentrations might be that i would be interested in and so i'm curious where are we right now regarding like where do we start talking to kids about this and then do you have plans of how do you continue to bring it down so that we're introducing just this idea and not not just about the studios but more about how do you match your interest with things you potentially might want to do in your future yes um well i'm a fan of that pre-k to 12 plus career development um we're really excited with uh cabal guy our counseling

[01:12:11] coordinator is really looking at what does that look like in a comprehensive way we have it inconsistently kind of happening right now and so he's actually built out scope and sequences for each of those different levels we do have as you mentioned we do have in the middle school a pretty strong career development in our advisory and in career investigation courses. The state has something called an academic career portfolio that students start at the elementary school that Cabell is working to get piloted.

[01:12:40] And we actually just opened up this year School Links, which is the program we use in sixth through twelfth. We just launched that in January with our fifth grade students and it went really well for course registration. So the next step will be layering in the portfolio and the assessments as well. And through all that we also try to tie it to the things we offer right here in our school and not just the careers long term and then you may have also heard about our go tech program that will be happening in the middle schools which kind of expands access to more careers and hands-on learning at the middle school level that will be tying to the studios as well so I think we have opportunities to grow and

[01:13:18] I agree that that is an important thing that we can continue to do I'll just add about four years ago we worked on a K through 12 framework and the guaranteed field experiences were also a big part of this and every lesson that we put out to our K through 8 teachers also has a component of career development and when we work with our external partners we also ask them to expose students to different types of careers that are occurring at that particular site thank you so much I know we'll be working on sorry future work sessions I know Dr.

[01:13:53] and myself, and so that might be something, if it's of the interest of the board, of spending more time talking, not just at scholar-skiders, but in about that kind of continuum, so we can learn more and understand, because I mean, as you've heard, I think one of the concerns of the board, it continues to be, you know, what are we doing to make sure that, like, there is an interest, we know it, but how do we get them here and into the doors, and what are we doing to prepare them throughout their educational experience?

[01:14:28] - Yes, we would welcome the opportunity to partner with you on that. - I have one more question regarding the studios, and forgive me for not knowing this. Can students join their junior year or is it really something that they have to get in like freshman year to do all four years?

[01:14:45] - Yes, so as you know, we originally started the Career Learning Communities in 10th through 12th because we had some feedback from the academies that ninth grade was too early. We expanded it. This is our first year of ninth grade. I know it feels like we've come to you guys a lot. This is actually our first year with ninth grade students in the Scholar Studios.

[01:15:03] And so our current registration is our second year with ninth graders in the Scholar Studios. And we have an opportunity for students to join 10th grade. And that's to be full Scholar Studios completers and meeting all the components that Katina shared. We have always allowed juniors and seniors to join in on the programming as long as they have the prerequisites.

[01:15:22] So, for example, if you're coming over to do a class in engineering two as a junior, you had to have had engineering one at the base school, which we offer. Not all of our programs are offered at the base school, so it doesn't work perfectly. But we have always allowed students to join in as long as they have the prerequisites to be a part of that cohort and that programming.

[01:15:42] Because maybe it isn't until their junior year that they figured that out, right? We gave it a name this year because previously it felt like it was just conversation between a counselor and a student and the principal to work that out so we called it advanced studio access I don't know we'll see if it catches on yeah but we put some FAQs around it shared that with counselors and started sharing that with teachers and I think that will help as well and we have we have space available for our juniors and seniors so help us get the word out great thank you helpful Dr. Carter you're gonna give us a tour sometime this summer when you get settled I would love to I have not achieved a doctorate yet though I will tell you but I am happy to give you a

[01:16:21] tour we'll let you get your feet under a little bit thanks oh and and and i fail to say welcome from the board we are very excited to have you back thank you i am most happy to be back thank you so much i'm super excited seeing no other questions i think we can move on with our um our work session thank you so much for your time we so appreciate it all right um so this next section is going to focus on per pupil expenditures um with the purpose being we're answering the

[01:17:01] question why are per pupil expenditures rising so if I explain it well enough I'm hoping that each of you can walk away and explain it so as I'm going through a lot of numbers please feel free to jump in because this is a type of topic you don't you might forget exactly what you didn't understand because I'm going to walk you through it step by step so please interrupt I'm starting here first with a slide from work session one which feels like ages ago but it was only two weeks ago where we talked about section a and section a of the budget book is where we step through and build up from an FY 26 adopted budget so our current

[01:17:40] year's budget and then all the changes that are happening to build up to next year's FY 27 draft funding request there are many many changes that are happening but for the ease of communication they are grouped together in these categories and these changes include baseline adjustment non discretionary new schools workforce investments service reductions and new proposals these changes equal twenty seven point one million dollars and that's the difference between this year's budget and next year's proposed budget I also want to emphasize again that most of the numbers we'll be

[01:18:16] discussing tonight are changes so if you see a dollar amount and you see the word compensation next to it that doesn't mean that's the cost of compensation That's the change in cost of compensation from one budget to the other. We're talking about changes for the most part. The way per pupil is calculated is you take the total adopted budget, we're focusing on the school fund, and you divide by the number of students.

[01:18:43] So, for example, the FY26 adopted budget of $284 million is divided by our number of pre-K to 12 students, which is 14,000. That provides a per-pupil budget in FY26 of $20,000.

[01:19:00] Then we add in those changes that were in the previous slide. That's the $27.1 million. We add that to the adopted budget and get to the draft funding request, which is $311 million. We take that number and divide it by the number of pupils to get to a new per-pupil amount of $22,000.

[01:19:21] So these next few slides, so this is just for one year, FY26 to 27. I really like this kind of I think it's called a waterfall chart. It's building up from one place to the next. You can do the same analysis for multiple years. So what we've done is done a budget to budget change from FY20 all the way through FY27.

[01:19:49] There's a separate handout that you all have with lots of numbers on it, and I'll go through each of these, what it means in detail, but what's on the slide is a summary version to summarize exactly what's on the handout.

[01:20:05] So we'll start with FY21. The adopted budget was $193.7 million. So that number is divided by the number of students at that time, 14,236, and the per pupil calculated amount is 13,609.

[01:20:23] When you move across the sheet of paper from FY21 all the way to FY27, you can see that the change from previous year in terms of the total budget is increasing. There's a percentage increase every year. In addition, the per pupil budget is also increasing. You can see the percentage change from year to year. In total, since FY20, the changes have equaled $111.8 million, or if you converted it to a per pupil amount, it's about $8,000 per pupil. If you're following that, you might say,

[01:21:01] well, why? Why is the per pupil increasing? If you look on the line that says budgeted enrollment for k-12 you'll see that we've talked about this a few times now our enrollment has steadily grown since the pandemic but not at a significant rate it has it has grown at a rate that is smaller than the rate of budget growth and so when you have that the per pupil amount is going to grow and so everything in the rest of the page so the middle to the bottom of the page shows you every change that has been made since FY20 to show you why the expenditures are increasing.

[01:21:39] Again, this has been simplified, even this paper has been simplified to categorize expenditures in such a way that we can compare them from year to year, and it's oversimplified. If you are interested in any of the specifics behind each category, they're outlined as mostly as new proposals or non-discretionary technical changes in every budget book in Section A.

[01:22:05] So you don't even need to read. If you wanted to go back to a different year, just look at Section A, and you'll be able to find exactly what the changes were, and that's what's outlined on the handout. What is VRS? Oh, retirement. Thank you. Yep, Virginia Retirement System.

[01:22:21] So what's on the slide in front of you is a summary of that $8,000 and what has contributed to that change. So as you can see, the largest bars are compensation, health care, and new proposals.

[01:22:38] So I figured we might spend a little extra time on those. So those are the three drivers of what is changing our per-pupil amount since FY20. We'll start with compensation. And compensation is one of those items that, you know, is not related to the number of students or student growth.

[01:22:56] So this is something that would increase per-pupil at any school division. It's closely aligned with inflation and cost of living, so you would expect that to increase. Post-pandemic, you might remember that inflation levels and cost of living was incredibly high at unprecedented levels.

[01:23:14] And these compensation changes, you can see post-pandemic make also reflect that. So in FY21, there was no salary increase given. In '22, there was a 5% to 4% salary increase given and so on.

[01:23:29] So you can see that we've separated the teachers and the classified employees because they often receive different salary raises based on our different compensation strategies each year. Overall, if you add up the, I didn't compound the percentages, but if you just add up the percentages, teachers have received greater than a 37% salary increase and classified employees have received a greater than 36% salary increase.

[01:23:57] So this is the single largest driver of per pupil, as you can see from that last chart. Any questions on compensation? also want to note that when we say compensation, it's called compensation because it includes the salary costs, but also the associated benefit increases that are a percentage of salary. So that would include FICA, VRS, retirement, group life, and other benefits that are percentage-based of your salary. Questions or comments? I think it does not include health insurance. Right, because

[01:24:36] that's not related to salary. But perfect lead into the next slide. Another driver is health care increase. This is the same chart I shared in work session one just expanded showing more years where we've seen a very significant increase in the health care rates starting with the FY23 budget going all the way through into the FY27 draft funding request. Overall we're seeing a 134% increase. Again that's unrelated to student enrollment. Those are increases in costs to

[01:25:12] provide the same level of services. And then the last major driver is new proposals. So this is a list of every new proposal that has been approved by the school board, beginning with FY21, which is not included here because there were no new proposals that year. But you can see them listed out by their different titles or what we called them. I put FTE amounts next to them just so you can get a sense of why FTE counts are increasing.

[01:25:50] The total cost of the proposal is not always FTE. So you can tie this slide into the bottom half of this sheet, lists the dollar amounts, if you wanted to tie them with a dollar amount. It's correlated with FTE counts, but not exactly.

[01:26:10] And then the ones that are starred, those are proposals that were added in a specific budget year and then but there haven't been fully carried forward because of a reduction in our budget process any questions questions from the board back to the last slide for a second I know you don't have a crystal ball and I understand from somebody who's way smarter than I am this is getting into the weeds that the cost of the health insurance does those projected costs come

[01:26:50] out based on a calendar year is that correct yes so as we're planning for the budget for fiscal year 27 we've got to base those estimates on costs that came out six weeks ago or whatever first of january historically has that estimate been pretty close do we have you know within a certain range there it's a good question um for the last couple of years we have under budgeted our expenses for

[01:27:26] health care um and i believe it was last fiscal year we had to make a one-time infusion to build our reserve back up and so um that was an i think a sound approach to be where we want to be um and but we have seen what we do is we look at the trend from and dan correct me if i'm saying anything out of place but we're looking at trends for the current year what we're actually experiencing and we're extrapolating that into the future and so what we're seeing now is that our expenses for health care are stabilizing back to a more i guess normal level than before and so

[01:28:03] that's the projection for the next plan year the reason why the there's still an 18 increase is because we're still paying for plan year 26 our current year as part of next year's budget and that increase is part of that blue column and so I would if if the stabilization continues I would expect that when we're talking about FY 28 that percentage will keep coming down to reflect more of the plan year to plan your increase which is more in the range of around 10% in the history of the

[01:28:37] universe have health care costs ever come down the percentage increases have come down yes i think that's what i would say yeah last half full thank you and forgive me because i'm new at what point did we decouple from the county in terms of health insurance we haven't we're still coupled with them okay sorry they um i'm thinking of hr yes yes okay well and i've wondered this is that a possibility to since we've separated our hr to have control over our health

[01:29:15] costs we'd have a smaller population it's a smaller pool more susceptible to variability and high costs yeah there are only what 600 i think the county government's in the 900s and we're about 2800 so it would have the effect of shrinking our risk pool which could have the unintended consequence of raising our rates you're spreading the total i just wonder if we're the majority of it if we could have more say what the cost you know we're told how much to spend but

[01:29:54] don't have any say right in making the just there is there is a joint steering committee that makes decision or guides decision making okay while the fund is overseen ultimately by the county gotcha there's a joint effort gotcha yep okay thank you for the clarification right right I don't know invite the city yeah invite the city keep first that is first step in this collaboration that is something that you are seeing happening in these in these the other thing we're seeing is that other localities are experiencing the same thing so it's not just us

[01:30:27] right what's in what anecdotally I've seen that we experienced these increases earlier they're seeing it upcoming and so while we're stabilizing they're seeing big spikes and that's been like that's been a topic of the regional superintendents meetings and i've last year i was talking about our really uh huge increases that we were having and there were there were a handful there's 25 school systems in our region a handful we're talking about the same thing this year it's everybody else yeah it's like they've all it's it's all come home for them and then i would add

[01:31:05] that um there are multiple agencies that are also part of the health insurance pool so the jails um can you think of other ecc eccs in there so they're authority they're smaller but they all add up to make it a pretty pretty good size uh pool um so speaking of other divisions this last slide um is a comparison of all virginia school divisions in the blue so we'll start at the bottom the blue line represents per pupil expenditures for virginia on average and then the yellow going

[01:31:43] up one step represents acps's per pupil over time and then the dotted lines are the same thing but they're adjusted for inflation and represent today's dollars and so you can see that from 2008 which is post great recession all the way through around fy21 that inflation adjusted dotted line is pretty flat what's happening in fy22 through fy24 that's where we see the increase and that's why we focus this analysis on that time period so we'll start first with fy22 label 22 actual

[01:32:21] in that year we made a we made a student enrollment projection this was right after the pandemic and we we expected students to come back and they did it well they did but not at the rate that we projected and so the variance from our enrollment projection which our budget is based on to the actual students that showed up after the budget year had started was negative 628 and so that's why you see that spike of well we budgeted for 628 students that didn't come in and that's why that per pupil is spiked the year-over-year change in reality was 260 so we actually added

[01:32:58] 260 students that year we just didn't add the full you know 800 students that had left from the pandemic the year-over-year percentage change that year was two percent while the state enrollment percentage change was zero percent so we're actually growing quicker than the state in 22 but we had over budgeted that year in 23 we corrected that so you can see our variance from projection was close to zero or zero percent and we added 125 students the year-over-year enrollment

[01:33:32] change was one percent in line with the state and then in 24 we under by we are getting closer but not quite there we over budgeted by over budgeted by 262 students we saw a slight decrease that year but just a zero percent change both for us and for the state so that's the enrollment side which is the the denominator what's happening in terms of expenses over those same years is that we had a 20 percent compensation increase as you saw on the slide with the year-to-year

[01:34:06] compensation changes we had a 50 health care increase as i mentioned those two items have nothing to do with enrollment but what is related to enrollment is we also decreased class sizes during those years so we said we want to keep the staff we have and the teachers we have the students didn't show up the way we expected but we want to take advantage of that and keep our class sizes small especially with recovery learning recovery efforts we the school board felt that was important so that added 30.5 fte some of the other major proposals that were approved during those years

[01:34:41] was the school-based substitute proposal that added 57 fte and a lot of these proposals like the school-based subs it's not just net ads school-based subs have lowered our costs for wages we pay to temporary employees so that was added and then mental health supports we've added 30 fce in that area so on the right are the kind of the biggest expenditure changes those years and then at the bottom are also the impacts of enrollment and then after fy24 though i think it's interesting that we are getting back to kind of the this the same we're getting closer to where

[01:35:20] we were with the statewide average where we were in all the previous years and we're kind of moving along the same trend line as the state so again we talked about health care being a trend and market compensation we provide those recommendations based on the market and so you can see per pupil we are generally in line with the rest of the state with a few exceptions during those middle years that are highlighted so i will open up for questions and discussion questions or comments

[01:35:54] for my peers so i think this is one of the first questions i sent to you is like is there like we continue both from constituents as well as board of supervisors to just provide a better explanation of per pupil and i appreciate this i may have you talk me through it a little bit more before i present to the board of supervisors but i think this the chart um the waterfall chart i think to date has done the best explanation instead of just saying it's it's a list of things but but to show the added impact and the size of it

[01:36:29] is important, so a huge thank you. The only other thing, and I think we've talked about this before, and I don't know if Dan knows it, like I know we can say, like there's data out there that says where Virginia as a whole ranks in the country, right, for teacher salaries, and I think it's like, we're number 26.

[01:36:50] Because teacher salary and staff salaries are moving target, right, 'cause everyone's going through budget season, just as I'm showing this to kind of to my peers, the Board of Supervisors, you know, you see this, oh my gosh, we did, you know, the size of the compensation jump. However, if you put it, if you need to show it in context that we are still at a level, you know, lower than 25 states and, you know, kind of in the mid median of the state. So if there's anything else we can show just to show that, that yes, we've made a huge investment but are still teachers are still like I said

[01:37:30] Dr. Haas there's an article right now about the number of teachers who have to work this is nationwide second jobs right or who get some kind of assist to federal assistance and so I also want to help the public understand like yeah it looks like we're giving them huge raises but because of where they started this is just in a way keeping up with inflation we're still not making the gains that we really need to to show the to to show what teachers and staff would actually deserve so if there's anything in that context that we could include but you know Dan or just when we present to the Board of Supervisors I think would be helpful yeah that's a great idea yeah I think the expression is

[01:38:09] we're a taller tree I wouldn't even say we're a tall tree but we're a taller tree in a really short forest yeah when you think about Virginia yeah and the overall lack of expenditure on on public schools in Virginia. I think that's where I heard the last but we can you can we can someone can fact check me on that. Good evening school board I'm Jackson

[01:38:47] Zimmerman I'm your school finance officer. I'm coming to present to you a preview of what's going to be on consent agenda for next week is the financial report for the second quarter of the year. We have I know you're talking about budget for this upcoming year but we also have resources in the current year and those resources some of those resources are available for to meet the needs of kids in our current year but there are also a few resources that we're we're proposing potentially to be used to address resource needs for next fiscal year so that's why the second

[01:39:25] quarter financial report has some bearing upon where we are in the budget process right now let me skip to the next next page we our operations for the the last quarter are very very similar as what we saw in the first quarter we have accelerated a little bit of our our expenditures because we started the year a little earlier our reception of resources in terms of revenues is very similar as to we've experienced over the past few years the only thing that sort of changed on

[01:40:02] our expenditures is we're accelerated a little bit since we opened school earlier there's also a side effect of opening school earlier since we had sort of a crossover of our benefit packages during that time period we are experiencing some one-time savings associated with that because of the crossover of the coverage of health care we had budgeted through august for the prior year we started in august so therefore we didn't double up on that health care payment during that time

[01:40:37] period so there's some one-time savings associated with that that doubling up of that potential crossover of coverage from the decision to open school a little bit earlier so we've identified some savings that we believe will and will have available to us through the end of this coming cycle as part of that of of our ending of the year for 25. so what we'll see here is a new

[01:41:14] projection of our fund balance very very similar as to what you have seen with the first quarter financial report with the exception that we have made there is an audit adjustment that's been posted so when you saw the first quarter financial report there was not an audit adjustment part of that there were some small adjustments associated with inventory that were made but the large adjustment was a component that's a brand new gasby government accounting standards board pronouncement that forced us to account for um our espets our technology contracts that we have

[01:41:53] that carry forward across multiple years and so there was a 500 000 plus dollar adjustment in that process to account for espets and that is reflected in our in our projections that are showing what's available fund balance during this time period so we're showing um we had our fund balance we have some of the audit adjustments we did collect more revenues than we expended last year so we had a very good financial performance for last fiscal year so therefore we started off

[01:42:27] this year with about four and a half million dollars in available fund balance of that money ninety one thousand dollars was uh budgeted in the budget that we're currently operating under we have a purchase order carry forwards from the end of the year last year that vendors didn't deliver all the goods and that leaves us with um and then we're we we have some savings that are going to be generated for this year 1.8 million dollars of that savings was due to that one-time

[01:43:04] health insurance benefits component and then we have identified some other savings that are associated with that as well we have some recommended one-time expenditures that will be shown on the next page and then we're looking at available fund balance for at the end of this current cycle this current fiscal year that may assist with budgeting for next year components of it may so we have a

[01:43:44] recommendation of one-time funding some components of this are in the current year. We anticipate using some of those savings that we've generated in the current year to meet some current year needs. Things that we really do in some of these issues, we must address them, particularly the things that are associated with trailers and classrooms. Vehicles, we've had a long-term need for replacing some of our vehicles. Instruments and arts equipment, we're recommending we are planning on spending those dollars in the current year and then for fiscal

[01:44:24] year 27 we have some recommendations for one-time items that can be used in fiscal year 27 these items are recommendations for you to consider during your budget process we would add them on to the budget process at the end of this at the end of your cycle but these are proposals that staff is bringing forward for discussion and consideration during the budget cycle so this is where we have current year needs that we're going to discuss and then future budgetary needs that

[01:44:57] can be met using one-time funds again there will be a full financial report on your consent agenda for next week and if you want to pull that and i'll be i'll be available to discuss it or any discussions that we might have on this presentation tonight is the recommendation under textbooks um six hundred thousand dollars would that be in addition to the eight hundred

[01:45:35] thousand dollars in the proposed budget it would be uh six hundred thousand dollars in addition to what is proposed um can we get a sense of what some of those unfunded instructional resources are that would be we'd be happy to come forward with uh additional information on that thank you um similar to the if we could get that as well as the transfer to technology replacement to just get a kind of a list of what would be included in that yes ma'am other questions i have a weedy

[01:46:10] question so you said there was a kind of on pay or uh pos that were open pos i know this goes way back um to dr hayes i know when we had issues with our math the new math curriculum one of the things we talked about you kind of assured the board is like we were having these issues you're working with them and at that point we hadn't paid them anything and I'm just wondering where that is is that what this that number is or is that we already

[01:46:42] has that been paid is that resolved thank you good evening it has not been resolved we are in the process now of reviewing the items they shared the updated items with us and so we're in the process of reviewing those we're going to share some things with our staff at the principals meeting next week and then if everything looks good we'll work with our finance department to move forward with the closeout one of the things that they're going to do is replace the items that we received this year that were faulty and then send some

[01:47:16] new items as well got it so would that be it would a part of I think that's part of that PO carry forward or is that already is that part of the PO carry forward I don't think so okay I don't think so I think it's a separate it's already it's kind of yes it's already a separate thank you just a comment it's my understanding that when we did away with the fees for students to be in band or in in one of the musical things the fees used to be collected at each school which will provided the replacement funding

[01:47:55] so this is our effort to equalize access to music uh but there somebody has to pay the piper i guess helpful okay yes that's the answer so right yes this is an effort to level the playing field so all students would have access and so if they're not collecting fees we pay the fees to replace the instruments that is correct um and also we want to make sure that students that are signing

[01:48:30] up for our courses don't if i'm choosing to play the trumpet and we don't have a trumpet then i don't say i don't want to be in band um and so you know that was one of the challenges that we were hearing from our community that I want to do this we don't have it now I have to go to the flute I don't want to do the food so I quit band altogether and so we wanted to make sure we eliminated that barrier and making sure we updated our instruments had enough for students across the division as well as our performing arts and digital arts programs as well some of our equipment has very special unique needs like our kilns and things like that and so we

[01:49:08] want to make sure that that those courses can be offered and don't create a burden for our schools so we want to make sure we can we have those funds at the division right and unlike many school divisions that did away with their arts departments we have always supported them and that is part of the cost for students thank you that's helpful because that has come up with conversations with principals and and constituents before of kind of where is this replacement money

[01:49:34] coming from in the future. All right, so I'm going to zoom us back out to kind of the overall picture looking at next year. This does not include those one-time items. We'll bring those back forward when we're getting closer to adopt a budget. Trying to keep the one-time items separate from this budget based on recurring revenues. The expenditures that we've been looking at for next

[01:50:12] year are $311.3 million. At the superintendent's draft funding request presentation, that balance to our anticipated revenues. And then as we provided an update last week, those revenues are projected to be lower by about $6.4 million.

[01:50:32] So the discussion for this evening really is three questions. One is which revenues do you want to approve for the FY27 funding request? Whether it's a balanced budget based on formula that was the presentation earlier in February, or a balanced budget based on updated revenues.

[01:50:53] So that would include reductions in the expenditures to match the $6.8 million in anticipated revenues. So we'll start with that first question and then we'll get to the other two questions.

[01:51:08] - I would do it based on A, the historical funding formula that the county we've used with the county for the past, what, 30 plus years. they already last year deviated from that funding formula by their four cent tax increase giving us a tenth instead of 60 percent so that would be my inclination i i agree because i haven't really gotten a sense or answer about what has changed about the county's priorities such that we're no

[01:51:46] longer working from that long-standing formula i think for us to have a discussion about what our priorities are is a robust discussion I think that's really important to see what is working and what we would like to see different what our priorities are that's our job but I don't yet have a sense of why you know the priorities for this for the county is lower for the schools this year than in previous years plus our legal obligation is to provide a needs-based budget and we of course it

[01:52:22] needs based funding request in course and the end of it we have to have a balanced budget but that's not what's required at this point do you have a sense about what's going on with the paternalistic I will hold 6.4 million and we'll talk about it later I mean does anybody have a sense as to what that's about I'm talking about out loud what no one has been stated is the purpose of it is to provide future flexibility for the Board of Supervisors out of our funding? Out of what we would have traditionally received so it was the

[01:53:01] combination of two things one is to set aside funding for capital for the capital improvement plan but not designate it for schools and then to flatten the variability of funding that can occur when we have fluctuations in the LCI that was the right are they were looking at our increase in state funding which is a significant percentage increase when you look at one year to the next um as you all know that was a restoration from the last two years and we'll um so jason i just reviewed um a little while ago jason has developed a slide deck so it's going

[01:53:40] to be a little different when we do the two by twos it will not be just a presentation of a rehash of what we presented before this will be a discussion about that about the shift in the the funding and we're we're going to be seeking to invite a conversation about it and we'll see how it goes I mean I don't think doing the rehash of the presentation will do that it will just be more inviting governing officials to get down in the weeds around how we're doing the work in the school system

[01:54:17] whereas I think by taking this approach which is more focused on the funding and and the prioritization of schools in the funding well it should engender that conversation we we are hopeful and he just looked at today he's done a really nice job of putting it all together so i mean i think one of the things i always think about and i think dr haus and i talked about this right before his presentation is that when you're doing a budget right be it for your home be it for a school be it for a county you have to take a slice of data at that time right you can't continued i think you this is why now you're said you're like we're not going to continue to adjust

[01:54:55] if we're hearing because potentially something um uh relevant from the state and so i think in my sense doing that is like everything was built around this number which was the number we had history on and so i feel like using that number because that is what this budget was built on and to to dr eikha's point is we have to provide a needs-based budget um and i think we are showing that there are there are a number of needs that we have that we if we that we are

[01:55:34] going to have to cut um if we already bring down that funding level so i i've i feel like it doesn't really have to be a or b i feel like it could be somewhere in between because i don't necessarily agree with everything that's in the budget and everything that we want to spend money on so in my opinion i think there are some things that could be cut or re-evaluated that would drop that 311 down but there's no way we're going to cut six and a half million dollars that's not like

[01:56:09] but i i do think that there is probably somewhere in between that we could land on that um yes it's a needs-based budget but do we need everything that's in there or are we you know are there some cuts that can be made or that we can economize on that um we get that paper down slightly i i think that is a good point i mean i always take everything back to kind of your own household budget right like we all have needs but like how do we continue to think about are we making the best choices with our money are there things that maybe we're working five years ago um that are not

[01:56:46] relevant so I know we have historically we made significant budget cuts in the last two years but I just think it's good fiscal operations and because fiscal oversight is a piece of our board for us to continue every year to look at that and do that you know keeping the needs of our students in mind but also saying you know is this piece still working are we being the most efficient and effective with our money um and i think that that is falls well within our um our duties as board members to analyze that um which is why i i do think that there's probably some compromise to be

[01:57:25] made well i mean i think isn't that though the difference between a funding request and a balanced budget is when do you make those cuts and i think in terms of our legal obligations to advocate for what we think would be the best um we may we will unless the unless jackson finds us some more one-time funding and uh the supervisors relax a bit we're going to have to make cuts um but the issue for me is how do we keep the funding requ needs based funding request which is not the same

[01:58:03] thing as a budget how do we keep that in its best form and then come back and do what we have to do we've always balanced budget that's been painful many times in the past decade but yeah no i hear you and i don't necessarily disagree but i think um as we are presenting what those needs are have we analyzed it as a board have we looked at are those truly our needs and are we presenting that to to the board of supervisors and i and you know i i think we we may disagree on on when we

[01:58:39] would start to analyze that i think it is good fiscal responsibility to say look we looked at all this stuff these are programs that aren't necessary and and um we can cut those um but yeah i mean i still want to negotiate against ourselves it's also good fiscal responsibility for the county to be consistent with us from year to year absolutely and you know if there are things that we can cut then let's cut them and throw that money into capital because we our capital needs are right on yeah no absolutely and they're not

[01:59:15] promising so if I'm gonna go towards absolutely we don't want X Y and Z right or we can do without X Y and Z that would be money that we could save to go to absolutely some others yeah more effective absolutely but I don't see how the public it would support changing the formula just on a whim like this well and not doing it out in the public and doing it you know that that to me is what bothers me about this whole situation is that it was done behind closed doors in closed session not out in the public saying hey this is why we came up we don't even know why they decided to do that and that is

[01:59:51] what feels um frustrating i guess for biting my tongue um but we also have to find a way to work with them um and and um repair i don't know i don't know what the right word is but um make this work in some way maya does the 311 million include what we had talked about before of four point something million to go to the cip yes so if we strip that out then the additional

[02:00:27] cuts that need to be made is a roughly 2.3 million yes that's correct but we don't know that they're not going to still say you have to take six million they're going to take six million regardless i don't know plus can we really cut anything from our cfp right like i mean because they want to put it in a in holding but not necessarily for cip rights well i'm wondering if the board of supervisors will actually take what the county administrator wants to do and follow and follow

[02:01:02] along with it and and do it so therefore if you take if you do b you use updated revenues and you cut then the board of supervisors is just going to take whatever cuts we want and run with it right so therefore we should do a based on the historic 54 formula right does that make sense makes sense to me bob i'm going to restate question number two based on the feedback you've provided so if

[02:01:32] you want to balance based on formula if do you have any changes you would recommend hold on can you now you so if you want to balance a budget based on what was presented um in the draft funding request is there anything within that you would want to change in preparation for approving it next week not at this time change it later right yeah so uh i just want to make sure just

[02:02:08] to clarify if we have specific ideas about budget items that need to be changed is this the time to raise those issues or are you saying either speak now or forever hold your peace no this oh this would be kind of a first time you could raise that um and then that would give staff time to work on that because we are adopting a budget at the end of april which really isn't that much time in that many meetings so we can start the conversation now but the

[02:02:42] funding request is typically at kind of the dollar figure for the school fund so you're requesting a dollar amount what goes into that dollar amount can be changed today or it can be changed during the school year so there's a there's flexibility and how that money is spent this is kind of the starting point is the full dollar amount right so if we wanted to reallocate the 4 million that that that jim just raised that we were going to put into capital we could do it after the funding request but before the adoption of the final budget yes and and um i haven't talked

[02:03:20] about this before but the budget that's adopted can be amended throughout the year which is what we're doing with um we have some fund balance savings this year so we're proposing to change our spending to make sure we spend that money and that's something you can do throughout the year is change um how you want to spend so it's not there's a lot of touch points and a lot of stages but nothing is ever final and if i remember jackson's presentation that amount currently we have a fund balance of 5.3 million dollars and that's projected for the end of fy26 if you

[02:03:58] accept the recommendations in the one time that would be the projected amount we have at the end of this year okay that's good news are we hearing anything any good news from the state in terms of educational funding yes a few hours ago I received some updates but and they're all generally positive but we I'm not presenting anything specific because if there are two separate versions of the budget once those there's the crossover or the conference budget where it's kind of the agreed

[02:04:32] upon negotiation that's when we would build in a state revenue update so we're not recommending any changes to revenues at this point but we should have that info before the adoption of the final budget perhaps we'll have a version yeah they've dragged it out for yeah the hope would be i mean the two that i'm just interested in looking at a little closely i think we mentioned earlier just um on the the textbook which would be there's a there's

[02:05:12] like the there's the 800 000 plus the 600 i think i'm interested in just seeing just understanding what that looks like across pre-k-12 and then just the the technology like what is included again not questioning it but just trying to like anytime i see these large pieces in the budget just trying to understand kind of what that is being used for i think we did get a breakdown of the 800. okay i apologize no that's fine but not the technology but we did get it on the 800.

[02:05:40] um i i would like more information on the half million dollars that's a discretionary amount for safety officers and talent um that's kind of i don't even know what page it's on um i'll have to go find it sorry but that's a lot of money and it's just kind of in there but we hadn't really discussed adding additional um safety officers or safety i'm sorry i school security officers thank you um but you know that's half a million dollars i would love

[02:06:16] a little more where that came from um and um yeah yeah i let me start first with the technology piece that number represents a replacement of our classroom display equipment this was a proposal that was submitted and it's not funded it's not in the budget but they do need to be be replaced there is some conversation about whether they all need to be replaced maybe it can be done in stages do we really need to replace all of them so it's it's it's a more of a technology contingency we know we need the money the equipment needs to be replaced we haven't decided exactly what it will be

[02:06:55] used for but there are and if we don't use it for that we would you know come back and describe that or it could be used for other technology but as a As a placeholder, that is mostly for display technology. With regards to the school security officers, the reason why you have noticed that those FTEs have gone up is it's simply a budget change.

[02:07:19] There's no change in increasing the number of school security officers. What schools have been doing is using their own staffing to staff to the level that they would like. And so what we're doing with the FY27 request is better reflecting so it's more transparent the level of school security officers we have in the school. So there's no additional cost to it.

[02:07:41] It is a shift of cost from instructional staffing to SSOs to reflect what the schools have decided to do. For talent development, those FTE changes are incorporated into the workforce investments proposal. It was about $4 million in making sure we had adhered to the collective bargaining agreements. So in order to adhere and make sure we have the guaranteed lunch time and the guaranteed planning time, those FTE increases were recommended to ensure we have the right staffing to be able to provide those benefits, and

[02:08:15] that's included as part of the cost of workforce investments. Okay, thank you. So it sounds like the consensus is we would bring back a balanced budget based on formula that is the draft funding request without any changes, and so are there any other questions or requests or about the process itself that I'd be happy to answer. This would be for Dr. Berlin's presentation to the funding

[02:08:48] request. I mean I would like to see a graph or a chart of the traditional allocation of the formula, the revenue formula that we, you know, how this is a deviation from that. I can't force Dr. Berlin to talk about that, but I would offer it as a suggestion we have that in the works already okay so the next step would be a week from today we'll bring forward a quick item for you to approve the school board funding request and we're still open for questions as I said

[02:09:27] it's an ever-evolving process it can be changed at any time so we're always open for feedback throughout there are no deadlines when is the funding request what what is the date of that 16th yeah it's March 16th at 5:00 p.m. though that's a change it's a Monday yeah they'd be just because of new some of the news the schedules of the current the new Board of Supervisors I think just until so I'll be part of the cheering squad thank you and yes and just just as

[02:10:04] a reminder we'll just go back just for a second to the to this slide that shows the for everyone in the public making sure you're staying abreast of all of the information it's all up on the website as well as questions and I promise to read the rest of them and thank you and I think we're gonna ask you how many were submitted at the next meeting we don't have to count right now Brooke did

[02:10:29] count today. I think it was like next week. That's that is thank thank you for all of your work and thank you to the public for your engagement. I want to know how many pieces of paper they generated. So we are now moving into 7.0

[02:11:05] Other business so other business by the school board members and superintendents. I know mr. Dillenbach has an appointment to the long-range planning Committee, this is also a time where we could talk about our committees or school visits Yeah, I am delighted to mention that Craig Weiss a community member of long-standing Is the new appointee from the Rio district to the long-range planning advisory committee?

[02:11:38] He and his family have been residents of Albemarle County for many years. He's got at least three kids that have gone through ACPS, and he's super, super smart. So I'm excited to have him as part of the committee.

[02:11:56] Thank you so much for that. I just wanted to mention that I spoke with a scout troop. They were the Weebelos, and it was hilarious and fun. What grade is that, like third, fourth grade? It's like fourth, fifth around there.

[02:12:12] There was a lot of like, you know, flipping your eyelids inside out. It's a thing. Anyway, it just was a lot of fun. And we talked about elected officials and then what happens if there's a tie and how many votes did you get and how many people vote. Anyway, it was a very interesting thing. So if you're invited, I would suggest it.

[02:12:30] It's very fun. They ask, like, are you going to be president of the United States next? We're like, no. Yeah. How many years can you serve? Yeah. And I said, well, what do you think? And he said, 400 million. And I was like, that's correct. That's what it feels like. I can serve 400 million. Dr. Haas and I had a visit to Western on Monday which was great because my kids go to Western got to see one of them in art and it was a great visit no cell phones out at all it was really impressive and it was quiet and Western had a fire today which was interesting and one of their pods I happened to be at the school when that happened so that was exciting but I also was in their

[02:13:09] theater tech miss gilman bennett and i are volunteering on the high school musical committee so we are in charge of um propaganda i don't know what do you call it promotion propaganda closing promotions promotions it's been a week it's been a week um but that should be really exciting it's going to be the last week of april so i encourage you guys to come and we have students who are actually doing the promotion for the first time and so they had amazing ideas of how they wanted to promote the show and get the whole school engaged in it so it was really impressive and i'm excited

[02:13:46] for that show so yeah i'm really looking forward to the musicals yeah what is the show high school musical i know it's like who's on first what's on second it's high school musical is the high school musical um it's the 20th anniversary of high school musical so they're very excited about it and um yeah so they are zach efron gonna make a i i don't know i did get a i did get an appearance for their show last year maybe i can try to pull some strings but they're very excited about it and i'm really impressed with the students engagement in it and trying to get sports teams involved and other students to get involved and they're doing contests with teachers and a photo booth and

[02:14:24] they're going to have apparently they have a cutout of zach efron and so they're going to put it in different classrooms and like where i don't remember the character's name but wherever he's going to like be in a different classroom every day and it's really it was really great better than going to the movies that's right yeah can we get a list i'm trying to think of who i should look at for this i don't know if it's dr geyser or dr hayes could we just get a list of the um music end of year musical end of year concerts like we can't go to everything but i know we'd love to do as much as we can and the more the earlier we have it and the more consolidated it is that i at least have some representation from the board of each one that would be great

[02:15:04] awesome thank you so much i had a chance to visit the pre-k class at woodbrook one of them front porch you may be aware of is this great organization that have teachers go into the most of the pre-k classrooms in in the county and teach music they spend 30 minutes i was there with chris matthews who's paid by front porch so it doesn't cost acps anything and yet kids are

[02:15:42] learning the alphabet and learning how to count using music which is fantastic so i'm hoping to have front porch come and tell us a little bit more about what they do but that was that was really cool i know dr has a statement no just real quick um so i'd sent out an email to the board uh i think earlier this week but what we what we what we're going to do uh and i'll just read real quick so as you know there will be a special election on april 21st 18 of our 24 schools serve as polling locations and several principals have already raised concerns about parking traffic flow

[02:16:18] and general crowd management on that day given the anticipated voter turnout in light of those logistical challenges and considering that we still have two and a half days banked based on our instructional hours following you know we got through this last week we're just kind of holding off on making a decision I am planning to convert April 21st into a non-student day we will follow up with additional information on expectations for each employee group regarding reporting that day or not reporting that day this would allow teachers to use the day either as

[02:16:54] workday or professional development day with the option to work on-site or telecommute. I should also note that Charlottesville City Schools are planning to make the same adjustment to their calendar because this day will affect our shared KTEC programming it makes sense for us to remain aligned with the city schools on this change. My intent is to support our schools in managing the operational realities of hosting polling locations while also providing staff with a productive day that benefits instruction and planning.

[02:17:24] so the 21st will be a non-student day thank you I appreciate you so much do I have any other announcements or motions in front of me seeing none it is gosh my eyes are bad I'm going to look down at my phone it is 8 50 and we are concluding this meeting it is now adjourned thank you so much

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